Sicko

Sicko, Sickie and Gazpacho

By John Taylor; 2007 May 15

The new Michael Moore documentary, "Sicko," is going to be about the American health care system, or rather lack thereof, at least for some 50 million Americans. In order to make his point, Moore took some rescue workers ailing from their work cleaning up after the fall of the Twin Towers to Cuba for medical treatment. Cuba, of course, is a godless commie state, where, get this, health care is guaranteed for every citizen, not just for the rich. The American Commerce Department is, by all accounts, playing into Moore's hands by investigating him for violation of their trade embargo against Cuba -- an embargo that is very profitable for Canadian industry, by the way, since it turns us into Cuba's largest trading partner.

Meanwhile, the Canadian documentary filmmakers who produced "Manufacturing Consent" (on Noam Chomsky's critique of American policy) have made an expose documentary against Moore called "Manufacturing Dissent," in spite of the fact that they agree with Moore politically. It seems that they set out to make a tribute to Moore but found that he twists the truth around in order to make his points. Meanwhile, the spin doctors (and this time many of them probably really are doctors) have already begun furiously spinning, in hopes of undermining the impact of "Sicko." The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America issued a statement that says, in part,

"A review of America's health care system should be balanced, thoughtful and well-researched. ... You will not get that from Michael Moore. Michael Moore is a political activist with a track record for sensationalism. He has no intention of being fair and balanced."

This of course misses the point completely. The important thing is that Moore is funny. If somebody can make me laugh, I forgive him anything, or almost anything. And do not forget, in spite of his posturing as one of the "little guys," Moore is a member of the elite, and they are untouchable. Remember Watergate. I was young and naive during Watergate and paid close attention to the televised investigations. Only later did I find out that at the same time that a powerful elite whose rights had been violated were being so publicly defended, that spooks and proxies of the same Nixon regime were not just breaking into offices, they were brazenly assassinating Communists, Black Panther and other dissenting but less powerful leaders right and left. No congressional investigations of that activity, and barely a nod from the privately owned press machine.

I have not seen "Manufacturing Dissent," or "Manufacturing Consent" for that matter, but they are good titles. Thought-provoking, for a Baha'i. They imply that either way, whether it is consent or dissent that is being manufactured, they are not natural; they are planned and systematically manufactured. Somebody always has something to gain, either way. Baha'is advocate manufacturing unity. But is forming unity the same thing as manufacturing consent? I do not think so, though they have superficial resemblances. That is why I want to continue my multi-essay investigation of polity. But first, I wanted to talk some more about health, the subject of this soon-to-be-released film, Sicko.

Check out this article, coming out of the UK, "A walk in the country may beat depression," by Amy Iggulden. Here is the first paragraph,

"Country walks can significantly reduce depression and raise sufferers' self-esteem, according to research published today. The first study into "ecotherapy" found that fresh air and exercise cut depression in more than 70 per cent of people. A 30-minute walk in a country park also boosted self-esteem in nine out of 10 sufferers."

You can read the rest at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/14/ntherapy14.xml>

I notice from the Google news feed that these British studies, so far, are restricted to the British press. They are not being given a lot of emphasis across the pond. Coincidence? I suspect not. A trillion dollar industry depends on people turning to pills, and turning away from boring, real-life health care solutions. Do not bother with lifestyle, walking in nature has nothing to do with it; if you feel depressed, take an anti-depressant medication. There are 31 million prescriptions a year in England, which is what? half the population? In America? Do not ask. It may not be cheaper to take a pill but it is much quicker and easier.

The corporate owners of "our" press depend on advertising from Big Pharma. How likely is it that they will pounce on a study proving that walks in the woods can cure depression? This is why I return again and again to housing. Housing is not just a physical thing that you build and forget. Housing, properly designed and manufactured, would allow, nay force people to go for daily walks in parks, forests or some kind of green, beautiful place. A total redesign of our housing industry might seem expensive, but it probably could be financed on the savings in anti-depressants alone.

A daily walk for an hour or three a day does not sound like a big thing. Surely it should be a basic human right. Every home, for all, rich or poor, should be close to a park or similar natural area. If one person in the world is deprived of this we should be as worried as if they did not have enough to eat. Okay, bad example. We do not worry about starvation as much as we should. Let me rephrase. On a neighborhood level access to a daily nature walk should be made available wherever humans reside as a fundamental condition of habitability, like food and water.

A walk to say prayers in a Mashriq would probably be as effective, or more so, than just walking in nature. It is not coincidental that nine surrounding gardens are required; I do not think mosques or churches are required to have gardens. That is something new, and now we see the wisdom of it.

But nature walking even without prayer is a good all on its own. The term they are using is "ecotherapy." Even walks in dank malls, as the article says, measurably help mental acuity. This too is not new. Socrates and Aristotle with his "peripatetics" did their best philosophizing while going on long walks with students; Rousseau, Wordsworth and other romantic thinkers thought nothing of going on an eighteen mile walk in the mountains along with good companions after a good dinner. Ecotherapy helps thought as well as happiness.

And recall how Baha'u'llah and the Exemplar loved to spend time in nature. Prison was His great deprivation from nature, and release meant a return. Once when Abdu'l-Baha was shipboard He was seen to be pacing back and forth on the deck. Somebody asked why and it transpired that He had been counting the steps up Carmel to the Shrine of the Bab. He did not want to get out of shape for His normal, daily walk, which is a steeper one than flatlanders like me are used to. He enjoyed going on horse rides when He had the chance in the Western journeys, and the sight of Him on a donkey was a common one around Haifa and Akka. When they built a railway between those two cities He took that easy way for a while, but later on He returned with delight to the carriage ride along the beach of the bay.

Fair to say, Abdu'l-Baha never took an anti-depressant pill in His life, and not only because they had not been invented. Then, people took as tranquilizers "laudanum," which was liquid opium, and Coca Cola still contained real cocaine. These were the contemporary equivalents of Prozac. At the time most of these drugs remained quite legal, but as the Tablet of the Smoker demonstrates, the Master was fervently against them. When his former secretary, Youness Afrukhteh, graduated from Beirut Medical College, Abdu'l-Baha had him check His pulse and cholesterol, which were clear and healthy. I was surprised to learn that they knew about cholesterol back then, but they did. Anyway, the point is that He underwent tremendous psychological stress, not least of which was the defection of His family and many of His most important followers, but in spite of that and His desire to sacrifice Himself, He close paid attention to His health.

Our Exemplar exercised far more than the average person does today, He ate more natural foods (dates, figs, rice) but also more sparingly, and above all, He prayed longer and more often than we are likely to. He recited prayers of the Bab and His Father, but He also revealed prayers spontaneously, just as He created spoken poetry (I am thinking of His chanting, even dancing, the "martyr's song" while telling their stories, and of course the laments for Thomas Breakwell and Thornton Chase). My question is, true, we read His prayers often, but do we ever follow His example in saying prayers extempore? I have heard many Baha'is say that we should imitate Him, but I have never in my life heard a Baha'i say a spontaneous prayer as the Master so often did in public. Maybe we are doing it in private. In any case, I am just speculating that making up one's own prayers (even if nobody else ever hears them) is a form of self-expression that may offer stress relief. It certainly helped Abdu'l-Baha undergo strains that would have broken a lesser man.

Maybe it is good time to include a prayer here. I was impressed with this one lately, by Baha'u'llah,

"Send down, therefore, O my God, upon all that seek Thee that which will entirely strip them of all that pertaineth not unto Thee, and will draw them nigh unto Thy Self. Assist them, by Thy grace, to love Thee and to conform unto that which shall please Thee." (Prayers and Meditations, 254)

A few more personal notes on health before I close. Dr. Andrew Weil wrote and narrates an audio book called "Breathing, the Master Key to Self-Healing," which I have found quite useful in my recovery from debilitating migraines. Breathing is the first thing that constricts when we are under stress, and no doubt these nature walks are of benefit because we spontaneously relax in such beautiful surroundings, and our breathing resets itself to normal. One point that Weil makes in this tape I found particularly illuminating. He says that one of his colleagues went for a year to practice medicine in equatorial Africa. She had sharpened up on her knowledge of AIDS and tropical medicine but she found to her dismay that most of her caseload there was exactly what you get here in industrialized nations: stress related illnesses. Stress, and how to deal with stress, is a universal burden. That is probably why prayer and fasting are obligatory prescriptions from the Manifestations of God, the so-called "twin pillars" that hold everything up in their religion.

Another big thing that has helped my recovery is gazpacho soup. If there is one thing that nutritionists are certain of, it is that more than several daily portions of a wide variety of vegetables are essential to avoiding disease and high mortality. Just about everything else can be debated or challenged, but this is established. In spite of such rock hard evidence, it is almost impossible to find people who actually do it. Our world is designed to make this impossible to do. After all, Salty Walties and Sugary Woodgeries have much higher profit margins.

The question remains, if nobody eats right, how can you compare? How can a scientist establish controls? The same thing confronts researchers who want to know what it is like to give up television; nobody is willing even to contemplate giving it up. One dietary researcher despaired of ever finding anybody willing to take the time out of a busy schedule to eat the proper number of veggies, until she remembered her childhood in Spain. There they eat gazpacho, a cold soup (or, if you prefer, a liquid salad) that just happens to have the daily recommended allowance of veggies. So she made up a large batch and handed out the correct portions to her subjects.

"Just take this little bowl of soup whenever you can during the day. That is all you have to do."

When it was that easy she did not find it hard to get test subjects. She found that their cholesterol -- and other abstruse indicators that I could not give a flying freewheel about -- shot way up to normal after only two weeks of daily gazpacho soup. This was not unexpected, considering the body of evidence that was already there. But for me the method was far more interesting than the results. If one portion of gazpacho helps normal people, and is easy enough to fit into their schedules too, what would it for a sickie (not a sicko, a sickly sickie) like myself? I decided to find out.

I filled a huge pot full of it and prepared it (you cannot call it cooking because it is all raw, which is what makes it so nutritious). I began by eating three portions of gazpacho a day. After over a year I have settled down to two, a portion just before lunch and another before dinner. As a bonus, this cuts down on appetite and the likelihood that I will binge out. As far as my health, gazpacho helped tremendously, to the extent that now I can function as well as anybody. For the first time in my life I have the energy and resolve to take it a step further and attack that other great lifestyle barrier: the two or more hours of exercise that are just as essential to health. (A study reported yesterday says that trying to control weight with just diet, without exercise, is not good enough, even for those who are thin already. It seems that small gobs of "killer fat" lurk in the belly to undermine health)

My problems arrive when I run out of gazpacho.

It takes a couple of hours to prepare the veggies and mash them up in the blender, and also you have to shop for ingredients. I still make enough to last a couple of weeks, and it is still the easiest way I can think of to be sure of getting the right nutrients. This does not sound like much work, but lately as soon as I run out of gazpacho I sink into such a funk (in other words, my normal state pre-gazpacho) that I have trouble making a new batch. I just want to go to bed; when I walk, putting one foot in front of the other seems like a major operation. And other tasks and distractions get in the way. So every time I end up undergoing days of living hell before finally getting the gumption for a new batch. What I will have to do is buy another huge pot of that exact size so that I can make up a new batch while still energized by the old.