Category Archives: Thoughts

Update on my Friend, Robert Crayhon

Many of you know about my friendship with Robert Crayhon, author, nutritionist and all-around good person. Unfortunately, many of you also know of his fight with stage IV colorectal cancer. I’d like to bring you an update on his condition and ask that you help him out if you can with either a donation or with caring words by going to these two websites:

To make a donation to help with Robert’s care please go to this website which is through Pay Pal.

To wish him well go to this site and pass a note showing all the love and care we all have for him.

Life – Things to Think About

This piece was presented as Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement address at MIT in 1997. It’s great stuff, but apparently it wasn’t written or delivered by Vonnegut. It’s still a beautiful piece… Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Why We Are Really in the Mess We Are In

The problem with the American society today is that we forgot that hard work and compassion and not over consumption is what made us a great country. We think that we have to have a bigger house, a better car, fancier clothes and more money than our neighbor that twisted our minds away from what truly makes us happy and that is compassion for others. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama once said, “I truly believe compassion provides the basis of human survival, the real value of life, without that there is a basic piece missing. We cannot be happy ourselves without thinking about the happiness of others.”  Isn’t that the truth?

From my vantage point, this is why the Republican party is in a free fall. They seem to want to retain the greed mentality without offering anything in return to society. Consumption, consumption, consumption. Drill for more gas, the hell with reducing our consumption. Cut taxes for the wealthy so that in some mythical way it will trickle down to the poor (what a monumental con job that was).

Lest the Democrats and liberals rejoice, they have lacked the backbone to make it clear to the American people that the way we’ve been doing things just doesn’t work. They meekly push half baked projects to curtail consumption but in reality, they still like the ability to enrich themselves and their friend. Just ask the thousands of lobbyists that roam the hallways of Congress.

Compassion for others is the only way out of the morass we live in. We don’t need a million man march to do that, we need each and everyone of us to think about it, and do something compassionate whenever we can. It doesn’t need to be everyday, just whenever you can. The ripple effect from one small act, can change the world.

Sometimes, Being Nice Comes Back in a Big Way

Just got one of those feel good emails I felt like sharing with everyone. Thanks to Frank Cook for the big smile I got after reading it.

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make   a living for his family, he heard a cry for
help coming from a nearby bog.   He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the
lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and
introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

‘I want to repay you,’ said the nobleman. ‘You saved my son’s life.’

‘No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,’ the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer’s own son
came to the door of the family hovel.

‘Is that your son?’ the nobleman asked.

‘Yes,’ the farmer replied proudly.

‘I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy  If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.’ And that he did.
Farmer Fleming’s  son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary’s  Hospital Medical School in London, and
went on to become known throughout  the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.
What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill .. His son’s name?

Sir Winston Churchill..

Someone once said: What goes around comes around.

Work like you don’t need the money.

Love like you’ve never been hurt.

Dance like nobody’s watching.

Sing like nobody’s listening.

Live like it’s Heaven on Earth.

Nice Definition of Open Mindedness

While Stumbling around the internet, I came across this video clip about what open-mindedness really is. Most people know that I am pretty open-minded about a lot of things but I have been accused of being very close-minded about products that just don’t have sufficient evidence to be anything except a scam. The video here shows how some people who accuse others of being close-minded are themselves the very thing they are accussing the other person.

Tara Parker-Pope: A Reporter Who Needs a Different Job

The New York Times, a newspaper you either love or hate, typically has a fine line-up of reporters and writers but one in particular needs resign from her position and find another line of work that does not require the ability to do careful research and intelligence. Tara Parker-Pope, needs to switch from reporting to something that only requires manual labor. Her recent article, “News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins” is an embarassment and is just another example of an inability she has to find out what the word truth means.

If she had bothered to research the studies she cites instead of choking the nonsense down like an obese person at an all you can eat buffet, she would have seen that what was presented was biased and consisted of terribly constructed research. The quantities of vitamin C and E used in the cardiovascular and cancer study were ridiculously low. Go to my podcast site labinterpretation.podhoster.com and listen to episode 13 where I discuss the issues that should have made the studies Ms. Parker-Pope cites go unpublished.

One of the major problems I have with the study on Vitamin C was the insanely low dose used. They used 500 mg of C daily when all intelligent researchers and clinicians know that you need a minimum of 2 grams and with cancer, 10 grams daily to get the needed effect. It is similar to the nonsense from the Mayo Clinic when they tried to disprove Dr. Pauling and Dr. Cameron’s work on cancer. They used intravenous vitamin C and Mayo used oral C and yet they claimed it was the same (it is definitely not). This is blatant dishonesty and the media is supposed to be objective and uncover the truth, not chow down on anything the so-called experts say. Ms. Parker-Pope, find a new job.