Sick

Someone, in some context -- I couldn't be bothered to remember ... because I'm not your bloody stenographer, is why -- mentioned those exotic super berries from the dripping bowels of the Amazonian Rain Jungle. Açaí. Has even more antioxidants than blueberries. Oh! Let's all race out and buy a couple of gallons worth, at ten bucks a gram. Cuz it has all them antioxidants and such.

How many people don't even bother with the easy stuff, yet get all tumescent over the idea of the exotic? Yes, açaí has ... have? ... more antioxidants than blueberries. Which is fascinating, but not all that useful, if you don't even eat blueberries. The point is about being practical. True, you can bankrupt yourself on Baikal caviar, but why not eat fisheggs? If you're into that sort of thing, I mean. They taste the same, and do the same job. That's my theory, and for purposes of this example, it is correct. Save your petty caviling for someone who wants to hear it.

I used the example before: populations that eat potatoes have less of a certain type of cancer. Not of all cancers -- just a certain type. This tells us that at least some cancers are a deficiency disease. Like scurvy. Like rickets. Like, um, beriberi. The obvious lesson is that we want to include as wide a variety of nutrients in our diet as is reasonable. Give your body what it needs to heal itself, and to keep itself healthy.

No medicine, no drug ever cured a disease. Diseases do get cured, but it isn't toxic chemicals that do it. Well, maybe they kill tapeworms -- but that's more a condition than a disease. What drugs do is suppress aggravating factors, so that your body can heal itself. It only takes a bit of thought to see the truth in this. Drugs can only stimulate your own body to do a job, or attack something that's causing a problem. Neither stimulation nor suppression is a cure. I won't labor the obvious. The really good doctors know this. It makes them humble. The foolish doctors are all about symptoms. I won't belabor this obviousness either.

So, yes, add a spoonful of açaí berries to your diet. Why not? But don't imagine that it will make even a noticeable difference. What will make a noticeable difference is having a wide spectrum of nutrients in your diet. Some your body will need, some not -- but it will have the choice. Maybe you're not susceptible to such and such a cancer. But since you don't have your genome memorized, it's better to graze than to binge -- roam the wide savanna, don't hunch over the carcass and glut yourself on zebra guts. Cuz your body does have its genome memorized -- it knows what it needs, even if you don't.

Eating complex meals, in which there are many nutrients, does have its risks. As I've been known to observe, the enteric system -- the whole digestive system -- has as many neurons, as many "brain" cells as the brain does. The obvious conclusion is that digestion is a fantastically complex process. The greater the variety of foods you eat in a single meal, the more complex the process of digestion will be. It's not just a blender, your gut, where everything is dumped into an acid bath and dissolved into a featureless paste -- like something from McDnlds (I cannot pollute the purity of my lips with even the name). Carbs aren't even digested in the stomach. Meat. Proteins. Not carbs. Carbs get digested farther along. The thirty feet of small intestines you've got coiled up under all that fat aren't just a long hose to the toilet. Specific nutrients get absorbed at only certain spots along the way. It's very complex. So sometimes it makes sense to give your body a break, and eat simply.

My digestion is perfect. Never had any problems. But I eat simple foods, simply prepared. Lots of nutrients, but all plant-origin. My point is that I have a smart body. It can easily handle the few and simple problems I throw at it. Some people have stupid bodies. Through years of abuse, their digestive system has become befuddled and confused, and just can't do a lot of complex thinking any more. It's like calculus. If you know it, and are thinking straight, you can solve the problem. If you never learned it, or have become stultified over the years through sloth and auto-intoxication, then forget about it. Get it? There's a brain in your gut. It has an IQ. You can make it retarded. If you do, it will take its unsubtle revenge.

Antioxidants are like Stonehenge. One sarsen stone may be much taller and more impressive than all the others. But it's not Stonehenge unless it describes a circle. Get it? Açaí may indeed be the tallest pillar. You can't live on a pillar. Get it? Built a wall. Build four of them, and add a roof. Get it? Some specific species of berry provides a rich supply of beneficent plant chemicals, although along a narrow band of the vast spectrum of nutrients. That's so wonderful, but how about you flood yourself in brilliant light? How about you ensconce yourself in the noble bastion of mighty security, so that when the chill hand of the boreal wind comes clutching after your throat, you'll have some shield to fend off the blah blah blah. God. What do I have to do to make myself heard? Write in blank verse? Have Frank Miller illustrate it? Dance naked at your bar mitzvah? You'd just love that, wouldn't you. Oh look at Jack up there, all naked! Wow, that's hot. You're sick. Thinking about me all naked like that, sweat dripping down my muscular thighs. Sicko.

The upshot is, get started. Go ahead and continue eating dead things. But eat something that will help you live, too. For my part, I'm not happy. I'm not entirely healthy. But I'm healthy physically. And that's a lot better than being not happy and not entirely healthy and physically unhealthy. So, should we make a deal? You test what I've said, and see if it works, and find yourself stronger and feeling better. And I'll try to get happy. Deal? But I'm not going to start until you do. I've told you my secrets. I'll be waiting to hear from you, about how you're so bloody happy and all that crap. Okay? You tell me your amazing super secrets of ultimate unlimited and eternal mega happiness. I just can't wait. Cuz I'm clocking in at about four hundred emotional pounds, with spiritual diabetes and social high blood pressure. And I've done so much for you. You can't give me a little something, some tiny little nothing, a grot, a moiety, some smidge in return out of the boundless cosmos of your godlike wisdom? Share all those crafty secrets of your slobbering happiness that you've been storing up so prudently? Let your poor pathetic pal Jack in on some of your hard-won and sure-fire uberwisdom? So I can change my name from Jack Hell to Jack Happenis? You're a regular frickin Nietzsche, so won't you toot it at me, O Thou Mage of All Contentment? No. I didn't think so. People are such pigs. As if I'd believe anything you said anyway. Forget it then. Nobody cares. Why do I even bother. What's the point of any of it. Sick. You make me sick, is all. How do I delete this stinking thing. You can just go to hell.


J