 are signals that do not t our conventional
senses, even though we probably do respond to them unconsciously.
Snakes, bats, and insects depend on these signals and therefore
inhabit a world that overlaps ours while remaining quite dierent. I
particularly like to imagine  the world as seen by a chameleon,whose right and left eyes rotate independently in their sockets. A
beam of light hitting a table would be a double beam to a
chameleon. Two chairs could never be a foot apart, or any xed
distance, since with the swivel of an eye, the chameleon can make
them as far apart as he wants.
Someone once vigorously challenged me on this point. “If I had a
chameleon’s eyes,” he said, “I might see that door as two feet to the
left, but that’s not where it is in reality. If I tried to walk through the
door I saw, I would bump into the wall.”
“But think about it,” I replied, “that just means you trust your
sense of touch  more than your sense of sight. The world  may look
very convincing, but that does not answer the deeper question: why
should you trust any of your senses at all?”
Many Realities
If each person  is constantly creating his own inner experience,
placing innumerable interpretations on the raw data that the senses
provide, that is strong grounds for not denying anyone his personal
version of reality. A generati on ago, the ruling assumption was that
one reality—hard, scientic, materialistic—would do for all. Now
we have to learn to cope with the state of many realities.
The story is told of a British anthropologist who undertook a eld
trip to India. One evening he crept through the jungle and caught
sight of a strange scene. An old holy man was dancing ecstatically in
the forest. He ran up and embraced the trees; he laughed when the
leaves stirred and bathed his face in the moonlight with an
expression of delirious joy. The anthropologist watched this display
in fascination until he couldn’t contain himself.
“Pardon me,” he said, stepping from the bushes, “but what makes
you dance out here, alone in the jungle?”
The holy man looked bewildered and replied, “Pardon me, but
what makes you think I’m alone?”
Both questions are mutually  unanswerable, because they depend
on unique world views. The holy man sees himself surrounded in
the forest by nature spirits, while the anthropologist sees wood andchlorophyll. The two realities overlap and yet do not come alive for
each other.
I am especially drawn to such stories because my own life has
been dominated by con icting and sometimes contradictory
realities. In my Indian childhood, which was spent in the family of a
military doctor, I saw a regimental band of Punjabis marching on
the parade ground in turbans while playing Highland ings on their
bagpipes. At my birthday parties the children sat wide-eyed, hands
on their mouths, while a snake charmer performed for us, yet my
favorite present was a model train from England complete with tiny
station houses marked “Wembley” and “Paddington.”
My school was St. Columba’s in New Delhi, which was run along
strict English lines by Catholic brothers. During games period,
Brother McNamara would drag me o, pull down my pants, and
wallop me every time I bowled outside the left wicket—cricket was
a matter of life and death at St. Columba’s. On graduation day he
took me into his oce and said, “Christ died to redeem you from
eternal damna tion. That is the point of your education here. What
are you going to do about it?”
Could I tell him that a swami lived next door to our house who
subsisted on the fty rupees  a month my mother, a devout Hindu,
gave him? (Not that he needed much, since he sat in deep samadhi,
hardly breathing or moving, for seven days at a time.) Or should I
have told him how thrilled my mother was when she came back
from a pilgrimage to a holy cave in north India? As she was
kneeling at the mouth of the cave, she opened her eyes and found
that Lord Shiva was giving her his blessing in the form of a rearing
cobra two feet away.
My sense of reality continued to veer unsteadily from one world
to the next. When I ew to Sri Lanka to take the exam that would
entitle me to practice medici ne in America, I spent the morning at a
temple built around Buddha’s tooth and listened to ethereal wind
chimes tuned thousands of years ago to be pleasing to the devas, or
angels. That afternoon I sat through an exam crammed with
metabolic pathways and basic biochemistry. The American
consulate was anxious to import only those foreign doctors whoknew English well, so I also had to pass a language test that
contained the memorable question, “A heavyweight boxer is A) A
man who lifts heavy boxes, B) A kind of sportsman, C) A large man
shaped like a box.”
If you ask who is the “real” me, I would have to answer, “All of
them.” The triumph of the self is that it can create something
entirely new and individual on the face of the earth. My inner self
contains Brother McNamara, my mother, the swami next door,
Shiva in the form of a cobra, my cricket team, and a toy station
marked “Wembley.” These images have been digested and turned
into me; newe r images, including everything I saw, heard, touched,
tasted, and smelled today, are turning into me at this moment.
Every time I bring one of these aspects of myself into view, I am
also launching a display of unique physical reactions. Each new
thought may cause only a slight shift inside my physiology, but
“slight” still amounts to millions of neuronal signals in the brain,
giving rise to billions of other cellular events that occur in the blink
of an eye. In a very real sense, a new thought turns me into a new
person.
The same holds true for everyone. An old man reliving a
cherished boyhood memory can suddenly glow with youth. The
eect, although temporary, can often be strikingly convi ncing—his
wrinkles soften, his skin looks fresh, his eyes sparkle with life. The
boy is still inside him, yearning to cross the threshold of time. You
can see the powerful regret when the child has to turn back and the
mask of old age wearily returns.
The depth and intensity of such changes is hard to fathom at
times. I was fascinated by a rst-person account given by a woman
parishioner concerning the French priest Père Jean Lamy, who died
in 1931 at the age of seventy-eight. An extremely devout and saintly
man, Père Lamy was giving a rapturous sermon when this woman
saw, uncannily, the complete emergence of a young man from inside
the old:
He stopped and looked upward. His face became translucent,
like a block of alabaster lit from within. Old as he was, I sawhim go young and handsome, like a man of thirty. I saw his
wrinkles disappear. There was no sparkling light about his
head but an inward light which made his face transpar ent,
without dimness, without shadows about either the nose or
the eyes. That lasted ve or six seconds, perhaps more—I
don’t know. He was looking lightly into the air in front of
him. Imperceptibly all became normal again, and he went on
talking as before.
This magical moment, which was seconded by another
eyewitness, falls into a pattern of inner illuminations exhibited by
saints and holy men in all times and traditions. Avoidi ng for the
present the spiritual content of the event, I am struck by how
eortlessly the body’s hard mask can melt with a shift of awareness.
To fully come to terms with the power of awareness, we have to
surrender the idea that its activity is conned to our mental bubble.
Almost every primitive society believes that looking at an object
requires the mind to shoot forth through the eyes. Instead of
explaining vision by saying that light comes in, they say that sight is
going out. Thus a skilled hunter can mesmerize game by stalking it
with his eyes, and a shaman can heal or harm people by the power
of his gaze.
In both cases, the glance is behaving as a carrier wave,
transmitting mental intention out into the world and placing it upon
whatever is being observed. Instead of understand ing visual
perception as a taking in  of reality, this viewpoint, which was shared
by Aristotle and the entire  ancient world, says that perception
confers  reality.  The same holds true for the other senses. Sound goes
out with a power that is more than its physical vibrations, which is
why New Guinea tribesmen can shout down a tree or the trumpet
blasts of the Israelites topple city walls.
Modern people sco at such things, reducing them to the level of
superstitions like the “evil eye.” We feel condent in our knowledge
that light


 a broad formula
with the full range of  vitamins and minerals. Some of the best products I have found over 25 years of research and experimentation
with young people are Douglas Cooper's "Basic Formula" (low dose and excellent for children) and "Super T Formula" (double th e
dose of Basic Formul a, therefore better for adolescents and young adults), also from Douglas Cooper Company; Bronson's
"Vitamin and Mineral Formula for Active Men and Women" and Bronson's "Insurance Formula." "Vitamin 75 Plus;" and
"Formula 2" from Now Natural Foods are also good and less costly.
    Healthy very small children who will swallow pills can take these same products at half the recommended dose. If they won't
swallow pills the pills can be blended into a fruit smoothie or finely crushed and then stirred into appl e sauce. There are also
"Children's Chewable Multi -Vitamins + Iron" (1 -5 years old) from Douglas Cooper that contains no minerals except iron,
Bronson's "Chewable Vitamins" (make sure it is the one for small children, Bronson makes several types of chewabl es) and a
liquid vitamin product from Bronson called Multivitamin Drops for Infants. These will be a little more costly than cutting p ills in
half.
    There is also an extraordinarily high quality multivitamin/mineral formula for children called "Childre n's Formula Life
Extension Mix" from Prolongevity, Ltd. (the Life Extension Foundation), it is in tablet form, and slightly more expensive.
    I hope that my book will be around for several generations. The businesses whose vitamin products I recommend wi ll not likely
exist in twenty years. Even sooner than that the product names and details of the formulations will almost certainly be alter ed. So,
for future readers discovering this book in a library or dusty shelve of a used book store, if I, at my curre nt level of understanding,
were manufacturing a childrens and young adults vitamin formula myself, this is what it would contain. Any commercial
formulation within 25 percent of these figures plus or minus would probably be fine as long as the vitamins in the pills were of
high quality.

Vitamin C  500 mg  B-1 30 mg
Vitamin E  50 iu  B-2 30 mg
Vitamin A  500 iu  B-3 niacinamide  100 mg
Vitamin D  25 iu  B-5 50 mg
Magnesium  100 mg  B-6 30 mg
Calcium  400 mg  B-12 30 mcg
Selenium  10 mcg  Chromium  20 mcg
Manganese  2 mcg  Biotin  30 mg
Zinc 5 mg  Iodine (as kelp)  5 mg
PABA  20 mg  Bioflavinoids  100 mg

Vitamins For An Older Healthy Person
    Someone who is beyond 35 to 40 years of age should still feel good almost all of the time. That is how life should be. But
enjoying well -being does not mean that no dietary supplementation is called for. The onset of middle age is the appropriate time to
begin working on continuing to feel well for as long as possible. Just like a car, if you take very good care of it from the beginning,
it is likely to run smoothly for many years into the future. If on the other hand you drive it hard and fast with a l ot of deferred
maintenance you will probably have to trade it in on a new one after a very few years. Most people in their 70s and older who  are
struggling with many uncomfortable symptoms and low energy lament, 'if I'd only known I was going to live so lo ng I would have
taken better care of myself.' But at that point it is too late for the old donkey; time for a trade in.
    Gerontologists refer to combating the aging process as "squaring the curve." We arrive at the peak of our physical function a t
about  age eighteen. How high that peak level is depends on a person's genetic endowment, the quality of the start they received
through their mother's nutritional reserves, and the quality of their childhood nutrition and life experience. From that peak  our
function begins to drop. The rate of drop is not uniform, but is a cascade where each bit of deterioration creates more deterior ation,
accelerating the rate of deterioration.

Because deterioration starts out so slowly, people usually do not begin to notice there has been any decline until they reach their
late 30s. A few fortunate ones don't notice it until their 40s. A few (usually) dishonest ones claim no losses into their 50s  but they
are almost inevitably lying, either to you or to themselves, or both. T hough it might be wisest to begin combating the aging process
at age 19, practically speaking, no one is going to start spending substantial money on food supplements until they actually notice
significant lost function. For non -athletes this point usually  comes when function has dropped to about 90 percent of what it was in
our youth. If they're lucky what people usually notice with the beginnings of middle age is an increasing inability for their  bodies
to tolerate insults such as a night on the town or a  big meal. Or they may begin to get colds that just won't seem to go away. Or
they may begin coming home after work so tired that they can hardly stay awake and begin falling asleep in their Lazy Boy
recliner in front of the TV even before prime time. If t hey're not so lucky they'll begin suffering the initial twinges of a non -life-
threatening chronic condition like arthritis.
    The thinnest line demonstrates the worst possible life from a purely physical point of view, where a person started out life with
significantly lowered function, lost quite a bit more and then hung on to life for many years without the mercy of death.

    If one can postpone the deterioration of aging, they extend and hopefully square the curve (retard loss of function until lat er and
then have the loss occur more rapidly). Someone whose lifetime function resembled a "square curve"(the thickest, topmost line )
would experience little or no deterioration until the very end and then would lose function precipitously. At this point we do not
know how to eliminate the deterioration but we do know how to slow it down, living longer and feeling better, at least to a p oint
close to the very end.
    Vitamin supplements can actually slow or even to a degree, reverse, the aging process. Howev er, to accomplish that task, they
have to be taken in amounts far greater than so -called minimum daily requirements, using vitamins as though they were drugs, a
therapeutic approach to changing body chemistry profiles and making them resemble a younger bod y. For example, research
gerontologists like Walford reason that if pantothenic acid (vitamin B 5, in fairly substantial (but quite safe) doses can ex tend the
life and improve the function of old rats, there is every indication that it will do a similar jo b on humans. Medical researchers and
research gerontologists have noticed that many other vitamin and vitamin -like substances have similar effects on laboratory
animals.
    Some will object that what helps rats and mice is in no way proven to cause the s ame result on humans. I agree. Proven with full
scientific rigor, no. In fact, at present, the contention is unprovable. Demonstrable as having a high likelihood's of being so, yes!
So likely so as to be almost incontrovertible, yes! But provable to the mo st open -minded, scientific sort –probably not for a long
time. However, the Life Extension Foundation is working hard to find some quantifiable method of gauging the aging process in
humans without waiting for the inarguable indicator, death. Once this is a ccomplished and solidly recognized, probably no rational
person will be able to doubt that human life span can be increased.
    Experiments work far better with short -lived laboratory animals for another reason; we can not control the food and supplement
intakes of humans as we can with caged mice. In fact, there are special types of laboratory mice that have been bred to have
uniformly short life spans, especially to accelerate this kind of research. With mice we can state accurately that compared t o a
control group, feeding such and such a dose of such and such a supplement extended the life -span or functional performance by
such and such a percent.
    A lot of these very same medical gerontologists nourish their own bodies as thoroughly as the laborato ry animals they are
studying, taking broad mixes of food supplements at doses proportional to those that extend the life spans of their research
animals. This approach to using supplementation is at the other end of the scale compared to using supplements to prevent gross
deficiencies. In the life extension approach, vitamins and vitamin -like substances are used as a therapy against the aging process
itself.
    Will it work? Well, some of these human guinea pigs have been on heavy vitamin supplementation for over thirty years (as of
1995) and none seem to be suffering any damage. Will they live longer? It is impossible to say with full scientific rigor? To  know
if life extension works, we would have to first determine "live longer than what?"


.
Heaven is right here, now, at this time... when you find y our balance
point.
Equalizing the Balance Scale
Heaven is a state of mind, not a location, since Spirit is everywhere and
in every thing. Y ou can begin eq ualizing your material and spiritual life by
making a conscious decision to look for the unfolding o f Spirit in
everything and everyone that you encounter. I personally do this  by making
an ef fort  to look upon my world as if I were observing it through  lenses that
filter ou t the form and all of the  material aspects of what I’m seeing, and I
can only view the spiritual ener gy that allows what I’m noticing to exist.
T ry putting on these imaginar y magical lenses and see ho w dif ferent
everything appe ars. The natural world is a pleasant place to  begin this
experiment.
— NA TURE.  Wh en you look  at a tree without these imaginary, form-
filtering lenses, you may see branches, blossoms, leaves, and perhapsmangoes or plums. W ith your enchanting new lenses, the line s that form
tree bou ndaries dissolve, and there’ s an ener gy vibrating so fast that it gives
a whole new per spective of the tree. Y ou see the spaces between the leaves
and noti ce the silence of the now-defunct acorn or mango pit o ut of which
the first  sprout of creation eme r ged, jump-starting the whole process that
eventually became the tree you’re looking at.
Y ou see the continuation of this life-giving process residing deep within
the tree that lets  it sleep in the winter and blossom in the spr ing, on into
infinity (or at least for the du ration of its life). Y ou realize that new
mangoes are producing not only  new fruit, but an infinity of mango trees as
well. Y ou see t his life force i n just one tree, extending bac kward and
forward in a never -ending stream of creation.
Begin looking at all of nature with this new vision—birds, ants, lakes,
mountains, clouds, stars—all of it. Deepen your vision so that you no longer
see only form and boundarie s. Appreciate the miracle that is your
environment... as you do so, you’re getting into balance.
— PEOPLE.  The se new lenses allow you to see everyone in a fresh
perspective. Y ou ’re no longer se eing tall and short, dark and light, male and
female, old and young, beautifu l and homely. Y our lenses blur the lines that
categorize people by cultural or religious dif ferences, and you don’ t see
others as only their attire or physical appearance or the language they speak.
All appe arances dissolve throug h filters in your lenses and your thoughts,
so y ou n ow see the unfolding of the spiritual ener gy in every person you
encounter.
What yo u notice  is pure love vibrating right before your eyes. Y ou see
kindness personified; you see and feel the same vulnerabilities in all others
that you  feel within yourself; you see enormous strands of peaceful,
glimmering ener gy connecting each of us. Y our new outlook in vites you to
playfully imagin e that two peop le created you, and four people created the
two peo ple who  created you, an d eight people created the four people who
created the two people who created you.As we go back a few more gene rations to the time of Abraham Lincoln,
there are 16,000 people you’re  related to who had to come together to
create you! W e can imagine going back to the time of Socrates, and puzzle
over the apparent math we come up with. T rillions of people were needed to
create o ne of us, but trillions o f people haven’ t existed, so s omehow, in
some mathemat ically puzzling way, we’re all related to each o ther. These
are t he k inds of fascinating conn ections that you can begin to observe with
your ima ginary lenses transforming your thoughts. Y ou discover  that there’ s
no one to judge, no one to hate, and no one to harm, because you see clearly
that we’ re relate d. In fact, we’re all one. From here, you can extend your
perspective to include more of life.
— EVENTS.  Where you onc e viewed the co mings and goings of people
as pure happenstance in current time, shaping the events of your  life and the
lives of everyon e else, your new  filtering lenses allow you to see how all of
these things are connected ener getically. Now you see an infinite network of
laser -like ener gi es emanating from the thoughts of everyone, blending the
events in  everyone’ s life in ener getic perfection. Y ou see some people with
very fas t vibrati ons of ener gy m atching up perfectly with the en er gy of the
Source of creation. Y ou see how they attune with the all-creating, all-
knowing Source of life, and how events are perfectly att racted in a
vibrational match.
Y ou also  see what appear to be accidents, tragedies, and horrors,  and how
they, to o, are vibrational matches that collide in what you’ve called
“mistakes,” but are really the re sult of two or more ener gies meeting in a
lar ger pi cture that you couldn’ t previously see. Y ou witness the connection
between the expectations of in dividuals and what they attract into their
lives. W ith these amazing le nses, you note that all even ts and all
“accidental” encounters are really incredibly compatible vibrational
matches, rather than randomly occurring situations. W ith this awareness,
you’re attaining a level of balance between Spirit and form.
How Life Looks When You Have a Balance Between
Spirit and FormHere’ s what I’ve found as a result of being able to keep th ese twin
aspects of life in balance. I now see spiritual ener gy in everyone I
encounter. Whe n I’m tempted to judge anyone, I remind myself to view
them thr ough m y special lenses. When I can do so, all negativ e judgment
dissolves. I feel more peaceful k nowing that I’m not just this body that I’m
destined to discard. I also feel the life-giving Spirit within me on a daily
basis, an d it’ s exhilarating! I now know that I’m an infinite spi ritual being
and that I share this originating ener gy with everyone on this pla net, as well
as everyone who’ s ever lived here or will live here in the future.
Being more balanced spiritually and physically gives me the opportunity
to be in a contin ual state of gratitude and awe. I see miracles everywhere. I
take my self less  seriously. I feel  intimately connected to others. I have less
stress in my life. I feel less pressured to fit in, or to accomplish  more. And
the irony  is that I perform at a h igher level because Spirit flows unimpeded
through me. There’ s a significan t change in your life when you correct the
imbalance betw een your physical and spiritual being. The title of this
chapter is taken from a well-kn own poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Here is a portion of the poem:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush are with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries...
When Moses approached a b urning bush, he took of f his shoes and
communed with  God. Y ou can  shift your focus and see with new eyes
encouraged by your thoughts. When you do, you’ll see that the p oet is right:
Earth’ s crammed with heaven.  If  you don’ t believe it and practice it, then
you’ll hopefully enjoy sitting around plucking blackberries.Sogyal R inpoche observed that “two people have been living i n you all
of your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating;
the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have
only rar ely heard or attended to....” I’m inviting you to re store some
balance by looking for Heaven  everywhere and listening and attending to
that hidd en spiritual being that i s within you at all times, begging to you to
pay it more heed.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Af fectionately called the “fat her of motivation” by his fa ns, DR.
W A YNE W. DYER  was an internationally renowned author, speaker, and
pioneer in the field of self-de velopment. Over the four decades of his
career, he wrote more than 40 books (21 of which became New Y ork T imes
bestsellers), crea ted numerous audio programs and videos, and appeared on
thousands of television and radio shows. His books Manifest Y our Destiny,
W isdom of the Ages, Ther e’ s a Spiritual Solution to Every Pr obl em,  and the
New Y ork T imes  bestsellers 10 Secr e ts for Success and Inner Peace, The
Power of Intention, Inspiration, Change Y our Thoughts—Change Y our Life


 readily.
It is  great news if you do exper ience a detoxification, as it shows your
health is  improving, and you s hould clearly feel the benefits. Generally,
cleansing reactions are mild and last from several hours to one or two days.
T ypical detoxification symptoms may include:•  Increased demand for water
•  Loss of appetite
•  Bad taste in the mouth
•  Increased moodiness
•  Short-term headache
•   Increa sed secretions of mucu s from the lungs by people wi th
asthma
•  Head cold with runny nose, especially during physical exercise
•  Diarrhea
An i ntegral part of detoxificatio n is a reduced appetite for food, so it’ s
important to only eat when hungry. T o help reduce the in tensity and
duration of any cleansing reactions, drink warm water regularly throughout
the day and continue with reduced breathing exercises.
In the next section we will begin the first step to improving you r BOL T
score: nasal breathing. W e will  look at the functions of the n ose, how to
decongest it, and learn what nas al breathing of fers for health, sp orts... and
in the bedroom.CHAPTER 3
N o s e s  A r e  f o r  B r e a t h i n g,
M o u t h s  A r e  f o r  E a t i n g
I n order to addre ss breathing volume and increase BOL T score, the first
step is to go back to basics and learn to breathe through the nose both day
and nigh t. As any child is aware, our nose is made for breathing, the mouth
for eating. Y ou were born breathing through your nose, and it has been our
primary conduit for breathing for hundreds of thousands of years.
It was only when  our ancient ancestors were in dangerous situations that
they reverted to mouth breath ing to take in greater volume s of air in
preparation for intense physical activity.
It i s for this reason that mouth breathing is synonymous with
emer gency, activating the same fight-or -flight response that our ancestors
experienced but these days usually without the accompanying physical
exercise to allow our operatin g systems to revert to normal. From the
perspective of breathing physio logy, mouth breathing activates use of the
upper chest, while nasal breathing results in abdominal breathing. Y ou can
verify the dif ference by sitting in front of a mirror and placing one hand on
your che st and one hand above your navel. Once settled, take a moderate-
size brea th in through your mouth and note the movements of your hands.
Next, co mpare your breathing movements to a similar size brea th drawn in
through your nose.
Upper -chest breathing is more  likely to be associated with a stress
response, while nasal breathing helps ensure regular, calm, stead y breathing
using th e diaphragm. The common misconception of taking a “deep” breath
is to puf f out the chest and raise  the shoulders, but this is neither deep nor
beneficial to oxygenating the body. T o help deal with stress, the instructionto take a deep  breath is actually correct, but a truly deep breath is
abdominal, gentle and quiet; the exact opposite of the big breaths usually
taken in an attempt to calm down.
Mouth b reathing activates the upper chest, involves lar ger breaths, and
may cau se reduced oxygen uptake in the arterial blood. It is no wonder that
habitual mouth breathers ofte n suf fer from poor ener gy, a lack of
concentration, and moodiness. W e all know the stereotype of  the mouth
breather, portrayed by moviema kers from Hollywood to Bollywood as an
idiot. But in ca se you think I am being unduly critical, I w as a mouth
breather for more than twenty years, so I know all too well the ef fects.
Furthermore, every time I look i n the mirror I see the results fro m my years
of mouth breathing. Dentists and orthodontists have also documented these
profound facial changes as a r esult of habitual mouth breathing: narrow
jaws, cr ooked teeth, sunken cheekbones, and smaller nasal cavities. While
orthodontic trea tment and the wearing of braces are epide mic among
modern-day teenagers, it was normal for our ancestors to have wide faces
with perfectly shaped teeth.
In th e 19 30s, a dentist by the name of Dr. W eston Price investigated the
cause o f facial changes and crooked teeth in various countries and
civilizations. On e of his observations while visiting Gaelic people living on
the Heb ridean islands of f the c oast of Scotland was that children became
mouth breathers after parents switched from their natural diet of seafood
and oatm eal to the modernized  diet of “angel food cake, white bread and
many white flour commodities, marmalade, canned vegetables, sweetened
fruit juices, jams, and confections.”
Dr. Price’ s discovery illustrate s the link between modern diet and
chronic hyperventilation. Processed foods are mucus and acid forming.
Throughout evolution, our diet consisted of 95 percent alkaline-forming and
5 percent acid-forming foods. N owadays the reverse is tru e: Our diet  is 95
percent acid- and 5 percent alkaline-forming foods. Acid-forming foods—
such as process ed products, dairy, meat, bread, sugar, cof fee, and tea—
stimulate breath ing. A natural response to experiencing a greater demand to
breathe is to open the mouth to t ake in more air. Over time, the b rain adjusts
to this lar ger intake of air, and overbreathing becomes a habit.
On t he other han d, alkaline-forming foods such as fruit and veg etables,
along with plain water, are easy for the body to process; they are“breathing-friendly” foods. But while these types of foods are highly
beneficial, I’m not saying you need to become a vegetarian. Protein is an
essential part of a healthy diet, and meat provides a natural, n utrient-rich
source. T he mos t important change is to get rid of processed foods in your
diet. They may take up the most space in our supermarkets, b ut they are
ef fectively suitable food for no one.
The nose is one of the most imp ortant or gans in the human body. In his
nineteenth-century travels in North America, the artist Geor ge Catlin
noticed that the Native Americ an mothers paid a lot of attention to their
infants’ breathin g. If at any time the baby opened its mouth to breathe, the
mother would gently press the baby’ s lips together to ensure continued
nasal bre athing. Catlin also noted that the rate of sickness and ill ness among
the native Indian people was very low in comparison with European
settlers. In his a ptly titled 1882 book Shut Y ou r Mouth  and Save Y our  Life,
Catlin w rote, “W hen I have see n a poor Indian woman in the wilderness,
lowering her infant from the bre ast, and pressing its lips togeth er as it falls
asleep. .. I have said to myself, ‘Glorious education! Suc h a mother
deserves to be the nurse of Em perors.’” In comparison, Catli n described
how the babies of the European settlers slept with their m ouths open,
gasping for breath in stuf fy, hot, and unventilated rooms.
Nasal b reathing is often an integral part of an animal’ s survival or
hunting techniques. The cheet ah, which is considered the fastest land
animal on earth, is capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 miles per hour in
just 3 seconds. Most high-performance cars cannot accelerate so quickly,
with the notable exception of the Bugatti V eyron, which will set you back a
million dollars to experience the natural acceleration of a cheetah. W ith
such incredible ef ficiency and speed, it doesn’ t take long for the cheetah to
catch u p with its prey, but maintaining nasal breathing is  especially
advantageous during the chase, ensuring that its victim is the first to run out
of air.
The dog is pr obably the best-known example of an animal that
periodically breathes through its mouth—dogs can commonly be seen
panting on a hot  day or after a long walk to help cool themselve s down. But
at all other times a dog will breathe through its nose, only using its mouth
for e ating, drinking, and barking. Nature has ensured that the vast majority
of land mammals breathe through their noses by positioning the windpipeso that the back of the nose leads directly to the lungs. In other words, it is
not easy for most animals to breathe through their mouths.
The same is tr ue for humans at birth, but after a few months the
windpipe drops down to just bel ow the back of the tongue in or der to allow
the b aby to brea the through both its mouth and nose. Charles Darwin was
puzzled by this adaptation in humans: how, unlike most animals, the
openings for carrying food to t he stomach and air to


ancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here isthat rancidity in vegetable oil is virtually unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on theother hand, smells “off.” Eating rancid oil is a sure-fire way to accelerate aging,invite degenerative conditions in general, and enhance the likelihood of cancer. I
recommend that you use only high-quality virgin olive oil, the only generally-
available fat that is largely monosaturated. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983)
When you buy vegetable oil, even olive oil, get small bottles so you use them
up before the oil has much time being exposed to air (as you use the oil air fills thebottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately uponopening it, transfer the oil to pint jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually allair, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now-opened, in-use smallbottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oilwith oxygen from the air and this chemical reaction is accelerated at warmertemperatures and slowed greatly at cold ones.
Chemical reactions typically double in speed with every 10 degrees C.
increase in temperature. So oil goes rancid about six times faster at normal roomtemperature than it does in the fridge. If you’ll think about the implications of thisdata you’ll see there are two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food iscoated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming relativelyindigestible and productive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degreesCentigrade and normal room temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goesrancid 2 to the 13th power faster in the frying pan, or about 8,200 times faster.Heating oil for only ten minutes in a hot skillet induces as much rancidity as about6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at room temperature. Think about thatthe next time you’re tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant wherethe hot fat in the deep fryer has been reacting with oxygen all day, or even forseveral days.
Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally
northern European on your bread, you are far better off to use butter, notmargarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally dip their bread in high-quality extra-virgin olive oil that smells and tastes like olives. Its delicious, why nottry it. But best yet, put low-sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a tastefor dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melted over steamed vegetables.
This way only small quantities are needed and the fat goes on something that is
otherwise very easy to digest so its presence will not produce as many toxins inthe digestive tract.
Milk, Meat, And Other Protein Foods
Speaking of butter, how about milk? The dairy lobby is very powerful in North
America. Its political clout and campaign contributions have the governments ofboth the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand(literally), providing the dairy industry with price supports. Because of these pricesupports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it does in the UnitedStates. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensednutritionists constantly bombard us with “drink milk” and “cheese is good for you”propaganda.
And people naturally like dairy foods. They taste good and are fat-rich with a
high satiety value. Dairy makes you feel full for a long time. Dairy is also high inprotein; protein is hard to digest and this too keeps one feeling full for a long time.But many people, especially those from cultures who traditionally (genetically)didn’t have dairy cows, particularly Africans, Asians and Jews, just do notproduce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belongingto these groups can digest goats milk. Some can’t digest any kind except humanbreast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer.Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it putrefies in thedigestive tract, with all the bad consequences previously described.
But no one, absolutely no one can fully digest pasteurized cows milk, which is
what most people use because they have been made to fear cow-transmitteddiseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by healthauthorities. I suspect drinking pasteurized milk or eating cheese made frompasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactionsto milk. Yet many states do not allow unpasteurized dairy to be sold, even
privately between neighbors. To explain all this, I first have to explain a bit more
about protein digestion in general and then talk about allergies and how they canbe created: and if you’ve read this book carefully and remember everythingyou’ve read, please forgive me; I am going to repeat a few things said in aprevious chapter about digestion in general..
Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricate chains whose individual links
are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal orplant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number ofdifferent proteins but all are composed of the same few dozen amino acidshooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are highlycomplex organic molecules too. The human body custom-assembles all itsproteins from amino acids derived from digesting protein foods, and can alsomanufacture small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but thereare eight amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essentialamino acids. Essential amino acids must be contained in the food we eat..
Few proteins are water soluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus
must first break them down into their water-soluble components, amino acids, sothese can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteinsthe body uses. The body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it usesenzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex molecule thatlatches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then theenzyme finds yet another protein molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusablemany many times.
Enzymes that digest proteins are effective only in the very acid environment of
the stomach, are manufactured by the pancreas and are released when proteinfoods are present. The stomach then releases hydrochloric acid and churns awaylike a washing machine, mixing the enzymes and the acid with the proteins untileverything has digested.
So far so good. That’s how its supposed to be. But. Dr. Henry Bieler, who
wrote Food Is Your Best Medicine,  came up with the finest metaphor I know of
to explain how protein digestion goes wrong. He compared all proteins to thewhite of an egg (which is actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, thelong chains of albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. However,cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller. What hashappened is that the protein chains have shriveled and literally tied themselves intoknots. Once this happens, pancreatic enzymes no longer fit and cannot separateall the amino acids. Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in thepresence of acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not digest completely. Partbecomes water soluble; part does not.
But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of consumption in
the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our airless, warm intestines. Some ofthese live on protein. In the process of consuming undigested proteins, theyrelease highly toxic substances. They poison us.
What is true of the white of an egg is also true of flesh foods and dairy. Raw
meat and raw fish are actually easily digestible foods and if not wrongly combinedwill not produce toxemia in a person that still has a strong pancreas. However,eating raw meat and fish can be a dicey proposition, both for reasons of culturalsensibility (people think it is disgusting) and because there may be living parasitesin uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill people. It has been arguedthat a healthy stomach containing its proper degree of acidity provides animpenetrable barrier to parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthythese days? Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilizedsensibilities, but are a poor food.
In my household we have no moral objection to eating meat. We do have an
ethical objection in that meat eating does not contribute to our health. But still, wedo eat it. A few times a year, for traditional celebrations we may invite thechildren over and cook a turkey. A few times for Thanksgiving when the children
were going through their holier-than-thou vegetarian stage, I purchased the
largest, thickest porterhouse steak I could find at the natural meat store and ate itmedium-rare, with relish. It was delicious. It made me feel full for hours and hoursand hours. I stayed flat on the couch and groggily worked on digesting it allevening. After that I’d had enough of meat to last for six months.
When milk is pasteurized, the proteins in it are also altered in structure. Not so
severely as egg white is altered by cooking because pasteurization happens at alower temperature. But altered none the less. And made less digestible.Pasteurizing also makes milk calcium far less assimilable. That’s ironic because somany people are drinking milk because they


, John Dewey's My Pedagogic Creed, in
which he states:
The school is primarily a social in stitution. Education being a social
process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all
those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in
bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and
to use his own powers for social ends.
Quoted in Mayer, Frederick, ed., Foundations of Contemporary Education
(New Haven: College & University Press, 1966), 139.
12. Dewey contended that the public school s must "take an active part in
determining the social order of the future... according as the teachers align
themselves with the newer forces making for social control of economic
forces." Quoted in Allen, Gary, "Hands off our Children!," American
Opinion, XVIII, No. 9 (October, 1975), 3.
13. Mort, Paul R., and William S. Vincent, Introduction to American
Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954), 43. 20 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
that learning occurred only through experience,
that the stimulus-response mechanism was basic to
learning, and that teachers were not instructors, but
designers of learning experiences.14 At the Dewey
School in Chicago, and later at Teachers College of
Columbia University, Dewey was able to
implement and promote the interchangeability of
psychology and education, successfully enough to
become the leading figure  in American education.
Yet Dewey, the "Father of American Education,"
was only one of the practitioners of Wundt's revised
psychology who critically transformed American
education and, consequently, American life.
14.   Ibid., 44, and Wirth, op. cit., 78-80.  3. Positioning
WHILE G. Stanley Hall had been Wundt's
first American student, his compatriot James Mc-Keen
Cattell had the distinction of being Wundt's first
assistant and, later, the most effective publicist and
promoter of the revised psychology.
Cattell was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania, and
received his bachelor's degree from Lafayette College
(where his father was president) in 1880. He then spent
a short period of time in Germany, where he met Wundt
and saw his laboratory. Returning to Germany in 1883,
Cattell went to Leipzig and told Wundt that he was
going to be his assistant. Wundt acceded and Cattell
spent the next three years experimenting in Wundt's lab,
receiving his Ph.D. from him in 1886. Cattell's primary
interests lay in mental testing and in individual differ-
ences in ability.1
1. Murphy and Kovach, op. cit., 169-72, and Schultz, op. cit., 117-
22.
21 22 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
One series of experiments Cattell performed
while at Leipzig examined the manner in which a
person sees the words he is  reading. Te sting adults
who knew how to read, Cattell found they could
recognize words without having to sound out the
letters. From this, he r easoned that words are not
read by compounding the letters, but are perceived
as "total word pictures." He  determined that little is
gained by teaching the child his sounds and letters
as the first step to being able to read. Since they
could recognize words very rapidly, the way to
teach children how to read would be to show them
words, and tell them what the words were. This
breakthrough of Cattell's le d to the adoption of a
sight-reading method in many schools and school
systems throughout the United States. Its failure to
produce an expected increase in literacy is hardly
attributable to Cattell's perception or findings,
which have been validated and enlarged upon in our
time with superb results by Glenn Doman, of The
Institutes for the Achiev ement of Human Potential.2
Rather, Cattell's results we re subsequently applied
by teachers trained in the new psychology, who
managed to convert even
2. For more information on Doman's work, see his books: What To Do
About Your Brain Injured Child, Doubleday, 1974, How to Teach Your Baby
to Read, Doubleday, 1975 (over one million copies sold), and Teach Your
Baby Math, Simon and Schuster, 1979.  Positioning  23
this otherwise brilliant observation into a national
crisis.
Returning to the United States, Cattell lectured at
Bryn Mawr and at the University of Pennsylvania for a
year. In 1887 (the same year in which Hall published
his Aspects of German Culture), he left the country
again to lecture at Cambridge, where he met and was
deeply impressed by Charles Darwin's cousin, the
English psychologist Francis Galton. Galton's theories
held that "a man's natural abilities are derived by
inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are
the form and physical features of the whole organic
world."3 Cattell quickly absorbed Galton's approach to
eugenics, selective breeding, and the measurement of
intelligence. Cattell was later to become the American
leader in psychological testing, and in 1894 would
administer the first battery of psychological tests ever
given to a large group of people, testing the freshman
and senior classes at Columbia University.
Returning from Cambridge, Cattell became professor
of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania—the
first professor of the revised subject anywhere in the
world (Wundt's title was in philosophy). At
Pennsylvania, he established one of the first
psychological  laboratories  in the  country,
3.   Pintner, op. cit., 14. 24 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
patterning it after Wundt's Leipzig model. Leaving
Pennsylvania in 1891, Cattell joined the faculty of
Columbia University as pr ofessor of psychology and
head of Columbia's new psychology department, a
critical position for the union of psychology and
education.
At Columbia, Cattell shone as an organizer and
publicist. To promote the new "science" of experi-
mental psychology Cattell created publications which
would carry the new subject to educators and scientists
across the country. First he began a new journal, in
1894, called The Psychological Review. Then he
purchased from Alexander Graham Bell the weekly
publication Science, which later became the official
journal of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. In 1900 he began Popular
Science Monthly, continuing to publish it after 1915 as
Scientific Monthly; that same year he began yet another
publication, the weekly School and Society.4 He also
began a series of well-known reference works:
American Men of Science, Leaders in Education, and
The Directory of American Scholars; with publications
such as these, he positioned the revised psychology
within the mainstream of American thinking, the
proponents of this new field taking their places
alongside  our  leading  scientists, educators, and
4.   Schultz, op. cit., 119. Positioning  25
scholars in the pages of these reference books.
During his twenty-five years at Columbia, Cattell
supervised 344 successful doctoral candidates in
psychology. In 1895 he was elected president of the
American Psychological Association, and in 1900 he
became the first psychologi st elected to the National
Academy of Sciences. Although he never wrote a
textbook, and was the author of only a few papers in his
field, he publicized experi mental psychology broadly,
organized his colleagues, and promoted their
accomplishments, enabling them to consolidate their
positions in the departments of philosophy (and, later,
psychology) at major universities across the country.5
A few of those colleagues deserve passing mention
here as they directly influenced the fusion of
experimental psychology a nd American education.
James Mark Baldwin, who studied with Wundt, became
a professor of psychology at Princeton in 1893, and in
1903 joined the psychology department at Johns
Hopkins University. Baldwin was to become one of the
leaders of American experimental psychology and
editor of Cattell's Psychological Review. Andrew C.
Armstrong, professor of psychology at Wesleyan
University, in building up Wesleyan's faculty in the
revised subject, hired (in 1896) his own former student,
"the ardent young
5.   Boring, op. cit., 532-40.  26 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
experimentalist, Charles Judd, fresh from Germany
with a Leipzig doctorate from Wundt."6 Judd later left
Wesleyan to become, succes sively, instructor in
psychology at New York University's School of
Pedagogy, professor of psychology and pedagogy at the
University of Cincinnati, director of the psychological
laboratory and psychology instructor at Yale, and
finally, in 1909, director of the School of Education at
the University of Chicago.7
James Earl Russell, a student of Wundt's who
received his doctorate from Leipzig in 1894, came to


 I could be a kook of some sort.”
She looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’ t know what you mean by lying,”
she replied. “Please explain.”Suddenly I was on the receiving end of my own clever salvo. “L ying, you
know, not telling the truth,” I responded.
“But the truth is all there is,” she answered quickly. “How is it possible
not to be truthful?”
“Well, if I were trying to hurt you, and as a way of deceiving you I said I
was an Earthling here to learn about you, when I was actually intent on
harming you, that would be lying,” I responded.
“Well,” she replied, “you now have the first dif ference that you can
record for your report. On Uranus, people cannot do that. W e are not
equipped for, as you say, lying. Everything that everyone says is the way it
is. Here on Uranus we can only operate from what is real. Why would
anyone ever even want to lie? W ouldn’ t that make talking with each other
impossible?” she asked, looking perplexed.
“But people on Earth don’ t always lie,” I said. “Only sometimes when it
is necessary or convenient.”
“If people lie to each other sometimes, how do you know when they’re
lying and when they’re telling the truth? Do they announce beforehand
which is a lie and which is truth so that they can communicate with each
other?” she asked quite seriously.
“It would break down the purpose of lying if one announced it
beforehand,” I said.
“Well then, I take it that people don’ t communicate truthfully on your
planet. I wonder how that’ s possible,” she said.
“Let’ s move to another area,” I suggested.
“Are you lying or telling the truth?” she wanted to know in all
seriousness.
“I’ll give you my pledge,” I answered. “I won’ t lie to you ever.”
“Welcome to Uranus,” she said. “But could you please tell me what you
mean by a pledge  and also by ever.”
“Well, a pledge is a promise to tell the truth,” I of fered.
“So now I understand why we have no such word here. And ever? ”
“When I said I won’ t lie to you ever, I meant from now on. As long as we
know each other. Forever I will never lie.”
She seemed even more bewildered. “This idea of ever and forever is new
to me. All I know about is now, and it’ s enough for me to know that you
will not lie to me now. I can’ t imagine how you can know what you will do,
as you say, forever. But if that’ s how you feel now, it sounds fine to me.Please know, however, that if you change your mind before forever arrives,
it is also fine with me.”
“But forever never arrives,” I protested. “It is forever.”
“So if it never arrives, we’re both talking about the same thing, the now. I
guess we needn’ t discuss it any further,” she concluded.
I was becoming exhausted because of my inability to phrase my thoughts
and questions to accommodate her strangely sensible perceptual mentality. I
was becoming bogged down in my own confusing questions and answers.
She showed no exasperation, only mild befuddlement at my inconsistency.
Her logic was inescapable, but surely they couldn’ t have built an entire
planet so identical to Earth and still be so reality-based that she didn’ t
understand simple concepts like lying, forever, pledge, danger, and harm.
Of course, if they didn’ t exist for her, could she understand them? But wait,
I was capable of understanding concepts that didn’ t exist for me. Perhaps
Uranus people were inferior after all. I certainly knew about war, and I had
never been in one. And I knew about God without unquestionable evidence.
I made a note to ask about these things at a later time. For now, I wanted to
get back to the business at hand, without becoming stalled in a maze of
petty discussions about obvious language barriers. (Or were they my limited
thinking barriers?  I was beginning to consider this a genuine possibility.)
“Just what is an anxiety attack?” I asked her out of the blue.
“Anxiety sweeps over us quite regularly. It attacks in substantial amounts
when the winds are right. W e broadcast the likelihood of anxiety attacking,
and in what amounts, as a public service,” she stated matter -of-factly.
“But what is it?” I asked incredulously.
“Anxiety travels in the air in the shape of tiny microscopic particles
shaped as little As, Ns, and Xs, hence it derives its name, anxiety. These
anxiety particles were discovered by a scientist working with a powerful
microscope. His name was Nopain, and therefore the most famous antidote
for warding of f anxiety attacks was named after the discoverer.”
“But what happens if the anxiety attacks and you are without your
antidote, as you put it?” I asked.
“Anxiety can take many dif ferent forms. If it attacks in lar ge quantities
and you are without your medicine it can actually break down your nerves
into smaller pieces, causing what we call an N.B.D., or nervous breakdown.
Generally, though, it attacks in milder proportions and the ef fects can vary
from a general feeling of uneasiness, to nervousness, fear, paranoia,stammering, increased blood pressure, tension, and so on. Since the ef fects
of an attack can be devastating, all newscasts announce impending anxiety
attacks, so that people can take the proper precautions. Does this answer
your question?” she asked with obvious concern.
“Yes, yes, it does, but it creates a thousand more.” My mind was racing
with thoughts. I’d never expected such an explanation. Anxiety actually
attacked people on Uranus, and she couldn’ t be lying because she didn’ t
even know how to do it. A strange, strange land indeed! “How often does it
attack?” I asked.
“It’s very dif ficult to predict. W e can never make prognostications for
more than a few days. It tends to almost sneak up on us. Therefore we have
to be ready at all times. W e can go for months without any attacks and then
have three or four in one week,” she responded.
I was beginning to see that this was a really singular phenomenon. I
made a two-part decision on the spot. First, I would ask Eykis for another
meeting as soon as possible, and if she were willing, I would then invite her
to visit Earth, so she could see how anxiety was produced in another reality.
But I would have to break that to her gently.
Before I could launch into the hundreds of questions swirling around in
my mind, she turned the tables on me. “Don’ t they have anxiety attacks on
Earth? Y ou seem so flustered by my description.”
“Yes, we do have anxiety attacks,” I attempted to explain, “but anxiety
doesn’ t attack exactly. In fact there is no such thing as anxiety per se.
People just have anxiety attacks without anxiety actually attacking.”
Now she was definitely puzzled. Y et she did not judge me, or appear to
be agitated. “W ell,” she continued, “do they have antidotes for this
mysterious anxiety that doesn’ t attack?”
“Yes,” I replied, “we have tranquilizers, sedatives, therapy, and many
drugs to cure our anxiety attacks.”
“You keep saying that the anxiety doesn’ t attack, yet you call them
anxiety attacks.”
“Correct,” I countered, almost ashamed to say anything else.
“So how do you know when you are being attacked by anxiety, if by your
own admission it doesn’ t attack?”
“We feel an anxiety attack coming on,” I responded.
“From where? How? What are your clues?”
“We start feeling nervous, tense, and out of sorts,” I of fered.“But these are the results of an anxiety attack, not the cause,” she ar gued.
“How can you feel tense when you don’ t have anxiety to attack you?”
“As I said, we feel it coming on.”
“From where?” she asked in an exasperated tone.
“From within, I guess,” I answered hastily. I was not at all certain of my
logic by this time.
“But if it comes from within, it isn’ t an anxiety attack at all, but is simply
anxious thinking. Y ou wouldn’ t need medicine for this. Instead you’d need
to change your thinking, wouldn’ t you?” she asked. “It seems so simple.
What a blessing it would be never to have anxiety attacking us. T ension,
fear, anxiety, and the like would all be gone if it didn’ t attack. Why do you
choose anxiety on Earth if there is none to attack in the first place?” she
asked, this time pausing long enough for me to answer.
I couldn’ t give her an intelligent reply. In fact, I had the distinct feeling
that I had yet to give her any answer that could be termed intelligent. “Can
we pick up this conversation on anxiety attacks at another time? Can we
talk tomorrow, or is tomorrow a concept that doesn’ t exist for you, since
you are only here now?” I asked, not wanting to be sarcastic, but still
feeling a bit shaken by her anxiety attack repartee.
“


oohm range. The input impedance of the
recording instrument (Grass Polygraph direct current
recorder) is 10 megohms.
Stability of the electrodes was tested repea ted!~· and
found entirely satisfactory (Fig. VI: 14).
After primary amplification of the input signal, the
outgoing signal was fed back into parallel-coupled,
secondary amplifiers. This arrangement permitted
separate treatment of amplification and filtering of
individual tracings, which appeared necessary because
the acrualtissue potential profiles could not be predict
ed.
In instances when the tissues were fibrotic or o'hcr
wi:se hard, salt bridges of higher mechanical stability
than the Teflon tubes were used. Biopsy needles, 1.2
60 Electric potentials the electrode traversed the left and right pleurae. Two posi
cive tissue potenlials are also seen upon 1raversing the media·
stinum. Small regular "spikes" represent a superimposed
electrocardiogram. These are of lower amplitude in the chest
wall than in the lungs.
mm thick, were then coated with double Teflon layers
on their inside and outside surfaces in the same way as
the Teflon coating on the electrode surfaces. Salt
bridges within the.se needles have shown excellent me
chanical stability but preclude use of these needles for
combined cytologic sampling and studies of electrical
potential. On the other hand, several tracings of elec
tric potential can be made during ins-ertion and with
d.rawal of the instrument.
2. Electric potentials of pleura and lung
The preliminary studies of electric potential of lung
revealed certain characteristics of the profile of electric
potentials of two specific tissues. These profiles could
be identified as related to specific structures by means
of high speed cineradiography.
The electric potential of pleura and lung, studied in
22 dogs, appeared as follows. Tr•cings were made with
the polarizable stainless steel electrodes and with the
nonpolarizable Ag-AgCI electrodes provided with a
salt bridge in a glass capillary. In Fig. VI: 15, a frontal view is seen of the thorax of
a dog with the exploring, Teflon-coated, polarizable,
stainless steel electrode inserted through the anterior
and superior part of botb lungs. The noninsulated tip
of the electrode is situated in tbe soft tissues of tbe
right thoracic wall. The grounded reference electrode
is positioned in the subcutis of the left side of the
tborax but is not seen in the radiograph. The exploring
electrode was pulled as evenly as possible out of the
chest as electric potential was traced continuously.
A series of positive fluctuations of potential differ
ences appeared in the chest wall or the pleura. The
section of tracing corresponding tO lung shows a rela
tively even level of potential. A superimposed electro
cardiogram shows very small fluctuations in the chest
wall compared witb tbe lung, where the amplitudes
also increased as the tip of the electrode moved toward
the heart.
The potentials of chest wall-pleura were furtber
investigated. When the electrode WJS passed through
tbe pleura in a dog, positive fluctuations of potential
are seen in Fig. VI: 16 before (upper tracing) and after
(lower tracing) the introduction of some air into tbe
pleural space. When the electrode was introduced and
removed, about20 mV positive deflection s of potential
were seen at the site of contact bctwee.n pleura and
chest wall. After some air was put into the pleural
space, the electrode was introduced and pulled out,
but slowly. This tracing!bows a large positive deflec
tion of potential before tbe tip of the electrode reached
the air-filled pleural space. When the retracted tip
reached the air in tbe pleura, rapid oscillations oc
curred due to the open circuit. At the touch of tbe
visceral pleura these oscillations disappeared. The po
tential in the lung was approximately the same as
observed previously in the chest wall. Positive deflec
tions of potential of the type that occur on traversing
tbe parietal pleura were not observed from the visceral
pleura in dog or man.
7
• 0. Lung
0
10
Rtsp
Fig. VI: 17. Electrical potentials at the pleura. upon four in·
scrtioos and retractions of a Ag-AgCI<Iectrode in a thin
glass capillary with KCI agar salt bridge. Grounded r<f<n:ncc
electrode of tht same construction was positiontd in the sub
cutis of the eh<st wall. Resp = pneumotaehygraphic r<eord·
ing of respiration. The exploring electrode w11s inserted from cMtt
I 10mV
parietal
pleura lung
I uno chest
parietal
p~ra
Fig. VI: 16. Demonstration of electric pot<ntial of pl<ura in
dog. As the exploring electrode passed b<twecn the chest
wall and lung, aboutlO mY of potential difT<rcne< was re·
corded, correspooding to the pleura (upper t.racing). Wh<n
air was present in th< pleural spa« (low<r tracing), the same
manoouvre shows that the potential difT<r<nce is related to
the parietal pleun. As the electrode is inserted or withdrawn
through che air·fillcd pleural space, an open circuit is ere·
atcd, causing rapid oscillations. Stainless steel electrodes.
In Fig. VI: 17 a control study is shown of tbe elec
tric potential of pleura and lung in the dog, using tbe
same recording equipment and the nonpolarizing
Ag-AgCl electrodes inserted into glass cnpillarics filled
with KCl-agar. The grounded reference electrode was
positioned in the subcutis of the rillht chest wall. The
exploring electrode was inserted from the opened ab
domina.! cavity through tbe diaphragm into tbe lung
close to the costopbrenic sulcus. The glass capillary
could then be mo,·ed repeatedly from the lung to the
pkurae and chest wall. As in previous studies, positive
deflection s of potential were obtained at the contact
with the inner surface of the chest wall. These deflec
tions, corresponding to the parietal pleura, have a
magnitude of about 20 m V in relation to the pulmo-
1
Ch
the abdominal cnitv through the diaphiUffi into th<lung.
and th<n mo,·ed from the lung to th• chest wall (Ch) and
back. Each mo\·ement to and from the pari<l21 pl<ura caused
two d<nection s of potential. These pleural pot<ntials were
us<d in the studi<S of tissue potential profiles of pulmonary
masses to localize the tip of the exploring cl<etrode.
Electric potentials 61 nary parenchyma. The potential deflections of the
pleura were present in all the twentytwo dogs and are
also detectab le in man (see Fig. VI: 21).
After repeated needlings in the same place, the tis
sue profile of electric potential of the lung sometimes
varies slightly, which may result from small haemor
rhages in the track of the electrode. The superim
posed electrocardiogram usually shows a lower ampli
tude in the chest wall than in the pulmonary parenchy
ma.
Discussion. Agoston.i (I) published in 1972 an exten
sive physiologic review of the pleura, including 268
references. From this source and further search of
more recent literature, it appears that pleural electro
physiology has not been a subject of previous study.
No attempts have been made here to evaluate the
functional significance of the positive potential of the
pleura. It seems possible, however, that the mecha
nism for in vivo development of membranes and organ
capsules which is proposed in Chapter XII is also valid
for the development of the fibrous pleural membranes.
The distinct.ive electrical changes observed upon
inserting and retracting an electrode through the chest
wall and the lung have become a helpful landmark for
topographic localization of the electrodes during trac
ing of electric potentials of normal and pathological
lungs.
The thickness of an air layer in the pleura can easily
be measured directly with an exploring needle elec
trode. The ele<:trode is slowly pulled out from the
lung. When an open circuit with high frequency dis
turbances is observed, the external position of the
needle in relation to the skin is noted. After further
retraction of the needle, the circuit will close when the
parietal pleura is reached. Assuming the needle was
approximately perpendicular to the pleural surface,
the distance the needle was pulled across the open
circuit indicate$ the


 treatment. The crucial problem is, however, that
it will become difficult to decide whether a slight
decrease of a tumour treated with direct current re
flects a "safe sequestration" or only partial destruction
of tumour tissue, possibly to be followed by later
regrowth of the tumour.
Another remarkab le finding also developed in pa
tient no. 4. Several of the multiple small nodules in the
posterior basal segment of the lower lobe (Fig.
XVII: 36a) clearly diminished in size after the treat
ments, as seen in Fig. XVII: 36b. It appears, there
fore, that a therapeutic effect on tissue may not be
limited to the destructive effects on tissue of protons
close to the anode. Effects of the electric field may
induce sufficient change of the biologic environment to interfere with the living conditions of malignant
tissue within the organ but at a distance from the
electrodes. This finding is also in agreement with the
biologic effects described earlier several centimetres
from the anodic and cathodic electrode$. Thus, dehy
dration> extensive microthromboscs and attraction of
leukocytes take place around the anode. Around the
cathode alkalinity and interstitial oedema are promi
nent. Large vessels are temporarily occluded, locally
impairing the circulation. These biologic field effects
as well as the induced changes of ionic composition in
the tissue fluids and cells represent, in the view of the
author) an interesting and fruitful aspect of treaunents
with direct current.
Patient no. 10. Chest radiographs (Fig. XVII: 41 a,
b) revealed a tumour, 2 em in diameter, in the middle
lobe of the right lung of a 46-year-old woman. One
year previously an adenocarcinoma or the left breast
bad been resected. Needle biopsy of the lung tumour
revealed cells which appeared to be of the same type as
T~atment of cancer 307 a
,
308 Treatment of cancer 50JJm
,
' Fig. XV/1:41. Decrease in size of a pulmonary metastasis,
potieot no. 10, after treatment with direct current. Primary
adenocar cinoma of breast. Radiographs, (a) pOSteroonterior
and (b) lateral projections before treatment ( 190 coulombs at
10 volts). The size of the!Umour gradually decreased. Radio·
graphs, (c) posteroanterior and (tf) lateral projections I 110
days after creatment.
Fig. XV/1:42. Patient no.
10. (a) Cytologic material
from screw needle biopsy of
pulmonarY metastasis.
(b) Corresponding histologic
tissue section from primary
adenoc:arcinorna of the
breast. 70
60
50 Largest tumour
diameter,mm
16.
0 13.
IJ.
2' 14· StOC, 7Smm 0 -=="-'="'-
~· 1330C,52mm
18.
8 Fig. XVI/:43. Effects of
DC treatment of cancers in
the lung. Diameter of each
cancer before DC treatment
(largest radiographically
measurable diameter) in re
lation to quantity of current
given. Numbers refer to pa·
tients ofTable XVII: 2.
C =coulombs.
40 3.
0 • n'b111c ······················Oo" 66SC.40mm.... ·····--··--17!b ______ ••••• --··
a·.o··--·
17~a nla.• -·.
a· 1b
9.~~ ~~J~~!f.............................. -3· 710C, 27mm 30
0.191 ••
12~ 4~ • • s. • a' •
2m 4' • • 8. 2' 8 •• 20
11. • Regression U2metastat ic tumours)
10 0 0 Progression ( Smetastat ic and 3primary tumours)
8 lndeterminite ( 3metastatic and 2primary tumours)
• • thereafter 0 ( 1 metastatic tumour}
o+----- --~ ------.-------,-------.- --------
0 2 3
the cells from her breast cancer (Fig. XVII: 42). She
had no symptoms and was in excellent general condi
tion. Surgical excision of her lung tumour was there
fore recommended. The patient refused surgery, radi
ation and cytostatic therapy but accepted a "slight
attempt" with direct current.
The tumour, 24X21 x20 mm in diameter, was given
190 coulombs at 10 volts. Gradually the tumour dimin·
ished to 9x 11 x8 mm, 3 years, 1 month after the
treatment (Fig. XVII: 41 c, d). To date (3 years, 8
months after treatment ) no metastases are visible in
her lungs and she remains free of symptoms.
The actual data on direct current treatment of the
series of tumours are surveyed in Fig. XVII: 43, corre
lating the largest diameter of each cancer at the time of
treatment, the amount of current given and the esti
mated effect on tumour diameter (indicated by sym
bols). It is obvious that the short observation time does
not permit any definitive,·onclusion about permanent
control of the treated tumours. Some conclusions,
nevertheless, may be drawn from the results to date.
The first important general comment must be that
the majority of the patients were considered as "hope
less", i.e., standard forms of treatment were not ap
propriate. In spite of their often poor condition, none
of the patients has been lost as a result of the treat-4 •100 Coulombs
men!$. A definitive beneficial effect has been observed
in twelve of twemy·onc treated metastatic tumours as
well as in many neighbouring small tumours in patient
no. 4. One metastasis decreased in size during 730
days and then later started to increase in size (patient
no. 7). Five metastases have progressed. Observation
time is too short tO evaluate three of the metastases.
Out of five primary cancers no one has so far shown
regression. Three have progressed and two arc indeter
minate because of too short observation time.
Tumours of greatest diameter larger than 30 mm in
general did not respond well to treatment, possibly
due to too small dose of treatment. The largest tumour
to react favourably was the 42 mm diameter sarcoma
or patient no. 2. The peripheral site of this tumour
probably contributed to this beneficial result. Elec
troosmotic oedema in the more proximal cathodic
field may have interfered with blood circulation and
thereby enhanced the possibilities of proton diffusion
and migration around the anode.
One relatively small tumour (case no. 11) increased
in size after treatment. It was difficult in this patient to
keep the anode in the tumour during the treatment. It
is therefore likely that the dose delivered to the tu
mour was too small, as was probably also the case in
tbe other tumours which showed progression. In spite
Treatment of cancer 309 "' Table XVII: 2. Rm;lu ()/ trfatmtmu un'rh dirttl cun·tniiO 16 runurs (21 mtrastatic, S pn'mary) in th~ lungs of ZO patttnll
0
Date of tre11tmcm Coulombs
~ Size of pulmon.-ry Position of per largest Obstn•ation.... Patient tumour (mm) cathode diameter time (days ~ "' g Age Prinury,\\ • lllC'IUta.si' Vohage (Type of (em) Size of tu· Effects of " No. (years) canctr P • prim11ry canet:r (••oltsl Coulombs anode) o( tumour mour(mm• treat.m~t Comments a
0...
" I. H.S. 9 Adenocartinonu M.l 8.6 1978 Ill-IS 180 PulrtlO!Uf)' 78 I 3SO Rt~ression Coronary anc:rioscl~:rosis, atrial " 66 of ovary 2SXI7xl7 poralcllyma lXI XI fibr.U.tion and myooudial infare-" ".. R<S<Ction 1973 (Type I) lion precluded su.raical ueaunent...
+4 000 ndJ
2. B.K. 9 Fibroliposar-- M.l 16 1978 10 ISO Pulmomry 60 I 370 Rqression Aft<r uatmcot I, small pleural
20 coma of uteruJ 3Sx37x•z poralcllynu 20X20Xl9 dl


 not let yourselves  become  angry  or feel
vicious  toward  that  one;  because  then  you  are harming
yourselves!  They  cannot  harm  you.  Suppose  one  swept
away  from  you  all the money  you  had;  do you  think  for
one moment,  that  can interfere  with  your  Great  Life  acting
to again  produce  more;  if you  hold  your  feeling  harmoni-
ous, and  pour  forth  Kindness  and  Blessing  to that  unfortu-
nate  Individual?  The  one  depriving  you  temporarily,  is the
one who  is most  unfortunate,  not you.
If only  blessed  mankind  could  understand  this.  In the
experience  of the depression  a few  short  years  ago,  what  a
Release  would  have  come.  How  those  within  the next  five
years  following,  would  have  restored  all their  loss,  if they
had known  this  "I AM  Presence";  and  how  to call It into DISCOURSE  XVIII  269
action.  Because  the Same  Power  and  Intelligence  is there  in
the Individual,  which  was  there  before  the loss,  so-called,
took  place.
If you  and  mankind  will  understand  These  Laws  and
utilize  Them,  there  is not  a thing  acting  in this  World,
which  can  harm  or deprive  you!  That  is why  I say today,
according  to the Great  Cosmic  Law,  there  is no one  in the
World  who  has wealth,  who  is sure  of sustaining  it, without
the Knowledge  of This  Presence.  The  very  forces  of human
destructive  creation  are pounding  at these  Individuals  to try
and deprive  them.  Every  one  of mankind  who  will  hold
himself  or herself  harmonious;  accept  the "I AM  Presence"
as the Treasure-house;  refuse  to be agitated  or disturbed  by
the appearance  of the outer  world;  will  find  his or her own
individual  world,  supplied  abundantly  with  every  good
thing.
Allow  Me to cite you  to the Messengers.  My dear  people,
they  are the Greatest  Living  Example  of This  Law  in the
World.  They  started  out in Chicago  without  money,  except
enough  to get to Philadelphia,  trusting  the Presence.  Not
only  trusting,  but calling  It into  action  with  the most  dy-
namic  power  you  ever  witnessed.  See what  has been  done
in three  and  a half  years—unparalleled  in the history  of
the Earth  by two  people,  without  one  word  of advertising
to the outside  world.  They  proved  the Law  absolutely  in
their  financial  supply  in the Call  to the Presence;  to bring
to them  the people  who  could  accept  This  Law  and  have
This  Freedom,  and  to keep  out all others. 270 THE  "I AM99  DISCOURSES
Therefore,  one  has but to look  at the action  of the Law
and see there  Its Fulfilment  without  question.  That  is why
I cite  these  things  to you,  so you  may  see they  have  been
the Fulfilment  of the Law  and  are today.
Never  was  such  viciousness  driven  at any  two  human
Beings  on Earth  as has been  at them.  Why ? Because  the
destructive  qualities  of mankind  know  This  Light  is their
annulment;  know  it is the Freedom  of all mankind.  That
is the only  reason!  Individuals  allow  themselves  to be made
claws  of the destructive  force,  to try to interfere  with  This
Activity,  but they  have  no power  to do it!
As you  understand  These  Laws,  when  disturbing  con-
ditions  confront  you,  your  attitude  should  be your  Call  to
the Light;  so far as your  own  Protection  and  the Harmoniz-
ing of your  world  is concerned.  Then  the Full  Result  and
Power  of your  Presence  may  come  forth.  I tell you,  Dear
Ones,  it is not a matter  of persons,  places  nor conditions!  It
is a matter  of the Harmony  in your  own  feeling,  which
allows  the Power  of the Presence  to flow  forth  and  produce
these  NATURAL  CONDITIONS  for  you.  It will  do it
every  time!  There  is no such  thing  as failure  in This  Light;
because  It is Light  which  goes  into  action  and  knows  no
resistance.  Even  the destructive  quality  of mankind  never
attempts  to interfere  with  the Light,  because  it knows,  it
cannot  do it.
As you  look  upon  It as Self-luminous  Intelligent  Sub-
stance,  you  know  your  Call  is compelled  to be answered,  by
the very  Light  which  beats  your  Heart  and  gives  you  ac-DISCOURSE  XVIII  271
tivity.  Today,  people  have  within  their  grasp,  the Scepter  of
their  own  Freedom  and  Dominion  over  the conditions  of
Earth.  Believe  Me Dear  Hearts,  when  I say there  is not one
of you,  who  cannot  stand  in the  midst  of everything—I
mean  in the Power  of your  Presence,  and  remain  untouched
by the disturbance  around  you.  Go on, and  on, and  on, into
the Perfection  and  Freedom,  which  your  Heart  knows  is
True  and  which  you  crave  and  want.
At first,  when  you  enter  This  Great  Stream  of Light,  it
means  a Great  Firm  Determined  Stand  to the Light;  and
the refusal  to accept  the gossip  of mankind  from  those  who
do not understand.  Therefore,  all who  are strong  enough
to do that,  will  go forward,  on, and  on, and  on.
You as Individuals  who  are not  Group  Leaders,  have
only  to be concerned  about  your  own  individual  world,
aside  from  your  Decrees  for the blessing  of America;  but
the Messengers  have  been  the focus  of all the viciousness
of mankind,  and  they  have  remained  untouched  by It!
They  always  will,  but it is because  of their  dynamic  Appli-
cation;  and  they  still  do it and  will  as long  as they  are serv-
ing in the outer  world!
It is imperative!  until  Individuals  have  made  their  As-
cension.  You  cannot  be Free,  without  your  own  dynamic
Application,  because  you  are moving  in the seething  vortex
of human  discordant  creation  all the time.
I thank  you  with  all My  Heart  for your  attention;  and
for that  which  has been  anchored  within  your  feeling  world
to bless  you.  Oh,  it is not  just  the  Words  which  I have 272 THE  "I AM99  DISCOURSES
spoken;  they  but hold  your  attention,  while  into  your  feel-
ing world,  is the Power  of Light  anchored  to bless  you
forever.  It is Our  Great  Victory  for your  assistance.  In these
wondrous  groups  it is the response,  which  makes  it possible
for Us to anchor  Our  Power  of Light  into  your  feeling
world;  which  not only  dissolves  and  purifies;  but gives  you
a Strength  and  Courage  which  sets  you  Free,  if you  but
realize  it.
Things  which  bothered  and  disturbed  you  before,  will
never  do it after  today;  if you  will  just  keep  yourself  re-
minded  of this.  Oh,  I want  you  to know  so much


, and
embarrassment, while others directly related to physical exacerbations. This
study, which describes the experiences of nine patients in detail, is the first
to really address a problem that af fects millions of people worldwide.
An earlier study had raised the issue of postcoital asthma and rhinitis.58
The paper descr ibes the case of one male patient whose acute severe asthma
after sex resulted in several emer gency department visits and
hospitalization. Patients with COPD also struggle with breathlessness
during sex, a feeling that may be worsened by hyperventilation.59 Erectile
dysfunction and low testostero ne levels have been reported in men with
respiratory diseases such as COPD,60 asthma and obstructive sleep apnea
syndrome (OSA). In patients with COPD, breathlessness, coughing, muscle
weakness, and diminished physical activity all contribute to decreased
sexual activity.61 In these situati ons, anxiety around respiratory symptoms
adds another burden on both the suf ferer and the spouse or lover.
A study  of patients with rhinoconjunctivitis —an allergic condition
characterized by nasal congestio n, runny nose, sneezing, postnasal drip, red
eyes (conjunctivitis), and itchin g of the nose or eyes—found a significant
relationship with sexual dysfunction in women and erectile problems in
men. In both genders, sexual function was much better in patients who had
received treatment for nasal and conjunctival symptoms than in those
patients who were untreated.62
The 2019 asthma study gives the most detailed account of the problems
facing asthmatic s. Each of the nine people interviewed felt that a good
sexual experience required some physical effort,57 yet even moderate
exertion limited their performance due to worsening symptoms. Intimacy
was made difficult by asthma, even to the extent that kissing caused a flare-
up of breathlessness. One partic ipant described having to stop in “full flow”
because of feeling unable to breathe. They described feelings of exhaustion
that came from living with asthma and taking high-dose corticosteroids.
Sleep deprivation caused marital strain in one case, as the participant’ s
partner interpreted attempts to get enough sleep as an evasion of intimacy.Patients felt they had to organize equipment or remember to use inhalers or
nebulizers, detracting from any spontaneity. While some could  accept this
as being part of their condition, others found it distressing and a barrier to
intimacy. One commented that her inhaler pump was almost like a third
person in the relationship because it was necessary to maneuv er around it
during sex.
There was also a genuine fear that sexual climax might induce severe
bronchospasm requiring emer gency medical intervention. This added level
of anxiety reduced sexual satisfaction. The embarrassment caused by
having to explain the reason for the exacerbation to paramedics and
healthcare professionals was a major consideration. Some devised positive
coping mechanisms, including using pillows as props and finding positions
that didn’ t lead to exacerbations—the “Asthma Sutra.” Emotional intimacy
has more elements than the purely physical expression of sex, but all of the
participants found that the physical act of sex was restrict ed by their
asthma. Certain positions caused feelings of suffocation, especially for
women, and men perceived their sexual performance to be dampened by the
need for physical exertion.
Emotionally, the patients experienced frustration and guilt, and felt
pressure to perform. Often part of the problem was feeling they couldn’ t
broach the subject with their partner. Five of the female participants (83%)
described givin g their partners permission to sleep with other women
because they felt so guilty over being unable to offer sexual satisfaction in
the relationship and feared losing their partner altogether. Many felt that
they should not impose their asthma-related concerns on their partners.
Others reported an emotional weight being lifted when they did manage to
explain the situation and receive support. Insights into self-image
uncovered feelings of self-loathing in all participants and problems
balancing the dual role of the partner as a carer and a lover: “One minute
they’re wiping your bum and then the next minute you’re ripping each
other ’s clothes off. It does vary.” Two of the participants describ ed how this
conflict in roles had caused the breakdown of previous marriages.
Weight gain due to long-term corticosteroid use and difficulty
exercising because of symptoms also had a negative impact on body image
and feelings of sexuality. Even things most people take for granted, such as
wearing sensual underwear, were problematic due to feelings of restrictionon the chest wall. All participants voiced some element of struggle on a
daily basis.
Despite the significance of these  issues in the day-to-day lives of people
with severe asthma, no healthcare provider had ever initiated discussion of
sexual intimacy during medical appointments with any of the participants.
Two even described negative reactions when they tried to raise their
concerns. One commented, “I actually brought it up, and I thought the
counsellor was going to run out of the room screaming!” Seven of the
participants felt that the topic was too intimate to raise but would welcome
the chance to talk about it with a specialist nurse if the opportunity were
offered.57
The study confirms that fatigu e has a significant impact on sexual
quality of life for people with severe asthma. The finding that the fear of
exacerbation was so present during sex is new, as is the discovery that
embarrassment about having to call an ambulance was generally worse than
anxiety about the asthma exacerbation itself. Intimacy, from kissing to full
sex, produced breathlessness and feelings of suffocation, and spontaneity
was difficult. All these factors added pressure to the sufferer ’s relationship,
presenting a huge emotional burden on top of the physical limitations. The
study concluded that it is essential for their quality of life that healthcare
professionals openly address sex and intimacy with asthma patients.
The breathing exercises in this book have been shown, time and time
again, to reduce asthma symptoms and prevent asthma exacerbations. If
asthma is affecting your quality of life, relationships, and sexual pleasure,
it’s time to take back control. You can read much more about using
breathing exercises to control your asthma in Chapter T en.
SLEEPING T OGETHER
Sex and sleep are interesting bedfellows—quite literally both are typically
done in bed—bu t the connection goes far deeper than this. We’ve already
discovered that sexual function  is indicative of health, and we also know
that sleep is fundamental to physical and mental well-being. A healthy sex
life will help decrease stress and improve sleep; conversely, quality sleep is
essential for sexual health.We’ve explored how stress can affect sex drive and sexual function for
physical and psychological reasons. Fatigue, sleep disturbance, and sleep
deprivation, by themselves, can simply make us too tired for sex. The
impact this can have on self-es teem, intimacy, and relationship s is all too
apparent in the study of patients with severe asthma. Accordin g to a 2002
paper, being “too tired” is the primary reason people lose interest in sex.63
Conversely, 2015 research from scientists at the University of Michigan
Medical School reported that the more sleep people had, the more likely
they were to feel like sex the following day.64 If all that you and your
partner are doing is actually sleeping together, it’s time to look at the quality
of your sleep.
Whenever you can improve the quality and quantity of your sleep, you
are likely to improve the quali ty and quantity of your sex life. We have
already looked in detail (in Chapter Seven ) at sleep-disord ered breathing
and ways we can ensure better sleep and better health through improved
breathing. Howe ver, it is worth examining the statistics here. One research
paper found that about 50% of men aged between 18 and 70 years who
have moderate to severe sleep apnea also suffer from erectile dysfunction.65
Another study found that 69% of participants with sleep apnea also had
erectile problems.66 The link may be partly hormonal. Men with sleep
apnea have lower levels of testosterone.65 Since we already know an
overactive fight -or-flight respo nse inhibits testosterone production, this
makes a lot of sense.
For men, it is absolutely norm al for erections to occur durin g sleep.
Nighttime erections often go unnoticed, perhaps only becoming obvious
first thing in the morning as “morning wood,” but to use its medical name,
nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) is actually an important marker of heart
health,67 vascular tone,68 and parasympathetic function.69 Medical science
frequently uses NPT as an indicator of sexual or hormonal well-being,70
especially when  diagnosing the causes of erectile dysfunction. If a man has
frequent nightly erections but is unable to achieve or maintain  an erection
during sex, it is likely that blood flow and nerve responses in the penis are
healthy. In this instance, erectile dysfunction may have a psychological
basis. If, however, he has no NPT and is unable to function sexually, it ismore likely that the root cause is physical. This differentiation allows
doctors to treat the problem ef fectively.
Nocturnal erections usually occur during rapid eye movement (REM)
sleep.71 The reason that they are most apparent in the morning is that we
t