Rejuveny

19/08/2022

Besides affording JB to sail his super yacht my Amazon purchases also benefit victims of war. Amazon just informed me that AmazonSmile has made a charitable donation to the charity I selected, Doctors Without Borders, in the amount of $181,014.38 as a result of qualifying purchases made by me and other customers between January 1st-March 31st. Playing the charity game is easy: instead of visiting ‘Amazon.com’ you type in the address, ‘smile.Amazon.com’. Elsewhere on the site you can select the charity of your choice.

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27/03/2020

Maybe you have run out of toilet paper and to you that’s more like the end of the world than running out of Scrabble pieces, but it doesn’t have to be if you learn to squat flat footed, like Asian people, and your great great grandparents and most mammals.
You see, the squat opens up your p**per, you drop your load, and it closes when you get up a second later. No toilet paper needed, just like your dog or cat don’t need it.
Toilet paper is a new invention, just like the modern toilet, which anatomically causes the mess by squeezing p**p through the unopened sphincter, which you are going to spread around with multiple pieces from the roll until you deem it clean enough because your nose can’t reach there—although some people do manage to stick their own head up their ass.
Many Eastern countries, including sophisticated Japan, still have squat toilets, which I consider a healthier and more hygienic option than the half-standing-up Western model rapidly replacing them. My personal solution has long been a $5 plastic stool bought in Chinatown that raises the feet and thereby simulates the squat position on a regular toilet. If that’s TMI, how about I only buy one roll of toilet paper a year just to blow my nose in.

© 2020 Rejuveny

03/03/2020

Now is the time to take action to boost our health. Again, these are my ideas and may contradict what your health pro tells you. Personally, I don’t have much faith in health "experts." I like common sense, but that can be based on wrong presumptions. Here’s what I’ve been doing and will be doing more of and why: Take long, cold showers - in 1976 or so I began foregoing hot showers. Not only does the heat dry out skin and hair, it’s unnatural, and cold showers boost the immune system; Use Turmeric lavishly on food for its anti-inflammatory qualities - Inflammation is the pathway to ill health; Buy fresh vegetables - "organic" contains more vitamins; Eliminate packaged foods - They’re produced for shop shelves; Buy what your body needs, not what your mind craves; Avoid foods with flour - it falls in the problem category; Avoid dairy - it creates mucous, sticky stuff in the respiratory system; Quit alcohol - it’s poison; Drink plenty; Quit sugar, even fruit - it tasks the pancreas, facilitates diabetes, and rots teeth; Eat less, drink more water; Avoid meat - cut out the middleman and go directly to the source—vegetables, seeds, eggs, fish, nuts, etc. Remember, your immune system is the first line of defense. Be nice to it.

© 2020 Rejuveny

19/01/2020

I was recently talking with a friend about personal change, something one can do right now that changes a habit forever and is something someone else can do too, like stop being part of the mass-methane -ozone-layer-destroying production that is the meat industry, a voracious killing machine at that.
As an example of personal changes I listed:
* Stopping using "product", like shampoo, conditioner, anything soapy in a plastic bottle (after a scientist Uber passenger elucidated me about the millions of bacteria we carry and destroy with chemicals but actually serve us, but once gone promote dry skin, dandruff, aging, and ill health);
* Stopping buying factory packaged foods as much as possible and trying to have nothing to recycle—which is a sham;
* Eating eat one meal a day, thereby reducing waste, and sometimes nothing for 2 or 3 days, which relieves one of hunger (people are fantastic over-eating machines, expending little energy, thereby failing to burn massive quantities of calories);
* Stopping taking hot showers (I was just in Brooklyn, where the water was icy and loved it);
* Taking cold showers daily. It boosts your immune system, energy levels (check out "Wim Hof");
* Stopping buying deodorant because everybody in my Uber stinks, which included me. Now I use tea tree oil. Healthier and problem gone. I can now wear my shirts for 3-4 days in a row if I want to;
* Squatting flat-footed to read or eat, like an Asian, in hopes of always having great mobility;
* Passing my collected and bagged coins on to homeless people begging by the road;
* Buying bento meals for poor souls at the supermarket entrance.

I thought long about each of my decisions and will explain each one in another post. But, we rarely take interest in each other, because we are vulnerable to criticism. Trump is easier, or bitchin’ about evil corporations, but try to make one change yourself, and you’re faced with great difficulty and we easily give up, and keep being a small cog in Evil’s game. Make every decision one of vision. Be the change you want.
Aloha.

©2020 Rejuveny

08/10/2019

It’s clear by looking at our behavior on Facebook that in spite of the notion of urgency to take action in support of Greta Thunberg's ideas (remember her?) we can't seem to respond other than by reposting funny bits dug up from around the Internet. Our need to be entertained may prove stronger than our sense of self preservation and finding ways for our generation and the next to implement personal changes in behaviors that merely mimic other folks' unconscious behaviors.

Let's not remain victims of the socially induced sleep that has fallen over this world while we thoughtlessly continue the sleepwalk that has brought us to the edge of the abyss. Are we even still having conversations other than about Trump? Is it easier to focus on one idiot than tell each other about little things we all can do to avoid the consumerist mind fog under whose spell we wish we could shop our way out of the mess?

Can we begin by radically refusing to buy "product" packaged in plastic bottles? I promise, it’s an eye opener to start removing them from our cabinets in the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, especially the extra ones picked up as "great savings" and put away, the extra mouthwash because they're packaged as pairs, even triplets. I raise my hand. Guilty.
Ultimately you and I are the ones who make it happen.
And Greta.

Be like Greta.

© 2019 Rejuveny

28/09/2019

Did you stop polluting today? Did you stop filling your trash can? Did you stop buying things packaged in plastic? Did you stop eating meat and dairy, which is part of a global pollution machine of enormous proportion? Did you stop eating fish? Did you stop using and buying products that are shipped from halfway around the world? Can we even stop? It’s not about reducing all that stuff. We cannot kill the environment a little less if it means we’re still killing it. Greta is great, but we are not the solution to the climate crisis. We’re the cause. You and I and everyone. The hippies were right and tried. Tune in and drop out.

(C) 2019 Rejuveny

26/09/2019

26/09/2019

The Endgame
The writer knows that every story ending has a beginning and a period in between. The end is the logical conclusion of what comes before. Sometimes the conclusion is not revealed until the very end. We can call that a surprise ending because we didn’t see it coming. Most endings are predictable once we know the facts of the story. In that case we merely follow the characters to the logical conclusion. Maybe a happy ending, maybe not. It doesn’t matter, the end comes no matter what.

So, now the world’s coming to an end, they say. Did anyone not see it coming? Come on, we actively participated in its demise, even if we thought we were "saving," or "helping" the planet by recycling all the products we never thought of not buying because many of them served only a limited purpose and likely none at all. We thoughtlessly accepted the "solutions" corporations presented us with, enriching them with every personal "need" they fulfilled through design, marketing, and research for their own benefit. And today we continue.

Don’t feel bad. The planet needs no saving, nor our help. It will do fine without us, so let’s stop repeating those silly phrases that only show our ignorance of how nature works.

Nature destroys and regenerates, collapses and thrives, mindlessly, indiscriminately, relentlessly, massively, and beautifully. We’ll be here to see it happen until along with the 200 species that face extinction every day we too will be no more.

In the meantime, we have a choice to either continue our stupidities or change. Change is hard. We’ve all struggled with change, mostly with changing ourselves. Frankly, I’ve not seen anyone I know succeed. If it was that easy everything would be alright.

Well, how about giving it our best by beginning with ourselves? The end will come and by then it doesn’t matter if you look good in the mirror. It’s about that period in between. That’s when we can fulfill our dreams, realize our ideas, prove to ourselves and each other it can be done. It’s not about hope and putting it off until tomorrow, but about beginning the process of changing yourself today. The world is not our "experiment." We are the experiment. You and I. Today, let’s look inside and see the inner mess we’ve created and begin by fixing it, fixing our thoughts, our habits, our choices, our likes and dislikes, and the traps we walked into eyes wide open.

Greta Thunberg gets it. It’s not about "the world," or "the planet," but about us and the way we treat ourselves, not as part of the problem, but as the solution to the problems. We are not different from her. Each one of us can create change.

If you are fat, skinny, poor, or depressed by today’s news, it’s no one’s fault, but between being born and dying there’s a period in between everything depends on your choices. As individuals we have limited control over changes outside of us, but unlimited control over changes within. Make one change for yourself today and it will reverberate if you can inspire others to make their own changes. Call it a sacrifice if you have to let go off bad habits, it will empower others, maybe empower a child. The only reason children have lost respect for us is because we lost respect for ourselves and let things get out of hand; our weight; our health; our garden; our neighborhood; our planet. Let’s show change is possible by stopping doing things that are bad, and expose how uncaring we are toward ourselves, and by extension toward those we love, and yes, the world.
One change, today, possibly to immeasurable positive, inspirational effect. You know you’ve been wanting to.

Rudolf Helder

©2019 Rejuveny

09/05/2019

Don’t Sigh With Relief When Your Doctor Says, "That’s Normal For Your Age."
Have you looked around you and noticed that most folks your age look terrible? That the hospitals are filled with people your age? If you are "normal" within your age group maybe you look fine according to you and your doctor, but you may be heading for the hospital, because that’s "normal" for your age too.

Recently, 3 of my friends in my age group, one after the other, were diagnosed with heart problems, severe enough for one to have open heart surgery, for another to be scheduled for it, and my third friend heading in and out of ER multiple times in the course of a few weeks. Each one was convinced he/she is living a healthy lifestyle, you know, with low-fat ice cream in the fridge, and doing their shopping at Whole Foods. They are label-aware, avoiding to buy products that contained GMO's and high-fructose corn syrup, and feel a bit cheated on by fate, because how could this happen when they were living "normal" for their age group of well educated, conscious consumers? They’d bought into the food pyramid, ate "healthy" snacks, quinoa, whole grain, low-carb, gluten-free, organic everything, reduced fat, less-sugar, sodium free, heart-healthy..., well..., eh..., industrial, packaged, designed for long shelf life, smartly-marketed, crap that spiked their insulin, stored carbs in their fat cells, overloaded their liver, pancreas, thyroid, kidney, and heart.

In other words, they’d been busy killing themselves, albeit slowly and pleasantly, and I realized that I was maybe not far behind when my optometrist told me I suffered the beginning of cataracts, and added as to placate me, "But that's normal for your age group."

Crap! I too, with my 50 year long vegetarian lifestyle, being label aware, avoiding gluten, GMO's, etc., was not far behind. The only difference was maybe that I never bought into the low-fat craze because my theory was that as humans we had since the dawn of times craved fats and hunted the fattest animals and not the skinniest, eaten their fats, and excelled on it until the 20th century put a stop to it. We weren’t hunting for sugars, but that became our staple with the introduction of grains into our diet some 10-20,000 years ago.
And we're all paying the price with diet-related organ failures, morbid obesity, sugar-fueled cancer, clogged arteries, and high blood pressure.

So, there's nothing more alarming than hearing your condition is "normal for your age group."

Be well.

(c) 2019 Rejuveny

08/05/2019

Hello Fat, where have you been all my life (except around my waist)?

I’ve been a vegetarian for 50 years and still got obese, according to the numbers, even after going Paleo 7 years ago, because I lacked the underlying nutritional knowledge that Dr Berg so handsomely disperses on his YouTube channel.
Luckily, my vegetarian commitment had prepared me for adopting a slightly different lifestyle by introducing healthy fats and intermittent fasting, which fall under the nomer Keto. Letting go off wine, beer, and a few other indulgents seemed hard but wasn’t because the cravings simply went away. The most remarkable outcome of substituting fats for carbs and become a fat burner (including the body's stored fat) is the liberating disappearance of hunger, and while I transitioned to one meal a day I often feel like I could easily skip that too and not eat at all for a day, and that's just great, knowing that my dependence on regular timed meals is gone.

And then of course there's the scale and my smile in the mirror and both tell me I’m doing better than I have in a long time. Another benefit is that my blood pressure is creeping down as well.

If any of my friends read this I urge them no matter what their health is to watch some of Dr Berg's YouTube videos in which he calmly explains how our body functions and why we may be heading for problems down the road if we don't start living and eating according to the way the body is designed to operate.

Bon appetite.

(c) 2019 Rejuveny

03/05/2019

My out of bed morning drink:
teaspoon wheat grass juice powder
teaspoon raw organic cocoa powder
teaspoon organic turmeric powder
pinch black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch sea salt
teaspoon organic macca powder
few drops organic cold pressed virgin olive oil
wedge organic butter
teaspoon organic apple cider vinegar
teaspoon organic raw honey
fresh lemon squeezed with the lemon fiber
warm water

What it does:
suppresses hunger
provides vitamins
provides energy
sustains autophagy
sustains ketogenic state
sustains a fast if you’re fasting
is anti-inflammatory

And is followed by:
one regular size meal a day within a 1 hour period
in my case around 7pm, vegetarian, all organic, containing no carbs such as pasta, bread, rice, quinoa, etc., but rather vegetables, egg, fish, nuts, seeds... maybe in a salad.
organic blueberries for desert.

Throughout the day:
plenty water with a squeeze of lemon
bullet-proof coffee (mid-morning, mid-afternoon)
no snacking, no alcohol

Long before bed:
glass of water with teaspoon apple cider vinegar

What happens, you will:
lose weight by burning stored fat (5Lbs in 3 days!)
lower blood pressure
unclog arteries
eliminate joint pain
feel great

I did similar in 2011 and lost 50Lbs, but slowly reverted to some old habits.

I’ll follow up: beginning weight, 220Lbs, 3 days later 215Lbs.

Next: more walking, 40Lb kettle bell
References on YouTube: Dr Berg, Dr Mandell (anti-pharma common-sense guys that advocate healing via nutrition)

© 2019 Rejuveny

12/04/2019

Why I'm Not Dead.
This is a mystery to me at 70, mostly because life doesn’t come with a guarantee for extension beyond the average lifespan. What I do know is that many, according to the news and reports from people I know don’t make it to 70. On the upside, many will live longer than ever before, but record numbers will die from disease, organ failure, and bad lifestyle choices. The medical and pharmaceutical industry awaits and welcomes everyone with open arms. Always get a second opinion.

Living long and in fine shape may be the result of genes, luck, and randomness, but what if one can help one's lot a little or a lot by taking steps that are generally recognized by those in the "Self Awareness" field as beneficial? Obviously, one can not take all the steps recommended by health advisors, but below follow the ones I started incorporating over the years because they make sense to me:
* Cold showers. Multiple times during the day. The colder the better;
* Ragging a ribbed massage roller vigorously over my body;
*Chi-gong motions, or Sun Greeting stretching;
* First drink of the day: Warm water to which added 1/2 lemon or lime, turmeric, Bragg apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, black pepper, raw honey;
* Breakfast (if hungry, close to noon): Organic eggs, avocado, sprouts;
* Or: Blueberries, grain-free granola, with added cinnamon, pure cocoa powder, water or cream or yoghurt or yoghurt substitute;
* Espresso coffee (around 9:30 when cortisol levels are low, and maybe for same reason around 14:00);
* Sitting in meditation (if there's time);
* Simple anytime exercise: The Plank, reading or eating while squatting flat-footed, Taichi-like movement;
* Second meal (if hungry, around 19:00-20:00): Organic greens, purple potato, wild rice, fish or nuts;
* Maybe wine or beer while prepping or during meal;
* Hara Hachi Bu (eat until 80% full);
* No meat, no fanaticism, no preaching, no disagreements, no supplements, no vitamins, no medications, no sugar, no envy, no worry, no rules, no judgment;
* A peeled apple for desert;
* Remain flexible, be loyal, improvise, experiment, mix it up, accept change, respect origins, respect cultures, respect habits, respect everyone and everything, do the work;
* Find joy in everything, and if not, move on;
* Treasure friendship, trust yourself, stay calm, don’t take yourself serious, don't pretend.

There you have it. You and I, we're both alive today. We're both doing things right and wrong, we're both winging it. This list will change. So far, so good. Keep it up. Enjoy life.

(c) 2019 Rejuveny

09/04/2019

I’ve been taking cold showers for over 40 years. Not a cold rinse after hot, but full-on cold, and I started midwinter in The Netherlands, but why, you might ask?
I always got sick in winter, the flu, a cold, and my feet and hands were always cold, so I was cold. I had low blood pressure, but not alarmingly low.
Then I remembered these kids from an outlying farm who came bicycling to school in my village midwinter, dressed in their year-round shorts, with just a scarf over their sweaters, their feet in wooden shoes they had stuffed with hay, while I and the other kids were buttoned-up, zipped-up, mittened-up, hooded, and layered in warm woolen long-johns, sweaters, stuffed overcoats and what not, with snot running out our noses, and coughs escaping our sore throats. They were the freaks, not us, and we laughed at the idiot farmer kids.
Well, the cold showers did wonders for me and I stopped getting sick, but then I started thinking about all the water that just ran down the drain after having barely touched my body or not at all, and not just mine, but millions of others. What a strange waste of a precious resource. In many Asian countries the family bathroom has a big box of water in which one after another family member can soak, like the usually heated furo in Japan, or the Mandi in Indonesia from which cold water is scooped over the body, thereby wasting little. Of course, the Western water-wasting shower has become popular there too, and unfortunately, I think.
Recently I started looking into recycling shower water, so you shower in a loop. Of course, that means not using soap and shampoo in the shower, which is another wasteful activity anyway. You could shower in less than a gallon of water. Eventually I plan to live off the grid and establish a continues loop between what I use and reuse in as far as that is possible and sanitary.
My main point is that we have been lulled into, and have become dependent on impractical methods that don’t benefit us, our communities, or eco-systems.
What are your thoughts on what we can do differently?

©Rejuveny

07/04/2019

Lately several friends of mine began to develop health problems. A few lived an in my eyes hedonistic lifestyle, albeit one that is common for most of us in industrialized countries where people enjoy a better life by buying the better things that are available, the better homes, the better cars, the better wines, the better foods, because they can afford it.

When I still cleaned the mansions of the better people I noticed that as the better educated they bought organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free, low-fat, recycled and recyclable, fair-trade, animal-cruelty-free, grass-fed, non-Chinese, non-radiated, 2 percent, "healthy", pesticide-free, farm-raised, biological, right-churning, high-fructose corn syrup-free, sugar-free, fat-free, well-marketed factory-produced, senselessly-labeled, nutrition-poor crap. Holy crap even, if in addition to a food fe**sh they also subscribe to a religion or are just spiritual, whatever that means.

Many packaged foods come from only a few companies that have bought smaller brands that are marketed to different demographies. Whole Foods is a prime example of a place where consumers feel that everything they buy is good for them and their arteries and hearts and livers. "Loaded with anti-oxidants!" scream the labels. "Made with purified water," "Sourced from natural habitats," etc., all sounds great, but most of it is pure bu****it when it comes to what the body needs to thrive. The body actually thrives on not eating at all, or on very basic foods, like nuts, seeds, berries, leafy vegetables, fish, eggs, or what I call "ancestral food," you know, the kind that nourished our forefathers and mothers and was good enough for them to make humans the top dog in the animal kingdom.

So, why would we want to do things different when it comes to providing fuel for our body machine? Yes, we have advanced and overcrowded hospitals show it. I’ve heard about doctors who refer patients to a nutritionist because they know little to nothing about nutrition. I cleaned the house and offices of a doctor and was appalled by the food and drinks I encountered and their artificial ingredients.

Now, I get it. Everything I say can be disqualified by an opposing argument because everyone of us has bought into one lifestyle or another. So, let’s just continue with those that made it all the way to this sentence, because life is about getting the most out of it and living well until your last breath. No one wants to end up doing biopsies, angioplasty, brain and body scans, stool samples, or anything for which you have to head to the hospital or the surgical unit.

50 years ago I became a vegetarian, thanks to my girlfriend, and I have struggled with weight, low energy, and depressions until I finally faced the fact that I too had bought into the food slogans and while I bought mostly in "health food" stores I was eating cookies, ice cream, grains, breads, jams just like everyone else, and just paid more for it. It was only after I went Paleo (but vegetarian) and dropped 50Lbs that I saw the link between our ancestors and the food and activities they relied on for their strength and stamina.

Here’s the choice: continue doing what you’ve been doing, which may bring you to the doorstep of the ER, or completely reassess that "better" lifestyle and the pet-beliefs that come with it (“It says Organic, so it must be good"). Nutrition is about the basics. If food has a label you may want to stay away from it, but at the very least check the list of ingredients, or better yet, buy unpackaged food that hasn’t been "processed and packaged in a facility that also processes diary and tree nuts," or whatever. Of course, you can’t avoid buying some foods in packaged form, like sauerkraut, but awareness goes a long way to making better choices.

Rejuveny

© Rejuveny

10/07/2018

I grew up on horse meat in a country where a horse’s final resting place was the slaughterhouse. At age 19 I became a vegetarian. Americans have declared the horse a noble mamal whose meat shall not be eaten. They regard dogs and cats the same way and shriek in horror when some Asian countries consider them meat. Americans eat massive amounts of animals they do not regard noble, like the cow and the pig. Pigs are quite smart and can show affection. It doesn’t matter. Be on they are in the eyes of the carnivour. However, this nonsensical, selfish, mindset is part of a culture of division that covers groups of humans too that are regarded as disposable, within its own borders and abroad. I don’t think I’ve ever met a vegetarian or vegan who did not have a wide grasp of our humanity, expressed empathy, and saw the world as an utopia in progress. As humanitarians they often identify themselves as Liberal and inclusive. The carnivore wants to hunt and determine what or who can be killed. Killing without regard and portraying it as heroic as they triumphantically pose with their animal or human victims is normal to them. But killing needs to be taught. No child engages spontaneously in killing. It has to overcome its own natural resistance to begin a life of shattered innocence and rationalizing death and the suffering before death as necessary. This numbing of the original spirit comes at a cost to the soul we all pretend to possess. Once the soul is fractured more reason to go against nature will become acceptable, but deep inside remains the child and the shame of having been led astray.

(c)2018 Rejuveny