Why Is the Left Terrified of Trump?

President Trump strikes terror into the hearts of Liberals and Progressives. This terror manifests itself as anger clothed in the garb of righteous indignation. Every news cycle prompts fresh rounds of hand wringing and tears of frustration from the Left. Each new Presidential tweet provokes apoplexy. You can see the fear and anger on the faces of Progressive marchers, town hall protesters, and pop culture icons. You can hear it in the strained questions of reporters at press briefings and the opinions of pundits at round-tables. 

The target of this Trump-terror is broader than the President and his staff--it affects every one of us. Those who voted against Trump have not settled down post-election, but continue to rage, rage, rage against the Trump machine. Those who voted for Trump now stand in for the Administration as localized whipping boys of Liberal indignation, buffeting wave after wave of hyperbolic sidewalk insults. Ask anyone who wears a certain red ball cap how it feels.

One of my best and dearest friends said a ridiculous thing to me at my brother's funeral. After many touching tributes to David's selfless devotion to others, my friend said to me, "I'm surprised your brother was so active in charity work and the mission field--I thought he was a Republican." Tempers quickly flared, words like "Trump" and "racist" were exchanged, and he and his partner left in a huff.  By the time I got home, there was an email cancelling an upcoming visit, signed "Best Regards."

David Puett teaching orphans in Brazil.

David Puett repairing water pump at Malawi orphange.

David Puett and his buddies at Malawi orphanage.

No doubt about it--the schism between Left and Right is deep, and we can make sense of it in terms of the Simple Explanation's meme exchange dynamics. 

First, a simple explanation of memes:  memes are simply the meaning of bits of communication, whether the meaning is carried by a word, an image, or any other way we communicate meaning to one another.  If you need a better explanation of memes, please read the "When Meme Chords Collide" article from 2015 .

The memes we cling to form sets of memes that I call "meme bundles." The totality of our meme bundles form the belief system we hold. The more your meme bundle overlaps with someone else's meme bundle, the more kinship you feel with that other person. The less your meme bundles overlap, the less you have in common and the greater your distrust of one another.

Oftentimes, belief systems, or "meme bundles" aren't held by individuals alone, but are shared with other people and with institutions we belong to. Not only do we share memes with others, it is the job of institutions to maintain the integrity of their meme bundles by keeping believers in and non-believers out.  From my 2011 article, "Meaning is in the Memes": 

"I realized the other day that each and every cultural institution we belong to (family, workplace, church, mosque, tribe, nation, etc.) not only comes with its own bundle of shared memes held in common by its members, it also comes with a filter that prevents members from acknowledging or adopting incompatible memes. Memes are even more important to an institution than its members in the sense that members come and go, but memes persist." 

"Institutions are defined as much by their excluded memes as they are by their included memes. An exclusive institution holds tightly to the identity provided by its memes; its border is strong and its filter powerful. An inclusive institution allows members more latitude in the memes they may hold; its border is less defined; its filter less opaque. An "open-minded" institution acknowledges the fact that there are memes out there in the greater culture that may have value, and is willing to consider new memes; its border is permeable and its filter thin." 

When you view politics through the lens of the Simple Explanation's theory of meme exchange, today's turmoil begins to make sense.  Seems obvious, but here it is:  The Left and the Right hold different meme bundles that appear to be mutually exclusive.  In other words, if I like people who like the memes I like, then I am made uneasy by people who reject the memes I hold. And vice versa. And the more polarized politics becomes, the less my meme bundle is likely to overlap your meme bundle. 

Furthermore, Conservatives have less permeable boundaries than Liberals--it is their function to "conserve." Liberals have more open, permeable boundaries because it is their function to welcome new memes. Conservatives are less likely to welcome foreign memes and those who hold foreign memes. Conservatives expect newcomers to adopt American memes. The open/closed aspect of Right and Left is not a moral short-coming of either side; it is their essential character and mandate. 

I think the extreme emotionality of politics today stems from not respecting one another's meme bundles.  Does holding exclusive meme bundles bring the end of civility? Not if we allow one another our beliefs.  Clashes over meme bundles only occurs when others are forced to adopt memes they do not hold. "Live and let live" is the only motto that assures peace among those who disagree. 

"Live and let live" acknowledges that there is more than one way to view reality. "Live and let live" acknowledges that someone else with another point of view may actually have a respectable meme bundle--just not one you happen to hold.  In other words, it is possible to disagree with someone, yet still respect their moral integrity and their right to their beliefs.

"Live and let live" is a meme that ensures civility amongst competing institutions.  "My way is the only way--death to all others" is a meme that ensures strife and warfare. Totalitarianism is the attempt to eradicate all meme bundles (and their believers) that differ from the tyrant's.

This American election cycle has brought an unprecedented level of mistrust between the Right and Left because they no longer appear to have anything in common. But is that really true? Not really.  We all share the same basic memes in common--Truth, Justice, Love, Family Values are just a few of the memes shared by the Left and Right. Most importantly for our country, we all agree that we want a functioning federal government and laws fairly applied all. We all, Left and Right, sign on to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--which are our founders meme bundles written down. What we fear from the "other side" is that they don't really believe those founders' memes. And it is that fear that inspires such mistrust.  

The reason for the mistrust is the rhetoric, not the reality. The Left says terrible things about President Trump. The hyperbole, the exaggeration of fault, the accusations of treachery--these are rhetorical devices designed to emphasize Trump's supposedly crazy, self-centered meme bundle. The problem with this rhetoric is that it paints an unrealistic version of Trump's memes that are over-the-top evil. In the vacuum of Trump's vaguely-defined policy memes or omissions of fact, the Left impugns the President with memes of pure devilry from their own imagination. It is important to realize that the rhetoric is not the reality--it is an interpolation of imagination borne out of fear.

I wish there were some way to reassure my friends on the Left that most of what they fear is hyperbole and not fact. Time will tell whether the Administration's motives lie in their public declarations or not. The proof lies in a "wait and see" approach. It's my belief that the gap between the Left's meme bundle and the President's is not nearly so large as they fear. 

What is A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything?

If that's not a catchy blog post title, I don't know what is.

Yesterday I reread my author's preface to the Simple Explanation book's 2nd Edition, which was published in 2015, in both paperback and as a kindle ebook. It's a good introduction to the Simple Explanation theory of everything, and I don't think it has ever appeared here on the blog.  

Reading this may help put things into perspective.

A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything came to me during the winter of 2009. I was contemplating an entirely different project when, much to my delight, the Simple Explanation presented itself on the page, diagrams and all.

A Simple Explanation begins by turning the ordinary  view of consciousness on its head. Whereas most scientists believe consciousness is a by-product of the brain, I propose that consciousness is the ground state of the universe, here long before there were any brains. 

Using only four basic principles, A Simple Explanation describes our universe as a fractal pattern of consciousness that repeats itself in endless cycles of information, organization, and cooperation, from the smallest quanta through the largest astronomical objects. 

In 1979 I first read Itzhak Bentov’s book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, wherein Bentov first proposed a torus-shaped,  universal consciousness.

About a year into writing the Simple Explanation blog, I realized that what I call the conscious “fractal” universe is very similar to the meme Bentov identified as the conscious “holographic” universe. By holographic, Bentov referred to the fact that any small fragment of a holographic image can be used to reproduce the entire image out of which the fragment came. 

The same can be said of fractal patterns: the fractal formula repeats itself at both upwardly-larger and downwardly-smaller scales so that any fragment at any scale of the fractal’s image reflects an eerily repetitive pattern. If you don’t know what a fractal is, relax; lots more about fractals later.

As for the tori, I’ve been doodling them in the margins of papers and inscribing them on notes and cards since I first read Bentov’s book. I even embroidered two tori into the pattern of a house blessing back in 1982, and I’ve been meditating on the torus ever since.

Cross-stitched House Blessing, 1982.

Close-up of House Blessing. Note the two green and gold tori flanking the center florets.

Cyd Ropp, chalk torus

Cyd Ropp, slinky torus

When I first began writing the Simple Explanation blog, it was tough finding images of a torus online, so I drew my own using colored chalk. In the past couple of years, images of tori have blossomed online, including quite a few of my own. 2012 even saw the release of a feature film called “Thrive,” promoting egalitarian reform through free toroidal energy. 

The Simple Explanation of this sudden whirlwind of tori is that we are all resonating to and concurrently invoking the same torus from the universe’s shared transpersonal consciousness. And the more we each individually explore and tap out this meme, the stronger it becomes, because memes are starved through lack of usage and reinforced through invocation.

If you don’t know what a “torus” is, don’t worry. This book will explain all that. Same thing with other unusual words like “fractal,”  “meme,” and “transpersonal consciousness.” You don’t need to be a philosopher or a Yogi to grasp the Simple Explanation. You don’t even need a college degree. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to think new thoughts. So go slow. I’m going to explain every Simple Explanation idea over and over, in various ways, throughout this short book. 

Cyd Ropp, Universal Torus

Criticism of Psychiatry reprint

Here's an interesting article I'm reprinting from Keith Scott-Mumby's newsletter:

[Keith Scott-Mumby wrote:]

Issue 202 | Date: February 17, 2017

Psychiatrists Are The Real Screwballs I’m not so sure about the patients but I am sure about the doctors: psychiatrists are just nuts! They have a fantasy diagnosis system that is not based on any real-world objective test. Not one. Not any! It’s shocking to grasp this but you need to know… it’s true. The so-called “bible” of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or DSM (currently number 5 or V), lists over 300 conditions, not one of which exists in reality. OK, I’m kidding slightly. But not one of those diagnoses can be proved, therefore in a sense they are not real. It’s all opinion. There is no definitive blood test, x-ray, scan result, urine change or microscope visual that can establish any of the 300 conditions. That’s why you can visit one psychiatrist, who says you’re depressed; another says you have anxiety neurosis; and a third (if you are unlucky) will try to tell you that you have signs of schizophrenia. But none of these experts will look at some     lab work and say, “This shows you have XYZ condition.” I repeat: there are no such tests. Yet these people are dishing out some of the heaviest, most destructive “therapies” known: toxic chemicals, including SSRIs, electroshock convulsion treatment and, yes, they are still doing lobotomies in some barbaric places (ie. Great Britain and The United States of America!) British psychiatrist Maurice Partridge, who conducted a follow-up study of 300 lobotomy patients, said that the treatment achieved its effects by "reducing the complexity of psychic life". Following the operation, spontaneity, responsiveness,     self-awareness and self-control were reduced. Activity was replaced by inertia, and people were left emotionally blunted and restricted in their intellectual range.  In other words the patients is wrecked but complains less. For “reducing the complexity of psychic life” read: cabbage state. Based on the fact that they have no workable diagnostic system, they have no right to treat anything. Yet they subsume the right to destroy brain tissue permanently and blunt the whole purpose of living. Holistic Psychiatry? I complain that they do not have any lab work. But in fact they do! It is my assertion that over 95% of so-called “mental illness” is caused by undiagnosed and untreated physical disorders, namely food allergies, heavy metal inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances and hidden stealth pathogens. So the real treatment becomes obvious: fix the physical problem. Do not label the person as a mental case and treat him or her with frightful chemicals under the guise of medicines. I’m shortly finishing up a book on Holistic Psychiatry (that’s its working title), which goes into these many treatable disorders which can underpin mental symptoms. I mean, just take hormones…. Any woman of menstruating age can report that a change in hormones can signal severe, even extreme, mental changes. Ask a man! It’s been a joke of mine for decades that “a lot of men suffer from pre-menstrual tension!” Does it mean a woman becomes a lunatic every month? I don’t think so. The point is that we do not need a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of supposed disorders. We really need a book of causes. An effective manual of psychiatry would list food allergies as probably the main condition; there would be a chapter on hormones; another chapter on nutritional deficiencies (very common, even if the overfed West); and a chapter on parasites and stealth pathogens. There would also be a chapter on cool procedures to pull people out of psychic trauma—trauma and abuse does exist, of course. But: 1.    Is not a mental illness, even when incapacitating (see 2.) 2.    Need not be permanent, if dealt with properly 3.    Should not be treated with addictive chemicals that create ongoing dysfunctionality Let’s do what the math teacher calls factorization. The treatment of depression due to food allergies (I’ve cured over a thousand such) is change the diet; the treatment of depression due to low thyroid function is supplement (replace) the thyroid hormones; the treatment of depression due to B vitamin deficiency is to supplement the vitamins; the treatment of depression due to Lyme’s is antibiotics to kill the spirochete (I’m talking real Lyme’s: an infection with Borrelia burgdorferi). Take out the common factor, which is “depression”, and you are left with a series of proper diagnoses and we do not need the word depression at all! Can’t Diagnose Sanity, Never Mind Mental Illness OK, let’s lighten up and have some fun. A couple weeks ago, sitting reading in Waikiki, I came across an interesting experiment. The book calls itself The Untold Story of Psychiatry and is by Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD. He’s obviously a shrink and takes the orthodox point of view. Not a vitamin or whole food in the entire book! The article that caught my eye, referred to by Lieberman, took place in 1973 (long before I came to the States). It was published in the prestigious journal Science and was titled “On Being Sane In Insane Places.” The author was David Rosenhan, a lawyer, not an MD (he had a degree in psychology though). The opening sentence of Rosenhan’s article was “If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?” Good question! He proposed to investigate psychiatry’s take on this important issue by sending sane, well-balanced and otherwise “normal” individuals into mental hospitals, to see if they were spotted as sane and sent home. Unbeknownst to the hospital staffs, Rosenhan engineered the secret admission of eight totally normal individuals. They used fake identities and varied their profession from the real ones. At each hospital, they telephoned ahead for an appointment and when they arrived they complained of hearing voices and had been primed to say three words: “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. Each of the fake patients was a voluntary admission, by the way. Each was instructed to say they no longer heard voices and to start behaving totally normally, once they reached the psychiatric ward. The result? All but one of the planted cases were diagnosed as schizophrenic! They were locked up from 7 – 52 days (brave fellows!) Rosenhan’s conclusion: We cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in mental hospitals. Predictably there was widespread outrage and derision from the public at large. Some of my older subscribers may even remember this outcry (1973). But Rosenhan wasn’t done yet! The furor that he evoked suggested a further chance to humiliate the psychiatrists! He issued a new challenge to one of the hospitals, which unwisely accepted: “Over the coming year, I will send in another round of impostors into your hospital. You try to detect them, knowing full well that they will be coming, and at the end of the year, we will see how many you catch.” From a total intake of 193 patients over the subsequent year, the staff identified 41 possible fake patients. To which Rosenhan gleefully announced that he had not sent in a single imposter! So he declared that, given psychiatry’s inability to tell sane from insane individuals, they were clearly incompetent. It resulted in the medical insurance companies, like Aetna and Blue Cross, slashing the mental health benefits in their policies. Their complaint, apart from the absurdity of being unable to identify true mental illness, was that in this one specialty, only the patient and psychiatrist could ever know what medical services were provided and why. I laughed so much, I nearly spilled my Mai Tai! To your continuing mental health! Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby The Official Alternative Doctor www.alternative-doctor.com What? Not a subscriber? To get your weekly copy of my fabulous "Medicine Outside the Box" sign up here...

My Brother, David, Passed Onward in January

David and Franny

In January, my brother, David Puett, fell from a ladder onto the concrete driveway while trimming a tree. Mercifully, he lost brain function immediately and never regained consciousness. His organs were donated and saved the lives of three other people on the day he passed over.

We all agree that it was a strange occurrence for David to die during an accident, as he was known to be an especially cautious and safety-minded guy. He had been trimming this particular flowering mulberry for 45 years without mishap. Then he popped outside on a sunny afternoon to trim just one branch. A couple of minutes later, he was gone.

David was a frequent contributor to the Simple Explanation blog in its formative days.  You will see his comments on articles involving cosmology, astronomy, and physics. He understood entropy like nobody's business.  

David was a lifelong learner and teacher. He, along with me and my other brother, Bill, was driven by curiosity about the natural world and a desire to share its wonders with others. He was a natural philosopher and a lover of God. He was thrilled when the internet came along because David liked nothing better than to research into the wee hours of the night, with only the glow of his laptop lighting the dark.

Of the tens of thousands of sets of eyeballs that have read Simple Explanation articles here over the years, David was one of probably no more than a handful of people who thoroughly grasped what he was reading. Without his support and Bill's, I'd have felt pretty alone here.

It was quite an honor to be David's sister at his memorial. People said such great things about him, about his dry sense of humor, about his generosity and his unbounded helpfulness.  He was a good man whose character improved with age.  I felt very proud of him.

Here's the obituary his wife and kids had printed in the newspaper:

David went to be with our Lord after a sudden accident but he saved three lives donating organs. Survivors include his wife Barbara, daughters Krista Puett & Brooke Fuentes, grandchildren Joshua Puett and Emma Fuentes, and his brother Bill Puett and sister Cyd Ropp. He met his wife at UCLA then completed his MBA. He was successful in banking and then became a much requested and respected substitute teacher. He loved God and helping others. He had a passion for serving children in Malawi and Brazil, creating toys for his grandchildren, fixing anything and everything, and caring for his family as a jack-of-all trades. 

American Life Expectancy Declines -- reprint

Here's another informative article from Dr. Mercola's website. I endorse everything he says in this reprint. 

American Lifespan Declines as Obesity and Opioid Epidemic Takes Its Toll

December 21, 2016 

By Dr. Mercola

For the first time in two decades, life expectancy has declined in the U.S.1,2,3 Obesity appears to have a major role along with the rising rates of eight leading causes of death, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and dementia, the latter of which rose by 15.7 percent rise between 2014 and 2015.

The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) show life expectancy for both men and women in the U.S. dropped between 2014 and 2015, from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015 for men, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women.

As noted by BBC News:4 "A decline of 0.1 years in life expectancy means people are dying, on average, a little over a month earlier — or two months earlier for men."

Rises in Preventable Deaths Push Life Expectancy Downward

In all, there were 86,212 more deaths in 2015 compared to 2014, and as of 2015, the U.S. ranks 29th out of 43 countries for life expectancy,5 lagging behind countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Korea and the Czech Republic. In 2014, the U.S. ranked 28th.6

Moreover, according to Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, this decline in life expectancy is a "uniquely American phenomenon." No other developed countries experienced this decline.

Dr. Jiaquan Xu, the report's lead author, noted that the decline in life expectancy is primarily caused by a rise in several categories of preventable deaths,7 again highlighting the failure of the American health care system to properly address the root causes of chronic disease.

More Than Half of All Americans Are Chronically Ill

The cost of health care in the U.S. also increased over the past year, now accounting for an astounding 17 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).8 But even though the U.S. spends more than $3 trillion on health care each year, it is the worst performing system ranked by multiple aspects of care.9

Recent research also demonstrates half of Americans are living with chronic illness.10I don't know about you, but I find this statistic absolutely astounding. Half the people in the U.S have some type of chronic illness.

According to study authors Elizabeth Reisinger Walker, Ph.D., an assistant research professor, and Dr. Benjamin Druss, professor at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University:11

"The health of individuals in the [USA] is increasingly being defined by complexity and multi-morbidity, the co-occurrence of two or more chronic medical conditions."

Opioid Addiction Likely Part of Declining Life Expectancy in US

Opioid addiction appears to be one significant contributor to declining life expectancy in the U.S.12,13 In all, more than 50,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, a rise of 11 percent from 2014.

Heroin deaths rose by 23 percent between 2014 and 2015, deaths from synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, rose by 73 percent, while deaths from prescription opioids like Oxycontin and Vicodin rose by 4 percent. Prescription pain killers alone killed 17,536 people last year.

According to Robert Anderson, who oversees death statistics at the CDC: "I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. Certainly not in modern times."

US Anti-Obesity Campaign Declared a Failure

As noted in a 2014 study,14 childhood obesity worsened between 1999 and 2012. This included all classes of obesity, but in particular severe obesity, which poses the greatest risk to a child long-term.

Now, another CDC report concludes that America's battle against the bulge — and especially childhood obesity — has indeed failed.15 According to CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden:16

"The data speak for themselves. If you look for the goal we set for ourselves, and look at what happened, we didn't achieve it."

Rather than lowering obesity rates for toddlers and children, the obesity rate has grown since 2009 (the year Frieden was appointed to the CDC), and now exceeds 17 percent.

This also refutes any claims that First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, launched in 2010, has made a dent in childhood obesity. It has been a miserable failure because it never integrated foundational nutrition advice due to corporate conflicts.

Her campaign unwisely focused on exercise rather than addressing children's diets. According to recent research, nearly 60 percent, in fact of the food Americans eat is ultra-processed, and less than 1 percent of daily calories comes from vegetables.17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24

Basically, more than half of what the average American eats in any given day are convenience foods that can be bought at your local gas station. Moreover, those ultra-processed foods account for 90 percent of the added sugar consumption in the U.S.

This kind of diet is hardly going to result in healthy children, and until this changes, we're not going to see any dramatic improvement in childhood obesity or childhood disease rates.

Sadly, the failure of Obama's anti-obesity campaign was the result of massive interference and manipulation by the junk food industry, discussed in my article, "How the First Lady's Organic Garden Became a Junk Food Campaign."

United Nations Calls Out Junk Food as Real Culprit in Malnutrition

Obesity is not the only problem associated with a processed junk food diet. On the flip side, you have malnutrition. According to the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, Ph.D., the impact of processed food on public health is "alarming."  As reported by Civil Eats:25

"Earlier this fall [Elver] told the United Nations General Assembly that, despite all the high-profile work being done around the globe to fight hunger and malnutrition, 'the world is not on track to reach globally agreed nutrition targets.'

Addressing leaders from around the globe, Elver was not afraid to name the culprit.

'Today's food systems are dominated by industrial food production and processing' … coupled with trade policies that result in 'large food corporations … flooding the global market with nutrient poor yet energy-dense foods that are relatively inexpensive.'"

A lot of people don't know this, but the right to adequate food is part of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights26 and the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights.27 In countries that have ratified them, these are both legally binding agreements that provide a framework for legal action when these rights are violated. Curiously, the U.S. never ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights.

In participating countries, lawsuits against the government have led to a variety of food entitlement programs for children and other vulnerable groups such as indigenous communities and prisoners. Most importantly, these agreements also address nutrition, not just availability of cheap junk food. In other words, they provide a human rights' framework for access to REAL food, not just denatured "belly-fillers."

Real Food Access and Health Go Hand in Hand

As explained by Civil Eats:

"Why the need for civil society groups to sue governments over the right to food? A significant part of what's gone wrong, Elver explains, is that international trade policies have allowed large food corporations to sell lots of soda, fast food and other high-calorie, nutrient-poor products made with cheap refined grains, corn sweetener and vegetable oil … [M]uch of this production is also controlled globally — in terms of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides — by a very few large companies."

According to Elver, lack of access to nutritious food is an indicator of socioeconomic inequality, and when a bag of chips is cheaper than an apple, this inequality ripples out into our health statistics. As noted by Elver, "We now know that this kind of highly sugar intensive, saturated fat heavy and salty food really makes you sick."

The fact that the U.S. never ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights means that in the U.S., the right to food is a policy issue, not a human right, and Americans cannot take the government to court over lack of food access or lack of nutritional value. According to Elver, access to programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for underprivileged women and children would also be quite different if the U.S. supported the right to food concept.

Elver also stresses that in order to protect and ensure the human right to adequate food, the global community must move away from the industrial model toward more sustainable systems. We simply cannot sustain a global population on commodity crops like corn and soy, and the United States' health statistics is a perfect demonstration of what happens when you try.

More Children Suffering From Type 2 Diabetes

With the rise of obesity has come a rise in the number of American children who suffer from type 2 diabetes. In a nationwide representative study28 between 2001 and 2009, researchers found that while the prevalence of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes increased, the rate of increase of the preventable type 2 diabetes was significantly higher than type 1.

Dr. Robin Goland, co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center, calls these "big numbers" and went on to say:29

"In my career, type 1 diabetes was a rare disease in children and type 2 disease didn't exist. And I'm not that old."

Indeed, once thought to be an exclusive adult metabolic disorder, in the past 20 years, type 2 diabetes in children has jumped from less than 5 percent of all newly diagnosed cases to more than 20 percent, and obesity plays an important role in this trend.30

Childhood obesity leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes more quickly than in adults, and is associated with both metabolic and cardiovascular complications in children and adolescents.31 Severe insulin resistance is also associated with an increase in morbidity and mortality in young adults and a higher risk of hypertension, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and metabolic syndrome.

This rising tide of children suffering from obesity and type 2 diabetes suggests we can expect ever increasing indirect and direct cost of care and loss of life in coming years.

Junk Food Kills

The root cause of most health problems can be traced back to a poor diet. Most Americans spend the majority of their food dollars on processed foods, most of which contain one or more of the three ingredients that promote the most chronic disease, namely corn, soy and sugar beets, all three of which are also typically genetically engineered (GE) and contaminated with toxic pesticides.

In short, processed foods are killing people prematurely, and if we want to reverse the current disease and mortality trends in the U.S., we have to get serious about cleaning up our food supply and increasing access to real food.

The processed food industry is responsible for creating a "lifestyle disease epidemic" the World Health Organization (WHO) says is "a much greater public health threat than any other epidemic known to man."32 Just as agriculture has become one of the most significant environmental polluters rather than being a leading environmental steward, the food industry has become a leading source of ill health rather than a source of nutrition, health and wellbeing.

In my view, this is thoroughly unacceptable. Marketing junk food to kids and knowingly increasing diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease rates is unacceptable. The ever-increasing use of toxic pesticides that contaminate food and destroy the soil is unacceptable. Creating vast amounts of pollution and antibiotic resistance is unacceptable.

Spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat legislation and regulation that would protect environmental and human health is unacceptable, and Big Food does all of these things as part of routine business. The way you fight back is by changing your own purchasing habits. While there are "food deserts" in inner cities, most people are not forced to buy processed foods for lack of options.

The Role of Endocrine Disruptors

Yet another factor driving disease statistics in the U.S. is the excessive exposure to toxic endocrine disrupting chemicals. According to one recent analysis, if exposure to certain household chemicals — including phthalates, DDT, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and perfluoroalkyl — were to be reduced by 25 percent, it would reduce the rate of obesity and type 2 diabetes by an estimated 13 percent.33,34 According to the authors:

"The present study confirms substantial contribution, especially of mixtures of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, to adult type 2 diabetes, and large annual costs of medical care … Our findings also speak the need for a strong regulatory framework that proactively identifies chemical hazards before they are widely used, and the use of safer alternatives …

The European Union is actively considering regulations to limit such exposures, and the USA recently revised the Toxic Substances Control Act, but does not consider endocrine disruption. In the absence of such a framework, newly developed synthetic chemicals may emerge as diabetogenic exposures, replacing banned or substituted hazards as contributors."

Your purchasing decisions can make a big difference in your exposure to these kinds of chemicals, and subsequently your health. In one study,35 young girls who switched to phthalate-free personal care products lowered their phthalate levels by 27 percent.

Taking personal responsibility and seeking out non-toxic products appears to be the only way to really stay safe, as the chemical industry maintains a stronghold over regulatory agencies in both the U.S. and Europe. The French magazine Le Monde recently published a three-part investigative series in which it accuses the European Commission of ignoring the science on endocrine disruptors. The series has been translated and republished by Environmental Health News.36,37,38

To Optimize Your Weight and Health, Eat Real Food, Avoid Toxins and Stay Active

The statistics discussed in this article reveal a grim reality. People around the world, and Americans in particular, are suffering the effects of a failed food system that places immediate profits over long-term health. There's really no way around it; if you're concerned about your weight and health, you need to address the quality of your food and the ratio of carbs, fats and protein you eat.

Don't make the mistake of trying to figure out which processed foods are "good" for you and which ones aren't. A far more effective rule is to simply eat real food, as close to its natural state as possible. If you're still struggling with excess weight after you've cleaned up your diet, you may want to reconsider the timing of your meals.

Intermittent fasting can be very effective for helping your body shift from sugar- to fat-burning mode. If you are overweight, I would strongly encourage you to do a number of water fasts, as that will radically jumpstart your body's ability to burn fat as your primary fuel.

In addition to that, you need to evaluate and address your toxic exposures. Most pesticides can be avoided by eating certified organic foods. If you buy organic produce and grass-fed animal products you'll also cut your exposure to genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, artificial sweeteners and harmful processed fats.

But that's not your only route of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Household cleansers, personal care products and anything containing flame retardants (and that includes everything from furniture and clothing to electronics and baby products) are other common sources.

Last, but certainly not least, increase your physical activity level. This includes standing up more during your work day and walking more. Ideally, aim for 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day. Later you can add on a more regimented workout routine, which will really help maximize all the other healthy lifestyle changes you've implemented. But for general health and longevity, staying active throughout each day and avoiding sitting takes precedence. 

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