Monthly Archives: November 2014

A One Legged Man in a Butt Kicking Contest

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sunday musting 1I have always been amazed at this image. The idea of jumping and kicking at the same time is just more than my feeble brain can handle. If you are having trouble with the one legged man, think of a one legged stool. It would seem that in either case, doom is the imminent outcome.

Have you ever baked a cake or a pie? Think of a strawberry cake that is made only of strawberries. Not a cake or a pie, you have simply made a collection of strawberries. Or think of a strawberry cake that is made without sugar or fat or flour. It is like the sound of one hand clapping.

This is the problem when a specialist focuses on only “one thing.” The “one thing” has to participate in interactions from and to its environment. Imagine that you are all puckered to kiss and there is nothing opposite your lips, imaginary or otherwise. A handsome prince or a captivating princess, there to receive your pucker, is your desire. But is the kiss in the pucker of the lips only.  I am sure that a specialist in the pucker would think so. The FDA says that a pucker cannot be used to treat, heal, diagnose, or prevent any disease – not even a broken heart.  Of course the specialist would have to disclose any conflicts of interest like his association with the National Sphincter Association.

In the pathological and physiological processes of the human body, water, air, proteins, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals would be “only the lonely” if they could not interact with each other. A body of water is a lake. A body of air is the sky. Birdie, birdie in the sky, I sure am glad that cows can’t fly. Oh, wait, wrong musing! This is the nature of our science and research when one specializes. There was a time when there was only one thing – “In the Beginning God…” The rest is just the dust of interactions. – A. Cognizant Commenter

Leading in Nutrients – The Affordable Care Act, Part II

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What are the natural or innate characteristics of leaders?   The significant characteristic of leadership is the ability to paint a picture of truth that others can understand. When the picture is false it becomes a lie.   The lie is where great leaders have failed us over the years. Much propaganda delivered in health and nutrition now makes it difficult for anyone to find the truth.   This includes you and your doctor.

The ability to paint a picture in leadership that others can understand is a great gift. It is not a developed gift but a gift or quality that is innate in the leader. Research was used to determine the qualities of a leader. Only one quality of leadership could be found through all ages of test participants. The participants were asked to drink a glass of water with lemon juice added – no sugar. They were then asked to describe how great the lemon water was to drink.   This was started with participants at the age of five. The children were then asked to go play. As they played, the researchers noticed that the children who were able to describe the lemon water as tasty without grimace, became the leaders in play. This test was repeated with groups through middle age with the same result.   Participants who were able to describe the lemon water as great to drink became “natural” leaders.

This gift of painting a picture that others can easily understand is what makes a leader great. There have been many examples of leadership when both the lie and the truth were used effectively. However, when the gift was used as a lie, eventually failure of the led was the result. Compare/contrast the words of leadership during WWII between Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

Has this happened to us in health? The immediate example is the Affordable Care Act. A regular citizen, like yourself, has discovered some serious issues of lack of the truth. Richard Weinstein, MBA, Investment Advisor, found that Jonathan Gruber, the architect-advisor to the ACA, used less than truth to help the ACA pass legislation. Rich was frustrated for a year because he could not get the attention of the press. It was only after his findings became part of a legal challenge to the ACA that he found traction. Huffington Post Article: “This Philly-Based Investment Advisor Has Become Obamacare’s Digital Menace.” 11/11/2014

Rich was driven by the words that got the bill passed, “If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.” Last year, his health insurance policy was cancelled. The closest comparable policy was twice as much. He spent his nights researching the words of the architects of the ACA by reviewing videos that were available on the web. This past week, the Obama Administration was embarrassed by the videos and took immediate action. Obama declared that he wanted “Net Neutrality.” To me this sounds like double-speak as an effort to better control the internet. Glen Beck, on his morning radio show, called this declaration a “Trojan Horse” or subterfuge. A fear tactic was used this week with the words, “if you like Netflix, you can keep Netflix with net neutrality.”

Confusing and confounding findings are now included on a regular basis as a method to advance political advantages. Subterfuge is used in economics, in atmospheric science, and in evidence based medicine. The commonality is the complexity of finding truth. Findings by our elite scholars are being used to manipulate the people for the sole purpose of empire building.   Empire building is simply the maintenance and growth of any organization without concern for the stress on society as a whole.

We, as citizens with concern for the health of government and people, have to now take action. The internet is there for you to determine your own truth. However, be careful, the double-speak artists are paid well to paint beautiful pictures. We do need to follow the leadership of a plain citizen, Richard Weinstein. Have you had a health situation that could be healed with nutrients? It is up to you to talk about this with your friends and family and to help our ethical leaders understand what is happening to our society. – Pandemic Survivor

Leadership in Nutrients – Part I

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Leadership is often misidentified as management. Certainly management is necessary to achieve any great goal. However, is it the correct goal? This is where ethical leadership steps in to give clarity to the community in its effort to achieve greatness in that society. There is always tension in what is an ethical goal. The obvious goal in any society for health is to lead long healthy lives with suffering only for very short periods of time before death takes us. When economic principles supersede the desire for health, a very suffering population can result.

The best way to understand the difference in leadership and management is the story that I heard in the 1980’s. We were attempting to add excellence in quality to a manufacturing environment. We listened to many quality gurus describe processes necessary to achieve the goals. But one story clearly differentiated the process of achieving the goal versus defining the goal: There was a team given the assignment of clearing a jungle and building a road to the other side of an island. At one point during the mission, the manager climbed a tall tree that had been cleared from the jungle. He relayed to the workers that the jungle cutters, the brush clearers, the road builders, and the people keeping the crocodiles away were all doing a great job. He could see the other side of the island and exclaimed to the group that they were more than half way there. On a tree that was adjacent, the leader climbed to the top. He raised his arm and shouted, “Wrong Island.”

Is managing health through evidence based medicine that spotlights only drugs, surgery, and other medical procedures the right island?

Where is the leader that stands up and declares, “Evidence based medicine when focusing only on drugs, surgery, and medical procedures is the wrong island?” “Evidence based medicine when focusing on drugs, surgery, medical procedures, and nutrients is the right island,” declares the leader.

And the economics shout back, “who is going to pay for the research on nutrients that will have no return except for health?”

“What will replace all the lost jobs in medicine and medical insurance?” the politicians proclaim.

Who is going to pay for the research on nutrients is answered by, us, the people. We have already paid for the research on drugs, surgery, and medical procedures that allowed the medical industry to achieve huge economic benefits. It is now time for the government to direct the largest portion of money spent on research toward nutrients and their interactions for health. It is interesting to note there is presently enough evidence based medicine for ethical leaders to make decisions on nutrients. But, what has clouded the effort is the desire to maintain the large sector of the medical-economic complex. Government has adopted the policy position that money to support the economy of healthcare is more important to the security of the nation. This has resulted in a population that suffers from a severe chronic disease epidemic. Could the problems of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes as the big three killers be corrected?

It is now time for our government leaders, Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court to make ethical leadership decisions. The health of the nation would give a much more thriving, wealth building economy than our present paradigm of the medical-economic complex can ever achieve. Are you going to be the change agent to motivate ethical decision making in health? Only through contacting your leaders at all levels will this ever happen. It is the people’s issue that must develop in a grass roots wave. The other choice is to maintain the status quo and continue with great management of the medical-economic complex.

“Wrong Island!” – Pandemic Survivor

Nutrition Beats Down Cholesterol

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D3 Beats Fat

Have you been to your doctor lately and he tells you that he thinks you should be taking a statin drug or a drug to reduce cholesterol. Who the hell is Ancil Keys anyway?  I was at my doctors just a few weeks ago and he begin to drone on about how the requirements for statins had been changed. If you are over sixty and your cholesterol is at 200 then you should be on a statin. Now why he was telling me this is beyond my comprehension. He even wrote down in his notes my explanation to him.

“You would have to hold a gun to my head to get me to take statin drugs.” He then repeated this to a med student that was shadowing him. They had a good chuckle. He was obviously telling me this just to get me excited. I am sure he remembered my “guessed hypothesis” (I’m sure the German’s have a word for this). That is the skin and liver pump out cholesterol yelling at your body to go into the sun to make vitamin D. When you make enough vitamin D or supplement, your hormonal feedback loop stops the production of cholesterol. My present cholesterol test was at 180. He then had me stay an extra thirty minutes to describe my positive changes in health through nutrition to his “shadow.” I was honored.

I had terrible lipids in the past before vitamin D3. I have had triglycerides as high as 800 or a walking heart attack from the viscous fatty blood. By the way, this is the real issue with fat and heart attacks. My cholesterol has come in as high as almost 250. The stabilization of my lipid profile has to do with the vitamin and minerals that I take. I don’t know the mechanism and really don’t care. All I know is that I feel extremely well. The idea that our institutions are trying to get everyone to take more cholesterol reducing drugs in this already tens of billions dollar drug makes me sick to my stomach. I’m sure they have a drug for sick-to-my-stomach caused by their idiopathic delusions of health and wealth.

About a year ago, a young relative about thirty years old told me his doctor was considering putting him on statin drugs because his cholesterol and triglycerides were so high. It runs in the family he said because his father and grandfather had lipid issues as well. It is in the genes. I had the discussion with him about how most everybody has a perfectly good gene map. It is the environment and what we put into our body that causes the genes to express themselves. I suggested he start taking all the a, b, c, d, and e of vitamins and a good mineral supplement that included around 3 to 4 grams of MSM per day as well for sulfate.

He was recently tested and his cholesterol came in at 160 with high HDL or extremely excellent lipids. His triglycerides were very low at around 40. So was it because of inherited genes for making lots of cholesterol or is his father and grandfather deficient in minerals and vitamins as well?

You’ll have to decide which way to go on your next trip to the doctor. Support the medical economy by taking statin drugs for your slightly high cholesterol with all the bad side effects that statins cause. Or, figure out the vitamins and minerals you need to reduce your cholesterol and put your neighbor that sells statins out of work. Of course Obama, Pelosi, and Reid want you to take the statins to show you how well Obamacare works. – Pandemic Survivor

Health versus the Economy

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Sunday MusingHave you ever wondered what a nation would look like that put the economy of the nation as more important than the well being of the individual? Or, wondered if the wealth of the ‘ruling class’ is more important than the health and well-being of everyone else?  What about a nation where one out of every five people gets their income from the illness of the population? This was the transition, “markets before mandates in health”, that America begins to make during the 1930’s at the height of the Great Depression. Now the healthcare segment of the economy is close to twenty percent of GDP.

It is difficult to imagine a community where one out of every five people gets their income from health. Think about a farming community of one hundred people. Now imagine that twenty of those people are medical workers, medical insurance workers, makers of drugs, and support people for this effort. This is what America has come to. In order to keep the medical workers busy, it means that there has to be a significant amount of illness. If the illness is maintain or increased, then the medical workers lively hoods are safe. But this very ill population has difficulty thriving in other sectors of the economy because there is no feeling of well-being. There is low energy and the illness means that the crops do not get harvested for food to feed the people.

These two things, health versus economy, held in juxtaposition of each other can only have two results. Like two waves coming together, they will either add together to get very large. This is the belief of our current leaders in government. Or, the energy will be neutralized as trough adds to ridge and flatness results. I believe this is closer to our present reality. The economy and health both fail.

Consider how the Department of Health and Human Services is operated. Here are the general principles on which decisions are made:

  1. National standards, neighborhood solutions.
  2. Collaboration, not polarization.
  3. Solutions transcend political boundaries.
  4. Markets before mandates.
  5. Protect privacy.
  6. Science for facts, process for priorities.
  7. Reward results, not programs.
  8. Change a heart, change a nation.
  9. Value life.

Please note that the first three are about politics and the fourth about the economy. There is polarization, political boundaries have been drawn with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, and national standards have prevented neighborhood solutions. And yes, markets have been sustained and increased as the greatest transfer of wealth ever from the Treasury to the pockets of medical insurers has been the result. But, have these actions actually created wealth in either the economy or health. Note that to value life or the general purpose of this large agency is last.

What if we picked a state that has done well economically and looked at its principles of operation in health care? Let’s pick Texas because it has created the largest number of jobs since 2008. Here is its number one principle for operating the Texas Health and Human Services Commission:

  • We place the concerns, interests, and well-being of our consumers and constituents at the center of our attention.

What is valued first in Texas is last at the national level. That is to value life and well-being. Texas economy is booming. Could there be a lesson here for national decision making. I am not going to take the time to look up the chronic disease rate in Texas, but being a southern state with higher UVB, I suspect it is less than the national average. I suspect it could be much better if Texas did not have to meet the requirements of the Federal laws. It is no wonder of the hint of Texas wanting to secede.

To paraphrase the words of M. Scott Peck in his book “People of the Lie”, an institution that does not have empathy for the ones it serves is evil. – Pandemic Survivor