In the movie The Jerk with Steve Martin, he screamed: “The new phone book’s here!” Well, in culinary terms, farmers are shouting “The asparagus is here!”

The concept of Eat the Season is that it is healthier to eat produce when it is harvested locally, instead of produce that is grown and shipped from thousands of miles away. This isn’t always possible, but I like to take advantage of it when it is -basically from spring to fall.

So right now, asparagus is on the menu. And right through to the end of the growing season, whatever the local farmers bring to market – I’m buying.

When the Brickworks Farmers market closed because of the virus, the growers regrouped and set up pop-ups with local businesses so they could still have a market for their products. Find out where you can buy local produce and meat in your area. Support local, independent business. The world needs them. You can have a look at the cookbook here.

Buy the local asparagus. Don’t let others have all the fun of stinky pee.

My brothers were involved in sports, but not me, so I never got into a ‘ look after your body’ mindset. Which is crazy, because if you don’t make time for exercise, you will have to make time for illness.

Now that I am on the wrong side of sixty, I joined a seniors exercise group just before the lockdown. I actually enjoyed going – but then it was gone. What to do?

Youtube to the rescue. We’ve only had a smart tv since February, so I had no idea what a plethora of spandex obsessed, fitness gurus lived in my basement. The variety is fabulous – hundreds of videos from 5-minute yoga to 60-minute aerobics.

And you are with people who inspire and talk to you. Remember real people – before they became bad for your health, like too much dessert?

I look forward to the day when human contact is put back on the menu. But for now, my screen buddies are tasked with keeping me moderately fit. I don’t see slim in my future unless the food supply collapses.

It takes a conscious effort to shift long-standing habits.

Exercise is a required component of lifestyle – just like eating and sleep.

Those who don’t find time to exercise will have to find time for illness.

Apparently, 70% of the way you look is based upon what you eat.

The French live to eat. The English eat to die.

Think about how food is affecting you at a cellular level.

Going through the exercise “gate” will develop other healthy habits.

Move your body to tone your mood.

Positive mental health is enhanced by exercise.

Muscle is more metabolically active than fat.

You’ve been misled. A calorie is not a calorie. A Twinkie is not the same as an egg. Think about it.

All of the above makes so much sense, so why do I find it so hard to actually do it? Humans truly are self-forgetting machines. Making a commitment to change can cause considerable anxiety, self-doubt and ambivalence. To maintain the status quo is easier in the short term, but probably detrimental in the long.

Omnipresent, and now omniscient.

They have decided that they know that every single vaccine in the history of the world is safe, and therefore, you don’t get any alternative information. Every single person who has evidence of vaccine harm, is wrong. Every single argument in vaccine documentaries is wrong. Every single document about vaccine harm is wrong. No choice for you, because you are wrong, wrong, wrong and that is final.

Time to break out the books again and read the John Stuart Mill treatise ‘On Liberty’:

“In an imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of the truth require a diversity of opinions.”

“The opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging.”

“All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”

Newsflash – no one is infallible.

In the future, when Google searches will fail to confirm any doubts about topics such as vaccines and alternative health, the sheeple will just assume there aren’t any. Never figuring it out that a corporate agenda took the information away.

Down the Memory Hole, as Orwell warned.

In my world, that seems to be the case. Time speeds up – Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, then Christmas, in what feels like 3 weeks.

And you know what that means – the cold and flu season will soon be upon us, and I think we need to call for a ban on patterned Kleenex.

Not all of them of course. The Sniff brand have very delightful illustrations, and an unexpected funny image on a tissue can make a sad person smile.

But save us from the shock and worry of the multiple nosebleeds we didn’t have – it was just the damn red pattern on the Kleenex from an innocent nose blowing episode.

If you do happen to get a real nose bleed, here is a cure from Spring Forest Qigong. Open your fingers and hold your hands above your head, making sure your elbows are above your shoulders. If blood is coming out from our right nostril, raise your left hand. If blood is coming out from your left nostril, raise your right hand. If blood is coming out from both nostrils, raise both hands. A good thing to teach kids too.

This is interesting. It might be true.

Weight gain is inevitable after a calorie-restricted diet. The initial loss of weight causes the metabolism to slow to greater amounts than the calorie restriction requires.

The body engages in metabolic adaptation. Also, the hunger hormone leptin increases in the blood stream.

So, the lower ability to burn calories, with an increase in hunger, results in weight gain and then some.

According to Dr. Jason Fung, the way to lose weight is to restrict carbohydrates, because insulin is a fat storage hormone. And the way to keep carbohydrates low is by intermittent fasting and no snacking between meals.

Here is his website .

When I don’t want to keep every book I own, I write down the parts I highlighted in a journal. I named it ‘This is a journal of highlights from books given away” – for no other reason than space limitations. These are some highlights from Lean For Life:

Men lose weight about 30% faster than women.

Liposuction may cause fat to collect in other areas of the body.

Dementia is linked to long term dehydration.

Insulin is a fat storage hormone. Sugar dumps a lot of it in your bloodstream.

Aspartame is a neurotoxin.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (Mark Twain- attrib.)

The following information is from Dr. Mercola’s website:

Let’s say you have a study of 200 women, half of whom take a drug and half take a placebo, to examine the effect on breast cancer risk. After five years, two women in the drug group develop breast cancer, compared to four who took the placebo. This data could lead to either of the following headlines, and both would be correct:

“New Miracle Drug Cuts Breast Cancer Risk by 50%!”

“New Drug Results in 2% Drop in Breast Cancer Risk!”

How can this be? The Annie Appleseed Project explains: “The headlines represent two different ways to express the same data. The first headline expresses the relative risk reduction — the two women who took the drug (subjects) and developed breast cancer equal half the number (50%) of the four women who took the placebo (controls) and developed breast cancer. The second headline expresses the absolute risk reduction — 2% of the subjects (2 out of 100) who took the drug developed breast cancer and 4% of the controls (4 out of 100) who took the placebo developed breast cancer — an absolute difference of 2% (4% minus 2%).”

You can now see why clinical trials, especially those funded by drug companies, will cite relative risk reductions rather than absolute risk reductions, and as a patient you need to be aware that statistics can be easily manipulated.

As STATS at George Mason University explains: “An important feature of relative risk is that it tells you nothing about the actual risk.

Now that the sun and suncreens apparently cause cancer, we have three options as I see it:

• Stay inside forever
• Break into the abandoned Biosphere 2 in Arizona and become a squatter
• Adopt the Burqa as your go-to fashion statement

I have not used sunscreens for years because whenever I read the list of unpronounceable ingredients and realized that skin is the largest organ and has tremendous absorption ability, it always felt like I might as well be applying it to my liver.

Seems I was right.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-05-06/sunscreen-chemicals-enter-bloodstream-at-potentially-unsafe-levels-study

Almost everyone I know who is older suffers from dry eyes. The artificial tears market is projected to be worth over $2 billion dollars in five years.

Dry eye syndrome is common because our work, play and socialization has shifted from working with our bodies, to working with our eyes.

Using computers reduces our blink rate by up to 60% due to concentration. Now we have to add blinking to our Things to Do lists.

Around 1890, William Horatio Bates developed a method that he said could improve eyesight, utilizing techniques like palming and the long swing. Aldous Huxley claimed it worked for him.

Blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelid) is sometimes a complication of dry eyes. There are clinical trials about demodex and tea tree oil dilutions, but this knowledge is not for the faint of heart. Do you remember watching a TV show years ago where they showed experiments with high power microscopes which revealed that there are microscopic things living on your eyelashes? If that grossed you out, forget that I ever mentioned the “D” word.

Wide awake now.