Winston wrote:International Love wrote:Winston, i have not read every post in this thread but have just been skimming it, but housemd is trying to help you out. i work out a lot and have explored different types of diets in my day. i've tried vegetarianism, the paleo diet, the lemon cleanse, ayurvedic principles, and conventional nutrition advice. i used to be way into the new age stuff, and i find that the new age/ "holistic" health stuff tends to be bs.
the new age/holistic crowd tends to be people who do yoga who have no muscle mass. they don't appear to be particularly healthy or athletic. the new age/holistic crowd tends to criticize christians for believing anything they read in a book (the bible), but then they tend to believe anything they read in a new age book/website.
you're having some health issues - should you try some gimmick/shortcut? or should you do what humans have naturally done to maintain their health - eating nonprocessed foods and exercise? i think you know the answer. i think deep down, you just don't want to change your lifestyle.
That's a good point. lol. The new age holistic crowd does take on faith anything they hear from the people in their movement. lol. I guess everyone needs some type of religion or belief system that they can trust and take on faith from. lol. And every belief system exaggerates.
I have a question for you though, and for HouseMD too:
Many of the new age holistic people I talked to swear that their natural remedies work and have changed their lives. How do you explain that? Are they all lying, deluded, or is it all due to the placebo effect?
I don't think there is a simple answer. Placebo doesn't explain everything. It's just a label by establishment defenders to dismiss anything alternative.
How did you find out that the new age holistic stuff is BS? What did you do? Did you test any of their stuff? And if their stuff is BS, why does it work for them? If something doesn't work, it won't sell right? Simple logic.
i think it is the placebo effect and also something else - i forgot what it's called, but it's the concept in psychology where you disregard everything that defies your idea and you only look for things that support your idea. i mean, you could go up to christians and ask them why they believe in the christian god, and they will come up with anecdotal evidence. same thing applies in the new age world. i think new agers want to believe in something, so they come up with ways to support their beliefs.
for instance, remember when all the new agers were all into dr. emoto's stuff? dr. emoto was the guy who said that when you write words on top of water bottles, it supposedly changed the water structure. so supposedly, you could put words that said "hate" and "anger" on water bottles, and then supposedly water bottles with "love" and "acceptance" had a different structure to them. "dr. emoto" then took very close up photos of the water and supposedly the water crystals had different structures. i flipped through his book at borders one day and guess what? all the water molecules looked the same to me. but you go into new age groups and see people with stickers saying "love" and "hope" and all that stuff on their water bottles, blindly believing the hype. i heard that "dr. emoto" isn't even a real doctor but is a photographer.
additionally, the new age crowd believes in ideas that are diametrically opposed and combine them together, which makes zero sense. the new age crowd takes the ideas of eastern spirituality aka present moment awareness. present moment awareness is the teaching that attachment to thought creates suffering and that one should learn how to create space from the thoughts. and in that separation between you and thought, inner peace/happiness comes, not from any material thing, but from a spiritual place beyond the material world. i actually like these eastern ideas a lot. and i know that you should be familiar with this concept at least somewhat, because you have quoted j. krishnamurti in your book many times. so to sum this up, present moment awareness teaches that thought creates suffering.
new agers love to combine the teachings of present moment awareness with positive thinking, which is the pop psychology teaching that thoughts create both suffering and happiness, and that one should constantly control one's thoughts to think about happy stuff all the time. supposedly, once you believe you are happy, you become happy. obviously, this idea of using thought is diametrically opposed to the teachings of present moment awareness, which teaches you to detach from thought. in my experience, positive thinking teaches you to put on a fake happy mask and conceals the real suffering underneath.
also, new agers talk about how spiritual they are, but then they talk about vision boards or dream board or whatever they call it to attract material success and things. also, they use the law of attraction (another thought based system just like positive thinking) to attractive material things. see, it's a lot of materialism shrouded in spiritual talk. also, the constant talk about angels and crystals and stuff like that teaches you to look outside of you for spirituality as opposed to within, like in present moment awareness teachings. so contradictory! teachers of present moment awareness would rather have you meditate than focus on your vision boards, angel cards, crystals, sage, etc.
new agers also have a different health trend of the year: lemon cleanse, colonics, probiotics, vegetarianism, raising the "energy" of the food, apple cider vinegar, etc. there will probably be a new trend next year.
i don't think the new age stuff works. when i first got into new age stuff, i saw new age people and thought that they were happy, but later i realized that their trust in positive thinking, makes them put on a fake happy mask and once you get to know them, they seem unstable and have darker stuff lying underneath.
i've tried lots of stuff - i've read at least a hundred books on positive thinking, new age stuff, eastern spirituality, did various forms of yoga, sudarshan kriya (a type of yoga cleansing), nauli (yoga technique), the law of attraction, affirmations, energy healing, wicca, acupuncture, vegetarianism, lemon cleanse, therapeutic massage, reiki, present moment awareness meditation, chakra meditation, concentration meditation, angel cards, qigong, tai chi, astral projection classes, psychic readings, various "holistic" classes, ayurvedic principles. some of these things that i did, i got way into, and some things, i just tried one class and left it at that. i probably did more stuff that i can't remember, as it's been so long.
A simple regime of cardio exercises and calisthenics would be all you would need.