"Which Road Do I Take?"

I love having thought provoking questions and quotes waiting for me in my inbox...thank you, Brain Tracy, for this passage from Alice in Wonderland!

"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter.""
-- Lewis Carroll, author

Do you know where you want to go?

The choices you make today WILL determine your future...

If you desire to earn more you have to learn more...if you desire to retire and enjoy abundance you have to plan in advance to do so...if you plan to live a healthy, vibrant, life you have to make daily "choices" that will help you do that.

So often in life we find ourselves in a place that we didn't intend to end up...so many roads to choose from...roads that lead to growth or stagnancy...roads that lead to abundance or lack...roads that lead to health or illness...

If you find yourself on a road that's heading to a destination that isn't to your liking get off!

It's NEVER too late to go in a new direction...to take a new road to a better destination...to wake up every day wondering what new and exciting opportunities are waiting for us if we will only "choose" to BELIEVE it is so and take ACTION. :)

"The degree that a person is willing to change is dependant upon the degree of discomfort they feel in their present moment" Brain Tracy

Why wait for discomfort to change?

Be Well!

Is Money Destroying the World?

Good Morning!

The ideal morning for me starts with taking a hot shower, making my Starbucks, and reading things that feed my mind and soul.

The past 2 evenings I've spent working on improving my website...which is not an easy task for someone not gifted with the ability to make copy interesting and compelling! That said, I've decided to spend time every day learning that skill... so I logged onto Mike Dillard's site to access one of the programs that I purchased from him... this article jumped off the page and in my face!

Consider this post under the catagory of "Feeding the Mind" ... at least it fed mine...it was also a confirmation...it made me feel good about what I do... and the products I represent that truly improve people's lives. I heard someone say recently, "for every dime I make it means that someone is closer to better health"...I love it...and that's what excites me about what I'm doing.
"Trading value for value"

Here's the article that whacked me this morning!

I am fascinated by the world we live in today, America in particular…

What was once the shining beacon of hope, leadership, and freedom around the world, is fast becoming a wasteland divided – with looters on one side, and the sheeple who willingly trade-in their pride, their dreams, and their honor as men – in exchange for hand-outs like social security, unemployment, and food stamps, referred to as “benefits” by the looters.

The Land of the Free, and the Home of The Brave, has become the “Land of the Slaves and Home of The Victims”.

I see this every day, as pleads for deals and freebies flood my inbox from moochers who name every excuse under the sun, as to why I should give my knowledge and my expertise to them from free, because “I owe them”, just like the government owes them, their boss owes them, and their spouse owes them.

They blame money, and those who have it, for the problems of the world. They call money the root of all evil.

Is that the case?

Well today I’d like to share with you some of the most profound words I’ve ever experienced, which will stay with me for the rest of my life. If we’re to hold onto the freedom, the ideas, and values they stand for, they represent the last great hope for our country, and our shrinking world…

And as for you… How you feel about the following story will determine your financial fate, and your life.

=====Page 410 – “Atlas Shrugged”=============================

“Standing unnoticed on the edge of a group, Rearden heard a woman, who had large diamond earrings and a flabby, nervous face, ask tensely, “Senior d’Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”

“Just exactly what it deserves.”

“Oh how cruel!”

Don’t you believe in the operation of moral law, madame?” Francisco asked gravely.

“I do.”

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, “Don’t let him distrub you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he’s the typical product of money.”

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Said Francisco d’ Anconia.

Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.

Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade, and give value for value.

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is that what you consider evil?

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into bread you will need to survive tomorrow.

Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is that what you consider evil?

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time.

Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of a man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?

Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.

An honest man is the one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

To trade by means of money is the code of men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more.

Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beats of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.

And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter- it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.

This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is that what you consider evil? But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

It will give you the means for satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.

The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors.

The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him.

Did it?

Or did he corrupt his money?

Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason you call it evil?

Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy.

Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Or did you say that it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil?

To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it.

The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.

That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long.

They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and his life, as he deserves.

Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statues are written to protect you against them.

But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creator’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them.
But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money.

Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.

Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half loot.
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave it to its owners in a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.

Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.
Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: Account overdrawn.

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘who is destroying the world?’ You are.

You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money.

You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.
That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries.

So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little con conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement.

For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American Industrialist.

Until you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction.

When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns – or dollars.

Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”
====Ayn Rand – “Atlas Shrugged” : Pg 410 –>===========================

My fellow entrepreneurs…
We are the producers.
We are the blood of our nation.
We are the noblest representation of man-kind in the world.
This is the value I offer to you and the world, which you will buy not because you must – but because it will improve your life.
To our future…

Mike Dillard

Are You Toxic?

As you know chronic diseases are on the rise in America. How many of you know someone who has had that wake up call from the doctor telling them that their test results were not what they had hoped for? Did toxicity play a part in that outcome?

Are You Toxic? Absolutely.
Everyone has a toxic body burden and should begin to understand how to address it.

Can you avoid toxins? Absolutely not.

What are some of the most common toxins?

Mercury: the air we breathe, water, fish, dental amalgams, some vaccinations.
Limit eating large fish - 2 times/week. FYI: it only takes 4 days for toxic air pollution to reach the US from China via the jet stream!

Lead: paint, plumbing, auto exhaust. Paint containing lead was sold to 3rd world countries and is now coming back to us via imports…what goes around comes around. When water sits in pipes for long periods of time it can have lead in it - run the water a bit before drinking it.

Cadmium: 2nd hand smoke & just being exposed to burning tobacco, marijuana, contaminated water, food & dust. Nickel/Cadmium batteries and now you can add jewelry to the list!

Arsenic: well water, treated lumber (a 12ft. 2x6 contains 27 grams of Arsenic…enough to kill more than 200 adults.) Playground equipment, wood decks…etc. Reduce exposure by putting table cloths on picnic tables and wash children’s hands after being exposed.

How are we exposed?
Air borne ultra fine microbes are transported into the blood stream, water, food, personal care products, household cleaners, pumping gas, diesel exhaust fumes, 2nd hand smoke, immunizations…the list is long.

What does your body do with toxins?
If it’s water soluble it will flush it in the urine.
If it’s not water soluble or you have too much it needs to be attached to something to get into your kidneys to excrete.
If the first 2 ways don’t work you will store it in fat & tissue.

How do they affect us?
Heavy metals tend to bind to enzymes and disrupt normal cell metabolism.
Lead, Mercy, Aluminum & Arsenic end up in the brain…we now know that they are implicated in Alzheimer’s, ADD, and ADHD & Autism.
Cadmium & Nickel go to the lungs and damage lung tissue…can cause sinus disease and cancer.

Most of these toxins are colorless & odorless, which makes sensory detection impossible. Common symptoms of Toxic Overload include: fatigue, depression, nervousness, headaches, allergies, joint pain, frequent colds, chronic infections, sudden anger & memory loss.

How do we get rid of them?
Infrared saunas, diet therapy, nutritional therapy, cleansing, lymphatic drainage, Natural Cellular Defense (natural chelating agent that has shown amazing results!) I personally use NCD as my biggest weapon along with the above therapies.


Consider these statistics:
Babies today are born with a toxic load…there have been 7 studies in the USA, Canada & Netherlands that show over 200 industrial chemicals in the umbilical core blood of newborns…70 or those are known carcinogens…cancer causing.

The elderly and children are most at risk from toxic exposure because they have less activity in the kidneys.

DDT was last used 38 years ago…it was dumped into
the Pacific ocean…samples done on fish in 1982 still showed high levels…studies done in 2007 showed that they were the same…our bodies can’t get rid of persistent organic compounds on their own.

I choose Natural Cellular Defense as my toxin trapping device...I see it as having a heavy duty magnetic pac man going thru every part of my body gobbling up the garbage!

There are some great audio's regarding toxicity on my website: http://www.enjoygreathealthtoday.com/

or click here:

http://my.waiora.com/videos/products.php?v=natural_cellular_defense

Cheers to Great Health!

Liquid Zeolite Study on Autism - Home

Greetings!

I was doing the never ending task of cleaning out my email inbox and found this article in my google alerts and felt compelled to share it with you.

It's about a product called Natural Cellular Defense...which in my humble opinion is one of the most amazing products out there at this time. To say that it has changed my life is an understatement and can be verified by my family memebers!

This is just one of many stories that I can share with you. It's not just people with Autism that will benefit from adding this product to their daily regimine. We all have heavy metals in our system that are not getting flushed out, and as a result are being stored in our bodies. The problem with that is toxic body burden...which means at some point you reach a tipping point that leads to illness and disease.

You don't have to take my word for it...there is plenty of evidence regarding the relationship between heavy metals and diseases of every kind so it won't be hard to verify.

Liquid Zeolite Study on Autism - Home


There is an audio on my website by Dr. Stuart Lonkey regarding the relationship between toxic body burden and illness/disease. Dr. Loneky is a Dr. of Toxicology and one of the Authors of Invisible Killers - The Truth About Environmental Genocide.

http://www.enjoygreathealthtoday.com/

Visualization - 4 parts

As I confessed in my previous post I didn't get off to a great start regarding my resolutions in January...slowly getting back on track!

Here is part of an article from Brian Tracy that may help put things in perspective.

There are four parts of visualization that you can learn and practice to assure that you use this incredible power to its best advantage all the days of your life.

How Often?
The first part of visualization is frequency, the number of times that you visualize a particular goal as achieved. The more frequently you repeat a clear mental picture of your very best performance or result, the more rapidly it will appear as part of your reality.

How Long?
The second element of visualization is the duration of the mental image, the length of time that you can hold the picture in your mind each time you replay it. The longer you can hold your mental picture, the more deeply it will become impressed into your subconscious mind and the more rapidly it will express itself in your subsequent performance.

How Clearly?
The third element of visualization is vividness. There is a direct relationship between how clearly you can see your desired goal or result in your mind and how quickly it comes into your reality. The vividness of your desire directly determines how quickly it materializes in the world around you.

How Intensely?
The fourth element of visualization is intensity, the amount of emotion that you attach to your visual image. In reality, this is the most important and powerful part of the visualization process. Sometimes, if your emotion is intense enough and your visual image is clear enough, your goal will immediately come true.

Of course, the elements of frequency, duration, vividness, and intensity can help or hurt you. Like nature, the power of visualization is neutral. Like a two-edged sword, it can cut in either direction. It can either make you a success or make you a failure. Visualization brings you whatever you vividly and intensely imagine, whether good or bad.

Action Exercise
Continually feed your mind with clear, exciting, emotional pictures. Remember, your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.

Wishing you a fantastic weekend!
Wendy

Resolution #1

January will be gone in a few short hours...wow...it sure went fast!

So, how are you doing with your New Year's Resolutions?

According to the experts the #1 Resolution made each year is to "Lose Weight" and it's the one that most people can't seem to keep. In fact by February 1st most people have thrown in the towel. Are you ever going to be fit again as long as you live? The answer is unless you make a resolution to get fit-you're never going to be fit-ever. The choice is yours.

I'd love to say that I'm off to a great start with my Resolutions for 2010...not so...but NOT giving up!

Even though I've managed to keep my weight level, I have not managed to work out consistently so the FIT part of the equation is missing...which I am choosing to deal with starting tomorrow! I realized over the weekend that it boils down to; how important of a goal is it? Am I going to keep making excuses about how busy I am or am I going to schedule time to do it and make it a priority.

I'm blessed to be part of a group who will meet monthly starting tomorrow, 2/1, called "Fit Happens." Our goal is to keep each other accountable, encouraged, and take the steps necessary to eat right, stay healthy, and fit for life. The more the merrier so feel free to contact me if you know of someone who would like to join us!

Need some motivation? Check this out...it's a 3 minute video clip showing the results of the Burn product that we use to jump start our metabolism and start our fat burning furnace!
http://www.waifit.com/

Cheers to an awesome 2010!

Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine

I found this link online today and thought I would pass it along. Probably my shortest blog entry to date!

Off to listen to a webinar titled:
Dynamic Eating Psychology and Mind Body Nutrition, with Marc David

Why did Hippocrates, the founding father of modern medicine say "Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food." ?

Check out this short video clip - http://ow.ly/ZNDo

Wishing you a great night!

Why Genes Aren't Your Destiny

Ahh, it's finally Saturday…the one day of the week to sleep a little longer, linger over my coffee, and spend a little extra time reading the stacks of things on my to read list.

Sure wish I knew the fine art of condensing information down into bite size pieces...I'm working on it...guess its a process just like everything else!

I’ve had the January 18, 2010 issue of Time Magazine sitting near the top of my pile for over a week and finally got to it this morning. I highly recommend finding a copy if you are at all interested in more information on how the choices we make today will have an impact on future generations. I’m continually amazed at how complex our mind, body & spirits are…fascinating information.

The article Titled “Why Genes Aren’t Destiny” by John Cloud, tells how the new field of epigenetics is showing how your environment and your choices can influence your genetic code-and that of your kids.

In the late 1980’s Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, a preventive-health specialist who is now at the prestigious Karolinska Insttitute in Stockholm, began to wonder what long term effects that feast and famine years might have had on children growing up in Norrbotten in the 19th century…they lived in a environment of literal feast or famine.

Around the time he started collecting the data, Bygren had become fascinated with research showing that conditions in the womb could affect your health not only when you are a fetus but well into adulthood. In 1986, for example, the Lancet published the first of two groundbreaking papers showing that if a pregnant woman ate poorly, her child would be at significantly higher than average risk for cardiovascular disease as an adult. Bygren wondered whether that effect could start even before pregnancy: Could parents’ experiences early in their lives somehow change the traits they passed to their offspring?

It was a heretical idea. After all, we have had a long standing deal with biology: whatever choices we make during our lives might ruin our short-term memory or make us fat or hasten death, but they won’t change our genes-our actual DNA.

What’s more, any such effects of nurture (environment) on a species’ nature (genes) were not supposed to happen so quickly...according to Charles Darwin. But Bygren and other scientists have now amassed historical evidence suggesting that powerful environmental conditions (near death from starvation, for instance) can somehow leave an imprint on the genetic material in eggs and sperm. These genetic imprints can short-circuit evolution and pass along new traits in a single generation.

For instance, Bygren’s research showed that in Overkalix, boys who enjoyed those rare overabundant winters-kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season-produced sons and grandsons who lived shorter lives. To put it simply, the data suggested that a single winter of overeating as a youngster could initiate a biological chain of events that would lead one’s grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did. How could this be possible?

Meet the Epigenome
At its most basic, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code but still get passed down to at least one successive generation. These patterns of gene expression are governed by the cellular material-the epigenome-that sits on top of the genome, just outside it. It is these epigenetic “marks” that tell your genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress, and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that are passed from one generation to the next.

There is evidence that lifestyle choices like smoking and eating too much can change the epigenetic marks atop your DNA in ways that cause the genes for obesity to express themselves too strongly and the genes for longevity to express themselves too weakly. We all know that you can shorten your own life if you smoke or overeat, but it’s becoming clear that those same bad behaviors can also predispose your kids-before they are even conceived-to disease and early death. WOW!

Pembrey, Bygren, and Golding-now all working together-used data to produce a more groundbreaking paper, the most compelling epigenetic study yet written. Published in 2006 in the European Journal of Human Genetics, it noted that of the 14,024 fathers in the study, 166 said they had started smoking before age 11-just as their bodies were preparing to enter puberty. Boys are genetically isolated before puberty because they cannot form sperm. (Girls by contrast, have their eggs from birth) That makes the period around puberty fertile ground for epigenetic changes: If the environment is going to imprint epigenetic marks on the genes in the Y chromosome, what better time to do it than when sperm is first starting for form?

When Pembry, Bygren and Golding looked at the sons of those 166 early smokers, it turned out that the boys had significantly higher body mass indexes than other boys by age 9. That means the sons of men who smoke in prepuberty will be at higher risk for obesity and other health problems well into adulthood. In other words, you can change your epigenetics even when you make a dumb decision at 10 years old. If you start smoking then, you may have made not only a medical mistake but a catastrophic genetic mistake.

All this explains why the scientific community is so nervously excited about epigenetics. In his forthcoming book isThe Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong, science writer David Shenk says epigenetics is helping user in a “new paradigm” that “reveals how bankrupt the phrase ‘nature versus nurture really is.” He calls epigenetics “perhaps the most important discovery in the science of heredity since the gene.”
Looking forward to reading his book!

90% or 10% - Which are you?

American's don’t have vitamin deficiencies – they have a whole food deficiencies.

It’s estimated that only 10% of adults and 5% of children consume the recommended 7 -13 daily servings of fruits and vegetables. I must confess, I was one of the 90% who didn’t even come close to that amount until I learned how important it is in the big scheme of preventing disease and aging well…both issues are very important to me.:)

Why not just take a multiple vitamin?
The research is complete and compelling that isolated vitamins and multiple vitamins have NOT been shown to prevent disease and in many situations have been shown to increase disease and cause harm.

Whole foods are really the answer to disease prevention. Why is that?
Because the nutrients in fruits and vegetables work synergistically together in perfect combination. Foods in their natural source are packed with 1000’s of vitamins and nutrients, not that 10 or 20 vitamins in a mega dose – its about small amounts of 1000’s of nutrients working together synergistically.

Take an apple for example; there are some 400 ingredients that are phyto-nutrients. There is a mere 5.7 milligrams of vitamin C in an apple…guess what…that 5.7 milligrams in synergy with all the other nutrients in that apple are as effective at fighting free radical damage as 1500 milligrams of vitamin C. That’s the POWER of synergy!

The minerals in fruit and vegetables are colloidal; i.e. they are in a state of such extremely fine suspension that they can be assimilated by the human system.

Good nutrition is a matter of pay now or pay later! I'm paying now because you don't have to look very far to see that prevention in the long run is more ecconomical than a cure...and a lot less painful.

Here are some things that you can do to educate yourself:

www.wendy-dejong-juiceplus.com - there is a video on the home page and 2 more under the button Related Info at the top of the home page. The research on whole food in the prevention of disease is quite amazing.

http:/healthenlightenment.com/document264.shtml - amazing information regarding the mineral deficiency of our soil and how its impacting our health...starving us in general. The sadest part is it appears to be an easy, inexpensive fix.

Rent - Food Inc. - this was a real eye opener for me and has changed my outlook on food...I now look at my purchases as casting a vote for good food or bad!

In closing the notes from the end of document 264 {We choose chemotherapy, amputations, pacemakers, surgery, and wheelchairs. One fourth of our Gross National Product(1.4 trillion dollars) is now spent on medical care, affectionately referred to (by doctors and drug reps) as "health care"}

The public can help; it can hasten change. How? By demanding quality food. You vote with your dollars every time you go to the store and purchase junk!

Do Calcium Deficiencies = Nasty Disposition - Low Intelligence - Poor Health?

Ok…let’s see just what’s involved in “mineral deficiencies,” what it may mean to our health, and how it may affect the growth and development, both mental and physical, of our children. We know that rats, guinea pigs and other animals can be fed into a diseased condition and out again by controlling only the minerals in their food.

A 10-year test with rats proved that by withholding calcium they can be bred down to a third the size of those fed with an adequate amount of that mineral. Their intelligence, too, can be controlled by mineral feeding as readily as can their size, their bony structure, and their general health. (hmmm, perhaps we know some calcium deficient people!)

Place a number of these little animals inside a maze after starving some of them in a certain mineral element. The starved ones will be unable to find their way out. Their dispositions can be altered by mineral feeding. They can be made quarrelsome and belligerent; they can even be turned into cannibals and be made to devour each other.

A cage full of normal rats will live in amity. Restrict their calcium and they will become irritable and draw apart from one another. Then they will begin to fight. Restore their calcium balance and they will grow more friendly; and in time they will begin to sleep in a pile as before. Many children are “slow to learn” merely because they are deficient in magnesia. (Magnesium) We punish them for our failures to feed them properly.

Calcium is the most dominant nerve controller; it powerfully affects the cell formation of all living things and regulates nerve action. It governs contractility of the muscles and the rhythmic beat of the heart. It also coordinates the other mineral elements and corrects disturbances made by them. Vitamin D is its buddy.

What does a deficiency mean? How would it affect your health or mine? So many morbid conditions and actual diseases may result that it is almost hopeless to catalog them. Included in the list are bad teeth, nervous disorders, reduced resistance to other diseases, fatigue, behavior disturbances, cancer, heart disease, and more.

Wow, I'm off to take my calcium, magnesium & vitamin D

Get some sunlight on the inside and see what positive changes happen in your life!

Is a Carrot a Carrot?

You'd think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot-that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn't; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain.

Laboratory tests prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs, and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago (which doubtless explains why our forefathers thrived on a selection of foods that would starve us!)

The alarming fact is that foods, fruits, vegetables and grains, now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat!

No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of so many calories or certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches, proteins and carbohydrates. We know that our diets must contain in addition a score of mineral salts.

It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, and considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, and shorten our lives.

Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. It is not commonly realized, however that vitamins control the body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of mineral's they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless. Vitamins & minerals from whole foods is what our body requires.

Information taken from United States Senate Document #264 "Modern Miracle Men" Presented by Rex Beach, June 1936

Senate Document 264 was written in 1936, and submitted as part of a Congressional investigation into U.S. farming practices. The leading authorities of the day had been sounding the alarm that depleted soils were causing a significant decline in the nation's health, evidenced by a steady increase in degenerative diseases. But when Congress saw the price tag on repairing the nation's farm and range soils, they swept their own investigation under the carpet.

Dr. Charles Northen a pioneer and genius in the field of nutrition demonstrated that countless human ills stem from the fact that impoverished soil of America no longer provides plant foods with the mineral elements essential to human nourishment and health.

The subject so interested Dr. Northen that he retired from active medical practice and devoted himself to proving that by putting back into foods the stuff that foods are made of, would open up the shortest and most rational route to better health.

He showed first that it should be done, and then that it could be done. He doubled and redoubled the natural mineral content of fruits and vegetables. He improved the quality of milk by increasing the iron and the iodine in it. He caused hens to lay eggs richer in the vital elements. By scientific soil feeding, he raised better seed poatoes in Maine, better grapes in California, better oranges in Florida and better field crops in other states. (By "better" is meant not only improvement in food value but also in increase in quality and quantity.)

He stated "We must rebuild our soils: Put back the minerals we have taken out. That sounds difficult but it isn't. Neither is it expensive. Therein lies the short cut to better health and longer life."

Why did Congress think it too expensive?

The information that will follow in the next few days will cover what "mineral deficiencies" are costing us and our children in terms of our health...both mental and physical.

Why Is Wellness So Late To The Party?

When I decided to blog daily, and share some of the information that I’ve been collecting over the past couple of years I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be! As you can see from my previous entries I haven’t figured out how to condense it down…suggestions would be appreciated!

Before digging into possible reasons & solutions for many of the health issues people face today, I feel that its necessary to look at where the wellness industry has been and “why” the wellness industry has come so late to our food and medical industries. Why is it taking so long for people to catch on?

Our wellness industry today exists in large part thanks to a historic battle won in the 1970’s by the one of the greatest wellness revolutionaries of our time: the late J.I. Rodale, founder of Prevention Magazine and Rodale Press (Men’s Health, Runners World).

How Rodale Paved the Way for the Wellness Revolution

In 1954, entrepreneur and author J.I. Rodale had a lot to lose. His company, Rodale Press, was just getting his fledgling Prevention Magazine off the ground. Prevention was dedicated to teaching readers how to prevent disease versus just treating the symptoms of disease.

Rodale had concluded that eating large quantities of red meat and dairy products dramatically increased the risk of heart disease and that physical activity actually decreased the risk of having a heart attack. This was at a time when the U.S. government was spending millions encouraging Americans to eat more red meat and dairy products at every meal, three times a day. Doctors were telling patients with heart disease to reduce or eliminate physical activity entirely.

Rodale wrote about his new findings in two books: How to Eat For a Healthy Heart and This Pace is Not Killing Us. He was convinced that this information could save millions of lives. But, like many writers in the 1950’ he was not on an approved list drawn up by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, so his publisher refused to publish his new books.

Long story short, he published his own books, was ordered by the FTC to cease and desist from claiming, directly or indirectly, that readers of any of his publications would improve their health. His legal battles with the federal government raged for almost two decades, at times putting his entire personal net worth at risk. In later years some of the same leading medical experts that the government had originally used at the initial FTC hearings almost 20 years earlier, one by one refuted their original testimony, claiming they “didn’t know back then,” and admitted that many of Rodale’s original claims had since become established medical facts.

Despite the hardship, Rodale refused to back down unless the FTC agreed to acknowledge that the First Amendment prohibited them from regulating books and printed material. Soon after Rodale passed away, the U.S. government reversed its position, stating that the FTC would no longer require advertisers of information-based products to establish the efficacy of their claims.

One of the greatest challenges facing Rodale, and facing many wellness advocates today, is human rejection of the new or unknown, especially when the new ideas and technology forces people to rethink established beliefs.

**FTC commissioner Elman wrote in his dissenting opinion: “It is the glory of a free society that a man can write a book contending that the earth is flat, or that the moon is made of green cheese, or that God is dead, without having to ‘substantiate’ or ‘prove’ his claims to the satisfaction of some public official or agency. It is arrogance to presume that in any field of knowledge, whether dealing with health or otherwise, all the answers are now in.”

Bravo, Mr. Elman!

Information taken from the New Wellness Revolution by Paul Zane Pilzer

I too, believe that information available today, not only could, but would, save the lives of millions of people, if they would simply look at statistics and see that doing what you have always done, will give you the current results...2/3 or more of the population dying of a disease that could have been prevented.

How Wellness Became My Cause

There are many reasons…here are a few.

When I was growing up my grandmother was an amazing part of my life…she was my best friend and cheerleader. She was so full of spunk & humor…my friends called her “hot rod granny” – because she had a sporty Cougar and would squeal the tires when we asked her to lay a patch! Later in life, she developed Parkinson’s Disease, which took its toll on her quality of life…her hands shook so bad that she couldn't’ feed herself so it became necessary for one of us to go the nursing home each night to feed her and get her ready for bed.

Spending several days a week at the nursing home was a very sobering experience…even though its one of the nicest facilities in town, I am determined never to end up in one. The majority of the people on the nursing floor sit in their chairs or beds, day after day, waiting for someone to bring them food, dress them, take them to the bathroom…which often doesn't happen in time, say a kind word to them, many don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on and are being kept alive with drugs and Ensure. Not my idea of quality of life. In fact if you need incentive for making it a priority to age as well as possible go spend some time volunteering in one…its heartbreaking at times.

In the past year alone several people in my circle of family and friends have passed away due to Cancer…people of all ages and backgrounds. Others have Diabetes, Heart Disease, ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, Trigemina Neuralgia. All of them take numerous prescription drugs that help deal with the symptoms and discomfort of the disease but do nothing to eliminate them.

Add to that the children who have horrible eating habits, and based on what I now know about nutrition, if left to their own devices will end up in the above category…very,very, sad.

Perhaps, I’m being too much of an optimist by thinking that if all of our cells are being replaced yearly, that it’s possible to reverse much of the damage we have done to ourselves, largely due to poor nutrition. The other contributing factor to illness/disease is toxicity. It seems, again, based on research, that it would be in our best interest to make sure that the cells that are being replaced are the healthiest possible cells. Why isn't this common knowledge?

I’m so convinced that prevention of disease IS possible, based on countless studies and research, that I have become passionate about sharing this information, in hopes that some will take it seriously, and live healthier, more vibrant lives, and that it will be catching, people will eventually desire what we have! Especially, when they see that its true and it works.

Here is a link with access to audio information & research on how basic whole food nutrition can make a huge difference in your life and that of your family.
www.wendy-dejong-juiceplus.com

This link tells the story of environmental toxicity and it’s impact on all living creatures, whether it be human or animal.
www.sharethecause.com/startnow

65% Of The Population?

It is estimated that 65% of the population is overweight with 30% being clinically obese.

Equally significant, the resultant medical (sickness) industry costs reached $1 trillion by 2000 and by 2006 doubled to $2 trillion, and now occupies almost one sixth of our economy-and medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy among U.S. families.

It's depressing to think of these numbers in terms of human suffering-90 million Americans clinically obese and 195 million overweight and unhealthy because they lacked the resources, information, and motivation to safeguard their most precious asset: their health

Fully 65% of Americans are trapped within their own prison of being malnourished and overweight to a point where they feel hopeless with no idea of where to turn for help.

These Americans are malnourished to the point that they live with constant headaches, body pain, stomach distress, heartburn, fatigue, arthritis, and hundreds of other ailments.

This is a subject that's so personal, and affects every aspect of our life, from self-esteem, self-confidence, relationships, jobs, social & economic opportunities, or the energy to stay on top of everyday demands of even a simple life.

Western medical school training, to this day virtually ignore, the importance of nutrition and the effect or vitamins, minerals, and natural supplements. During the twentieth century, while Western medicine was ignoring the importance of diet and exercise in preventing disease and aging, the amount of exercise preformed by individuals declined due to labor-saving devices in the home and to machines in the workplace. The quantity and variety of vitamins and minerals in our diets declined as food became more processed and less varied. And the percentage of fat in our diets increased by 75%-from about 20% of our calories in 1910 to 35% of our calories today. These and other factors contributed to the epidemic in obesity and ill health we have today in the United States.

Take a look at the waistlines and diets of most politicians and many of the medical personnel if you want to know what they think of food and health! Our politicians have been effectively controlled by the food and drug companies for so long that our government is now a large part of the problem, rather than being poised to be a part of the solution.

Heaven help us if the government gets control of our health care system!

Here are some quotes that I look at daily:

Knowledge + Action = Change

For things to change in your life you have to make a commitment to change yourself first.

If you keep doing what you've always done you will get what you always got!

I've spent quite a bit of time studying how the balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat in our meals and snacks will not only keep the weight off, it will literally melt fat off your body at the rate of 2lbs of fat a week...that's just fat alone! Not to mention all of the other health benefits of doing so, such as, regulating your insulin levels, feeling great, having more energy...etc. It's so worth the effort to learn the simple steps necessary to live well & healthy! I'm happy to share information with anyone interested in knowing more.

Challenging you to take control of YOUR life and wishing you much success in doing so!


The statistics quoted are from The New Wellness Revolution - Paul Zane Pilzer

How Economics Perpetuates Sickness

Do you ever ask yourself "why am I doing this...what difference will it make?" I ask myself that daily! Will it make a difference to provide people with information that they may not know about and encourage them to check things out for themselves before they just swallow the band aid solutions that are provided on a regular basis...perhaps looking at all of the choices/options before just blindly going along with what is presented.

Here's some more food for thought from Mr. Pilzer - followed by some of the transripts from Headline News - Joy Behar's interview with Suzanne Somers 1/12/10 ( I highly recommend reading the entire transcript and watching the video clip):

As my research (Paul Zane Pilzer)led me to the medical industry, I encountered large multinational companies whose nefarious practices made those of the food companies pale by comparison. It quickly became apparent to me why an economist needed to write a book about obtaining good medical care along with how to obtain food for a healthy lifestyle.

When patients go to see a physician, they believe they are receiving a prescription for the best drug or treatment available for their specific ailment. Not likely.

Just as obese consumers are the target market of the food companies, physicians are the target market of the medical and pharmaceutical companies. In the United States, doctors typically prescribe completely different treatments for the same ailment, depending on which drug company has the dominant market share in their region.

Although the ethical (prescription) pharmaceutical companies around the world justify the very high prices of their drugs by citing the high cost of research and development, drug companies actually spend much more money marketing drugs than they do on research and development. Moreover, a considerable amount of the research and development that leads to the creation of new drugs is funded by the federal government through grants to nonprofit entities such as research labs at universities, medical schools, and the National Institutes of Health.

In recent years the pharmaceutical companies have hired the same advertising firms as the food companies and have begun direct image-based advertising to consumers. In these advertisements for prescription-only items that may be legally dispensed only on the written recommendation of a doctor, the patient is directly urged to demand the product and told to "ask your doctor" for a DAW (dispense as written) prescription-with the knowledge that if the doctor refuses to write the prescription the presold patient will simply find another doctor who will.

Sadly, most physicians have become technology dispensers for the products and services of the large multinational medical companies-companies that always seem to tip the scale between profits and patients in favor of profits.

These practices have pushed the price for U.S. drugs so high that patients cannot afford to fill approximately 22 percent of the prescriptions written each year. Prescription drugs now represent the single largest monthly expense for most over 65 U.S. citizens - approximately $300.00/month - millions of people are forced to make the terrible choice of purchasing food or medicine. Medicare pays for doctor visits but generally does not pay for prescriptions.

It is more profitable for medical suppliers to produce products that consumers use for the rest of their lives than to make products that a consumer might use only once. Invariably, this means spending research and development funds on products that treat the symptoms of disease rather than the causes or the cures.

Clips of the interview on Headline News with Joy Behar:

SOMERS: But with all due respect, with the dismal results of chemotherapy, and you know so many people have died, and it`s a horrible death, and particularly with pancreatic cancer, which I have three different doctors who say we all know in the oncology world that chemotherapy does absolutely nothing whatsoever.

BEHAR: So why do they give it?

SOMERS: They said it`s palliative. I said what is palliative. It means it makes the patient feel better, it makes the family feel like something is being done, and when the patient dies, a horrible and very -- it costs about $500,000 to die of chemotherapy, they all feel they did the best they could.

BEHAR: I`m back with Suzanne Somers and Drs. Julian Whittaker and Steven Lamm. OK, this Dr. Burzynski you say has found a cure for cancer?

SOMERS: Dr. Burzynski has completed phase two clinical trials in compliance with the FDA, having a 60 percent success rate with the worst kind of brain tumors. And like Dr. Whitaker was saying, if you can control cell multiplication, you`ve found a cure to cancer.

BEHAR: And how did he do that?

SOMERS: He has found that all people with cancer are missing a specific peptide and amino acid in their liver that controls cell multiplication. He`s dedicated his life to replicating that peptide, puts it back in, and in 60 percent of his brain tumor patients he`s having success. He`s just completed and approved for phase three clinical trials.

BEHAR: Approved by whom?

SOMERS: FDA. My whole point in writing "Knockout" having been diagnosed twice now with cancer, the last time being told I would die, all I want when someone says you have cancer, we can do standard care, which is surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and harsh drugs, or if that doesn`t appeal to you, you can try x.
These are all the options and Dr. Burzynski -- if I had a brain tumor, I would be on in Houston, I`d be on the train last night.

BEHAR: Dr. Lamm, would she survive if she went to Dr. Burzynski with a brain tumor?

LAMM: Let`s put it this way -- I would hope that`s the case, but I`m a little skeptical, and I think some of this fine doctor`s work has been reviewed, and, you know, the medical community has not at this point been able to validate that it truly makes a clinically significant difference.

WHITAKER: That`s non-sense! Listen, I have visited Burzynski`s clinic four or five times. I have been in a room where they were celebrating 30 years where children who had cancer 15 years ago were standing up there vibrant, prosperous, and holding a child on their hip.
BEHAR: Why doesn`t the FDA and the medical establishment say this is a good thing and we`re going to approve this?

WHITAKER: I can tell you why. There`s so much money tied up into conventional medicine that to actually allow him free reign --

BEHAR: This sounds conspiracy-theory like.

SOMERS: If some little guy in Houston has the cure to cancer, it wipes out a $200 billion a year business.

WHITAKER: Trillion.

SOMERS: Trillion.

LAMM: The medical profession is not rooting for disease. I think it`s being very -- as you say, conspiratorial to actually believe or delude yourself that doctors would rather their child die of cancer if a cure were available. There are no secrets in medicine.

WHITAKER: Wait a minute, no, no, look. It`s not individual doctors scheming to let children die. It`s the system. Never has medicine at any time in human history ever been so tied up into business. And when you have a business where you`re training physicians to do it this way, they think this way, and all of a sudden a guy says, wait a minute, the body has a parallel system to control cell division, and I have discovered how it works. Well, then that challenges all of the purging the body -- let`s do this chemo, let`s do that chemo. And now all of a sudden the cancer just disappears.

BEHAR: I remember years and years ago people used to say that the cancer business was so big that they would never find a cure. And here it is 50 years later, or whatever it is, and they still haven`t found a cure for cancer.

SOMERS: The FDA tried to put Dr. Burzynski in jail for 300 years for unlawful dispensation of unapproved drugs across state lines. Hundreds and hundreds of his patients marched in front of the Houston courthouse, and the lawyer who was representing them was not able to ask if they were cured, but he was able to say you had stage four liver cancer how many years ago? 12 years ago. Thank you, sir. He would bring them on one after another, and it spoke volumes.The jury acquitted Dr. Burzynski and he was allowed to continue his work. I really think that they are jealous of Dr. Burzynski because it`s a little guy in Houston who figured it out.

BEHAR: I believe -- one of my doctors, I said to him, does acupuncture help you to lose weight? And he said, if it, worked, there would be an acupuncturists on every corner. And I say unto you the same thing. If this worked, if this guy can cure brain cancer in children, I`m sure that the medical establishment would be right there.-

SOMERS: But he is curing children.

WHITAKER: But he is doing it.

SOMERS: He is doing it.

BEHAR: But no one from the AMA is going there to find out?

SOMERS: You have to understand that our medical schools are pharmaceutically funded, our government bureaucrats are pharmaceutically funded. You`ve got to connect the dots. I know if I had cancer, I`d try alternative first.
There`s pockets of doctors who have decided they can`t do it anymore. They have stepped out of the standard of care box, and they get persecuted by the medical establishment for doing so.It`s very hard in a hospital setting to go against standard of care. So those of us who want to go alternative, we`ve got to find it on our own. And that`s all I`m trying to do.

BEHAR: I know, I hear you. Dr. Lamm, do you think these doctors, this Burzynski, they lack credibility because the AMA and the FDA are not behind them?

LAMM: I think people lack credibility because there`s no evidence for their work.

BEHAR: He`s telling you to go there.

LAMM: I understand. I`m happy to. But you have to remember, this has been going on for many, many years. This is not a new thing. This has been going on since 1992 1993, 1995.

WHITAKER: Let me make a statement here. Dr. Burzynski patented all of his therapies beginning in the early `80s. The National Cancer Institute visited him in the early `90s and saw that it worked. They then put it consultant in there and they actually patented all of Burzynski`s work under a different name and assigned it to HHS. I have those patents. It is unbelievable.

SOMERS: And the FDA is in Burzynski`s office all the time.

LAMM: I would root for him to work, but I`m skeptical. (CROSSTALK)BEHAR: You`ve heard this conversation out there, so you decide for yourself. Thanks to Suzanne and my panel for joining me tonight and thank you for watching. Goodnight, everybody. END

How Economics Perpetuates Obesity & Malnutrition

Packaged food companies, such as General Foods and Procter & Gamble, employ some of the best and brightest minds to study consumer psychology and demographics. In trying to decide what sorts of foods to sell us, they invariably apply one of the great unwritten laws of marketing: it is easier to sell more product to an existing customer than to sell that same product to a new customer. In other words, it is easier to influence a regular customer to ear four additional bags of potato chips per month than it is to persuade a new customer, who may never have tasted potato chips, to buy even one bag of this exotic new substance.

Most processed food sales, such as Hostess Twinkies, Orea Cookies, and McDonald's Happy Meals, are governed by what those in the business call the "potato chip marketing equation." According to this law, more than 90% or product sales are made to less than 10 percent of their customers. In the case of processed foods, that coveted 10 percent consists largely of people weighing more than 200 pounds and earning less than $35,000 per year. The targeting of overweight customers is especially lucrative since these unfortunate individuals typically consume twice the amount per serving as a person of normal weight.

Each company studies its 10 percent, known as the target market, like rats in a laboratory. Customer surveys reveal their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, hero's, and desires. High-consumption customers are recruited to take part in focus groups, where they are asked to sample new products, view advertising, and offer opinions.

No expense is spared to hit every psychological button that matters to the target market. If people in that market like a particular actor or singer, that very celebrity will soon appear on radio or television, praising the product. If a certain look, feel, or lifestyle appeals to people in that market, legions of stylists and designers will descend on the studio to simulate it. Like a deer in the scope of a hunter at close range, the target never has a chance.

These companies do something even worse than targeting lower-income, unhealthy, overweight consumers for their products. Once the target actually tries the product and becomes a customer, company chemists ensure that they will never be satisfied with eating just a healthy amount of it.

Say, for example, I give you an apple, a banana, a stalk of asparagus, or almost any food in its natural state. After eating two or three apples or bananas, your body begins craving a different kind of food, as the pleasure you feel in your taste buds lessens with each bite. But if I give you a chocolate bar, a McDonald's french fry, a can of cola, or almost any other item of processed food, you almost always crave more and more of the same item, because the chemical flavorings have been altered to ensure that "nobody can eat just one" of them. This chemical alteration causes great over consumption, promoting obesity and destroying the natural tendency of our taste buds to seek variety in what we eat.

The human body requires a daily intake of 13 essential vitamins, most of which the body cannot manufacture on its own. These vitamins, along with certain minerals, are necessary to sustain the millions of chemical reactions our bodies perform each day. Eating a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the day gives us all of what we need. But the majority of Americans are not getting the minimum amount of these vitamins and minerals that their bodies require because of the chemical alteration of the processed and fast foods that they consume.

Over the short term, these vitamin and mineral deficiencies manifest themselves as mood swings, lack of energy, joint pain, failing eyesight, hearing loss, and thousands of other ailments that medical science tells us to accept with advancing age. Over the long term, these deficiencies cause major illness like cancer and heart disease.

The above information was taken from The New Wellness Revolution - Paul Zane Pilzer

In my opinion its not just the over overweight, economically challenged consumer who is the only target. Everyone who has a busy lifestyle is a target!

The mother who works full time, comes home tired, has to feed the family, clean up the mess, perhaps help with homework, do laundry...etc. The last thing she feels like doing is spending an hour in the kitchen preparing dinner...so what's quick? Something from a package or take out!

The business person who doesn't have time to go out to lunch...grabs whatever they can on the fly.

Have you seen what's in the school lunch programs and vending machines?

I often wonder how I managed to make meals almost every night while working full time back when my kids were growing up. The one key thing that sticks in my memory is pre-planning as much as possible...on Sunday afternoon I would make myself a cup of coffee and go thru cookbooks and plan my menu's for the week...that also helped to keep the grocery bill down. My husband would love to have those days back...minus teenagers...I now find myself in the same trap as the majority of the population too much to do and too little time to do it! However, the same principals apply...if you desire to live a healthy lifestyle, and keep the weight off, you have to take the time to plan ahead...if that means chopping veggies and having fresh fruit ready to grab and go... or buying protein shakes so that you can have one at work when you don't have time for a break...it boils down to how bad do you desire to be healthy and fit.

Being over weight once was enough incentive for me to make the effort not to let that happen again!

Why We Need A Wellness Revolution

First, lets check out the definition:

rev-o-lu-tion

a: a sudden, radical, or complete change

b: a fundamental change in political organization

c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation

d: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something: a change of paradigm

The seventeenth- century English writer John Milton saw revolution as the right of society to defend against abusive tyrants-creating a new order that reflected the needs of the people. To Milton, revolution was the means of accomplishing freedom.

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed in revolution as a force for the advancement of humankind-a natural step in the realization of a higher ethical foundation for society.

The nineteenth-century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegal saw revolutions as the fulfillment of human destiny, and he saw revolutionary leaders as necessary to instigate and implement reforms.

These insights aptly apply to the wellness revolution.

Entrepreneurs and revolutionaries are really the same kinds of people born into different circumstances. Both see the status quo in need of change, and both are willing to take risks, and reap the rewards, of changing it.

The revolutionary leaders in wellness are the entrepreneurs who grow and procreate wellness, the inventors who instigate wellness services and products, and the practitioners and distributors who carry the wellness message throughout society.

The above content taken from The New Wellness Revolution by Zane Pilzer

FACT: The U.S. Government has spent billions trying to find a cure for heart disease, cancer and other diseases and yet...

41% of all deaths are cardiovascular related - 1 out of 3 women will be affected by heart disease - 1/2 of the people that develop a heart attack will not survive.

70% of children have the beginnings of hardening of the arteries by the time they reach 12 years of age.

23% of all deaths are due to cancer - 1500 people die of cancer everyday

Add to these figures diabetes which is now said to be the third biggest killer

Still think that things are OK in the health care system?

Yes, there is a cost for wellness, but there is a MUCH bigger cost for sickness...are you willing to pay it?

The Wellness Revolution

A decade ago if you would have seen me on the street, you would have thought that I was healthy and fit, which just goes to show that you can't judge a book by it's cover! Most of my life I've been able to maintain a fairly slender build...and the times I haven't...well, at those times I learned to be a master of disguise. :)

There comes a point in life where eventually you ask yourself "if I don't do anything different where will I end up?" I reached that point just prior to my 5oth birthday, I felt like I had one foot in the grave and couldn't envision the aging process going very well for me considering how lousy I felt...between the monthly migraines that lasted for days at a time, extreme joint & tissue pain, insomnia, and depression...probably brought on by all of the other issues. I felt like a ticking time bomb.

I'm a huge skeptic, so when a client of mine told me that I should go see a lady that she and her husband had gone to for years and that she would whip me up a tincture, (her words!) I had visions of some far out, hippy type person, mixing up herbal remedies! Much to my surprise, she was a very professional lady in a suit...imagine that. That's where my journey started and I've been on a mission ever since to make sure that I don't end up like the majority of the population who work their whole life, save their money, plan for their retirement, and then end up with some illness or disease that either takes away their quality of life or wipes out everything that they have worked for. The sad truth is that it's not just the older population...according to statistics over 1 million middle and upper middle class Americans are forced into bankruptcy every year due to medical related issues. What's even sad er is that most of it could have been prevented.

The book The New Wellness Revolution, by author Paul Zane Pilzer, called "economist turned wellness guru" by the New York Times, has many examples of "why" a Wellness Revolution is necessary. Paul received an honorary doctorate for the role the book played in helping Congress pass Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and other health care reforms-reforms that now allow wellness-oriented consumers to save money on their health insurance and finance their wellness.

Although millions of new consumers every day embrace wellness, millions more remain outside the reach of the current wellness industry and become more overweight, malnourished, exercise less and or continue to smoke.

The New Wellness Revolution explains how the population of every developed nation continues to divide itself into two opposing socio-economic groups - those who are fit and healthy and take care of their wellness, and those who don't.

We are only at the beginning of the public consciousness of this growing need - because most people still are not aware of how simple choices affect their health and well being.

Approximately one-sixth of the US economy, about $2.0 trillion, is devoted to what is erroneously called the "health care" business. Health care is a misnomer, as this one-sixth of the economy is really devoted to the sickness business - defined in the dictionary as "ill health, illness, a disordered, weakened, or unsound condition, or a specific disease."

The sickness business is reactive. Despite its enormous size, people become customers only when they are stricken by and react to a specific condition or ailment. No one really wants to become a customer.

Most of the one-sixth of the U.S. adult working population that work in the health care industry today focus on treating the symptoms of disease rather than on preventing disease. This is because it is more profitable for medical companies to research and develop products that create customers for life.

The wellness business is proactive. People voluntarily become customers - to feel healthier, to reduce the effects of aging, and to avoid becoming customers of the sickness business.

Wellness is defined as "the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal (emphasis added)"

The above statements are taken from the book The new Wellness Revolution...so don't get upset with the messenger!

I've been told by a few in the medical profession that if government health care does in fact happen, we won't even be able to get vitamins without a prescription! Wake up people...we CAN NOT afford to lose anymore of our rights.

So Many Books So Little Time

I've spent most of the day reading and wishing that I could just run my hands over the books and absorb all of the great information and inspiration that they contain!

A friend of mine, who has been such an inspiration, recently sent a link to an ebook of Joe Vitale (The Secret) called Attract Money Now. I've only made it to page 63 so far but its full of insights into what keeps most people from attracting wealth, success, or happiness into their life. Here is a little clip from pg 43:
What you put out into the world comes back to you several times over. If what you put out into the world is positive you receive positive returns. If what you put out is negative, then you receive negative returns. Its that simple. When you were young, you were probably taught the ideas of 'give unto others' or 'its better to give than receive' along with other similar truths. These ideas are simple statements of the Law of Attraction. If you give freely, without expectation of return, you will receive back in kind many times over - not to mention the sheer joy that giving brings into your life.

As you've probably guessed...I've become a book junky! Another book that I found during a trip to Starbucks...my favorite coffee shop...has a large 1 on the front and the question "How many people does it take to make a difference?
I'll end the week with two pages of this book to give you something to ponder!

One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself or anyone else is inspiration. Inspiration to get in touch with your dreams. Inspiration to seek out your deepest passions. Inspiration to make a difference in the world, a difference that only you can make. This is not a book about making a living; it's a book about making a life. It's not a book about fame or acclaim; it's about making a contribution and service. Instead of asking "What can I get from life?",watch what happens when you ask "What can I give?"

What does a GREAT LIFE look like?
Ask a hundred people what a great life looks like and you'll probably get a hundred different answers-but certain answers will make virtually every one's list.

Most people would agree, for example, that a great life includes something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for. A portion of a great life would be devoted to something bigger, greater, grander, than yourself. Something that inspires you, energizes you, pulls you forward. Something that responds to your unique talent or touch and, ultimately, makes a difference in the world around you.

A great life you naturally bring more meaning, purpose, love, laughter, wonder and adventure to your days. And, at the end of your journey you would look back on a life of significance, rather than regret-knowing in your heart that you left the world a better than you found it. Knowing that you made a difference in the lives of others. Knowing that you got something wonderful out of it, and you gave something wonderful back.

A great life, of course, is not something we experience, it's something we create. That's what this book is all about.

I love it...can't wait to work thru it!

Are the Days of Networking and Niches Over?

What a blessing finding this article in my inbox was this morning!

I got involved in the "Health/Wellness" business 2 1/2 years ago because of my own personal life changing events. I was so excited about the changes that I experienced with my health & well being and that of several other people that I've shared the information with that I set out to share it with whoever would listen. If you knew that there was a product that had changed the lives of hundreds of people wouldn't you desire to share it with people?

Unfortunately, at this time, my excitement, passion, and belief has had an impact on a select few...in the big scheme of things...which has been very disappointing to say the least! Especially when the people closest to me, who know for a fact that my life has been truly changed as the result of the products that I've been introduced to...and having issues themselves, but still won't listen...ugh...its enough to make you throw in the towel and say "If I can't even get these people to listen to me who will?" I know I'm ranting but hey it makes me crazy some days...I'd like to knock on peoples heads and say "Is there anyone home up there?" I'm sure I've been that blatant at times to the ones I'm closest to so if you're one of those people reading this I do sincerely apologize.

Ahh...and then comes an article like the one below to fill you with certainty that you are on the right path for the right reasons...to keep plugging along and touch the lives of those who will hear with their hearts...who do desire to live a healthy, vibrant life...those are the people that I will attract into my life...one person at a time!


Are the Days of Networking and Niches Over?

by Karen Frank, Networking Expert

Boy, you can tell that the gurus - and everyone else - is scrambling desperately to figure out this new economy thing. It's pretty interesting actually because one thing I have noticed is that almost no one has a clue what to do - and so they are beginning to bash the experts - and each other.

Of course the two that have caught my attention are the Niche bashers and the Networking haters. Lots and LOTS of people are out there screaming that the emperors (experts) on these two subjects have no clothes.

What's most interesting is that these people with all of the thwaking and whacking of these two "n's" have utterly failed to realize that they are 'undeniably and reliably dead' - wrong. (to borrow a phrase I particularly like from the Munchkins). And there's blame to share because most of the experts also have it wrong - hence the internet airtime battle.

Here's the truth that EVERYONE is failing to see:

Your business is supposed to be an expression of who you are - your highest and best self.

If you don't believe me realize this:

During the industrial age it was important to our economy to have large numbers of people trained to obey and do "big box" corporate jobs - both blue and white collar. Even our school system was created to provide industry with an unlimited supply of ready workers. We, as a society forgot how to be entrepreneurs. As children we were taught that money doesn't grow on trees so we had to give up our deepest desires, be responsible and go get a job. Our jobs became separate from our "regular lives" and our dreams were forgotten.

That was all well and good in 1950 (sort of). Now it's 2010 and schools, business schools, big business and society in general tells us that the 1950's way is "safe and sensible." Don't believe me? Just watch the news tonight. BUT the new economy is all about changing those paradigms. True, many of the experts and gurus haven't caught up, but neither have the naysayers because they too are still coming from this mentality.

"I am not my job, I am a human being." said the Elephant Man and many of the networking naysayers. Well sure you are, but in the new economy your job, your business is not just about making money any more. It's about helping and healing people on a global scale - and that is where the disconnect lies. Your business IS who you are and it is important to be able to articulate that.

Your uniqueness aligns you perfectly to do something that will change people's lives, even if just on a small scale. It's no longer about you making money, it's about you helping people - even if you are "just a financial planner."

And don't get me started on how spirituality and integrity are incompatible with having money. Just how many people can a homeless person help? How many lives will be changed by someone whose business is failing?

The fact is that by successfully communicating who you help, what you help them with and who your perfect client is, you will make the money you need to stay in business and make a difference in this world however you choose to do it.

I can teach networking and why niches are important all day long BUT if the student is "just in if for the money" and they'd rather be off doing something else in their spare time, it's a total waste of time and money because it won't work.

This is also why the network marketing people really struggle. They go money to money. They see their job as changing people's lives by giving them an "opportunity" - which is about making money and recruiting more than it is about helping people with their problems which (oh my god) sometimes have nothing to do with money (imagine that).

So my first request of you in 2010 is to think about what your ideal life would be like. Not just the things you want, but your life, your experiences. What would you like your perfect day to be like? Where would you go? What would you do? With whom would you do it?

Take out a sheet of paper and write it down - seriously.

When you answer these questions, you'll be able to see clearly whether your business is really an expression of you or if you are "just in it for the money." If your job is a mismatch for your ideal life, then you need to make some adjustments. I am not saying close your doors necessarily, just notice and adjust.

Finally, as you think about how to talk about what you do and for whom you do it (your networking statement and your niche) remember your passion. The deep "why" buried beneath the surface of why you do what you do. When you speak with that passion to someone about what you do, the words come easily and don't matter so much, because they will hear you with more than their ears. They will also hear you with their hearts.

And that is what Networking is all about.

Want to use this article in your newsletter or on your website? You can! Just be sure to include the entire article and include this complete "blurb" with it:

Networking Expert, Karen Frank publishes Networking News, a semi-monthly newsletter devoted to helping you avoid marketing disasters and networking faux pas. Get the home study course "The Seven Deadly Sins of Networking and How to Avoid them" Free when you sign up for Networking News at www.3ecommunications.net.

The Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction is as scrupulously fair as a mirror.
Man tends to attract to himself that which he loves, fears, or steadily expects; that is, those things that he keeps at his central (focal) consciousness.

Man fears certain negative experiences, and quite logically, he attracts them. There will come times when the negative will edge toward the center, but the instant he notices this, he will immediately say "I resist that suggestion" and he will again bring back into focus that good that he wishes. Gradually, he will notice that the good, more and more, tends to stay at the center, while the negative tends to fade away.

The above is taken from The Science of Mind by Frederick Bailes

Thoughts attract that upon which it is directed. Recall that it was Job who said: "For the thing which I have feared has come upon me." Our fear thoughts are just as magnetic in attracting troubles to us as are the constructive and positive thoughts in attracting positive results. So no matter what the character of the thought, it does create after its kind. When this sinks into man's consciousness, he gets some inkling of the awe-inspiring power which is his.

We hear and read much about various stages of thought, degrees of consciousness, thought concentration, the strength of our faith, all of which deals with the intensity or degree of power we send forth. Creative force comes only when there is a fully developed mental picture, or when the imagination can visualize the fulfillment of our ambition and see in our mind a picture of the object we desire....just as if we already possessed them.

As a result of my studies of the so-called mystic teachings, the various mental sciences and the regular orthodox church teachings, I am convinced that they all work in varying degrees, but only to the extent that their followers believe. So it is with prayer, whether it be a part of a church service or the purely spontaneous and personal supplication of the individual.

However, I am forced to the conclusion that many people go through the lip-service act of saying their prayers without the slightest belief that those prayers will be answered.

Taken from the Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol

It is written; "it is done unto you as you believe"

When I first started reading these materials it was just too out there for me...a lot of it went against my personal spiritual beliefs and some of it still does...however, the more I dig into it the more I realize that a lot of the principles presented are found throughout the scriptures of all religions. What I've learned thru this process is; even though we may not agree in full with what is being presented, when we close our minds to things we may miss out on some pearls of wisdom that can be gathered along this path of life.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge...knowledge is limited."
Einstein