WHO’s zero alcohol use versus the University of Otago’s 13 grams

Tags

How much alcohol is ideal?, How much alcohol is too much?, How much alcohol should I drink?, University of Otago's 13 grams of alcohol, WHO's zero alcohol use

A couple of days ago I posted I experiment with creating a habit. The statistics seem to indicate that a small amount of alcohol is better for health and longevity than total abstinence from alcohol. The data didn’t appear to exclude those people who have the self-control to not submit to their addiction to alcohol, but I think they should be excluded. With those who developed an addiction to alcohol or any other addiction, a single tiny relapse often results, in a short time, to a complete re-addiction.

My personal experience with this addiction problem is with cigarettes. I quit many times for over a month, and then assumed I had broken the addiction and could smoke a single cigarette after a meal. I do enjoy that kind of smoking, but that single cigarette caused me to fail every time, and a month later I would be smoking a pack a day again. Finally, I admitted to myself that I am a cigarette addict and thus can not have a single one … ever, without becoming addicted again. I’ve been successful with that coping strategy with my cigarette addiction for over forty years.

Fortunately, I am not addicted to alcohol, and I don’t want to become addicted to alcohol, but a small amount of alcohol does seem to maintain health and help in maximizing healthy longevity. The material available several years ago seemed to indicate that approximately a single drink per day was near optimum. So, I sip a little whiskey every day. The graph below appears to prove that assumption.

The hazard rate ratio of various diseases based on alcohol consumption

Image from Public Health Expert, University of Otago, New Zealand

From the graph above it appears that the bottom point average of the eight curves is 13 g. That is 13 grams of pure alcohol per day. That quantity conforms well to the WHO suggestions below for the maximum permissible for any day where a drink is taken. On the chart above all of the hazards are improving up to twenty-two grams per day except for coronary heart disease. Unfortunately, that’s a great exception because coronary heart disease is at the very top of the causes of death list: WHO’s Top ten causes of death.

 

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World Health Organization (WHO) / Health topics / Data and statistics  / Do you drink too much? Test your own alcohol consumption with the AUDIT test / AUDIT /

There is some disagreement between WHO and New Zealand as to what one drink means. It might be 10 grams of pure alcohol or 13 grams, but looking at the hazard ratio chart above that wouldn’t make a significant difference.

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For example (approximate values as defined by WHO):

• 1 can beer (330 ml) at 5% x (strength) 0.79 (conversion factor) = 13 g of pure alcohol
• 1 glass wine (140ml) at 12% x 0.79 = 13.3 g of pure alcohol
• 1 shot spirits (40 ml) at 40% x 0.79 = 12.6 g of pure alcohol

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But the WHO recommends not drinking any alcohol. NONE! They admit that people will drink, so they put a maximum that is similar to the recommended amount from the New Zealand research. That seems to conflict directly with the data from the University of Otago, New Zealand, as shown in the graph above. The curves on every one of the health hazards studied there, except coronary heart disease, show a lessening of risk at ten grams per day of alcohol consumption, or thirteen grams. Above that amount of alcohol, the curves of risk with more drinking get worse, but they don’t cross over the index line of a non-drinker until about three drinks per day. Thus, there is a huge difference between the two authoritative reports.

Who do we choose to follow? It would appear to me that if you don’t have any cardiovascular problem, which most people do have, then it is okay, even better to have about one standard drink per day with food. But, if you are of average health you should follow WHO’s advice and should never drink any alcohol. 

One important thing these statistics didn’t mention is the concentration of drinking time. Surely, drinking three drinks just after work at a bar and then driving home is worse than a drink with lunch, a drink with dinner, and a drink with popcorn in the evening when watching TV. Spreading the drinking throughout the day, and diluting the alcohol with some food would probably keep the benefits and lessen the risks.

I have been drinking less than 13 grams of pure alcohol per day and today I repeatedly measured my usual sip as 4 grams whiskey which by WHOs measure is 4 x 40% = 1.6 grams. I do that an average of approximately five times per day. Thus, I have been drinking about 8 grams of alcohol per day.

I’ll just keep doing what I do.

Nothing special today except for this thing.

Tags

Beauty, Nothing special, What is beauty?

A few days after not getting a Tamiflu pill from the ER room for my impending flu, I discovered this in the bathroom sink after blowing my nose. I posted this photo on January 3, 2020, but I couldn’t help making it a little more visually exciting.

I cleaned the color balance of the photo and sharpened it a bit to emphasize its qualities. This represents my relationship with visual images better. An image of a thing isn’t the reality of the thing portrayed! It is a visual representation of something conceived by the creator. I present this image to you as a challenge to re-view the reality that exists around us all the time. This reality has its own unique relationship to beauty. It has been said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I say,

“Beauty is in the mind of one who is presently perceiving a new reality.”

What does it mean to be kind?

Tags

Kindness, Probaway's 442 habits

Almost all my life I have been doing little experiments on myself. I say almost because before about the age of thirteen I was just a kid growing up. But, about that time I remember doing things just to find out what would happen.

In the year before I started this blog, that is before January 1, 2008, I published this list of things that I had been doing for several years. When I thought of one I attempted to do each of these things seven independent times that day. The idea was to create the item as a habit. I haven’t looked at this particular list for over a year and yet as I skipped through it I do remember practicing them and still do.

I just glanced down and saw #45 “Observe water and its many, many different appearances.” I still do that automatically, along with other similar things listed nearby. One curious way I manifest the habit these last few months is by taking photos of the water in storm sewers.

#47 “Observe irregularities in street pavement and consider their causes and futures.” I do that a lot when Debbie and I take our daily walks. It creates a problem for her because here in Bend the concrete practically dissolves in a year because of poor enforcement of construction laws and I complain about it. My complaining annoys her, so I am trying to see those things but not to say anything about their failure.

#140 “When you see something good to do, try and do it right away.” That is the key to kindness.

Enjoy reading my working list below and finding things you would like to experiment with.

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Probaway – Habits

Derived from New Year Resolutions – 2005 – 2006 – 2007 – with bonmots and comments.

© 2005, 2006, 2007 by Charles L. Scamahorn, El Cerrito CA

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1. – Create a new good habit every day; make a list of the habits and practice it seven seperate times.
2. – Greet your interlocutors in a direct and friendly way.
3. – Observe the visual pattern of things and their lighting.
4. – Observe the emotional space of people and treat it with respect.
5. – Observe the energy of people’s direction of gaze and why they are looking at that subject.
6. – Look for the fuller meaning and content in what you see and hear.
7. – Observe the meaning as the result of the way things are positioned relative to one another.
8. – Say your name … the way some person you are observing would enunciate it.
9. – Say your true love’s name … frequently the way they should hear it.
10. – Use precise words instead of generalizations as much as possible.
11. – When observing people, name their emotional space and how they are using it.
12. – Observe and state the architectural intent of buildings and say it out loud.
13. – Observe your body’s current health problems and state specific reasons for its present condition.
14. – Say your name with the affect of an observed person’s emotional state.
15. – Place your keys against the doorknob before closing an outside door.
16. – Place a hand on a solid object before sitting down.
17. – Say the observed person’s name with their expressed affect.
18. – Observe the color and translucency of liquids.
19. – Look along a street, as far as can be seen and then scan back.
20. – Grab objects firmly and deliberately.
21. – Rate the health of a person’s skin and their behavior.
22. – Observe the Earth’s center of gravity and yours in relation to it.
23. – Identify the necessary parts to identify a physical object or abstract thing.
24. – Look at the expression on the left side of a person’s face and then the right side.
25. – Observe a group, name a random category, and state the commonalities between them.
26. – Spot lurkers’ hideouts and make mental preparations for coping with them.
27. – When looking at a person look for their symmetry.
28. – At the end of the month read your habits list and correct the statement of your usage of the new habits.
29. – During lulls exercise by raising a leg and push/pulling clasped hands.
30. – When running hold the breast pocket to prevent loss of items.
31. – When bending over grab the breast pocket to prevent loss of items.
32. – Observe the mood of the local groups and the energy flows between them.
33. – When you find yourself humming a song, find and learn the lyrics.
34. – After eating rinse out the mouth three times to clean your teeth.
35. – Look for the center and the periphery of a situation and then the external influences.
36. – When you remember a habit, do it right away, if possible.
37. – Randomly during the day see and name a category and find examples of it.
38. – When getting out of a shower, grab some stable item firmly.
39. – Find and use soft brown paper napkins for ear plugs to limit excessive noise.
40. – Uniquely identify people with two descriptive words.
41. – Observe something and mentally make it symmetrical.
42. – Finish every sentence even when interrupted … especially when interrupted.
43. – Cut desserts in two and only eat half; share the other half.
44. – Wash before eating and keep hands clean when eating by using a utensil.
45. – Observe water and its many, many different appearances.
46. – Observe people and their many, many different appearances.
47. – Observe irregularities in street pavement and consider their causes and futures .
48. – Look at the sky and smile; the sky’s many moods are all wonderful.
49. – At all times be aware of attack and retreat routes.
50. – Mentally rehearse where you want to go and the things you need along the way; feel the pull to your goal.
51. – When driving don’t run into anything and don’t let anything run into you.
52. – Imagine things being much bigger than they normally are.
53. – Look at things and ideas as parts of a larger system, repeat …
54. – Look at things and ideas as expanded parts of a smaller system, repeat …
55. – Put a numbered dimension scale on objects, phenomena, ideas …
56. – Look at a person’s face and then their body.
57. – Observe the icons in a person’s presentation of self.
58. – Note person’s subjects of interest and that subject’s time frame.
59. – Observe “all” of the symbols of an object and its environment.
60. – On walks pick up an unusual item and when home set it in a visible place.
61. – Observe your center and take comfort in it.
62. – Ask questions about important things that can be answered.
63. – Observe phlegm and its manifestations of health.
64. – Listen to background sounds and identify their sources.
65. – What can you observe and how can you observe it differently?
66. – Ask your companion how you might create a good habit.
67. – What pain are you feeling and what caused it?
68. – Choose a name for unnamed entities.
69. – Think through the history of an item.
70. – Think of the goal and then think through the new journey, its junctions and key points to that goal.
71. – With the first step of a journey think of its final step.
72. – Observe the scene and how “it” would observe your place in it.
73. – What can you do to make this task simpler? Can it be parsed into doable pieces?
74. – Observe the human reactions to water.
75. – Observe what creates pleasure and precedes pain.
76. – Look for the extreme stress and what will happen when it breaks its bonds.
77. – What is important to the passing person?
78. – Make a collection of little items and display them together.
79. – Avoid virus transfers by gripping doorknobs in nonstandard ways and washing your hand often.
80. – When in public avoid touching your eyes and mouth as that is when viruses are transfered.
81. – Go to bed at appropriate times and do so consistently.
82. – Respond as accurately as possible to a person’s statements.
83. – Observe how one can do without something and try to do it.
84. – Check your entire skin for imperfections and treat them.
85. – Make a list of people’s names and add to it when you meet someone new.
86. – Keep a list of interesting words and use them.
87. – What are your fears?
88. – Rate people’s perception of: “did they get what they deserved out of life?”
89. – What higher purpose might you be working toward right now?
90. – Look at people and laugh; it puts you into a good humor towards them.
91. – View people as Poser models as it gives you a feeling of what they are feeling in a gross way.
92. – View surroundings as if seen from above and go to Google Earth for developing overall perspective.
93. – Create a situation-specific good habit right now.
94. – At the computer, do five seconds of back exercise by looking back and up at each corner.
95. – How can you improve this object in your hand, to make it work better?
96. – When dieting and coming to the middle of a meal make a statement of dissatisfaction with overeating.
97. – When picking up new household items, state where you will put it and what it will displace.
98. – When you say, “thank you” say specifically what the thanks is for.
99. – Before you go through an outside door, make sure you pee.
100. – Before you go into the house check the mail.
101. – Before you get into the car make sure it is clear front and back.
102. – At the outside door say, “pee, key, see”. Look back and ahead for needs.
103. – Place a note card at eye level at the front door with a list of things to do before you leave.
104. – Carry a notepad and pen in the breast pocket.
105. – When you encounter an unknown word write it down.
106. – When you depart a public seat, look back for dropped items.
107. – When eating a bagel be careful about jam dripping through the hole.
108. – What are you doing now that someone else could be doing for you, and doing it better?
109. – When walking ask, “How well does this architecture function? What to change to make it better?”
110. – What can you do right now to show your appreciation for what the world has given you?
111. – Think for a moment, “How do I learn best, and how do I remember to apply what I have learned?”
112. – Practice doing two-handed tasks with one hand.
113. – Place good web finds on a special HTMLized web page. At present DeLicio.us works well.
114. – After eating anything rinse your teeth and tongue with a swallow of water three times.
115. – When balancing on “one” foot, to put on pants, put just one ounce of weight on the other foot before lifting.
116. – Throw away useless old stuff.
117. – When going to sleep press a smile into your face.
118. – When eating food talk about positive things.
119. – When it is necessary to face difficult things, have some yogurt as it soothes the stomach.
120. – Carry a notepad and pencil and date the edge.
121. – Before giving personal data check for credentials of the recipient.
122. – Taste food before you swallow and when raisin bread has bitter raisins, spit it all out immediately.
123. – Greet people in a way they expect and feel comfortable with.
124. – When eating, set goals and triggering events.
125. – Don’t start eating until your companion is ready to eat.
126. – When little things go wrong don’t fail … but think “I used to get frustrated but now I will try this better alternative.”
127. – When trading stocks consider using limit orders.
128. – Make every activity have a potentially salable product.
129. – Walk up and down the stairs, even when using an escalator.
130. – When you see someone is wrong, you don’t have to correct them.
131. – When you have a useful thing, explore alternate non-intended uses it can be put to.
132. – Recognize a play potential in everything by playing with it.
133. – When entering a new environment, bring good news.
134. – When you look at someone’s eyes consider how you can help them live life more abundantly.
135. – When bending over put a hand on a knee to ease the stress on your back.
136. – Keep moving appropriately to the situation, to burn calories and keep the blood flowing.
137. – Never click on anything in an email unless you are certain it is virus free.
138. – Set the computer’s safety programs to update automatically.
139. – Protect your mind and senses, like hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling from assaults of excess.
140. – When you see something good to do, try to do it right away.
141. – When you see something bad in another’s behavior, stop doing it yourself.
142. – Seek to please women and impress men.
143. – Keep a chart of your monetary wealth.
144. – Notice what works well and apply that to more things.
145. – Plan a specific action to do when arriving at a specific place.
146. – When you go to bed your job is to go to sleep; don’t get distracted.
147. – When putting things in the garbage can, make sure you don’t miss.
148. – On the last day of the month, change the calendar, pay bills and remember appointments.
149. – When you find a good web site save it to your local web site.
150. – Watch for situations where you may cultivate new habits.
151. – Observe the shadows cast by different colored transparent objects.
152. – When taking a shower maintain balance by holding an elbow against a wall.
153. – Observe where the power lies and seek a positive influence.
154. – What are your current options and constraints to action?
155. – Live life abundantly by having an important goal toward which you can make clear daily progress.
156. – At the end of each day have what you have done in a final form.
157. – Finish what you start.
158. – Make what you want to do fit in with the conditions which will prevail when you are done.
159. – Find the critical precursor to an expected event.
160. – Make your life as aesthetic as possible by making your things and behavior a beautiful aspect of yourself.
161. – Observe the aesthetically horizontal banding.
162. – Compare the banding aesthetic of the horizontal and the symmetrical aesthetic of the vertical.
163. – Note seven related items together as an aesthetic group.
164. – When you take out the garbage pick up the local litter.
165. – Seek out people with similar interests; that is, with similar goals.
166. – Think through a list of what your goals and interests are and prioritize a list of the top seven.
167. – Align your thoughts and actions with archetypes of your goals.
168. – Rate passing people on a baby face versus mature face scale.
169. – When at a restaurant thank the waiter specifically for specific thoughtful actions.
170. – When you have four or more items label them with a single name.
171. – When you know you have done something good pause for a moment of pleasure and review the precursors.
172. – When making a presentation leave a space for questions and a closure.
173. – Take note of the bling of others; notice how it was acquired and the type of success it brings its consumer.
174. – Before you get a needle shot slap your hands, face and injection place a couple of times.
175. – When you pick up a favorite magazine get a repulsive one also to broaden your perspectives.
176. – When watching a movie get into the directors mind and their intended effect on you.
177. – In graphical comparisons keep the measurements on the same scale and the same number of dimensions.
178. – When making web pages in HTML keep them in a single folder and use relative links ../../ .
179. – For critical irreversible actions – double check before proceeding.
180. – Be aware of distance relative to apparent size.
181. – Observe the path you are on, its opportunities and limitations.
182. – When you come to a fork in the road take em … mentally.
183. – Seek the convergence point of various non-related activities.
184. – Observe your group’s response or boredom to your conversaton and actions.
185. – When you need to remember something, analyze it abstractly from three points of view while handling it and talking about it.
186. – Find the choice point of a prospect and look all around for accessibility.
187. – Identify the barriers to your actions and their doors and windows.
188. – Think through important decisions in a quiet environment and then a noisy one.
189. – Expect the best from yourself and others and speak to them in that way.
190. – Repeated exposure to anything creates acceptance so to some degree just keep being present.
191. – On the first of the month do a thoughtful triage on your activities.
192. – Speak out a name, a short description even a scaleing number to things and phenomena you encounter.
193. – When you want to make a point lean forward.
194. – Always work within the design limits factor of safety but be prepared for for disruptive breaks.
195. – Work at the normal design optimums most of the time.
196. – Observe the background environment of what you look at.
197. – Keep stuff you use close and stuff you don’t use far away.
198. – Consider once a day what your goals are.
199. – Observe what you want and what you now have that will satisfy it now without further investment of time and energy.
200. – When riding public transportation work on a productive task.
201. – Observe something and then think of the biggest and the smallest.
202. – When leaving something think what will you do when you return.
203. – Always keep a safety net and a safe go back position available.
204. – Describe the success criterion for every goal.
205. – Set several attainable steps and times to achieve the goal.
206. – Go from where you are as the starting point toward your goal.
207. – When verifying data have it presented in a different format.
208. – Search for examples of Google usage leaping the bounds.
209. – When you see an obese person shift your attention to trim one.
210. – When you see a person with a problem try and identify the cause and then at a person without the problem and their behavior.
211. – Group related things into logical geometrical patterns.
212. – Figure out why a person is doing an obviously stupid thing; what is the positive aspect of it for them.
213. – With a random batch of items get some of them into an alignment position as it minimizes the complexity of the remainder.
214. – In a complex environment limit your choices to this or that and be prepared for an instant response.
215. – When waiting, get into a position for a long view and check out things that are distant and compare them to what is close.
216. – Cover your basics on everything and then upgrade the important items first.
217. – When reading or studying something hi-light less than ten percent of material.
218. – Take large messy random stuff and make it into logical packets.
219. – Always carry a week’s supply of essential pills, money and information. (In an eyeglass case or another thing you carry with you all the time.)
220. – Watch carefully for interference problems and correct things back to the essence.
221. – Observe what you enjoy most and adjust things so you can do more of it.
222. – Carefully observe your failures and search for appropriate precursors and plan appropriate responses and rehearse them.
223. – State a clear end-point of a process early on but after the process is well past started and into the progress phase so you can measure the steps to the finish.
224. – You never get something to work really well without iteration and reiteration and more reiteration.
225. – When an idea presents itself run with it to its logical conclusion and a bit beyond, so you know the limits.
226. – Try and observe the moments just before your decisions are made and why they tripped the way they did.
227. – When you have eaten enough food look away and then walk away and start doing something new.
228. – Look at a face as a template from average and then subcatagorize its special features.
229. – Look at the corners of the eyes and the mouth and between the brows.
230. – On your birthday think through your health risks and helps and try and routinize your best responses.
231. – When with friends observe their health risks and frame comments in such a way as will be helpful.
232. – When someone throws you the ball catch it and run with it a bit and then throw it back.
233. – Just because dessert is served doesn’t mean you have to eat it, the same with shit.
234. – Before eating a meal or a snack, drink a glass of water and eat some dietary fiber.
235. – After eating anything but especially after sugared stuff, swish three swallows of water between your teeth.
236. – During and after a meal drink something non-caloric such as coffee, tea or water.
237. – When eating foods with an odor, post lingually exhale and sniff your chewed portions as it gives you more pleasure and makes you more aware of the food you have eaten.
238. – Observe who or what you might mimic with success. You can frequently choose acceptable role models on TV and record them and practice their techniques but avoid pretenders.
239. – Make a list of ten TV role models and make some recordings of them in spontaneous action. Choose people who are responsible for their actions. Presidents of corporations are good.
240. – When you fail at something observe what you are mimicking that brought about your failure. There is an abundance of this type of counter-productive behavior in movies and TV.
241. – Observe human body fat by comparing weight to waist, butt and height. Use the FATS chart for some guidance.
242. – When at a lecture try to sit between the speaker and the center of the audience because this is where their statements will be directed.
243. – At dinner when you feel full drink some tea or walk away.
244. – Observe the modules of the environment and the interactions of those modules.
245. – Monitor your flu symptoms and take hot baths to raise your temperature to 102.0° every eight hours at the very beginning of the symptoms.
246. – List and clean up your obvious physical defects; bad teeth, overweight, flabbiness, blemishes, posture and chemical imbalances.
247. – The journey of the next thousand days always starts right now; while conscious step carefully for the rest is mostly automatic.
248. – Once a goal is set, follow the shortest route to it.
249. – Reward good behavior in others consistently for a while, then occasionally or else you become too trite and predictable to be interesting to them.
250. – Acknowledge your friends’ accomplishments with public praise.
251. – Keep web materials in folders and make an overall directory; make a printout occasionally and post it on your wall.
252. – Design your personal information in such a logical way that nothing is ever lost.
253. – Watch for things to give to friends as free gifts.
254. – When talking with someone, think what gift they might need and use.
255. – When a sane person is nearby talk to them and find their interesting features.
256. – Whenever there is an opportunity to be happy, take it.
257. – When there is an opportunity to avoid being unhappy, take it.
258. – Observe what you are doing occasionally, and justify it to yourself.
259. – Search for the overview and the organizing forces at play in the situation you find yourself in.
260. – Make your work of the moment a perfect example of that type of work.
261. – When entering home wash your hands, face and nostrils.
262. – If something sounds too good to be true, simply smile and nod, and see where things go from there.
263. – Go out into the sunshine naked for a few minutes every day in the winter.
264. – Limit eating to three times day and make sure the food doesn’t have much sugar in it. Evaporated cane juice is sugar.
265. – Try and understand the motivations of observed persons; you know you are getting close when you can predict their next action.
266. – Practice saying, “No! I don’t want that!” in various ways toward things you might want.
267. – When you are stuck, pick an alternate easy task and finish it quickly and then consider returning to the problem task.
268. – Think ahead to where you are going and what you are going to do when you get there.
269. – Search online for exact answers to your specific problems.
270. – Make the current task important, obvious and with easy steps to completion.
271. – If some task isn’t important stop doing it and start doing something that is important.
272. – When someone asks a question answer it exactly in the terms they will understand.
273. – Don’t let anyone join you for dinner after you have finished eating.
274. – When it comes to bodily injury, think ahead and avoid it. Don’t do stupid things for sport!
275. – When going somewhere, choose transportation that is quick, reliable and healthy.
276. – Practice saying, “Yes! I want that” in different tonalities.
277. – Make a working prototype of an idea and then refine it at least three times.
278. – It is time to stop buffing imperfections when others can’t find them but if they can find them keep buffing.
279. – When making something for your true love, make it perfect.
280. – When in a situation, list five good things about it.
281. – In the face of problems try to be quiet, sane and firm.
282. – When you are reading, notice the spelling of words.
283. – Think, speak and act in close alignment to the current situation.
284. – When a friend is injured go quickly to their aid!
285. – Be calm and firm and help them with getting the proper treatments.
286. – When you feel victimized, do a small corrective action, right now.
287. – When you feel deprived, think of three good things you have.
288. – When you see a mistake that can be corrected quickly, do it now.
289. – When you see something you want, think what do you need to do to acquire that.
290. – What is something else that is just as good that you can get more easily?
291. – When turning off the water give it a second push to stop the drips.
292. – When you think you will have to wait, bring a book and always have a project in your pocket.
293. – If you can do it perfectly, do so; if not, know your compromises.
294. – When you forgot your book, think about a book that needs to be written.
295. – When about to meet a friend review in your mind some of your good times.
296. – If it is the type of problem without a solution, don’t look for a solution.
297. – If a problem is solvable, what would be the characteristics of the solution?
298. – If you can only find part of a solution, do that and work out from there as things will tend to clarify themselves when parts are finished.
299. – Try! Not succeeding is forgivable, but not trying is not forgivable.
300. – Watch for manifestations of different kinds of intelligence and perceptions. Every person, animal, even plant has found something that works for them.
301. – Before you make a big effort prepare for the probable effects.
302. – Kill ear worms by twisting them in a unique way at every appearance.
303. – Kill eye spikes from SUVs by timing your trip to put the sun high and to the side.
304. – When upgrading your computer, take the time to write down the specs of your old one. A digital photo works well.
305. – What is that person thinking? Say it to yourself the way they seem to be saying it to themselves.
306. – What will that person’s next action be? Say it to yourself and watch carefully.
307. – Carry a separate note card in your breast pocket with today’s good habit on it.
308. – Store candies, liquors and other calorie temptations out of sight.
309. – Turn on the electric stove before you fill the tea kettle.
310. – Set the tea kettle to heating before getting the tea cup ready.
311. – Make a map of your computer motherboard and the various plugs and leave it inside the case.
312. – Label and tag the various components, wires and plugs of your computers and transformers.
313. – Observe beauty and appreciate it but walk away enriched as you must, as you would from the Mona Lisa.
314. – Observe other people’s and creatures’ success and take pleasure in it.
315. – State a good habit to another person as an unacknowledged part of conversation.
316. – Glance at the sun, moon or star and re-radiate its light with each exhalation.
317. – Make habit reminder cards, with a vocabulary word, some background info on a news item.
318. – When working don’t rest until you need to or have finished what you are doing.
319. – When thinking about habits make a habit of rehearsing doing the right thing at a specific time.
320. – Create your own habits or other unintended ones will be forced upon you by circumstance or by others.
321. – When with others, behave in such a way that you deserve their love and respect.
322. – When meeting people bring happiness and when you leave sadness and hope for your return.
323. – When others talk about their life, support their success and learn from their failures.
324. – When a present problem can’t be faced, face one that can, and work on it.
325. – When you have time think about things you can change because that’s where the fun is.
326. – Be good to others and you cultivate the habit of being good to yourself.
327. – Life is short so cultivate your good habits while you have the chance, so you can take pleasure in them.
328. – In your daily routine, take your medicine but not too much.
329. – Observe that to tell a pleasant lie and you will be loved, but tell an unpleasant truth and you will be hated.
330. – No matter what’s happening around you, or how you are acting, be cheerful inside.
331. – If you absolutely cannot prevent a problem, carefully observe it play out and learn its precursors.
332. – Don’t interrupt someone when they are saying something stupid, or wise as you can learn from both.
333. – People will behave like you treat them so treat them like they are honorable and wise.
334. – Pay attention! When something is obviously more than 10% crap it probably is 99% crap.
335. – When something is less than 10% crap pay close attention but filter out the 10%.
336. – When reading make notes on a 4″ x 6″ card, with date, title, page # of quotes.
337. – When handling delicate equipment place them carefully and avoid theatrical tossing.
338. – When somebody approaches who is clearly infectious exhale slowly and walk away.
339. – Prepare for the extreme month of the bird flu epidemic before it hits.
340. – Ask people that really know something who the people are that really know the subject.
341. – Ask people who have succeeded at something what is essential and make a list.
342. – Show this list to those successful people and ask them to rank them.
343. – Well begun is half done but well finished is all done and gets the reward.
344. – Winning is a habit with a beginning, a middle and an end, a stimulus, a response and a result.
345. – Don’t help someone who should be taking care of themselves.
346. – Remember the most important person in the world is watching your every thought and action.
347. – Remember that what people do is what they really believe; what they say is what their group likes to hear.
348. – Prepare right now for what you will need tomorrow.
349. – Practice right now the skill you will need tomorrow.
350. – Stretch your calf and foot muscles before bedtime and for a few seconds and at night if you get up.
351. – If you have the feeling you are about to do something stupid you’re probably right, so don’t do it.
352. – Creating a new good habit precipitates more pleasure than any other human activity.
353. – When you look at the world and see something, also try and see it from one of the great seers’ point of view.
354. – Be very careful creating your habits; You create your habits and then they create you.
355. – Your world changes and the habits you are using must be changed to cope with the new conditions.
356. – You can form your habits to cope with a future which will be very, very different from what a naive person would expect.
357. – Natural habits form in adaptation to current events but with forethought you can do much better.
358. – Read, and study the world as education is society’s attempt to help you cope with the future.
359. – If you adapt to the present you will always be behind so adapt to some specific future condition which is sure to come.
360. – If you postulate specific future situations, then the habits that will be needed will become obvious.
361. – Thinking is slow so important skills must be habitualized beforehand to become effective.
362. – When you meet a knowledgeable person ask them who they think are the prime movers of society for the next five years. Have your own list ready to show them and reasons why you think your choices are so.
363. – Preparation for unusual events will seem unreasonable but it takes very little effort and may have a very big reward.
364. – Watch carefully for improvements in things and then try and apply the improvement to unrelated things.
365. – With billions of people thinking about stuff and communicating with each other new things are bound to crop up that will have spin offs.  365 is a year’s worth of new habits.
366. – Watch for new tools of observation as this always permits seeing things with a new vision.
367. – Watch for patterns of self organization and its derivatives in everything. Preexisting stressors both internal and external which push apart at some level and pull together at some level seem to be the key factor.
368. – For self orgainzation to flourish there must be an overiding influence perceptible to all, forcing them into orientation and close together so these items must have solid pre-existing boundaries.
369. – When you are stuck on a problem it is a great opportunity to think and grow new coping abilities outside of the solution to the present problem.
370. – You must look at yourself and prepare your habits for what you are capable of becoming.
371. – Go to a wiki site and check out something you are familiar with and make appropriate improvements.
372. – Look at a new object and create three improvements to it and three nonstandard uses to put it to.
373. – Find out who are the prime movers in computers, communications, sales, genetics, nanotech, robots and their combined forms and track their progress.
374. – Make a list of who today will be considered the prime movers ten years from now; print the list and post it on your bathroom mirror; and make an RSS feed.
375. – Don’t drink high calorie beverages; do eat chew able unprocessed solid foods.
376. – When you see a dog and human team, look to see who is the leader; usually it’s the dog who is pack leader.
377. – Watch for critical size reactions in various social as well as physical groupings.
378. – When you see a new idea immediately write down in your notebook that idea and how it may be applied to other situations.
379. – New ideas are easily forgotten because there in no refrent to bring them back to attention, so write it down now!
380. – When at a lecture go up afterwards and participate in the small discussions and watch carefully for the creative people, the place holders and the groupies.
381. – Think things through but don’t waste time on things that can be wikied; After wikiing think through your application of that knowledge to your problem.
382. – Spend some specific event moments on every level of the “Happiness scale” every day.
383. – View your problems from several perspectives: survival, freedom, pleasure, sustainability, aesthetics, well-being, virtue, action, balance, power, truth, vigor, vitality and benefits.
384. – Seek out artificial intelligence systems such as “Google”,   “Free Dictionary” and “Wikipedia”; Become skilled at applying them to your problems.
385. – Make an HTMLized page of your AI systems and meld them and your problems into working systems.
386. – New ideas lack associations and are difficult to remember, so write down your ideas, even as first approximations, later you can buff them into clearer and cleaner statements.
387. – Look at a beautiful thing; then find and observe what is ugly relative to that thing. State the differences.
388. – Calling one thing beautiful generates its opposite to come into existence also but that opposite is created by how the beautiful thing is defined.
389. – Eliminate unnecessary things from an idea. Beauty is in the revelation of an underlying understandability of a previously overly complex whole.
390. – When blocked on anything great or small start working on a way around the blockage.
391. – When you are not observed working toward a goal others will not strive to prevent you from reaching it.
392. – When others can see a goal clearly and a simple step they can take toward that goal they will take it.
393. – Your foremost duty is to live life abundantly; to pay attention to your environment and to participate fully.
394. – Identify threats to your life and its possibilities and create workable solutions to those problems.
395. – Try hard to stay alive because each new year is filled with more potential experience than ever before, it is like your life is being extended.
396. – Opportunities for living more abundantly are expanding so rapidly it is as if your life expectancy is being greatly extended on a daily basis.
397. – When something works, do lots of it right away so it becomes a habit and you have some variations on the theme.
398. – When you are contradicted note the statements and later, carefully inspect your ideas which they consider wrong, for the correctness of your underlying assumptions and facts.
399. – Religions became widespread because they fit the needs of the public at those times and places and the wisdom they provide is best adapted to those circumstances.
400. – Pause to think before applying a good habit to a situation unrelated to its original circumstance of creation.
401. – Create new little habits because the more little habits you have at your command the more accurately and specifically you may respond to new situations.
402. – When confronted with a routine situation, and have some time, explore a new habit for coping.
403. – Think ahead a few years; Our bodies, minds and societies evolved long before wiki-wisdom came into being and you should now be preadapting in the direction things are sure to go.
404. – Some ideas and sensations can be recreated by going down a pre-experienced path, like rereading a book or drinking a Coca Cola but others require creating a unique new path to re-experience them.
405. – Occasionally, observe yourself observing yourself doing what you are doing and then move on and do it with frequent enthusiasm’s.
406. – Do what you do with enthusiasm, like you are inspired by God to accomplish wonderful things.
407. – Observe that humanity evolved and created most of what we see around us because each individual was trying to improve their personal condition.
408. – When you seek your personal goals do so in such a way that it doesn’t ruin the world around you.
409. – Set triggers in your environment such that whenever possible you may take control of your attention and place it where it will do the most good.
410. – When starting a new project spend an hour doing a Wikipedia search on the subject and follow the embedded links.
411. – Much of the future is already here, prepare for the worst of it with specific actions and embrace the best of it with specific actions.
412. – Some things progress slowly, some grow linearly, some grow exponentially and others just the opposite. Try to identify which is which and what needs to be done about the changes.
413. – When scratching at skin blemishes put some antiseptic on them first to prevent the transfer of the blemish cells to the next place you happen to scratch.
414. – On various anniversaries consider what you want your legacy of accomplishment to be on various time and space scales: day, year, millennium- personal, family, group, society.
415. – Be prepared! People think of a severe problem, such as a car wreck as being a catastrophe and buy insurance but they never consider preparing for a DISS-3 or for a DISS-10. These are all personally survivable with some dedicated preparations.
416. – Do something original! Something new and useful! Generally this is most easily accomplished by building and improvement on something which was recently created.
417. – You can predict the weather by checking an almanac printed last year, a newspaper printed last night, your local weather radar movie or by looking out the window.
418. – Observe what need cigarettes, alcohol, gambling and other self limiting activities fulfill in there customers.
419. – Identify small margin inflexible organizations, as major innovations are stressful for everyone but are most stressful to big, and brittle organizations. They will be the first to fail but their fall may be slow because of vast stored reserves.
420. – Watch for people and organizations with self defeating behavior and find out why they insist on doing things which they probably acknowledged to be self defeating.
421. – When observing a person you wish to understand set your whole being into their likeness; make your face, posture, gesture, thoughts and statements identical to theirs.
422. – When starting a project learn the basics with Wikipedia, discover the authorities in the field and find one to be your mentor.
423. – When meeting people greet them with symmetrical presence and wait until they smile before being overtly friendly.
424. – When things are getting difficult say an authoritative word or two and assume a calm relaxed still but attentive posture.
425. – Save paper documents by folding them with the identifying information on the outside, so you can identify them later.
426. – Start sentences by addressing a person, place or thing rather than with a self referent.
427. – When looking back on former problems consider what you were thinking about before the events developed.
428. – When asking a question put yourself in the emotional state of the speaker then move on toward your goal.
429. – When snuziling with celebrities start off with a thank you for a particular thing they have done for you.
430. – When waiting for your turn to speak to them think about specific ways they have contributed to your happiness.
431. – Ask your question in terms that can be answered from their world view.
432. – Start by saying their formal name with title, how much you value a specific thing they did, why it is important to you, and what you want from them.
433. – Observe your stomach a few minutes after eating and ask, “Is this what I hoped for and expected when eating?”.
434. – Look at people and imagine what they will look like in thirty years.
435. – Look at the city and the environment and imagine what it will be like in thirty years with various sceenarios.
436. – With a thought in mind about some action, think … what follows that, three times.
437. – Think through a simple task, like getting a cup of tea, and returning. Then observe as you go how many things you missed.
438. – Do it again tomorrow and try and get more details into your think through. And again observe what you missed.
439. – Search for things in your environment that are scalable from making a small number of them to a large number of them without proportionally increasing the effort.
440. – If you are going to be something or do something you may as well start behaving right now as though it is going to happen and its effects are already being felt.
441. – Assume for a moment that a solution to your problem exists, what would you do then and can you do some of that right now.
442. – Try and think of a tool, physical or mental, which would solve a problem. Refine it three times.

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Enjoy!

I’m feeling okay on the fourth day of my cold.

Tags

Cure common cold

This is my fourth day of taking hot baths to suppress my cold/flu symptoms. Yesterday I took three baths because it was impossible because of my planned meetings to time the baths evenly. Thus there was one bath at 8AM, another at 12 Noon, and a third at 9PM. For me, the normal timing for two baths per day would be 9:30AM and 9:30PM. I took the extra bath because one time, as an experiment, I only took one bath on a day I had flu symptoms and the next day my symptoms were worse. When I follow my usual procedures of two evenly spaced baths per day for six days, no one other than me would even know I have a cold because my symptoms are almost nonexistent.

I’ve been doing these 105°F hot bath treatments for almost thirty years. Most of those years I raised my mouth temperature to 102°F and immediately got out of the tub and cooled off slowly and naturally. Now, because of my advanced age, it doesn’t seem wise to raise my temperature that high, so instead I raise it to 100.0°F and hold it there for fifteen minutes before getting out of the tub. I let the tub temperature drop to 103°F and sit up in the water, and that lets my mouth temperature drop to 99°F. When my mouth under the tongue gets to that temperature, I fully immerse my whole torso under the water, leaving just my face and knees out of the water, and go back up to 100.1°F.

I think this new technique heats my body more completely and stimulates the same things to happen in my body. My hypothesis is that the “heat-shock” stimulates the natural disease-fighting process, such as the body’s macrophages, to seek out and eat the exposed flu virus. They can’t get at the viruses within the cell, but the viruses must come out of a cell to invade another cell, and during that time they are vulnerable to being eaten by the macrophages.

This is a basic scientific method in that these ideas can be tested. I believe them to valid because I have done them at least once a year for decades, but it would require a controlled study to establish the likelihood that the technique works for other people. A new scientific idea must begin with someone thinking it, and generally, a new idea is hard to promote because it is strange and because it has never been experienced before.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything salable about this flu suppression technique; thus the drug companies won’t fund it because there’s no drug product for them to make money on, and if the idea became widely known they would probably find ways to cast doubt on its legitimacy. They would say there haven’t been any tests, so it can’t be trusted. If the government tried to sponsor a test, they would accuse it of squandering public money on something that hasn’t been proven to work.

Anyway, I will keep taking hot baths for a couple more days.

 

Some personal experiments with infrared light

Tags

IR infrared light experiments

I’ve been doing experiments with various forms of heat since about 1985 when I was getting poison oak rashes. I was out searching for Sir Francis Drake’s buried treasure and that required being in places where there were abundant poison oak plants. I was very careful but got the invisible oil transferred onto my skin numerous times. That brings about two weeks of a rash with intense itching. The treatment that works best is first washing everything I carried into the field in a strong detergent like Tide, and that includes my skin. There are now some specialized detergents that claim not to be so harsh on the skin. The thing that really works best after the rash and itching shows up is a hairdryer. Blow hot air onto an itch until it just gives a flash of pain, about the level of clapping one hand loudly with the other. The flash of pain flips the switch on the itch. This procedure works on all surface itches.

I’ve done other experiments with heat which are also discussed on this blog, but one I’m currently observing is with infrared light and it appears that I have had some results worth mentioning. My hypothesis is that natural direct sunlight has infrared light (IR) that penetrates deep into the skin and that the skin and perhaps tissue deeper than the skin can perceive the infrared light.

The skin and body have evolved responses to the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) light to counter the observed destructive effects resulting from exposure to that form of light. Tanning is a response to UV light, and that is proof that the skin has evolved the ability to observe and respond to sunlight. An easy experiment to perform for yourself is to set up a standard 1500 watt IR home space heater on a table so you can place your face about 18 to 24 inches from it. The experiment is to rotate your face from left to right in about 8 seconds and return right to left in about 8 seconds with your lips and teeth closed. Observe that you can feel the IR heat on your tongue. Your lips and teeth haven’t heated up appreciably enough to give your tongue any sensation of heat. Also, you can leave a little air space between your teeth and your tongue. That will prevent any heat from being conducted by physical transfer from your teeth.

The point of this experiment is that you can easily feel the IR heat shining through your skin to your tongue. When I’ve tried this same experiment using the sun instead of the IR heater, I feel the outside of my skin heat up on the surface from visible light and UV light quickly, but my tongue has only a little heat feeling from the IR light from the sun. The glowing red IR heater has a higher percentage of IR light than the bright white of the sun’s sunlight.

It’s the IR light that penetrates through the skin and it’s the IR light that is sending the signal to the organs in the skin and the body to make an appropriate response. Some potentially positive responses have been an apparent clearing up of some modest arthritis in the affected joints in my fingers. In that experiment I included some capsaicin applied to the outside of the joints the day before the treatments, to let it sink into the joint. I’ve done this about once a week for about ten times and as I sit here flexing my fingers I haven’t the slightest sign of arthritis.

Another therapeutic experiment is exposing the left side of my face to IR, but not getting the skin hot, and only feeling the slight deeper warmth. I’ve tried doing this for about 10 minutes before going to bed because my left Eustachian tube itches in the night. I tend to sleep on my left side and that tube seems to get compressed and not drain properly. This IR treatment seems to have stopped the itching.

There are a few other experiments. But these particular ones are easy to do. But, remember to be careful because these are just ideas I’m playing with.

 

Can a work of art’s quality be numerically measured?

Tags

Measuring aesthetic, measuring pain, Quantifying art works

I argue with some of my artist friends about creating a numerical measure for the quality of a work of art. They claim that artworks are too individual to be quantified. I have been creating a chart for measuring beauty based on specific qualities that I feel are measurable, and then each of the qualities will be given a numerical value. When that is done the various works may be measured and weighted and the whole group may be added together. That will give a single numerical value. It sounds a bit contrived, but after a large number of items have been subjected to this treatment I suspect that there will arise a generally agreed-upon belief that there is an aesthetic core beneath artworks for humans. It would differ for other species. There are aesthetic judgments being made by birds like the Bower birds of New Guinea, and by bees, here in Bend, when choosing flowers to inspect.

I will show a shortlist of the artistic qualities that can be measured, but first here is a chart I created for measuring Pain. It gives a much better measure than what you have probably encountered in a medical doctor’s office because it gives objective things that can be observed and quantified

Pain Scale – For measuring the intensity of human pain; click to enlarge.

Aesthetic beauty has more dimensions than physical pain and therefore will have a longer columnar list of qualities. For example, the aesthetic sub-quality SKILL can be measured as going from a work filled with wobbly mistakes measured as an ESTH~1 on to one filled with masterful strokes, ESTH~14. PERSEVERANCE can be measured as a partially begun work that was abandoned, ESTH~1, to a work that required many strokes and filled the space to the point where everything is perfectly used to completion. That might be measured as an ESTH~14.

I have been working on a list of qualities that include, EMOTION, THOUGHT, INVENTIVE, ARTISTICALLY AGGRESSIVE, RISKY, CLEAR, DISTINCT, CULTURALLY ASTUTE, MOTIVATIONAL, RARITY, SALES VALUE.

There will be other qualities on the final list and then these can be judged down to a more workable list and standardized. Retch, everyone reading this will say, probably in a loud voice.

And yet, this chart when completed will help artists create better works, because it will be easier for them to judge where they might place additional effort.

This blog will be a talking point one of these days.

 

 

Perhaps we’ve just begun to think.

Tags

Creation of new ideas, Evolution of ideas, Look at things anew, research, Search again

When reading the various science news materials it feels like new things are being discovered every day, and yet the individual things seem so insignificant, and yet again, often these new things are combined with other things, even very old things, and suddenly everyone has something totally new. Light bulbs that are a hundred times better than the ones that made Thomas Edison rich and famous are now commonplace.

A mundane activity like flipping a wall switch and electricity finds its way through some pure copper wires through a twisty century-old screw base adapter into the modern LED bulb, and the light nearly always comes on. I suspect and expect that the future will bring us many other things that after a few uses will seem as ordinary as these modern light bulbs.

Occasionally back in Berkeley, where I lived for fifty-one years, I would hand a friend a blank piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to change the world. As far as I know, no one of them ever did change the world with what they wrote on the piece of paper I gave them, but some of them did change the world somehow.

It is impossible to know what will come from what appears to be a simple idea, a foolish idea, an obviously stupid idea! Perhaps, the more peculiar an idea seems at first mention, the more potential it has for generating unique thoughts, but the idea must fall into minds that are in a condition to explore it with their own view of reality. This idea-bouncing process seems to work best with a small group of people who are searching for an answer to a seemingly impossible problem. Sometimes this process is called brainstorming, and here is a site that presents 19 techniques to brainstorm a problem.

Several years ago, in 2013, I wrote about obvious things that are hidden from us behind veils, such as various kind of camouflage that evolved to disguise certain species, and there are kinds of non-living natural things that act as veils, like time, space, distance and mixes of these things. But probably the most important thing that prevents us from seeing truly new ideas is that no one has thought of them, combined with those who did think of something new, but didn’t present it to others, or presented it in such a way that no one understood its significance.

I suspect that as you walk through your day there will be many things you see but do not comprehend their potential uses. Talk about these things!

This is not an advertisement.

Tags

Argan Oil

This afternoon I encountered a friend M in one of my coffee shops. We both were meeting other people but chatted for five minutes until they arrived. After a brief catch-up conversation, we somehow got on to the subject of skin oils. I hadn’t been paying any particular attention to my forearm skin for the last several months because there were other issues in my life which had distracted me. But …

Several months ago I purchased some Shiny Leaf Organic Argan oil in response to something or other, or someone or other, which I have forgotten, that recommended it. I was using it on my hair because it was looking dry and brittle. That’s not an uncommon problem for an 84-year-old head of hair. It’s remarkable that I have any hair at all, as most of my cohort are looking awfully sparse in that area.

My procedure was to put about three drops of this very light oil on my left palm, to rub it vigorously between my two palms and then rub my palms over the top of my head for a few seconds. My hair looked more normal, and then I rubbed my still slightly oily palms on the back of my hands and on the back of my forearms. Occasionally I put a few more drops on my palms and from there a little more on my forearms. I have done this every couple of days without really looking carefully at my arms.

Boring! Except! During my conversation with M, I looked at carefully at my arms and was astonished at how good they looked. He had to go, and I was sitting there looking at my arms and wondering what happened. Other than the argan oil, the only unusual thing is the hormone treatments I’m taking to suppress a reoccurrence of my prostate cancer. That cancer is also a more than common problem for a male of my age.

Did argan oil and hormone treatments make my eighty-four year old hands and forearms look like a twenty-year-old’s?

I’ve been playing with my blood pressure

Tags

Chocolate and blood pressure, Does chocolate lower blood pressure?, Experimenting with chocolate, Playing with blood pressure

This evening I tried to drop my blood pressure by eating three 72% chocolate squares from a slab. It has been reported that dark chocolate will give as much as a ten-point drop in systolic pressure. I gave it a try. What could go wrong?

I use the OMRON blood pressure monitor model BP786N, which I bought last month to replace my manual hand-pumped blood pressure cuff device. Because this OMRON is more automated and links to my cell phone, it is easy to track the details of what’s going on with blood pressure. I have it set on the triple measure which does three measure about a minute apart and then averages them and displays the result in big numbers on the screen. Okay, that works well enough, but when I put my cell phone beside the device and turn them on and off, it transfers all of that data to a much better display on my cell phone. And it displays all three of the recordings separately. That is great because when I relax, the numbers usually drop a few points from the first reading to the third one.

The chocolate experiment started at 9:40 PM with 125 sys /62 dia 55 bpm when I ate 3 of 40 Trader Joe’s Pound Plus 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate chunks. That’s 3/40 of 500 grams or 37.5 grams of chocolate. That equals 1.3234 ounces of chocolate. At 10:49 PM my blood pressure was 118 sys /55 dia 52 bpm. That’s a drop of 7 sys / 7 dia 3 bpm that might be related to eating the chocolate or maybe not.

That was a single experiment, and as such doesn’t mean much, but it was promising,  and thus I will try it several more times. Perhaps it would be better to do this experiment in the mid-afternoon, when my body has the opportunity to digest and use it for something better than gaining weight.

Like I said, what could go wrong with eating chocolate late in the evening?

Your skin’s microbiome needs your help!

Tags

Killing bad bacteria, Killing bad microbiomes, Killing microbes, Saving good microbes, Saving good microbiomes, Survival of skin

The various microbes living inside of you and on your skin are too small to see, but their effects in your gut and on your skin are what keep you healthy and in some cases alive. There thousands of species of microbes but the most famous at the moment is C. diff, which is a contraction of the scientific name Clostridium difficile. It is a deadly microbe because it overruns the intestinal tract and prevents the hundreds of other species of essential intestinal microbes from establishing a home in a person’s gut. Standard antibiotic treatments often aggravate the disease because they kill the good microbes along with the C. diff and it becomes impossible to digest food. If that isn’t corrected, the person dies. One of the most successful treatments is to find another human with a healthy intestinal microbiome and transfer some of their partially digested intestinal contents to the sick person’s intestinal tract. In this case, eating healthy shit is a very healthy thing to do. My solution is to save some of your own poop when you are healthy in a freezer and reintroduce it if you get C. diff. Okay, that sounds yucky, but it will probably save your life if you are in that horrid condition.

The skin is a wholly different situation. It is the surface material on the outside of you, whereas the gut lining is the skin on the inside of you from your mouth to your anus. In some ways, the outside is much easier to cope with because it is visible and you can sometimes correct its problems by caring for its microbiome. Yes, you are covered with living microbes, and they keep you healthy, but when those good microbes are overwhelmed by the bad microbes your skin gets sick. Every tiny bit of your skin is a battleground between these good microbes and the bad ones. The moral overtones are an overlay of our conscious wishes. The microbes’ goals are to survive and reproduce, and they do that by eating stuff on your skin, which has nothing to do with our human morality of goodness and badness. They are just making a living as best they can.

What makes sense to me is to treat my outside in a way that takes into account the experience of the medical profession with the insides. That means to not totally kill off the bacteria residing on the outside of my skin by using strong antimicrobial killing agents on healthy skin. When that is done internally it can result in C. diff overwhelming the internal microbiome and if not corrected the death of the human involved. That same result can happen if the external microbiome is destroyed and the skin is then left exposed to whatever microbes are in the environment. Some of those are deadly! Normally, a person’s skin is covered with a living community of microbes that protect it from those others that want to eat your skin. It is claimed by microbiologists that over ninety percent of the DNA of our living bodies isn’t our human DNA but these microbial beings, and they make up about one percent of our weight. They are tiny but there are lots of them.

The method I propose here is to kill the bad microbes and replace them with good microbes. The way to do that is to … First put an antimicrobial agent, like Hibiclens, directly on to the bad patches of skin with a fingertip, gently rub it with the fingertip for a few seconds, and then rinse it with running water for several seconds. Do that procedure for each of the problem areas. Second, rub vigorously for a few seconds some healthy areas of your skin with the palm of your hand, and then with that hand now laden with invisible microbes rub over the sick areas you have just cleaned. It will help with the distribution of the microbes to first smear a few drops of Argan Oil on your palms.

The intent of this procedure is to kill the bad microbes infesting a sick portion of skin and repopulate it with healthy microbes that have been living on the healthy parts of your skin.

I have no relationship with Hibiclens, but it is the Antiseptic/Antimicrobial Skin Cleanser recommended to me by my doctor for cleaning my skin before minor surgery. There might be other products that are okay. A good idea always begins with a single person but it takes a lot of double-blind trials before a procedure becomes scientifically accepted.

Replacing unhealthy skin microbes with health-promoting ones worked for me.