For The Rome Observer, November 29, 2010
By Elizabeth Szlek, LMHC
I suppose that many of you read that the FDA is now considering allowing Monsanto to start producing genetically modified sugar beets for widespread consumption in America, and probably elsewhere. A couple of months ago it was the salmon they were going to be tinkering with, and some reports say the FDA is “poised” to approve what some refer to as “Frankenfish”. This would be the first genetically engineered animal deemed safe for us all to eat.
Naturally (no pun intended), thousands, if not millions of Americans, and scores of ad hoc groups are springing up to protest this horrible idea, and I have written about some of the down side to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s). At this point in our history, I hope you all out there realize that our government is now on the side of Big Whatever (Business, Pharma, Food), and not on YOUR side. And, as proper little citizens, we are pretty much just sitting back and allowing this farcical “protection” agency to keep doing things in our worst interest. What is more basic than food that is nutritious? If we can’t get excited over protecting our food supply, what else can do it?
Or, are we thinking: Well, they don’t serve salmon at Mickey Dee’s anyway, so what’s the harm?
Because there is no rioting in the streets, I guess the FDA will let this one slide through, just as they did with the approval of aspartame. And we all will go on eating and drinking the stuff that will eventually kill us, or maybe just render everyone sterile.
Maybe it is the high percentage of those who have been numbed with psychotropic medication that keeps us so passive and controlled.
Other people in the world aren’t so passive, however. In August, Spanish citizens, in a sort of posse, attacked a whole vineyard planted with GMO grapevines, destroying them all. French citizens did the same, and it has also been done in Roanoke, VA. Some people are doing their research, and realize this means the end of food we can trust.
What’s the Big Deal?
If I may repeat some past warnings about the negative effects of GMO’s, what we can all look forward to is:
1. The appearance of more and more food allergies among our populations. Right now, I’ll bet you personally know someone who is deathly allergic to something. I know I do. This was not the case before GMO’s appeared on the scene. Now we have tots at death’s door because of peanut allergies. I met a woman last week who has to carry her epi pen in case someone has sneaked any one of about thirty ingredients into the food she may eat. Soy, corn and some other ubiquitous products are in the neighborhood of 90% GM at this time. Soy products are everywhere, especially where you least expect them. They are triggering lots of allergies, and things can only get worse from here. To think that we need MORE GM foods in our system is ludicrous, if it were not unethical and possibly criminal.
2. When foods are genetically modified in any way, it is a total mystery as to how the foods will change generation after generation. It is likely that even if the food is not overtly harmful at once, it can develop deadly toxic properties after several generations. This has been proven in scientific studies. Are you willing to take that chance with your life, or the life of your children? Remember, it is very, very difficult to trace these kinds of toxins to their sources, and the engineering companies and seed companies will probably get a free ride on the blame game.
3. GM foods are sometimes altered in a way to make them less nutritious. This means you can be consuming them, thinking that you are eating something nutritious, and actually, it is a nutritiously dead food. Have some GM salmon, feel virtuous, and find you have been eating the nutrition equivalent of a Pop Tart! Sounds great, no? And, if they keep making more of our superfoods like salmon into GM foods, will there be any superfoods left? What will we eat for our nutrition needs?
4. There is some speculation that GM foods are going to prove to be endocrine disrupters. That is, they will interfere with hormones in our bodies. Down the road, this spells infertility! Not to go all “conspiracy theory” on you, but trials were conducted on GM corn in Mexico which were actually intended to be endocrine disrupters. They worked! Those who consumed them became infertile! Is this what you want for your children?
Now, I’m Really Mad!!!!
There was an uproar in the past year about the GM sugar beet problem. Farmers were ordered to stop using the GM seeds for their sugar beets. After all, the sugar was going into the candy that kids would be devouring on Halloween! See the four points above and try and decide whether you want your Gummy Bears made with GM beets!
However, the jury is still out on this one, so the farmers were given the go-ahead to resume using the GM seeds until a final ruling is made. HUH??? Wouldn’t it make more sense to hold off on the GM junk until real scientists not in the employ of Big Food do some tests and definitively determine what the heck is going on? Not in America! No, just go ahead and create these possibly life-threatening foods. We all want to be your guinea pigs!
In fact, I LOVE BEETS!!!!!! And they are really GOOD for you – when they are in their non-GM state. They contain flavanoids that can protect you from cancer. But even if they didn’t they are among the very best vegetables to consume, especially raw, when they are simply loaded with beneficial enzymes. Now, I have to worry that my ton a year of beets is actually harming me? My ancestors in Poland are now spinning in their graves to think that the marvelous beet could cause harm.
I am writing in a light vein here, but I want to stress this: Your life and the lives of your children are in grave danger from those who would purposely contaminate the foods that give life. Please let your representative in Congress know that you don’t want to eat Frankenfoods!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Yorkville, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Fighting Memes!
For The Rome Observer: November 23, 2010
By Elizabeth Szlek, Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Someone recently gave me a book to look at, Carol Kivler’s Will I Ever Be The Same Again? It’s a pretty short book, but the message is very important- in a negative way. What the book amounts to is propaganda, and dangerous propaganda at that. It’s the story of an unhappy woman who can’t face the fact that she is living the American dream, and hating it. She becomes very sad, and then decides to bow to the nudging of the kindly medical professionals and agree to some mind-altering treatments.
I am quite sure that Ms. Kivler is earnest in her attempt to help us all understand her pain in suffering from depression, and is equally earnest to enlighten about the wonders of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT). Unfortunately, her efforts are blighted by both her scientific knowledge, and perhaps even self-knowledge. In a word, the book represents a view of emotional distress that is not consistent with reality. Ms. Kivler has been fully indoctrinated into the biopsychiatric worldview, and is a mouthpiece for this dangerous and harmful philosophy. I will write more about this view, but, briefly, it proposes that humans are mere conglomerations of chemicals, without souls. All mental distress, in this view, is caused by some unexplainable balance of brain chemicals, and fixing the problem revolves, mostly, around taking psychotropic, or mind-altering medications, or submitting, like Ms. Kivler, to barbaric assaults on the fully functioning brain.
First, I must explain my reaction to her subtitle: “Transforming the Face of ECT (Shock Therapy).” In fact, ECT needs no such transformation. It has always been feared by patients, and rightly so. No one will benefit from embracing this disabling “treatment”, except perhaps the doctors who earn thousands of dollars every time they flip the switch and light up someone’s brain.
Many books have been devoted to this topic already, but to just name a couple: Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, by Peter Breggin, M.D., who is an internationally respected psychiatrist, and The History of Shock Treatment, by Leonard Roy Frank, a patient’s rights advocate, mental health activist, and victim of shock therapy. These books outline in minute detail the negative effects of this brain-disabling method of dealing with people in distress. So, right out of the box, we must face the fact that ECT destroys brain cells. Lots of brain cells!
One example Ms. Kivler failed to include in her pantheon of “celebrities” who have undergone ECT is Ernest Hemingway, who famously blew his brains out after he realized he had suffered brain damage following this “treatment” for his depression. Few among us would every consider seizures as healing events, and neurologists struggle to prevent them in those who suffer them naturally.
There is no credible science to suggest that ECT does anything except kill brain cells, and Ms. Kivler’s “scientific” explanation is ludicrous. If someone feels “better” after ECT, this is by no means any indication that the seizure has “fixed something”. It hasn’t. Perhaps the pain of existence burns less brightly, and this is translated into “relief”. Or, the memory loss that inevitably follows blunts one’s distress to some degree, and that is regarded as “remission”. As Peter Breggin notes in his latest book Medication Madness, people with altered brains are very poor judges of their own mental states, and those with brain trauma are among the least capable of such judgment.
Cui Bono?
This is a legal term, meaning, “whose benefit?” I ask this question of Ms. Kivler. Who benefits from this little tome? I looked at her testimonials, and saw that this was a book supporting (or supported by?) NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If we get into the book at all, it is obvious that Ms. Kivler has bought their perspective on mental illness, hook, line and sinker. She calls herself a “consumer”, she is not to blame at all for her depression, and shares no part in its genesis, she has nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about, she needs to be on medication forever, she spends a lot of time with others similarly indoctrinated, realizes that she has a chemical imbalance in her brain, and that she has a real illness, called depression. This is the total package of NAMI thinking, and all I can say is: Nah! Nope! No way! Not so! And especially: Ain’t true!
So, who benefits from this propaganda? Not Ms. Kivler, who has sacrificed untold numbers of brain cells to the cause. No, the big winners in this are biopsychiatry and Big Pharma, via the Big Pharma funded NAMI, who spreads their poisonous thinking far and wide.
Fighting the Memes!
I have decided that in future articles I will attempt to disassemble many of the memes currently overhanging our society. Memes are ideas, or thoughts which are disseminated by those in power to sway the thinking and behavior of us all. Memes are a deliberate and distinct form of propaganda.
It takes a lot of work, reading, research and study to overcome the power of the meme. One such meme, obviously, is “Depression is a disease, like diabetes.” This meme has been floating about for years, if nowhere else than in the billion-dollar ads for such poison as Zoloft or Zyprexa. If you will give me a few moments each week, I will try to present some anti-memes to you all. You can certainly disagree with me, but you had better come up with some real science, because I am armed and ready with mine!
I am greatly moved by the suffering, spiritual, emotional and physical, of those around me. I try my best to help people look within and without themselves to find the source of their unease. Very often, it works! What never works is medication for spiritual or emotional problems. But, I hope I will have many weeks ahead to give you all the latest information on an alternate reality I inhabit. It is a place where people are sad, or despondent, not “clinically depressed”. I never used labels for people, such as “schizophrenic”. I call people “overwhelmed”. I believe that we are not mere animals, concentrations of various chemicals which mysteriously interact to make us “depressed”.
No, we are alive and responding to our thoughts, our lives, even our nutrition. There are understandable reasons we become sad. In fact, in reading Ms. Kivler’s early chapters, it became apparent to me that she was less than thrilled with her endless motherly duties, and lack of personal fulfillment. I think that, plus a somewhat lousy marriage, was the REAL cause of her “clinical depression”, and I think she was too polite to say anything about it. If she were my client, and I sincerely wish she had been before she killed off millions of brain cells, I probably would have told her to can the idea of being Super Mom, and go out and do something she felt was more life-enhancing – even if it meant her kids didn’t have a home-baked brownie every afternoon. But, that’s just me.
One last word: Let’s fight the memes together! Stayed tuned!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Yorkville, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
By Elizabeth Szlek, Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Someone recently gave me a book to look at, Carol Kivler’s Will I Ever Be The Same Again? It’s a pretty short book, but the message is very important- in a negative way. What the book amounts to is propaganda, and dangerous propaganda at that. It’s the story of an unhappy woman who can’t face the fact that she is living the American dream, and hating it. She becomes very sad, and then decides to bow to the nudging of the kindly medical professionals and agree to some mind-altering treatments.
I am quite sure that Ms. Kivler is earnest in her attempt to help us all understand her pain in suffering from depression, and is equally earnest to enlighten about the wonders of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT). Unfortunately, her efforts are blighted by both her scientific knowledge, and perhaps even self-knowledge. In a word, the book represents a view of emotional distress that is not consistent with reality. Ms. Kivler has been fully indoctrinated into the biopsychiatric worldview, and is a mouthpiece for this dangerous and harmful philosophy. I will write more about this view, but, briefly, it proposes that humans are mere conglomerations of chemicals, without souls. All mental distress, in this view, is caused by some unexplainable balance of brain chemicals, and fixing the problem revolves, mostly, around taking psychotropic, or mind-altering medications, or submitting, like Ms. Kivler, to barbaric assaults on the fully functioning brain.
First, I must explain my reaction to her subtitle: “Transforming the Face of ECT (Shock Therapy).” In fact, ECT needs no such transformation. It has always been feared by patients, and rightly so. No one will benefit from embracing this disabling “treatment”, except perhaps the doctors who earn thousands of dollars every time they flip the switch and light up someone’s brain.
Many books have been devoted to this topic already, but to just name a couple: Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, by Peter Breggin, M.D., who is an internationally respected psychiatrist, and The History of Shock Treatment, by Leonard Roy Frank, a patient’s rights advocate, mental health activist, and victim of shock therapy. These books outline in minute detail the negative effects of this brain-disabling method of dealing with people in distress. So, right out of the box, we must face the fact that ECT destroys brain cells. Lots of brain cells!
One example Ms. Kivler failed to include in her pantheon of “celebrities” who have undergone ECT is Ernest Hemingway, who famously blew his brains out after he realized he had suffered brain damage following this “treatment” for his depression. Few among us would every consider seizures as healing events, and neurologists struggle to prevent them in those who suffer them naturally.
There is no credible science to suggest that ECT does anything except kill brain cells, and Ms. Kivler’s “scientific” explanation is ludicrous. If someone feels “better” after ECT, this is by no means any indication that the seizure has “fixed something”. It hasn’t. Perhaps the pain of existence burns less brightly, and this is translated into “relief”. Or, the memory loss that inevitably follows blunts one’s distress to some degree, and that is regarded as “remission”. As Peter Breggin notes in his latest book Medication Madness, people with altered brains are very poor judges of their own mental states, and those with brain trauma are among the least capable of such judgment.
Cui Bono?
This is a legal term, meaning, “whose benefit?” I ask this question of Ms. Kivler. Who benefits from this little tome? I looked at her testimonials, and saw that this was a book supporting (or supported by?) NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If we get into the book at all, it is obvious that Ms. Kivler has bought their perspective on mental illness, hook, line and sinker. She calls herself a “consumer”, she is not to blame at all for her depression, and shares no part in its genesis, she has nothing to be ashamed of or guilty about, she needs to be on medication forever, she spends a lot of time with others similarly indoctrinated, realizes that she has a chemical imbalance in her brain, and that she has a real illness, called depression. This is the total package of NAMI thinking, and all I can say is: Nah! Nope! No way! Not so! And especially: Ain’t true!
So, who benefits from this propaganda? Not Ms. Kivler, who has sacrificed untold numbers of brain cells to the cause. No, the big winners in this are biopsychiatry and Big Pharma, via the Big Pharma funded NAMI, who spreads their poisonous thinking far and wide.
Fighting the Memes!
I have decided that in future articles I will attempt to disassemble many of the memes currently overhanging our society. Memes are ideas, or thoughts which are disseminated by those in power to sway the thinking and behavior of us all. Memes are a deliberate and distinct form of propaganda.
It takes a lot of work, reading, research and study to overcome the power of the meme. One such meme, obviously, is “Depression is a disease, like diabetes.” This meme has been floating about for years, if nowhere else than in the billion-dollar ads for such poison as Zoloft or Zyprexa. If you will give me a few moments each week, I will try to present some anti-memes to you all. You can certainly disagree with me, but you had better come up with some real science, because I am armed and ready with mine!
I am greatly moved by the suffering, spiritual, emotional and physical, of those around me. I try my best to help people look within and without themselves to find the source of their unease. Very often, it works! What never works is medication for spiritual or emotional problems. But, I hope I will have many weeks ahead to give you all the latest information on an alternate reality I inhabit. It is a place where people are sad, or despondent, not “clinically depressed”. I never used labels for people, such as “schizophrenic”. I call people “overwhelmed”. I believe that we are not mere animals, concentrations of various chemicals which mysteriously interact to make us “depressed”.
No, we are alive and responding to our thoughts, our lives, even our nutrition. There are understandable reasons we become sad. In fact, in reading Ms. Kivler’s early chapters, it became apparent to me that she was less than thrilled with her endless motherly duties, and lack of personal fulfillment. I think that, plus a somewhat lousy marriage, was the REAL cause of her “clinical depression”, and I think she was too polite to say anything about it. If she were my client, and I sincerely wish she had been before she killed off millions of brain cells, I probably would have told her to can the idea of being Super Mom, and go out and do something she felt was more life-enhancing – even if it meant her kids didn’t have a home-baked brownie every afternoon. But, that’s just me.
One last word: Let’s fight the memes together! Stayed tuned!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Yorkville, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
Monday, November 15, 2010
"Supersize Me" Redux
By Elizabeth Szlek, LMHC
For The Rome Observer, November 15, 2010
Last night I had a chance to rewatch the movie “Supersize Me”, which came out in 2004. Since the time I first saw it, I have moved to a different understanding of nutrition, largely because I have had to do my own research and find out what is really going on. The fact is, just as with the drug industry, the food industry, or Big Food, as we might call it, is working “in cahoots” with the agencies that regulate and speak with authority on our food supply. And, just as with Big Pharma, a lot of downright lies are being passed on to us at every turn.
But first, the movie’s creator, Morgan Spurlock, as you recall, subjected himself to one full month of All McDonald’s meals. That would equal ninety doses of fast food, or, as one nutritionist put it, eight years worth of fast food, if eaten at a safe rate.
What happened to Mr. Spurlock on this diet? He developed high blood pressure, high triglycerides and cholesterol levels, began on the pathway to gout, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, liver failure, sexual impotency, and other conditions which, thankfully, reversed themselves within a year or so. Part of his rationale for making the film was that two young women had sued McDonald’s as being responsible for their weight gains of seventy to one hundred pounds. When the movie ended, and Spurlock was found on the brink of systemic collapse, it was noted that the women’s case was being reconsidered, after initially being thrown out.
Some Hasty Conclusions
As Spurlock grew fatter and fatter (he gained about 25 lbs.!), he also suffered from other kinds of symptoms, such as mental health issues, including depression. This was particularly interesting to me, since I am now becoming more and more involved in separating nutritional depression from other kinds. My inbox for e-mail is loaded with all kinds of notices about teens and depression, and the rise of depression in general in the modern world. I don’t think anyone could argue that our lives are far more comfortable now that they have ever been in the history of the world.
Really, there are some people in America you could call “poor”, but when you compare our citizens to say, the Haitians, who are living miserable lives of deprivation, the word “poor” is a relative term. Those with shelter, enough food and clothing, television sets and cell phones and other modern accoutrements can hardly be compared to those subsisting on fifty cents a day in Third World Countries. And yet, with all the wealth we enjoy, suicide rates just keep climbing. I realize that material things do not bring happiness, but even if they promote just material comfort and not spiritual ease, why should our people be killing themselves? Of course, I look to their spiritual lives, which are wanting, but first, I like to look at their diets.
Let’s face it: The typical American diet is just horrible! Add to the regular lousy American diet such items as fast food, and you indeed have a recipe for suicide. It is true that the regular American diet produces malnourishment. Don’t confuse malnourishment with hunger or starvation. Well, it is a sort of starvation: The body is starved for proper nutrition. The most easily detected elements, vitamins are present in such minute quantities that we can just write them off. In addition, good fats and enzymes are also sorely lacking. The brain does not function when it is malnourished. Hence, such “symptoms” as suicide. Believe me, all the “counseling” in the world will not help a depression that is based in poor nutrition. Can we assume that many of those drawn into suicide got there because of their terrible diets? I sure think so!
Some Erroneous Conclusions
As Spurlock went from doctor to nutritionist to doctor, they all became more and more concerned for his fate. And, when the final numbers came in, they all made their pronouncements: “See, a diet in too much fat can kill you!” Well, yes and no.
A diet with too much of the WRONG fat certainly can and does kill you! But no one was making this distinction. Fat was just bad for you, according to all of them, and a low-fat diet would cure all that ails you. Except, it doesn’t.
No one picked up, in the film, on the rise in phosphorus levels in Spurlock’s blood, except to say that he would soon develop gout. But what was the source of all this phosphorus? Of course, it was in the Supersized sodas that he drank several times a day.
I have previously written about the problem of soft drinks and gout. The doctors all seemed to look at Spurlock’s diets in a monolithic way. One interesting fact: There was one man featured who ate three Big Macs a day, and he had already consumed over 19,000 of them. Funny thing was, he wasn’t even fat! But, he ate no French fries, and soda was not mentioned either. He just ate Big Macs. Big Macs, which do nonetheless contain sugar, are low in the kinds of fats French fries swim in: Hydrogenated oils. So, this man was relatively untouched by his bizarre diet. Meat and cheese were not killing him. Hydrogenated oils and sugar were killing Spurlock, and all the others who consume them in large quantities. Yet, the doctors inveighed against “saturated fats” as if they were directly implicated in Spurlock’s tremendous weight gain.
Also quite weird was Spurlock’s girlfriend, a vegan chef, claiming that now that he was off the McDonald’s diet, he needed to eat “nutrient dense” foods to cleanse his system. My question to her: What vegan foods are nutrient dense? Vegetables and fruits do have many beneficial nutrients, but the only real nutrient dense foods are of animal origin. Foods like eggs, raw milk products, organ meats, fish and shellfish, saturated fats and fish liver oil are the most nutrient dense foods we know. A little postscript added that after Mr. Spurlock “cleansed his body” of all the fast food junk, he reverted to being a meat eater, and left the tofu behind. Good for him!
It bothers me when I read, as last week, that in San Francisco they want to ban the use of whole milk in the Happy Meals kids get there, or something like that. Children should not be consuming low fat anything, because their growing bodies need fat to create new cells. Low fat milk has added powdered milk, a dangerous product, since it is highly processed. Children who consume it have much higher rates of asthma than children who consume whole milk. Do the research!
Overeating is one of the main problems when dealing with fast food. Huge portions and the use of high fructose corn syrup conspire to create big, obese, fast-food addicted customers. Stay away from fast food, but learn to eat foods that are actually life-giving, even if “they” say they are not good for you!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY, and is a trained chef and Health and Wellness Counselor. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 786-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
For The Rome Observer, November 15, 2010
Last night I had a chance to rewatch the movie “Supersize Me”, which came out in 2004. Since the time I first saw it, I have moved to a different understanding of nutrition, largely because I have had to do my own research and find out what is really going on. The fact is, just as with the drug industry, the food industry, or Big Food, as we might call it, is working “in cahoots” with the agencies that regulate and speak with authority on our food supply. And, just as with Big Pharma, a lot of downright lies are being passed on to us at every turn.
But first, the movie’s creator, Morgan Spurlock, as you recall, subjected himself to one full month of All McDonald’s meals. That would equal ninety doses of fast food, or, as one nutritionist put it, eight years worth of fast food, if eaten at a safe rate.
What happened to Mr. Spurlock on this diet? He developed high blood pressure, high triglycerides and cholesterol levels, began on the pathway to gout, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, liver failure, sexual impotency, and other conditions which, thankfully, reversed themselves within a year or so. Part of his rationale for making the film was that two young women had sued McDonald’s as being responsible for their weight gains of seventy to one hundred pounds. When the movie ended, and Spurlock was found on the brink of systemic collapse, it was noted that the women’s case was being reconsidered, after initially being thrown out.
Some Hasty Conclusions
As Spurlock grew fatter and fatter (he gained about 25 lbs.!), he also suffered from other kinds of symptoms, such as mental health issues, including depression. This was particularly interesting to me, since I am now becoming more and more involved in separating nutritional depression from other kinds. My inbox for e-mail is loaded with all kinds of notices about teens and depression, and the rise of depression in general in the modern world. I don’t think anyone could argue that our lives are far more comfortable now that they have ever been in the history of the world.
Really, there are some people in America you could call “poor”, but when you compare our citizens to say, the Haitians, who are living miserable lives of deprivation, the word “poor” is a relative term. Those with shelter, enough food and clothing, television sets and cell phones and other modern accoutrements can hardly be compared to those subsisting on fifty cents a day in Third World Countries. And yet, with all the wealth we enjoy, suicide rates just keep climbing. I realize that material things do not bring happiness, but even if they promote just material comfort and not spiritual ease, why should our people be killing themselves? Of course, I look to their spiritual lives, which are wanting, but first, I like to look at their diets.
Let’s face it: The typical American diet is just horrible! Add to the regular lousy American diet such items as fast food, and you indeed have a recipe for suicide. It is true that the regular American diet produces malnourishment. Don’t confuse malnourishment with hunger or starvation. Well, it is a sort of starvation: The body is starved for proper nutrition. The most easily detected elements, vitamins are present in such minute quantities that we can just write them off. In addition, good fats and enzymes are also sorely lacking. The brain does not function when it is malnourished. Hence, such “symptoms” as suicide. Believe me, all the “counseling” in the world will not help a depression that is based in poor nutrition. Can we assume that many of those drawn into suicide got there because of their terrible diets? I sure think so!
Some Erroneous Conclusions
As Spurlock went from doctor to nutritionist to doctor, they all became more and more concerned for his fate. And, when the final numbers came in, they all made their pronouncements: “See, a diet in too much fat can kill you!” Well, yes and no.
A diet with too much of the WRONG fat certainly can and does kill you! But no one was making this distinction. Fat was just bad for you, according to all of them, and a low-fat diet would cure all that ails you. Except, it doesn’t.
No one picked up, in the film, on the rise in phosphorus levels in Spurlock’s blood, except to say that he would soon develop gout. But what was the source of all this phosphorus? Of course, it was in the Supersized sodas that he drank several times a day.
I have previously written about the problem of soft drinks and gout. The doctors all seemed to look at Spurlock’s diets in a monolithic way. One interesting fact: There was one man featured who ate three Big Macs a day, and he had already consumed over 19,000 of them. Funny thing was, he wasn’t even fat! But, he ate no French fries, and soda was not mentioned either. He just ate Big Macs. Big Macs, which do nonetheless contain sugar, are low in the kinds of fats French fries swim in: Hydrogenated oils. So, this man was relatively untouched by his bizarre diet. Meat and cheese were not killing him. Hydrogenated oils and sugar were killing Spurlock, and all the others who consume them in large quantities. Yet, the doctors inveighed against “saturated fats” as if they were directly implicated in Spurlock’s tremendous weight gain.
Also quite weird was Spurlock’s girlfriend, a vegan chef, claiming that now that he was off the McDonald’s diet, he needed to eat “nutrient dense” foods to cleanse his system. My question to her: What vegan foods are nutrient dense? Vegetables and fruits do have many beneficial nutrients, but the only real nutrient dense foods are of animal origin. Foods like eggs, raw milk products, organ meats, fish and shellfish, saturated fats and fish liver oil are the most nutrient dense foods we know. A little postscript added that after Mr. Spurlock “cleansed his body” of all the fast food junk, he reverted to being a meat eater, and left the tofu behind. Good for him!
It bothers me when I read, as last week, that in San Francisco they want to ban the use of whole milk in the Happy Meals kids get there, or something like that. Children should not be consuming low fat anything, because their growing bodies need fat to create new cells. Low fat milk has added powdered milk, a dangerous product, since it is highly processed. Children who consume it have much higher rates of asthma than children who consume whole milk. Do the research!
Overeating is one of the main problems when dealing with fast food. Huge portions and the use of high fructose corn syrup conspire to create big, obese, fast-food addicted customers. Stay away from fast food, but learn to eat foods that are actually life-giving, even if “they” say they are not good for you!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY, and is a trained chef and Health and Wellness Counselor. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 786-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
Monday, November 1, 2010
How To Be Assertive
For The Rome Observer: November 2, 2010
By Elizabeth Szlek, Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Now that Thanksgiving is coming into view, many of us will be facing family members who seem to lack personal boundaries. More about that some other time. Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite things: Assertiveness. What is it? Why do we need it? How is it different from other ways of dealing with conflict?
What is Assertiveness?
The Webster’s Dictionary I checked gave two definitions of assert. One: “To state positively, declare or affirm”, and Two: “To maintain or defend (one’s rights, etc.)”. My own use of the term incorporates both these ideas. We need to be able to speak up and state the obvious without fear, and we need to defend ourselves and others when conflict rears its ugly head.
Assertiveness as a response style is the only mature way to handle the inevitable problems we face living with others. Because it is a respectful style, it causes much less pain and guilt than aggressiveness or manipulation. It is affirming to the other person when done properly. To quote my former professor, “ Assertiveness says ‘You count and I count”. Nobody is the loser here, and it creates an atmosphere of listening and co-operation.
Why Do We Need Assertiveness?
We need to be acquainted with the skill of assertiveness because when we use it to deal with problems, it preserves our relationships with others. If you catch yourself burning your bridges again and again, it is likely you don’t understand how to be assertive. If you find yourself suffering from chronic depression, fatigue and other “down” kinds of feelings, it is also likely that you don’t use assertiveness in handling conflicts. In fact, you are probably just absorbing all the negativity others are throwing at you, and it is bumming you out!
What Does Assertiveness Look Like?
It’s easy to think of a million examples where being assertive can be used. Let’s start with an easy one: The check-out line at Big M on Main Street. You are waiting in line, and suddenly, a guy steps in front of you. What to do? The aggressive person will say, “Hey, Buddy, back of the line!” and throw an ugly face his way. The passive person will, of course, say nothing, but will silently be angry, thus compounding the rage inside, generating another migraine later on. The passive-aggressive person will say nothing, but will “accidentally” ram the guy in the behind with their basket. What will the assertive person do? They will probably say something like, “Excuse me, sir. I’m sure you are in as much of a hurry as I am, but I believe I was next in line. Can you let me go ahead?”
That’s it in a nutshell. However, hidden in this response is a three-part statement we will now deconstruct.
The Three “A’s”
To create an assertive statement, we need to make sure it has those three parts.
The first part is the Affirmation. If we want to make a good assertion, we don’t want to lose everybody at the get-go. So, we create an affirmation which tells the person we understand that they have their own unique point of view, and we appreciate it. Now, we don’t agree with it, but we can see that they are coming from a different place. This is the hardest part for those who are used to being aggressive and riding roughshod over others. But, research has shown that when the affirmation is added to the assertive statement, it gets far more results than just the naked assertion. Think of it as the bow on the package.
The second part of the statement is the Assertion. This is where you make your case. You tell the other person the way you see things, your reality. This isn’t hard to do.
The final part of the statement is the Action. You want to see something happen here, and this is what you want to see. So, we have the Affirmation, Assertion and the Action. Three parts to one assertion.
More Assertions
Let’s see a few of these assertions. How about: “I know that my parking space is a lot closer to the building than yours, Bob, but I need to use my own space, so I am asking you to please not park in my space in the future. Thanks.” Or, “I really like Lady Gaga myself, Tiffany, but I have an exam tomorrow, and I can’t study when you have the volume so loud. Could you please turn it down a bit? Thanks.” Or, “I realize you need to raise a lot of money for the class trip, but I won’t be able to make ten pies for the bake sale. Please put me down for two.” So, you get the idea. We want to let the other person know that we understand where they’re coming from, but that we have an alternative idea, and we tell them what we expect them to do. See how easy this is??
The Down Side
Well, that was a trick title, since there is no down side to assertiveness. It is a great tool to have in your everyday dealings with others. But, don’t think that just because you frame a perfect assertive statement, you are going to get your way. In fact, since so few people are actually good at this, it may put you a little farther ahead, but there are plenty of stubborn, selfish people around, and they don’t really care what you think or want. At least, though, you will be able to identify them much more easily, and then we’re on to the next topic: Dealing with difficult people, otherwise known as jerks!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
By Elizabeth Szlek, Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Now that Thanksgiving is coming into view, many of us will be facing family members who seem to lack personal boundaries. More about that some other time. Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite things: Assertiveness. What is it? Why do we need it? How is it different from other ways of dealing with conflict?
What is Assertiveness?
The Webster’s Dictionary I checked gave two definitions of assert. One: “To state positively, declare or affirm”, and Two: “To maintain or defend (one’s rights, etc.)”. My own use of the term incorporates both these ideas. We need to be able to speak up and state the obvious without fear, and we need to defend ourselves and others when conflict rears its ugly head.
Assertiveness as a response style is the only mature way to handle the inevitable problems we face living with others. Because it is a respectful style, it causes much less pain and guilt than aggressiveness or manipulation. It is affirming to the other person when done properly. To quote my former professor, “ Assertiveness says ‘You count and I count”. Nobody is the loser here, and it creates an atmosphere of listening and co-operation.
Why Do We Need Assertiveness?
We need to be acquainted with the skill of assertiveness because when we use it to deal with problems, it preserves our relationships with others. If you catch yourself burning your bridges again and again, it is likely you don’t understand how to be assertive. If you find yourself suffering from chronic depression, fatigue and other “down” kinds of feelings, it is also likely that you don’t use assertiveness in handling conflicts. In fact, you are probably just absorbing all the negativity others are throwing at you, and it is bumming you out!
What Does Assertiveness Look Like?
It’s easy to think of a million examples where being assertive can be used. Let’s start with an easy one: The check-out line at Big M on Main Street. You are waiting in line, and suddenly, a guy steps in front of you. What to do? The aggressive person will say, “Hey, Buddy, back of the line!” and throw an ugly face his way. The passive person will, of course, say nothing, but will silently be angry, thus compounding the rage inside, generating another migraine later on. The passive-aggressive person will say nothing, but will “accidentally” ram the guy in the behind with their basket. What will the assertive person do? They will probably say something like, “Excuse me, sir. I’m sure you are in as much of a hurry as I am, but I believe I was next in line. Can you let me go ahead?”
That’s it in a nutshell. However, hidden in this response is a three-part statement we will now deconstruct.
The Three “A’s”
To create an assertive statement, we need to make sure it has those three parts.
The first part is the Affirmation. If we want to make a good assertion, we don’t want to lose everybody at the get-go. So, we create an affirmation which tells the person we understand that they have their own unique point of view, and we appreciate it. Now, we don’t agree with it, but we can see that they are coming from a different place. This is the hardest part for those who are used to being aggressive and riding roughshod over others. But, research has shown that when the affirmation is added to the assertive statement, it gets far more results than just the naked assertion. Think of it as the bow on the package.
The second part of the statement is the Assertion. This is where you make your case. You tell the other person the way you see things, your reality. This isn’t hard to do.
The final part of the statement is the Action. You want to see something happen here, and this is what you want to see. So, we have the Affirmation, Assertion and the Action. Three parts to one assertion.
More Assertions
Let’s see a few of these assertions. How about: “I know that my parking space is a lot closer to the building than yours, Bob, but I need to use my own space, so I am asking you to please not park in my space in the future. Thanks.” Or, “I really like Lady Gaga myself, Tiffany, but I have an exam tomorrow, and I can’t study when you have the volume so loud. Could you please turn it down a bit? Thanks.” Or, “I realize you need to raise a lot of money for the class trip, but I won’t be able to make ten pies for the bake sale. Please put me down for two.” So, you get the idea. We want to let the other person know that we understand where they’re coming from, but that we have an alternative idea, and we tell them what we expect them to do. See how easy this is??
The Down Side
Well, that was a trick title, since there is no down side to assertiveness. It is a great tool to have in your everyday dealings with others. But, don’t think that just because you frame a perfect assertive statement, you are going to get your way. In fact, since so few people are actually good at this, it may put you a little farther ahead, but there are plenty of stubborn, selfish people around, and they don’t really care what you think or want. At least, though, you will be able to identify them much more easily, and then we’re on to the next topic: Dealing with difficult people, otherwise known as jerks!
Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.
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