A few weeks ago, kind of by chance, I met David Icke. He was going to hug me. I shook his hand.
It is not so long since almost everyone in the UK seemed to think Mr Icke had become too weird to pay any attention to. He’d been on prime-time TV saying the royal family were lizards. I have not read enough of his books to know if he believes/believed they are biologically reptiles. Possibly, the point he was making was that many of ‘elites’ behave as if they have no understanding of the emotions most of us experience.
Only today, I have heard two people say that our current Health Secretary is a lizard and I know they are referring only to the way he doesn’t blink when interviewed and seems to relish having ever more power while going along with decisions that cause unnecessary harm.
Putting lizards aside, I have undoubtedly been living with fear. Other people’s fear and my own fear, which at times seems as extreme as fear can be. Much of the time I am fearful of masks. Not that masks are inherently dangerous. It is more because of the blind obedience they represent. It is how wearing masks without questioning why tends to go with things like not wanting to know what is in ‘vaccines’ or why locking down society was allowed when all that is needed is protection and appropriate support for the frail people.
What if I were able to choose not to be afraid of ‘lizards’, masks and everything else?
Well, I think David Icke is making a lot more sense these days and why I was happy to shake his hand.
A friend has asked for my view on the David Icke video below. Well, it makes sense. I cannot say to what extent the mood, feeling or vibrational energy we have changes the world around us. It does however make a lot of sense to me to choose to feel empowered. Doing the opposite of, continuing to feel disempowered and fearful, makes no sense.
How does someone like me; overcome fears and regain enough confidence to feel and act positively? Here is a dull answer if put up against the video below for entertainment value! The most important thing, for me, at this time, seems to be to make a plan for tomorrow and keep doing this day-after-day. Recently my life seems to one of, “Failing to plan and so effectively planning to fail.”
I am inspired. I have made a plan for tomorrow. I am grateful to the friend who forwarded this to me: https://youtu.be/AQKe_Elii1o
Perhaps listen and watch the full 16m 09s before reading my notes below. I believe my notes are brilliant, yet who has time to read and consider all this?
At just 2m 47s into that video I decided to look up Joost Meerloo and found this a fascinating read: Joost Meerloo – Wikipedia
Academy of Ideas somehow manages to pull together so much artwork to be displayed in their videos. I have paused at 4m 44s with a picture that, for me, is only slightly disturbing, yet, surely it is an image that is very disturbing… or maybe not… so much going on in the picture… looking at it again, I am struck that even the characters holding weapons seem very disturbed… none seem anything like happy with the role they have to have/play.
Now looking at the picture at 5m 25s I have decided I can categorise myself as sane! Sane compared with the poor ‘sod’ who got that image in his mind and had to draw it… perhaps to have some release from some fears of his own… the narrator talking about how fear is needed to get menticide underway.
In terms of the words/quotes, there are many I could say are outstanding. So far, if I were to just pick one quote, it is that from Joost Meerloo at 7m 10s that stands out for me. It matches with a conversation earlier today. In fact, matches with several recent conversations with several people. In one such conversation “A scotch-egg constitutes a substantial meal” was an example of the craziness of last summer when so many, including me, were confused.
Please read the quote at 8m 15s while being aware that Joost Meerloo died on November 17, 1976. Was he a genius? Maybe, yet mainly he was in the wrong places (E.g. as a jew in occupied Holland 1940-1942) such that he was set on a course of wanting/needing to understand how/why such situations were occurring.
Isolation is discussed at 9m 50s.
Just 6 months ago, I believe I would have regarded the picture at 10m 28s as nonsense. Right now, I consider that picture is an accurate representation of the world I know… (Do I have to again redefine what is sane and sanity!?) I believe I know what the artist was thinking when drawing (in the upper-left part of picture) the person under the shell and the person upside-down above the shell. I believe I have recently met people dealing with their current reality in these alternative ways, but please do not lock me up just for my ‘appreciation’ of this art.
According to Carl Jung, for those of us who wish to help return sanity to an insane world, the first step is to bring order to our own minds, and to live in a way that provides inspiration for others to follow:
I will now use the transcript supplied to share, “It is not for nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of the collective [psychosis] and save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man* who has succeeded in extricating himself from the fatal identity with the group psyche.” Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition
Here I will point out that Carl Jung died on 6 June 1961, yet he was writing about “our age” as if he were living today. This perhaps confirms that the massive shifts many (including me) experienced in 2020 were really just part of a flow that has been going on for centuries. You may find it interesting to listen now to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Light the Fire”, or just familiarize yourself with the lyrics and know that, whether in our own lives or on the world-stage, each action has to follow from the action before. Not for political correctness but from my own observations of the mass rally in London on 24th April 2021 and of the meeting in our local park this morning that Carl needs to change “one man” to “person” as there really does seem to have been a shift from men standing up against tyranny to us now being so very reliant on women. It seems we need the “lionesses” more than ever while the reasons why there has been so much de-masculination of so many men could be the subject of another article from me.
Now, I do hope this is still true, “…the weapon of ridicule. The demagogue himself is almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor, he will begin to collapse.”
Near the end now at 15m 15s, I am reminded of my own experiences at age 20, behind the Iron Curtain,
“…Czechoslovakia, is the construction of what are called “parallel structures”. A parallel structure is any form of organization, business, institution, technology, or creative pursuit that exists physically within a totalitarian society, yet morally outside of it. In communist Czechoslovakia, Havel noted that these parallel structures were more effective at combating totalitarianism than political action.”
It is then mentioned that “to prevent a full descent into the madness of totalitarianism is action by as many people as possible.”
I believe some of my newest friends will appreciate the final quotation, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.” Thomas Paine, American Crisis
Listening to, or watching, mainstream media (MSM) in 2021 seems to be increasing people’s level of fear. This messes with our mood/emotions, which in turn can weaken our immune system. As I said in an earlier blog, avoiding MSM can leave space for new even more frightening memes from social media to take hold.
I am therefore recommending some older memes from before the 2020/21 gloom (remember a meme is any idea that can be accurately copied, and I’d say these two fit that description)
“There’s something special about you.“
“Your body is designed to adapt to this planet.“
If you…
have been feeling gloomy lately
would rather live with less fear
want to repair your body, mind and emotional health quicker
desire long-term good health…
…then please take notes, ideally with an old-fashioned pen and paper, from one of the best ever lectures on how to get well and stay well… with minimal medical intervention. It is 60 minutes. He starts off saying about ‘God’ – It is okay, it is a talk about health not religion, its just John’s way… stick with him… he’s great!
Remember: What happens to each of us depends a lot on what we each believe. Believe we have the intelligence within us to adapt and thrive when we ignore the crazy new ideas and stick with what has always worked.
Now in a second ‘lock-down’, I am keen to share this email I sent to our support group in July 2020…
Yes, it is the same story as Natalie was referring to on 30th Dec 2018. Here, on YouTube, is the same story from 11th Oct 2019… If only time to listen to one talk today, I suggest this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB5IX-np5fE
Especially listen 16m 30s, “We live in a machine that is designed to get us to forget what’s important in our life.” and 19m 00s, “your pain doesn’t mean anything………………… no……. it is there to tell you something.”
This is the slightly shorter version with advertising added at the end… 18th June 2020
It is a good story worth repeating and, for me, very relevant to my current situation. My emotional difficulties are undoubtedly closely coupled to things going on in the real world and I feel not to be dismissed as ‘all in my head’ / ‘a chemical imbalance’. It is not as simple as just loneliness or as simple as me berating myself for mistakes made. It is a complex mix of so many things. A mix that cannot be resolved by any prescription medication.
After about 11 years med-free = no prescription medications at all, I accepted a prescribed antipsychotic drug to help me sleep. I have found that I sleep a little more when I take this, yet each day I am so very tired and doing (what seems to me) to be far too little.
TOXAPREVENT ‘Tim Animation’ – “Animation about the toxins, heavy metals and histamine that affect your digestive tract and skin.”
I have met with a nutritional therapist who has suggested that my troubles may be largely due to excess toxins. If this is so, then I need a way to get these toxins out of my body (and especially out of my brain). Can this be done?
Perhaps the best hope is with a product called ToxaPrevent(R). This film explains about toxins in the body and how ToxaPrevent may do exactly what I need it to do.
The instructions I have are to take both the powder (for detoxing from upper digestive system) and the capsule(s) (for detoxing from lower digestive system) 30 minutes before each meal.
I have just taken first dose of each, so now to cook, eat and see how I feel later.
I have been asked, how much our susceptibility to any illness or disorder is due to beliefs rather than to do with healthy nutrition/lifestyle. More specifically it was in a discussion about the latest corona-virus. Here is my reply,
Yes, beliefs are so very important when it comes to viruses. In my world, beliefs and actions go hand-in-hand.
When we believe we can resist the virus by ensuring we have daily vitamins C & D and zinc then we find a way to include these nutrients in our daily meals.
I accept that even the best food choices can be undermined by belief about diseases.
Beliefs that create fear seem to lead to greater vulnerability to all sorts of illnesses and disorders (including bipolar diagnosis). Mainly though, stats and science tell us that people who eat well stay well. Also, people who have been eating fairly well before an infectious disease or disorder comes along, in general, recover quicker, than malnourished people.
In 2018, I found a way of quickly checking my subconscious self-limiting beliefs then balancing those with empowering beliefs. To qualify as a facilitator of this modality of knowing and balancing beliefs I attended a course with Sharon Lock in Leeds, UK.
Here is a 3 minute video made during that very 3 day course (I appear, yet do not have a ‘speaking part’ 🙂 )
Would you like to hear more about food or more about beliefs?
I was interviewed about some of our research work… This was on the top floor of a building overlooking the Thames. With the start of the Olympic Games just days away, every few minutes another helicopter would go over, hence a lot of editing.
Anyway, I felt it worth saying about this interview again now while I am getting some help tidying my place – skip to 4m 16s to hear what I was saying about surroundings.
Then at 10m 40s I share my views on medication. These have not changed, “the same drug everyday is not likely to be ideal”, “people need choice” (for those in USA paracetamol = acetaminophen).
Something that is great about having this blog, that is not directly connected to my business (that I do because I do not want others to suffer through ignorance as I did) is having the freedom to change direction and share what is on my mind that I feel will be of benefit.
You may have noticed how excited I have been about the iThrive series and seeing its links with mood and therefore with bipolar disorder.
This morning, I am feeling very much as the creator of the series shares in an email I just opened. I’m simply going to paste most of that email here and ask how much you have needed to (or will need to) change your life to truly be the best you can be?
“…one of the biggest factors in reclaiming our health and our life, is…
CONNECTION
Every day we have a choice… to open our hearts to the world or not.
To care about other people enough to give to them…
To care about ourselves enough to take care of ourselves.
It’s a risk to open our hearts again… to love again… and to try again.
We can fail. And we can be hurt.
For years I hid away from the world.
Well…
Today…
Today, I choose to LIVE!
I choose to LOVE today.
I choose to feed my heart, my cells, my brain and my soul with the care, the love, the nutrients, the fresh air, the movement and the connection that it takes to truly thrive!
And tomorrow?
I will wake up and great the day anew. And I will aim to honor this one precious life I have, and my new-found mission!
I will do my best to be an example to you and everyone I meet.
Some days I may fall…
But when I do, I will not retreat in shame and self-blame.
No, I will rise up, and remember who I really am. And the great work I have to do, and the people I get to serve.”
New health documentaries are coming out so quickly these days it is challenging to keep up. This series on diabetes has been great. I said about being disappointed with episode 4 but they were soon back on track. 5,6 and 7 all great!
Now I have episode 8 playing. The subject is fasting, which would seem to be the fastest way to reverse diabetes. Essentially you stop adding sugar to your body for a while, then the sugar in blood goes down and things start to heal. Okay, for a lot of us that is nowhere as near as easy as it sounds. It may also need medical supervision if you happen to be very unwell.
Food and mood are so linked that I see regaining the ability to fast, even if just going for 12, 14, 16 hours without food in each 24 hours can be hugely beneficial. It is a matter of retraining our digestive system and brain such that we can walk past temptation and only eat when we plan and need to be eating.
It is 1pm here. Last ate at 7pm yesterday. Time for my break fast. I like how it feels and that having skipped eating in the morning I feel okay to eat a big meal now… feasting – it goes with fasting.
If you want to get healthier and live longer take time out to watch as much of “Live Longer Feel Better”
All 7 episodes were screened for free in February 2018.
Why am I sharing this at Rethinking Bipolar? Whatever helps us to live longer is almost always what helps us to manage our moods or live well whatever mood we find ourselves in. It is all linked!
For example, see Episode 3, which matches my own experiences of eating well doing me far more good than any medication.
Today, as I update this page, there is no free screening. If you’d like to know more about how this information can help you with understanding your mood while getting healthier please do ask via the comments option.
Embrace Your Weirdness. This is what Ed Sheeran suggests we do. He also says, “Get the treatment you need.” Now, that is not especially about moods, but think about it… If you are not recovering or keep getting unwell, then the treatment you need may not be what you are being offered at this time.
Sorry mum, there are a few swear words in this:
Who is Ed Sheeran? An amazing person – Almost 400 million views – Wow!
I heard that aluminium may cause brain troubles many years ago. It may have a little to do with bipolar as it has mainly been linked with Alzheimer’s.
A few weeks back I heard that drinking silicon-rich mineral water might help to flush excess aluminium from our brains.
If you watch this two minute video I think you will agree the possibilities are amazing:
Please let me know if you’d like to hear more about amazing possibilities for recovery.
Real Food: The Best Diet –Andrew Weil, M.D. explains what to eat and drink more and less of:
(This talk is largely about USA diet. USA has the highest incidence of bipolar and many other modern disorders. Elsewhere in the world we need to learn from America’s mistakes.)
Can there really be an optimum diet?
It perhaps depends on what we mean by optimum (or maybe it is optimal?). If optimum diet means the best diet we can work out for ourselves, and a diet we can stick with, to keep us healthy then, yes, it just takes a while to figure out what is good for us.
Why did I start searching for my optimum diet?
Stress caused indigestion, such that I could not sleep and this led to a psychiatric admission where I was heavily sedated, and started to rapidly gain weight. I reacted badly to some of the newer sedative drugs and was diagnosed as bipolar. Eventually coming off the drugs I then had gut pains almost every night. I had to work out what was causing these pains. It took me years to find most of what works and does not work for me. Even with my current optimum diet my quest continues as there is always room for improvement.
It is all about balance
What has worked for me is finding out more about our daily needs for moisture, protein, fat, carbohydrate and fibre. That makes five ‘macro-nutrients’ to be balanced. There are plenty of micro-nutrients#1 to be considered too, just that I have found that getting the five macro-nutrients in about the right proportions at each meal time to be life changing.
Modern myths were the biggest challenge to overcome
I was once told, “eating fat makes us fat”. It sounded so believable. It is so untrue. What I was eating that was putting weight on was a lot of carbohydrate, and the same was true for every person I knew who was getting fatter. We were all addicted to carbs and we were cutting back on fat. It wasn’t working.
I came to believe that “eating lots of protein is a good way to get slimmer”. This is half-true. Protein is more slowly digested than carbohydrate and usually makes us feel fuller for longer. Changing to a high protein/low carb diet is slimming. However, it is rarely a good long-term plan, as high protein diets are often not high enough in fat. On high protein I lost 40 pounds in weight but gradually felt weaker and was not sleeping well. See point 7 that I have just added below – 25th August 2016.
I was told that “fibre does not provide any energy and so is slimming”. Yes, fibre can help with slimming, however gut bacteria can partially digest some fibre for us, giving us extra energy. This turns out to be a good thing for moods as this energy is released gradually and helps our guts to work better.
I believed, “fruit is slimming”. If you look around (in UK) you may well notice that most over-weight people are eating lots of fruit and very little of green vegetables. Fruit is high in the fruit sugar, fructose. Unlike glucose (the main ‘vegetable sugar’), fructose is not used as energy by the muscles but can be readily turned into body fat by the liver. Fruit may be good, just rarely as good as salad and vegetables.
Balance
When we get past the myths we come back to looking for balance. Here is some good information#2 that works for me:
1) Proper meals need to have a good percentage of both protein and fat as once digested these can travel through the blood together as lipoproteins, to allow the right fats to be delivered to the right parts of the body and brain to allow repairs. This seems to help a lot with steadying mood.
2) Most of us are not getting enough good quality fat and are often short of fats known as omega-3 and MCFAs.
3) It is close to impossible to have fried foods not containing damaged fats, so my current optimum diet is one with no fried foods.
4) The brain needs glucose, so although we can live with almost no carbohydrates, this is likely to lead to misery. I can get enough glucose by digesting vegetables without needing to eat grain/cereal every day.
5) There are many types of fibre, so eating a range of vegetables and just a little fruit every day helps with steadier digestion, which in turns helps us to have more of the moods we want to be having.
6) There can be no set amount of water to go with our diet. Learning to be guided by thirst and drinking as soon as I start to get thirsty works for me. Carrying a bottle of water on all but the most local journeys makes a lot of sense.
7) It is 2 years since I published this article (16th July 2014) and reading it through today (25th August 2016) the only thing I want to add is: It is so easy to eat too much protein. If you have always eaten meat and fish it takes a while to get used to eating a little less protein. I believe it does help for long-term health and mood stability. For me, a diet with only about 15% protein and close to 50% healthy fats (including; avocado, nuts, seeds, olives and butter) seems to be helping my liver and kidneys to heal after all those years on prescription drugs and lithium.
From disorder to order
Eliminating the disorder part of bipolar is likely to require dietary changes. For me the most outstanding results have come from increasing#3 my variety of fat sources and ensuring every meal has a good content of healthy fats. It was the extra fats working with the protein in each meal that allowed my brain and body to heal and allows me to go longer between meals. Balanced meals help us to avoid slumps in energy and periods of despondency. This approach continues to work for me.
Links:
#1 I will be writing more about micro-nutrients and how these link to common modern disorders.
#2 I have written about or am writing about these aspect of balancing diet and mood. Contact me if you would like to learn more now.
#3 Overall I am only eating a bit more fat as I cut out fried foods. Eating more fat and being more active go together. If we eat more fat then we are going to need to walk more. When I do eat more fat I find it easier to be doing more exercise while being less tired. I will write more about this later.
Has glyphosate become the number one cause of mood disorders? Okay, so I do not have a huge amount of evidence to support such an idea, but as a chemist I do understand that glyphosate disrupts hormones that are essential for having a steady appropriate mood. It disrupts things like serotonin, dopamine, melatonin and more.
Personally, eating foods that have likely been sprayed with glyphosate, such as non-organic wheat and oats or any kind of bean imported from USA gives me pains in the gut and messes up my sleep. Glyphosate certainly cannot be good for moods and the more that is sprayed the more people are being diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Are the two connected? I cannot prove any such link but while you are on this page please read on, watch the parts of the video that I mention and please go on to do your own research. Glyphosate is making a lot of people sick.
Glyphosate could be one of the biggest threats to human and animal health the world faces today.
I could write a lot about this, but for the moment here is Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewing Dr. Anthony Samsel, about glyphosate and its adverse health effects.
You may wish to skip chunks and focus on these sections:
At 7 minutes when Dr Samsel explains how he discovered he was consuming a lot of toxic glyphoste in the snack foods he was eating.
At 16minutes Dr Samsel explains more about glyphosate killing ‘good’ gut bacteria but failing kill many of the ‘bad’ bacteria.
At 22 minutes Dr Mercola asks how glyphosate disrupts the production of serotonin and then Dr Samsel explains some of the troubles caused by this disruption.
At 28 minutes details are revealed of how long ago it was known that glyphosate is a carcinogen at the levels found in many common foods.
Glyphosate is sprayed on almost all wheat grown in the UK to kill it before harvesting so that it dries better. This only started a few years ago and is not something that has been explained to the public. We did not used to have so many sick people. As I say above, please do your own research. Would it help if I put more links here to toxins that disrupt moods and cause chronic illnesses?
(I am watching this film about glyphosate in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDyI10Z8aH0 – The film is not at all pleasant, as it includes film of animals said to have been deformed due to ingestion of glyphosate.)
All drugs are potentially addictive, so suddenly stopping the use of any medication or psychiatric drug can be dangerous or even extremely dangerous.
The biggest trouble I see with medications or psychiatric drugs is that people are taking too much of these for too long. Unless you have really good evidence that your prescription is ideal for you, then please:
find out more about what the medication or psychiatric drug really does and not just what the manufacturer says it does.
talk to your doctor about whether you could have help in gradually reducing the dose.
whatever your doctor says about gradually reducing, ask others if this is going to be gradual enough – this is important because so many people accept medical advice to come off a drug too quickly resulting in terrible reactions.
Be aware that when you take less you may start to feel great and be tempted to take even less too soon. This is a huge risk, because medications and psychiatric drugs usually sedate and then being less sedated can feel too good! It takes time to adjust and learn to cope, especially when less sedation allows us to feel more normal anxieties and just normal anxieties can be overwhelming if we have not experienced these for a while.
I worked for ‘big pharma’ in the 1980’s. What Gwen Olsen says in these videos is true. She is brave to be saying such things as big businesses do not necessarily want everyone to know how they go about convincing doctors to prescribe some very toxic substances.
A personal note from Roger: When I used to teach about bipolar while believing I would need to take pharmaceuticals for life, my courses were popular and I had plenty of bookings. Now that I share about ‘low-med’ and even ‘med-free’ bipolar, there is very little paid work for me. Telling the truth about medications and psychiatric drugs can lead to reactions from organisations that see no alternative to pharmaceuticals. Overall though, finding a doctor who was supportive of my plan to reduce my intake of pharmaceutical drugs was the right thing to do.
If you are continuing to be unwell and your doctor is saying that you need to keep on taking the same drug at the same dose, or more drugs or higher doses then it is probably time to find a new doctor.
Roger Smith (in the UK)
Rethinking Bipolar 