Your Existing Situation
Sensuous. Inclined to luxuriate in the things which give gratification to the senses, but rejects anything tasteless, vulgar, or coarse.
Your Stress Sources
Wants to overcome a feeling of emptiness and of separation from others. Believes that life still has far more to offer and that he may miss his share of experiences if he fails to make the best use of every opportunity. He therefore pursues his objectives with a fierce intensity and commits himself deeply and readily. Feels himself to be completely competent in any field in which he engages, and can sometimes be considered by others to be interfering or meddlesome
Your Restrained Characteristics
Unhappy at the resistance he feels whenever he tries to assert himself. However, he believes that there is little he can do and that he must make the best of the situation.
Your Desired Objective
Hopes that ties of affection and good-fellowship will bring release and contentment. His own need for approval makes him ready to be of help to others and in exchange he wants warmth and understanding. Open to new ideas and possibilities which he hopes will prove fruitful and interesting.
Your Actual Problem
The fear that he may be prevented from achieving the things he wants leads him into a relentless search for satisfaction in the pursuit of illusory or meaningless activities.
Your Actual Problem #2
Feels restricted and prevented from progressing; seeking a solution which will remove these limitations.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Ring of Fire
Down I went and yes, it burns. To suddenly feel older but not necessarily wiser at my age is not a good thing. But what can you do?
Saturday, July 08, 2006
SACRIFICE
"Wounded I hung on a windswept gallows
For nine long night,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin,
Offered myself to myself.
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood (Tree)
They gave me no bread,
They gave me no mead,
I looked down;
with a loud cry I took up the Runes,
From that tree I fell."
For nine long night,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin,
Offered myself to myself.
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood (Tree)
They gave me no bread,
They gave me no mead,
I looked down;
with a loud cry I took up the Runes,
From that tree I fell."
Friday, July 07, 2006
Don't tell the kids, but Rowling would be right to kill off Harry
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Fiction allows us to come to terms with the emotions, such as the terrible outrage in Kes
IS J. K. ROWLING going to commit Harry-kiri? Is she planning some appalling act of Potter-cide? The publishing world has been abuzz ever since Britain’s most celebrated children’s author insisted that the seventh volume of her series would, definitively, be the final one. And some of the characters, she suggested in an interview this week, would be coming to a sticky end. “One got a reprieve,” she confided, “but I have to say, two die that I didn’t intend to die.”
Rowling refuses to reveal anything more. And, if her last book is anything to go by, pre-publication secrecy will prove impenetrable — which will only whip up more frenetic speculation that it is the eponymous boy wizard himself who is about to perish.All over the country, muggle parents are already growing panicky.
They foresee tear-spotted pages. And how will they cope with all those
broken little hearts? “It’s such a betrayal of loyalty,” a friend of
mine railed before confiding her plan to kidnap Ms Rowling — like the
mad woman in Stephen King’s Misery — and force her at knifepoint to begin a rewrite.
Fiction allows us to come to terms with the emotions, such as the terrible outrage in Kes
IS J. K. ROWLING going to commit Harry-kiri? Is she planning some appalling act of Potter-cide? The publishing world has been abuzz ever since Britain’s most celebrated children’s author insisted that the seventh volume of her series would, definitively, be the final one. And some of the characters, she suggested in an interview this week, would be coming to a sticky end. “One got a reprieve,” she confided, “but I have to say, two die that I didn’t intend to die.”
Rowling refuses to reveal anything more. And, if her last book is anything to go by, pre-publication secrecy will prove impenetrable — which will only whip up more frenetic speculation that it is the eponymous boy wizard himself who is about to perish.All over the country, muggle parents are already growing panicky.
They foresee tear-spotted pages. And how will they cope with all those
broken little hearts? “It’s such a betrayal of loyalty,” a friend of
mine railed before confiding her plan to kidnap Ms Rowling — like the
mad woman in Stephen King’s Misery — and force her at knifepoint to begin a rewrite.
But why? For the sake of our children we should look forward to
the death of Harry Potter. His demise seems a natural conclusion — and
not just for an author who is unwilling to see her creation resurrected
to some tacky commercial afterlife.
Death used to be an integral part of family life. People
prepared for their end at home, surrounded by those whom they loved.
They still do in many cultures. Once I stayed in the Amazon for a year
or so. When the grandmother of the family I was living with fell ill
she made a trip to the doctor. It took her a week to walk with her
stick through the forests. But as soon as she had arrived, she turned
round and came home. It wasn’t what the doctor had said, she explained.
It was that she had suddenly been frightened that, if she didn’t hurry,
she would never make it back.
So she spent her last month as a faint curve at the bottom of
a hammock. And on the night that she died, it was her 12-year-old
grandson who was sleeping beside her. And it was he and his sister who
helped their mother to wash her, who kept her corpse company until it
was buried.
But in our modern world death has grown lonelier. Too often
our elderly seem all but abandoned. Their little flats smell of urine
and solitude. When they fall ill, they are bustled off to hospitals: to
a strange world of hard surfaces and suffocating heat. Death is kept at
an antiseptic distance. And we seem to have derived a whole vocabulary
to obscure it. Granny doesn’t die: she is lost, or she passes away; she
is no longer with us, or she is called to God.
And yet children are instinctively fascinated by the subject.
You have only to watch the toddler fixated by the road-kill. You have
only to listen to all the brutally blunt questions of the “When you
die, Mummy, will Daddy cry?” sort. Death to a child is something solid.
It is something to be prodded at with a stick — or at least it is until
they realise that the adults around them are side-stepping the
question. Then they find it disturbing. Sometimes, in not talking, we
are communicating at our clearest. The child starts to sense all the
distressing dangers of taboo.
But literature can offer an arena in which, uncramped by
social expectations, children can discover and explore their emotions.
That is why all great children’s literature is preoccupied with death,
from the fairytales that first flirt with its possibilities to the
tragedies that encounter it in full-blown form. Fiction has a peculiar
power. It can create characters who feel as real as life; who become
our friends; who speak to our childhood imaginations in all their
hungry ferocity — as C. S. Lewis did to me, as J. K. Rowling clearly
does to another generation.
Like any child, I encountered death everywhere: in the
stillborn calves in the farmyard with their tiny blue tongues; in the
poisoned rats that turned to leathery mummies in the barn, in the
wounded wood pigeons whose slow deaths I presided over so attentively.
But as we retreat alone into the secret world of books, such
experiences gradually settle, find a context in life’s wider story.
Slowly we come to terms with all the emotions they arouse: lonely
abandonment (Babar’s mother), pained anger (Ginger in Black Beauty), unbearable outrage (Kes), heartbreaking disappointment (Midge in Ring of Bright Water). Slowly we draw towards some realisation of sad resolution.
Only when this is denied are we troubled. How many children, as I did, picked up Animal Farm
imagining it was some simple barnyard tale? I can remember my
bewilderment at the departure of Boxer. Was he killed or not? The lack
of certainty haunted me. It was as if some family pet had died and we
had never held the funeral.
Adults often fear that children are too fragile to face the
reality of death. But the only certainty of life is the thing about
which we seem most uncertain. It is better for our children to confront
death directly. Let Harry Potter be killed. It would be less confusing
than for him to grow up to become an accountant. Besides, as his
headmaster Dumbledore put it: “For the well-organised mind, death is
the next big adventure.”
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
the Well and the Tree
SUMBEL - INVOKING THE POWER OF THE PAST
The I in this article does not refer to myself but rather to Stephen A. McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly. A person who usually never fails to provide food for thought.
Sumbel, the ritual toasting which comprises an entire branch of Germanic religious observance, is practiced with many different variations across the country and around the world. Some groups pass the horn three times, while for others that would be only a warm-up. The subject of each pass varies, as do the rules for acceptable behavior. I have sat in some sumbels where the attitude was extremely informal, as well as in those that were highly structured and infused with elaborate protocol. Even the word itself is spelled differently from place to place; common spellings include the Old English symbel, the Old Norse sumbel, the Icelandic sumbl, and the American variant sumble.
Depending on the mood and the occasion, all these customs are within the acceptable range of Germanic practice in the early 21st century. There is one element, however, that I feel is often missing but which can add a great deal to the experience for novices and experienced Asafolk alike.
This "something" is nothing more than a verbal statement to the group calling to mind the theory and the purpose of the sumbel. It refreshes the essential principles in the minds of the old-timers, and instructs those who are new to our faith. Additionally, it serves as a good transition from mundane affairs to the sacred.
Anyone who sits at sumbel with me has heard this lecture, perhaps many times. It goes something like this, with various elaborations:
In Germanic cosmology there are two major features: the Well and the Tree. The Tree is the mighty Yew, the framework of the cosmos, and in it hang all the Nine Worlds. The Tree is all that which IS at any given instant.
The Well, on the other hand, is the repository of all that which has been - the past, if you will. As we go about our lives, our deeds deposit layers in that Well. These layers constitute our "fate," or more properly our orlog (or=primal; log=layers). These layers continue to influence the present. In other words, the layers we put in the Well help determine what happens to us. We get the fate we make, at least partially.
Philosophically, this is significant because it affirms free will and human effort while refuting fatalism.
However, it gets more complicated: We are not the only ones putting layers in the well. Our own deeds have greater immediacy for our own lives, but the outcome of events is also shaped by the deeds of others - vast forces, usually impersonal, that condition what can or cannot be done at any given time. Because the equation describing that-which-is is thus a complex one, we may not be able to get the outcome we desire in any given situation. The momentum of other layers in the Well may simply outweigh any power we can bring to bear.
It is here that heroism comes into play. Edith Hamilton, in her book Mythology, writes that "The hero can prove what he is only by dying." I read that line as a young man, and it took me years to truly understand it. A human may exert all his or her power (physical, mental, and spiritual) to attain a goal. This is a noble thing, but gaining victory is not the greatest test of heroism. The ultimate expression of the heroic ethic is to fight one's hardest and lose the battle - but to accept defeat calmly and meet death with a joke on one's lips. In other words, the enemy can take victory but they cannot take the dignity of the great soul; that remains forever under the control of the hero's will.
We can draw power from the past - from the Well itself - to aid us in our personal battles. The sumbel horn is, magically speaking, the Well. The mead within it is the accumulated orlog. By drinking from the horn with intent and invoking some specific form of that-which-has-been, we bring the might of the past into the present and immerse ourselves in it that we may use that might to seek our own victories. This involves making a toast (thus harnessing some of the Well-bound might of others, to include the Holy Powers themselves), a boast of a personal accomplishment (reaffirming our own layers laid down successfully) or some other mighty verbal gesture such as a song or poem that also captures the courage, power, endurance, or even the sense of humor expressed in the past.
While social bonding and the speaking of one's mind are valuable side effects of the sumbel, we would do well to remember the fundamental aim, which is to manifest the power of the past and apply it to our present and future struggles. As such, sumbel becomes a magical act of great significance, with immense benefits for the participants. I urge you to incorporate a verbal prologue at the beginning of your sumbels to take full advantage of this effect and to teach those who sit at your table!
The I in this article does not refer to myself but rather to Stephen A. McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly. A person who usually never fails to provide food for thought.
Sumbel, the ritual toasting which comprises an entire branch of Germanic religious observance, is practiced with many different variations across the country and around the world. Some groups pass the horn three times, while for others that would be only a warm-up. The subject of each pass varies, as do the rules for acceptable behavior. I have sat in some sumbels where the attitude was extremely informal, as well as in those that were highly structured and infused with elaborate protocol. Even the word itself is spelled differently from place to place; common spellings include the Old English symbel, the Old Norse sumbel, the Icelandic sumbl, and the American variant sumble.
Depending on the mood and the occasion, all these customs are within the acceptable range of Germanic practice in the early 21st century. There is one element, however, that I feel is often missing but which can add a great deal to the experience for novices and experienced Asafolk alike.
This "something" is nothing more than a verbal statement to the group calling to mind the theory and the purpose of the sumbel. It refreshes the essential principles in the minds of the old-timers, and instructs those who are new to our faith. Additionally, it serves as a good transition from mundane affairs to the sacred.
Anyone who sits at sumbel with me has heard this lecture, perhaps many times. It goes something like this, with various elaborations:
In Germanic cosmology there are two major features: the Well and the Tree. The Tree is the mighty Yew, the framework of the cosmos, and in it hang all the Nine Worlds. The Tree is all that which IS at any given instant.
The Well, on the other hand, is the repository of all that which has been - the past, if you will. As we go about our lives, our deeds deposit layers in that Well. These layers constitute our "fate," or more properly our orlog (or=primal; log=layers). These layers continue to influence the present. In other words, the layers we put in the Well help determine what happens to us. We get the fate we make, at least partially.
Philosophically, this is significant because it affirms free will and human effort while refuting fatalism.
However, it gets more complicated: We are not the only ones putting layers in the well. Our own deeds have greater immediacy for our own lives, but the outcome of events is also shaped by the deeds of others - vast forces, usually impersonal, that condition what can or cannot be done at any given time. Because the equation describing that-which-is is thus a complex one, we may not be able to get the outcome we desire in any given situation. The momentum of other layers in the Well may simply outweigh any power we can bring to bear.
It is here that heroism comes into play. Edith Hamilton, in her book Mythology, writes that "The hero can prove what he is only by dying." I read that line as a young man, and it took me years to truly understand it. A human may exert all his or her power (physical, mental, and spiritual) to attain a goal. This is a noble thing, but gaining victory is not the greatest test of heroism. The ultimate expression of the heroic ethic is to fight one's hardest and lose the battle - but to accept defeat calmly and meet death with a joke on one's lips. In other words, the enemy can take victory but they cannot take the dignity of the great soul; that remains forever under the control of the hero's will.
We can draw power from the past - from the Well itself - to aid us in our personal battles. The sumbel horn is, magically speaking, the Well. The mead within it is the accumulated orlog. By drinking from the horn with intent and invoking some specific form of that-which-has-been, we bring the might of the past into the present and immerse ourselves in it that we may use that might to seek our own victories. This involves making a toast (thus harnessing some of the Well-bound might of others, to include the Holy Powers themselves), a boast of a personal accomplishment (reaffirming our own layers laid down successfully) or some other mighty verbal gesture such as a song or poem that also captures the courage, power, endurance, or even the sense of humor expressed in the past.
While social bonding and the speaking of one's mind are valuable side effects of the sumbel, we would do well to remember the fundamental aim, which is to manifest the power of the past and apply it to our present and future struggles. As such, sumbel becomes a magical act of great significance, with immense benefits for the participants. I urge you to incorporate a verbal prologue at the beginning of your sumbels to take full advantage of this effect and to teach those who sit at your table!
Sunday, July 02, 2006
When I Paint My Masterpiece By William Rivers Pitt
When I Paint My Masterpiece
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 02 July 2006
Someday,
Everything's gonna be smooth like a rhapsody,
When I paint
My masterpiece.
- Bob Dylan
Any starting point requires that we remember that this nation which birthed us, inspires us, blesses us, puts us to work, this nation that challenged us to remember the original promises whenever we said the Pledge of Allegiance all those times in school, this nation we'd all die for, this nation we call home is, in the end, nothing more or less than an idea.
An idea. A dream, an experiment, something sociologist Max Weber once described as "the slow boring of hard boards," a serious endeavor with a good chance of success but a better chance of failure, and if the one was to be saved from the other, there would have to be a lot of good will and hard work and devotion to the premises that got everything started in the first place. The lady who asked Benjamin Franklin what had been wrought after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 got the right answer. "A republic," Franklin told her, "if you can keep it."
"We the people" was a good start, if we're talking about the premises. No one had ever before, in all of history, bothered to lay down a national charter with that kind of thinking in mind. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was another original stroke. There were a dozen more at least, ideas that have been around since time out of mind to be sure, but ideas that no one anywhere ever used collectively and comprehensively to define the reasons for a diverse people to stand under one flag and salute, and mean it.
It was supposed to be a lot of things, but it was never supposed to be easy.
That is America, or at least it was for a while. The song remains the same, as the band once said, but we are certainly not operating off the same ideas that marked the blueprint these last several generations, and anyone who tries to tell you different is also trying to sell you something. Rose-colored glasses are selling cheap these days. They're going for the price of a flag or a few hours of round-the-clock cable-news talking-head pablum, and unfortunately for all of us, that's about as cheap as it gets in the 21st century.
Why? Because America was about a lot of things, back when it all meant something, but there was always a virus in the matrix. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the great thinkers put all the good ideas to paper, but they also made sure the thing was hard-wired to favor anyone with a lot of money.
It was the taxes that burned the Fathers out of neutrality, after all, as well as the denial of commerce by the Crown. So when the revolution was over and the smoke had cleared, the Fathers carved out a separation of church and state, and codified free speech, and laid the groundwork for more freedom for more people than had ever been seen before, but they also made sure the well-to-do were going to remain thus for time out of mind. That was fine, because they put the work in, and freedom also means freedom to make money and be rich. Before too much time had passed, that kind of thing was called The American Dream.
The problem, though, was the virus, which was money. Money slowly bought power, money slowly won elections that used to be free, money started to be the defining reality of Congress and then the presidency, money began writing and signing the laws, money got judges put on the Supreme Court by the purchased aforementioned, and money made sure those judges made decisions designed to benefit the money. Washington and Franklin would have been horrified to see the way it started to shake out even fifty years after they finished their work, but of course, they were gone by then.
Two Supreme Court cases tell the story of where we're at: Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, and Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. The first, a relatively straightforward eminent domain case, granted 14th Amendment rights to corporations. The second declared that money spent to influence elections is a form of Constitutionally-protected free speech.
And we roll the bones, because the 14th Amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," which makes corporations exactly the same as natural-born American humans, and further says that no state can create or enforce any law, "which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So corporations are the same as natural Americans, but thanks to Buckley v. Valeo, all the money thrown at elections and candidates and campaigns and political parties is the same as free speech, and when massive multinational trillion-dollar corporations throw millions at the politicians, they do so with the same set of basic rights as the guy who empties their trash. Except they can't be held liable for anything, because they're corporations, and can hire million-dollar law firms to defend them, and those lawyers become judges appointed by the politicians who are bought and paid for, and it's all perfectly legal, and that's the virus.
Buy the laws, buy the law-makers, and you become the law. That is the definition of corporate freedom.
Money is why we're in Iraq. Money is why it's legal to spy on Americans, why the laws are rewritten to suit policy, why we go to war for resources, why we torture people. It doesn't have anything to do with safety or national security or anything else except money. Foreign policy decisions these days amount to little more than business deals writ large and with body counts to boot, but the latter is always folded in somewhere beneath the bottom line.
These are the Augean stables that have to be cleaned. It doesn't have a damned thing to do with George W. Bush or any of his merry men. That pack is a symptom, merely a cell, a string of proteins holding the genetic code for the virus that is everywhere, and it was there before they showed up, and will still be there when that pack is gone.
There is an election in November, which is good, because there are some people in Congress who know all this, and if it all shakes out the right way, those people will be in a position to make some changes. It's good because elections still matter, even with the corporate ownership of our votes. It's good because the idea may have been paved over with a hundred miles of money and corruption and greed, but that doesn't mean the idea is dead.
The nation which birthed us, inspires us, blesses us, puts us to work, the nation that challenged us to remember the original promises whenever we said the Pledge of Allegiance all those times in school, the nation we'd all die for, the nation we call home is, in the end, nothing more or less than an idea. It has trembled on the edge of dissolution for more than two hundred years, and never more so than today, but the margin is still there.
The margin, of course, is you and me, and everyone else. A lunatic might call this a great time to be alive, while a patriot would say it is a terrible time to be alive, and in the end, they'd both be right. Only a lunatic would think any of this could be changed, and only a patriot would stand up and volunteer for the fight to create that impossible change.
Lunatics and patriots, and a guarantee of broken hearts. That is what you sign up for if you get involved tomorrow, and that is what you've seen and felt and choked on if you were involved today. It was supposed to be a lot of things, but it was never supposed to be easy.
That was the idea to begin with, when you think about it. It has always been in danger, this idea, this dream, and it has been sustained all this time by edge-riders and lunatics and patriots. It was a masterpiece when it was created, and will be again when all is said and done. Too many of us refuse, absolutely refuse, to have it any other way.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
-------
© : t r u t h o u t 2006
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 02 July 2006
Someday,
Everything's gonna be smooth like a rhapsody,
When I paint
My masterpiece.
- Bob Dylan
Any starting point requires that we remember that this nation which birthed us, inspires us, blesses us, puts us to work, this nation that challenged us to remember the original promises whenever we said the Pledge of Allegiance all those times in school, this nation we'd all die for, this nation we call home is, in the end, nothing more or less than an idea.
An idea. A dream, an experiment, something sociologist Max Weber once described as "the slow boring of hard boards," a serious endeavor with a good chance of success but a better chance of failure, and if the one was to be saved from the other, there would have to be a lot of good will and hard work and devotion to the premises that got everything started in the first place. The lady who asked Benjamin Franklin what had been wrought after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 got the right answer. "A republic," Franklin told her, "if you can keep it."
"We the people" was a good start, if we're talking about the premises. No one had ever before, in all of history, bothered to lay down a national charter with that kind of thinking in mind. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was another original stroke. There were a dozen more at least, ideas that have been around since time out of mind to be sure, but ideas that no one anywhere ever used collectively and comprehensively to define the reasons for a diverse people to stand under one flag and salute, and mean it.
It was supposed to be a lot of things, but it was never supposed to be easy.
That is America, or at least it was for a while. The song remains the same, as the band once said, but we are certainly not operating off the same ideas that marked the blueprint these last several generations, and anyone who tries to tell you different is also trying to sell you something. Rose-colored glasses are selling cheap these days. They're going for the price of a flag or a few hours of round-the-clock cable-news talking-head pablum, and unfortunately for all of us, that's about as cheap as it gets in the 21st century.
Why? Because America was about a lot of things, back when it all meant something, but there was always a virus in the matrix. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the great thinkers put all the good ideas to paper, but they also made sure the thing was hard-wired to favor anyone with a lot of money.
It was the taxes that burned the Fathers out of neutrality, after all, as well as the denial of commerce by the Crown. So when the revolution was over and the smoke had cleared, the Fathers carved out a separation of church and state, and codified free speech, and laid the groundwork for more freedom for more people than had ever been seen before, but they also made sure the well-to-do were going to remain thus for time out of mind. That was fine, because they put the work in, and freedom also means freedom to make money and be rich. Before too much time had passed, that kind of thing was called The American Dream.
The problem, though, was the virus, which was money. Money slowly bought power, money slowly won elections that used to be free, money started to be the defining reality of Congress and then the presidency, money began writing and signing the laws, money got judges put on the Supreme Court by the purchased aforementioned, and money made sure those judges made decisions designed to benefit the money. Washington and Franklin would have been horrified to see the way it started to shake out even fifty years after they finished their work, but of course, they were gone by then.
Two Supreme Court cases tell the story of where we're at: Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, and Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. The first, a relatively straightforward eminent domain case, granted 14th Amendment rights to corporations. The second declared that money spent to influence elections is a form of Constitutionally-protected free speech.
And we roll the bones, because the 14th Amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," which makes corporations exactly the same as natural-born American humans, and further says that no state can create or enforce any law, "which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
So corporations are the same as natural Americans, but thanks to Buckley v. Valeo, all the money thrown at elections and candidates and campaigns and political parties is the same as free speech, and when massive multinational trillion-dollar corporations throw millions at the politicians, they do so with the same set of basic rights as the guy who empties their trash. Except they can't be held liable for anything, because they're corporations, and can hire million-dollar law firms to defend them, and those lawyers become judges appointed by the politicians who are bought and paid for, and it's all perfectly legal, and that's the virus.
Buy the laws, buy the law-makers, and you become the law. That is the definition of corporate freedom.
Money is why we're in Iraq. Money is why it's legal to spy on Americans, why the laws are rewritten to suit policy, why we go to war for resources, why we torture people. It doesn't have anything to do with safety or national security or anything else except money. Foreign policy decisions these days amount to little more than business deals writ large and with body counts to boot, but the latter is always folded in somewhere beneath the bottom line.
These are the Augean stables that have to be cleaned. It doesn't have a damned thing to do with George W. Bush or any of his merry men. That pack is a symptom, merely a cell, a string of proteins holding the genetic code for the virus that is everywhere, and it was there before they showed up, and will still be there when that pack is gone.
There is an election in November, which is good, because there are some people in Congress who know all this, and if it all shakes out the right way, those people will be in a position to make some changes. It's good because elections still matter, even with the corporate ownership of our votes. It's good because the idea may have been paved over with a hundred miles of money and corruption and greed, but that doesn't mean the idea is dead.
The nation which birthed us, inspires us, blesses us, puts us to work, the nation that challenged us to remember the original promises whenever we said the Pledge of Allegiance all those times in school, the nation we'd all die for, the nation we call home is, in the end, nothing more or less than an idea. It has trembled on the edge of dissolution for more than two hundred years, and never more so than today, but the margin is still there.
The margin, of course, is you and me, and everyone else. A lunatic might call this a great time to be alive, while a patriot would say it is a terrible time to be alive, and in the end, they'd both be right. Only a lunatic would think any of this could be changed, and only a patriot would stand up and volunteer for the fight to create that impossible change.
Lunatics and patriots, and a guarantee of broken hearts. That is what you sign up for if you get involved tomorrow, and that is what you've seen and felt and choked on if you were involved today. It was supposed to be a lot of things, but it was never supposed to be easy.
That was the idea to begin with, when you think about it. It has always been in danger, this idea, this dream, and it has been sustained all this time by edge-riders and lunatics and patriots. It was a masterpiece when it was created, and will be again when all is said and done. Too many of us refuse, absolutely refuse, to have it any other way.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
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© : t r u t h o u t 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
THE PALEOLITHIC DIET
I NTRODUCTION TO THE PALEOLITHIC DIET
Dr. Ben Balzer, family physician
There are races of people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. They share a secret that is over 2 million years old. Their secret is their diet- a diet that has changed little from that of the first humans 2 million years ago, and their predecessors up to 7 million years ago. Theirs is the diet that man evolved on, the diet that is coded for in our genes. It has some major differences to the diet of "civilization". You are in for a few big surprises.
The diet is usually referred to as the "Paleolithic Diet" referring to the Paleolithic or Stone Age era. It is also referred to as the "Stone Age Diet", "Cave Man Diet" or the "Hunter-Gatherer Diet". More romantic souls like to think of it as the diet that was eaten in the "Garden of Eden" and they are correct in thinking so.
The basic principles of the Paleolithic Diet are so simple that most high school students can understand them. Within 15 minutes from now you will grasp the major elements. At the technical level, Paleolithic Diet Theory has a depth and breadth that is unmatched by all other dietary theories. Paleolithic Diet Theory presents a fully integrated, holistic, comprehensive dietary theory combining the best features of all other dietary theories, eliminating the worst features and simplifying it all.
All major dietary components are covered- (i.e. vitamins, fats, protein, fats, carbohydrates, antioxidants and phytosterols etc). This is for the simple reason that it is the only diet that is coded for in our genes- it contains only those foods that were "on the table" during our long evolution, and discards those which were not. Have you ever wondered why almost everybody feels the need to take vitamin supplementsat times, or why so many people feel the need to "detoxify" their system? There are very real reasons for this that you will soon understand. Now, come with me, I’d like to share the secret with you...
Basics of the Paleolthic Diet
For millions of years, humans and their relatives have eaten meat, fish, fowl and the leaves, roots and fruits of many plants. One big obstacle to getting more calories from the environment is the fact that many plants are inedible. Grains, beans and potatoes are full of energy but all are inedible in the raw state as they contain many toxins. There is no doubt about that- please don’t try to eat them raw, they can make you very sick.
Around 10,000 years ago, an enormous breakthrough was made- a breakthrough that was to change the course of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that cooking these foods made them edible- the heat destroyed enough toxins to render them edible. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta. These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.
The cooking of grains, beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake- perhaps doubling the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our environment. Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:
· they could store for long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)
· they were dense in calories- ie a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport
· the food was also the seed of the plant- later allowing ready farming of the species
These advantages made it much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for winter, and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also enabled surpluses to be stored, and this in turn made it possible to free some people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities, such as builders, warriors and rulers. This in turn set us on the course to modern day civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not. Man soon improved further on these advances- by farming plants and animals.
Instead of being able to eat only a fraction of the animal and plant life in an area, farming allows us to fill a particular area with a large number of edible plants and animals. This in turn increases the number of calories that we can obtain from an area by some 10 to 100 fold or more. Then followed the harnessing of dairy products, which allow man to obtain far more calories from the animal over its lifetime than if it were simply slaughtered for meat. Dairy products are interesting as they combine a variety of components- some of which our genes were ready for and some not. Whist cows milk is ideal for calves, there are several very important differences between it and human milk. For example, the brain of a calf is only a tiny fraction of its body weight whereas humans have very big brains. Not surprisingly, cows milk is low in critical nutrients for brain development, particularly omeg 3 fats.
Paleolithic Diet buffs refer to the new foods as Neolithic foods and the old as Paleolithic Diet foods. In simple terms we see Neolithic as bad and Paleolithic as good. Since then, some other substances have entered the diet- particularly salt and sugar, and more recently a litany of chemicals including firstly caffeine then all other additives, colourings, preservatives, pesticides etc.
Grains, Beans and Potatoes (GBP) share the following important characteristics:
· They are all toxic when raw- there is no doubt about this- it is a fact that no competent source would dispute- they can be extremely dangerous and it is important never to eat them raw or undercooked. These toxins include enzyme blockers, lectins and other types. I will talk about them in detail later as they are very important.
· Cooking destroys most but not all of the toxins. Insufficient cooking can lead to sickness such as acute gastroenteritis.
· They are all rich sources of carbohydrate, and once cooked this is often rapidly digestible-giving a high glycemic index (sugar spike).
· They are extremely poor sources of vitamins (particularly vitamins A, B-group, folic acid and C), minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols.
Therefore diets high in grains beans and potatoes (GBP):
· Contain toxins in small amounts
· Have a high glycemic index (ie have a similar effect to raw sugar on blood glucose levels)
· Are low in many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols- ie they are the original "empty calories"
· Have problems caused by the GBP displacing other foods
As grains, beans and potatoes form such a large proportion of the modern diet, you can now understand why it is so common for people to feel they need supplements or that they need to detoxify (ie that they have toxins in their system)- indeed both feelings are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily realize which supplements we need, and ironically when people go on detoxification diets they unfortunately often consume even more Neolithic foods (eg soy beans) and therefore more toxins than usual (perhaps they sometimes benefit from a change in toxins). More detail on these issues follows in subsequent pages.
The essentials of the Paleolithic Diet are:
Eat none of the following:
· Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles
· Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
· Potatoes
· Dairy products
· Sugar
· Salt
Eat the following:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
· Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.
Try to increase your intake of:
· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
· Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)
Expect some minor tuning problems- don’t worry, you can deal with them:
· It will take some time for your body to adjust to the changes after all these years. There is a huge surge in your vitamin intake. There is a huge decrease in your toxin intake.
· Start with breakfast for few days, as this is the easiest place to start as most people eat it at home, and it tends to be the least Paleolithic meal of the standard 3. For weight loss you will eventually need to reduce your carbohydrate intake, but ignore this initially as most people have high carb intakes and this can continue for the first few days that you are on this diet. If you reduce too quickly then you may fell unwell. Then move on to lunch or dinner for a few days and then to all 3 meals. If you work, you will often find it easier to take your lunch to work.
· Keep reading more about the diet- and read it again. Remember, there are many dietary myths that will need to be unlearned. Particularly, please read the section on fats several times. Knowledge on fats has exploded over the last decade and there is a realization in mainstream nutrition that omega 3 fats are critical to good health. It is very important to ensure that you have an adequate intake of these. The low fat diet craze of the 90’s was well intentioned but many people "threw out the baby with the bath-water"- most people reduced omega 3 fat intake as well as other fats, and sometimes even increased omega 6 fats. There is now a realization that the low fat diet theory of the 90’s doesn’t often work (it has about a 6% success rate like most other diets) and that the vast majority of the Western population need to increase their omega 3 intake and decrease their omega 6 intake. Even if you don’t end up on a Paleolithic Diet, you will benefit from a better appreciation of fats.
Technical Aspects:
12,000 years ago the ice planet Earth thawed out as the last Ice Age came to an end. The great glaciers melted, carving enormous plains across the continents and the planet became green again. The seas rose some 400 feet (120 metres) (incidentally unfortunately drowning most of our archeological heritage). The plains flourished and savannah, prairie and forest sprang up. Grazing animals spread onto the plains, followed by hunting animals and amongst these last were the greatest hunters of all- humans. Humans, being omnivores, have the ability to eat both plant and animal foods. That is a major advantage as the number of creatures that can live in a particular habitat depends entirely on how much energy they can obtain. To make a crude example- imagine you are breeding monkeys on 100 acres of land and the only edible plant there is bananas. If you double the number of banana plants, then you can double the number of monkeys on the land.
You might instead introduce apple trees and have the same effect. The number of monkeys would depend entirely on how many calories they could obtain from the environment. The carrying capacity of the habitat for a species depends on how many calories the species can obtain. Humans are no different. They have a major advantage in being able to eat both plant and animals foods thereby harvesting enormous amounts of calories from the environment. Humans learnt to cook grains, beans and potatoes and increased further the number of plant food calories they can obtain from the environment- probably doubling it in most habitats, and even more on grasslands.
The reason why grains, beans and potatoes store so well is simply because of the toxins that they contain. The enzyme blockers put them into a deep freeze, stopping them from sprouting. The lectins and other toxins are natural pesticides and can attack bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other pests (and humans too of course).
ANTINUTRIENTS- YOUR KEY TO BAD HEALTH
You probably already know a lot about nutrients- macronutrients (fats, protein and carbohydrates and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytosterols etc). Now it's time to meet the rest of the family....... We all know that foods contain a variety of nutrients. There is less awareness that many foods contain small amounts of potentially harmful substances. These are toxins, as they have toxic effects. They are normally called "antinutrients" by the scientific community as toxins sounds too alarmist. Antinutrients are very real and for over 100 years research has been done on them- but it is generally only appreciated by a small group of specialized scientists. Antinutrients have an incredible range of biological effects. As you have probably already guessed, the vast majority and highest levels of antinutrients are in Neolithic foods like grains, beans and potatoes. The Paleolithic diet has incredibly low levels of antinutrients compared to the usual modern diet. I believe that this is the number one advantage of the diet.
Textbooks on antinutrients read like books on what not to eat- Neolithic foods are the most prominent. Professor Irvin Liener published one of the most famous of these books in 1980. In the first chapter he points out that when we started cooking inedible plants, new toxins entered the diet for the first time. Ironically, he wasn’t trying to promote Paleolithic diets- his aim was to help agricultural scientists more safely feed the world on grains, beans and potatoes.
It’s a technical subject, and I’ll do my best to make it clear to you.
Consider our friend, the apple. When an animal eats an apple, it profits by getting a meal. It swallows the seeds and then deposits them in a pile of dung. With some luck a new apple tree might grow, and so the apple tree has also profited from the arrangement. In nature as in finance, it is good business when both parties make profit happily. Consider what would happen if the animal were greedy and decided to eat the few extra calories contained within the apple seeds- then there would be no new apple tree to continue on the good work. So, to stop this from happening, the apple seeds contain toxins that have multiple effects:
* firstly, they taste bad- discouraging the animal from chewing them
* secondly some toxins are enzyme blockers that bind up predators digestive enzymes- these also act as "preservatives" freezing the apple seed enzymes until sprouting- Upon sprouting of the seed, many of these enzyme blockers disappear.
* thirdly, they contain lectins- these are toxic proteins which have numerous effects. They act as natural pesticides and are also toxic to a range of other species including bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other predators including humans .
Of course, the apple has other defenses- to start with it is high above the ground well out of reach of casual predators, and it also has the skin and flesh of the apple to be penetrated first. Above all though is the need to stop the seed from being eaten, so that new apple trees may grow.
Now, please consider the humble grain. Once again as a seed its duty is mission critical- it must perpetuate the life cycle of the plant. It is however much closer to the ground, on the tip of a grass stalk. It is within easy reach of any predator strolling by. It contains a good source of energy, like a booster rocket for the new plant as it grows. The grain is full of energy and in a vulnerable position. It was "expensive" for the plant to produce. It is an attractive meal. Its shell offers little protection. Therefore, it has been loaded with toxic proteins to discourage predators- grains are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. You may be surprised to learn that uncooked flour is very toxic- please don't try eating it as you become very sick. And yes, I don't recommend al dente pasta (if one must eat pasta at all).
Beans too are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. Potatoes contain enzyme blockers, lectins and another family of toxins called glycoalkaloids. Glycoalkaloids (GA) unlike lectins and enzyme blockers aren't destroyed by cooking, even deep-frying. GA are particularly high in green or injured potatoes, which must never be eaten even if trimmed heavily and well-cooked. Many people have told me that they eat small amounts of raw potato- this is a dangerous habit and it should be discouraged very strongly.
These toxins in foods are commonly referred to as antinutrients. Let's learn some more about them:
Enzyme Blockers: These enzyme blockers are abundant in all seeds including grains and beans, and also in potatoes, serving to hold them in suspended animation and also acting as pesticides. Most commonly they block the enzymes that digest protein (proteases), and are called "protease inhibitors". They can affect the stomach protease enzyme "pepsin", and the small intestine protease enzymes "trypsin" and "chymotrypsin". These small intestine enzymes are made by the pancreas (it does a lot of other important things besides making insulin). Some enzyme blockers affect the enzymes that digest starch (amylase) and are called "amylase inhibitors".
When GBP are cooked, most of the enzyme blockers are destroyed, but some are not. In human volunteers and in animal experiments high levels of protease inhibitors lead to increased secretion of digestive enzymes by the pancreas. This is because the body can sense that the enzymes have been knocked out and orders to pancreas to make more. Even if the effect of GBP based foods is only a small increase in pancreatic enzyme secretion, over many years it all adds up to a lot of extra work.
They are effective poisons- rats cannot gain weight if they have substantial amounts of enzyme blockers in the diet. As far as their preservative action is concerned, I need only to remind you that the potted grains in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs were still viable and sprouted after thousands of years locked away.
Grain eating birds have evolved digestive enzymes that are resistant to grain protease inhibitors. Lectins (Haemagglutins)................ Meet Hannibal
Lectins are natural proteins that have a large variety of roles. They are amongst the most
fascinating and stimulating of all biological compounds, and I have no doubt that they play a major role in many "unexplained " diseases. I think of them as "Hannibal Lectins" as they remind of the devious criminal mastermind in the shock horror movie "Silence of the Lambs.' Lectins are like master code-breakers. The cells of our bodies are studded with receptors which are like code pads to ensure stimulation only under the correct circumstances. Lectins have the ability to crack these codes and stimulate the receptors causing a variety of responses- covering basically the full repertoire of the cell and even tricking the cell into doing things it normally cannot do.
They also have a knack for bypassing our defenses and "getting behind the lines", and then they can travel all over the body causing harm. They can, for example:
--strip protective mucus off tissues,
--damage the cells lining the small intestine- disrupting the microscopic fingers called villi and microvilli,
--get swallowed whole by the small intestine cells ("pinocytosis")
--bind to cells including blood cells causing a clot to form (hence they were initially called "haemagglutins")
--make a cell act as if it has been stimulated by a hormone-
--stimulate a cell to secrete a hormone
--promote cell division at the wrong time
--cause gowth or shrinkage of lymphatic tissue ("outposts" of white blood cells)
--cause enlargement of the pancreas
--cause cells to present codes (HLA's) that they normally should not use
--cause cell death (apoptosis)
Lectins break down the surface of the small intestine, stripping it of mucus and causing the cells to become irregular and leaky. Some lectins make cells act as if they have been stimulated by insulin. Others cause the pancreas to release insulin. Others cause immune cells to divide in the wrong way, causing growth of some white blood cells and breaking down the control of the immune system. Others cause cells to present the wrong codes (HLA's) on their surface, tricking the immune system into thinking that intruders have been found and activating the immune system inappropriately- thus leading to "autoimmune disease" where the body's tissues are attacked by its own immune system.
Autoimmune diseases are incredibly common and increase every year that a person gets older. A disordered immune system also has a much harder job recognizing and attacking the real intruders- invading germs and cancer cells (you may have heard that scientists think that most people generate many cancer cells in a life time but that the immune system cleans most of them up).
It is not known whether lectins can cause cancer- this is one of the most important questions in medicine today. They certainly affect colon cells in the test tube. I feel that they are likely candidates as they can stimulate abnormal cell growth and they also cause disorder in the immune system.
Lectins have many other roles besides defending seeds. For example in beans, lectins act like a glue to enable nitrogen-fixing bacteria to bind to the roots of the plant. Many important lectin families are found in animal tissues, but as we are carnivores, we have evolved to be able to deal with these- just as birds that live on grains have evolved to be resistant to grain lectins.
It is ironic that the lectins were discovered more than 100 years ago and yet so many questions remain unanswered- the same was true of the immune system until the 1980’s. I hope that there is more research done into lectins as they hold a whole world of disease mechanisms of which most of the medical community is blissfully unaware.
Exorphins:
Exorphins are food chemicals that have morphine-like activity. They are found in dairy products and wheat. Our body has its own natural morphine like substances that are called endorphins. Endorphins work by stimulating a type of nerve cell surface receptor called endorphin receptors. Endorphins are very important in controlling pain and addictive behaviour.
Exorphins also act on endorphin receptors and may stimulate them or block them. It is logical that exorphins may therefore affect chronic pain and also affect addictive behaviour.
Additional Reading Suggested by Bill Lauritzen:
The Omega Plan
Paleolithic Prescription
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
Nutrition and Evolution by Crawford and March
PaleoDiet by Loren Cordain
Syndrome X by Gerald Reaven
The Miracle of Fasting by Paul Bragg
Home Articles Email Lauritzen Buy a Book About Lauritzen
Dr. Ben Balzer, family physician
There are races of people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. They share a secret that is over 2 million years old. Their secret is their diet- a diet that has changed little from that of the first humans 2 million years ago, and their predecessors up to 7 million years ago. Theirs is the diet that man evolved on, the diet that is coded for in our genes. It has some major differences to the diet of "civilization". You are in for a few big surprises.
The diet is usually referred to as the "Paleolithic Diet" referring to the Paleolithic or Stone Age era. It is also referred to as the "Stone Age Diet", "Cave Man Diet" or the "Hunter-Gatherer Diet". More romantic souls like to think of it as the diet that was eaten in the "Garden of Eden" and they are correct in thinking so.
The basic principles of the Paleolithic Diet are so simple that most high school students can understand them. Within 15 minutes from now you will grasp the major elements. At the technical level, Paleolithic Diet Theory has a depth and breadth that is unmatched by all other dietary theories. Paleolithic Diet Theory presents a fully integrated, holistic, comprehensive dietary theory combining the best features of all other dietary theories, eliminating the worst features and simplifying it all.
All major dietary components are covered- (i.e. vitamins, fats, protein, fats, carbohydrates, antioxidants and phytosterols etc). This is for the simple reason that it is the only diet that is coded for in our genes- it contains only those foods that were "on the table" during our long evolution, and discards those which were not. Have you ever wondered why almost everybody feels the need to take vitamin supplementsat times, or why so many people feel the need to "detoxify" their system? There are very real reasons for this that you will soon understand. Now, come with me, I’d like to share the secret with you...
Basics of the Paleolthic Diet
For millions of years, humans and their relatives have eaten meat, fish, fowl and the leaves, roots and fruits of many plants. One big obstacle to getting more calories from the environment is the fact that many plants are inedible. Grains, beans and potatoes are full of energy but all are inedible in the raw state as they contain many toxins. There is no doubt about that- please don’t try to eat them raw, they can make you very sick.
Around 10,000 years ago, an enormous breakthrough was made- a breakthrough that was to change the course of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that cooking these foods made them edible- the heat destroyed enough toxins to render them edible. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta. These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.
The cooking of grains, beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake- perhaps doubling the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our environment. Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:
· they could store for long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)
· they were dense in calories- ie a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport
· the food was also the seed of the plant- later allowing ready farming of the species
These advantages made it much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for winter, and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also enabled surpluses to be stored, and this in turn made it possible to free some people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities, such as builders, warriors and rulers. This in turn set us on the course to modern day civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not. Man soon improved further on these advances- by farming plants and animals.
Instead of being able to eat only a fraction of the animal and plant life in an area, farming allows us to fill a particular area with a large number of edible plants and animals. This in turn increases the number of calories that we can obtain from an area by some 10 to 100 fold or more. Then followed the harnessing of dairy products, which allow man to obtain far more calories from the animal over its lifetime than if it were simply slaughtered for meat. Dairy products are interesting as they combine a variety of components- some of which our genes were ready for and some not. Whist cows milk is ideal for calves, there are several very important differences between it and human milk. For example, the brain of a calf is only a tiny fraction of its body weight whereas humans have very big brains. Not surprisingly, cows milk is low in critical nutrients for brain development, particularly omeg 3 fats.
Paleolithic Diet buffs refer to the new foods as Neolithic foods and the old as Paleolithic Diet foods. In simple terms we see Neolithic as bad and Paleolithic as good. Since then, some other substances have entered the diet- particularly salt and sugar, and more recently a litany of chemicals including firstly caffeine then all other additives, colourings, preservatives, pesticides etc.
Grains, Beans and Potatoes (GBP) share the following important characteristics:
· They are all toxic when raw- there is no doubt about this- it is a fact that no competent source would dispute- they can be extremely dangerous and it is important never to eat them raw or undercooked. These toxins include enzyme blockers, lectins and other types. I will talk about them in detail later as they are very important.
· Cooking destroys most but not all of the toxins. Insufficient cooking can lead to sickness such as acute gastroenteritis.
· They are all rich sources of carbohydrate, and once cooked this is often rapidly digestible-giving a high glycemic index (sugar spike).
· They are extremely poor sources of vitamins (particularly vitamins A, B-group, folic acid and C), minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols.
Therefore diets high in grains beans and potatoes (GBP):
· Contain toxins in small amounts
· Have a high glycemic index (ie have a similar effect to raw sugar on blood glucose levels)
· Are low in many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols- ie they are the original "empty calories"
· Have problems caused by the GBP displacing other foods
As grains, beans and potatoes form such a large proportion of the modern diet, you can now understand why it is so common for people to feel they need supplements or that they need to detoxify (ie that they have toxins in their system)- indeed both feelings are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily realize which supplements we need, and ironically when people go on detoxification diets they unfortunately often consume even more Neolithic foods (eg soy beans) and therefore more toxins than usual (perhaps they sometimes benefit from a change in toxins). More detail on these issues follows in subsequent pages.
The essentials of the Paleolithic Diet are:
Eat none of the following:
· Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles
· Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
· Potatoes
· Dairy products
· Sugar
· Salt
Eat the following:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
· Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.
Try to increase your intake of:
· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
· Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)
Expect some minor tuning problems- don’t worry, you can deal with them:
· It will take some time for your body to adjust to the changes after all these years. There is a huge surge in your vitamin intake. There is a huge decrease in your toxin intake.
· Start with breakfast for few days, as this is the easiest place to start as most people eat it at home, and it tends to be the least Paleolithic meal of the standard 3. For weight loss you will eventually need to reduce your carbohydrate intake, but ignore this initially as most people have high carb intakes and this can continue for the first few days that you are on this diet. If you reduce too quickly then you may fell unwell. Then move on to lunch or dinner for a few days and then to all 3 meals. If you work, you will often find it easier to take your lunch to work.
· Keep reading more about the diet- and read it again. Remember, there are many dietary myths that will need to be unlearned. Particularly, please read the section on fats several times. Knowledge on fats has exploded over the last decade and there is a realization in mainstream nutrition that omega 3 fats are critical to good health. It is very important to ensure that you have an adequate intake of these. The low fat diet craze of the 90’s was well intentioned but many people "threw out the baby with the bath-water"- most people reduced omega 3 fat intake as well as other fats, and sometimes even increased omega 6 fats. There is now a realization that the low fat diet theory of the 90’s doesn’t often work (it has about a 6% success rate like most other diets) and that the vast majority of the Western population need to increase their omega 3 intake and decrease their omega 6 intake. Even if you don’t end up on a Paleolithic Diet, you will benefit from a better appreciation of fats.
Technical Aspects:
12,000 years ago the ice planet Earth thawed out as the last Ice Age came to an end. The great glaciers melted, carving enormous plains across the continents and the planet became green again. The seas rose some 400 feet (120 metres) (incidentally unfortunately drowning most of our archeological heritage). The plains flourished and savannah, prairie and forest sprang up. Grazing animals spread onto the plains, followed by hunting animals and amongst these last were the greatest hunters of all- humans. Humans, being omnivores, have the ability to eat both plant and animal foods. That is a major advantage as the number of creatures that can live in a particular habitat depends entirely on how much energy they can obtain. To make a crude example- imagine you are breeding monkeys on 100 acres of land and the only edible plant there is bananas. If you double the number of banana plants, then you can double the number of monkeys on the land.
You might instead introduce apple trees and have the same effect. The number of monkeys would depend entirely on how many calories they could obtain from the environment. The carrying capacity of the habitat for a species depends on how many calories the species can obtain. Humans are no different. They have a major advantage in being able to eat both plant and animals foods thereby harvesting enormous amounts of calories from the environment. Humans learnt to cook grains, beans and potatoes and increased further the number of plant food calories they can obtain from the environment- probably doubling it in most habitats, and even more on grasslands.
The reason why grains, beans and potatoes store so well is simply because of the toxins that they contain. The enzyme blockers put them into a deep freeze, stopping them from sprouting. The lectins and other toxins are natural pesticides and can attack bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other pests (and humans too of course).
ANTINUTRIENTS- YOUR KEY TO BAD HEALTH
You probably already know a lot about nutrients- macronutrients (fats, protein and carbohydrates and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytosterols etc). Now it's time to meet the rest of the family....... We all know that foods contain a variety of nutrients. There is less awareness that many foods contain small amounts of potentially harmful substances. These are toxins, as they have toxic effects. They are normally called "antinutrients" by the scientific community as toxins sounds too alarmist. Antinutrients are very real and for over 100 years research has been done on them- but it is generally only appreciated by a small group of specialized scientists. Antinutrients have an incredible range of biological effects. As you have probably already guessed, the vast majority and highest levels of antinutrients are in Neolithic foods like grains, beans and potatoes. The Paleolithic diet has incredibly low levels of antinutrients compared to the usual modern diet. I believe that this is the number one advantage of the diet.
Textbooks on antinutrients read like books on what not to eat- Neolithic foods are the most prominent. Professor Irvin Liener published one of the most famous of these books in 1980. In the first chapter he points out that when we started cooking inedible plants, new toxins entered the diet for the first time. Ironically, he wasn’t trying to promote Paleolithic diets- his aim was to help agricultural scientists more safely feed the world on grains, beans and potatoes.
It’s a technical subject, and I’ll do my best to make it clear to you.
Consider our friend, the apple. When an animal eats an apple, it profits by getting a meal. It swallows the seeds and then deposits them in a pile of dung. With some luck a new apple tree might grow, and so the apple tree has also profited from the arrangement. In nature as in finance, it is good business when both parties make profit happily. Consider what would happen if the animal were greedy and decided to eat the few extra calories contained within the apple seeds- then there would be no new apple tree to continue on the good work. So, to stop this from happening, the apple seeds contain toxins that have multiple effects:
* firstly, they taste bad- discouraging the animal from chewing them
* secondly some toxins are enzyme blockers that bind up predators digestive enzymes- these also act as "preservatives" freezing the apple seed enzymes until sprouting- Upon sprouting of the seed, many of these enzyme blockers disappear.
* thirdly, they contain lectins- these are toxic proteins which have numerous effects. They act as natural pesticides and are also toxic to a range of other species including bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other predators including humans .
Of course, the apple has other defenses- to start with it is high above the ground well out of reach of casual predators, and it also has the skin and flesh of the apple to be penetrated first. Above all though is the need to stop the seed from being eaten, so that new apple trees may grow.
Now, please consider the humble grain. Once again as a seed its duty is mission critical- it must perpetuate the life cycle of the plant. It is however much closer to the ground, on the tip of a grass stalk. It is within easy reach of any predator strolling by. It contains a good source of energy, like a booster rocket for the new plant as it grows. The grain is full of energy and in a vulnerable position. It was "expensive" for the plant to produce. It is an attractive meal. Its shell offers little protection. Therefore, it has been loaded with toxic proteins to discourage predators- grains are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. You may be surprised to learn that uncooked flour is very toxic- please don't try eating it as you become very sick. And yes, I don't recommend al dente pasta (if one must eat pasta at all).
Beans too are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. Potatoes contain enzyme blockers, lectins and another family of toxins called glycoalkaloids. Glycoalkaloids (GA) unlike lectins and enzyme blockers aren't destroyed by cooking, even deep-frying. GA are particularly high in green or injured potatoes, which must never be eaten even if trimmed heavily and well-cooked. Many people have told me that they eat small amounts of raw potato- this is a dangerous habit and it should be discouraged very strongly.
These toxins in foods are commonly referred to as antinutrients. Let's learn some more about them:
Enzyme Blockers: These enzyme blockers are abundant in all seeds including grains and beans, and also in potatoes, serving to hold them in suspended animation and also acting as pesticides. Most commonly they block the enzymes that digest protein (proteases), and are called "protease inhibitors". They can affect the stomach protease enzyme "pepsin", and the small intestine protease enzymes "trypsin" and "chymotrypsin". These small intestine enzymes are made by the pancreas (it does a lot of other important things besides making insulin). Some enzyme blockers affect the enzymes that digest starch (amylase) and are called "amylase inhibitors".
When GBP are cooked, most of the enzyme blockers are destroyed, but some are not. In human volunteers and in animal experiments high levels of protease inhibitors lead to increased secretion of digestive enzymes by the pancreas. This is because the body can sense that the enzymes have been knocked out and orders to pancreas to make more. Even if the effect of GBP based foods is only a small increase in pancreatic enzyme secretion, over many years it all adds up to a lot of extra work.
They are effective poisons- rats cannot gain weight if they have substantial amounts of enzyme blockers in the diet. As far as their preservative action is concerned, I need only to remind you that the potted grains in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs were still viable and sprouted after thousands of years locked away.
Grain eating birds have evolved digestive enzymes that are resistant to grain protease inhibitors. Lectins (Haemagglutins)................ Meet Hannibal
Lectins are natural proteins that have a large variety of roles. They are amongst the most
fascinating and stimulating of all biological compounds, and I have no doubt that they play a major role in many "unexplained " diseases. I think of them as "Hannibal Lectins" as they remind of the devious criminal mastermind in the shock horror movie "Silence of the Lambs.' Lectins are like master code-breakers. The cells of our bodies are studded with receptors which are like code pads to ensure stimulation only under the correct circumstances. Lectins have the ability to crack these codes and stimulate the receptors causing a variety of responses- covering basically the full repertoire of the cell and even tricking the cell into doing things it normally cannot do.
They also have a knack for bypassing our defenses and "getting behind the lines", and then they can travel all over the body causing harm. They can, for example:
--strip protective mucus off tissues,
--damage the cells lining the small intestine- disrupting the microscopic fingers called villi and microvilli,
--get swallowed whole by the small intestine cells ("pinocytosis")
--bind to cells including blood cells causing a clot to form (hence they were initially called "haemagglutins")
--make a cell act as if it has been stimulated by a hormone-
--stimulate a cell to secrete a hormone
--promote cell division at the wrong time
--cause gowth or shrinkage of lymphatic tissue ("outposts" of white blood cells)
--cause enlargement of the pancreas
--cause cells to present codes (HLA's) that they normally should not use
--cause cell death (apoptosis)
Lectins break down the surface of the small intestine, stripping it of mucus and causing the cells to become irregular and leaky. Some lectins make cells act as if they have been stimulated by insulin. Others cause the pancreas to release insulin. Others cause immune cells to divide in the wrong way, causing growth of some white blood cells and breaking down the control of the immune system. Others cause cells to present the wrong codes (HLA's) on their surface, tricking the immune system into thinking that intruders have been found and activating the immune system inappropriately- thus leading to "autoimmune disease" where the body's tissues are attacked by its own immune system.
Autoimmune diseases are incredibly common and increase every year that a person gets older. A disordered immune system also has a much harder job recognizing and attacking the real intruders- invading germs and cancer cells (you may have heard that scientists think that most people generate many cancer cells in a life time but that the immune system cleans most of them up).
It is not known whether lectins can cause cancer- this is one of the most important questions in medicine today. They certainly affect colon cells in the test tube. I feel that they are likely candidates as they can stimulate abnormal cell growth and they also cause disorder in the immune system.
Lectins have many other roles besides defending seeds. For example in beans, lectins act like a glue to enable nitrogen-fixing bacteria to bind to the roots of the plant. Many important lectin families are found in animal tissues, but as we are carnivores, we have evolved to be able to deal with these- just as birds that live on grains have evolved to be resistant to grain lectins.
It is ironic that the lectins were discovered more than 100 years ago and yet so many questions remain unanswered- the same was true of the immune system until the 1980’s. I hope that there is more research done into lectins as they hold a whole world of disease mechanisms of which most of the medical community is blissfully unaware.
Exorphins:
Exorphins are food chemicals that have morphine-like activity. They are found in dairy products and wheat. Our body has its own natural morphine like substances that are called endorphins. Endorphins work by stimulating a type of nerve cell surface receptor called endorphin receptors. Endorphins are very important in controlling pain and addictive behaviour.
Exorphins also act on endorphin receptors and may stimulate them or block them. It is logical that exorphins may therefore affect chronic pain and also affect addictive behaviour.
Additional Reading Suggested by Bill Lauritzen:
The Omega Plan
Paleolithic Prescription
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
Nutrition and Evolution by Crawford and March
PaleoDiet by Loren Cordain
Syndrome X by Gerald Reaven
The Miracle of Fasting by Paul Bragg
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Gore Vidal
An American Icon: Gore Vidal on Italy, Iraq - and Why He Hates George Bush
Why is it so dreadful to live in America, I asked.
"We have been deprived of our franchise," he says. "The election was stolen in both 2000 and 2004, because of electronic voting machinery which can be easily fixed. We've had two illegitimate elections in a row ...
"Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless. We are in a dictatorship that has been totally militarised, everyone is spied on by the government itself. All three arms of the government are in the hands of this junta.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
What Does Love Mean?
When the satisfaction or security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own, then a state of love exists. So far as I know, under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of popular usage.
- Harry Stack Sullivan
- Harry Stack Sullivan
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Monday, June 19, 2006
Love....
The Ragged Wood
by William Butler Yeats
O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have looked upon their images
Would none had ever loved but you and I!
Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?
O, that none ever loved but you and I!
O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry
O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.
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