You can enjoy an extra twelve to fourteen years of good life! No really! That’s a promise.

It’s not a pill or potion! You just have to take care of yourself properly. Deep down, we all know that if you follow healthy lifestyle options, you will live longer. Not just that but you will enjoy better health in your life.

Now we can boil it down to just 5 essential factors. In a large study, which followed over 78,000 women and over 44,000 men, researchers have shown that if you follow a healthy diet, exercise regularly, don’t smoke, drink moderate amounts of alcohol and maintain a healthy weight you could live more than a decade longer than those who don’t do any of these things.

To be more specific, they defined the five good health habits as never smoking; body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2; 30 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day; a high-quality diet (top 40%); and moderate alcohol intake (up to one glass of wine daily for women and two glasses of wine daily for men). Personally, I would say that BMI is not such a good measure as percentage body fat, but that discussion can take place elsewhere.

The good news is that researchers found each factor added around 2 to 3 years of extra life. Cumulatively, that means that life expectancy at age 50 years was 14 years longer for women and 12.2 years extra for men (for women, that’s 93 years average, up from 79, and for men, 87.6 years, up from 74).

Put another way, compared with men and women who lacked any of the five healthy-lifestyle habits, those who had all five enjoyed an 82% lower risk for dying from cardiovascular disease, a 65% lower chance of dying from cancer, and a 74% lower risk of dying from all causes during follow-up. That’s awesome!

And, you know, so much better than popping pills, NONE of which add to your health span!

What you can potentially achieve is exciting. But almost as exciting is that, even by following some of these recommendation, you get measureable benefit, even if just a few extra years! In other words, just do as much as you can. Every step in the right direction will lengthen your life a little.

“Each single lifestyle change you make will help you live longer and better,” commented Jean-Pierre Després, PhD, cardiology research director at the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute at Laval University, Quebec, Canada, and chair of the American Heart Association (AHA) Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health.

If your life is really good—and it should be—then you will want to maximize your stay here on earth. In which case, commit to all five.

It’s Not Just About Lifespan (Longevity)

Lifespan is how long you can expect to live, on average. But there’s a better concept: “health span”. Lifespan is simply how many years you live and breathe. But for over a decade, the Longevity Institute of the University of Southern California (USC) a leading biomedical research center for aging and longevity, has been researching how to improve a person’s health span – the happy part of life prior to the onset of some calamity such as diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s and auto-immune diseases.

It’s not the same as Lifespan, obviously. But hopefully nearly the same length of time. Our health span is critical and we want it as long as possible, staying healthy until the very end of life. This is a newer version of the old saying, that anti-aging is not so much about putting years into your life, as putting life into your years!

Many years ago (1997) I wrote a piece entitled “Do You Want To Be An Old Crock Or A Classic Car?” It may help to picture this in terms of the aging of a motor car. Typically, a well-used car will last 10- 20 years and then fall apart, unsafe to be repaired. The better the maintenance, the longer it takes to crumble, naturally; if you omit routine oil changes and other vital tasks, the car will soon fail mechanically. But then some cars, so-called Classic Cars, are in sweet running order and perform reliably when they are 80, 90 or even more than 100 years old. Why is that?

The answer is so obvious, it screams at you: they have been properly looked after.

It’s exactly the same with the human body. You have to ask yourself, do you want to be a classic car or an old “banger”, rusting and clanking away? I doubt anyone in their right mind would choose to be a banger. Yet that is the outlook mentality of anyone who doesn’t begin to take effective care of their health NOW.

Turning Back The Clock

We have one proven advantage over mechanical objects: our bodies can regenerate to a considerable degree. It has been a medical hoax of long standing, to tell people they have to put up with miserable health conditions, just because the doctors don’t know how to cure it. The fact is that if you turn to nature, instead of the drug industry, to look for answers, there are many exciting ways to gain back your health, even after many years of believing you were stuck with it. You probably already know of people curing themselves of arthritis, cancer, heart disease and so on, without resorting to any further drastic medical intervention. These results show the way for us all: you can recover your health! 

Add to this the many wonderful breakthroughs in the science of anti-aging, and there is really no good reason, other than self-neglect, to accept the breakdown of old age. People routinely feel a sense of complete life renewal, increased vigor, mental clarity and sexual pleasure. You can—literally—turn back the clock!

In the words of Dr Walter Pierpaoli and Dr William Regeleson: “Ours is the first generation that need not experience senescence, the dismal physical decline now associated with old age. We are the first generation that need not resign ourselves to accepting the fate that our later years will be filled with debility and disease. Ours is the first generation that has the capacity, by resetting our aging clocks, to actually prolong youthful health and vitality into our eighties, nineties, and possibly even our hundreds”.

The appalling toll of unnecessary deaths is simply a measure of the incompetence of a medical profession, which is obsessed with drugs and treating only symptoms, instead of taking effective and proven action directed towards the known causes of these conditions.

It really comes down to what does Nature want for us? As far as she’s concerned, we are supposed to be wandering around in the forest, or on the African veldt, where it all started. We are hunter-gatherers and should eat meat, fish, plants, nuts and seeds.

Sitting still all day long is very bad. So are burgers, pizza and donuts. Boozing isn’t natural, although even wild animals have access to alcoholic fermented fruits at least part of the year (for some fun, search on YouTube for “drunken elephants marula fruit”).

Drunken elephants smashed on fermented marula fruits

As for smoking, Nature doesn’t understand that at all. And being fat just doesn’t happen in the wild.

Sugar is the kiss of death—truly. But so are grains, which turn quickly to soft carbohydrates like glucose. Milk is good for infants; but after a few months it’s nothing more than a sugar food. Skim milk is even worse, by the way: take away the fats and milk is basically just sugar water.

Thing is, these are all what I call “farmer foods”; they have only been in our diet for a few thousand years. In evolutionary terms that’s no more than a blink of an eye.

Forget vegetarianism and veganism; those are cults, not science. We are built as hunter-gatherers and that’s the way to live. I dismiss arguments about teeth and intestinal patterns. The truth comes from archeology, not speculation. Looking at ancient middens we know exactly what paleolithic man ate. From skeletal remains we also know that true paleolithic man was superb physically: tall, muscular, healthy and without a trace of bony malformations, which all appeared when we started to eat more vegetables!

In the last 2 millennia humans had shrunk to a crippled and deformed dwarf status and only regained their average paleolithic height in the late 20^th century.

Take these science-based tips to heart and get to work building a vigorous future!

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Source reference:

Circulation. 2018;CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047. Originally published April 30, 2018

The actual life expectancy for the U.S. population in 2020 was 77.0 years, a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019.¹

However, these are figures from birth. If you have already made it to 50 or 60, you’ve proved you’re a survivor. You will live much longer than the average for all ages—well into the 80s! But again these are averages. As many as half of us will reach 100!

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the top three causes of death are heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

Statistics Can Lie

Don’t let statistics bog you down. The really important thing is what will happen to YOU, not what happens to everybody else. You’re not a statistic, you’re not even average. Nobody is average. We are all different. I only want you to understand that the old-fashioned idea of a generation ago—that you were pretty well finished by your 70s and there was nothing much you could do about it—is false and has always been false.

If you go to other supposedly less fortunate societies, you find that living beyond 100 is pretty common and always has been. I first noticed this among my Scottish ancestors, living to 90- 100 years, on a diet of herring and oatmeal (good scientific reasons why these would help you live long). They also had plenty of exercise, walked long distances and, by the way, drank plenty of whisky.

But if you go to societies like the Okinawans of Japan, the Hunzas of Pakistan or the Georgians of Azerbaijan, the picture really is dramatic: many men and women live to be 100 years old, can still work, ride a horse and father children. Unfortunately the ladies cannot match this last but do enjoy occasional “rumpy-pumpy” and they are right up there as sprightly centegenarians, along with the men).

One picture in National Geographic, Jan 1973, shows a woman the researchers know to be at least 130 years old. She’s lucid and lively and—wait for it—has a cigarette in one hand and a glass of vodka in the other!

I took one look at that photograph and thought “What do we doctors know, really?”

Jeanne Louise Calment, a French lady, who famously lived till just a few months short of 123 years. She drank every day and didn’t give up smoking till the age of 117!

So my first piece of advice for living healthy and long is IGNORE EVERYTHING YOU ARE TOLD BY REGULAR DOCTORS. Medical science is crude, simplistic, biased, ignorant, narrow-minded and dangerous. Most of it is, after all, centered around drug company profits, not patient care in the true sense of the word.

So What Do We Die Of?

The Center for Disease Control reported the top 10 causes of death for 2005 were as follows:

1. 1. Heart disease
   2. Cancer
   3. Stroke
   4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases (lung diseases)
   5. Accidents
   6. Diabetes
   7. Alzheimer’s disease
   8. Influenza and pneumonia
   9. Kidney disease
   10. Septicemia (a serious infection that affects the blood)

These were closely followed by suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, high blood pressure, Parkinson’s disease and homicide.

But wait—I argue that there are just 6 main speed bumps in the road. Yes, that’s right. A lot of these figures are quite complicated and don’t necessarily speak the truth. For example, someone who had a paralyzing stroke but survived, only to die in bed of pneumonia (a very common outcome), would not show up as a stroke death.

But really a stroke was the cause of the fatality; pneumonia and respiratory disease is thus exaggerated. In any case 4 and 8 are pretty similar (lungs).

Stroke and heart disease are also pretty much the same thing, under different names.

The actual disease is arteriosclerosis or bad arteries, whether the heart is most affected or the brain. Even Alzheimer’s could be seen as a disease of the circulatory system since the main problem seems to be poor nutrient blood supply to the brain, caused by aging arteries.

We can rule out accidents, since avoiding them is hardly a medical matter. To die in a car crash has nothing to do with the aging process! It’s just tough luck.

So!

We can actually boil the top of the list down to this:

1. 1. Aging circulation
   2. Cancer
   3. Diabetes
   4. Kidney disease
   5. Septicemia.

But that’s only 5 you say. What about the 6th?

This is what they didn’t tell you in the report: doctors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US! They account for over 225,000 deaths per year.² These show up as “iatrogenic” causes, a Greek word which means “caused by doctors”.

This year the CDC tried to claim that COVID is the 3^rd leading cause of death. Well, since that’s medical blundering and falsehoods at its worst, that too may be added to iatrogenic causes!

Doctors May Be The Number One Killer

But according to Dr Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, who prepared the report for The Journal of the American Medical Association, doctors are actually the number one killer, because they do not inform patients properly of the hazards of the procedures they offer (why would they? The patient might have second thoughts and that would lose income for the doctor!)

According to Starfield’s figures:

• • 12,000 —–unnecessary surgeries
  • 7,000 —–medication errors in hospitals
  • 20,000 —–other errors in hospitals
  • 80,000 —–infections in hospitals
  • 106,000 —-non-error, negative effects of drugs

These total to 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!! Note that over 100,000 deaths are not “errors”, the patients died of the “correct” treatments.

Another analysis, published in the British Medical Journal³, concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients experience negative effects in outpatient settings, with:

• • 116 million extra physician visits
  • 77 million extra prescriptions
  • 17 million emergency department visits
  • 8 million hospitalizations
  • 3 million long-term admissions
  • 199,000 additional deaths
  • $77 billion in extra costs

The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but seems to be tolerated under the mistaken assumption that better health results from more expensive care.

In fact, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care (medicalese for “wrong treatment”)! An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among them die each year as a result of medical errors.

My often-repeated piece of critical advice therefore, if you want to live a long and healthy life, is STAY AWAY FROM DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS. They are by far the biggest speed bump in your way. In fact when doctors go on strike, ironically, the death rate always drops.

Not a lot of people know that! [a phrase from Peter Sellers and often attributed to Sir Michael Caine]

Keep healthy and choose your own day of departure!

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. NCHS Data Brief No. 427, December 2021

2. Journal American Medical Association 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5

3. Weingart SN, Wilson RM, Gibberd RW, Harrison B. “Epidemiology and medical error.” BMJ. 2000;320:774-777.

It’s something the US specializes in: getting blood from students, tramps and druggies for a few dollars and then selling it to the rest of the world at a huge profit, on the understanding it’s a quality-controlled product, WHICH IT IS NOT.

My own dear father was killed by this medical negligence and commercial greed. He was a hemophiliac (the bleeding disease). He needed a  transfusion because his blood would not clot. He needed factor VIII enriched (this was nearly 30 years ago, research has moved on since), which came from the USA. The best there is, you might think. Yeah, but the blood included lots of Hep C viruses. Nobody had bothered to check.

So he “caught” Hep C, without any mistake or lifestyle indiscretion, and died as a result. It was sad to see his liver ruined and one day he just exsanguinated (bled out) when liver cirrhosis caused the blood vessels around the esophagus to rupture. I drove like the furies to see home before he left this earth. But I was denied> He was dead by the time i Got an hour down the freeway. It was another 5 hours before I finally reached the hospital. They couldn’t resuscitate him.

And then I was reading in my MENSA (high IQ club) magazine, only today, that Isaac Asimov, the brilliant science fiction writer and futurist, died of AIDS because he had received a filthy blood transfusion loaded with HIV. Nothing changes. we lost a very great intellect at that time.

Isaac Asimov

Caffeine Transfusion

So I might as well keep going in the same grumpy vein! Ha ha!

You’d think donor blood ought to be perfectly pure, but a study from Oregon State University showed there are a lot of surprise substances in donor blood. They looked at 18 bags of blood and discovered caffeine in all the samples, as well as traces of cough medicine and anti-anxiety drugs in many of them, too.

The analysis was made as part of a study into how botanical dietary supplements and other drugs can interact together in the body, using mass spectrometry to identify the chemical composition of the molecules in the blood samples.

I presume they were trying to take another swipe at holistic medicine and how “dangerous” it is, because what the scientists set out to do was identify how dietary supplements might have adverse effects when they interact with existing prescriptions. Of course the problem would be the dietary supplements, not the damned meds, you can be sure!

Anyway, the team ended up discovering how our lifestyles cause changes that live on in the samples when we donate our bodily fluids. Ugh!

Based on this sample, we’re so keen on coffee, tea, chocolate, soda, and energy drinks that caffeine and sugar are literally running in our veins.

“But the other drugs being in there could be an issue for patients, as well as posing a problem for those of s doing this type of research,” says pharmacologist Luying Chen, from Oregon State University, “Because it’s hard to get clean blood samples.”

Besides the caffeince, which appeared in ALL the samples, 13 of the samples showed the presence of alprazolam, the anti-anxiety medicine sold under the name Xanax. It’s dreadful stuff and nobody should take it, never mind get it unknowingly, so get whacked mentally, without realizing where the horrible feelings came from.

Meanwhile, eight of the samples had traces of the over-the-counter cough medicine dextromethorphan.

As Chen, says, this causes complications for blood transfusion as well as for medical research on blood samples – because researchers might not be starting from a clean state very often.

However, the team was able to successfully prove the effectiveness of their technique for measuring the presence of drugs in blood samples. That should make it easier to figure out how botanicals – natural products with drug-like activities – affect other compounds in the bloodstream.

“It’s not straightforward or necessarily predictable, thus the need for methods to look for these interactions,” says pharmacologist Richard van Breemen, from Oregon State University. “The odd thing in this case was finding all the tainted blood.”

You need to get real van Breeman: transfusion blood is dirty blood, period.

In the end the team behind the study had to enlist the help of two volunteers who promised to abstain from eating or drinking anything with caffeine before their blood was taken as a sample. That gave them a baseline.

The number of samples in this case wasn’t very big at all, so it’s not comprehensive proof that caffeine is proliferating through blood donations bags worldwide. But it poses an interesting question on what exactly might be present in donated blood, whether it’s being used for medical treatments or for further research.

“Another thing to consider is that we found drugs that we just happened to be looking for in doing the drug testing – how many others are in there too that we weren’t even testing for?” says van Breenmen.

A lot Buddy!

By amazing serendipity, as I was writing this very piece, one subscriber asled me to do a piece on the pros and cons of donating blood. That’s a different evaluation, of course, from the hazards of receinving blood.

Basically men should donate blood regularly. Otherwise we tend to build up too much iron (hemoglobin). Indeed, that may be one of the reasons why men don’t live as long as women on average (iron is a surprisingly toxic free radical).

For women, it depends on their menses. If you lose a lot regularly, it still won’t make you seriously deficient to donate blood occasionally. But maybe do it less frequently: once or twice a year, instead of monthly or quarterly.

I can’t be a blood donor because I had glandular fever and hepatitis when a teenager. That was rough to think back on!

Just take care of yourselves out there and remember my motto: if you want to be healthy and life long, stay away from doctors and hospitals! Just make sure you never need a blood  transfusion and you’ll be OK!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby

The Official Alternative Doctor

SOURCE:
The research has been published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis.

So I thought I might as well share the whole story with you (this is supposed to be a newsletter, after all!)

Some years ago, I found a formulator with a good idea. It’s a very different version of vitamin C that has amazing, powerful properties (it is vitamin C!) but in a very well-tolerated form. In fact it tastes rather nice, instead of that ghastly sour ascorbic acid form.

Sodium ascorbate tastes a little better but is still not well tolerated in large doses. It causes diarrhea and stomach pains.

But the main value of vitamin C in fighting health conditions is to be able to take substantial doses. The piffling quantities they called the “recommended dietary allowance” (100 mg or less) was drawn up by fools, who cannot understand the different between the minimum amount to stop you getting scurvy and the OPTIMUM amount, to keep you in good health!

Consider: most animals don’t get colds and flu, or cancer (unless they eat the junk fed them by humans). Why so? All animals, with very few exceptions, make their own vitamin C on board. Goats, for example, create themselves about 12 – 15 grams of vitamin C a day. That’s more than 1,000 times the RDA.

You know I’ve always gone with nature, not scientists. She knows what she’s doing. We humans are a bit bigger than goats, so we probably need 15 – 20 grams a day. But we can’t make vitamin C anymore. We could once, but we lost the gene!

So I took on this new form and called it my “Super C”. All went well for years; it’s been one of my most successful products. Lots of people rave over it and say they can tolerate it like never before.

Then one day, a few months ago, Vivien met with this individual who supplied us. She was collecting a batch for distribution. But she noticed the expiry date was all wrong: it was about 7 days from the time of purchase. By the time anyone got their shipment, it would be out of date.

Viv pointed out the inconsistency but this gentleman bullied and harassed her and insisted the products were good for a least a year (probably true, but I can’t sell goods that are past their sell-by date, obviously!) Viv got back with the consignment, very upset and I DESPISE men who push my wife around. I stopped the payment check and told him to come get his out-of-date goods. In the end I had to take them back to him in person.

As people do, when you catch them out in crime or deceit, he became very obnoxious and seems to behave as if we were the party in the wrong. I hope never to speak to him again, though he still hangs around at trade shows etc.

Anyway, because of this wrong-doing, we suddenly found ourselves with no Dr. Keith’s Own® Super C! In a rush we found a new formulator who agreed they could do the job for us. They understood my modifications and improvements and set to work.

But they were starting from scratch; we had to do testing and tastings; then create new labels. It all took an uncomfortable length of time. But I’m writing this with excitement, delighted to tell you that DR. KEITH’S OWN SUPER C is back in stock! Yay!

Go here to order some.

Stock up NOW, just in case there’s a problem. I don’t think so. The manufacturers are the same and we have Victor, a nice young Korean chap, working as our intermediary. He’s very confident things are now ALL GOOD!

There are some tweaks to the formula. As well as EDTA, for chelation purposes, there is MSM (methylsulfonylmethane).

Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) has become a popular dietary supplement used for a variety of purposes, including its most common use as an anti-inflammatory agent. According to a 2017 article on PubMed, it has been well-investigated in animal models, as well as in human clinical trials and experiments. A variety of health-specific outcome measures are improved with MSM supplementation, including inflammation, joint/muscle pain, oxidative stress, and antioxidant capacity.¹

I also added glycine. Glycine is a most important and simple, nonessential amino acid in humans, animals, and many mammals.

Glycine acts as precursor for several key metabolites of low molecular weight such as creatine, glutathione, haem, purines, and porphyrins. Glycine is very effective in improving the health and supports the growth and well-being of humans and animals. There are overwhelming reports supporting the role of supplementary glycine in prevention of many diseases and disorders including cancer (I don’t think I’m allowed to say that).

Dietary supplementation using proper doses of glycine is effectual in treating metabolic disorders in patients with cardiovascular diseases, several inflammatory diseases, obesity, cancers, and diabetes. Glycine also has the property to enhance the quality of sleep and neurological functions. ²

So, you’ll not be disappointed! In fact you should notice clarity and energy you have never been aware of before. I think it’s a better formula and I am delighted to take it myself.

Incidentally, it was reported that glycine is very effective in optimizing the activities of g- glutamyltranspeptidase, alkaline phosphatases, asparatate transaminases, tissue fatty acid composition, and alanine transaminase, [these are all liver function enzymes] so oral supplementation of glycine can be very effective in protecting the liver.

And for those of you who like a drink: glycine is an excellent preventive to reduce the alcohol levels in blood.³

A ton of good references in that last article, by the way.

Finally, there is that wonderful heart-healthy sugar: D-ribose.

So, take care of yourself. GET MY NEW SUPER C HERE.

Go here to order some and you can use the coupon code: SUPERC to get a 10% discount.

As I said, stock up NOW, just in case there’s a problem. This is the most wonderful vitamin substance of all time!

To your good health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby

The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Nutrients. 2017 Mar; 9(3): 290. Published online 2017 Mar 16.

2. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2017; 2017: 1716701. Published online 2017 Mar 1.

3. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2017; 2017: 1716701. Published online 2017 Mar 1.

To wish for a better relationship is too vague to work – it will (probably) only ever remain a wish. You need to get re-involved at a new level in each tiny brushstroke of the relationship, every sentence of communication exchange (touch, gift, service, word or gesture). Make the details conform to your desired painting (outcome) and you will start to see a new picture emerge from the dismay.

Why not add in the simple “I love you” brushstroke to your life. Make a point of saying more often to those around you.

Family members a problem? Well, you should re-read my newsletter of a couple of weeks ago, about the moments before dying…Don’t wait for the deathbed scene! Everyone, as they are dying, wants to bring the family around them and forgive everybody and be forgiven. Nothing wrong with that, except WHY WAIT?

If it’s a job to be done, do it NOW! That way you can have more years of comfort and delight on earth, with those you love or once loved. It’s a harvest of goodness, instead of meager sproutings at the eleventh hour.

You goofed?

No problem. Just re-do the brushstroke. It does not violate the picture! Don’t let it. You can overpaint a patch of the wrong paint on a canvas; you can do the same with your life. But trying to re-do the entire picture from the same perspective would be too difficult.

Having to do everything all at once is difficult. To change ALL your life doesn’t work. A friend recently lost a sweet girl he loved. He wasn’t listening and she kept telling him her concerns, but he wouldn’t listen. He was “busy”, he had “responsibilities”. Quite true but that’s not what a lover wants to hear!

So she quit. All of a sudden, he wanted to change his whole life, get an apartment together; he would devote himself to her…

Too late! She wasn’t listening any more. But if he had concentrated on a few tiny brushstrokes, things would have been different: like listening when she said she wasn’t happy living with parents or that she wanted to go on a simple romantic vacation together.

Now I’m not judging. But Vivien and I did watch this scenario play out and we could see it was almost inevitable. They were lovely together at first but then the picture turned sour.

The sad thing is the lady wasn’t making huge demands (not like some women we know, eh!) But he missed the important cues.

Don’t let your picture gradually turn from a masterpiece to a dowdy old canvas. Do something!

Get a mind brush and start painting sweeter detail in your life, from today.

You have to change something, otherwise life does not improve. However trying to make enormous earthquake-type changes is not easy and definitely not the best way to go about things.

Make small changes and get those integrated, before adding in another change, and so on.

Morale

There is another aspect of working in small chunks: morale.

If you have a totally scruffy garden, where you can’t keep on top of growth, weeds, pests and untidiness, that can be demoralizing. But if you take one small portion of that garden and prune, clean, weed and tidy it up, so that it looks very nice, your morale will improve just a little. Maybe a lot, because you can see to the next phase and tidying that up too. By planning, phase by phase, to remedy the situation you can enjoy the morale of having matters under control, while not yet finished!

See how the logic works?

Here’s a little garden I created for myself after my first wife left suddenly. It started as a field, no plants! The square patches all came about because I measured off one small square at a time and turned it into something pretty. I grew this little back yard paradise, brushstroke at a time. It took about 3 years and, you know what? Every new patch added made me feel a little bit happier! I grew back to life with the flowers, shrubs and trees.

A small piece done well brings much higher morale than hard-to-measure progress along many fronts. If you are musician, this takes on a different aspect. It is far more satisfying to learn one piece of music and play it really well than to learn dozens of tunes to an indifferent standard.

The Scots have an oaty saying: Mony a mickle maks a muckle. In plain English, lots of little things go to make up big things. The proverb has a lot to do with economy, meaning if you waste pennies, soon you will waste much more; conversely, if you save the pennies, you’ll soon have a lot of money.

That’s the Scots for you. But it is a broad proverb with a lot of wisdom. It applies to life. A superb painting is made up of lots of brush strokes, none of which in themselves are interesting or special. But the overall picture can be magnificent.

Warren Buffet

Buffet was the richest man in the world at the time I first wrote this piece (1994) and without doubt the most successful investor of all time. He is quoted as saying: “ I don’t look for seven-foot bars to leap over; I look for one-foot bars to step over”.

To me that is yet another restatement of the brushstroke principle.

Women Have Always Known This

You can dye your hair a different color and totally change how you feel about yourself. Even flat shoes to high heels – you feel more elegant, more sexy, your posture changes into something that makes you sassy. These are just brush strokes.

Men will change their ties! Sometimes we change our shoes or jacket but not much. Male clothing is conservative compared to womens’ flamboyant fashions. We are not as daring as women, who will change anything to alter how they feel about themselves.

Enough With The Burning Bushes!

You can move mountains if you do it a little at a time. Work with this practical and powerful philosophy in your life.

The trouble is, people are wedded the epiphany idea, the burning bush, that sudden moment of awed inspiration when the voice speaks from on high and you hear something that changes your life in a flash.

People pay good money to go on courses to learn to set fire to bushes! No, I’m kidding. But gurus tell tall stories about amazing and instant transformations. It’s bunk! Such flash-bangs do not usually sustain.

The greatest painting or symphony in the world is made up of lots of brush dabs or a string of thousands of separate notes. Nobody, not even Mozart, wrote a symphony in an afternoon, or painted a masterpiece in one big flash!

That’s good. Because it might be daunting to change our lives all at once. But anyone, however timid, can paint over a picture, brush stroke at a time…

To find out more effective and successful ways to make inspiring and permanent changes in your life, using this brushstroke principle, consider getting onto my Your New Life In a Box program. It’s written for you and others like you!

Go here and get more information: http://www.on2url.com/app/adtrack.asp?MerchantID=96247&AdID=922941

In any event, I wish you some wonderful mental gardening with your inner shrubs and flowers!

Out with the weeds!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
www.alternative-doctor.com

Renal failure occurs when your kidneys are suddenly unable to filter waste matter from your blood.  Dangerous toxins build up quickly in your system and result in acute kidney failure in as little as a few days.  There have been cases that have advanced to the critical point within hours!

Once your kidneys reach end-stage renal failure, you will be unable to survive without a transplant or long-term dialysis (mechanical device that filters your blood for you).  

There may be no symptoms that something is wrong until lab work is done for another condition.  If you do experience symptoms, it is crucial that you immediately seek medical attention. When your kidneys fail – truly fail – your options are severely limited.  The need for kidneys far outweighs the available supply.  

Common Symptoms of Kidney Failure

• Lower output of urine
• Pain or pressure in the chest
• Retention of fluids that results in swelling of the limbs
• Seizure
• Fatigue or perpetual drowsiness
• Nausea or loss of appetite
• Difficulty breathing
• Mental confusion

Acute kidney failure is typically your body’s response to another medical event or condition.  If you have a history of kidney, liver, or heart disease, diabetes, are of advanced age, or have been hospitalized for a serious condition (especially for surgical or intensive care), your risk of is higher than you might imagine.  

Risk Factors Include

• Poor lifestyle choices such as obesity, lack of nutrition, and smoking
• Slow or impaired blood flow to your kidneys
• Blood loss (even in surgical conditions)
• Blockages to your kidney drainage tubes (such as kidney stones)
• Long-term use of aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, or similar over-the-counter drugs
• Repeated or prolonged dehydration
• Blood clots in or around the kidneys or urinary tract
• Chronic infection and inflammation
• Impact injuries to the kidneys
• Autoimmune disorders such as lupus
• Chemotherapy drugs, imaging test dyes, antibiotics, and osteoporosis drugs
• High-level toxic substances such as illegal drugs or heavy metal exposure
• Excessive alcohol consumption
• Reproductive or endocrine system cancers

Dr. Alex Chang, M.D. with Johns Hopkins University stated, “Unlike family history of kidney disease, diet, smoking, and obesity are modifiable lifestyle factors that we can all control.  By eating well, quitting smoking, and maintaining a normal weight, people can protect their kidneys and prevent future damage.”  

The results of his kidney disease research were published in the American Journal of Kidney Disease.  Dr. Chang and his team determined that people who are obese have double the risk of developing kidney disease and those who smoke are 60% more likely to lose the use of their kidneys.

Before your kidneys go past the point of no return, you need to read my book!  Inside the pages of The Waters of Life, you’ll learn how to prevent and even reverse kidney disease right now!  Without trying to buy someone’s black market organ!

What You’ll Discover Inside

• Kidney disease statistics
• Hidden kidney disease
• Causes of kidney failure
• Nephrotic syndrome (the inflamed, leaky kidney)
• Understanding end-stage renal disease (ESRD)
• Dialysis (and why you don’t want it!)
• Facts about kidney cancer
• Kidney tests explained
• Treatment for kidney disease
• What you should do to look after your kidneys
• How and why to detox safely to avoid damaging your kidneys
• Kidney stones (the myths get busted)
• The “bump and jump” method to dislodge stuck stones
• Preventing recurrence of stones
• Herbs for kidney health
• Homeopathic kidney formulas
• Drink only quality waters (a review of water filters)

Your liver and kidneys are two of the most important organs in your body. They help you digest food, flush out toxins, regulate blood pressure and maintain a healthy heart.

But sometimes they need a little extra help to do their jobs properly. To keep them in tip-top health. You need to KNOW what to do and a good chunk of WHY you should do it.

I have one final comment and I hope you take it seriously.  Do not wait until you are told you have extensive kidney damage or even kidney failure.  Remember, you won’t know until it’s almost too late!  Kidneys are the “silent” killer.

Start today on protecting your body’s filtration system.  Pick up your copy of The Waters of Life right now!

US Department of Health and Human Services: Kidney Disease Statistics for the United States https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/kidney-disease

National Kidney Foundation: The Right Diet May Help Prevent Kidney Disease, New Study Finds https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/nr/Right-Diet-May-Help-Prevent-KD

Finally, mainstream science is catching up to the knowledge that holistic practitioners have known for hundreds of years.  

Hippocrates believed, “All diseases start in the intestines.”

Your bowel system can be a devastating source of inflammation.  Once it begins there, it can affect every other organ in your body, wreaking havoc on your basic functions.  

I call it Fire in the Belly and it will burn down your health.

5 Ways to Keep Gut Flora Healthy

1. Probiotics through your diet.  Fermented foods should be your first choice when it comes to having a healthy gut.  Whenever you can, choose food over supplements since your body will utilize all the nutritional benefits.

While yogurt is the most commonly consumed probiotic food, there are others such as dark chocolate, ginger beer, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, fermented cheese (parmesan, Gouda, cheddar, and Swiss), green peas, miso soup, pickles, and kombucha (fermented tea) offer excellent probiotic benefit.

2. Don’t neglect prebiotics (they are the food source for probiotic bacteria).  Prebiotics are not digested in the same way as the other foods you consume.

They are soluble fiber foods that reach your intestines intact and stimulate the growth of healthy gut flora.  Almonds, asparagus, garlic, onions, leeks, apples, apples, and bananas are great foods rich in prebiotics.

3. Detox from heavy metal poisons.  If you don’t think you’ve been exposed to heavy metal toxins that destroy healthy gut flora and damage your gut (leading to a whole host of health problems), then you are probably one of the rare exceptions.

Mercury in dental fillings, silver in serving ware, aluminum in deodorant and canned goods, lead in children’s toys and paints, arsenic, cadmium, and other toxic substances found in building materials, household cleaners, and our food supply.

4. Remove the overuse of antibiotics in your life.  They are put in our food, over-prescribed by doctors, and used in abundance in cleaning products.  Too much exposure to antibacterial solutions damages more than the “bad” bacteria. These compounds are unable to distinguish between “good” and “bad” bacteria…and kill it all.

Opt for organic foods whenever possible, avoid a prescription if you can, and get rid of all the “helpful” antibacterial cleaning products, soaps, and hand sterilizers in your home.

5. Refuse to allow stress to derail gut health.  Several studies have linked inflammation to the reduction of healthy gut flora.  Stress is (finally) accepted as one of the biggest causes of chronic inflammation.  It might not seem like it but stress is manageable if not outright preventable.

Evaluate the mental, emotional, financial, professional, and physical stresses in your life and make a plan to remove or reduce the causes.  Not only will your gut thank you, so will your heart, your immune system, and your central nervous system. Every cell in your body is negatively affected by stress.  Make it stop.

Your Gut Cannot Be Ignored

Did you know that the gut is considered a “second brain” that contains all the identical neurons and neurotransmitters as the spinal cord and peripheral nerves?  In fact, 95% of the body’s serotonin is found in the gut “brain,” which thus affects our moods and performance.

In my book Fire in the Belly, I tell you so much more about maintaining healthy gut flora – where 80% of your immune system resides.  You need to put out that fire, urgently and permanently.  I’ll be telling you how to do that in this life-saving book.

Here’s a sneak peek of what I share…

• How to rebuild a healthy gut flora colony after damage
• Key symptoms that point to chronic inflammation
• How to eliminate “fire foods”
• Why the symptoms are so diverse that most doctors miss the diagnosis
• How to detox from toxic metals without further damage to your immune system
• The varied effects of brain inflammation
• Genes and metabolic capabilities of trillions of microbes tell your body what to do
• The formation of “leaky” gut (it’s not what you thought)
• Plus…how to quench the fire in your gut once and for all.

You shouldn’t delay.  Diabetes, arthritis, heart attack and stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease are all inflammatory processes.  Even deadly cancer has strongly inflammatory aspects.

All this “fire” in your body is dangerous to keeping your gut flora healthy (and you as their host)!  Understand that chronic inflammation will kill you if you simply ignore it.

REFERENCES

Johns Hopkins Health Review: Understanding Inflammation https://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/spring-summer-2016/articles/understanding-inflammation

EMBO Reports: The inflammation theory of disease – the growing realization that chronic inflammation is crucial in many diseases opens new avenues for treatment https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492709/

Healthline: Understanding and Managing Chronic Inflammation https://www.healthline.com/health/chronic-inflammation

Tense moments such as paying bills or looming work deadlines will trigger several stress hormones in the body, which cause muscle tension, sweating, increase in heart rate and, increased respiration.

Stress is a silent killer and puts you at risk for chronic diseases, obesity, and insomnia.

I am sure you feel the hectic pace of everyday life wearing and tugging on you and you aren’t alone…did you know that worldwide nearly 500 million people suffer from stress?  It’s shocking yet true.

Mental and emotional stress can even cause chronic muscle pain and depression.  What mimics a crippling disease is actually an emotional state that is programmed by basic instincts.

This Is Your Brain on Stress

Your brain physically cannot handle prolonged periods of stress.  Here is what happens to the brain when you are under extreme stress:

• The physiological stress response begins due to the sympathetic nervous activity.
• Visual and auditory signals are sent to the emotional processing center of the brain call the amygdala. The amygdala then sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
• The lateral hypothalamus is the circuit in the brain the controls bad behaviors such as overeating and drinking too much alcohol.
• When these circuits are affected, by stress this influences our coping mechanisms and leads us to engage in these behaviors as a way to cope with stress.

The hypothalamus is the control center for involuntary activities in the body such breathing and heart rate.

The hypothalamus carries out the stress response by increasing heart rate, dilating blood vessels, and, increasing respiration and blood pressure.

The sympathetic nervous response is often referred to as the “fight or flight” response.

This is because it is used as a survival mechanism in the animal kingdom. It is a preparation technique that allows humans and other mammals to face life threatening situations by fighting or running away.

The human body has evolved to activate the stress response in non-life threatening situations however. Family arguments, financial struggles and job stress can all activate the flight or fight response.

Even though this original mechanism was designed to keep us alive, chronic stress can be very harmful to physical and psychological health.

Prolonged stress contributes to high blood pressure, formation of artery clogging deposits, and changes in the brain that may cause depression and anxiety.

Stress can increase the appetite, decrease ability to sleep and, decrease the motivation to exercise.

It can also cause irritability, migraines, muscle pain, upset stomach and a decrease in sex drive.

Stress has a detrimental effect on the equilibrium of all the body systems which can lead to severe health issues.

Scientific Ways to Reduce Stress Starting Today

Learning how to eliminate and deal with stress on a daily basis could be one of the healthiest lifestyle changes you can make.

Here are a few simple ways to reduce stress:

1. Physical Activity: Physical activity benefits the body in several ways. Regular exercise improves immune function, reduces migraines, improves sleep, decreases blood pressure and improves fat metabolism.It also deepens breathing and reduces muscle tension which provides a quick anecdote for stress.Exercise also increases the release of a hormone called in endorphins. Endorphins reduce the negative effects of stress, reduce appetite and make you feel great.  You’ve probably heard of the term “runner’s high?”  Well endorphins are the feeling of euphoria behind this term.  Swimming, biking, running, dancing, walking, and other several other activities can give you the same endorphin boost and provide stress relief.
2. Yoga/Meditation/Tai chi: These ancient exercises combine movement with controlled deep breathing which reduces tension in the body.  This type of breathing and moving stimulates the relaxation response within the body, which combats the stress response.
3. Connecting with family and friends: This seems like an obvious suggestion but the stress relieving benefits of social support are more effective than any other stress therapy. Spending time with your loved ones is a proven and effective way to reduce stress.

A hypothesis called the buffering theory suggests people who have close relationships with family and friends receive emotional support that indirectly helps them face stress and crisis.

1. Enjoy a cup of tea:  Being British I love my Earl Grey tea.  But, I also love green tea.  Green tea has many health benefits but even black tea has stress relieving benefits.In a recent study, scientists at University College London noted that people who drank black tea four times a day for six weeks had lower levels of cortisol after a stressful task than those who drank a caffeinated fruit beverage.Green tea contains an amino acid known as gamma-ethylamino-L-glutamic acid, commonly known as L-theanine. One of the unique properties of L-theanine is its ability to induce relaxation response within the brain.Start the kettle boiling and make a pot of your favorite tea for an easy way to reduce stress.
2. Magnesium: Magnesium is an effective and safe muscle relaxant for tense muscles caused by a stress. It also can be used as a sleep aid.Magnesium will lower blood pressure boosted by stress and anxiety. Larger doses will relieve constipation as well. Aim for 200 mg dose of magnesium citrate twice daily with food. Consult your doctor before beginning any supplement regimen.
3. Fish oil: The omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil have been shown to lower blood cholesterol. They may also blunt the effect mental stress has on the body. Omega-3 fatty acids may help keep the heart rate and sympathetic nerve activity consistent during stressful periods.Omega-3 fatty acids can be consumed from fish oil, olive oil or supplements.

Don’t wait another day to practice at least one of these natural ways to reduce stress in your daily life.  All it requires is taking five minutes today to start investing in your well-being.

More educated people live longer.

In some cases, life expectancy for people who don’t finish high school is actually getting shorter. Meanwhile, those with higher levels of education and more socioeconomic benefits are living much longer than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.

Education is key: the more learning, the more living…

The world is gradually dividing into two populations. Not the “haves” and “have-nots” of the political agitators. This is something much more precious than mere money: It’s those who learn and those who don’t.

In bald numbers, educated men live 14 years longer, on average, than uneducated men. Educated women live 10 years longer, on average, than uneducated women.

In conducting the study, the researchers analyzed trends in life expectancy from 1990 through 2008. Specifically, they looked at how people’s age, sex, race and education influenced their longevity.

The study revealed that Americans with less than a high school education have life expectancies similar to adults who lived 50 to 60 years ago.

“It’s as if Americans with the least education are living in a time warp,” said Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, in a press release. “The least-educated black men are living in 1954, black women in 1962, white women in 1964 and white men in 1972,”

[SOURCE: University of Illinois at Chicago, news release, Aug. 6, 2012]

One day I got to thinking about “Internet health”. I made that up and, no, I don’t mean health ON the Internet; I mean health OF the Internet.

I was all fired up to do a piece on Google (which is a nasty, contagious disease). New Scientist recently ran a piece, pointing out the dangers of downloading images via Google. Apparently, that’s the latest loophole the hackers are exploiting, to get malware onto your computer.

It’s a war out there and what you see on Yahoo and Google searches is the top 5% of a seething cesspit of crime, fraud, filth and malware. You wouldn’t want to see the half of it. The search engine spiders do their best to keep it out of view.

But talk about pathogens! These evil hacker bugs and human parasites out there are trying to infect your healthy life.

Anyway, the point is that I shifted my attention away from this, somewhat. I got hacked at the alternative-doctor.com website. Someone had planted malicious code and Google has now flagged it as a compromised site. In this case I know who did it and the police are closing in on her now.

But that doesn’t help clean up the mess.

Then Viv got her Yahoo account hacked. Dear Viv isn’t so computer literate and I hadn’t realized she was using her Yahoo account for some of her office work. The result is that the hackers got a list of email addresses that includes my customers. I can only apologize that many of you are now receiving spam of a sexual nature.

It’s too late for us to close the door (meaning, I’m afraid, you have to block them yourselves).

But the real culprit is that moronic system of Yahoo’s. It’s very easy to hack and has NO real safeguards. I went into Viv’s A/C and looked at recent log ins. Someone had logged in twice in an hour from Germany, then Malaysia, and all the while Viv herself was logging in from California.

Yahoo is too badly set up, busy making money on its advertising, to bother with little details like this. Yet it’s such an obvious red flag. It would have taken nothing (except a bit of real care) to have their coders demand extra log in proof when it saw inconsistencies like this.

If you have a Yahoo.com email, I advize you to dump it immediately and get a gmail or similar*. You are at risk and Yahoo doesn’t seem to care.

Read this piece here, which repeats what I just told you:

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/yahoo-email-hacked

*PS. Don’t forget to sign back into my subscriber list with your new email address!