Jim Grisanzio

I was in Beijing last week and was happy to find the hotel serving wheatgrass juice. Shocked, actually. I’ve never stayed at a hotel that had a ready supply of wheatgrass juice. So, I drank lots of grass. The juice was clearly cut with water since it was a bit weak, but it was better than nothing. No need to cut wheatgrass juice, though. Drink it full strength. And, yes, I know the grass below is rice. Close enough.

Live long enough and you accumulate a few close calls. That’s life. I’ve certainly had more than a few of my own over the years. Tonight was my latest. One foot to the right and I’d be dead. Or at least seriously injured. At best, really pissed off.

I was walking home from the pool. I had a great swim. And it was a nice, quiet, cold night. I was on the sidewalk and had plenty of space around me. Just as I was about to start jogging I heard a car coming fast on my right. The next moment I heard a crash as the car jumped the curb. I turned in reaction to the sound and the car was right there. Just a foot away. Going fast. I quickly jumped to the left and hoped I could move fast enough. A moment later the car slammed into a tree right in front of me. The entire thing took seconds.

The elderly women driving survived but she was in a great deal of pain. She was taken away on a backboard. The car just sat there. Totaled. Smoldering. After the police and fire truck left I started walking home. The only thing I could think of was that I almost died. This could have been my day. Had she hit me she would have thrown me into a concrete wall. Or perhaps run over me entirely. Or crush me between the car and the tree. Not a good way to go. Can’t get it out of my mind. Your life can be gone in a moment …

Ron Paul is the only U.S. presidential candidate talking about alternatives in health care. Shouldn’t people have some say about the treatments to which they are subjected? Seems reasonable.

Don’t eat refined sugar. It’s poison. Instead, drink it raw right out of the cane.

Why do people in cities rush all the time? Train stations in Tokyo are utterly frantic places. It’s difficult to walk slowly and mindfully among the cortisol-soaked masses buzzing by in every direction. But why? Out in the country among the trees no one worries about saving two minutes – literally — by diving on to that express train. Why the hurry? Are we that inefficient that we can’t take it easy getting from place to place?

It took 14 years to grow a new breed of broccoli with much more nutrition than the old broccoli. I eat a lot of broccoli and love it, so I’d like to give the new super green a try. The more nutrients the better, especially since so much of our food is altered and sprayed and processed and denatured and over cooked. The article also notes that the British researches did not use GMO techniques to create the new broccoli, which is good because I certainly wouldn’t want it otherwise.

It is well known that hospitals are filthy places. And since 100,000 people die every year in the U.S. from hospital infections you would think that the issue would be top of mind in the medical community, right? How about a little ozone and hydrogen peroxide to clean things up? Seems so simple. One wonders how medical facilities became so dirty in the first place.

An Electronic Eye on Hospital Hand-Washing. Cameras catching the dirty doctors in hospitals. I love it. Psst: Doctors, wash your damn hands! Far too many people die due to extremely serious hospital infections and you are directly to blame. Hospital administrators running hospitals like sewers are also to blame. And anyone else touching sick patients and then casually touching others — without even thinking about properly washing your hands. I know, I know. You’re busy. And you’re the Gods of American society so who are we to judge, right? But this is actually not difficult to understand. I’m glad the cameras appear to be working, but I’d much rather some aggressive district attorneys dump some docs in jail for this crime. That would help change behavior, eh?

Think you’ll be climbing trees eight hours a day to pick fruit when you’re 90? Or perhaps running in the local races on the weekend well into your 80s? It’s not too late. Better clean up your act or you won’t last. The Okinawans seem to know what they’re doing with all this. They’re a real kick. Farming at 100. Never spending time in a hospital. No drugs. How is that possible? They say their secret is simple: good food, good air, good people, good exercise. That’s pretty much it, really. It’s lifestyle. It’s no secret. And there’s no cash involved since the Island is the poorest prefecture in all of Japan. Their life is not based on sitting at a desk in New York or London or Tokyo for 40 years poking at a freaking computer and thinking they have a career. Career. Such a lie. Instead, they live life actively. They get the basics right. But it’s a shame their younger generations are following the example of the Americans, who obviously have massive influence on portions of the island due to the military. The result? Fat. Stress. Disease. Death. It’s really that simple. Oh, well. We all have to learn our lessons ourselves, right? I’ll visit soon and hang out with the old people. They seem far more interesting. Feeling nice and young are you?

I read The Checklist Manifesto a few days ago. It only took one sitting. Great book. Every project manager should read this book. Follow a checklist to implement your tasks and you have a reasonable chance at success. Skip the list and you will screw up — no matter how smart you think you are, no matter how much training you’ve had, no matter how easy your task appears to be. That’s the core message of the book — absolutely everyone messes up the things they think they’ve mastered. Even if these mistakes are small they add up to big consequences. And if you happen to work in a field where lives are at risk — construction, aviation, medicine — then people will die because of your mistakes. The science on this is persuasive to say the least, and Atul Gawande documents everything in great detail in a series of extremely interesting stories.

There is a disturbing part of the book, though. It’s the realization that the medical industry is really quite backward and immature in some critical ways. We think of medicine — especially technology-based emergency medicine in the United States — as the most advanced field on the planet. So many people are saved from life-threatening situation and we see this on our television screens every day. Yet the medical community also kills thousands of people due to totally preventable errors. Why? Arrogance.

To drag medicine out of the dark ages and help improve the safety and efficacy of medical procedures, Gawande looks outside his paradigm and explores the construction and aviation industries. Both aviation and construction realized long ago they needed to grow out of their go-it-alone individualism, that the level of complexity simply surpassed the capacity of any one individual to know and implement all parts of a process. Thus, they took more of a team approach, more of a systems approach, more of an approach based on checking lists. Medicine, however, still struggles with this concept in far too many areas. And to be honest, I find that unacceptable. Unfortunately, the era of the doctor as the all-knowing God dictating reality to everyone else is still very much alive and that’s pervasive throughout Gawande’s book. “I don’t have time for a damn checklist, get out of my operating room,” a surgeon would say. Right. Yet when other docs implement Gawande’s checklist lives are saved. So much for the so-called Gods. Get a clue, guys. You’re human. And you’re directly responsible for saving people. And killing them. Which would you prefer?

So, make a list. Use it. Test it. Repeat. Don’t be afraid to be different. That’s the only way things change.

Anyone meditating for a long time knows that it can be frustrating dealing with thoughts. Just as you get all relaxed and present in any given moment in come the damn thoughts like an invading army taking you back to the past or forward to the future, reminding you of problems that need working, fights you can’t help reliving, or pleasures you’re endlessly seeking. This can be difficult while trying to relax. But that’s what meditation is all about: dealing with thoughts and learning how to transcend them so you can explore life beyond thinking. That’s the goal. But it takes time. Decades, actually.

But as I suggested in the previous post, actually focusing on your thoughts instead of the underlying sensations in your body can be a valuable (albeit painful) learning experience. Here’s why: you can better perceive the effects of thoughts on your body while meditating than while in the waking state. All thoughts create corresponding physical reactions in your body and they are obvious while meditating. For instance, take a string of thoughts that piss you off. While meditating you are sitting and calm so you can easily feel your heart race. Your muscles constrict. You sweat. Your breathing gets shallow. You grit your teeth. You can’t feel the stress hormones flooding your body but they are most certainly there if you get yourself all worked up ready for a fight in your mind. But all these sensations are significantly dulled and subtle while experienced in the waking state since you can act out physically. You get up and walk around. You bang the keyboard. You slam the phone. Talk to a friend. Whatever. These actions are distractions for the anger because you rarely notice the profound effect the feelings have on your body in that moment. Next time you get pissed at some email and rip out an angry response check to see if you are breathing. I bet it’s constricted at best.

So, this is the lesson: if you meditate try to gently transcend your thoughts, but at times it’s worth noticing what images bubble up because they are the very same issues you live with all day long. You deal with them by observing them and the effect they have on your body. Again. And again. And again. For years. These observations alone are shocking if you’ve spent a lifetime indulging in thinking. Remember, positive or negative, thoughts are distractions. Just like those physical actions we take to distract from thoughts.

When you practice observing sensations in your body — mostly pain — without judging them eventually you’ll see a lot more going on than you realize. The key, however, is focusing on the sensations themselves and not the judgements about the sensations. The judgements, or thoughts, can teach important lessons but they are ultimately distractions. This is a subtle and difficult exercise because judgements are attractive and they pile up rapidly. But they mask reality so you should’t focus on them to much. If you’re not careful before you know it you’ll be reacting to judgements and not the underlying sensations you need to experience. Over time, though, you can learn to peel back the layers of thoughts to observe reality and then you can consciously influence things by intentionally pushing new thoughts around your body. In other words, you can create judgements and thoughts but helpful ones instead of dwelling on those diving at you automatically and unconsciously. This takes time to master. But even small movements in the right direction are obvious. Get quiet. Breathe. Observe. Deflect. Push. I do this for hours every day.

I love this story: Oak Park, Michigan Resident Julie Bass Faces 93 Days In Jail For Vegetable Garden.

Why not grow some food in your front yard? Forget zoning laws for a moment. They can be changed with a little collective action and a collapse in the local economy. The larger issue is more important. Just imagine an entire block of formally middle class people ripping up their pretty little lawns and growing their own food in their yards — front, back, side, whatever. And then trading with each other throughout the year. No exchange of money. Just trading food for food. You grow some spinach. I grow carrots and corn. The guy over there grows squash and beans and sprouts. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. It’s a great way to build community, independence, and self sufficiency — farming in the suburbs! In fact, I could be wrong but I bet some people way back in history used to do this very thing before we all became dependent on brittle and inefficient systems to distribute resources like food from all over the world. Why not just use your own land?

Now imagine if someone starting growing rice in big wet paddies in the front lawn? Oh, goodness. The local neighborhood association would really get pissed. But maybe not. Rice looks like grass so maybe they wouldn’t even notice.

Stress will kill you. And if it doesn’t kill you it’ll make you sick. Mainstream medicine in the West does a poor job at recognizing and treating stress-induced diseases but the underlying science documenting the problem is remarkably well established. Relax. A lot. It matters. Don’t wait for this research to get into clinical practice because it simply takes too long. For an hour long discussion of this in three separate interviews with video and transcripts see Dr. Gabor Maté on Democracy Now.

Image: Zenkō-ji, Nagano, Japan, 2008

Here’s a lot more from Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh) at The Automatic Earth on Fukushima and Chernobyl: Welcome to The Atomic Village and The Lifeboat Hour (audio). The first link is a lengthy review of the situation in Japan that’s pretty scary at points but substantive as well. It’s well worth a read if you love radiation. And the videos in the post contain some startling information as well. In the interview with Michael Ruppert at the second link Foss addresses the public pissing match between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot and how the Western scientific community sometimes dumps on inconvenient data outside its paradigm — in this case research from Eastern Europe compiled by Alexey Yablokov and published by NY Academy of Sciences. If you don’t think data can get lost between scientific paradigms just read Thomas Kuhn. Finally, here’s a previous interview with Foss (audio/transcript) on Fukushima.

Image: Mt. Fuji, Japan, 2006

Unsafe at Any Dose, Helen Caldicott, Op-Ed, New York Times: “Physicists talk convincingly about “permissible doses” of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body, whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays, cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment. However, doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that radiation is cumulative. The mutations caused in cells by this radiation are generally deleterious. We all carry several hundred genes for disease: cystic fibrosis, diabetes, phenylketonuria, muscular dystrophy. There are now more than 2,600 genetic diseases on record, any one of which may be caused by a radiation-induced mutation, and many of which we’re bound to see more of, because we are artificially increasing background levels of radiation.”

I suppose it depends on how you look at things and your ability to focus on data from different paradigms.

Image: Tokyo, Japan, 2011

Democracy Now: Chernobyl Catastrophe: 25th Anniversary of World’s Worst Nuclear Accident.

Some people say 43 people died as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and some people say the number is probably closer to 980,000. Right. So much for science being scientific, which is probably the most disturbing aspect about the current Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. For an exploration of some of the issues, see an interesting debate on Democracy Now between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot. My own view is that science is as political as politics and always has been. You need to do your own research and be careful of those pushing agendas. The banter back and forth is helpful — and entertaining — but nothing is as valuable questioning both sides of a debate. There are never just two sides in a debate.

Since all things nuclear are raging these days — especially in Japan — I’ve been reading up on radiation exposure. What the heck. I know, I know. I shouldn’t worry too much, right? I live far enough away from the nuke plant in Fukushima and the winds will blow things out into the ocean. And besides low level radiation is not that harmful. It’s only a chest x-ray or a flight to New York, they say (and they keep saying every time more radiation is released). Right. Well, I stopped believing that bit long ago. And of course, I certainly don’t believe nuclear extremists like Ann Coulter, who says radiation is actually good for us. I wonder, will Coulter volunteer to help out at Fukushima? Probably not. Well, Ann really got under the skin of Gary Null recently. Gary is a social activist, researcher, broadcaster, and alternative health care advocate. He’s posting an ongoing series of radio programs — Fatal Fallout: The Dangers of Ionizing Radiation — citing a variety of experts questioning the notion that low level radiation is harmless. The programs are sobering to say the very least, and fortunately Coulter’s view doesn’t hold up very well.

So, since these programs didn’t cheer me up much I viewed some documentaries on Chernobyl. I figured some history would be interesting and I came across these two films: Chernobyl Heart and The Battle of Chernobyl. Utterly horrifying. Both of them. Watch them on an empty stomach, though. They are upsetting. There is great debate about how many people died as a result of Chernobyl, but the most disturbing view comes from Alexey V. Yablokov, a Russian scientists who published an English review of the literature that had been written in Slavic languages: Statement from the NY Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (pdf), press conference on C-SPAN, press release, interview. Yablokov puts the death toll from Chernobyl at about a million.

On the good side to all this, if you are not exposed to insanely high levels of radiation such as at Chernobyl, there are actually some interesting things you can do to help protect yourself from low levels of radiation by taking various nutrients. Gary Null talks about these things a lot so that’s what I’m looking into now. He has two programs ( March 18 from about the 27 minute mark and March 16 from about the 21 minute mark) where he goes over about 75 nutrients that have been known to protect against radiation. That’s comforting to know because it demonstrates we do have at least some control over our circumstances even with an out-of-control nuclear industry. This can all be very confusing, though. It’s a medical and environmental emergency, but it’s wrapped in a significant amount of power politics and that’s always a bad combination. Another option, of course, is to just relax and believe the mainstream industry experts and the governments when they say all of this is just like getting a little chest x-ray or taking a quick flight across the ocean. That would certainly be easier. Party on. Right?

I see Janet Napolitano, secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, is out there checking for radiation from Japan: “Just to make sure that everyone remains safe, we are doing screening of passengers and/or cargo if there happens to be even a blip in terms of radiation.” Really? Even just a blip? I’m touched. I feel much safer now that Janet is on the job. Yet I find it ironic that this is the same security official who insists on radiating passengers as they go through American airports — or sexually assaulting them with “enhanced pat downs” if they refuse her cancer “backscatter” scanners. Note that Janet also refuses to subject herself or other members of the Obama Administration to her cancer scanners. I realize Janet says her radiation machines are safe, but I don’t believe her. Her department royally screwed up the configuration of the scanners recently and exposed people to ten times the radiation level. The TSA cancer scanners are not safe, the TSA should not be trusted with our health and safety, and security theater will not keep us safe. For more information on the issues involved with airport security, see Electronic Privacy Information Center on C-SPAN from January 6, 2011

I was looking forward to opting out of Obama’s fancy new cancer scanners at SFO, but for some reason they sent me through the old clunky metal detector instead. I set the darn thing off and had to go back through again. Success! I was clean! Then after I put on my shoes and jacket and strapped on my belt and collected all my crap, I sat and watched for 20 minutes dozens of people quietly walking through the naked body x-ray machines — legs spread, arms and hands held high. No one opted out. Not a single person. Remarkable.

Good article from Richard Senelick, a neurologist specializing in brain injuries, on the obvious dangers of contact sports: Head Games and Youth Sports: Have We Gone Too Far? Hint: you should question — strongly — all those cheering parents, screaming coaches, and detached administrators involved in contact school sports. Your child’s health depends on it, and it’s likely those in charge have no idea what they are doing. I played a bunch of contact sports back in school at Sachem in New York, including lacrosse and football. Not only were those sports a waste of time, teaching me little other than violence, but the coaches were clueless about injuries — especially at the younger grades. The coaches were extremists in every sense of the word, too. It’s scary to think that these people have such power over the health of our kids. For more fun that results later on see dings and dementia.

I work late. It’s perfectly normal for me to be on the phone with people in the U.S. and the U.K. till 4 a.m. multiple nights a week. Sometimes I go to 5 a.m. if I can`t get to sleep, which is rather inconvenient if you have things to do the next day like other meetings or just life stuff. It`s insane, I know, but it`s my reality for the time being. It will change in due time. Anyway, the longer I do this the more I notice some trends. Some bad, some good. Here`s an interesting one that keeps popping up:

Going to sleep immediately after managing or participating in active, intense, and stressful meetings (I call them "hot" meetings) or after dealing with fast breaking issues can lead to some really hairy nightmares. Keep in mind that 9 a.m. in San Francisco is 1 a.m. in Tokyo the next day, so as the Americans are gearing up for action your body in Asia is supposed to be winding down. Over time, this is a jarring experience. Generally, most normal people don’t crash immediately after these hot meetings. They drive home. They go for a run. They take a swim. They eat dinner. They play with the kids. They walk in the park. They catch a baseball game. Watch a little TV. They unwind a bit before bed. Whatever. They don’t just go from work to bed in 1 minute (and, no, checking our email at nite while watching Leno is not work, sorry).

But what’s interesting about this is that when you get through the initial nightmares and get into normal sleep you wake up with a fresh set of ideas about how to solve the problems that buried you in the meeting before you went to sleep — which was just a few hours earlier! I’ve never had this experience before, but he pattern is clear. My subconscious mind seems to be working out the details of the problems while it serves up a steady flow if dragons and murders and other such bloody and graphic fun. And when I get up, I have multiple new ideas for dealing with stuff. I now keep a notebook close by so I can jot down whatever comes out immediately upon waking. Those first few moments are critical, though. Once conscious thinking starts, all is lost and you are simply up.

"We need more police." That`s what Senator Max Baucus said the other day as he laughed at protesters engaging in a little civil disobedience in his Finance Committee hearing on health care — a hearing obviously excluding proponents for a single-payer system. "The committee will stand in recess until the police can restore order." The police restoring "order" is a good example of the power that community organizers face while fighting for change. In this case, though, the community organizers are also professionals working in the health care field, and they represent majority opinion in the medical community and among the American people. Shouldn`t these people be heard instead of being arrested?

There are 36,000 100-year-olds in Japan, according to Nightline — The Key to Longevity? Chatting with Japan’s Centenarians. That`s wild. At the moment I can`t imagine making it to 50 and these dudes are turning in a century and expecting more. Diet, exercise, and human connections are very important. I don`t doubt the diet bit. I eat a thousand times better here than I did in the US, which is very cool. My kid is way ahead of most American kids in that respect since she gets to start life eating this way. I feel very good about that. At least she`ll be healthy even if the world around her isn`t necessarily so. But who knows, maybe she`ll change the world. Regardless, these 100 year-olds are inspiring. They demonstrate that you can continue to grow well beyond what you expect, but they all seem to have a calm state of mind as well. Perhaps this is more about being than doing. Not sure. Oh, and make sure you play the video to the story. The dancing scenes are charming. And the porno scene kills.

I love the multitasking issue. It’s just insane. So, for kicks I collect links under the tag “multitasking” right here in my blog for safe keeping. Tim Walker has some more multitasking bits under Once again: Do Not Multitask. Totally agree with Drucker as Tim quotes him. If you have any cool multitasking stories, I`d love to hear them. My all time favorite is this one. I have yet to hear anything that tops that guy.

Professor Randy Pausch died a couple of days ago from pancreatic cancer. If you are feeling depressed about life, just click on some of these links below and spend a couple of hours looking into this wonderful person. You may cry but, you’ll not be depressed anymore.

• The Last Lecture Website
• Randy Pausch News on Yahoo
• WSJ Remembrances
• YouTube: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• ABC: Randy Pausch Dies at 47

Thanks to Randy’s Last Lecture, millions of people may find it a little easier to live in the moment, a little easier to be inspired, a little easier to dream and take a risk.

Inside T. Boone Pickens’ Brain: "I’d rather surround myself with sharp young minds than play golf and gin rummy all day." — T. Boone Pickins. That attitude isn’t just talk from a cocky oil billionaire. It just may be a critical component to staying young as you grow old. Very interesting article on brain research, and specifically about how this guy thinks.

Pill-Popping Pets. It’s great to see my old friend, Dr. Nicholas Dodman, in the New York Times talking about veterinary behavioral pharmacology. I met Nick when I worked at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in the mid 90s. Great guy. Very smart, too. And a pioneer in the field of animal behavior. If you have an animal with serious behavioral issues, give this article a read. And give Nick a call. It’s well worth a trip to Tufts outside Boston in Grafton, Massachusetts.