Cool, I can get behind that.
That was 9 months ago that we had that conversation.
And it wasn't until I went out to visit my dad, well technically my brother in jail, that I had the big fucking ah-motherfucking-ha moment. You see, my dad was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's (also now called Diabetes Type 3 funnily enough) a few years ago. Talking with my mom back then, we figured it was just his emotional stubbornness manifesting as no longer being able to tie his shoes or easily put on a pair of pants correctly. But when I visited him in November 2017, I decided to take a better look at what this whole Alzheimer's thing was all about. Well, I found a study showing that you can reverse it! No shit. It was done by UCLA in 2014, (you mean, i could have saved my dad three years ago had i just looked into it a bit?? Mmmm, what a delightful helping of guilt. No, not really. Thankfully I've gotten some pretty sweet tools to be kind to myself from the past.) and it flipped the script on everything.
Instead of viewing Alzheimer's as a leaky roof with one hole which needs to get plugged with one pill, the study approaches the disease as being a roof with 36 holes, with one pill only being able to address one of the leaks.
So the study put 10 people with Alzheimer's on a 36 point protocol which included regular exercise, good sleep, nutritional supplements, and a diet without sugar. 9 out of 10 people had experienced reversal of their symptoms. The other person had late stage Alzheimer's, so for them it was too late apparently. So yes I could write a book on sugar, but that would be only plugging one of the holes in the leaky roof. I want to know what happens when we plug them all at once.
Dr Gabor Mate's book about addiction is also something to be considered. The first puzzle piece, sugar has been closely related to cocaine in regards to its addictiveness. The fun pieces of that book are the mouse paradise study which showed us that a while a mouse in a stark white room will always pick the cocaine water over the regular water, in an environment where the mouse has friends, places to explore, a shelter, you know, all the needs of a well adjusted mouse, they didn't differentiate between the two different types of water. In other words, when a mouse (read: human) has a good life, they don't feel the need to do cocaine (read: sugar). This also applied to heroin, one of the most addictive substances. Lots and lots of US soldiers did it over in Vietnam during the war. When they came back, 95% of them discontinued their usage. But, I thought it was super addictive! What we learn from this knowledge is that the issues of the human condition are complex!
Which brings me to how it all applies to everything. If Alzheimer's, previously thought to be untreatable, can be treated if all parts of a lifestyle out of alignment are realigned at one time, perhaps we can consider the human condition in a similar light?
Perhaps, the human condition of suffering isn't untreatable. Maybe it just is a leaky roof that has a lot of holes and they all need to be plugged at the same time to stop everyone under it from getting soaking fucking wet. And right now, there's a lot of good humans doing their best (ok, i'm projecting) to frantically run around sticking their finger in each leaking hole while the water just get diverted to the other holes.
In non-metaphorical speak, this looks like gay marriage being legalized and then soon after planned parenthood being defunded. It looks like PrEP being invented and widely distributed and then the affordable care act being actively reversed.
So in this amazing article I read about millenials and the shit culture they got birthed into, I learned that there are now more millenials than there are baby boomers. So if it is really true in a technically democratic society that the majority of the population can make choices, we have the power to completely restructure our environment, aka plug all of the holes in the leaky roof with live under called life.
The thing is, unless we coordinate and plug every hole with our collective finger at the exact same time, it seems like the we will keep on existing in an increasingly cold, wet, and lame room.
So here's my proposal.
We know what's wrong with the world, with our culture it's the following:
- Legal system
- Prison complex
- Healthcare
- Insurance
- Taxes
- Education
- Mental Health
- Drugs and Substance issues
- Sex work
- shelter
- Food/nutrition/nutrients
- water
- ^aka basic human needs
- sexuality/sex ed
- communication tools
- trauma rehabilitation
- campaign finance reform
- voting reform
- addressing corporation structure issues
- issue of endless growth
- banking/loan reform
- Touch
- Body reintegration and fitness
- gut brain connection for mental health
- and most importantly,
- we need to end the rape of our planet. we need to love and care for her and help her heal.
Yes, there are more. Yes there are nuances. These are the big ones that come to my mind. If we can collectively address/reform all of these issues at once, we might be able to have peace.
Am I onto something?
Very well said
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