(J this could be worked into a great government conspiracy theory J)

Note: The following rant is directed at the Great American Sheeple (GAS). I am not talking directly to any of our subscribers, so please, none of you take this as a personal attack. It is not meant to be.

OK, folks… bear with me a few moments because this is speculative psychology rather than science fact. Of course, I know a few psychiatrists who will argue the point, claiming what they do is science, but I believe the analysis of the human psyche is closer to an art than a science (one cannot prove why someone does a thing, but we can make educated guesses based on tons of empirical evidence).

Before I start ranting, I would first like to define the word “happiness” (noun). To be happy (adjective), according to the dictionary, means: enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. I disagree with using “joy” as part of that definition, because that is an intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness. So my rant here is not about the occasional joyousness we all feel now and then, but about a general state or claim that we are “happy people.”

Of all the things I have read about human history, happy people are not explorers or inventors; only unhappy people do those things. I know you are trying to reject that thought because you know some pretty creative people who appear to be very happy. I am rather joyous when I complete a really good woodcarving or build a pretty bookcase (the sin of pride?), but the cause of going out to the shop to create those things in the first place was my unhappiness with what was not working for us. But let’s examine this a little closer and perhaps divide the word “happy” into specific areas of life. Are you generally a happy person? Are you happy about all areas of your life? Are there some areas of your life about which you know you are not happy?

Ladies, go stand in front of your full-length mirror and tell me about the bikini you will wear in a few months when the sun reappears from behind winter’s snow clouds. I use the ladies for this example because, typically, they are the most critical of their own appearance. Have a little love handle there, do you? And you are unhappy about that, aren’t you? So, are you planning to do anything about it? Going to try the latest fad diet so you can look great on the beach this summer? OK, here’s a question to ask yourself: why do you care? Is it because you want to look better so you can increase your chances of attracting a mate? Already have a mate? You want to lose 15 pounds so he’ll want you more? Or do you just want to look better than that hussy next door, who you have noticed your mate looking at a bit too often lately? Statistically, by the way, married women carry more weight than single women and the shrinks claim this is because they feel that they no longer have to compete for the male’s attention (they captured one and he has to put up with her regardless of her looks). Obviously, that statement does not apply to every woman, nor does the rationale (Today, U.S. statistics show 75% of all marriages end in divorce, so someone isn’t doing something right. That, alone, ought to shout out that we are not as happy as we claim.). But this article isn’t about fat or marriage – those just happened to be easy points to start you thinking. And thinking is what you need to do for this article.

People who are happy tend to also be complacent. There is no need to make changes in any part of your life if you are happy about how you are living, where you are living, the type of house you are living in, who you are living with, what kind of job you have, etc. Complacency also tends toward stagnation; happy people also tend to become lazy people. Now we all know someone for whom that statement does not apply. Likely, you all know a few people who are very unhappy and still very lazy. They actually fit into another category entirely: those who were lazy first, relied on someone else to do things for them, then found no reason not to become complacent and stagnant. I call them “spoiled.” These are the people who routinely hire someone else to do the work for them and never try to do things for themselves. But they are a small percentage of the general population, so let’s step back and focus more on the larger group. I’ll touch on these people again a bit later.

History is a great place to look to see why unhappiness causes us to make changes. You’ve all heard the phrase, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” (barring the Berkley pot crowd who thinks the necessity of invention is a mother J). What is it that we consider “necessity”? Jane Doe doesn’t like her kitchen cupboards. She nags her husband to do something about it. John Doe (so who else would me married to Jane Doe?) is not a carpenter. He also claims they do not have the $10,000 that the cabinetmaker estimated the remodeling job will cost. So Jane goes out to the garage and digs out those tools her lazy husband hasn’t used in 15 years, reads the operator manual (just temporarily suspend disbelief here and pretend that they actually kept the paperwork.), and she learns how to make these things herself. (You GO Jane!) She does such a good job that she discovers she likes woodworking and perhaps even changes her career field. Would any of this have happened if she had been happy with her cupboards? Would the light bulb ever have been invented if people were happy with candles (and Edison perceived a potential profit from the undertaking)? Would Lewis and Clark have discovered the Pacific Northwest if they had been perfectly happy on the east coast? (Yes, history teachers, I have read that they were “sent” on that mission, but unless they were willing adventurers, they wouldn’t have survived that grueling task, and a willing adventurer is one who is not happy being wherever he is at the moment.). I bet you can fit thousands more questions into this area.

Why are you reading this newsletter? If you were perfectly happy about the state of your health, would you bother trying to find a new way to fix it? (Assumption: pain causes unhappiness, unless you are really into Sado-Masochism.) You’ve already been to the allopathic doctors, spent lots of money on exams, tests, and medicines, and still they didn’t fix whatever it is that caused your pain. You remained unhappy. The knowledge of your unhappiness gave rise to the invention of alternatives to allopathic medicine (yes, I know that, historically, what we call “alternatives” today actually came first, but that was for a different reason, which we will get to shortly). What I mean here, is that your unhappiness with traditional (non)fixes made room for a huge business in alternative medicines; people who want to take advantage of your unhappiness and sell you a miracle cure, which likely also will not fix your problem, but for some short term you will use it because you still have hopes that you can switch from a man-made chemical “cure” to a Nature-made cure and find the fix you’ve been dreaming of. And, if that makes you happy, then for some period of time, you will become complacent and stop searching for what actually caused your ailment and the resultant unhappiness about that ailment. Simply switching from one form of pill to another form of pill is also laziness. At this point, your unhappiness quotient wasn’t sufficiently strong enough to drive you to find the cause of the ailment and reverse the offending conditions.

OK, so what caused the industrial revolution? Was that also unhappiness? In a way… but there is also another motive for making changes like that. If a person is unhappy about his/her financial situation and perceives a reasonably easy method for making lots of money, would that also do it? I’m sure I could have great arguments here with the political/life-science majors in this area, but I believe that a certain segment of our population loves to capitalize on other people’s laziness (touching again on those people from a couple paragraphs back). Let’s puff up our righteous indignation here and demand: How could I possibly call your desire to have the latest timesaving gadgets laziness? Those are <expletive deleted> lifestyle improvements! Or so you claim, but that likely is merely the result of being brainwashed to believe something that isn’t necessarily truth. I know lots of people who have closets full of labor-saving devices they bought and do not use (It slices, dices, chops… and is a major pain in the butt to clean up afterward.).

I will grant that the greatest portion of our civilization does not have the ability, regardless of desire or skills, to grow their own gardens, raise their own livestock, etc., because they live in urban environments where they cannot do those things. And, even though I do not choose to live that way, I will not judge those who do (even if I do occasionally rant about city dwellers’ ideologies). What caused 95% of the people in this country to live and/or work in urban environments? It is easier to get a job with a large paycheck attached in the city than to be a manual laborer in the country. Of necessity, then, urban folks also tend to live an urban lifestyle. They buy groceries at a chain supermarket (which we have shown in past newsletters, is the major cause of your illnesses – if you follow the entire money trail). The only exercise urbanites get is walking from their car/bus to the office, then to the vending machines in the lunchroom, then back to the car/bus, etc. And how often have you seen someone park in a handicap zone (permit or not) right in front of the store and you said to yourself, “He doesn’t look handicapped to me” as he sprints the 50 feet to the door because he’s too lazy to park 100 yards farther away? City people get very little exercise. Oh yes, they all have a membership to “the gym,” but they probably went once and decided it was too much trouble. That, in turn, gave rise to another industry – we’ll put exercise programs on TV and sell you AbLounges or Bowflexes, which all neatly fold up so you can store them under your bed, which is where they have been collecting dust ever since the first time you used them. Right? Be honest.

Perhaps our unhappiness just isn’t strong enough to keep us motivated to keep making changes. Or, maybe our laziness is too strong and it overpowers our desires to get healthy. One of my sisters-in-law is so happy with her peanut butter and corn, that she says she’d rather die young and stay happy than to get healthy and live a long boring life. Complacent. L If you fit in that category, however, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Back to capitalizing on people’s laziness and/or living situations (those that prevent them from having an active healthy lifestyle). As I implied above, allopathic medicine actually is the latest arrival on the scene in mankind’s history (see Brief History of Medicine, issue #07) regardless of the recent resurgence of alternative medicines. What caused Big Pharma to get as huge as it is? We, the consumers, asked for it. We asked for a miracle pill. Our unwillingness to work it out naturally, to take long-term doses of naturopathic/homeopathic treatments or eat and live life as Mother Nature intended demanded someone else invent a quick fix for us. Of course, that also could be called laziness. We don’t want to eat properly or exercise regularly because it’s just too hard. It is easier to eat fast/junk food and be entertained by the boob tube.

The government conspiracy, hinted at in the subtitle, is really a food industry and pharmaceutical industry conspiracy; it is only aided and abetted by the government (non)regulators who promote that way of life because of all the money that gets palmed off for immediate certifications. The food industry, of course, knows they can capitalize on our laziness by giving us thousands of labor-saving prepackaged processed foods (all of which contain sugars, grains of some sort, guaranteed mycotoxins, and possibly other toxins in the form of flavor enhancers and preservatives). This, in turn, gives Big Pharma the opportunity to invent another pill because those foods are guaranteed to make you sick and keep you that way. Then, when someone comes along and tries to tell you what is happening to you, both the food industry and the pharmaceuticals industry do their best to convince you that we don’t know what we’re talking about. They are aided by those to whom they pay great deals of money – the government (FDA) and the agency all doctors bow down to (AMA). (If you aren’t sure you believe that, notice that a pharmaceutical that kills 100,000 people is still on the market, but an herb that killed three people is banned. A pharmaceutical can claim to be a “cure,” but if you claim an herb will do so, you go to jail.). The doctors (those who have been properly indoctrinated – um, brainwashed – by a strictly regulated academia), in turn, will try to convince you that the kinds of food you eat have nothing whatsoever to do with your health. Common sense should tell you otherwise, but we are also trying the rid our society of that nuisance. We are all being systematically programmed to live our lives exactly as the big industry folks want us to live – which is to say, we do whatever it is that puts more money (and power) into their hands. And, that leads us back to the subject of this article: Are you happy about all of this?

Lazy people are happy because they choose to put the responsibility for their lives in someone else’s hands. They will eat their McBarf burgers and flavor-enhanced French fries (secret formulas containing corn syrup sweeteners to enhance boring plain potatoes) and follow that with several pills, collect their paychecks and spend the night in front of their big screen plasma televisions where they absorb further programming. When they trip on their own shoelaces because they are too fat to see their feet, they will sue someone else because obviously, it wasn’t their fault that society forced them to be what they are (some are now claiming that obesity is a disease – I believe the real disease is called laziness, and I’m sure the new psychiatric-think has a pill for that too.J ). Not being responsible for your own life has now become the American way of life. Do you want to live like that? I don’t think you do, or likely you would have stopped reading this article shortly after I made the first accusation that something you might do isn’t right.

WHICH ONE OF THESE PEOPLE DOESN’T RECEIVE PERKS, PAYOFFS, OR EVEN A REAL CURE?

So, are you happy? Do you even want to be truly and 100% happy? The government masters want you to think you are – or least that you can be if you’ll just follow their suggestions for a “healthy” life. Just fall in line behind the millions of other compliant taxpayers. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t rock the boat. Oh, and no matter how much they screw up, do wave the flag often so they will know that you’re supporting their greed. Above all, do not ever learn to think for yourselves because that leads to unrest. And don’t take responsibility for your own actions or your own health, because that will lead to economic collapse. Who would pay all those pill pushers if you don’t need to buy their products? Who will pay all those lawyers if you don’t sue someone? The biggest fear of all the world’s power mongers is that you, their subjects, might gain enough knowledge so as to not need them. So get happy, get complacent, get stagnant, and that will keep the power brokers in a constant state of joy.

Or decide to discover what life is all about. Get off your collective complacent butts; learn enough to know the cause of all things (at least those that affect your life). The biggest drawback is that “you can’t go home again” – once you know a thing, you can never unknow it. You might be able to modify that knowledge with the addition of new data (valid new data should cause logical people to modify their beliefs), but you cannot ever erase such knowledge. Should you decide you want to return to your old lifestyle, your mind will nag you until your dying day. The best you can do is to try to ignore what you know by trying very hard to believe it is not truth; that it was the devil that made you do it; that it was somehow wrong (pick an excuse). But you will still, deep inside, know that your deliberate cover-up is false, so you will not ever be satisfied by such self-deception. To be a creator – to create a good healthy lifestyle – you must be sufficiently unhappy with the one you are currently living in order to push yourself into making changes. So what are you going to do about it?

Here we go again… I am sitting here in front of this computer with a large bottle of Vitamin E soft gels (Member’s Mark brand from Sam’s Club) shaking my head in wonderment. Aren’t we suppose to take supplements to get away from the bad crap in our regular food? I have ranted about people not reading food labels, yet I allowed myself to get caught with my pants down when it came to supplements. It says the ingredients are: d1-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Gelatin, Glycerin, Soybean Oil. Clearly even the vitamin manufacturers have no clue about what is not a good ingredient! Not that the other ingredients are perfect. The dl-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate is an off-white crystalline solid and the MSDS (material safety data sheet) says you should minimize contact with this substance, but that’s where the vitamin E portion of this supplement comes from. The gelatin is not identified as to type or origin, but generically the MSDS says to avoid long-term exposure to skin or by inhalation. I assume it is used as the coating on this capsule. The glycerin is a viscous, colorless or pale yellow liquid, to which we should also minimize contact. And soybean oil is the carrier. Well, we’ve already beaten soybeans to death in past issues. It would appear, if you believe in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) MSDS requirements, that we really shouldn’t get the contents of this capsule on our skin, but it seems OK to swallow it. Does that make sense to you? And… ummm… don’t some people routinely use this to rub on aging skin?

Next bottle: VITAMIN C: 1000 mg tablets. I have read that we should not take Vitamin E without also taking Vitamin C because the C helps the body utilize the E. OK, so here we have a giant economy-sized bottle of Vitamin C (same brand as the E) and its ingredients are: Ascorbic Acid, Cellulose, Corn Starch, Hypromellose, Rose Hips, Croscarmellose Sodium, Crospovidone, Stearic Acid, Hydroxypropyl Cellulose, Magnesium Stearate, Silicon Dioxide. Dang! A whole chemistry set in one tablet! Now I know the rose hips is high in Vitamin C, so what is all that other crap doing in there? Hey, the cellulose is good too because that helps the body attach and dispose of heavy metals, but why ascorbic acid? Ascorbic Acid is Vitamin C according to all the fact sheets I have read, but don’t run out and buy a case of oranges as a substitute for tablets because a guava, a red bell pepper, or a papaya will give you more of this than an orange, which has only 60 mg (big news to Florida/Texas/California orange growers, huh?). The corn starch is an ingredient I don’t want, but they use that to stick the other ingredients together. Corn starch has two components, amylose (a straight chain polymer of glucose) and amylopectin (a branched chain polymer of glucose). It can also cause things to become stale. Hypromellose is also known as Hydoxypropyl Methylcellulose, which is the generic name for Artificial Tears ® (and 19 other US brand names plus eight Canadian brand names for a product used by people who wear contact lenses). But that same chemical is listed by itself, so why differentiate them? The United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) says this is to avoid confusion between geographies and allow clearer communication between industry professionals. In other words, where that component was made, or who holds the patent, determines what it is called. But that still doesn’t explain why it got used twice or why Artificial Tears ® are necessary in my Vitamin C tablet. Croscarmellose Sodium is a cross-linked polymer of carboxymethyl cellulose sodium, which provides superior drug dissolution and disintegration characteristics, supposedly improving bioavailability of formulations. Crospovidone is a low-substituted hydroxypropyl ether of cellulose, which is also listed separately, so once again we have a situation akin to the Hypromellose confusion. Stearic acid is a saturated fatty acid that’s mainly in animal products and also in some plant foods like cocoa. I have no idea why they needed to put that in my Vitamin C tablet. Magnesium Stearate is a white, soft powder used as a lubricant and stabilizer. The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is the oxide of silicon. It is found in nature in several forms, including quartz and opal. Silica is used as a food additive, primarily as a flow agent in powdered foods, or to absorb water. So, let’s see… if I go outside, pick some rose hips from my bush, throw in a bunch of synthetic chemicals that don’t have obvious uses, then swallow a couple quartz crystals, I should get the same effect, right? Ptooie!

OK, one more and I’ll let you rest your tired brains (keep reading this stuff and you’ll end up with a degree in organic chemistry J). Those of you who watch Know the Cause often hear Doug or Kyle proclaim CoQ-10 to be something we should all take, so I bought a bottle. I wish I’d read the ingredients at the store first. It contains: Soybean Oil, Gelatin, Coenzyme Q-10, Glycerin, Yellow Beeswax, Lecithin, d-Alpha Tocopherol, Riboflavin, Titanium Dioxide. Do all gel-caps have the same crap in them? I don’t want anymore stinkin’ soybean oil! The gelatin and glycerin were covered in the Vitamin E section above. The yellow beeswax is something I would expect in candle making and soap making, but it is used here to make dull gelatin into a pretty yellow capsule. Supposedly we are more likely to be attracted to that than a slightly off-clear capsule. Sigh. Lecithin is a fatlike substance called a phospholipid. It is also a fat emulsifier, so it supports the circulatory system. Now this d-Alpha Tocopherol was also in the vitamin E gelcaps, so what’s it doing here? Well, note there is a slight difference in nomeclature. This is Vitamin E too, but it is a synthetic form, which is also the cheapest and least effective form. It is also esterified (converted) into a single acid ester. That means it is very resistant to destruction by oxidation, even in the presence of minerals or at high temperatures, but this destroys its antioxidant properties, although not its ability to prevent clot formation in our blood vessels. Riboflavin is also known as Vitamin B2, something that is normally manufactured in your body by the intestinal flora. I can’t quite figure out why they put the Titanium Dioxide in this gelcap because that is normally used as a white pigment in paint. Titanium is also used as a white food dye, and titanium dioxide is frequently found in toothpaste. If they are using it as coloring in this gelcap, why the heck did they need that yellow beeswax? This capsule is yellow, not white. Heavy sigh.

I suggest, folks, that we all start paying closer attention to the labels on our supplements as well as our food products. I am going to dump this stuff as soon as I order some stuff from someone who has a better idea of what should and shouldn’t be in my pills, such as Primal Nutrition, All-One, or BioActive Nutrients. We’ll keep you posted.

Again we see that vets get it, but not MDs, the AMA, or the FDA (see food pyramid rant, issue #57). Pet food have grain (corn) in them for only one reason: it makes them cheap to produce.

 “The meat industry has quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide. But the growing use of carbon monoxide as a “pigment fixative” is alarming consumer advocates and others who say it deceives shoppers who depend on color to help them avoid spoiled meat. Those critics are challenging the Food and Drug Administration and the nation’s powerful meat industry, saying the agency violated its own rules by allowing the practice without a formal evaluation of its impact on consumer safety.”

Color is a poor indicator of freshness. Meat naturally turns brown from exposure to oxygen long before it goes bad. This is being done merely to avoid having to lose money by discounting or throwing away meat that is no longer bright red, which they got from nitrates anyway. Yet another reason for us to get our own cows!

“Mars Inc., maker of Milky Way, Snickers, and M&M’s candies, next month plans to launch nationwide a new line of products made with a dark chocolate the company claims has health benefits. Called CocoaVia, the products are made with a kind of dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that is thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may even lower blood pressure. The snacks also are enriched with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy.”