Your Turn to Try

I have to say this: We vegans first tried our hardest to get people to go vegan for justice for animals and animal rights. When that didn't work we talked about compassion for animals and how much we have in common and how they feel just like we do. When that didn't work, we talked extensively about people's health and how almost all aspects of health will be improved with a vegan lifestyle. When that was ignored, we talked about the environmental reasons to go vegan and how animal agriculture ruins just about everything on this Earth. We even talked about how eating animals makes climate change worse! When that didn't work, we talked about how large farming corporations are taking all your money and your taxes are paying for their bailouts and their subsidies and even their Wifi. When that was ignored, we pointed out that all these viruses come from animals and that, in order to stop most viruses in the future, we must stop eating animals! I know that is being ignored too.
People who eat meat and dairy in this age are ruining the lives of others - animals, humans, our future generations, and all life on Earth.

There are vegan recipes all over the Internet. Your supermarkets are wiped out, but, as you always point out to me, there is some food in the "vegan section." Go there and get some! First read the labels, because some of it is just vegetarian or even "organic meat." (Boo.) Try the vegan sausages I recommend over and over. I will not tell you the brand, because I have said it so much, I have been accused of being paid by the company! (But the initials are F.R. and the types of that F.R. brand that I like are the apple sage sausage and the Italian sausage.)

Make an effort. Eat some grains, some vegan meat, some vegan cheese, some vegan sour cream, some vegan mayo, some Oreos, some potato chips, some vegetables, some fruits, purchase some plant milk, some vegan ice cream, and other vegan junk food if that is your desire. We have great food!

So try it.

Save this planet now!

You Know

For years, I have had discussions with people about animal rights, but a new idea hit me today.  My discussions used to go something like this:

Other Person:  It’s the circle of life.  We are supposed to kill animals.  We are predators.  Animals in slaughterhouses don’t know you are going to kill them.  Animals don’t have a sense of themselves, so it doesn’t matter.

I would usually argue back that we are primates and are most suited to eating grains, fruits and vegetables; that we were not born with tools in our hands; that animals do know fear and can smell blood and feel terrible pain when they are slaughtered; that most animals do have a sense of themselves because they react to pain, want love, and a few do look at their reflections and realize it is them.  I end up writing a lot of information on all these topics in order to try to prove each aspect.

What I thought of today is that it does not matter whether it is the circle of life, whether you think you are supposed to kill animals, whether you are a predator, whether animals don’t realize they are about to die, or whether animals have a sense of themselves - YOU know they are about to die. 

You know this is their only life – this is their only chance to live on planet Earth.  Why would you take that away?  Why would you categorize them as “livestock” or “food” when you could eat something else and allow them to live their lives? Why betray them?  Why be “The Devil” to them?  As long as they aren’t threatening your life, why take theirs?  Why not live as morally and kindly as you can?  Let them experience life for as long as their natural lives will last and help make every animal’s life as good as possible! 

Australia Fires and Animal Deaths - a Short Comparison

The Australia fires have killed 1/2 billion animals so far, and I hate to imagine their deaths. However, the United States has killed 59 billion animals this year for our choice of food consumption and I hate to imagine their lives and deaths. In addition, wild animals are killed to make room for cow grazing and crops for farm animal feed due to our choice of food consumption and I hate to imagine their deaths.

There is that word: choice.

Does Peace on Earth Mean Anything?

Peace on Earth. I feel like this phrase has no power anymore.  Does it mean anything to anyone? Is peace seen as an unattainable wish that has become a meaningless phrase, or is anyone still working toward a peaceful world? 

We know most humans have the biological capacity to be violent because it is a survival mechanism.  But we want to cooperate because that is so much easier than fighting our way through life.  We should have made more progress with world peace by now.  Instead, we still have wars, kidnappings, unspeakable violence, and world leaders who can’t talk things out without threatening each other.  

What about our daily lives?  Nothing is really peaceful, as we have intentionally hidden violence in our culture.  Therefore, saying “Peace on Earth” is ingenuine unless we work toward it.  Our food system is based on unnecessary violence, yet few people seem to want to change to a peaceful way of eating, when it is as simple as choosing only non-animal products to put into your mouths each time you eat.  Don’t you “choose to eat this and choose not to eat that” every day?  If you can easily make choices, then why is it so difficult to keep dead animals out of your mouths? 

Looking at it as written, it seems so easy to convince others to do, yet humans get offended and defensive.  You would think they would jump excitedly at the idea of saving animals from immense suffering and to help come closer to peace on Earth. Few even realize it should be a goal.  

I think most people are just stuck in their culture, and don’t want to change anything – they want others to change everything for them.  Change would happen a lot quicker if everyone were helping.  Instead, humans just accept that “this is the way it is,” which is exactly why this is the way it is – and we are no closer to Peace on Earth. 

Stamps Show Our Subconscious Christian Nationalism

At our work, we have two different types of stamps for our holiday cards – secular and religious.  Of course, the religious stamp is of the Christian religion, with Mary holding baby Jesus.  The religious stamps were for certain clients, but I never saw us purchase Jewish stamps for our Jewish clients or Kwanzaa stamps or Eid stamps!  Did you ever notice we never show what our politicians claim – that we have “Judeo-Christian principles?”  We didn’t buy any stamps with Menorahs on them! 

We did run out of our secular stamps and we were told to put religious stamps on the cards.  As I slapped on Mary stamp after Mary stamp, I thought, if I had bought some Menorah stamps for the office, I bet we would not have used them; the cards would have been metered or stamps with the American flag would have been used. 

This is just another example of how Christian nationalists have gotten into our brains so that we do not even realize we favor Christianity.

THE PEACEFUL WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS

What kind of world do you imagine when you think of a perfect world?  Is it one where all beings are respected and treated well?  Is it a peaceful world?  Is it a safe world where everyone works toward the good of society?  Is it a clean world, with sparking lakes and rivers?  Is it a world where people are happy?  

If children were raised to respect the rights of all beings on Earth, and to believe that animals are not property and should not be eaten or used for entertainment, there probably would be no racism, because the child would be raised to respect everyone and every being.  People and governments would be peaceful, and wars would not be the way to solve problems.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stop fighting people with different cultures?  

Right now, our society runs on speciesism, where we think we are superior and have the right to use other beings, and deeply conditioned racism is why we make up so many excuses to continue to eat animals.  We will never have the world of our dreams if we continue with our species hierarchy, because animals make waste that pollutes rivers and lakes, the huge farms are put in areas that disproportionately affect people of color, our factories and our trash are located in areas where people of color live, the animals we breed into existence require monocrops and pesticides which end up poisoning us in many ways, and our society is structured to favor a few people over the rest of the beings, with throw away beings and disposable animals, and strangers who are enemies.  Getting rid of speciesism will topple that structure.  

My Rant When "Well-Meaning" Friends Challenge the Facts I Present about What they Eat

When I post about how you can avoid heart disease, I write about a diet that is very low in fat and has little to no oil. I do that because it is the only diet that can reverse heart disease. Why would I post a diet that would keep you at risk of dying? 
Most people in heath professions still believe in "moderation" and when I show that meat is too high in cholesterol and saturated fat, they use a pat phrase, such as "correlation doesn't equal causation." It was used against me a few months ago regarding cholesterol, but let me make it clear - eating cholesterol causes raising of cholesterol in your blood. 
We have 50 years of evidence that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, but rather than being skeptical when in 2010, a meta-analysis came out saying "eat butter," saturated fat won't harm you, they happily believed it!
The meta-analysis was quickly debunked - the results spread around did not mention the deaths that resulted from the study; and the results spread around only compared people in countries where the fat amount in diets were similar so they could say, "eating beef in the United States didn't make cholesterol worse than other diets in the study." 
Also, studies on cholesterol were done where they first fed vegans large amounts of coconut oil for a few weeks before they compared them to "meat eaters eating a lower fat diet than they usually do" so they could say that low fat, carbohydrate rich diets were no better than high protein, high fat diets. Coconut oil is one of the few vegan foods that has saturated fat and raises cholesterol. I don't eat coconut oil and never recommend it.
In another study, they made people eat cholesterol, then they did not take their blood in the four hours after the cholesterol was ingested, and they made the subjects fast for 12 hours after they ate the cholesterol. After nearly all the cholesterol had left their bloodstream, they took their blood! Their conclusion was that eating cholesterol doesn't raise cholesterol because it wasn't in their bloodstream!
Do you see how they cheat? Do you see how a person looking at their results would not know and would fall for their faulty studies? They would think it was fine to eat meat and butter! That is what happened.
I don't put studies up that support the "Standard American Diet" because that diet can make you sick. I don't show you what is currently the diet of the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association, because their diets can still give you diabetes and heart disease. I tell you a total cholesterol level has to be below 150 in order to be heart attack safe, when your doctors and most health professionals are still touting the diets that say "you are healthy" if your cholesterol is under 200. People have heart attacks at that rate, and about half of American adults are walking around at risk of a heart attack at any time. 
My goals are three-fold - to help you have great health, to help the environment, and to help animals. Since no one wants to address the suffering of farm animals and people unfriend if I show the animal abuse that is on farms, I show you how to improve your health. It is met with criticism by people who do not study nutrition nearly every day like I do. Time will be on my side, but will time be on your side - all those people my age and younger who are already going in and out of the hospital? My Facebook home page is a mass of sick people due to what my friends are eating! Will time be on your side? Will it be on the side of all the farmed animals being tortured at this moment? 
Make a change in your diet. Drop the fatty meat with fat in the muscles. Drop the dairy. Drop the glob of fat called eggs. I'll keep posting until I convince you, or until you get sick of me and unfriend me. Then it will be another activist down the line who will convince you of the truth.

Why Don't You Take Climate Change Seriously?

For those of you who still don't believe climate change is real and primarily man-made, how can you explain the data of our parts per million of CO2 getting up to 410 ppm in our air? How can you explain the breaking down of the jet stream so that the polar vortex weather is coming down lower? How can you explain that the warnings the climate scientists have been telling us in detail since 1956 are now coming true? When you realize something is true, why aren't you switching sides on this issue and letting your representatives know you aren't supporting their views anymore? Why aren't you angry that no one did anything about it? For the past 60 years, they have done very little to help and they have done more to harm. Do you now realize that the right and the rich are killing off our planet for greed?

Our sea levels are rising, the ocean is acidifying, the type of CO2 that is exclusively from fossil fuels is increasing in our air, animals are moving northward and upward, animals are dying, we are having droughts as predicted in large parts of our world, we are having more wildfires, our storms are getting bigger as the warmer air is holding more moisture, and our temperatures worldwide are going up.

I could go on with side effects happening now that we were warned about, but you get the picture. And after all of this, we have a government that is stalling on climate change, does not admit that man has a big part in it (because they are lying [for money]), so they can continue to undo regulations that protect us. Why aren't you ALL, on the left and on the right, writing your representatives and firing off letters to the White House? Why are you still supporting a president's actions of "bringing coal back" when he is destroying the environment and killing off people due to climate change?

Circle of Life?

It’s the Circle of Life.” 

“Really?  We’re Primates!  We’re supposed to be eating leaves and picking berries!
What part of the circle of life is imprisoning highly bred animals, collecting semen from a bull by electrically shocking him, sticking your arm in a female cow with the semen, keeping her pregnant as often as possible then taking away each baby so you can drink the milk meant for her calves?” 

Why Would a God Send Different Important Messages?

If there were a god, wouldn’t he send out the same message to everyone? If it is crucial to “be saved” before you die, why did countless people live and die before “the savior” was even born? It seems to me that God would have given the same “important” message to every single human, from the start of time; yet the opposite is true. 

One thing Christians seem to change their minds on is the reason for different messages. Is the reason that different messages are being given to other people: “There are different, false gods” or “God knows what He is doing and we don’t have to understand why He gives out different messages?” It seems that it isn’t important, then, what we believe, because “God will judge depending on the circumstance.” I have heard many times from Christians that God will judge independently depending on all these differences. Why such monumental differences in religion and message and god in the first place? Why do other people hear a different god and savior talking to them in their heads, and some people don’t ever have a god talk to them, but still claim they have been sent a message?

We cannot ignore that different religions are based quite geographically and within certain time-frames in history. It looks more like people in certain areas have leaders that spread a certain message, so all the people in that area believe that message, more than, “God sends a different message to people in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, ancient Eridu, and Columbus, Montana.

Think about it – Why, if there is one all-powerful god, is God sending different messages using a different name and a different personality and even a call to a different savior? Is this a way to get them to believe, “Jesus died on the cross for your sins and you must repent, yadda yadda yadda?” Where are these messages really coming from?

Challenged On Whether Dairy Cows and Goats Are Tortured

On Facebook, I received a comment that my friend's spouse's relatives were small scale dairy farmers and that they loved their cows like family, and that the business kept people fed in the area.  She challenged that I called dairy farming of cows and/or goats "torture."  This was my response:

I appreciate the concern and how caring your relatives are. However, I have not seen an animal farm business that is humane yet, and I have watched a lot of videos about humane farms. When you see cows in the field, it looks idyllic, and certainly farmers can be nice to cows most of the time. But let's examine what happens on just about every small dairy farm: 

Cows are usually branded. Would branding a human be torture? 

Dairy cows usually have their tails docked - cut partway off, without anesthesia. If we cut off a part of a human - say, a part of a finger, without anesthesia (or even with anesthesia) would that be torture?

Cows usually are disbudded or dehorned, usually without anesthesia. If humans had a part of their bodies burned off, wouldn't that be torture?

How did their cows become pregnant? Were they artificially inseminated? (Most likely) How often? Probably as often as possible after giving birth, so that the cows will be pregnant most of their lives in order to produce milk. Would that be torture for a human? 

What happened to the baby boy calves that were born to these cows who were pregnant over and over? (Usually they either become veal calves, are sold off to become veal calves, or they are shot or hit in the head.) Would that be torture for a human to have her son taken away or killed? 

What happens to the cows when they no longer can reproduce or give enough milk? (They were sent to slaughter or killed by the farmer. Usually sent to slaughter.) Would being taken from the farm and driven to a slaughterhouse to be killed be torture for a human? Would being deceived and killed by your caretaker be torture for a human?

If you still think I am wrong, please let me know why.

I expect not to get a reply, except for an unfriending.  

Meat Eaters Supplement with B12!!!

A lot of people try to discount veganism because we vegans are told we must supplement with B12. There are vegans who do not supplement because they try to get enough B12 from their diets, but all the reports I read from experts state that there is not enough B12 in plant foods, and that the bacteria in the dirt is cobalt depleted and nutrient poor now, and, therefore, is not reliable. Most reports say that EVERYONE should be supplementing with B12!

Meat eaters claim vegans' diets are deficient because they know that we have to take a supplement. Now I could eat a lot of already fortified soy milk and cereal (which I do) and I could truthfully claim I don't take a pill form supplement, but my food is already supplemented - just as cows milk is fortified with Vitamin D and bread and flour are fortified with folate. (And meat eaters are still deficient in more vitamins than vegans, in general.) B12 is so important, it's better not to take a chance on being deficient. By the way, 40% of people are deficient in B12. Meat eaters - take your B12!!!!

I thought that, technically we vegans could easily eat dirt or feces to get B12 (who would want to), but the soil is too poor now to take that risk. What meat eaters do not realize is that they also supplement their diets with B12. Yes, you, the meat eater, take many supplements - you just don't realize it. You just run the supplement through an animal.

Very few people eat grass fed beef and even those who do, are rarely consistent about it - they go out and eat meat in restaurants or at friends' houses that is not grass fed. Why am I mentioning this? B12 comes from bacteria that is in the soil and meat eaters used to get B12 from the cows who absorbed B12 naturally from dirt. Now, however, meat eaters get B12 by cows who spend either their whole lives or the last six months of their lives being fattened up by grains that are supplemented with B12! So, cows are eating supplements and meat eaters are absorbing cows' supplements into their systems. Again, even the grass fed cows are eating from soil that may not be rich in B12. Also, cows do contain bacteria in their guts that manufacture B12, but the antibiotic use on the farms kills their gut bacteria! I should highlight that last part! I will repeat it: . . . the antibiotic use on the farms kills their gut bacteria!

So you supplement. You may now stop thinking vegans' diets are insufficient because we choose supplementing. I eat a tasty cherry flavored chewable B12 supplement, which I highly recommend over eating an unknowable amount of B12 that has been ingested by a cow as a supplement and consumed by you through the animals' flesh.

Arming Americans

Just as Betsy DeVos wants teachers to carry guns, perhaps she needs to insist people who do yoga must carry guns. Maybe those who take ballet lessons should have guns strapped to their tutus. How about gymnastics? Should Simone, Laurie, Aly and Gabby vault and do bars with guns in their leotards?

How about we stop this nonsense of arming more people, and ban AR15's as a start. We must have stronger gun laws with periodic checks, we must tone down violent rhetoric, we must promote a non-violent culture, and we must raise boys to have peaceful hobbies and self esteem that is not built on toughness and aggression.

How Hot do you Want the Heat in your Car to Get?

Have you ever parked your car outside on a sunny day, and then, when you got in the car you find it is hotter than the outside air? The steering wheel is burning to the touch? You do know it is true that you car gets hotter, because we can't keep our pets in the car on a hot day because the car's interior will quickly overheat. This is because light energy from the sun gets into the car, and the interior car surfaces absorb this energy, which heats the car's seat, dashboard, floor, etc. The car's roof and windows then trap the heat, and the whole inside of the car gets hotter.

You and I and all the animals and all the plants - are the dog trapped inside the car. The earth's layer of gases in our atmosphere is our car windows and roof, trapping heat inside.

The earth has a layer of trapped gases that keep heat from escaping. With extra gases from all of our human-caused activities - factories, cars and cows and sheep spewing CO2 and/or methane, the gases become thicker and less heat energy can escape back into space, so our planet continues to warm. This results in climate change - an alteration in the patterns of temperature, wind, rainfall, and major weather-related events over the planet.

Okay, this really wasn't about the heat in your car - this was a post about climate change, but who would have read it with "climate change" in the title?!

- I took a good share of this from Janice Stanger, "Climate Change Simplified."

Free Speech Violations are Increasing

It is against the law to call for violence if it is likely violence will occur from that call. Free speech does have some limits. Gavin McInnes is openly calling for violence. This is against free speech - yet he is on two stations from what I can surmise, and it looks like one of them is FOX. His gang has beat up people who were protesting peacefully.

Trump has openly called for violence that has repeatedly resulted in violence - he has broken the law. But Trump was not arrested, because people love to see him get away with everything - it makes them think they can too. As long as we have this distraction of Trump taking up our time and causing commotion and fights within ourselves, our government can make changes that take away money from us. That is what they have been doing and what they will continue to do.

Oh, and I hope you are not so gullible to think that Republicans are going to protect your health care allowing preexisting conditions because they all of a sudden, right before we vote, they are claiming they will; with no factual evidence and a lot of evidence that they will take it away. They do not care about you. They will take it away. They only want your money and already have stripped most of us of any excess beyond our basic bill paying ability. We must fight this with our vote. We must protect our environment, our country and our money with our vote, even if we are not totally happy with either choice. Our freedom is being taken away by the Republicans, our livelihood and our earth is being destroyed. This administration took away the value of truth, the honor of a person's word.

Start thinking logically on every subject instead of only using your emotions. Realize we, as Americans, as Patriots, must stand up to our government when our government becomes extreme and is against We, The People!

The Cube of Truth Brings Out the Truth!

When looking people watching the video at the Cubes of Truth that are in major cities, I see horror and sadness on their faces.  These are people watching what is actually happening on farms and at slaughterhouses. Your food should not be in fear, should not cry, should not scream, should not be in tremendous pain, should not be murdered. If you eat meat and dairy, you are eating fear, sadness, screaming, pain and murder.
 
Plants do not feel pain. Choose the world of plants for your meals. We now have plant-based beef, chicken, turkey, shrimp, tuna, etc. - any meat you think of, we have a vegan meat you can eat. Our vegan cheeses have improved greatly, and we have American cheese, cheddar, swiss, mozzarella and all kinds of gourmet cheeses. 

Some foods have to be special ordered if you live in a small town - so order a few, find what you like, then go to your grocery stores and ask that they get those foods in as part of their regular inventory.
Or, you can eat plant-based without vegan meats and cheeses, enjoying all kinds of grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, plant-based milks - and the myriad recipes that can be made with these foods.

Common Sense Changes We Must Make to Decrease Violence in the United States

We used to have a ban on AR-15 assault rifles. Did you even notice it at the time? Did it infringe on your rights because you wanted to buy one? If so, why did or do you want to buy an AR-15 assault rifle? Be specific to your particular case. Not some generalized "so I can defend myself just in case." You could defend yourself in many other ways, and you didn't need it when we had a ban on the AR-15. Why are you all in a panic when it is suggested we need to ban it? You are not legally allowed to buy a Russian AK-47 and an AK-74. Are you crying over that and whining that it is infringing on your rights? No? Then why argue over the AR-15?

We must ban the AR-15 again. If you disagree, apparently you do not respect the lives of all the people who have died in the mass shootings. You put an AR-15 over the lives of people.

This is not my only issue. There are many things we must change - I already talked about how we must raise our males differently, and that is one of the most important things we must examine. Our culture must become peace oriented in action as well as thought.

We must vote Blue this November. We have to rein in the vicious, violent talk of Trump. He has instigated a lot of violence, and if you disagree, I know it is because you are willfully ignoring the punches in the face, the calls to rough up people, the rise of white gangs and violent white protests, and the mass shootings that have resulted from his followers who are enamored of Trump.

We have to talk about other things than Trump. I despise having to talk about it here. Unfortunately, when he spews undeserved hatred every day and tells his followers lies, we have to address his words. Currently, he is spending his time going to rallies, working on his own campaign, instead of running the country. His staff inserted some language into his "worship Trump rally" to make him seem sympathetic to those who lost their lives today. You can tell he never saw that part of the speech and that he read it for the first time at the rally. They were not his thoughts.

He should be comforting those people and talking to the whole country, and either at the White House or at the town of the shooting.

He lacks presidential ability in so many ways.

Therefore, we must find a way to change him, and I think voting Blue in November will do the trick, because he changes his ideas according to who is giving him information and who is in power in Congress and Senate.

These are the major things I think we need to change and I know our country will be better for these changes.

The Problem is the White Conservative Christian Male

Once again, we must talk about the latest shooting, and I am just sick of addressing these tragedies. 

It is so obvious who does most of the shootings - white, conservative males. What we need to do is study how they are being raised, and why so many conservative males can't be peaceful. Certainly I have friends who are conservative Christian males who are not violent at all, but we have a terrorist problem in our nation and the most common terrorist is a male - a conservative Christian male. 

Although I have not yet heard many details of the shooting at the Synagogue, my deepest sympathies extend to the congregation and their families. It is obvious that no matter what god you worship, no matter what religion you are, no god will protect you. We must be honest and accept this.
You should be safe. We can't all carry weapons all the time and we should not have to do so. We must fix the problem at its source. Demand that our government admit and address the problem of the violent American white Christian conservative male.

How God Should Respond "When We Get to Heaven"

The god of the Bible is supposed to judge people based solely on whether “they accepted Jesus” or not while they were alive on earth.  Those who did not believe in God will be sent to Hell, because “they had many chances to change”; at least this is the most popular explanation given to me. 

Funny then, that people pray after a person dies, to magically change God’s mind and let the person into Heaven!  At Christian funerals, it is not uncommon to hear a minister claiming that God is forgiving and will certainly accept “Mom” in Heaven, even though she did not believe.  The minister will read off all the good things Mom did, and people in the audience will accept that she made it safely to Heaven, even though they do not believe other people whom they don’t know can make it based on their merits.  I guess it depends (in your own minds) whether a person “has to accept Jesus” in order to get into Heaven, or whether there are exceptions to the rule!

I was surprised to find out there are atheists who still retain some of the fear of “What if you’re wrong?”  They worry about being sent to Hell, even though they don’t believe in Hell!  They simply fear that they may be wrong, so the fear continues.  This usually happens to adults who deconverted out of a fundamentalist household, where fear and the Christian worldview are deeply ingrained in them. 

What should a loving god say when meeting a nonbeliever at the Pearly Gates?  I think it depends on your own personality what you think God should say.  If I were God and a nonbeliever showed up for “judgment,” I would smile and say “Welcome!”  I would chuckle that the person did not believe I was real, and I would assure him that everything would be fine, as I am a loving god that also likes people as well as loves them.  I would explain that Hell was just a fabricated place, made up by people who didn’t know better. 

I would apologize to the nonbeliever that I was not convincing enough for them to believe in me - that I thought my hints were good enough, but I didn’t want to make it too obvious I existed, because I like to be anonymous so people can live their lives as they wish.    

You see, what I just described is what I think a kind, loving God would do.  My god sounds like a really nice human!  But this is not the picture of God that most people believe in. 

If the god I just created (by figuring out how I would like God to act toward me) is so much better and kinder than the god of the Bible, then how can the god of the Bible possibly be a loving god; and if he is supposed to be such a superior being, then how can the god of the Bible possibly be true, as he is much worse than what most people would create if they were to create their own god?  Be honest with yourselves – would you really want to worship the god who is described in the Bible?  Would you even want to be anywhere near him?  How can that be your all-loving, omnipotent God?

Hyperventilation Syndrome - An Invisible Disorder That Is Miserable!

Anyone else deal with hyperventilation syndrome? I bet you are thinking, "How difficult is it to breathe correctly?" It's the dumbest mental illness to have, so of course, I have it! Seriously, I know it is stupid!

Do you know what it feels like to keep breathing out, and then hold your breath for as long as possible, simply because you are afraid to breathe in; because you know you will take in too much oxygen and continue screwing up your system? 

It's exhausting, and my rib muscles even get sore. Nearly every breath has too much oxygen, but I can't describe to you what happens chemically to the body, because it is confusing!  It does make me a bit spacey, but most people think that is my personality anyway, so no one knows when I am in the throws of a hyperventilation attack! 

I have had this malady on and off since I was in my 20's.  The first time I had it, I drove myself to Foote Hospital in Jackson, Michigan, thinking I was having a heart attack!  An ER staff member hooked me up to something (an EKG?) and said nothing was wrong with my heart, and that I was just hyperventilating. 

Over the years I have learned ways to cope with it, so that I don't get light-headed and feel like I will faint, but I haven't conquered it yet. Just thinking about breathing can bring it on, so yoga and meditation involving breathing are not a good fit for me! Still, I do practice some relaxation techniques, and also try to get busy to distract myself - my breathing will naturally go back to normal for a little while when I concentrate on something else.   

Eventually, after a few days (or a month of on and off problems), I start breathing normally again for several months and don't even think about it.
 

I am very healthy and want to show people how healthy I am, but then I get these ridiculous maladies! It's like my brain tries to sabotage me!  It usually happens to insecure people who project themselves to be cool and confident. At least that is what I read, and it does sound like how I am a good share of the time. Plus, I acquire habits easily. Breathing in fast gasps is a really annoying habit!

Up until recently, we were told to breathe into a paper bag, but now experts say it doesn't do any good, and sometimes makes it worse.  I could see that people would breathe in very strongly into a paper bag – perhaps that is the problem!  One of the things they now say to do is breathe in slowly for the count of 2, and out for the count of 4, because the ratio is what is close to normal and it is supposed to reset the brain. All I can say is that it is very difficult to figure out how much air to let in or out and really hard to control it.  They offer other suggestions like “not deeply sighing” which is what we naturally do when having trouble breathing, covering one nostril to breathe in and then breathe out slowly through pursed lips, or even just hold your breath if you know you are taking in too much oxygen!  I do all of these techniques.

 
I have to be happy that I have not had any "near fainting" episodes with my hands cramping up, or any hyperventilation combined with a panic attack, like I used to get. So it's "under control" to an extent! Hopefully, it will disappear one day forever, but I am not holding my breath!