This past week, being absent any personal internet connection while waiting for a new unit, the librarian, knowing of my interest in, and distaste for, institutional finance and the pharmaceutical special interests, suggested three books to me; Debt Cures (Kevin Trudeau, 2008, Equity Press), Natural Cures “They†Don’t Want You To Know About (Kevin Trudeau, 2004, Alliance Publishing Group), and More Natural “Cures†Revealed (Kevin Trudeau, 2006, Alliance Publishing Group).
The book about curing debt confirmed much of what I already knew, having done income taxes since I was teenager; that people are suckered into paying money to get money, rather than working to get money.
And oh, at such usurious rates.
It’s a very good book, well worth reading.
Personally, I am not enamored of “self help†books with their constant telling us what they’re going to tell us before they finally get around to telling us, and their constant repetition; I assume the book could be one-third of its size and still worth the price.
But that’s just me; the author has sold more books than I ever possibly could, and so he knows what works. Just out of curiosity, I checked the “date due†sticker in all the books, and these three books have been checked out lots and lots and lots of times by other people in an area where there are more square miles per capita, than people per square mile.
The only objection I had was the obvious political bias of the author; he mentions by name Republican personages involved in one financial scandal or another, but omits to mention the names of Democrat personages when discussing other, better-known, financial scandals.
It’s sort of like printing the names of those accused of petit larceny, but not printing the names of those with proven grand larceny.
Other than that irritant, it’s a very good book, and if one is having financial difficulties due to debt, I strongly suggest one read the book and follow its advice; it’s all good.
Of the two on leading the nonpharmaceutical life, about half the stuff I personally and enthusiastically endorse—-although I am no medical or pharmaceutical or dietary professional—-and the other half, well, one must vehemently disagree.
Having grown up in a medical family, for some reason as a little lad I developed a distaste for conventional medical practices and applications.
I think such distrust arose from an incident that happened when I was circa 4 years old, and an older brother came home from playing in a high-school football game, obviously in great pain and agony.
Given the time and place—-small-town rural Nebraska—-and professional courtesy, the family physician came to our home to treat this older brother. It was later explained to me, however one can explain things to a deaf child, that my brother had seriously injured his ankle, and that he was going to have to stay off his feet for four or five weeks.
And that the physician had given him some pills for the pain.
Within a few days, I became greatly confused because my brother was running around as if he had not injured his ankle at all. But then he did something that further exacerbated the injury, making it necessary for the physician to return to our home, and give him more pills, bigger ones, to kill the pain.
I developed this notion that adults were a most peculiar sort of people, after my brother again resumed running around as if he had not injured his ankle at all. That of course even further exacerbated the injury, making it yet again necessary for the physician to pay a third visit, giving my brother yet more pills for the pain; not only more pills, but enormous pills.
This confused me, because it had been explained to me that the injured ankle was the problem. And so why was the pain being addressed, rather than the real problem?
I am not fond of pain, but if pain exists because of a certain problem, I’m much more interested in curing the problem, not the pain; once the problem is cured, the pain goes away.
The first and only time in my life I ever had those bloated blood-vessels at the end of the intestinal canal, I was a 17-year-old student at the University of Nebraska. Being of a trusting nature, I went to the student health center, where the physician prescribed pain-killers.
The physician prescribed pain-killers all summer long—-if I recall correctly, alternating between Darvon and Percodan. It drove me to distraction that this problem was not going away, and I was naturally suspicious of invisible effects of the pain-killers on the rest of me.
Finally, near the end of the summer, I drove back to the Sandhills of Nebraska, and inquired of an old country doctor. He had me drop the pants, and inserted a glass rod with silver nitrate or nitric acid (I forget which) up there.
That immediately cured the problem, and despite that a couple of decades have passed since then, the problem has never recurred, even though I did spend some years as a desk-sitting bureaucrat in a state agency, and later a federal agency.
Of course, this had something to do with diet, too; as a little lad at the tail-end of a large family, it had been the older brothers and older sisters who had fed my younger brother and myself, and food prepared by resentful siblings is generally not healthy food.
And so upon leaving home after the death of the parents, I resolved to never deal with junk or imitation food again. Since the age of 17, white bread, margarine, refined sugar products, &c., &c., &c., have never passed through these teeth. Only real food.
I dunno when the last time was, that I ate a candy bar; perhaps 1987 or something, now a very long time ago.
This distrust of conventional medical practices and pharmaceuticals was reinforced by the centerpiece on the dining-room table; some sort of round circular plastic thing that rotated, on which sat dozens of bottles of pills for all members of the family excepting my younger brother and myself.
It was my impression, accurate or inaccurate, that pills were supposed to heal, to cure, after which one no longer needed to take them—-but here, all these grown-ups were downing more and more pills, as if popcorn or something, and constantly deteriorating right in front of one’s eyes.
And most here know the rest of the story; all these people, the parents and the siblings, all these people medical professionals, dead long their time, dying prematurely from all sorts of ailments, usually the ailments of affluence and the too-easy life.
It gets lonely, being the Last Survivor (my younger brother, also distrustful of pharmaceuticals, having died from an automobile accident when I was 19 years old), and the only survivor of what had once been many.
I am not discounting the use of conventional medical practices and pharmaceuticals; however, I am insisting rather strongly that if there appear to be alternatives, conventional medical practices and pharmaceuticals should be the last resort, the absolute final resort.
Being deaf, I have had an unfortunate tendency to endure bone-breaking accidents—-far too many to count—-but once away from home, I have since vetoed the use of pain-killers other than immediate post-operative, which is of course only one time; after that, using only aspirin or ice or nothing at all, to deal with the pain.
Even when my right elbow was smashed and irretrievably lost, after that immediate post-operative application of pain-killers, on my way out of the hospital, I threw away a 10-day prescription (some sort of controlled substance, I forget what) for pain-killers. Tossed it into the garbage.
It had initially been determined I could never use my right arm again; but here it is, nearly 16 years later, and I use my right arm more than I ever did when it was a complete arm. And for the record, one job I had during the late 1990s involved taking 20’ long 380-pound steel poles and bending them so as to make them into poles supporting basketball backboards.
Pain is instructive; pain tells us when to NOT do something, and if one does it anyway, pain threatens to make the original problem worse.
And therein lies the best advice, the absolute best advice, of the author of those two of the three books; when confronted with a chemical, one should ask if there are alternative, longer-lasting, solutions to the problem—-and the original problem, not the lesser problem of enduring pain.
There are solutions advocated by the author with which I vehemently and stridently disagree—-especially his anti-milk jihad—but that’s for another time.
However, if one hasn’t read any of these three books, and is experiencing problems handling money, or doubts about how one remains healthy, I strongly suggest these books as good reads.
