Considerations

It was a Northern
Exposure TV show. A central character in the small village of Cicely, Alaska, a graduated New York City physician, Dr. Joel Fleischman, and his western medicine. See the patient for a half hour/hour and proscribe a drug. But Fleischman went back to New York on vacation, and so a village Indian took over, and his method of practice was to spend three to five days with the patient, at the patient's home and work and wherever they were.

The point being, particularly US medicine, the idea is to run as many patients as possible thru in a day, to make more money AMA style. The point of the Indian's medicine, was to discover how the person lived and how that affected the person's health.

How the person lives is the key. And I developed a philosophy for living over the years pertaining to health. When twenty two by a process of analysis, I clarified my mind such that I discovered by getting drunk, that previous to analysis, there was not much difference between my normal mind and a drunken state mind. I was always as confused as if drunk. And now after analysis, getting drunk, I could no longer stand it, because I hated the drunken confused state of mind.

Which is to say, I felt good all the time, and did not like not feeling good as perhaps, if I didn't get enough sleep. So I suppose it was early in my life that I began to get seven or eight hours of sleep each and every night, because I felt better in the day time, and why should live day times not feeling the best I could.

Now I am seventy-five and never been ill i.e. hospitalized, but of only flu and head colds and such, and that with smoking for fifty years, never eating fruit and never drinking water. Why ? Because my body loved smoking, hated fruit and didn't like water. And I have just gotten a clean bill of health.

So rather than Dr. Fleischman's advice, perhaps I took the Indians. The body likes regularity, to sleep and wake the same time, to eat the same times, so it knows when to start chemical processes, and thus when externalities meet the body's expectations, it is efficient with no wasted energy starting and stopping at inappropriate times.

Regularity is probably another important factor in good health. Thus to the degree that regularity has contributed to my good health, I owe to cigarettes, in that I mostly smoked but five a day at regular times, post breakfast and lunch, a three o'clock, a post dinner and a nine o'clock. And so my meals were regular as well.

Back in the hippie days, I knew people who taught me about food. One thing was to always eat the real thing, but in moderation. I knew not to drink diet coke or diet anything; it tasted like poison. Always eat butter, never margarine. Always whenever possible Olive Oil.

Or never believe the book fads, on food written for profit. The body knows. George Gurdjieff the Russian mystic, had something of a following. He rented a Chateau in or near Paris, and doing some renovations found an ancient wine cellar, in which was found three ancient empty wine bottles. Gurdjieff filled them with the cheapest rot-gut wine he could find, corked the bottles, candle waxed them, and invited the premier wine experts of the day, to taste this find of fine wine, produced by church brethren of centuries ago.

The experts concluded that it was the best wine they had ever tasted. Which is to say the mind fools the body. People told something is good by authority will believe it by mind, and may contradict what the body knows is a lie.

I remember I would eat a lot of something like broccoli everyday, to read my bodies reaction. The idea as I remember, was to get the body to learn the affects of the broccoli. The body would learn if it needed it and how much. Then I would stop. The body would then tell me when it wanted Broccoli, for I would get a craving. Like sardines, I get a craving now and then. I have one can, and that's all my body wants, something in there is wanted and needed.

They say if one is getting all the vitamins and proper nutrition they need, one will not crave sweets. The only time I have ever craved sweets, was in army basic training. Everything, all factory food, even cigarettes has salt and sugar in it. Other than chips I have nearly never eaten factory food, which contains a great deal of sugar. I eat two tablespoons of brown sugar a day, on my oatmeal in the morning, and that is all the sugar I knowingly eat, although it would be in the chips and the Aloe I drink. However I do love salt especially garlic salt. I have a lot of salt.

I'm from the Midwest and perhaps then, a meat and potatoes guy. Breakfast around eight. Lunch at noon and dinner at five to six at latest. I tried to go meatless once, but just didn't have the same get-up and go. Fish, chicken or steak mostly with potatoes chiefly and real butter, and a vegetable : spinach, broccoli, asparagus when affordable, steamed Artichoke with real butter now and then, cauliflower, red lettuce with tomatoes and avocado occasionally, green onions and green olives for dinner.

I weigh but one hundred and ten for most of my life, very skinny, hard on the psychology but easy on the heart, and not a lot of weight to push around. I have high metabolism. So I need fat which is why I eat all the meat. Cholesterol is high but not that high. And a Doc said years ago, you need fat so take cholesterol medicine. I said that may cause liver damage. He said we monitor that. I said, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I have taken medication twice briefly, once for I don't remember and once for heartburn, now called acid reflux syndrome, caused by alcohol, and is why I don't drink wine. Which worked for a short period of time, but I had to stop drinking my single evening beer. Then I had to get more prescription. But I saw a television ad for aloe vera on TV, and so I bought some at Trader Joe's, a drinkable liquid and walla, fixed the reflux problem for good.

Poor all my life, probably has contributed greatly to my good health. While I couldn't afford to buy organics, I couldn't either afford to buy bad unhealthy food, one would be tempted, if one could afford : cakes and pies, restaurant food, sweets and confectioneries. I had to cook for myself as already described, as the women I lived with most of my life, wouldn't cook for me.

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