Keep Your Brain Young

By Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., CNS

I don’t have to tell you how important exercise is to your health and well-being. But did you know that exercise can actually help you grow new brain cells?

For baby boomers, worries about senior moments, memory loss, and worse are high on the list of health concerns. But if you’re forgetting where you put your keys a lot these days, don’t despair. A recent study, published [2006] in the Journal of Gerontology, offers a lot of hope for aging brains.

Researcher Dr. Arthur Kramer and his associates investigated the result of aerobic exercise on the brain - specifically, whether or not there were any changes in the amount of the white and grey matter. The results showed that exercise increases the grey matter (which contains neurons - the computational units of the brain) and white matter (which contains axons, which are like telephone wires that connect the neurons).

In other research at the Salk Institute, neurologist Fred H. Gage has demonstrated that human brains are capable of growing new nerve cells throughout life, a process called neurogenesis. Asked at a cocktail party what someone can do to protect their mental functioning, Gage replied, "Put down that glass and go for a run!"

You might think you’d have to do traditional long-duration cardio to achieve brain-protecting results - but Kramer’s subjects just walked. The goal is to get oxygen into those brain cells, get your blood circulating, and get nutrients delivered. A good short-duration, high-intensity circuit program, interval training, or Dr. Sears’ PACE program should all power up your brain… plus give you extra benefits like increased endurance and strength.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He’s a board certified nutritionist with a master’s degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth.]
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"Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee."

William Penn

People of the Lie

By Robert Ringer

Remember how, some years back, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (known to his closest friends as Mahmoud Muttonchops) came out and said that there was no holocaust? That’s right, it never happened. The films of those hideous corpses being bulldozed into mass graves in Auschwitz and Dachau - forget about them. It’s just part of a vast Zionist conspiracy to evoke sympathy for Israel.

Likewise, the people who claim to be survivors of the holocaust are making the whole thing up. They even went to the trouble of tattooing numbers on their forearms to add authenticity to their stories. I tell you, these Zionist conspirators have absolutely no shame. No wonder Jimmy Carter has such revulsion for them.

The main thrust of the Muttonchops strategy to recreate the world in his own image was to employ what has come to be known over the centuries as The Big Lie. The Little White Lie might be likened to a neurosurgeon performing delicate brain surgery with a scalpel, while The Big Lie is more like a lumberjack chopping down a huge tree with an ax.

The Big Lie is a tool used only by high-level, professional liars, as most people are not endowed with the genitalia necessary to employ it without smirking. These professional liars fully understand that when you tell The Big Lie, you can’t be defensive when the facts threaten to expose you. On the contrary, you have to be prepared to feign indignation and immediately go on the offensive.

But there’s something even worse than The Big Lie. There are people on this planet who wear personality masks intended to deceive. They are, in the words of M. Scott Peck, "People of the Lie."

A few examples include:

• Famous media personalities at the major networks who position themselves as professional commentators while relentlessly pushing their hateful agendas. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
• Politicians who cast themselves as saviors of "the little guy" or "the working class." They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
• Psychics who employ verbal sleight-of-hand to make gullible and vulnerable people believe they are connecting with their deceased love ones. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
• Religious leaders and heads of state who make up revelatory doctrine as they go along in order to twist the minds of the angry and frustrated. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
• And so on… the list is endless.

People of the Lie will always be with us. People of the Lie will do and say anything to accomplish their ends - which almost always include achieving power over others. In fact, for many of them (e.g., politicians), power is an end. In his book 1984, George Orwell, through his character O’Brien, underscores this reality when he says:

"Now tell me why we (the Party) cling to power? What is our motive? Why should we want power?… The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end…. The object of power is power."

Power and force are not mutually exclusive, because a person can use his personal power to act either constructively or destructively. And the ultimate destructive use of power is force. Force is the use of physical or intellectual power to compel or restrain, so force robs other people of their power.

In bygone days, the civilized world did not hesitate to use overwhelming, retaliatory force to destroy People of the Lie who tried to establish their power over increasing numbers of people through the use of force. Despots like Hitler and Mussolini were crushed without ceremony.

Whether the civilized world (read, U.S.) still has the moral strength, the courage, and the will to eradicate People of the Lie who now threaten to bring down Western civilization remains to be seen. As I write this, People of the Lie are in positions of great authority and are taking ever-greater control of world events.

In the meantime, all you and I can do is try to deal effectively with the People of the Lie in our own lives. Unfortunately, we can’t eradicate them, but we certainly can keep them at bay by being strong, vigilant, well-informed, and willing to face up to the reality of who and what they are.

By this I mean being candid with ourselves when it comes to recognizing that a person we may want to become involved with - or perhaps someone with whom we are already involved - is a fraud. If it’s obvious that someone is wearing a psychic mask - trying to represent himself to be someone other than who he really is - don’t try to convince yourself that it’s your imagination.

In my experience, when someone hisses like a snake and crawls like a snake, he is a snake. Further, in every encounter I’ve had with a snake, I came to find that, sooner or later, others were also able to spot the snake under the mask.

By all means, give family, friends, and seemingly well-meaning strangers the benefit of the doubt. But when it comes to those whom you suspect to be People of the Lie, benefit of the doubt can be an invitation to a snakebite.

Do you really believe the teller of The Big Lie is going to respond to your presentation of the facts by saying, "Gee, I hadn’t really thought about it that way before. I guess I was wrong." Forget it. People of the Lie thrive on telling The Big Lie; it’s what they live for.

What I’ve learned through all too much firsthand experience is that the most rationally selfish way to handle People of the Lie is to respond with my feet. Eradication is not an option, but walking away is.

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It’s Good to Know: Paper Batteries

Researchers from New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are developing a type of paper that’s embedded with miniscule carbon nanotubes and can store energy like a conventional battery. So far, they have been able to create a postage stamp-sized battery that produces about 2.3 volts, enough to power a small light, but they believe additional research could make cars powered by reams of paper a reality.

(Source: BBC)

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Word to the Wise: Traduce

To "traduce" (truh-DOOS) - from the Latin for "to lead across" - is to expose to contempt or shame by means of false statements.

Example (as used by Peter Bazalgette in The Guardian): "I sometimes wonder whether those who traduce today’s television have any conception just how much is on offer to the growing number of us with multi-channel television."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2133, 08-29-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.