Commit to the life that you want to live – then live it.
“Do or do not… there is no try.” – Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back
We can spend our entire lives debating actions and, frozen in fear, fighting uncertainty. Yet, in life, nothing is certain. We can either waste precious time in limbo or make a decision and stick with it! Just start.
If you’ve fallen off track, just restart. Try again. You’re mindset should rejoice in success or learn from failure.
Surround yourself with people who are supportive of and believe in you.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” – Darth Vader in A New Hope
Even the great Lord Vader needed supportive people around him. There is absolutely no reason to waste your time and energy on people who bring you down. Rather, fill your life with the believers and doers, people who inspire you and bring positive energy to your life. Otherwise, you may resort to the dark side…
Don’t lie to yourself. You usually already know what you should be doing.
“Already know you, that which you need.” – Yoda
Listen to your heart, The Force, and your conscience. Listen to that Yoda voice you hear as you fall asleep or the nagging thoughts that simply won’t go away. Though the road ahead seems perilous, the solution is within. You know what you should be doing, just do it.
Don’t let the impossible hold you back.
“Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1,” stated C-3PO.
“Never tell me the odds!” retorted Han Solo
(The Empire Strikes Back)
Even if an asteroid field is hurling towards you and your odds of success are 3,720 to 1, don’t let this daunting ratio prevent you from following your heart.
If people aren’t laughing at your dreams, your dreams are NOT big enough. You should be striving for big hairy audacious dreams. Seriously.
Success often stems from overcoming failures.
“Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” – Obi- Wan Kenobi in A New Hope
Success cannot flourish without hard work. Losing weight is hard, but being obese for a lifetime is even harder. Success is only found through trial and error, profound dedication, and the ability to see setbacks as stepping stones towards later victory.
You may have to learn 301 ways that don’t work before you try the 302nd method that is successful.
Do not let fear guide your life
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda in The Phantom Menace
Fear cripples us from doing what needs to be done. It prevents us from becoming the people we’re meant to be. It isolates us from others and makes us scared of those we do not understand. Historically speaking, fear has fueled many wars, genocides, persecutions, and riots. Clearly, Yoda was onto something. What are you actually afraid of?
Humor goes a long way
(As the garbage compactor closes in on Luke and Han Solo) “One thing’s for sure, we’re all gonna be a lot thinner.” – Han Solo in A New Hope
When things get tough, it’s natural to freak out. However, freaking out isn’t the most productive or efficient way to solve a problem. Humor lightens the mood and allows everyone time to regroup and reassess the situation. It also keeps spirits high, enabling people to do what needs to be done. Plus, girls dig a guy who can crack a joke every now and again.
Humor is a method of alleviating stress and giving your brain a chance to reset for success.
Thoughts and actions directly impact the future
“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” – Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace.
What we spend our days thinking about, and actively pursuing, directly affects our future (for better or worse). Considering this, we should invest our time and energy into the things and people we’re passionate about, and the dreams we have, rather than focusing on the negative or filling our lives with empty distractions.
Sometimes we just need to let go
“Let go of your hate.” – Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi
There is no room for hate, fear, and regret in our lives. Often, we just need to let it go so that we may finally be free.
When in doubt, improvise
If you are backed into a corner, do your best and improvise, then move on and don’t waste your time.
Sadly, I’ve had patients over age 70 tell me “pneumonia is an old man’s best friend.” It is very true that pneumonia, the common cold, influenza and COVID-19 can all cause death in the older frail adult. This is not something new, though if you listen to CNN you may think death should never occur.
But, thousands of physicians and over 200 different journal articles within the last 11 months demonstrate that if you are treated with azithromycin and either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin plus Zinc, Vitamin D, Niacin, Vitamin C and Melatonin, you improve your risk of survival of a COVID-19 infection by an additional 10-40%. 75% of those studies demonstrated significant improvement even when hydroxychloroquine was started late. Africa has a mortality rate (1.3 per 100,000) that is 100 percent lower than the US (120 per 100,000) because they have hydroxychloroquine available over-the-counter and many people take it “every Sunday” as preventative medication for malaria.
Mind you, these medications were never FDA approved for treatment with COVID-19. But, we as licensed physicians have the autonomy to use medication “off-label” as long as we have discussed the risks, side-effects and expectations of these medications and you are aware that they were never FDA approved.
I have treated hundreds of patients with these combinations with great success in my clinic over the last 11 months.
Yet, in the last two weeks Fry’s Pharmacies (Kroger Pharmacies) are now refusing to dispense hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for any COVID related virus. Why? Because they can make a huge profit on the Experimental COVID-19 vaccine. Why dispense a generic medication when you can make twice the profit from a vaccine? However, this experimental vaccine’s effectiveness is still yet to be confirmed, and probably less effective on newer strains as stated by the Surgeon General this last week (https://news.yahoo.com/us-surgeon-general-covid-19-184157789.html).
In my opinion, this is malpractice on the part of Fry’s Pharmacy and malfeasance on the part of the pharmacist.
Until they issue a public apology to you and me, I recommending you and I stop using Fry’s Pharmacy all together. Any company that mandates the use of an Experimental Vaccine with a side effect profile experienced by up to 20% of those who receive it, and at the same time refuses to provide access to proven treatments overseen by a physician should not receive the business or the trust of the public. If your pharmacist refused to dispense these medications with a valid prescription from your doctor, please let me know.
The pharmacists claim they won’t dispense hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin “because the FDA has not approved their use for viral infections.” Yet, these drugs are safe enough to be over the counter in many other countries and because of the vaccine, this is all political. Both of these drugs have been use very safely for decades with millions of people around the world for multiple disease processes.
The FDA issued it’s updated statement on the use of ivermectin. “Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of onchocerciasis and strongyloidiasis. Ivermectin is not FDA-approved for the treatment of any viral infection. In general, the drug is well tolerated. It is currently being evaluated as a potential treatment for COVID-19.” These drugs are considered “generally safe” for multiple disease processes used over long periods of time, and yet, the politics and finances of this issue have now become more important than your health. Neither the FDA or the NIH has stated that these drugs are contrindicated, they just have not been approved, and because of that “they are not recommended.”
As of January 14, 2021, the NIH has stated that ” currently there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.” Similar statements have been issued on hydroxychloroquine. However, “well conducted clinical trials” will not occur for some time, as these types of studies take years to be designed, funded and put into place. Because ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are generic drugs, there is no incentive for any pharmaceutical company to run these types of studies. The FDA will never change it’s position for this same reason.
Any physician, organization or pharmacy that places politics and finances over your health and wellbeing and tries to get between the doctor and patient should experience you and I protesting with our wallets and our feet.
Two essential things come out of this. First, the CDC, FDA and NIH have shown us as a nation how untrustworthy they are. Second, if you and I are not vigilant, mandates for the use of an experimental and potentially dangerous vaccine will be come the “new normal.”
I recommend you go to https://stopmedicaldiscrimination.org/ and sign the petition to prevent travel companies, airlines and other businesses from mandating this and any other experimental vaccine. And, then tell Fry’s Pharmacy and any other pharmacist that plays politics with your health where they can put the rest of their medications.
Sources:
Kory P, et al., Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19. FLCCC Alliance; Version 5; Nov 28, 2020.
Rajter JC, et al. Use of Ivermectin is associated with lower mortality in hospitalized patients with corona-virus disease 2019. Chest Journal Open Access Jan 2021; 159(1): 85-92
Guilherme Dias de Melo, Françoise Lazarini, Florence Larrous, Lena Feige, Lauriane Kergoat, Agnes Marchio, Pascal Pineau, Marc Lecuit, Pierre-Marie Lledo, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Herve Bourhy, Anti-COVID-19 efficacy of ivermectin in the golden hamster. bioRxiv 2020.11.21.392639
Vora, Agam, et al. “White paper on Ivermectin as a potential therapy for COVID-19.” Indian Journal of Tuberculosis 67.3 (2020): 448-451.
Gorial, Faiq I., et al. “Effectiveness of Ivermectin as add-on Therapy in COVID-19 Management (Pilot Trial).” medRxiv (2020).
Scheim, David. “Ivermectin for COVID-19 Treatment: Clinical Response at Quasi-Threshold Doses Via Hypothesized Alleviation of CD147-Mediated Vascular Occlusion.” Available at SSRN 3636557 (2020)
Rajter, Juliana Cepelowicz, et al. “ICON (Ivermectin in COvid Nineteen) study: Use of Ivermectin is Associated with Lower Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID19.” medRxiv (2020). medRxiv.org
Chowdhury, Abu Taiub Mohammed Mohiuddin, et al. “A comparative observational study on Ivermectin-Doxycycline and Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin therapy on COVID19 patients.” ResearchGate.net
NIH Statement on Ivermectin: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/statement-on-ivermectin/
FDA Statement on Ivermectin: https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/faq-covid-19-and-ivermectin-intended-animals
“NowThis News” is a progressive website with cheery music, snackable videos and catchy BLM colors we’ve all subliminally come to recognize designed specifically to deliver leftist education to your newsfeed. You’ve probably scrolled past their content a few times while doing your daily doom-scrolling: “Elizabeth Warren’s Greatest Moments” or “Drag Queen Kyne Uses Tik Tok to Teach Math.”
Last September, “NowThis News” released a particularly telling video article from a more than chipper young authoritarian millennial demanding that we all “Stop Saying ‘Hey Guys.’” because it excludes women.
Half way through her sinister monologue she mentions a few other goals that the modern feminists want to achieve: “reproductive rights . . . LGBTQ rights, and the general reprogramming of most people’s minds” (italics added).
Wait . . . What?!
This last phrase caught my attention. “the general reprogramming of most people’s minds” sounds almost unreal. That’s just too Orwellian, too spot-on-the-nose to really be serious, right?! Yet, it was published in deadly earnest. This is an example of progressive social engineering at its finest. They attempt to nudge and drug each of us into a state of compliance with leftist ideals. This is the explicit goal of the “woke” progressive leadership.
They aren’t hiding it. They don’t want to persuade you. They openly want to brain wash you and your children. And, it’s working.
Today, the first time in months for example, I was able to go back to church services with my family with “Arizona’s Phased attendance protocols” in place. It was wonderful to meet with other members of my church and “fellowship with the saints.”
Yet, as I read through the attendance instructions required to be compliant in our state and as a “Global Citizen,” I was shocked at the verbiage I read. A statement found in the opening pages of these instructions read: “. . . we should sustain and uphold the laws where we reside. . . governments enact such laws as in their own judgments are best calculated to secure the public interest. We acknowledge that in exceptional circumstances all individual rights may be restricted. . .“(Emphasis added).
When is it ever OK to restrict all individual God given rights to “secure the public interest?” Yet, many I spoke with feel that “it’s different today. This is just short term.” The explained that it is justified to give up liberty and rights for short term security. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 14 days of quarantine has now become 6-12 months of social distancing, lock-downs, school closures and $10-14 trillion lost in economic output this year alone as calculated by the congressional budget office. That is essentially the equivalent of wiping out the income of 30 million U.S. families this year and over the next five years.
Though it may seem humane to remove ones rights to protect the masses in crisis, it actually just strips the populace of their humanity. It changes the person, from a subject with rights to a mere object to be controlled for the desired outcome deemed most important to the ruling leader. This is the worse kind of tyranny because it is tyranny sincerely exercised for the “good of its victims.” In the words of Lewis, “Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis predicted this development back in 1954 with crystalline precision in a remarkable essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.” Back then, even as today in 2020, a growing number of Westerners became squeamish about the use of the death penalty. They were then, and many are today, disgusted with the idea of punishing criminals because they simply deserve it; but rather they feel better using rehabilitation as a means to deter them and others from criminal behavior.
C.S. Lewis wrote that the very ideas of “deterrence” and “rehabilitation,” compassionate though they may seem, undermine the entire concept of justice. This concept is the key to a functioning republic and to society as a whole. It is the reason the American experiment has been successful for nearly 250 years.
Wait, are you saying that enacting a mandate of social distancing and mask wearing “for the good of the people” undermines justice?
YES. That’s exactly what Lewis wrote about in the 1950’s and its even more applicable today.
Justice, as defined by Lewis, is nothing more than giving every person what he or she deserves. The only way we evaluate the justice of a punishment at all is by asking whether the person punished actually deserves it. The natural objection that “the death penalty is unjust” boils down to the argument that “no one deserves the death penalty,” argued Lewis.
Completely different from justice, deterrence and rehabilitation, much like mask wearing and social distancing, are forms of social engineering. These forms of punishment are tools for making people do what the punisher’s want, not for providing a consequence of a person’s action that they deserve. Lewis wrote, “when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether.” Instead of having a person with rights, we have reduced the person, instead, to a mere object, a patient or a case. We have removed the justice that is due, instead, to objectify the being under the guise of a cure for the common good.
It’s like the patient shows up at the doctor’s office with a serious case of syphilis, the consequence of promiscuous sexual relationships. Instead of treating the disease and killing the bacteria that causes the rash and terribly painful urogenital discharge, the doctor says, “let me send you to counseling to talk about your rash. Let’s just rehabilitate the bacteria. You can describe the discharge and have a few group sessions so others can understand your pain, and the bacteria should be much nicer.”
These two different governing ideas of punishment proceed along entirely separate tracks and arrive at very different destinations. Justice – though sometimes fearsome and always imperfect – treats the human being as a moral agent of choice whose actions have weight, and therefore whose actions also have consequences. In contrast, the “moral busybodies” of the world today (we call them “Karens”) are interested not in justice, but in social engineering. Social engineering is a very dangerous illusion which, in Lewis’ words, “disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without an end in sight.”
Exactly as C.S. Lewis predicted, the logic of this social engineering has now begun to careen toward its gruesomely logical conclusion. Social engineering is based upon the idea that human beings are effectively bags of meat and chemicals, pure matter to be therapeutically manipulated by “compassionate” and “progressive” healers.
However good their intentions may be, those “progressive healers” are in fact proposing to set themselves up as gods over men. “The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments,” wrote Lewis. “If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment.” If a positive COVID-19 test was seen, a person will no doubt be forced to get vaccinated for the “cure of the populace.”
You can see this everywhere in modern life. You can see it in the endless classification of EVERYTHING as a mental illness, implying the best way to fix emotional problems is with the right cocktail of medications.
You can see it in the insistence that gender and sexuality are mere social constructs, whose injustices can be rectified with surgery and hormone injections.
You can see it as the Freudian idea that religion is just a holdover from primitive tribal fantasy and really isn’t “essential.”
All of these ideas take for granted that our enlightened leadership – many of whom were never elected, and especially those best versed in Critical Race Theory and inter-sectional politics – have the right to tinker with our brain chemistry until they reprogram our minds “just right.”
This doctrine, merciful though it may appear, really means that each one of us, from the moment he disagrees with leadership or breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being. And, it is being accepted without resistance in the schools, churches, shops and hospitals across the country.
This isn’t a bug, it isn’t a feature. It is pure leftist Marxism. It is modern materialism philosophy with the potential to turn even well-intentioned people into coercive monsters. We were warned. It is happening. Now it’s time to fight back.
(adapted from – Spencer Klavan’s “C.S. Lewis On The Leftist Effort to Reprogram People’s Minds”)
I have been very vocal this week about the new narrative for racism that permeates every air-wave and smartphone across the country, “The criminal justice system is to blame.” The logic states that Black men are being rounded up for little reason by a White-run criminal justice system dedicated to the eradication of a burgeoning minority middle class. If it weren’t for the dastardly system, all would be well. All is to blame on “white privilege” they claim. And, the narrative is being driving by the organization called Black Lives Matters.
Phoenix, Arizona May 31, 2020 – CNN
A significant number of the ketogenic and carnivore world “elites” have significant buy in to this narrative and have come down hard on my position during the last week. I’ve been called a white racial supremacist, a bigot, a fanatic, and I’ve even had a few death threats arise in my “in-box” because I disagree with the agenda of this organization. But those of you who know me, know that I don’t make statements lightly. Any time I take a position, it will be based in scientific fact.
All of this has occurred as protests, riots, looting and murder have flooded the news, social media feeds and airwaves of the world. Anger that justice has not been served was the initial outcry. True it is that any life unjustly taken deserves restitution. Yet, in the attempt to make things right, I refuse to join with a movement that stands for nearly everything wrong and evil in this world.
As of today, more innocent lives have been taken (20 as of today’s count) since these violent protests began over the horrible death of George Floyd. But what about the other black lives that have been lost in the chaos. What about the Black business owners that lost their businesses? What about the families of those that lost fathers and mothers to this violence in response to violence?
Minneapolis Minnesota, May 31, 2020 – FoxNews.com
“Dr. Nally, you don’t have to agree with everything. Just because it’s on their website, doesn’t make them bad. Just agree with the good things this movement is doing. Just drop to a knee with your sign and show your support for the good parts,” I’ve been told by quite a few people I used to admire.
Let’s apply that logic to other examples. Would you hold your church social on the lawn of the Playboy Mansion because Hugh Hefner was a Methodist who believed in God and had a copy of “The Purpose Driven Life” on his nightstand table?
I am not a racist. Just because I disagree with your position on social justice does not make me a racist either. The definition of racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent prejudicial superiority of a particular race. I do not view, interact with or treat anyone of a different skin color any differently than I would treat my own family.
This may offend you, but according to scientific evidence, “white privilege” isn’t real. If it were a real issue, you would not see statistical success of the Asian populations in the United States. Just look at the graph of ethnic incomes below.
And, it’s not just income. Asian students score higher on educational testing like the SAT. How does the argument of “white privilege” explain this anomaly? It doesn’t. If race provided privilege, then these graphs would be notably different.
Those of us that have been raised to abide the law, pay our taxes, set aside our instinctual urge to provide justice by allowing for due process in the civilization we’ve contributed to, act with civility toward leadership, give honor to the experience of our parents and our elders, follow basic civil instructions, provide for our families, protect them and serve our neighbor are horrified that someone would claim we are “subconsciously racist.” This is an attack on and an attempt to verbally disarm the good men and women of this country by creating guilt, claiming that because of your heritage, a part of you is unwilling to protect your neighbor.
Because of this, I cannot sit idly by and watch this country spiral down the drain without making my position loud and clear. Based upon additional thoughts I contemplated after reading Ryan Bomberger’s article in TownHall this morning, here are:
Ten Reasons I Will Never Support #BlackLivesMatters (BLM)
Their Premise Isn’t True. I despise racism. It is never appropriate. It is even worse when racism is used as a political weapon like is has been this week. According to the FBI’s latest homicide statistics, a black man is 11 times more likely to be killed by another black man than by a white man. The comprehensive 2019 study by PNAS, “White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.” Even the Washington Post’s database on police-involved deaths put this into perspective. In 2020, among those killed by police officers (all male):
2 Native Americans
9 Asians
46 Hispanics
76 Blacks (Incidentally only 9 of those 76 Blacks were unarmed)
149 unlabeled individuals
149 Whites (whose deaths are never reported by national mainstream media.)
“White Privilege” – @AmyDC – (Satire Image)
2. Goals for Forgiveness or Reconciliation are not Present. On none of the Black Lives Matters websites are there any mention of healing wounds, forgiveness or moving forward. You cannot talk about the sins of distant past and expect to move forward if there is no intention of forgiveness. Ask any counselor, psychiatrist or physician, when your spouse brings up old wounds or grievances with every argument, does the marriage get better? Absolutely not. They’ve never forgiven you and neither will Black Lives Matters. Their paradigm is not centered in any gospel of forgiveness. It is a prejudicial oppressor/oppressed race theory paradigm that is completely flawed. This seems strange when the majority of Blacks in the U.S. are Christian (79%) and profess a belief in Jesus Christ.
Most Christians believe that we are individually responsible for our own actions and, not Adam’s transgression from the fall (that was the whole point of the atonement of Christ). Yet, belief that white people living today are responsible for the slavery their for-bearers participated in is diametrically opposed to Judaeo-Christian philosophy. I am not responsible for my father’s transgressions and neither are you. You can’t stand on both sides of the fence.
What is the solution? Whether you are a believer or not, Jesus Christ taught an inspired model that leads to peace and harmony — to love God first, and then to love our neighbors as ourselves. I don’t pretend that either of these pursuits is easy, but in the 50 years I have been upon this earth, it is the only action that yields the promised fruit.
3. The Focus is 100% Black Power. That’s all you’ll ever see on their websites at M4BL and BLM. Both of these organizations focus on “organizing and building Black power across the country.” This is not what Martin Luther King promoted. He promoted “God’s power and human power.” That’s dramatically different. I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement, that “hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Only this kind of love and empathy can inspire us to do the rigorous work of rebuilding bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation and alienation. I will happily stand and march with the principles outlined by Dr. King.
5. Black Lives Matters Intentionally Ignores and Suppresses the Importance of Fatherhood. From their own website: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” Notice “fathers” is intentionally missing from that statement. We know from years of research that every “village” that has fatherless families is a village that suffers higher crime rates, higher drug usage, higher abortion rates, higher drop-out rates, higher poverty rates, and so much more.
Prejudice, hate and discrimination are learned behaviors. We are not born with them. This is why parents, family members, and teachers must be the first line of defense. Teaching children to love all, and find the good in others, is more crucial than ever. Oneness is not sameness in America. We must all learn to value the differences.
How does the absence of a father play a role in this? Isn’t it interesting that the ethnicity that is the most successful at income and education is also the group that has the lowest number of fatherless homes.
6. They Demand Reparations. On the same BLM website above, they demand, “Reparations for . . . full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education . . . retroactive forgiveness of student loans, and support for lifetime learning programs.”
Ummmm, question? What about the mixed racial peoples? Will the white half of their bodies have to pay the Black half of themselves?
7. Complete Abolition of Police Forces. These people assert that complete abolition of prisons, police and any other institution related to civil safety is their goal. Across 30 cities this week you’ve heard the cry, “Defund the police!” This would leave total anarchy in any community. Yet, police chief’s and commissioners around the county have begun to stand with these groups at the behest of their officers. Reforming department codes to control use of force, continued training in use of aggressive force and monitoring systems that identify officers who abuse these policies have been show to be effective and are essential, but abolishing police forces is utter insanity.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, people who buy this mindset are guilty “Of not understanding the difference between the fire department and the fire.”
8. BLM IS Anti-Capitalistic. They declare “We are anti-capitalist. We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.” The video and recordings that identify incidences of police brutality and misuse of force are captured on phones and body-cameras that were made possible by capitalism. We have known for over 100 years that the best way to raise people out of poverty is capitalism. Capitalism is what makes the United States of America the most charitable nation on the earth and the nation with the most freedom.
9. Collin Kaepernick Supports It. I want nothing to do with a man who idolizes Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and worships Malcom X (check out his social media feeds and you see all the proof you need). Malcom X was an anti-integration, pro-violence member of the Nation of Islam (virulently racist). Interesting that this #SocialJusticeWarrior is absolutely silent about the fact that he makes millions from Nike whose entire Executive Leadership Team is White, and according to Kaepernick makes its shoes in the most “murderous regime in the world.”
Colin Kaepernick – NYTimes.com
10. Not All Black Lives “Really” Matter. The pro-abortion Black Lives Matter further declares: “We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice [aka abortion] that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.” Aborted children don’t thrive.
Many even argue that Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger, a strong believer in eugenics, intentionally used abortion to lower the Black birth rate. Something is amiss when over one-third of all abortions occur in Black mothers.
BLM has claimed solidarity with “reproductive justice” groups since February 2015 and have been officially adopted into the Democratic National Convention platform since August 2015. Sorry folks, you cannot simultaneously fight violence while all the while celebrating it by destroying lives before they take their first breath.
Will I be ostracized from the keto/carnivore community for my position? Probably, but my conscience is clear, and I can sleep at night.
Are you interested in controlling your weight? It revolves around thought, speech and behavior. Sign up for my FREE six-part weight loss mini-course above and find out how.
Ketogenic Lifestyle – the Balance of Endocrinology & Psychology
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a number of patients and friends about what it means to live a ketogenic lifestyle. A low-carbohydrate or ketogenic lifestyle is different from a low-carb diet. It is different because the definition of lifestyle implies the way a person lives their life that reflects specific attitudes and values, not just how they eat. My recent posts, The Principle Based Ketogenic Lifestyle – Part I and Ketogenic Principles – Part II, focus on fundamental principles making the ketogenic lifestyle one in which balance and grounding in all aspects of life can occur. When the mind, the body or the spirit are out of balance or un-grounded, symptoms of metabolic inefficiency, sickness or disease result.
I have been fascinated, as a family practitioner, that the body produces “warning flags,” when there is dysfunction in one of these areas: mind, body & spirit. These warning flags are byproducts of inefficient inter-related functionality between the body’s systems and it is one of the foundation principles of osteopathic medicine. Prior to the advent of many of our diagnostic techniques today like MRI, CT scan, advanced laboratory evaluations, and ultrasound, these were the only indicators of disease that a physician could identify, and upon which diagnosis was made. These flags often show up on the skin, in the hair or nails, in the complexion, or in general appearance or mannerisms.
Skin Tags (fibroepitheial polyps) under the arm
For example,”skin tags” are now recognized as pathognomonic, specifically indicative, of insulin resistance and will often occur up to 20 years before impaired fasting glucose or diabetes is ever recognized.
Exopthalmos (bulging or protruding of the eyes) from hyperthyroidism
Exopthalmos, or protrusion of the eyes, is pathognomonnic for overactive thyroid function (hyperthyroidism), and spider angiomas occur as a somatic flag that cirrhosis of the liver is present.
Alligator Skin (severe dry skin) found in hypothyroidism
Hair loss and dry skin, or “alligator skin,” represents the exact opposite with an under-active thyroid (hypothyroidism).
Spider angioma seen with cirrhosis
When metabolic pathways get “clogged” or flow of blood, lymphatic fluid or hormones do not reach the destinations they were meant to reach, symptoms of accumulation or poor function begin to arise.
The osteopath is also trained to recognize a corollary Chapman’s Reflex Points that act as flags for dysfunction in specific organs or regions of the body. These points relate directly to what causes the pathognomonic flag. I frequently identify abdominal, adrenal, pancreatic and liver Chapman’s points present in those with insulin resistance, inflammatory diseases, pre-diabetes and diabetes. Understanding how to interpret and use these flags comprises four years of medical school and three to four years of residency and often years of clinical application.
Mental or spiritual pathways can often be bloc-aided by poor recognition of, or refusal to acknowledge, individual truths in our lives. Interestingly, the signs or warning flags of spiritual dysfunction are also expressed physically.
“Oh, no?! Dr. Nally are you going to get all religious on us?”
Maybe.
Over the last 15 years of my medical practice, I’ve witnessed the spiritual component of the “mind, body, spirit” unit, or lack thereof, have profound impact on the body’s ability to heal. Every one of us must defeat what Sigmund Freud called the pleasure principle – the human instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain, including recollections or memories that are painful. Hiding from these memories because of pain is very common and is part of human nature. We often believe that thinking about or re-living the truth may cause us individual overwhelming un-survivable grief. So, we naturally bury the thoughts and emotions and feelings deep down into our subconscious minds.
In fact, we take irrational risks, busy ourselves, use food or drink for short term comfort and move from one distracting or debilitating relationship to another. We lose and then regain gain weight, become workaholics, hide behind thousands of texts, social media posts and emails in order to protect ourselves from the part of ourselves that we don’t want to think about.
However, when we step away from the distractions and courageously look at our individual history, our personal life story, honestly and completely, feelings of sadness, anxiety, regret and anger may often arise. These painful emotions bring with them essential insights into how experiences will help you and I individually grow, become a better people, and help others along the path. It takes faith to trust that these experiences will not destroy us, but were allowed to occur by a loving Father or Creator, understanding that for you and I to grow, we must each be given individual agency to chose. It takes faith to recognize that that Father has your individual best interest in mind. Hiding from these emotions clogs the mental and spiritual systems and fuels disabling depression, anxiety, insomnia and fatigue. These feelings, real as they are, persist when there is no other physical sign of illness. That’s because this illness is not physical. It is spiritual. When we are out of line with the truths that bring peace and balance to our lives, negative, self-limiting patterns of activity and fear stifle growth and development mentally.
It is fascinating to me that on more than one occasion, as an osteopath, when a patient suffering from these symptoms gets a massage or has an osteopathic or chiropractic manipulative treatment, they may suddenly become tearful or have unexpected release of emotion. Physical treatment over the areas of congestion can, and do, cause a reflex triggering of mental, emotional or spiritual release of tensions.
How do I know that it is truth we are hiding from? Take the words of the Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche found in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying among many others throughout the ages:
“Saints and mystics throughout history have adorned their realizations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind. Christians and Jews call it “God”; Hindus call it “the Self,” “Shiva,” “Brahman,” and “Vishnu”; Sufi mystics name it “the Hidden Essence”; and the Buddhists call it “buddha nature.” At the heart of all religions is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth, and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize that truth.”
“Wait a minute, what does all this have to do with a ketogenic lifestyle?”
The ketogenic lifestyle is one that is based on values. A patient following a ketogenic diet recognizes that food has just as powerful effect on the hormones of the body as does prescription drugs. Understanding the value of hormone balance and the principles that effect weight, inflammation, blood pressure and cholesterol, the ketogenic lifestyle is one in which carbohydrates are restricted in an individually tailored way to obtain the end goal. How does a ketogenic lifestyle balance mind and spirit?
Step One –
Put down your force-field. This takes courage and it takes faith. Your force-field is any distraction that keeps you from thinking and feeling and identifying truth. These include excessive alcohol, illicit drugs, binge eating, smoking, gambling, working excessively or getting lost in repetitive dramatic romantic relationships .
Believe me, the force-field gets heavier every day. After my father passed away at age 58 from the major complications of diabetes and my sister committed suicide a few years later, I threw myself into work and church service. I worked 16-18 hour days, completed a second board certification in Obesity Management and a fellowship in Health Policy, all while serving as a bishop and counselor in my church. I found that I could raise my force-field of justification to hide from the pain and emotions of family illness and depression.
But the force-field saps your energy and cheats you out of seeing your full potential. I found that as long as I held up my force-field (and some of us care more than one), I couldn’t see the experiences that made me who I am and connect me with those I was trying to serve and help. As long as I was holding up my force-field, I was living in the fear of re-experiencing the pain of loss and the worry of future disease, . . . and people sense that.
You don’t have to drop the force-field all at once. You don’t have to quit work and become a hobbit. You just have to lower the field a little bit, enough to peek over and let the Eternal Truth shine on you. Truth is a funny and powerful thing. The more we overcome our reluctance, face the pain and the fear, the more we realize just how often things begin to go well for us. Living in the presence of great truth and eternal law and being guided by permanent values is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
Step Two–
Identify emotional or behavioral patterns that you want to change. If you don’t know, ask a trusted friend, your spouse, or your relatives. As I think back over the years, I had a couple trusted friends pull me aside and identify a few of those patterns face to face. I appreciate that, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Make a list of the events in your life that you regret and wish you would have made a different decision.
Go over the list as many times as you need to to identify the pattern or theme that seems to tie the regrets together.
Then actually write down the theme or reason that you identified as the cause. This allows you to identify and remove the corrupted soft-ware of your soul.
This process can take time and is often camouflaged by denial.
Major insight often comes as a knock on the door of denial, so listen carefully to what is being said. Listen to yourself listening. Psychiatrists say that if something said while listening to a patient makes them suddenly feel sad or irritable, then that may be a meaningful theme in the patient’s life. Listen to your gut feelings as you go through the day. Don’t ignore a prompting from your soul.
Step Three –
Realize that today’s negative emotional and behavioral patterns are connected with painful memories and unsolved past conflicts.
Do you get a gut feeling that you want to change the subject when someone brings up a financial setback? Do you want to reply with one liners like, “I’m sure it will all work out?” Are there other topics that make you uncomfortable? Ask yourself why that topic makes you uncomfortable . . . seriously, ask yourself, and then answer yourself. Do you suspect your spouse of cheating when there is no objective evidence to support the suspicions? Recognize these uncomfortable feelings are our subconscious waving flags to make us each aware of unresolved conflicts within our mind and spirit.
Remember, we attract the type of energy we give off.
Step Four–
Pray to whatever higher power you believe in. Meditation, prayer and “ponderizing” brings a reservoir of faith and courage to find and to face the truth. If you have the faith, get on your knees and sincerely ask God for help facing your truth and the challenges, fears and sadness that reflecting upon it may initially bring. I promise you that you will gain the strength to accomplish the task. It will bring the strength to overcome the hidden trauma in your earlier life and will give you the strength to resist the call of ice cream at 3 am.
Following these four simple steps, keeps you vigilant to the physical and spiritual warning flags that may arise on your ketogenic journey and will bring great confidence while modifying your diet to balance your body’s hormonal milieu. Confidence inspires courage. Those with courage and confidence in themselves, and faith that they are on the right path, are unstoppable. Good luck . . . I look forward to seeing you on my journey down the same path.
This post isn’t going to win me any friends . . . in fact, mentioning this topic a few days ago has already angered a number of them and resulted in an online tongue lashing by a few others. However, I can’t resist. And, based on some very persuasive data and personal experience, I don’t care.
Truth is truth . . . it doesn’t change no matter how you spin it, or attempt to fit it into your paradigm. The problem is what we have accepted in the last 40-50 years as “the scientific truth about getting healthy” is far from truth. By getting healthy, I’m implying the application of main-stream methods accepted to lose weight, reduce cholesterol, improve blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes.
For the last 40 years we’ve been told that the only way to get and live healthy is to restrict our calories. This main-streamed advise continues even today in our USDA 2010 Dietary Guidelines. And, if you ascribe to this futile dogma propagated since the 1970’s, then you’ll know that the “only acceptable way” to do this is to “eat less fat” (because fat is the most caloric dense of the macro-nutrients, right?) and to “exercise more” (because that’s how we burn calories, right?!) Well, that’s what I thought, too. And that is the health prescription I doled out to my-self and to all of my patients for the first 8 years of my practice.
Interestingly, most of them, including myself, took that prescription of a caloric restricted diet of 1200-1500 calories per day and exercise 3-6 days a week for 30-60 minutes and ran with it. Personally, I restricted calories to 1200-1500 per day and began running triathlons. I performed cardiac monitored running, swimming and cycling for an hour a day during the week and 2 hours on the weekend. I lifted weights 2-3 days per week as well. Guess what it got me? Fat.
It raised my triglycerides by 100 points, elevated my LDL-C and increased my waistline by 3 inches. Yes, I gained weight. But, hey, my doctor was happy because my HDL-C went up by 4 points.
I saw this identical pattern with 3/4ths the patients in my office. A fourth of my patient’s (the group without any genetic insulin resistance) saw weight loss and improvement in their cholesterol profiles, but the rest didn’t. I had the exciting opportunity to introduce the saddened and discouraged 3/4ths of my patients to STATIN drugs and blood pressure medications. My average patient’s gained 2-3% of their body fat each year. Those that exercised like fiends were lucky if their weigh gain just stabilized.
What I saw in my office over a period of eight years was that exercise and caloric restriction didn’t work. But I couldn’t say that, because that goes against everything your 8th grade health teacher taught you. It contradicted your neighborhood dietitian, and it spat in the face of the food pyramid and the USDA Guidelines. The Government wrong? Never. . . . Speaking contradictory of the calorie-in/calorie-out exercise dogma was heresy, right? Contradict, Dr. Ornish, wouldn’t be heard of?!!
If I’ve learned one thing in my medical career, it is this: “Don’t be afraid to question everything” – even Dr. Dean Ornish, the USDA and the American Heart Association. And, fascinatingly, I’m not the only on that did.
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Three Massive Studies did just that . . . question whether this exercise and caloric restriction dogma really works. This is what applying exercise and caloric cutting did for almost 67,000 people between 1972 and 2010 – little to nothing.
WHAT?!! Nothing?! You can’t be serous?
The first of these trials was the MRFIT (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention) Trial. It started in 1972, looking at 12,866 men with high risk for heart disease and followed them over seven years. All of them were placed on caloric restricted low fat diets and encouraged to exercise. It demonstrated that low fat diets and exercise FAILED to reduce weight or stop coronary artery disease in 100% of the cases. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself (JAMA. 1982; 248 (12):1465-1477).
The second of these trials was the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). This study started in 1991 and followed 48,835 women (yes, that’s a small city of women) for eight years. They didn’t believe the MRFIT results apparently, so they had a low fat (caloric restricted) arm and a control arm [the SAD diet (Standard American Diet)]. The women on the low fat arm lost a whooping 0.4 kg over the 8 year period (JAMA. 2006 Jan 4;295(1):39-49). 0.4 kg, really!?? That’s almost an entire pound of weight loss over 8 years. Quick, call Barnes & Noble so we can package that diet and sell it on Opra!! (Oh, wait, the news media was a little embarrassed by the findings and never really mentioned them.)
Lastly, if research on 60,000 men and women wasn’t enough to demonstrate what most primary care physicians seen in their offices daily, we had to do the Look AHEAD Study(Action for Health in Diabetes). This study started in 2001 and was supposed to run for 13.5 years. It studied 5,145 Type II diabetic patients with intensive lifestyle intervention. These patients were placed on intensive caloric and fat restriction of 1200-1800 calories per day with exercise and behavioral counseling. It was so unsuccessful, that they stopped the trial at 9.6 years – cause it wasn’t working.
The patients did lose some weight through Look AHEAD . . . an average of 6% of their body fat (That means you would have lost 15.6 lbs over 9 years if you weighed 260 lbs. Successful? . . . NOT). What made this trial worse is that it didn’t improve risk for coronary artery disease and people didn’t live longer (N Engl J Med 2013; 369:145-154). They just got the exciting chance to eat cardboard for 9 years of their lives. Sad. Very sad.
So, what does all this mean? Exercising your brains out at an expensive gym every morning won’t do much more than help you loose 1% of your body fat. It won’t increased your life span and it won’t decrease your risk of heart disease, despite what Dr. Ornish said. If you like spending $40 per month just to stare at sweaty fat bodies jumping up and down in spandex, by all means, please keep going to the gym. But I’d much rather spend that $40 on a nice rib eye steak at a restaurant staring at my wife. But, the benefits of saturated fat . . . that’s for another post.
Don’t get me wrong. I love lifting weights. I love riding my horse. I truly enjoy working in my yard. I even enjoy riding my bicycle. But I do these things now because they bring me peace, decrease my stress, and allow me to connect with nature. Believe me, there’s nothing natural about a 250 pound man in spandex staring at himself in a mirror repetitively lifting 30 pound bars of iron. But, we won’t go there.
My friends, and a few of my patients, get their knickers in a wad trying to decry the fact that I’m giving people a reason not to go running. Maybe I am. To be honest, there’s really only one reason I want to run, . . . and that’s when I’m being chased by a bear. But what good does it do to guilt a person into participation in an activity that isn’t really benefiting their health or help them lose weight, unless they really truly enjoy the activity for the sake of the activity?
Our health is not based upon a caloric scale of inputs and outputs. We are hormonal machines. We gain or lose weight and we gain or lose muscle based on powerful hormone signals, specifically insulin. Simple carbohydrate restriction has profound effects upon our weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and inflammatory states. Until we each come to grips with the fact that the food we eat triggers hormone responses in our bodies, we will continue down the path of diseases of civilization. Hippocrates summed it up when he said, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”
Fat.
