How To Prevent Age Related Vision Loss

 Many people don't give age related loss of vision any thought. They expect that their vision will get weaker as they move from middle age into their senior years. And, for most, that is exactly what will happen.

But it isn't necessary for everyone. There are many causes for loss of vision. Some can be stopped by doctors, some are inevitable and can't be stopped. The most common cause for weakened vision is preventable. That's why you are reading this.

People need to use glasses as they get older for the same reason they can't lift weights as heavy in their senior years as they did when they were younger. Muscle loss. Muscle loss around the eyes is the most common reason for weakened vision as people age.

I will teach you how to strengthen the muscles around your eyes, which will stop your vision from getting worse naturally, and perhaps improve the vision you have. I say that with confidence because I have done it myself.

But here's the thing. Most people who read this won't try the exercises and most who begin the daily exercises will not do the series for long enough to make a difference. This is not a quick fix. Nothing about your vision is. Yet you do want your vision to last for the rest of your life.

You must commit to doing the eye exercises daily or your vision won't improve. It will, like that of most other older people, continue to get worse.

We humans don't have many muscles around our eyes. They tend to get weaker because they don't get the exercise they need as we get older and don't demand as much movement from side to side and up and down as we used to. Like any other muscles, eye muscles atrophy--they shrink--with lack of exercise.

Most people find their vision weakening with age because their eyeballs change shape. Why on earth would that happen? Because the muscles around them get smaller and eyeballs change shape to take up the extra space. Nature abhors a vacuum and eyeballs are no different. They take up space added when muscles beside them shrink. Misshapen eyeballs mean distorted vision.

Now that you understand the problem you can proceed with the solution. This has been a long read and the rest will make it longer. If you want, bookmark this page somehow so you can return to the exercises that follow.

Working Your Eyes

The procedure begins with what are called pinhole goggles. Note, they must be the goggle variety that wrap around your head a bit, not regular glasses that sit in front of your eyes. The reason why this is important will become obvious later with the exercises.

These are available online, but you might have to begin by searching "sports goggles". These wraparound goggles have hundreds of tiny pinholes arranged around each lens. You don't need the kind made of wire mesh. Just lenses of plastic, full of tiny holes, in frames of plastic. They cost only a few dollars.

When you first get them, try them on and look at something up close, something that would normally be blurred if you looked at it without glasses. It looks clear and sharp, in focus, right? Like magic. That is what you are aiming for when, eventually, you can move around without glasses. You can see clearly and precisely with the goggles on, but without glasses the object is blurred. I tend to look at the hair and skin on the back of my hand each day for confirmation of my overall objective.

The exercises are in two parts. You can do both sitting in an easy chair. The first part involves actual exercises that strengthen the muscles around your eyes. The second part is a matter of wearing the goggles for a while each day. Anywhere from ten minutes to two hours as it suits you. I find it difficult to wear them while working because they don't allow enough light for me to see details. My wife uses them while doing other types of work.

Okay, the eye exercises. For the sake of ease of explanation I will use compass directions to indicate how you should move your eyes. So N will be UP, S will be DOWN, E will be RIGHT and W will be LEFT.

In each case you will move your eyes as far in each direction as you can. Don't move your head or you will miss the point of the exercises. Move your eyes so far the you will feel the muscles get a bit tired after a few tries. That is what you want. Your body will respond by making those muscles stronger, and larger, which is very important.

Here we go:

NSEW

NSEW

NSEW

NSEW

Then change to

NSWE

NSWE

NSWE

NSWE

Following that you will cast your eyes in very wide circles, around the compass points you just used. Turn them one way ten times. Then turn them the opposite way ten times.

Remember, make those eye muscles work, just as a weight lifter would work muscles in a gym. Expect your muscles to get a bit tired. You will feel the fatigue, but it will disappear almost immediately when you stop your exercising.

This is where the difference between pinhole goggles and pinhole glasses comes into play. With the goggles you easily look to the corners of the lenses, whereas with the glasses the corners are all distracting bright areas.

Follow that routine--look to the compass corners then circle your eyes each way--three times. There is no reason you can't do these any number of times each day, if you like. I do them once.

After that you can relax and wear your goggles for as long as you like. Some advise ten minutes per day, others two hours per day. It's up to you how long you wear them each day because you have other activities to do with your life.

Keep in mind, this is not a quick fix and it will not repair any eye damage. This is all about rebuilding the framework around your eyeballs.

It's up to you whether or not you need eye glasses as most people will when they get older. For best effect you will need to incorporate these eye exercises into your daily routines into the indefinite future.

If you have any doubts about these exercises, speak to an optometrist. But, keep in mind that they are in the business of selling glasses and you want to avoid doing that. It is in their best (financial) interests to get you wearing glasses.

Bill Allin is the author of hundreds of articles available free on the internet.

Who or What Is God and Why the Mystery?

Who or What Is God and Why the Mystery?

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
- Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist, sometime philosopher (1879-1955)

Einstein's "reflection of human frailty" is the biggest part of the answer to the title question. Humans created their God or gods based on their own needs. Each god reflects the needs of its human creator at the time of its creation. Einstein was not afraid to imagine something different.

Does this mean I am about to prove that God does not exist or that he does? In a very real sense I can answer that neither.

The gods we have been taught about are human creations based on the limited knowledge (and needs) of their time. In that sense God is fiction. That is the God that atheists deny and that confuses agnostics. That does not mean that God does not exist. It means that humans have not listened to their predecessors who taught what was real. Not many predecessors, to be sure. The world’s most popular book was written about one of them.

In general, religions have taught about gods that were created millennia ago. They were days when people belonged to tribes and had distinct tribal values. Tribal values seem brutal and inhumane in today's megasocieties. Yet those ancient religions today stick to their creations which can never be proven and don't even make sense to most people in the 21st century. Moreover, some of the concepts are conflicted or inconsistent. God in the Christian Old Testament, for example, has distinctly male characteristics as the stern master and vengeful warrior. In the New Testament God takes on clearly feminine characteristics, as a mother who would care for, help, protect and coddle followers.

It is so easy for science to debunk the gods created by religion because, generally speaking, the claims made about each are not just outrageous, but actually absurd. This claim may seem offensive to those who have not actually studied the books about the god they believe in. Religious leaders, for exactly this reason, have felt no shame in giving the god they want followers to adore (and to give money to his place of worship) characteristics that the followers want to believe their god has.

Christianity made Mary, the mother of Jesus, into a virgin. The Bible makes no such claim, anywhere--some of the most modern Bibles may be exceptions as they have written what they want their followers to believe. But it makes followers more strongly believe that God must have been the father of Jesus of Nazareth. Most of the miracles in the Bible can be explained by a thorough knowledge of nature and a good knowledge of therapies that ancient peoples used to cure diseases. Cures that, I must add, today’s pharmaceutical companies do not want us to know because they want to sell us their expensive medicines. “Us” being the same gullible followers of religions that preach of fictitious gods.

In order for us to understand what God is we must discard what we have been taught by both science and religion. About God or gods, not about other things they have taught us. Neither religion nor science has allowed for a concept of God that is beyond the understanding of those who went before us thousands of years ago. I especially remember one man with rebellious ideas who was crucified. He taught what we should understand today, but his contemporaries did not understand. Those who followed him named a religion after him but did not accept his word about God. Yes, I am saying that Christianity is not about Jesus of Nazareth, but instead about a real person who was fictionalized to make him more attractive to followers. Jesus was a simple teacher and healer. His follower Paul was the real founder of the religion.

Wait, am I saying that Jesus is not the Son of God? What Jesus actually said was that we are each children of God and we can find God within ourselves if we know how to look. The Bible says that but Christianity doesn’t teach that, does it?

We can use what we have learned in all aspects of the sciences and humanities--in the past century more than in all of history before that--to look at a bigger picture. We can’t satisfy science, religion or our own curiosity unless we are prepared to at least consider possibilities that are different from the conventional thinking we have been taught from the past. In the case of religion, from thousands of years in the past. In the case of science, from an establishment with rules tougher than most religions, one which is prepared to alienate, even to remove certification from, those with different ideas.

Let’s begin with what we know. We know about matter because we see and feel it every day. It constitutes the body that most believe is who we are. We can see, hear, taste, touch and smell matter. We know about energy because it warms us when we stand in the noonday sun, when we drive our cars or when we heat our homes. Yet science has calculated, through observation and learned mathematics, that the matter and energy we know constitutes only five percent of what exists in the universe. That’s right, 5%.

So what is in the other 95%? People who read will quickly answer dark matter and dark energy. OK, and what are they? They can’t be seen because they do not reflect light or absorb it. Apparently we walk through them and breathe them and shoot spacecraft through them every day. We know when we bump into regular matter because it hurts. But when we bump into dark matter? Nothing. According to what we have been taught, that should be impossible.

Let’s review: science has proven that we can only detect about five percent of what science knows exist in the universe. That means that science admits that neither it nor anyone it supports has any real idea of what constitutes 95% of the universe. Science says that the 95% inhabits every part of the universe. We send spacecraft through it, we walk through it, we even breathe it without knowing it. Science says that.

Science does not say whether we walk through dark matter or dark energy. Hmmm. Since science does say that dark energy is responsible for our universe expanding uncontrollably, actually increasing its rate of expansion over time, I will say that what we walk through is dark matter. In that case we would be known matter walking through unknown matter. And we don’t know it. Well, you do know it now that I have told you. But it doesn’t push you around the way dark energy pushes the universe with unimaginable force.

We know that people around the world, in every culture on the planet and every one that has existed through recorded history has believed there is something bigger than what they are and what they know, something most of us would call supernatural. They have all prayed, in some form or another, to this supernatural force. With little effect, though many claim that when things work out the way they wanted them to work out their prayers have been answered.

When a supernatural force is deemed to have human characteristics, it doesn’t work out. If God gives us good things, why does he allow things such as the Holocaust and genocide, murder, drug addiction and mean mothers to happen? The answer, of course, is that only the fictitious gods are deemed to have human characteristics. Deemed? Isn’t it Genesis (a part of the holy books of Judaism, Islam and Christianity) that says God created man in his own image? That statement is so old that billions of people believe it is true. Because it’s old. And it appears in a holy book. What does that even mean, really? Is it not more true that people created their god in their own image?

Science believes it may have captured evidence that dark matter exists. Maybe. It still doesn’t know what dark matter is or does. As for dark energy it says we must just have faith that dark energy is real. Faith? Well, science doesn’t use that word, but what words it does use mean the same thing as faith. The mathematics of physics insists that dark energy must exist. Call it what you like if you don’t like the term dark energy. It exists.

I ask myself who would object if I claimed that dark energy is really God. That science has found evidence that God exists.

Why would science not come out and say that is a possibility? Because billions of people have beliefs that God (or gods) are something different. Any scientist who came out and stated that dark energy is God would find himself unemployed, with his name scrubbed from the annals of history.

I do not live under such threats so I will say it. The dark energy that science claims exists and pervades every part of the universe is what people for millennia have been calling God. Anyone who would claim that I am wrong will have no more evidence--in fact, even less--that his or her own god exists.

So what about this God? Did God create everything? Not quite. God IS everything. That includes you. You might call God a scientist. The universe is his playpen (sorry, science lab). The matter and energy we know, which Einstein said are the same thing, are his toys. I don’t say that sarcastically or cynically. I believe we should not put so much emphasis on the meanings and values of words. “Playpen” and “toys” are words familiar to all of us. If you attach values to them that are not intended or are not inherent in their denotative meanings, that is your problem.

Can we say, then, that science has proven the existence of God? No, not even close. Science would not even try. While people around the world have various concepts of God, there is no general agreement, no consensus that reaches even a bare majority. People disagree on the nature of God so science could never have a hope of proving anything that could never be recognized as a proof.

Science and religion can never agree about God because people can’t agree on what or who God is. Or what powers God has or lacks. That profound lack of agreement might be the greatest mystery of all. And the greatest obstacle.

This concept of God is not new. I have found it in elements of most of the world’s major religions. It may be found within the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth for those who willing to cast aside what they have been taught and look at the words of Jesus in the Bible. Let’s remember that Christianity is not the sole possessor of Jesus. Both Judaism and Islam consider Jesus one of their great prophets. That covers nearly half the current human population today. Of course the idea of dark energy is not mentioned by any of the God concepts because it is a name given by science in recent years and never considered by those who devised their own concepts of God millennia ago. God was assumed to be a mysterious supernatural force. Ummm, like dark energy.

Multiple times each week I read on social media where people make claims about God and even have the audacity to speak on his behalf with no authority whatsoever. This alone would make agreement between science and religion impossible as religionists mold their concept of God like wet clay.

The implications of this concept of God are either very simple or very complex. Simple if you reject it outright. Complicated if you want to consider what God could do, not do, want to do, want to avoid or take a serious interest in. These will be discussed in followup articles to this one. You may consider this as Part I, essential reading for anyone who will dare to venture into reading succeeding parts.

Finally, it will be important for us for future parts of this discussion to remember the law of conservation of matter and energy. Einstein said they are essentially the same thing in his well known equation e=mc2. Same with dark matter and dark energy. No matter whether something is energy or matter, it could become the other or even reverse its form. Nothing disappears. This will be important for us to keep in mind before reading followup articles. If something exists, it will not disappear.

[HINT: Does your personality exist?]

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book of simple and inexpensive solutions to big problems of societies, and hundreds of articles which are available on the internet.
Learn more at billallin.com   Follow Bill’s blog at  tiabuilder.wordpress

Are We Maturing or Evolving As A Species?

Are We Maturing or Evolving As A Species?

You can graph human evolution, which is mostly a straight line, but we do get better and change over time, and you can graph technological evolution, which is a line that's going straight up. They are going to intersect each other at some point, and that's happening now.
- Daniel H. Wilson, American author, TV host, robotics engineer (b. 1978)

Evolution is constant. It's happening all the time, every day, not just occasionally over eons. It is now known that our own genetic composition can change even daily based on life conditions, diet, stressors, environmental factors, medications, even to the extent of finding new love.

Is it possible that our species has evolved slightly over the past century so that we are close to becoming two separate species? What might members of an evolving group of humans look like so that we could distinguish them from those who were not evolving? Would the unevolved ones fear the evolved ones and kill them as enemies the way science fiction has postulated? If so, would the evolved ones want to look like the unevolved ones long enough that their numbers were strong enough that they could repel attacks from the unevolved ones?

That suggestion may sound absurd because you have not heard it before. But look around the world at human populations. You can see major differences in approaches to life in every country.

In North American countries they are referred to as political differences, liberals and conservatives. In many countries the two are represented by two or more different political parties. In other places they may be represented by different religions. In still others the differences may be between those in power and those struggling to escape from the group in power, one that is particularly oppressive. Often the differences will be that one group prefers peace while the other advocates war or control by power. Or those who work for the best interests of others as well as of themselves and those whose only interest is themselves and their own welfare.

Sympathy is a common characteristic among all human cultures. Empathy, the ability to actually feel what someone else is experiencing, is a relatively rare characteristic. Empathy would seem to be a characteristic of an advanced form of human. Characteristics have ways of forming themselves to become part of the genetic makeup of a species.

Could these possibly represent differences in the DNA of our species, differences that are not yet striking enough that we are still able to reproduce with each other. (Species are usually distinguished from each other by their inability to mate successfully, though there are exceptions such as donkeys mating with horses to produce mules.)

Sociologists would say these two groups represent the social evolution of humankind from tribal culture to megasociety culture. This would be what I am calling the maturing of our species.

Tribal culture can best be seen in parts of the world that are still mostly tribal in nature. In these places fighting is ongoing, peace is rare and brief. The Middle East, parts of Africa and parts of the subcontinent are easily recognized as mainly tribal. In tribal culture there is always fear of the other "tribes" because of their differences, fear that the other may conquer or assimilate them.

With 7.5 billion people on our planet we can't afford to maintain a constant tribal state or we would be constantly at war. We must accommodate ourselves to what is called the megasociety. The megasociety recognizes differences and accepts them without fear and without wanting to resort to genocide to protect themselves. Death by violence is frequent in tribal societies, much less in megasocieties.

In the largest countries by population in the world, China, India and the USA, we can see signs of old tribal characteristics showing up, especially at election time. But, generally speaking, these countries remain relatively peaceful within their own borders and with other countries, considering what they were like in the past.

Are we maturing, as we must with an uncontrollably large population, from tribal society to megasociety? Or are we splitting into two separate and distinct species of necessity, by evolution?

It would certainly be more comfortable for us to say the differences are just differences in principles, in political preferences.

But, no matter what your political preferences, are you not tempted to ask yourself "What is wrong with those people that they can think that way?" Are the differences deeper than political preference?

I can't offer evidence of genetic change among our species. Neither can anyone else because this has not been studied. I do wonder why the US State of California has forbidden its citizens from having a complete DNA analysis done by their own request and at their own expense. What might that reveal in a state that large?

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that offers inexpensive solutions to social problems through changes in education. He has also authored hundreds of articles which are available free on the internet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

You Are the Weaker Side in a War You Don't Even Know Is Going On

You Are the Weaker Side in a War You Don't Even Know Is Going On

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
- John Muir,  Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness (1838-1914)

[DISCLOSURE: This is a rant. It is filled with personal opinion based on the science I have read and the facts on the ground as I have observed them. You can do anything from rage in disagreement to nod your head in agreement to learning more about these situations before you lose the war against your health and welfare.]

You are an innocent victim in a war going on around you that you might not be aware of. Yes, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But in this case the evidence is clear and irrefutable. I will not trouble you with the science (study references) here for the sake of simplicity. If you doubt anything, check it out.

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of your life that has not been taught to you by your doctor, your schools or even what you learn from television or the internet is that you are not just one being. What you consider to be you is the host for billions of tiny microbes, bacteria for the most part, that inhabit virtually every part of your body.

It's called your immune system. That's right. Your immune system is actually not part of the cell structure of your body. They are independent organisms that live in symbiosis with you. You can't live without them and they can't live without you.

Does that sound creepy? That's what doctors and the media believe you will think. They believe you will appreciate remaining ignorant about what may be the most important part of your body, certainly the one that keeps you alive every day.

Science can't tell you how many or even how many varieties of microbes compose your immune system. The reason is that it varies from individual to individual. There could be as many as 10,000 different varieties of microbes in your immune system with anything up to billions of each. If you have a healthy immune system. Which you may very well not have.

Shouldn't your doctor be able to correct your immune system's deficiencies? Yes. But they don't. Antibiotics, indeed most pharmaceuticals prescribed by your doctor will impair or even destroy your immune system. Antibiotics are microbe killers. Trouble is, they kill hundreds of times more good microbes than bad. Yes, antibiotics and most pharmaceuticals (especially the most popular ones) harm your immune system. Drugs kill the wrong things. And you believe the doctors.

If you know a little about good health and the immune system you will likely know that fresh fruits and vegetables will boost your immune system. But conventional industrial farms commonly use pesticides (poisons), herbicides (poisons) and chemical fertilizers on the very same "fresh" fruits and vegetables you will see for sale in your supermarket. Nobody knows what effects the chemical fertilizers will have on your health years later. Nobody ever tests for that. Nobody.

You will have heard of GMO (genetically modified organisms) foods and GE (genetically engineered) foods--same thing, different terms in different countries--and likely read how safe they are. The producers of those chemicals that are put on the seeds they produce that accept those poisons create studies that show how safe the poisons are. But are they? The tests are notorious sources for conflict of interest. Independent studies, which receive little or no attention in the media (that profit from the chemical and pharmaceutical companies--same companies really) become buried, hidden from a public that deserves to know.

Farm workers who apply the chemicals must wear hazardous materials suits that completely enclose their entire bodies.The most famous is Roundup, by Monsanto. Its main active ingredient--glyphosate, claimed to be perfectly safe (yes, a poison they claim is safe)--has been found in mother's breast milk, in baby foods, in vaccines, in fresh organic foods, in most chemically treated city drinking water, in air samples in a majority of cities, virtually everywhere.

GMO food crops and seeds have been banned in a large number of countries of the world. Glyphosate and similar poisons have been banned in a large number of countries. Banned because they are carcinogens, chemicals that cause cancer. Yet you can buy Roundup freely over the counter in the USA and Canada. And when you apply it you are not required by law to wear a HAZMAT suit like the industrial farmers do. You aren't even advised to wear a mask or apply it downwind.

Generally speaking, mold, bacteria, insects and many larger animals will avoid eating a majority of food that is available in a supermarket. Some will avoid it even when they are starving because they do not recognize it as "food." The poison itself is so effective that it kills every living organism in the soil. Everything. How do you think that affects the food chain whose larger organisms feed you?

People are finding themselves allergic to the clothes they buy and the new furniture and draperies they install in heir homes. Others find themselves ill in other ways, including cancer, from the chemicals embedded in the fabric to make it "look better." You can ask your doctor about any of this.

Your government likely warns you about climate change and advises you that your car emits too much greenhouse gases. Your government does not tell you that airplanes--many fewer than cars--emit almost as much greenhouse gas as cars. They also do not tell you that one of the greatest sources of greenhouse gases is power generating stations that account for almost one-quarter of all emitted greenhouse gases. Those power stations are usually owned by the same governments that want you to cut back on driving your car.

If there is something wrong that is a public hazard, you may be assured that a government will blame you for it. That will distract you from the fact that governments are the greatest hazards to health on the planet. They do not protect you from air pollution. They do not protect you from water pollution. They will not enact legislation that will make your food free from hazardous ingredients. They will not insist on proof that new drugs--always man-made chemicals, never natural products grown in nature--are safe. Testing of new drugs is from three months to a year, usually. Yet they could affect your health years later. You will never know and never suspect it when you are dying and don't know why.

If you live in a democracy, you vote for the people who make decisions that affect your life and your health and your future. Legislators are ordinary people like you and me. They often make a lot of critically important decisions based on very limited input. Often that input comes from the very people who stand to benefit from their decisions. Or from lobbyists who are paid by the stakeholders.

You should learn. You should teach your legislators. Without your pestering, they may not even know the harm their decisions will make.

You should not be the victim of their ignorance or neglect. Nor should you allow yourself to be a victim of your own ignorance.

Bill Allin in the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about inexpensive and easy solutions that people are not taking to overcome serious problems. The "war against health" is a serious social problem. He has authored hundreds of articles that are available free on the internet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

TV Commercials Can Ruin Your Life and Health

TV Commercials Can Ruin Your Life and Health

The question for me was, could TV actually teach? I knew it could, because I knew 3-year-olds who sang beer commercials!
- Joan Ganz Cooney, American television producer, one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, home of Sesame Street (b. 1929)

[DISCLOSURE: The purpose for this article is to make readers aware of the effects of following life and health advice offered by TV commercials. These are science based facts, not opinions. The science part is left out to make it easier to read.]

Children, adolescents, even adults learn about life and life skills by watching television. As odd as that may sound, they have few other convenient sources for information they need. Today's parents literally know almost nothing about parenting and the needs of children other than food, clothing and shelter.

For most of human history children learned about life from their parents and neighbours as they worked and played alongside their parents in fields and workshops. Today children are separated from their parents for almost all of their waking day, leaving surrogates to do the job of teaching them about life.

TV fills that role magnificently as it seeks to mold the minds of children to become devoted consumers of particular products as they get old enough to spend money. The prime objective of programming is to entertain people long enough that they will stay around for the next set of commercials.

But what are television commercials teaching? Is it worthwhile life advice? No. Do parents realize that they have turned the job of teaching almost everything their children learn over to pathological commercial interests who want people to follow what they teach with the same devotion as people give to their religions or their preferred political party? Again, no.

First, I want you to think about all the TV programs you know. Which among them has role models you believe children should follow? Of course we need buffoons to laugh at and actors to play conflicted characters for drama. Would you change lives with any of them?

As you think about the TV programs you know, one that would interest kids, adolescents or poorly educated adults, can you think of any you would like to represent life in your home or workplace? Even one? I can't.

TV news is filled with violence and perversion. Shows that emphasize personalities tend to have them conflicting among themselves. Comedies show people with personality problems, social problems, even mental illnesses (never identified as such). Dramas (mostly soaps) show people with lives that no one would want to emulate.

Commercials are where real life teaching takes place. Commercials pay the freight for programming. And they are often better produced. Their messages are meant to be taken literally, also to create a long term following. That's why you see the same commercials repeated over and over. And over. And over. As a hypnotist would do when putting a volunteer into a trance. The rule of thumb in TV advertising is feed the same message to people ten times or more and they will believe it. Anything.

Let's set aside anything to do with political or religious advertising as it is filled with so much brain twisting propaganda and distortions of truth that networks and stations should be required to flash warning signs before and after them. Networks don't bother big advertisers because there is too much income at risk.

Let's begin our look at commercials for personal care at the top. Hair care companies may have done the most and best research about hair care than any commercial product manufacturer. But their products only heal what other products have broken. In fact, most hair would be best treated with a simple soap wash every few days. The hair of a person who eats a healthy diet will look good so long as the natural elements of hair are not stripped away by chemicals. Wash, rinse with clear water, then leave the hair alone for a few days, other than brushing.

Any commercials to do with mouth care are deceptive, if not outright harmful. I have not seen one teeth brushing commercial in decades that shows a person brushing their teeth in a way that would avoid cavities. On the contrary, the ones I have seen would promote cavities and sensitive teeth. Neither is necessary, but both keep other industries like dentistry and teeth cleaners alive and flourishing.

The mouth (along with the skin) is a secondary part of the body's immune system. After the major immune system component in the gut, the mouth is the first line of defense against attack by diseases. Kill all microbes in your mouth and you destroy one component of your immune system. Wash your body with soap thoroughly in a daily shower and you will decimate another part. Take doctor-prescribed antibiotics and you will destroy the major component of your immune system. That's what these products you see advertised do. The advertisers make fortunes on your devotion to their somewhat or totally harmful products. Your doctor will come to know you intimately from your frequent visits.

Skin care products are a travesty against good skin health. To begin, cosmetics for women produce a look that studies have shown men do not prefer over the look of no cosmetics. Men know that cosmetics mean "fake" and act accordingly. Women who claim that they make themselves up to make themselves feel better have self esteem issues. Are they trying to compete for attention with other women or attract them?

Clothing fashions are another issue of brainwashing. A man or woman who believes that he or she performs better at work because they look better is a victim of effective advertising and self deception. Most bosses look at job performance before apparel. Should you be known for your good looks or your job skills?

Teeth whitening was originally used by movie actors to make them stand out from other actors on set. Teeth whitening, like fashion and cosmetics, was an industry founded by people who wanted to sell something that people did not need, except to impress others. Generally speaking, those with real talent and skill do not subscribe to that kind of fake.

People who whiten their teeth to look better in real life do indeed stand out. They stand out as being needy, prepared to do anything to get attention. Anyone who chooses a life mate based on white teeth, fashionable clothing, beautiful makeup, type of footwear or kind of car driven is bound for breakup when the fake wears off. Yet that is what TV commercials teach in North America, where the divorce rate is now well over 50% and a majority of kids in school classrooms live in single parent households.

Generally speaking, if you depend on TV commercials or programs to tell you how to live your life you will live a troubled life. And probably in debt.

When you think about buying something you have seen advertised on TV, remember that the choice is yours. Will the long term disadvantage of harm to you outweight the short term benefits? Of this you may be certain, the advertiser always wins. The advertiser has no obligation to benefit you, only to make you believe that you will benefit from the product. What will you believe?

You may think that what you have just read is opinion by one person. It's not. I don't care what you do or wear or how you live your life. That is your business not mine. I don't have time or interest in meddling in your life.

I do take an interest in helping people to think about choices they make, what effects those choices have on themselves and on others. If you "dress for success" to impress others, you will have bought into the model that industry leaders want. You will be a follower, not a leader. A consumer, not an independent innovator.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about inexpensive solutions to major social problems. If you have hear the word "sheeple" you understand that what you have read above is indeed a social issue.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Marijuana, Maybe Not What You Thought

Marijuana, Maybe Not What You Thought

When Mexico sends its people [into the U.S.], they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.
- Donald J. Trump, American actor (b. 1946)

Donald Trump is merely the latest loud voice to rail against the coming to the United States by Mexicans fleeing their homeland hoping to find a better life. At the turn of the 20th Century, Americans with similar feelings adopted the Mexican Spanish word marijuana for what most of the rest of the world called and still calls Cannabis. Before the 20th Century everyone called it Cannabis.

The American campaigners originally tended to spell it marihuana, which is closer to the Mexican pronunciation of the word, but eventually the Mexican spelling marijuana prevailed.

Anti-immigrant advocates in the U.S. expressed their aversion to foreigners invading the land they themselves had only recently invaded and stolen from native Americans that they used the newly adopted word marijuana as an expression of the evil that they claimed the foreigners brought with them.

Is it possible that the U.S. Congress passed laws criminalizing the growth and sale of cannabis marijuana specifically to discourage Americans who had neutral feelings about Mexican migrants so that they would associate the Mexican word for the now-illegal product with migrants who entered the U.S. illegally? That may seem a strong claim but prejudiced Congress members have passed many laws in the past to advance their various bigoted causes.

How strongly did these politicians feel about turning Americans against Mexicans by making marijuana seem like a Mexican curse? The only cure for cancer that has ever been patented in the United States was filed by the U.S. government itself, in 1937. The government of the country with the highest cancer rates in the world withheld a cure for cancer rather than make the all-natural chemical-free plant marijuana acceptable to the American public. That patent holds today, though many others of that time have been allowed to expire.

Not all varieties of Cannabis are alike. C. ruderalis is generally agreed to be of little value for either recreation or medicine. Though uncommon, it is still illegal, yet it could be feral so it might be found growing in your back yard. Illegally, of course.

Etymologists give various origins for the name Cannabis, but the plant indisputably originates in Asia. The Chinese used it to relieve various conditions from constipation to malaria as far back as 2700 BCE. In India it was considered a sacred plant used for its psychotropic and medicinal effects. Mind-altering natural products that improve sensitivity and intellect temporarily are not considered sinful in many cultures and have been used for that purpose for thousands of years.

Cannabis is mentioned in the Jewish Talmud. Traces of its pollen or oil have been found in various tombs of ancient Egyptians, including that of the famous Rameses II. The nomadic Scythians, who were documented in 450 BCE to have used it in funeral rites by Greek historian Herodotus, likely brought it to Europe.

But which variety of cannabis? C. sativa and C. indica are the two best known. But they are often confused even in modern literature. Some claim that C. sativa has the most psychotropic ingredient delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in its sticky resin. Other non-scientists claim that C. indica has the most cannabidiol (CBD), claimed to be the primary medicinal ingredient and a sedative.

Both groups are mistaken. Both varieties are high in THC and relatively low in CBD. Much research is taking place with CBD because of its anti-inflammatory effects. Inflammation is known to be the starting place for cancer.

Researchers have found that CBD results in weight loss in their studies of overweight mice. No one has risked experimenting on humans, despite that fact that the U.S. has the highest rate of obesity in the world. Nobody knows how to tell if mice get the munchies.

Then we have what may well be the most useful subspecies of cannabis, Cannabis sativa L, more commonly known as hemp. Hemp grows much faster than trees and can be used to make paper (thus saving forests), clothing, building materials (someone made a whole car from it) and it can be used to replace oil. Yes, this renewable energy source could replace the non-renewable oil that is extracted from the ground and it can even be grown in less than ideal agricultural conditions.

That is, if it were legal. Which it isn't in the USA. Hemp is grown legally in Canada and many other countries. But not in large quantities that could be exported to the U.S.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of articles which are available on the internet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

[Primary resource: Discover, April 2016]

Why The Food You Eat Is Dead

Why The Food You Eat Is Dead

I certainly feel that the time is not far distant when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, be able to do better mental and physical work and disease will be less frequent.
- Fannie Farmer, American culinary expert (1857-1915)

Sadly, Fannie Farmer was mistaken. We did not learn because the knowledge we need was not incorporated into our education system. In our ignorance, while we were busy with other things, the food, drug and chemical industries collaborated to make us a sick society, one that would forever be dependant on doctors and drugs. Or, in the case of the poor, dependant on dying as a form of relief.

Could this be true? Is it even possible? Does it sound like a conspiracy theory? Yes to all. The evidence is all around us. Cancer, muscular dystrophy, autoimmune diseases, viral infections are commonplace today whereas they were rare just a couple of generations ago.

There must be some explanation. We live in a world--in the west known as a rich world--filled with people with poor health, with compromised health problems that impact every day of their lives. We have all the food we want, we have the ability to exercise and get advice about how to live healthy lives, but we don't and can't.

We rush around making money but never take the time to develop our greatest source of wealth, our health. Inevitably, our accumulated wealth goes to pay for the consequences of our poor health practices.

These problems were not common in the past. Our ancestors had many problems but illnesses from today's most common diseases were not prominent among them. There must be something we don't know. We need to change or we will be unhealthy with illness and physical incapacities ourselves. It will happen. It is happening around us. If not to ourselves than to others we know.

There are a few who know, a multitude who don't know and a massive number who are in denial. "It couldn't be that bad." "They wouldn't do that to us." Yes, alas, they would. All for the sake of profit.

Denial that a problem exists is the worst problem we have. Until we admit that we have a problem with the food we eat, the beverages we drink, the water we drink and use every day and the air we breathe every moment, we will have no way to address our own health.

We can begin by learning about the studies that have been done that show exactly how the factors just listed impact our lives in negative ways. Thanks to the internet this task is easy. Not fast, but easy if you want to take the time to learn. It is, after all, your life we are talking about. How long you will live. How healthy or sick and impaired you will be in the last decades of your life.

You can begin learning about how what is happening around you and what you eat (not the quantity or the foods themselves but the quality of them) has such a negative effect on your life. You can begin with this video presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esk7k5KkhXE Dr. Tent's presentation (2 hr.)

Dr. R.E. Tent is a doctor of naturopathy and chiropractic. He has nothing to sell in his videos. His purpose is to inform. To inform those who wish to learn. There will always be those who deny that the food they eat could be as lacking in nutrients (that used to be natural and normal but are no longer) and often harmful. Dr. Tent has no interest in arguing with these people. He has patients to heal. He shows you how in the video.

If you prefer to learn through videos, I recommend that you go to YouTube.com and search the word "health".

If you are up to learning by reading, put "nutrition health" into your favourite search engine.

But first watch Dr. Tent's video to learn why you need to learn so much about how your health is being damaged and how you can fix it.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about cheap and easy ways to improve our lives by making changes in our education systems. And, yes, poor health is a severe social problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Your Food Is Not As Good As You Think

Your Food Is Not As Good As You Think

The hospitals and graveyards are filled with those who refused to acknowledge the virtues of physical morality.
- Dr Ron Spallone, denverchiropractor.com

Imagine you own some slaves. Bear with me, this is only a hypothetical example to make a point.

You want your slaves to be happy and healthy at the beginning because you know they will work best for your advantage that way. You give them weekends off, holidays, provide health care, forms of entertainment.

People around you claim you are wasting the potential of your possessions because you aren't working them harder. At first you resist. But you see the others making far more money than you.

First you cut out the holidays. Then the weekends off. You make them work every hour there is daylight. You don't bother with health care any more because there are always more slaves to buy. Entertainment becomes something for you and your family, not for your slaves. They have a job, a purpose, and that is to work.

Eventually they become exhausted beyond recovery. You pump them full of medicines and power drinks, but they never recover. They die and their families die along with them. Neglect and abuse.

Now let's replace the slaves in our example with fields owned by a farmer. When I was a kid I lived in a rural farming area. Every field lay fallow once every three years, four at most. Fields needed rest in order to recover their health and vigor. Often farmers would plant crops such as clover that they would then plough under to fertilize the field. There would be no profit from that field that year.

Today there is no such thing as a field without a crop, unless it is pasture. There is no such thing as leaving a field fallow. Every field must produce every year. Crops must produce as much return as possible every year. The ground is tired, exhausted.

What about the health of the field? Fertilizer has become the power beverage that keeps every field going every year. But what about pests? Ah, we have pesticides, poisons we put on our crops to look after the pests.

And weeds? No problem, we have poisonous herbicides for that. In fact, we have chemical poisons that kill every living thing in a field. Everything it touches. And, as it happens, every bird and other small animal that eats whatever the herbicide has killed. Those birds and other animals won't eat our final crop produce.

This stuff is sprayed on the food you eat. You avoid packaged and canned foods because you don't want to ingest added preservatives since preservatives do exactly the opposite in your body of what you want to happen to the food you eat. You eat produce you buy fresh from the market. Everyone says that is best for you.

That produce is grown with poisons. The worst among the produce products are apples and potatoes. Apples are sprayed with poisons before the blossoms even begin to grow into fruit. Then several more times before harvest. Much the same happens with potatoes. When clean, these are among the healthiest foods you can eat. But how clean are they when they are sprayed with poisons several times?

The agriculture industry, chemical industry and government agriculture departments all claim the food is safe to eat. Because nobody dies from eating it. At least not within the few months or years after they eat it.

Even if you buy organically produced fruits and vegetables, they most likely come from tired ground, exhausted ground, dirt lacking many of the nutrients you expect to get when you buy fresh produce. Look at the foods that are "fortified" with vitamins and minerals. Why were these added? Because they were grown in ground that was nearly devoid of the microbial life that makes food nutritious. You may choose to supplement the food you eat with products that will give you what you should have gotten from your food.

Look at the proliferation of cancer. Cancer doesn't grow quickly. It takes decades to blossom in your body. A sunburn you got as a kid becomes a form of skin cancer when you reach middle age. Decades later. Other forms of cancer, prompted by poisoned foods, also take decades to become dangerous or lethal.

Poisoned foods are never tested over decades. Usually their "safety" is tested over months, not even years. Some chemical companies claim that their poisons have disappear after being sprayed on a field only a day earlier. Those who applied it wear HAZMAT suits. You won't find any kind of life, birds or any other animals, anywhere near these fields. Yet you are expected to believe the products grown in those fields is safe for you and your children and grandchildren to eat.

Your government tells you the food you buy is safe. The same government pays out fortunes every year in tax money to care for people who ate that "safe" food for decades.

In the market organic food is often more expensive than "conventional" produce. So you pay a little bit less now only to find that you have to drain every bit of savings and capital you have later to pay for your very costly health care.

No economist would call that a good investment. Those people who ate carelessly for many years never speak up to warn you about the ill health and expenses they suffer during the last few decades of their lives. Yes, they are living longer thanks to advances in medicine. But they are not living health, active and happy lives. They are existing.

By no means are all elderly people unhealthy. Some are anything but. Active, involved in volunteer work, hobbies and social groups. But nursing homes and care facilities always have waiting lists that never get smaller.

There are many old people in our communities. We and government tend to think of them as burdens on society. Rarely does anyone associate their ill health with unhealthy practices, especially in what they eat or ate in past decades.

That's the way the human body works. It takes decades for abuse or neglect to show up as ill health.

Take the time now to search out what foods are healthy and where you can acquire them. It will pay off well for you in years to come.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about cheap and easily implemented solutions to problems that cost you a lot of tax money. Poor eating habits is a major social problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

What If God Is A Scientist?

What If God Is A Scientist?

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”
- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
- C.S. Lewis, British novelist, poet, academic (1898-1963)

One of the most asked questions among people around the world is "Is God real?" Or some variation of it, such as "What is God?", "Why does God allow evil?" or even "Why am I here?" They are all essentially the same question. Feed me because I want answers.

Answers to the unknown. Or the unknowable. Yet we still ask. Not surprisingly, many have devised answers over the years, answers that insult the intelligence of some, but that others cling to so dearly they are prepared to make regular donations to support, even to give their lives for. Or take the lives of others.

First of all, note that in the questions above, the background motivation for them is to learn "How does or can God serve me and my purpose and needs?" One famous quote from US President John F. Kennedy goes "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Yet we still want to know what our country and what God can do for us.

"Where does God fit into my life?" not "What can I do to justify my being here in the first place?" Our questions are self-centred. The answers provided by others all tend to sell a product that satisfies that need, then collect proceeds for the answers.

Note that every answer is designed to satisfy personal needs. The answers are custom designed to serve that customer need, not to provide a universal truth. Religions gain followers by offering up a god that will supposedly satisfy those needs.

Inevitably others, often scientists, claim there is no God. Or at least there is no God like that. Atheists and skeptics are so busy debunking false gods they don't have time to address the question of what a real God might be. How, given what we know and what science knows today, can there be any kind of God?

Every concept of God is based on assumptions or premises. Should we be surprised if an invented God meets the needs of someone who is prepared to pay for the services of that God? Should we be surprised if those invented gods fail to meet minimum standards of logic or questions based on common sense?

Everything you believe about God, or everything you disbelieve, is likely based on a concept of God somebody taught you. It is based on assumptions that satisfy personal needs. Do you need a manly God? God is all-powerful and vengeful. Christianity's Old Testament has that kind of God. Do you need a God with maternal qualities? God loves you, will always look out for you, will hold you in the palm of his hand, will look after you when you die. God has those qualities in the Bible's New Testament.

God can be whatever you need. Whatever you are prepared to pay for.

Does that mean there is no God? No. It means that any concept of God based on satisfying the needs of people for a deity that will serve them so long as they keep paying will ultimately fail. They are all based on faulty assumptions. Like effective advertising. It doesn't have to be true, it only has to sell.

And it does. Every concept of God, no matter how absurd to the rest of us, will find some followers, who will pay. The best way to be remembered through history is to tell others that God has spoken to you. There are shrines around the world where people claim that God has spoken to them. The shrines are named after the individuals who received the messages. Or believed and publicly claimed they did.

Science, in general, insists there is no God because God can neither be proven by argument or sensed in any way through sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. At its base, science uses these as basic premises for existence.

Some use the argument that because there are and have been thousands of different gods over past millennia, it is obvious that they have all been invented by their users/followers. That does not meet the criteria of logic because it denies that one could be real and valid. It also does not recognize that all have one characteristic in common, a strong belief in a supernatural being. Why is this belief so universal no matter what the culture, history or geographical location?

It's worth remembering that "supernatural" does not mean "extra" as in "super fries". It means more like "outside of nature", a force or kind of energy unlike anything we have previously contemplated. Just because something has not previously been contemplated by a human does not mean it does not exist or that it is impossible. Air flight was long believed to be impossible. Then someone contemplated it and made it possible.

Rarely in these debates does anyone raise the fact that there are phenomena that exist for which no one has an adequate explanation, or even a reasonable guess. Ghosts and UFOs that the US military, science or governments have no explanation for would be some examples. There are better examples that would require more space than we have here to explain. TV shows often put these down to examples of early visits to earth by extraterrestrials. Are these any better than religions based on emotions and faulty guesses? I would say no. Their hypotheses are as full of holes as the religions they propose to replace.

One fundamental part of the God debate involves how earth and the universe began. The Bible says that God created everything in six days, then rested on the seventh. No one ever attempts to explain whether the days are earth days, Jupiter days or some kind of God-days. Nor does anyone ever explain why a supernatural being would require rest. We humans require rest to refresh our bodies and set memories and clear trash from our brains. As God has neither physical body nor brain, why would he require rest?

Religions claim that God or gods are supernatural, not subject to natural laws or explanations. Then they set about making up claims for God, what God does, who God cares for, as if their God were a physical being. No matter how much their followers are devoted to these beliefs, their arguments inevitably fail.

Science claims that evolution and fossils destroy the Bible's explanation that God created everything 6,200 or so years ago. Would those be earth years or God-years? Don't laugh about the concept of God-years as it is not even one you can contemplate.

More importantly (to me, perhaps soon to you) should be the question of why a creator, essentially a scientist of unusual skill, would work for a week then stop. Forever. No human creator, artist or scientist would ever stop work after one success. I find it hard to imagine a creator who would work for a bit, then stop forever.

Progress or development, the top argument for evolution, is undisputable. It happens and it can be proven. But the whole concept of evolution itself is full of holes. Unexplainable gaps, for one thing.

Zoologists claim that for a species to be viable, to survive, it must have a minimum base of 30 members. With fewer than that there could be mating, but inbreeding would force the species out of existence within a few generations.

Evolution claims that a new species begins with a single genetic mutation. Even assuming that the newly evolved creature could mate with some other genetically close species, science today has shown that the possibility of the offspring of such inter-species mating being fertile is extremely low. With species survival possibilities near zero, how could so many have survived and thrived to this day?

Imagine yourself as a creator. You try many possibilities, they fail. Then you get one that works. You make more. Then you move on to another creation project. Same routine. Many failures, then eventually a success. If your creations are natural they need instincts for survival and reproduction. And they need to eat. So you have more creating to do. You develop a food chain.

Eventually and inevitably your food chain life web becomes extremely complex. Then what? More work. More planning. More creating. Gaps in your development could be explained by the fact that you created different species at different times. These species, with reproductive instincts, evolve their DNA and in the process create other close species. So new species originate from two very different sources.

Would it not work that way if God were a scientist?

Neither science nor religion would need to modify their beliefs much to accommodate such a radical concept.

I did not set out in this article to prove anything. I hope I have planted a seed of thought in some people. The "God argument" to date has been more like a war with neither side wanting to give a point to the other than a discussion. The argument has been as productive as one that might be fought over the existence of purple elephants. (You can paint an elephant purple, but does that make it real?)

Science denies that anything exists that its members are unable to contemplate, let alone explain. Religion has invented deities and whole spiritual environments around a few experiences that defy explanation. Both have limited their own credibility. A real God would have to be an unlimited concept. Those who debate the topic build walls of limitation around themselves. Then they battle it out with anyone whose opinion differs from theirs.

Let's get serious about coming together. We will never reach any reasonable understanding until we accept that there could be other explanations for the unknown and the unexplainable that we have not considered.

In the final analysis does it matter? Why would God care about atheists or those who have different beliefs from each other? God would stand apart from such trivial debate. No God worth respect would do trivia.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of articles that are available free on the internet. Search for them using the author's name.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Why You Desperately Need Your Sleep

Why You Desperately Need Your Sleep

How about those people who don't need sleep? What are they called again? Successful? What a bunch of dicks they are.
Jim Gaffigan, American comedian

The significance of that quote goes far deeper than the joke Jim intended. "Successful" tends to refer to people who make a lot of money. They are usually workaholics, they neglect their families (if they have families that are still together), they are first in line for divorce, many commit "white collar" crimes that make us wonder "What were they thinking?" Most of them die wondering what their lives might have been like if they had not idolized money.

One characteristic they all have in common--all people self described as "successful"--is they get only a few hours of sleep each night. The payoff for them is their feeling of success and the size of their investment portfolio.

Most are narcissistic, even to the point of being borderline (or actually) psychopathic. They are the ones that those they consider "unsuccessful" think of as slaves to a system with money as its god. If they are not actually in the "1%" they are strong supporters of those who are. Any support for those who are desperately in need through no fault of their own comes with a catch--tax deduction, social status, self-aggrandizement.

In my experience (anecdotal evidence only) these self described "successful" people all believe that they can get along with only a minimum of sleep. To them, sleep is the equivalent of a long coffee break.

That is patently false, which is why so many of them lead single purpose lives, like monks, and why most of them die far younger than they believed they should, having suffered for too many years before their death with unexplained health problems.

As they lie dying they will be visited by family members and other individuals whose names appear in their will. They bought that devotion.

The above is but one consequence of sleep deprivation. As always, no generalization is 100% accurate for everyone. And it may be argued which came first, the dedication to 'success' or sleep deprivation--chicken and egg. Here are more consequences:  http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sleep-habits

So what else does your brain do while you sleep? First you should know that your brain may be busier when you sleep than when you are awake. It's that busy. Not dreaming necessarily as that is more of a side effect. Yes, you read that right.

The most important activity your brain does when you sleep is house cleaning. Blood vessels that are so tiny they can hardly be detected in daytime enlarge greatly inside the brain when you sleep. They carry away amyloid beta among other things. The brain makes amyloid beta and needs it when you are awake, though the reasons are unclear. It is cleared away by those blood vessels when you sleep. Too much retained in the brain may be a primary cause for Alzheimer's. Lack of sufficient sleep would mean amyloid beta would stay in the brain. Almost every brain analyzed of Alzheimer's sufferers contained plaque of amyloid beta.

Also during sleep the clutter of what accumulated while you were awake is cleaned out. Everything you see, hear, taste, touch, smell and think during the daytime is too much to commit to memory. So priorities are made and the necessary stuff is committed to memory. The rest is cleared away.

The brain actually does some problem solving while you sleep. Have you ever wrestled with a problem you could not solve during the day, then wakened at night or in the morning with the solution ready at hand? The brain does figuring like that, sorting through data, prioritizing it, then working out a solution while you sleep. A sleep deprived brain can't do that.

Dreaming helps people to make sense of what they experienced during their waking hours. Sometimes, not always. Often daytime experiences are assembled in an incorrect order and they emerge at night as dreams. Science is not certain what causes nightmares, though there are many theories. Dreams tend to be refashioned assemblies of experiences and thoughts of the previous few days.

What about naps during the daytime? Do they do good or harm? A nap may give rest to a tired physical body. It may also give the brain time to consolidate what has been learned over the previous few hours. Consolidating new learning is one critically important function of sleep. Science has proven that staying up late to cram for an exam often results in confusion and forgetfulness during the exam itself.

Better to learn a bit at a time, then sleep or nap to consolidate it and commit it to memory. You can't draw on information that is not already in your memory.

Why do you desperately need your sleep? Because you desperately need your brain to help you avoid being a boring drone with a limited future and a lifespan that is shorter than it should be.

The human brain has been under intense scrutiny for studies in recent years. Brain transplants, uploading data to the brain and artificial electronic brains are under study, but are many years away from any kind of conclusion, let alone approval.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of articles which are available on the internet by searching his name.
Learn more at billallin.com

Who Lied to You Today? Your Immune System

Who Lied to You Today? Your Immune System

Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our lifespans increase.
- Paul Stamets, world's preeminent expert on mushrooms--he has more viable ways to save our planet and our health than most people can imagine

I struggled with the title for this article. You will soon see why. No physicians, no government health "experts," no journalists and very few researchers will dare to tell you what you are about to read about your immune system. I mean that sincerely. They are afraid to tell you. So be prepared to be shocked.

Your grandparents knew nothing about immune systems. Your parents' generation knew very little because the whole concept was new to the medical community they learned from. Good health was still more good luck than good management.

You probably know far more than any generation before you. Yet what you think you know is likely wrong, at least inaccurate. Bear with me as this may be uncomfortable, even ugly, for you.

What you know as YOU, the living entity with your name, is not just one being. The only part that is distinctly YOU is your personality or, as some might say, your soul. Are your own body cells not YOU? Maybe, but maybe not. Read on.

The biggest part of what you think of as YOU is comprised of the cells of your body. They, even together, are only a small minority of the living entities that live together inside your skin. A majority of the rest is bacteria, though some are actually beneficial viruses. A large majority of them--about 80%--live in your gut. Specifically in your colon, your large intestine. Yes, the place where you store your poop before you excrete it from your body.

Uncomfortable yet? These microbiota, along with those on your skin, in your mouth, around or in every organ of your body and in every orifice are what mot people think of as their immune system. That's right, your immune system is NOT part of the cells of your body. It works in coordination with the cells of your body.

These microbiota, what advertisements seem to call germs to be gotten rid of, and what antibiotics and other contaminants kill freely, live in symbiosis with the cells of your body. There are trillions of them. At least as many as you have cells, most scientists say ten times as many as you have cells, some say as much as 100 times as many as you have cells.

Why the apparent differences in number? Because so often what you eat or take as medical prescriptions kills so many of them, all at once. You can't live without them. I mean you would die without them. Not just from infection due to lack of ability to fight off disease.

Upset these little guys with a bad diet and they react as if they are under attack. They can actually allow disease (such as cancer) to spread in a desperate attempt to get rid of what they don't like, what does not allow them to thrive.

Science now considers these microbiota so important that it considers them, collectively, as a second brain. You read that right. Just recently the link between the microbiota in the gut (yes, found in your poop as well as around it) and your brain was discovered. Your two brains work together.

I should emphasize here that your brain is yours, comprised of your own cells. Your other brain is not. Is your head brain all you? Your DNA is composed of genetic material that comes largely from bacteria, in our distant human past. Some strands of DNA have come from viruses. Since your DNA produces the cells of your body, are your own body cells all YOU or just another part of a composite mega-organism comprised of trillions of parts that live in interdependent symbiosis?

Should your second brain not protect you against cancer? Usually it does. Research on this is still in early stages, but it seems that your second brain allows cancer cells to grow and spread as a kind of defence against other invasions, other health problems. Cancer cells and other diseases, it seems, can kill other body invaders. But, like allergies, sometimes the defenders take over and kill the main body itself. The military calls that collateral damage.

Why can't the protectors be stopped? Maybe they can. The protectors are powerful. What would you do to try to stop a powerful killing machine such as the US military if the US military were attacking you and your people? The problem is no less complicated than that.

We know very little about how our own brain, the one that is comprised of our own body cells, works. What we know about how our second brain, the one in our gut, is almost nothing. We do know that when we feed it a diet it doesn't like it becomes our enemy. A deadly enemy.

That second brain also has a great deal to do with mood, our feeling of well-being, even our attitude toward life. It likely is more powerful than our own brain (the head one) in the sense that it can affect decisions we make, including those that risk our life, whether or not we break laws, how we make choices between right and wrong, even about addictive behaviours and suicide.

We know that our second brain is supposed to be an ally. That should cause us to want to support it, to strengthen it, not to kill it or weaken it.

I am not able to present evidence to support all of these claims here due to space requirements. You have starting places if you want to search to learn more yourself.

If you have comments or questions please feel free to write them. I will do my best to address them.

Bill Allin is the author of the book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of articles which are available on the internet. Search for them using the author's name.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Who-Lied-to-You-Today-Advertising-about-your-Head

Who Lied to You Today? Advertising about your Head

Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.
- Marilyn Monroe

Most of what we learn about our head and parts of it that require our personal care we learn from our parents, our peers or from advertising. Most of what we learn from parents and peers can be directed back to advertising. Most of that is misleading, distorted or clearly wrong. Some is even harmful.

But we believe it, which is why industries that create the advertising keep it going. To them, what is important is not the truth or your health or best interests, but the fact that you keeping buying their products.

A smile makes anyone beautiful. Cosmetics (and a smile) can make the proverbial silk purse out of the sow's ear. What we know as the cosmetics industry today began with the rise of Hollywood and Bollywood. Cosmetics were intended to attract attention to a character for a couple of hours. But life is longer than that.

Eventually the smile drops and the makeup comes off. Then two people who were attracted to one another in that artificial state must deal with real life. With "just a girl" as Marilyn said it. Cosmetics of one sort or another can be as important to a man wanting to influence others as to a woman.

No one can be certain how many breakups and divorces result from the realization that the real people involved in a relationship do not match with the artificial character behind or beneath the cosmetics. Cosmetics hide the real person only temporarily.

Teeth whitening began in Hollywood when actors and actresses wanted to be seen on screen and noted while those with real teeth colour were not. Off screen, whitened teeth look fake to anyone paying attention for more than a few seconds. Note that many teeth whiteners are composed of hydrogen peroxide, which used to be known as oxygen bleach. Yes, bleach.

Two grades of hydrogen peroxide are available on the market. The kind you buy in a dollar store or most pharmacies will say 3% on it. That is not food grade peroxide. Food grade is much harder to find and is about 35%. As the tissue (skin) inside your mouth is very porous and easily absorbs anything, you want to be certain that you do not put a chemical that is not food grade in there.

Mouthwashes promise to remove millions of vile and supposedly dangerous "germs" from your mouth. Yet saliva does that. A large majority of what advertising claims as "germs" are really microbes that are part of your immune system. Your body protects itself from stuff it doesn't want to hurt you by killing it as you are eating. Kill those microbes and you destroy part of your immune system. Mouthwashes that claim to kill 99% of mouth germs never tell you in their advertising about the fact that they also kill part of your immune system, your body's first line of defence. "Clean" your mouth, destroy your immune system.

Tooth brushing you see in commercials is all wrong and will do nothing to prevent caries (the proper dental term for what the rest of us call cavities). Mostly the brushes swipe the broad sides of teeth, which are kept clean by the foods you eat anyway. Nobody gets cavities there. Eating an apple will do that.

We get cavities, if at all, between our teeth and at their base where the gumline is. Brushes do not get there easily, no matter what the commercials say. Only floss can do that. You can buy a pick at a pharmacy that will allow you to remove anything that has built up at the base of your teeth or between them. That is what a dental hygienist uses.

If you use a brush on the flat surface of your teeth, don't spend more time doing it than a hygienist does. A few seconds per tooth. More than that and you will grind away at the enamel and dentin that protect your teeth from attack. That would result in tooth sensitivity, meaning pain, which would cause you to have to spend more money on toothpaste that is specially made to be gentle.

All toothpastes are designed to grind the teeth. Almost all contain fluoride, which is a poison. The advertising never mentions that. Poison. Read ingredient lists on stuff you put into your mouth to see how many end with "...ide". They are all poisons. Try to dispose of fluoride in the USA and you will find it is declared a hazardous waste and must be disposed of in an environmentally safe way.

If you must brush, understand that toothpaste accomplishes nothing. You don't need it at all. Brush, using water only, horizontally along the gumline, not vertically across your teeth. Cavities grow out of plaque, which is composed of harmful microbes that eat through the enamel and dentin. Remove that and you eliminate the cause of cavities. Those harmful microbes hide where you don't normally brush.

Any over the counter medication you buy at a pharmacy when you have an ache in a tooth or an ear will be mild and only act temporarily, if at all. If they work, you may be experiencing the placebo effect. Not bad considering that the placebo effect works in up to 30 percent of people who believe they are being helped. A doctor or dentist can prescribe something stronger, or cure your problem by eliminating the cause.

Shampoos that "clean" your hair while leaving something beneficial in it don't really clean. Yes, the take away protective oil from your hair, then leave deposits of other stuff that does nothing to add to your hair's health. Only pure soap, such as from a bar, will wash your hair clean. For a conditioner (to keep your hair shiny and deter tangles, use a mixture of one part apple cider vinegar and two parts water.

If you wash your hair with city water, remember that most city water contains chlorine, another poison. Chlorine kills microbes in water cities take from rivers or lakes. Inevitably it will also kill healthy bacteria on your skin, another way your body protects itself from attack with its own immune system.

Does it seem as if advertising presents you with a favourable impression about products that will or could do you more harm than good? Now you understand why it is important for you to know about them.

Cosmetics industries create repeat customers the way pharmaceutical companies create lifetime patients, by causing problems that keep you coming back for more.

The above is intended to cause you to think carefully about the chemicals you use on your body. It is not intended to be conclusive or persuasive, or medical advice. It is intended to make sense. Each point is backed by science. Advertising does not have to make sense to be effective at persuading people to buy a product. It just has to make money for the manufacturer. And it does, which is why you see so much of it.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book or inexpensive solutions parents and teachers can use to help grow healthy children. He has also authored hundreds of articles.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Who Lied To You Today? Fracking

Who Lied To You Today? Fracking

Almost all of what we are taught--we think of it as news--by television and other media, by politicians and by religious leaders is either false, misleading, misstatement of facts or plain deception. To them it's all part of the game of life.
Take the following for what it's worth, or leave it. It is not based on scientific research which, like statistics, can be manipulated to say anything the writer or sponsor wants. It is based on logic, what makes sense and what does not.


Hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) involves forcing toxic chemicals into permeable rock underground. Resource companies claim the process is safe, though they will not reveal what chemicals are used. The poisons remain within the rock forever, or until they are released into groundwater that people drink. In some cases fracking has been proven to cause minor earthquakes.

Chemicals are governed by law in the USA and available to public scrutiny in the Environmetnal Protection Agency's data base of toxic chemicals. Except for those that were in use before the law--Toxic Substances Control Act--came into effect in 1976. They were grandfathered and assumed to be safe, were never studied. Tens of thousands of chemicals in use today are not listed and need not be revealed by companies engaging in hydraulic fracturing.

That's why fracking companies need not reveal the chemicals used in their underground explosions. Chemicals that could leak into drinking water that would not even be tested by municipalities. Other countries depend on the EPA list of toxic chemicals as if it was exhaustive, which it certainly is not.

Why don't governments take action against the perpetrators of these crimes? The natural resource companies always claim that they offer jobs. To politicians, the offer of jobs may even been more attractive than a good bribe because more jobs mean a better chance of being elected next term.

When the resource companies--never ones to be inconvenienced by possible damage to the planet or to human health of its workers--feel threatened by politicians, they warn that closing down will mean loss of jobs. That tends to silence political interference.

As of 2015, the government of Canada has sole possession of and responsibility for 22,000 former mines contaminated with poisons in the area. In one former mine area alone, the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, once a few billion dollars of taxpayer money has been spent cleaning up the area, it will cost two million per year just to maintain the frozen ground where arsenic is stored. Residents around these areas fervently hope that flooding does not contaminate the soil of the land where they live, and their bodies in the process. All of those mining companies went "bankrupt" leaving taxpayers to clean up after them indefinitely.

Ironically, when the companies negotiate with the governments and find themselves forced to take measures to protect the health of workers and the environment, they tend to become more efficient and garner greater profits. However, this evidence has little impact on their drive to make profit as quickly as possible.

Our planet is not short of energy resources, no matter what you may hear. Big oil companies, who receive the most flack from the public, are the biggest investors in alternative energy sources such as solar energy and wind power.

The claim is that solar and wind are not dependable because they are not consistent and dependable sources of power when people need it most. For that reason, resource companies claim, taking resources from the ground is and always will be necessary.

But they never mention the most plentiful and dependable sources of all. Our planet is always warmer one kilometer and more beneath the surface--a common depth to dig for other resources--than it is higher up. Difference in temperature means a dependable source of power.

The oceans almost always have waves, even if they don't have much wind blowing above them. Waves have energy. Tides have energy so long as we have a moon.

More importantly, water temperature varies a great deal from the surface to a short distance below. That never varies, just as the heat from the interior of our planet never varies. Both are infinite for our purposes.

Even water itself is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, both sources of energy.

Could we run out of water to convert to power? Recent study has shown that there is at least as much water locked in rock in earth's mantel as there is in all the water on the surface of the planet.

What about desertification? Are not droughts causing fertile land to become deserts, as happened in the Levant, the land east of the Mediterranean that most westerners call the Holy Land? It is true that the Levant was once as fertile as the Garden of Eden--human agriculture began there--until climate change made it into mostly desert.

Even in Israel, Syria and Lebanon, farming takes place. It's all a matter of growing crops appropriate for the climate. Under the world's largest desert, the Sahara, lies the world's largest underground freshwater lake.

Fracking is not necessary to get cheap energy when free and sustainable sources that will last forever are available. We should not expect resource companies to be open about offering to do what is right by its employees or the planet. They have never behaved that way.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about do-able and inexpensive solutions to our worst problems. Fracking is a social problem when it affects the lives of many people.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Additional material about hydraulic fracturing

There are many, and I mean MANY, examples of fracking problems in the USA. Most of them involve leaking of chemicals into ground water that is later used as drinking water. Hydraulic fracturing involves having a soup of chemicals (no company will ever reveal the mixture because it would shock everyone and cause the practice to be stopped--they claim their mixture is an industry secret, a coverup) explode deep under ground. The purpose is to crack the rock (the explosions are that great) that natural gas that is trapped within the rock will seep out.

As you think about that and the nature of natural gas, being as gas that can seep anywhere, you can see that, unlike with liquids, natural gas is extremely difficult to control and contain. The chemical soup itself is easier to control if it is inside of a container on the surface of the ground. But underground, after an explosion of rock that no one can tell how much crack will happen (it is usually shale rock, not granite that would be easier to estimate and control) the liquid could go anywhere. In many cases in the US, it has gone into drinking water sources.

Many countries have banned fracking entirely, deeming it too risky. The USA and Canada, being essentially job whores, have made fracking legal and licensed in many places. (I use the term "job whores" as a derogatory condemnation, without meaning any reference to prostitution--which I do not condemn.)

The most attractive lure of fracking is jobs. That is what gets the attention of politicians and they in turn get votes based on their perceived creation of "new jobs."

In fact, fracking requires few workers. Some highly trained people are brought in from their last jobs (never from the untrained local labour group), plus truck drivers. I feel safe in saying that there is no community in existence where fracking has been used that is entirely satisfied with the industry. Most residents anywhere near the mines are afraid they or their children will die one day from contamination of their drinking water by the poisons from fracking.

Like virtually every natural resource company, when they have a financial problem they declare bankruptcy and vanish into the night. One Canadian mine will cost Canadian taxpayers $2 million every year, forever, to contain poisons that if let out would kill every person in the nearby town.

Two additional points are worth making about fracking.

First is that it uses an enormous amount of fresh water, which is then contaminated by its chemicals. In Saskatchewan, for example, where fracking is taking place full bore, fracking is taking away fresh water needed by the Canadian province's most important industry, agriculture. Farms cannot risk using water that could possibly be contaminated by fracking chemicals because produce from the farms is all used for food. Already a province that is usually not blessed with an abundance of clean water, Saskatchewan now does not have enough water to service its food-growing agriculture needs.

Second is that while the waste water from fracking can be reused--fracking companies would rather not reuse its own water because its used water has pulled heavy metals out of the ground it fractured--it must be stored in the meantime. Who wants contaminated water stored near their home? Where can you imagine it would be safe to store contaminated water indefinitely? My country, Canada, has water all over its surface, perhaps more than any other country in the world, and we are concerned about leakage that would contaminate our fresh water. Contaminated water in surface water could be used for drinking, but it is also used by countless animals, plants and beneficial microbes that allow food to be grown in the soil.

Even if the waste water from fracking were safe (bear with me, I know it is not), the heavy metals drawn from the ground would make it unsafe. When it comes to water, fracking is a lose-lose situation.

While Nova Scotia has put a moratorium on fracking, waste water from fracking exploration mines in NS still needs to be disposed of. No community in Nova Scotia would allow it to be put into their sewer system. No community in neighbouring New Brunswick would allow it to be put into their sewer system, even when large amounts of money were offered for doing just that by the company involved. International law forbids it from being dumped into the oceans.

How safe can a liquid be if it can't even be dumped into the ocean? Our oceans have two huge garbage patches each larger than small countries, but fracking waste water is not allowed.

Fracking companies, like every mining operation that ever existed in history, will lie through its teeth, swearing it is telling the truth on the grave of its mother. Not a single one of them could ever be trusted. They have done more damage to our planet and its (former, often now extinct) life forms than any other cause.

The University of Toronto Magazine online has an article in its Winter 2015 edition that will explain more about fracking from a political science professor who is as much of an expert on the subject as anyone (given the secrecy that surrounds fracking operations at all levels).
On Shaky Ground | Dale Sproule | Winter 2015 | University of Toronto Magazine
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http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/on-shaky-ground-dale-sproule-andrea-olive/

How Vaccines Cripple Your Immune System

How Vaccines Cripple Your Immune System

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control originally thought seasonal flu shots from 2008 might offer extra protection against the new pandemic strain. They were puzzled to find instead, seasonal flu vaccination almost doubled the risk of infection with pandemic flu.
- British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, http://tinyurl.com/kn2u4j4

One sad but undeniable characteristic of human nature is that most of us trust those in authority, follow what they say as truth, obey their rules and laws as if they were commandments dictated by God.

The good people of Germany, in a free and democratic election, elected Hitler and the Nazi (National Socialist) party to power in 1933.

Though a huge majority of medical doctors in Canada (two surveys said 92% and 100%) would refuse chemotherapy if they got cancer, it is still the #1 recommended therapy for newly diagnosed cancer patients. The "success" rate for chemotherapy is five years because doctors don't dare to look beyond that to see a failure rate close to 92%. Chemo is still the therapy accepted as first choice by people diagnosed with cancer.

We are so addicted to following what we are told that thinking people refer to mindless followers as sheeple [sheep + people]. It is in our nature as members of a social species to follow a leader, especially so if the leader shows confidence or is powerful. However, nothing in our nature demands that we accept everything we are told without question, especially when it comes to our own personal health.

Louis Pasteur was hailed as a hero when he discovered that heating would kill "germs" in our foods and beverages. At the time, every form of microscopic life was considered to be a germ by most people. The process of pasteurizing milk was named after him by a grateful world.

Even today we can watch many commercials on TV that promise to kill almost 100% of "germs" on whatever the product touches. The trouble is, most of what these products kill are beneficial bacteria.

Our immune system is comprised almost entirely of beneficial bacteria. In fact, we have 10 to 20 times (some estimates go as high as 100 times) as many good and healthful bacteria that comprise our immune system as we have cells of our own body. We are truly, as Star Trek called them, symbionts. We can't even survive without them and they can't live without us.

When we get sick we dutifully take antibiotics our doctor prescribes to kill the evil bacteria. Even when we suffer from a virus (which antibiotics do nothing to kill), we may be prescribed an antibiotic "just in case of attack by bacteria while you are vulnerable." Antibiotics, especially broad spectrum ones, kill the very bacteria that comprise our immune system. So, kill 10% bad and 90% good.

Vaccines and antibiotics were hailed as health saviours when they first came out. Both were intended to help our immune system defeat the dastardly microscopic pathogens.

While antibiotics kill a good percentage of the bacteria that comprise our immune system, vaccines do assist. Annual vaccine shots against influenza were considered to be so beneficial that many governments offered them free to citizens. So, because they were free and government said vaccines would protect them, people took the shot annually.

Now one study (see the top of this article) shows that the annual flu shot actually impairs the immune system so much that it increases the incidence of flu. Increases. Immune systems got so used to the vaccine doing their job for them that they got lazy.

Does that matter? Many children are required to have a minimum of 48 vaccines before they can enter school. Some kids get their first vaccine two months after they are born.

Please think about this. Before a child's immune system has had a chance to develop, it is already being encouraged to be lazy. Remember "childhood diseases" in years past? They helped to develop the immune system. Vaccines impair the immune system. Vaccines make the immune system lazy. Lazy things don't work.

What happens when we don't exercise enough? We gain weight and lose muscle mass (get weak). What happens when we don't think enough? We develop dementia, even Alzheimer's, when we get older. We know these things, yet people persist in not exercising either their bodies or their brains. We have epidemics because we are lazy.

Now we have chemical and drug companies intending to make permanent patients out of us until we die by impairing our health by depressing our immune system through chemical pesticides (they kill small creatures--including bees--then larger ones that eat the smaller ones), herbicides (they kill the food that small animals that benefit our food plants eat), antibiotics and vaccines.

Our medical systems fully support vaccines. Doctors never mention that at least some of them are rewarded financially and with gifts for prescribing certain drugs (that tend to be the most popular drugs prescribed).

Despite vigorous campaigns to get people to stop smoking (tobacco accounts for over half the diseases and a majority of deaths from health problems each year), an estimated 25 percent of adults in North America still smoke. Smokers know how to kill themselves, but not how to live.

People are knowingly harming their health, causing their own early deaths and making themselves dependent on others for the latter decades of their lives. Most don't yet know what they are doing to their own immune systems with the vaccines they willingly accept from their doctors.

You know. Think about it. How willing are you to harm your own health and limit your own future?

All you need to do to stay healthy is get some exercise, eat clean food and stay away from things that will harm your immune system. Think now while you still have time.

Bill Allin is the author of the book Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of published articles. It is a massive social problem when people knowingly and willingly harm their own health.
Learn more at http://billallin.com