According to Elizabeth Arias, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the U.S. life expectancy. “[It will take] some time before we’re back where we were in 2019,” she said.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that according to CDC numbers, life expectancy for the entire U.S. was 77 years in 2020. However, this dropped to 76.4 years by 2021 – in time for the introduction of the COVID-19 injections that year.
One study by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California found that heart attack deaths climbed for all age groups during 2020 and 2021. But the biggest jump in heart attack deaths was seen in the group aged 25 to 44 at 29 percent.
COVID-19 injections shorten men’s lives by 24 years
The CDC’s own data also disclosed the true dangers of the vaccines. According to the Daily Expose, men injected with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could see as much as 24 years taken off their lifespan as a result.
The public health agency’s all-cause mortality data shows that each dose of the COVID-19 vaccine a person got raised their mortality rate by seven percent in 2022, compared to 2021. In other words, people injected with five doses were 35 percent more likely to die in 2022 than in 2021.
The Expose compared the COVID-19 vaccines to “slow-acting genetic poison” based on this data, given the fact that people do not appear to be recovering from the damage caused by earlier vaccines when it comes to excess mortality. It ultimately warned that a person injected with five doses would be 350 percent more likely to pass away in 2031, and a shocking 700 percent more likely to die in 2041 than an unvaccinated person.
Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), acknowledged this reduced life expectancy. “We are facing extraordinary headwinds in our public health with a major decline in life expectancy,” he wrote on X. “The major decline [of life expectancy] in the U.S. is not just a trend; I’d describe it as catastrophic.”
Not surprisingly, Califf stopped short of pinning the blame on the COVID-19 vaccines. Many of those who dare to suggest that the injections are responsible for excess deaths find themselves being censored.
In one instance, whistleblower Barry Young from New Zealand shared data from the country’s health agency that pointed to a strong link between the COVID-19 injections and excess mortality. According to the data he shared, the vaccines killed more than 10 million around the world.
But this revelation came with a steep price, as Young was arrested and now faces prison time. Nevertheless, the whistleblower said he shared the data as it blew his mind. He also wanted experts to analyze it and make people aware of what is happening.
Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, carotenoids, and polyphenols. Recent survey research showed that fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and cancers.
A research team led by Atsushi Goto, a professor at Yokohama City University, and Hitoshi Nakagama, the president of the National Cancer Center Japan, conducted a 20-year research survey on the association between eating fruits and vegetables and all-cause mortality. The results, published in the Journal of Nutrition, an Oxford journal in the UK, on June 28, 2020, showed that people who consumed more vegetables and fruits had a 7 to 8 percent lower risk of death over 20 years, compared with those who consumed fewer vegetables and fruits.
European and American research had previously revealed that eating more fruits and vegetables can reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and the risk of all-cause mortality effectively, said Atsushi Goto. Yet, the diet, lifestyle, and heredity of westerners are different from Asians. Thus, the research team selected 95,000 male and female volunteers, aged 40 to 69, from 11 Japanese prefectures and cities between 1990 and 1993, after excluding patients with cancer, cardiovascular disease, and liver disorders, for a long-term questionnaire survey.
Based on the results of the questionnaire, the researchers compiled statistics on the daily fruit and vegetable intake of the participants and divided them into five groups according to the amount of intake, from highest to lowest. The group with the lowest fruit and vegetable intake was the control group, which was compared to the other groups for subsequent risk of death from all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
In 2018 (20 years later), the follow-up investigation results showed that the risk of all-cause death was reduced by 8 to 9 percent in the high fruits and vegetables intake group, while the risk of death for cardiovascular disease was reduced by approximately 9 percent.
The analysis of fruit intake showed that the risk of all-cause death was reduced by 8 percent in the highest intake group, and the risk of death by cardiovascular disease was decreased by 13 percent. It was particularly noticeable in women.
Analysis of vegetable intake showed that the group that consumed the most vegetables had a 7 percent lower risk of death than the group that consumed the least.
When mortality was analyzed separately for males and females, it was found that higher fruit intake in males was associated with lower respiratory mortality, while the same in females was associated with lower cardiovascular mortality.
According to the result of the analysis, the research team concluded that vegetables and fruits, which are rich in vitamins and dietary fiber, play an important role in people’s health. It is recommended to intake more than 300g of vegetables and more than 140g of fruits daily.
“I hope this research result can provide data as a basic reference to the general public about the daily intake of fruits and vegetables,” said Atsushi Goto.
Additionally, research on nearly 1.9 million people worldwide conducted by scientists from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions also revealed that an appropriate amount of daily fruit and vegetable intake can extend life expectancy. The research results were published in the American medical journal Circulation in March 2021.
The research discovered that not all vegetables and fruits can reduce the risk of mortality. Starchy vegetables such as peas, corn and potatoes, and some fruit juices are not associated with lowering the risk of death from all-cause or certain chronic diseases.
Green leafy vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, and kale, citrus fruits, berries, and carrots, which are rich in beta-carotene and vitamin C, have all shown benefits in reducing the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality.
Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new analysis. It’s the biggest two-year decline in almost 100 years.
Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years.
The Covid-19 pandemic is the primary cause of the decline. However, increases in the number of people dying from overdoses and accidents is also a significant factor.
American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It’s a ridiculous decline,” Anderson said. “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.”
Life expectancy isn’t really a prediction for a single individual. It’s more like a check engine light — an indicator for the health of society as a whole. When more people die than would be expected, or when they die at younger ages than expected, then life expectancy will decline.
“Life expectancy is an interesting measure, because it emphasizes deaths that occur at younger ages,” Anderson explained. “A death at a younger age basically takes away more years of potential life than again in older age.”
For decades, Americans saw steadily rising life expectancies. Efforts to reduce smoking contributed to this increase in the 1990s and 2000s, because fewer people were dying of related conditions, like cardiovascular disease. American mortality data has been collected since at least 1900.
But American life expectancy began to stagnate around 2010 — while other developed countries continued to see gains, Anderson noted.
This year’s life expectancy figure is 0.9 years lower than last year’s. Covid-19 accounted for about half of the decline, and a category encompassing accidents and unintentional injuries is responsible for another 16%. That category includes overdoses; in fact, about half of the unintentional injury deaths in this analysis were due to overdoses.
“We think that the increase in drug overdoses during the pandemic is partly due to the pandemic, but probably not wholly due to the pandemic,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see [what happens] as the pandemic abates — assuming that it does, hopefully it will.”
Although deaths from heart disease were the third biggest contributor to the decline in life expectancy, the number of people dying from this condition actually decreased. “With heart disease, we did see increases in mortality at younger ages — from ages 35 to 64 in particular,” Anderson said.
Not every demographic group saw the same changes, the researchers found. Asian-Americans have the highest life expectancy of any group — 83.5 years — and only saw a 0.1 year decline from 2020. Meanwhile, Black Americans lost 0.7 years between 2020 to 2021.
But American Indian and Native Americans saw the largest loss of life expectancy of all — 1.9 years less than 2020’s life expectancy, and 6.6 years less than 2019’s. They also had the lowest life expectancy among the groups studied. (Historically, Native Americans’ life expectancy has been staying level even in years when the life expectancy of the entire population did increase, one recent study found.)
The data used for this analysis is still technically incomplete, Anderson noted; it includes about 99% of the deaths that the researchers expected to have. The precise figures could change when the final analysis is released in December.
I don’t believe every aspect of life should be optimised, every day planned out and every minute used productively. Because sometimes the unexpected, spontaneous things are what makes life worth living.
BUT: I strongly believe in streamlining areas of your life that are repetitive and/or annoying, if it allows you to carve out time for the things that are more important in your life.
Here is the ultimate guide for increasing your personal efficiency in every area of your life.
Eating:
Plan your meals for the entire week and shop the ingredients in one go. This takes some time to get a hang of it but has tons of benefits in the long-run. 1) You save time by avoiding multiple runs to the grocery store, thinking what to cook and where to eat every single day.
2) You save money by avoiding food waste through careful planning and being able to strategically benefit from store promotions. 3) It is a lot easier to be healthy if you cook yourself and plan your meals instead of eating what you feel like when you are really really hungry. Bonus: Order your groceries online to save even more time.
Meal Prep on Sundays. If you are already planning your meals and want to go a step further, this one is for you. By spending 2–3 hours on Sunday to prepare most of your meals for the week you will save a bulk of time by eliminating daily cooking and cleaning time. It’s kind of like economies of scale for your private life. If you are not ready for prepping the full week yet, just cook double the amount at dinner and take it for lunch to the office the next day.
Some of my favourite meals to prep: over-night oats topped with fruits, big leafy salads with grilled vegetables and feta/chicken/salmon/tuna, Thai curry and other stews with brown rice, home-made wraps and flourless egg quiches.
Have a set of default recipes. Being able to cook fast, well and healthy is one of the keys to streamlining your nutrition. By having a set of recipes that you know how to do in your sleep you are able to save time and mental energy on decision making, ingredient shopping and recipe research.
Always have your kitchen stocked with the basics. Make sure your pantry is stocked with the basic ingredients to make your default recipes as well as other essentials like oil, salt, herbs, rice, coconut milk. Moreover, keep a few home-made meals in the freezer at all times. This will be a life saver when you need a quick meal fast — or have unexpected guests over.
Bonus: Optimise your nutrition for optimal mental performance by experimenting what works best for you in terms of eating frequency, carb/fat/protein distribution and type of foods (watch out for sensitivities and intolerances).
Household
Have a basic “stock” list that you check every week. Running out of toilet paper is probably one of the most annoying things on this planet. Mostly because it always happens when you don’t have time to go to the store to buy some or the store is even closed. But running out of basic things like olive oil, shower gel and batteries can easily be avoided by having a “stock list” for every room in your house and checking it weekly. If something is about to run out, put it on the “to buy” list (see next point). This not only saves you time but also saves you from the toilet paper moments.
Keep a running “to-buy” list. This could be a physical list on your fridge or a section on your task management tool — just make sure you have it all in one place and ideally sorted by type of shops to buy the supply.
Buy the stuff you need once a week. While you are on your weekly grocery tour, stop by some other shops to stock up your household. Bonus points if you do it online to save even more time. You can adjust the planning cycle to 1 month or even 3 months if you have lots of storage space and are permanently living somewhere.
Clean up after every meal and before you go to bed. Getting into the habit of putting things back were they belong every day keeps you from ending up in chaos — even if you have a very busy week.
Make a cleaning schedule. Determine how often it makes sense to clean your flat/house and do the laundry. Then, set specific times and dates for it, mark it in your calendar and stick to it. Bonus points if you are able to outsource house work and save even more time.
Errands:
Keep a running to-do list for errands. Sounds very basic but most people don’t have a separate to-do list for their admin tasks. Instead, they try to remember it, write it on post-its or set random reminders. Save yourself some time and start to manage your errands properly.
Batch similar tasks together. Running errands will always be annoying, but at least you can save some time if you are doing them strategically by batching similar tasks together. The idea is to categorise your errands based on type or location (e.g. post office, online bill payment, messages, purchases, etc.) and then do them all in one go.
Get them done in scheduled time slots. The thing with errands is that they like to stay on our to-do list for a very long time, making us feel worse every time we look at it. This behaviour not only impairs your productivity but also negatively impacts your happiness. Staying on top of your admin stuff is easy and can really improve the quality of your life. So after you have set up your to-do list and divided your errands into batches, assign specific time slots in your calendar for getting them done. Bonus points if you combine it with things you enjoy like having a coffee in town after picking up a parcel from the post office or listening to your favourite music while paying all your bills online.
Traveling:
Have a default packing list for different occasions. Business trip, city break, beach holidays or yoga retreat — identify the trips you do most often and set up a default packing list for it. Opt for fashion items that can be combined multiple ways and have your toiletry bag flight-ready with mini-versions of your cosmetics.
Travel hand-luggage only. This is a no-brainer. It saves you time before and after your flight. But get yourself a proper cabin trolley — one that can be pushed in any direction.
Check in online. Another no-brainer. Enough said.
Prepare for your journey. Pack food, download podcasts, ebooks and movies and bring everything you need to sleep properly. Preparing for those WIFI-free, commute heavy times can help you save time and use your time more productively when traveling — even if it means catching up on sleep.
Workouts:
Plan your workouts ahead. Having a workout schedule saves you a lot of time and increases your chances of actually working out. Define a specific time, place and type of workout and schedule it in your calendar.
Have a set of workouts you can do at home or while traveling. 20 – 30min workouts can be extremely effective and a great way to stay fit during busy times. Use apps like Freeletics, Sweat or 7-minute workout for no-equipment exercises on the go.
Combine working out with other things. No time for working out? Kill two birds with one stone by doing a walking meeting, taking your bike to work or meeting your friend for yoga instead of coffee.
Lost Time (waiting in line, commute etc.):
Have a set of relevant podcasts ready. Don’t just randomly listen to podcasts on your commute. Instead, select them in advance and download them. This way, you can be sure you will make the most out of your listening time and avoid connection problems in the train.
Have a list of articles ready to read. Use a tool like Pocket to bookmark and save interesting articles from Medium or elsewhere. This way, you’ll avoid mindless scrolling and can fully take advantage of your reading time.
Have a running list of 1-min tasks. Make that quick phone call to reserve a table, quickly cancel a subscription, unsubscribe from a few useless newsletters or book that appointment — all in the 5 min waiting for your friend.
Reply to messages. If you hate email and Whatsapp like I do, using lost time for catching up with messages is a win-win.
Prepare. Go through that important meeting in your head. Review your notes. Think about your marketing strategy. Use lost time to think about your next move.
Not that long ago, Juliet Jacobsen, MD, had for a patient a woman with cancer. The patient did not want Jacobsen to talk about life expectancy. At all. Ever.
She didn’t want to talk about time-based prognosis when she was diagnosed. She didn’t want to talk about it when the cancer spread. She didn’t want to discuss it when she stopped treatment or enrolled in hospice. The same was true when she signed a do-not-resuscitate order.
“We were able to make all those decisions without her having to know if she had 6 months, 3 months, or 3 days left,” said Jacobsen, of Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston. “The idea that you have to have specific information to have decision-making conversations” just isn’t true.
And that’s good news, because two recent articles suggest that discussing life expectancy and prognosis are tough on both sides of the doctor-patient relationship. And that means, suggest palliative care specialists, that physicians may need to redefine what a successful prognosis discussion looks like, using shared decision making and patient-centered approaches.
Life Expectancy? No Thanks.
If we are going to talk patient-centered, it’s important to know what patients want. Therefore, Nancy Schoenborn, MD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues asked more than 1000 older adults with chronic illnesses when and how they wanted to talk to physicians about life expectancy.
These are her patients, said Schoenborn, a primary care physician who works with people who are “older and often sicker and at various points of this decline toward end of life.”
The study was published in the November/December issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.
What she found was that 59.4% of the 878 respondents didn’t want to talk about life expectancy at all if life expectancy was 10 or more years. And 87.7% did not want physicians talking to family or friends about it either.
Patients’ interest changed, however, when life expectancy dropped to 2 years. Then, 55.8% of patients wanted their doctor to talk to them about it.
Still, like Jacobsen’s patient, 16.5% of respondents didn’t want to talk about life expectancy even when it dropped to 1 month.
This all made sense to Schoenborn, in a way — after all, people with chronic conditions who aren’t facing something like cancer don’t necessarily need to have these conversations. They are important for physicians, however, as they have a bearing on some preventive screenings 10 years from end of life.
What did surprise her was the answer to another question: Would patients be open to a physician asking if the patient wanted to have the discussion? Nearly 60% of patients said absolutely not.
“Before this study, that’s what we were proposing,” she said — “telling patients, ‘This is something we ask everyone about, is it OK if we ask you if you’re open to the conversation?’ ” The answer left her wondering, “If a patient doesn’t want to be offered, what’s a clinician to do?”
Hope and Concern
One answer comes from a recent article published in JAMA Internal Medicine that Jacobsen and colleague Joshua Lakin, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, authored. The pair suggest another way of handling the tension between a patient who doesn’t want to have the conversation and a physician who feels it’s their duty to do so.
In that tug of war, the pair wrote, “Put down the rope.”
“The problem is not a patient who cannot accept the prognosis, nor is it the pessimistic clinician who has given up hope,” they write. “The problem is the disease, which is advancing despite everyone’s best efforts.”
In the article, the pair suggest couching prognostic and life-expectancy conversations in “I” statements that pair a physician’s hope (“I am hoping that you will have a long time to live with your heart disease”) with concern (“but I am also worried that the time may be short, as short as a few years”). These statements allow for the uncertainty of prognosis and also put the patient and provider on the same side against the disease.
Talking Values, Not Time
But for patients who don’t want to talk about length of time at all, there are other options, especially when discussing preventive screenings, Robert M. Arnold, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, told Medscape Medical News.
“The goal isn’t to tell people what they don’t want to know. It’s to help people cope with where they are,” said Arnold, who has studied physician communication and end-of-life care for decades.
Instead of telling patients that you want to discontinue cancer screenings because life expectancy has dropped to 10 years, Arnold suggests weighing out the benefits and risks of such screenings with patients, without discussing time left.
“I’d talk around it,” he said, and be willing to talk directly about life expectancy if that develops in the conversation. “You can say, ‘I don’t think it makes sense to keep doing colonoscopies. Do you want to talk about it?’ ”
Schoenborn agreed, saying that she suspected that the path moving forward involves exactly that kind of risk-benefit analysis. And, she added, exacerbations and hospitalizations give physicians a reason to bring it up.
It’s this long-term relationship with a patient that offers another option, said Lakin. In a fee-for-service world, where physicians have little time with each patient, taking the conversation bit by bit may be better.
“If a patient is having notable changes in their disease, if they are reaching landmark moments in progression,” that’s the moment to start mapping out the kind of care they want going forward. Even if you never give a timeline, you can talk about what a patient wants to do if hospitalizations happen again. You can share how the disease usually progresses. And you can, through shared decision making, give patients real options that take into account “what’s important for them.”
“Those are the moments,” he said, “to realign care.”
We all want to fulfill our potential and make a big impact on life.
After all, we only get life once and we want to make the most of it.
But if you’re asking yourself this question, then you might feel that you’re not doing enough.
You feel like you’re going to be disappointed when you reach the end of your life.
But it doesn’t need to be like this.
We all have the ability to make change, and the fact that you’re reading this article now means that you want to make change.
That’s a great first step.
So in this article, we’re going to figure out what you really want to do with your life so you can start taking purposeful action.
1) What’s your “why”?
This is the first question you need to ask yourself.
I know it sounds lame, but understanding your “why” is the key to motivation, which will unlock the door to taking action and finding fulfillment.
German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once said, ‘He who has a why can endure any how.’
The question is, how do you find your “why”?
What’s important to remember is that this isn’t some big esoteric question.
You just need to decide what’s important for you at this current time.
Write down a list of things that you want to achieve in life and that you enjoy doing.
Maybe it’s buying a house and spending time with your friends and family.
The answers might be different for everyone. But it’s very hard to find your “why” if you don’t know what’s important to you.
Next, you should make a list of things that you are actually doing in your life right now.
Now you can match up this list with your “why”?
For example, is it really important to run that extra Math class when that could be time spent with your children?
Do you have to spend money on dinner at an expensive restaurant when that could be money saved that goes towards buying a house?
The trick is to get rid of the unimportant things and focus on things that actually fulfill your “why”.
2) How to figure out what you REALLY want in life
Understanding what you want to do in life isn’t an easy task, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.
Nor is it something you can just figure out by thinking about it for 5 minutes.
It takes a lot of reflection and introspection. You need to understand your true self to figure out what you really want in life.
So, to help you out, here are 3 ways you can get to the bottom of your deepest desires:
1) Where will you be in 5 years?
While this questions seems meaningless and cliché, it’s an incredibly important question to figure out for yourself.
It’s not an easy question to answer. You can’t answer it in a concrete way. It’s hard to picture.
But thankfully, just trying your best to answer this question might be all you need.
And don’t just think about this question in terms of your career, your house or you net-worth.
Think about what you to BE in 5 years. A better parent, brother/sister, husband/wife?
Once you understand what you want to be in the future, it gives you a “why”. It gives you purpose.
2) Write your personal manifesto
This might seem a little pointless on the surface, but it’s a great way to figure out who you really are and where you stand in life.
It helps you define yourself and how you want to go about life.
To write a personal manifesto, all you have to do is write down your beliefs and intentions on whatever is important to you.
Make sure you use strong, affirmative language. Don’t write “should”. Instead, write “I will”.
3) Start digging into hobbies and side projects
Sometimes you just need to trial new things to figure out what you really enjoy doing. This means trying out new side projects and hobbies.
This could be all sorts of different things. It could be taking up golf, tennis, volunteering in different industries. It could be anything. Just give it a go and see if you like it.
3) Is your “why” actually meaningful?
This is important to consider.
If you’re “why” is simply about material objects or impressing other people, then it’s not going to end well.
You can’t let other people dictate your life.
And you can’t let superficial “things” control your mind. They’re just objects and they won’t last forever.
In general, if your “why” is about your significant relationships, your values or your character, you’ll achieve a lot more personal growth as you go about your journey.
4) If money were no object, what would you do?
At some level, money is a driver for all of us. Maybe not the number one driver, but it plays a part.
So, perhaps it’s time to look at the job you’re doing now and ask yourself if you’d still be doing it if money were no object.
So, if that was the case, what would you do? Be practical – you probably aren’t going to be a professional footballer or model, but really think about what you’re perfect job would be.
How are you going to work towards that?
Whatever it is, I can guarantee you that it won’t happen overnight. It takes time to build your perfect circumstance in life.
But if this is what you truly want to do, then it’s going to give you a “why” to get there.
Watch this video by spiritual Alan Watts on why considering this question could be life changing for you.
5) Stay clear and focused
If you’re not clear on why you’re doing something, then you’re going to waste time and you’ll feel lost.
When understand your “why”, your actions are always meaningful.
You’ll be confident, calm and ready to take action.
When your focus is elsewhere, you’ll feel cloudy and lacking in motivation.
When you ask yourself, “what am I doing with my life”, it shows that you’re not clear on your “why”.
You might even start questioning your life choices, harboring resentment and regrets.
But these emotions aren’t helpful.
You need to focus on what you have now and what you can realistically achieve in the future.
Ask yourself: What preoccupies your mind the most?
If it’s not your “why”, then no wonder you’re feeling lost and unsure.
What you spend time focusing on and taking action for is your choice. It’s up to you to take responsibility.
6) What don’t you need in life?
To maintain your focus, you need to figure out what’s getting in your way.
All of us tend to have too much stuff, too much projects and too many things going on in our lives.
It can make you feel cluttered and unsure of what to focus on.
Once you’ve figured out your “why”, it’s time to ask yourself: “What’s getting in my way?”
For example, if you’re looking to buy a house, do you really need to spend $200 a month on magazine subscriptions?
It’s getting rid of little things like this that will allow you to maintain focus on your purpose.
There will be no “what am I doing with my life” because everything you’re doing is for a purpose.
7) Whatever you do, don’t follow “The Law of Attraction”
If you haven’t heard of it, “The Law of Attraction” states that whatever consumes your thoughts is what you will get in life.
So, if you think about all the things you do want in life, you will get them. And vice versa.
It’s not useful and it doesn’t work.
If you want to achieve your goals in life, you need to take action.
The fact of the matter is, you’re going to have negative thoughts and you’ll doubt yourself at one point or another. We all do.
The key is to not let it change your behavior and actions. It’s important to keep taking action that will eventually help you achieve your “why”.
In conclusion
Remember, asking yourself “what am I doing with my life” is perhaps the wrong question.
It’s time to consider what your “why” is and what actions you can take that will help you achieve it.
Once you’re clear on your purpose and you remove anything standing in your way, you’ll be well on your way to living a life that most people couldn’t dream of.
Looking for a little clarity in your life? Want to find some perspective to help you make decisions and navigate situations?
Here are 20 paradoxes that could help give you some insight into your life and your choices.
1) The best things in life can’t be bought
Healthy, happiness, family, friends: you can’t put a price on these things. Stop chasing material possessions in search of happiness. Everything you need is right in front of you.
2) Choice paralyzes us
When we are faced with too many options, we’ll often choose the wrong one or make a choice just to be done with it. Make a decision and move forward.
3) When you stop looking for happiness, you find it
Sometimes everything you need to be happy is right in front of you…all you have to do is just open your eyes.
4) When you stop trying to find solutions, you find them
Stop wracking your brain and let it be with its own thoughts for a while. Before you know it, you’ll find the solution is right in front of you.
5) You don’t know what you have until it’s gone
This is true of everything in life: you favorite pair of jeans, an ice cream cone that fell on the ground, you precious granny Sue. All things have an expiry date so enjoy them while you can.
6) The more you do, the less you get done
Taking on too much at once is counterproductive even for a skilled multitasker. Focus on one thing at a time and you’ll get more done in a day, week and a year.
7) What goes around comes around
You’ll get out of life what you put into it, so don’t sit idle and let life pass you by. Be nice to people and yourself. Otherwise, it could come back to bite you in the behind.
8) The more control you want, the less you have
Helplessness is a horrible feeling, but sometimes we have to let go of things to gain perspective on how to move forward. Stop trying to control everyone and everything.
9) Fiction can change reality
Things that aren’t real or that we can’t prove are real can bring us a great deal of joy: stories that aren’t true but make us feel good, art that has no impact on life except to provide joy, and faith. You can’t see it but you feel it.
10) We’re the same, but different
Everyone is different but everyone wants the same things: to be loved, safe, and happy. Respect how people go about getting those things in life and we’ll all be better off.
11) The more you sleep, the more tired you’ll be
Sure, this one isn’t fair but it’s true. Get up with the sun and go to bed with the birds and you’ll be happier and well rested for it.
12) You can only change when you accept who you are
When you accept yourself as you are, you are better prepared to take on the responsibilities and work associated with change. It comes from a place of love and not hate.
13) The more you run from a problem the bigger it will be
Fate always catches up with us. So if you owe your taxes, pay them. If you haven’t called your mom in years, call her. Don’t ignore what needs fixing.
14) Question what you think you know
The world tells us to question what we see, but not what we think we know. We can change our own minds if we question what is in them.
15) Eat more, lose more
What a concept: eat better foods with more nutrients and minerals and good for you fats, and you can lose more weight than a diet of lettuce and tomato.
16) Improve commutes with less roads
Reducing choice leads to more effective movements in life and on the road.
17) When you stop looking for love, you find it
As with most things in life, what you need is usually right in front of you. Enjoy life and love will come your way.
18) A watched pot never boils
Things take longer when you wait. Stop waiting and start living.
19) Talk less, say more
People who talk a lot usually don’t have much to say. Speak when you have something important to say.
20) Don’t cry over spilled milk
I mean, you could, but really, there’s no going back.
“Why can’t I get this to work?” Those were the words I’d ask myself when I’d recognize that, once again, what I so longed to create simply wasn’t happening. I felt stuck… in life… because this thing that I was pouring my heart and soul into – my work – wasn’t thriving. Honestly, I didn’t understand why.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the trenches of my inner being. I think we all have one area in our lives that funnel our biggest Soul-healing. Mine has been my work; my spiritual growth and evolution came in the guise of getting my work, to work. And issues around my work have been what so often send me deep into my inner experience to look for answers around “why” things aren’t working.
What I’ve come to understand is how I process my emotional world – especially when that goes sideways – is a direct reflection of how well I can get things to actually happen. And what I thought was the most conscious approach to my emotional process, was actually dragging me under. Let me explain…
I’ve spent what feels like most of my adult like feeling stuck around my work. Sure, I have a business and have helped a lot of people create change, but I was not thriving. I felt broke – both financially and emotionally. Like a dog with a bone, I would not quit, no matter how challenging things got. I cycled around struggle in many ways.
I battled this growth around work, and making it work, for years. I looked at it all… my money, my personal power, my family, yet I was going nowhere. I was at my wit’s end. I felt really, really lost.
I had a vision of my life and knew my purpose. I knew, too, that I had some amazing spiritual gifts to share; I had this spot-on psychic ability since I was young, and a knack for seeing emotional patterns a mile away. Literally, I see things across space and time!
Yet, I was in a loop when it came to shifting my experience and making things happen, and that loop was creating my struggle. And one day, I figured that out!
I recognized three things:
The root of problem
The pattern it was creating that was the real issue, and
How I was bypassing action in the name of my emotional nature.
This awareness was huge. It was like this whole matrix of information came in, not only for my life, but for so many highly conscious people who struggle.
Those of us who are energetically sensitive, emotionally sensitive… just plain old sensitive… often have a natural pattern of going within to understand the world around us. It’s comforting to turn inward, yet it can become a trap. The way you are processing your outer experience through your inner world — and all the amazing information you access through that inner exploration — may just be the thing that is keeping you stuck.
I learned this lesson the hard way. But it’s made a huge impact on how I am now working with people and moving my own life along.
Let me know if this sounds familiar:
You’re stuck. Something in your life isn’t working or isn’t happening, and hasn’t for a while. It’s a big one though, it feels like it’s your Soul that isn’t making it here, and it’s carving out a huge reference point around failing, being stuck and feeling disempowered.
Deep down you know you must keep at it. You keep going around and around the issue, yet you can’t resolve things for some reason. You desperately want your life to be going down some other path, but you either can’t leap or you try and try and it’s a no-go.
You find new things all the time that tie into this issue, and you diligently work on them thinking, “This is it… this is the thing that will change it all.” You are a master at shifting out of those deep emotional states, back into balance. It’s those shifts though that fool you into thinking you are changing. I mean, you’re growing right? You’re learning new things about yourself… except the one thing that changes your direction.
A week, a month or a year later, you realize you are still stuck, and you still don’t know why. You still have that same job you hate, you aren’t in the relationship you want, your still not making enough money, your business isn’t thriving and you still feel disempowered. Honestly, that big-ticket life change that your Soul yearns for hasn’t manifested.
Your only recourse seems to be to keep moving inward to understand why. You’re pulled back into your inner world that reflects what’s showing up.
It’s a loop!
When I look back now, I can see how my inner processing was both a blessing and a total derailment. There were way too many times when I missed out on creating real change, by moving inward to try to understand what was in play. Honestly, that was all I knew to do in those moments. Instead of creating a breakthrough, I was creating a breakdown.
That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth. I was stuck in a pattern of processing. I was in a loop of emotional comfort, all in the name of my spiritual and emotional process.
Those moments where I’d “get” something about myself and seemingly create a level of change, created enough belief to keep me going… until the next time. But they weren’t real changes… the kind of changes that truly moved me along my path of spiritual evolution and anchored into this 3D world in a way where I thrived.
And I see this now in so many highly conscious, highly stuck, people whose natural instinct is to process their experience through what they feel. The process is influencing the outcome and not always with a positive outcome. There is something missing that’s creating a breakdown, instead of a breakthrough.
So how do you create the breakthrough?
1. You must get to the core and untangle that mess. Cut to the chase. Get some help. I can guarantee you, if you are stuck in life in any way, and things aren’t moving forward, you need help in getting to the core of the issue. And if you’re like my clients, what you’re looking isn’t the core issue and energy.
What you’re feeling are the symptoms of a core pattern that’s been created to both protect you and force you to grow beyond it. This pattern is deeper than where you are looking and, when you’re in it, incredibly confusing. You won’t know whether to embrace it or crush it. And honestly, you have to finesse it a little, and do both.
2. Break the processing cycle. Find the line between awareness and action.
Someone recently asked me what it took for me to understand how to shift from being in “process mode” to “action mode”… how I found that balance. And I’ll tell ya, it took learning some new skills that were not innate to this energy-gal who has spent years exploring “why.”
It’s not always easy at first for the folks I work with either. When it’s natural for you to feel it all, and process it all to understand your world – and that’s been working over-time – it’s hard to not go into auto-pilot and fall back down the rabbit hole of process.
Don’t get me wrong, at times you need to go within and work on your emotional stuff and make connections between things and allow new awareness in. But if you aren’t getting in and out and then switching gears to then move forward, you need help from someone who’s figured it out.
There’s a level of information about how it works to seamlessly shift between awareness and action that you don’t yet know. (But you can learn this!) There was a download in a sense where I realized all of a sudden how it works.
3. Invest in your change. This is not going to come as a shock to you, but if you want something to change, you have to do something different. The thing is, so many of us don’t.
To create a breakthrough, you really do need to invest in yourself, and some help. You need to set up a period of time where you say, “I am going to deal with this.”
Big mindset changes are not the thing to do on your own. You simply can’t see your own stuff. That’s not just marketing hype, it’s the truth. None of us can clearly see the big stuff in our lives. And quite frankly, going it alone encourages more struggle. Had enough? Break the pattern.
The other part of this is, all too often people seek out help from the same model (or frequency) they are used to. Dip into a different well of information… someone who holds a frequency and awareness that you can learn from. When you are stuck, you need new data; you need new information. It’s not going to come from your mind set, the people who you’ve been trading with, or the same model or modality you’ve been working from. It just isn’t.
Seriously, invest in something new and create that breakthrough. You’ll be glad you did. You’ll see that you didn’t know what you didn’t know.
Here’s the thing, life is moving fast these days. Your change should be as well.
When things around you are moving at high speed, your “stuckness” is highlighted in the most painful of ways. By comparison, your inability to get things moving feels even more rooted. It can be heartbreaking to not be moving ahead.
So if your highly conscious life is going nowhere, it’s not you. It’s your process. Your highly conscious self has something amazing to do. Change things up in how you are approaching things. Up-level and step back onto the path of your spiritual evolution and thrive.
The HIV virus targets immune cells in the bloodstream
Life expectancy for young HIV-positive adults has risen by 10 years in the United States and Europe thanks to improvements in AIDS drugs known as antiretroviral therapy, researchers said on Thursday.
This meant many patients can expect to live as long as those without HIV, according to their study published in The Lancet medical journal.
The scientists said the improvements were likely to be largely due to the transition to less toxic medicine combinations, with more drug options for people infected with drug-resistant HIV strains, and better adherence to treatment.
“Our research illustrates a success story of how improved HIV treatments coupled with screening, prevention and treatment of health problems associated with HIV infection can extend the lifespan,” said Adam Trickey, who led the research at Britain’s University of Bristol.
Antiretroviral therapy, or ART, first became widely used in the mid 1990s. It involves a combination of three or more drugs that block the HIV virus’ replication. This helps prevent and repair damage to the immune system caused by the HIV, and also prevents onward spread of the disease.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) now recommends ART should be given as soon as possible after diagnosis to everyone with HIV.
Since 2015, WHO recommends that all pple diagnosed w/ #HIV start antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as possible to prevent illness & death
The researchers analysed 18 European and North American studies involving 88,504 people with HIV who started ART between 1996 and 2010.
Fewer people who started treatment between 2008-2010 died during their first three years of treatment than those who started treatment between 1996-2007.
Trickey’s team said when they looked specifically at deaths due to AIDS, the number during treatment declined over time between 1996 and 2010, probably because more modern drugs are more effective in restoring the immune system.
As a result, the researchers said that between 1996 and 2013, the life expectancy of 20-year-olds treated for HIV increased by nine years for women and 10 years for men in the European Union and North America.
This suggests that life expectancy of a 20-year-old who began ART from 2008 onwards and responded well to it would get close to a life expectancy of the general population – 78 years.
But the improvements were not seen in all people with HIV. Life expectancy of those infected through injecting drugs, for example, did not increase as much as in other groups.
Mr Trickey said this underlined the need for prevention and treatment efforts to be focused on high-risk groups.
According to a recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy has actually declined in the U.S. for the first time in 20 years,1,2,3,4 dropping from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015 for men, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. This means American women now die, on average, about one month earlier than they did in 2014, and men lost about two months of lifespan in two years.5
In all, there were 86,212 more deaths in 2015 compared to 2014 — a rise in death rate of about 1 percent in 2015 — and as of 2015, the U.S. ranks 29th out of 43 countries for life expectancy,6lagging behind countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Korea and the Czech Republic. In 2014, the U.S. ranked 28th.7
Moreover, according to Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, this decline in life expectancy is a “uniquely American phenomenon.” No other developed countries experienced this decline. “A 0.1 decrease is huge,” Dr. Muennig added. “Life expectancy increases, and that’s very consistent and predictable, so to see it decrease, that’s very alarming.”
Dr. Jiaquan Xu, the report’s lead author, noted the decline in life expectancy is primarily caused by a rise in several categories of preventable deaths,8 again highlighting the failure of the American health care system to properly address the root causes of chronic disease. He also cited the opioid epidemic as a significant factor.
Meanwhile, both dietary patterns and health care availability in South Korea — which has made some of the greatest life expectancy gains — offer valuable hints at what Americans need to do to change course.
Analysis suggests South Koreans may soon outlive the rest of the world.
Another extensive analysis 9 of longevity patterns in 35 industrialized nations projects life expectancy at birth in the U.S. will continue to lag, such that by 2030, it will be on par with the Czech Republic, Croatia and Mexico.10,11,12
Meanwhile, South Koreans of both sexes and Hungarian men and have made the greatest life expectancy gains. By 2030, South Korean women are projected to have an average lifespan of 90.8, making it the first nation to break the 90-year life expectancy barrier.
This is a significant feat, considering South Korea ranked 29th for women’s life expectancy in 1985.13As for the cause of the U.S.’ failure to keep pace, The Washington Post notes:14
“The reasons for the United States’ lag are well known. It has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any of the countries in the study, and the highest obesity rate. It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the largest share of unmet health care needs due to financial costs,” the researchers wrote …
In contrast to the United States, South Korea “has a remarkable investment in early childhood nutrition,” has been taking advantage of medical advances and technology across its population and has some of the world’s lowest obesity and hypertension rates … “They seem to be getting a lot of things right at the same time, and getting them right for almost everyone”, [lead author Majid Ezzati] said.
Differences in diet offer valuable clues…
Japan has long been noted for its longevity, but that’s starting to change as Western dietary influences have crept in. Again and again, we see health outcomes decline when countries adopt a Western style diet with processed foods as a staple.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s use of nutritional supplements, especially probiotics for both adults and infants has risen, and their fermented food and omega-3 intake is among the highest in the world. In my view, this is what you would call a major clue.
Research15 published last year showed South Korea, along with Japan, the Primorskry region of Russia, Denmark, Norway and Greenland and a few other indigenous regions had the highest blood levels of the animal-based omega-3 fats eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) — the latter of which is a primary structural component of every cell in your body.
Americans and Canadians both have “very low” levels, which may increase the risk of chronic disease. Use of vitamins and dietary supplements in South Korea also rose by 4 percent in 2016, and probiotic sales rose by 7 percent.
According to Euromonitor, “these products are increasingly seen as essential consumer health items among South Koreans.”16 South Koreans also consume 2 million tons of kimchi each year — a traditional dish of fermented cabbage. As noted in a previous Food First article:17
“[K]imchi is the one food that most Koreans simply ‘cannot live without.’ 18 … [It] seems to make its way into every meal of the day. In autumn, South Korean employers even give their workers a customary ‘kimchi bonus,’ helping to subsidize the ingredients for their annual kimchi supply.19”
Considering that most Americans eat a primarily processed food diet, high in sugars and low in healthy fats, fiber and fermented foods, it shouldn’t come as a major shock that life expectancy might suffer. Advertisements might lead you to believe this processed fare will give you all the nutrition you need for a long and happy life, but your body cannot be fooled.
The toll of chronic illness and opioid addiction on Americans:
The cost of health care in the U.S. is also the highest in the world, and continues to rise. Health care now accounts for 17 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).20 But even though the U.S. spends more than $3 trillion on health care each year, it is the worst performing system ranked by multiple aspects of care.21
Recent research also reveals HALF of all Americans live with chronic illness,22 and in my view, this has everything to do with diet. According to study authors Elizabeth Reisinger Walker, Ph.D., an assistant research professor, and Dr. Benjamin Druss, professor at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University:23
“The health of individuals in the [USA] is increasingly being defined by complexity and multi-morbidity, the co-occurrence of two or more chronic medical conditions.”
Addiction to opioid painkillers appears to be another significant contributor to declining life expectancy in the U.S.24,25 Deaths from synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, rose by a whopping 73 percent between 2014 and 2015. Prescription pain killers alone killed 17,536 people last year.
According to Robert Anderson, who oversees death statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this. Certainly not in modern times.”
More than half of the American diet is ultra-junk food.
Ponder these parallel statistics:
Half of all Americans are chronically ill.
Half of all Americans are also either pre-diabetic or diabetic. 26,27
Nearly 60 percent of the American diet is ULTRA-processed junk food, and these products also account for 90 percent of the added sugar consumption in the U.S.28,29
As much as 40 percent of American health care expenditures are for diseases directly related to the overconsumption of sugar.30
Less than 1 percent of Americans’ daily calorie intake comes from vegetables.31,32,33
While correlation does not definitively prove causality, I for one have no doubt these statistics are related. The dangers of eating too much added sugar have been well-established, and have even become officially recognized. For the first time ever, the 2015-2020 U.S. dietary guidelines34recommend limiting your sugar intake to a maximum of 10 percent of your daily calories.35
Without a doubt, lowering your consumption of added and natural sugars is at the top of the list if you’re overweight, insulin resistant or struggle with any chronic disease. This includes sugar from refined non-vegetable fiber carbs such as potatoes, bagels and breakfast cereal. Recent research actually suggests these foods are as risky as smoking, increasing your risk for lung cancer by as much as 49 percent, even if you’ve never smoked.36
High glycemic foods, i.e., refined carbs high in sugar, promote insulin resistance and obesity, and this isn’t the first time a connection has been made between a high-sugar and/or obesity and cancer.
In fact, cancer specialists who discussed the cancer trend at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago warned that obesity will likely overtake smoking as the principal cause of 10 different types of cancer within the next decade.37 Obesity, also associated with worsened prognosis after a cancer diagnosis, raises your risk of dying from the cancer treatment, and raises your risk of additional malignancies and comorbidities.38
Why fermented food is so important for your health:
In ancient societies, fermentation was a very common food preservation method. And, while they may not have understood the mechanisms involved, by eating fermented foods, their overall health flourished — principally, their intestinal health. Today, we have a much more comprehensive understanding of the human microbiome, and its influence on health. We also now know that the best ways to improve gut health are to consume fermented foods on a regular basis and avoid sugar and processed foods.
About 80 percent of your immune system is in your gut. When your intestinal flora is skewed toward more sugar-loving pathogenic microbes, health problems of all kinds are more prevalent, from obesity and diabetes 39,40 to allergies and autoimmune diseases. The fiber and wide variety of beneficial bacteria (probiotics) found in traditionally fermented and cultured foods help protect against disease by improving your microbiome, and also help chelate harmful toxins and heavy metals from your system.
Nearly all organic plant matter (and even the dust covering the soil) contains lacto-fermenting bacteria called Lactobacilli, or Lactobacillus acidophilus. As Lactobacilli start multiplying in the fermentation process, they produce lactic acid. When lactic acid is produced, it helps preserve the food. Another benefit is that fermentation makes nutrients more bioavailable.
It also provides instant energy. Several studies indicate the many amazing benefits fermentation brings to your gut health. For instance, one week after sauerkraut begins fermenting, the vitamin C content rises to around six times higher than in the same amount of plain cabbage.41
Another fermentation advantage is vitamin K2, which works in tandem with and provides many of the same benefits as vitamin D. Certain cheeses, homemade yogurt, kefir and natto (fermented soy) are good sources of vitamin K2. There are only certain strains of bacteria that make K2, so not all fermented foods will contain it. Most commercial yogurts are virtually devoid of vitamin K2, and while certain types of cheeses, such as Gouda, Brie and Edam are high in K2, others are not.
It really depends on the specific bacteria present during the fermentation. When fermenting your own foods at home, using a special starter culture designed with bacterial strains that produce vitamin K2 will ensure a vitamin-K2-rich result.
Reclaiming your health is not rocket science.
The data and statistics presented in all of these studies and analyses give us significant clues as to what works and what doesn’t — what promotes health and what will kill you off sooner rather than later. The fact that the average American lost up to two months of life expectancy from one year to the next should be a wakeup call.
Clearly, the Affordable Health Care Act did not have a positive influence. This makes sense when you consider that American health care is grossly lacking in common sense disease prevention. Making health care available to more low-income individuals makes no difference when treatment strategies are primarily focused on costly pharmacological interventions rather than low- or no-cost lifestyle recommendations.
For starters, if you seek wellness, you’d be wise to ignore any and all food commercials and most conventional dietary advice, which still to this day promote dangerous low-fat myths and condone the use of artificial sweeteners. In fact, a health-promoting diet is more or less the conventional food pyramid turned upside-down. My free optimal nutrition plan will lead you through the needed changes one step at a time.
Higher healthy fat consumption, lower sugar intake, and increased omega-3, fiber and fermented foods are of particular importance. The shift from sugar to fat will allow your body to become an efficient fat burner, which has many tremendous benefits.
The animal-based omega-3 fat DHA is a necessary component for all of your body’s cells, and fiber-rich and fermented foods will help optimize your gut microbiome. Switching to organic whole foods is also recommended, as this will help you avoid harmful agricultural chemicals as well.
U.S. statistics may be depressing, but the significant improvements made by countries like South Korea also offer hope. It’s rather remarkable to think a nation may soon have an average lifespan of 90! We can all get there. But to do so, we have to change our dietary status quo, and realize the price we pay for all of our convenience foods.
References: see below.
About the author:
Born and raised in the inner city of Chicago, IL, Dr. Joseph Mercola is an osteopathic physician trained in both traditional and natural medicine. Board-certified in family medicine, Dr. Mercola served as the chairman of the family medicine department at St. Alexius Medical Center for five years, and in 2012 was granted fellowship status by the American College of Nutrition (ACN).
While in practice in the late 80s, Dr. Mercola realized the drugs he was prescribing to chronically ill patients were not working. By the early 90s, he began exploring the world of natural medicine, and soon changed the way he practiced medicine.
In 1997 Dr. Mercola founded Mercola.com, which is now routinely among the top 10 health sites on the internet. His passion is to transform the traditional medical paradigm in the United States. “The existing medical establishment is responsible for killing and permanently injuring millions of Americans… You want practical health solutions without the hype, and that’s what I offer.”
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