In this issue:
- Featured product line
- Brainpower tip
- Finance tip
- Health tip
- Fitness tip
- Thought for the day
1. Featured product line
Here we are, over halfway through the current
semester of school. If you have kids in school, you are probably wondering if
they are learning anything of value. Most likely, the answer is no.
Mindconnection offers some ways to overcome that. For example, we offer "Minding
Your Money," a book that helps children learn lessons that will allow
them to prevent the one problem that is the number one cause of suicide and the
number one cause of divorce: poor money management. Yes, most of us consider
ourselves above average drivers, above average money managers, and so on. But,
let's set that aside and focus on helping kids where it really counts. See:
https://www.mindconnection.com/product/BK-H-MYM.html
If I were buying "Minding
Your Money," I would take into account peer pressure and buy a lot of
50 so my kid could learn alongside other kids in school. Makes a nice tax
deduction, but the real value would be showing a commitment to my child's future
success. Then again, you can always hope your kid simply "gets it"
despite being drenched by thousands of "be a stupid consumer" messages
each week. I don't know that I would take that chance, but your decision is up
to you.
2. Brainpower tips
You have heard the expression, "You are
known by the company you keep." Well, it's also true that your brainpower
depends, in part, on the people you associate with. That's one reason why I
suggested a bulk order in the message above. Let's look at some ways this
principle affects you:
Negative people. These are the folks who
see the downside in everything or rarely see the good side in things. They
will cloud your thinking and sap your energy. You just need to set limits
with them. If they ignore the limits, avoid them. Pollyanna people. These are the folks who
can't see reality, and make like everything is wonderful. They love the
emperor's new clothes, fail to realize a tax increase is a wage cut, believe
they can drink "osteoporosis in a can" and not get osteoporosis,
and so on. These folks will lead you over a cliff. Avoid them. Realistic people. These are the folks who
understand cause and effect. They may not always agree with you, but they
challenge your thinking even when they are wrong. In so doing, they spur
your brain to add synaptic connections. They make you smarter, in an organic
way. Cherish them! Dreamers. These folks may be pollyannas
or realists. They share with you visions of how things can be. They are
inspiring, and they are the kinds of folks who help others reach new
heights. Having a few among your friends is a very good idea. Fact gatherers. Often boring to the
mentally-asleep, these folks have a passion for finding things out. They
revel in knowledge. Go ahead and let them do the gruntwork and share their
findings with you. You'll be more knowledgeable and more interesting. Control freaks. These people are very
insecure and work hard to satisfy those insecurities by "fixing"
other people, telling them what to do, or outright punishing them for not
following their personal "party line." Do not confuse these folks
with friends who intervene in your life with good advice or in some other
way seek to help you or just challenge you. The difference is in the need of
the other person. It can be hard to spot. If someone is smothering you,
simply tell that person you feel pressured and you need a break. If you
don't get that break, you are dealing with a control freak. Tip: the person
who always has to drive is usually a control freak. Opposites. If you are a conservative, you
need a friend or two who is liberal (at least until you can cure that
person!). By making sure you have a "devil's advocate" for some or
most of your beliefs, you can be more sure in what you believe. You can also
be more sensitive to the beliefs of others (while plotting the best way to
embarrass or discredit them <grin>).
This is not an exhaustive list. It's just a
few ideas to get you thinking about your relationships. If they are too
homogenous, you need to seek out folks who are different from you. If some folks
make you feel bogged down, you need to re-examine your relationships with them.
3. Finance tips
Did you know "family size"
containers of popular grocery items cost more per pound than smaller sizes?
Note, I said "grocery items" rather than "foods." The reason
for this distinction is clear when you start reading the labels on these items.
It's best not to buy them at all. But, since I am not a control freak (see item
#2 above), I am simply telling you this fact about them. You don't automatically
save money by getting a larger package. The manufacturers know folks assume the
savings are there, so they jack up the prices on larger sizes and ask grocers to
place them in the most prominent display positions. Caveat emptor.
4. Health tip
We all know to drink plenty of water. But, what is water?
If you are in a raft on the ocean and drink the water you are floating on, you
will get sick. Hmm. What about your tap water? Let's take a look. And, just so
you don't think I am full of hooey, I have worked as an engineer in public water
treatment, public waste treatment, and water deionization for industrial
purposes. I know a guy who constantly smells like a distillery, but we'll leave
any contributions from him out of this.
Treatment of tap water, at the source, is pretty good. If
you look at the stats for most localities, the water is safe to drink. The
various levels of contaminants are at levels most people's bodies can safely
handle, provided their bodies are not taxed by other factors. The water isn't
pure, but it is potable. However, the water that comes out of your tap is toxic.
What happened? Several things:
- Because the water travels through a maze of old
piping--much of which leaks--it is contaminated by various flora and fauna.
Some of these are downright lethal. Rather than re-pipe water systems every
year, the solution is to add an algaecide. That algaecide is chlorine. It
works great. However, it is also toxic to people. Further, the chlorine
reacts with other substances in the water to form compounds that are highly
carcinogenic. If your water tastes like swimming pool water, you are
drinking poison. We can't stop chlorinating the water--that would simply
expose us to other poisons. But, we can treat the water at point of use.
More on that, in a bit.
- The United States has a myriad of laws prohibiting the
prescription of random doses of medication, yet we have a medicine added to
our drinking water. We don't know anything about its toxicity--that is, we
don't know what level is safe. However, we know for a fact that communities
with fluoridated water have abnormally high levels of lead poisoning. You
can quickly find stories on this with any search engine. Here's one link:
http://www.nofluoride.com/mountjoy.htm.
- We also know that fluoride strengthens enamel when topically applied and
given time to fill in the porous surface of the tooth. There is considerable
evidence that ingested fluoride weakens the tooth. The logic that ingested
fluoride strengthens the tooth would mean that adding wax to your gas tank
makes your car shiny. I'm not sure that's true, but let me know if you try
this. Because of the brainwashing on the fluoride issue, many folks
pooh-pooh any criticism of fluoride in the water. Well, ask yourself why
there are such stern warnings on over the counter fluoride rinses. Ask
yourself why a dentist, after applying a fluoride treatment to your tooth
with a rotary tool, asks you to spit the leftover stuff out. Hmm. Repeat
after me: "Two plus two is four."
- Various gases. A major source of intestinal bloating
and flatulence is dissolved gas in the water. Because water is flowing
through a maze of leaky pipes while various chemical reactions are going on
in the water, you are going to be drinking a lot of gas when you drink
directly from the tap. If you have a passion for belching or passing gas,
this may actually be useful to you. Do note, however, that many of those
gases are toxic.
- Dissolved particles, noticeable as turbidity. If you
look at the water in a strong light, you'll see a certain amount of
cloudiness. More so when it is fresh out of the tap and also after it's
stirred. Some of this is feces from the organisms in the water, some of it
is entrained pipe crud, and some of it is air. Even if the water is
perfectly pure when put into the pipes, it will have junk it in at the tap
What can you do about these items in your water? Here are
some strategies, ranked roughly in order from least effective or advisable to
most effective or advisable:
- Drink bottled water. Uh, you have no guarantee this
isn't bottled tap water. So now, you get the chlorinated plastic fumes plus
whatever was in your tap water.
- Simply let it stand. If you have fish, you know most of
the chlorine will evaporate if the water is left to stand at room
temperature in an open container for 24 hours. Fail to let it stand, and you
get a massive fish kill. Chilling the water retards this process. You may
not always have a 24 hour lead time to let your water stand, so know that
you get significant benefit by simply pouring the water into a glass. So, if
you are in a restaurant, order water with no ice and let the glass sit for a
while before you drink from it. This will make the water much safer. It'll
still have the various flora, fauna, and feces in it, but most of the gases
will be gone.
- Distill it. This removes most impurities. Some people
claim it removes all the impurities, but that is not so. It will remove all
the minerals, but some of the dissolved gases will be entrained in the steam
and simply return to the condensate. This is why nuclear power plants use
deionization, rather than distillation, for the water they put in their
piping systems. Distilled water is simply too corrosive, because it still
contains impurities. Also, distilling water removes one of the primary
benefits of drinking water: getting minerals you need for health. You can
use mineral supplements, but that approach still is likely to leave you with
a hole in your mineral uptake.
- Deionize it. You can't afford a deionization plant, but
if you could you would get very clean water. Such a plant also means having
to stock a lot of toxins onsite to make the deionization work. This is not
recommended for home use, unless you have IRS agents frequent your home.
- Filter it. Many types of filters exist. Most are not
very good, but some are quite outstanding. The more expensive osmotic
membrane filters (which I am too cheap to use) do the best job. I personally
have selected a high-end consumer-grade point of use filter. The water
system in my location carries one of the best ratings of any water system in
the country. However, if I lived in my mom's town--where the tap water
smells like pool water (pee optional, I guess)--I would go osmosis. I am
convinced the local swimming pools take chlorine out of the tap water so
swimmers don't get skin burns. It's that bad. If I lived in Detroit--which
is surrounded by five toxic waste dumps (that, to me, explains their
far-left politics)--I would buy my drinking water from out of state and
filter it.
There you go. Think this over, and do take care of your
health--it's your most precious asset.
5. Fitness tip
I was in an online conference with fitness
guru Bill Phillips when someone asked this question: "Is it true you
shouldn't eat carbohydrates within two hours of working out?" Amazing how
the exact opposite of fact gets circulated. This shouldn't be surprising,
though, because labor unions actually backed Al Gore in the 2000 presidential
election despite the fact his intended programs would have sent most of their
jobs overseas and granted the survivors a massive paycut. That's a topic for
another eNL, but it is instructive when examining fact vs. fiction and how
people don't stop to think. Here's the answer to that question:
When you have depleted your glycogen stores
due to intense exercise, you are in the best possible of all times to ingest
carbohydrates. Following a workout, you want to ingest protein, carbohydrates,
and glutamine
over the next two hours. The carbos act like carriers, ferrying the building
blocks directly into your cells. You need a certain amount of carbohydrates, and
the best time to ingest them is after a workout. The second best time is at
breakfast. When you ingest them with protein, you make the best use of them.
Working a different body part every day for
two or three weeks is a good way to stimulate muscle growth, if you are
faithfully sucking down carbs and protein in the two hour window following the
workout. You don't want to maintain this pace for more than three weeks, as
intense exercise does release free radicals by damaging muscle tissue. If you
start feeling weak or tired, take a day off and go back to a four or five day
routine for at least a month. Otherwise, you develop too much cortisol--which is
catabolic. BTW, cortisol is only one downside of overexercising.
Have you ever wondered why marathoners have
such high cholesterol levels and look so bad? It's because they have damaged
their arterial walls. When the blood leaks through these walls, the body cranks
up its cholesterol machinery and your cholesterol level goes up. Most doctors
make uninformed assumptions about cholesterol, and advise people to cut back on
eggs. Following this ignorant advice actually causes a rise in cholesterol, if
you are eating free-range eggs!. If you speak to someone who is trained in
things cardiovascular and endocrinological, you will find out that high
cholesterol is the body's way of trying to fix a problem. Taking
cholesterol-lowering medication or using other stupid measures to cure the cure
of one problem or symptom of another isn't the answer. But, I digress--that is a
topic for another eNL. Just make sure to feed your muscles after a workout. Take
plenty of vitamin E, vitamin C with B6 and B12, and water. Get enough rest along
with this nutrition, and you will gain lean mass while improving your
cholesterol profile.
BTW, I eat anywhere between two dozen and
eight dozen eggs a week. My cholesterol profile is something that has made every
doctor who has ever seen my test results ask me, "How do you do it?"
Well, dear reader of the Mindconnection eNL, I just told you the answer.
Remember, a healthy mind cannot exist without a healthy body to support it. The
brain depends on your vascular system to feed its cells. This is a fundamental
you cannot escape from. You can make it work for you, however.
6. Thought for the Day
It's not what you know, but what you do with your
knowledge that counts.
Wishing you the best,
Mark Lamendola
Mindconnection
Authorship
The views expressed in this e-newsletter are generally not shared by criminals, zombies, or brainwashed individuals.
Except where noted, this e-newsletter is entirely the work of Mark Lamendola. Anything presented as fact can be independently verified. Often, sources are given; but where not given, they are readily available to anyone who makes the effort.
Mark provides information from either research or his own areas of established expertise. Sometimes, what appears to be a personal opinion is the only possibility when applying sound logic--reason it out before judging! (That said, some personal opinions do appear on occasion).
The purpose of this publication is to inform and empower its readers (and save you money!).
Personal note from Mark: I value each and every one of you, and I hope that shows in the diligent effort I put into writing this e-newsletter. Thank you for being a faithful reader.
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