Introduction & Free Audio Cassette
Hi! I'm Carl Weisbrod! Can I interest you in some personal history?
In the 1960s I established my first psychotherapy practice. I used hypnotism a lot because it seemed to me a no-nonsense, rapid-results approach. Then I discovered the best way to achieve consistent results was to instruct patients in the mechanics of the problem they were in my office to solve--not on a psychological basis but sometimes basic biology. Often, I had to set aside psychological training in favor of biochemistry, neurology, and even archaeology.
When working with cigarette smokers, for example, I found my success ratio shot upward as I started teaching the brain-function that supports habit formation, habit extinction, and psychological defenses. My weight-control patients did much better if they understood the cellular chemistry of body-fat metabolism.
Of course cigarette smokers were often not interested in neurological principles, and overweight folks were seldom interested in adenosine triphosphate, oxygen, and lipids.
The advantage I had was that they were paying a dollar a minute to be in my office, so at least there was financial motivation to pay attention. To make the sessions easier and less expensive, I developed a habit of putting together supplemental audio cassettes and workbooks, and assigned these as homework. I also wrote a couple of problem-solving books as reference. Still, sometimes patients left me for therapists that were easier--but those who stuck with me were usually successful.
I have been engrossed in the process of formalizing and packaging a couple of dozen of these programs, partly with the idea of no longer handing over two-thirds of my income to leaseholders, and other "self-appointed partners" who do nothing for the patient. And I'm looking forward to moving away from the Honolulu rat-race to one of the outer islands.
The concern I have with programs that come through the mail is that if "the voice on the tape" asks "too much" one might simply turn off the recorder and put the workbook on the shelf--perhaps thinking they will retrieved it when “there’s more time.” I’m concerned that many who order my programs might not have the commitment needed to comprehend the basics of the problems they have.
Many people just want to know what pill to take, diet to follow, or book to read. Well... if it was that simple, would there even be a problem?
Seldom will one solve a problem using the same mentality that created it. Usually, previously held "truths" must be set aside and a journey taken back-to-the-basics.
So, in the interest of fairness and before you spend your money on any of my programs, please read the following article. If you understand the principles I discuss--if it makes sense to you--if you can read it all without “putting it on the shelf”... you are probably a good candidate for The Weisbrod Method of Problem Solving.
And later, I will make you a free offer--followed by a couple of inexpensive get-acquainted programs.
The article that follows zeros in on these questions:
Most scientists believe that life emerged 4 billion years ago on a then half-billion year old planet called Earth. Even though our lives began just in this century, our genes link us back millions of years. Consider that the oldest human-made tools have been carbon-dated at 2 1/2 million years.
We only get a copy of copies of chromosomes that have been around throughout the millennium, but our parents still managed to hand us a relatively intact set and near perfect health--with some exceptions.
It is because of this link with the past that we are hard-wired before birth with some basic behavior patterns. We have basic concepts of pain and pleasure and a strong drive to consume. Our brains are wired to absorb new information like a sponge.
We also bring with us at birth the instinct of fear.
Within our first year, we are learning things that help us avoid pain and find pleasure. Everything works pretty well when you consider that these instincts were originally programmed many millions of years ago.
But there are a couple of noteworthy exceptions: our drive to feed ourselves is probably too strong for our own good and the impulse to deal with fear by avoidance causes huge problems.
You don't have to look very far to observe problems caused by a too-strong hunger drive, but the problems that result from the fear impulse are less obvious. Rather than learning to deal with fear constructively, we tend to avoid that which triggers it. Avoiding fear impulses can become a life-threatening system, especially as we grow older. I’ll tell you more about this later.
Before I get into that, let me tell you how mankind has fallen out-of-balance with the environment for which he was created.
The first bipedal hominids were primarily foragers, making their living on the African savanna. They were vegetarians just like their hominoid cousins.
The most significant hominid survival mechanism was the ability to scramble over miles of rocky terrain day in and day out.
These foraging hominids were slow by most standards but no predatory carnivore could match their long-distance endurance. For this reason, as long as they stayed some distance from these predators they were safe, but they had to keep moving.
Another critical survival mechanism was their vertical, arms-free posture allowing them to hurl 100 mph rocks at enemies such as the sabertooth tiger. Baseball-type sports are a modern-day artifact of this ancient life-saving talent.
With these and other characteristics, Australopithecene hominids survived millions of years. This is a dozen times longer than we have been here so far. The Australopiths will undoubtedly retain the record for the longest lasting hominid, but Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and even Neanderthals probably had a longer run than is destined for us.
For this reason alone there is a lot to be learned by looking at the life-styles of ancient hominids.
The energy requirements for the endurance that would allow a steady pace for perhaps 30 miles a day was fueled by a diet of fibrous carbohydrates that were gathered along the way.
As meager as it seems to us now, there must have been adequate nutrition and calories in the coarse plants that provided subsistence for the Australopithecene hominid. (Have you noticed that each new nutritional recommendation is suggesting more complex carbohydrates, lower fat, and less protein?)
But should we even be surprised that the diet that was the standard from archaic beginnings is healthier than the recently invented American diet?
The American-style diet has a genesis probably precipitated by the last Ice Age. The first deviation from the ancient diet happened when Homo habilis and Homo erectus were forced to obtain some of their energy requirements from flesh foods.
The hominid digestive system was not designed for bloody-raw meat, and anyway they could never have competed with the carnivore tooth and claw. So they had to rob bones from carnivore kills and crack them open with stone tools for the marrow inside. Since hominids disliked freshly killed flesh they must have been primarily scavengers.
Today we speak of country-cured hams and nicely aged steaks . . .but the truth is. . . well, I’d better not elaborate. :-)
Our ancestors at some point did add hunting to their list of skills; but I really believe this man-the-hunter thing is exaggerated because of a kind of scientific romanticism. If hunting was a routine activity it would not have been a favorite topic of cave art--we prefer to immortalize the spectacular. Imagine the amount of satellite, space shuttle, and aircraft artifacts that future archaeologists would discover in their excavations. It would not be too surprising if they thought all 20th-century folks were space travelers.
Okay... if the basic survival trait is the endurance to cover 30 miles every day fueled by complex carbohydrates, then why don’t we live like that today? Few of us even come close to this kind of life-style. It’s an especially perplexing question when you add the fact that altering a genetically programmed system will eventually cause life-threatening health problems.
It is unfortunate that at the end of the last Ice Age we didn’t revert back to our more balanced life-style. Something very powerful must have disrupted a continuity that had served hominids so well for so long.
My guess is there were three events that sidetracked this Paleolithic (Stone Age) balance with the environment.
Event #1 probably was the emergence of a large bilaterally-specialized cerebral cortex from about 100,000 years ago. I think it’s significant that this massive change might have emerged in a relatively short time--perhaps within the range of 10,000 years.
(Typically the left brain hemisphere handles outside-of-self duties using logic and person-to-person communication, with the other hemisphere handling inside-of-self duties sometimes thought of as the imagination. The two hemispheres then “talk” back and forth resulting in that unique human intelligence. Humans therefore are the only species that can divide thoughts into three parts rather than two.)
Event #2: Using this triad brain, Cro-Magnon people figured out the technology of agriculture. We moved from forager to an agrarian society perhaps 15,000 years ago.
Event #3 happened as animals attracted to Cro-Magnon’s rich agriculture were domesticated so they could be slaughtered for food.
These early technologies allowed much greater population densities. One huge downside was that this provided a fertile incubative environment for pathogens. Diseases (such as tuberculosis) were then spread worldwide with the advent of ocean travel.
Medical technology was mandated to focus a thousand years on identification and control of diseases that killed us off by the millions. Finally in the last century men like Pasteur, Koch, and Lister were successful as reflected by the fact that just in the past 30 years the world population has doubled, and life expectancy averages out decades longer.
Because of medical technology’s outstanding success bringing infectious diseases under control, we are no doubt preoccupied with the idea that once again science will triumph, saving us from the poor health that has befallen us.
The problem is... the evolution of medical science was mandated to prevent death from injury and disease, not to improve health and quality of life. Medical science, in other words, might "pull you out of a hole in the ice" but it won’t keep you from "falling in." And anyway, the new 20th- and 21st-century causes of death and disability cannot be cured or prevented by a vaccine.
As infectious diseases diminished there has emerged a completely new plague of sorts; a pandemic spreading throughout most developed countries. It’s called the degenerative disease. Really it’s better categorized as a disorder because (as opposed to infectious diseases that are caused by a bacteria, virus, or parasite) a degenerative disease or disorder is almost always multi-factorial (many causes).
Currently these degenerative disorders are responsible for a majority of death and disability in most developed countries.
One category is atherosclerosis. This is responsible for over 40% of the total deaths in the United States! Atherosclerosis is not difficult to understand. Look at the Latin roots: athero translates to fatty plaque; scler means hard; and osis refers to a condition--a clogging condition of hard fatty plaque.
If this clogging causes a bottleneck in the brain the result is a stroke; if in the coronary arteries, a heart attack might be the result.
Based on a multitude of studies, there is now a consensus among scientists and physicians that the major factor is excess saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet, coupled with a sedentary life-style. Hypertension, stress, and genetics are secondary factors.
Cancer can be classed as a degenerative disorder and comes in as a close second to atherosclerosis as a major killer. The most prominent cancer sites are the colon, lung, breast, and prostate.
Some factors in the common cancers are (any variety of) fats and oils in the diet and the sedentary life-style. Of course, cigarette smoking is a major factor.
Other degenerative disorders are diabetes (type 2), emphysema, and osteoporosis. These also have as factors a diet high in fat, a sedentary life-style, and cigarette smoking. The American diet is too high in protein and that is a major factor for osteoporosis.
I mumble under my breath when I see a newspaper headline or a TV report that sounds like this: “SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH THAT COULD LEAD TO A CURE FOR CANCER !!”
All of the degenerative disorders that I’ve mentioned have always been curable; and that cure has been known for years--it’s no secret!
(Perhaps I should use the term prevention rather than cure, but I’ve grown uncomfortable with a term that has become confused with the term detection. Mammograms and biopsies, for example, detect not prevent cancer. Detection, of course, is important but should not be confused with other approaches of health care.)
The cure (or prevention) I’m talking about does not involve medical science, much less pills, powders, or elixirs. There is no product to sell and therefore little profit motive to stimulate commercial advertising, or even media-based discussion.
The cure is the diet and life-style of our early Paleolithic ancestors who didn’t have heart attacks or cancer. Epidemiological studies have shown that the couple of tribes that still live this Stone-Age lifestyle have little atherosclerosis and cancer. I should tell you, however, that epidemiological (population) studies don't satisfy scientific criteria as definitive proof... but it’s proof enough for me!
If it’s that simple to avoid having a heart attack or cancer--eating lots of veggies, exercising every day, and not smoking . . . then why don’t folks just make these changes? Why indeed?
(I think I have the answer to this. Read on and see what you think.)
When you first started reading this, you will recall I talked about dealing with fear by avoidance. Avoidance was a life-saving system for our early ancestors who had to deal with predators, accidents, and famine. But now, in our so-called civilized environment, avoidance is no longer protective, in fact the opposite is true.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know you are putting your life at risk if you follow the typical American diet with a couch-potato lifestyle. If, on top of it, you add harmful substances like alcohol and cigarette smoke, you will most certainly die before your time or, perhaps worse, become an invalid.
What is the definition of dying before your time? That’s easy: it means dying while the brain is still in good working order.
If you have a friend or family member that seems to be giving up on life, try thinking about them this way:
Check [X] if this person can . . .
When evaluating someone’s zest for life it is important to remember that expressed feelings of hopelessness and depression can be medically treated.
The point is, if you could [X] just a couple of the above there is still time for life.
For those at risk of dying before their time the thought of death has a universal effect: it creates a feeling of fear! (Although most won’t admit these feelings even to themselves.)
Nevertheless there is the tendency to deal with this fear by the ancient system of avoidance. Sigmund Freud assigned the phrase defense mechanisms to this psychological avoidance system.
This avoidance (aka defense mechanisms) is the primary reason so many of us do nothing while degenerative disorders progress insidiously.
What about the much advertised longer life expectancy? Don’t we hear constantly that we are living longer because of better medicine?
As comforting as this seems, on a person-to-person basis it is almost meaningless. Here’s why:
This longer life expectancy is the result of three factors:
First there was an early 20th-century reduction of deaths from childhood diseases. Every newborn that is spared from an early death profoundly expands the statistics. Because of 19th-century science we are given a birthright of protection from the causes of death of the millennia gone by. While this is reflected in today's statistical increase in life expectancy, the benefit of this gift only extends through the first decade of life.
The second reason for our longer life expectancy is the high-tech medicine that can patch us up with drugs and surgery--keeping us alive much longer than normal. Physicians can mechanically unclog arteries, transplant organs, and slash, poison, and burn cancer from the body. Of course if it comes to that, it’s good that it’s available.
The third factor is unfortunately the least statistically significant. It is represented by a small group of people that have adopted a life-style that includes a starch-based diet, vigorous daily exercise, and not smoking.
You can only join this third group if you do exactly what they do. The rewards are that you maintain your best weight, with physical stamina, and a strong sexual function. Probably most important however, is you can avoid most degenerative disorders--I guess you could call it a retroactive cure.
I’m often told something like this: “Well, we’ve already cut down on red meat...we have more chicken and fish, and go for walks as often as we can.” Well...this may help a little, but it is far from adequate to prevent heart disease or cancer.
So, I’m suggesting you do what the third group does, keeping in mind that just living in 1997 won’t do it. Major changes must be made. (Am I being a little redundant? I guess I am, but that’s okay.)
Well . . . did you enjoy my little article? If you did, you might enjoy the free audio cassette that I would be happy to send you. On this 60-minute cassette you will find lots of information about many aspects of problem solving. Just email your post office address, and tell me you would like to have the free audio cassette.
There is no obligation--nothing to buy--nothing to lose.
Carl Weisbrod, Ph.D.
© Carl Weisbrod 1997