578-National_Preparedness_Month-Common-Sense_Discussion_on_Avoiding_Lifestyle_Diseases
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00:00:30.400 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:38.640 | building a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.
00:00:41.720 | My name is Joshua, and today we're going to kick off National Preparedness Month, September
00:00:46.880 | 2018.
00:00:47.880 | Let me read to you a couple of paragraphs from the recent presidential proclamation
00:00:54.040 | on National Preparedness Month 2018.
00:00:57.280 | It goes like this, issued on August 31, 2018.
00:01:02.000 | National Preparedness Month is a time to focus our attention on the importance of preparing
00:01:06.280 | our families, homes, businesses, and communities for disasters that threaten our lives, property,
00:01:12.040 | and homeland.
00:01:13.800 | During this time, we also honor the brave men and women who selflessly respond to crises
00:01:17.160 | and disasters, rendering aid to those in need, blah blah blah.
00:01:21.680 | And that is signed, of course, by President Donald J. Trump.
00:01:25.140 | He has set his hand, or as the quote would go, "In witness whereof, I have hereunto set
00:01:30.040 | my hand this 31st day of August in the year of our Lord 2018, and of the independence
00:01:34.340 | of the United States of America, the 243rd Donald J. Trump."
00:01:39.960 | Presidential proclamations are funny because it's such a formal language that we don't
00:01:42.520 | use much in day-to-day discourse.
00:01:45.100 | But September is indeed the National Preparedness Month by virtue of presidential proclamation.
00:01:51.660 | And I'm just going to use this as a rough outline for a various series of shows which
00:01:56.400 | I'll be sharing with you here in the month because I am convinced there is a deep connection
00:02:02.640 | between the term or the word preparedness and all of its associated concepts and financial
00:02:10.260 | planning.
00:02:13.140 | Preparedness is basically the root of good financial planning.
00:02:18.340 | Now in the traditional sense of financial planning, we usually think of financial products
00:02:24.300 | such as insurance policies and investment accounts.
00:02:27.780 | And these products fundamentally are a component of preparedness.
00:02:33.740 | What do you want to do to prepare for your death?
00:02:36.300 | Well, you prepare by making an estate plan, furnishing adequate wills and trusts.
00:02:43.080 | You also put in place appropriate insurance policies which will remunerate your family
00:02:49.220 | or your business for the associated risks.
00:02:52.560 | And you do all of these things in advance.
00:02:54.280 | You prepare.
00:02:56.240 | What do you do to prepare for sickness?
00:02:57.840 | Well, you make sure that you have adequate savings to cover your personal expenses.
00:03:02.100 | You put in place health insurance policies to pay for your medical bills, perhaps disability
00:03:06.880 | insurance policies to provide you with income in case of an extended disability.
00:03:11.660 | This is all part of preparedness.
00:03:14.380 | So preparedness is basically at the core of all good financial planning.
00:03:19.880 | But I think we often ignore some of the other extensions of the word preparedness.
00:03:24.960 | And especially those of us who work in the financial planning industry are guilty of
00:03:28.260 | ignoring these things because we don't personally sell products to them.
00:03:34.080 | I have learned that when you don't have products to sell, you tend to analyze the problem more
00:03:40.300 | comprehensively and to see the value of those products.
00:03:45.620 | For example, I was often, when I was actively working as a financial planner, I was often
00:03:51.700 | consulted on some of the non-traditional components of financial planning.
00:03:57.360 | But when I was working with client, excuse me, I was consulted frequently by other financial
00:04:02.440 | advisors.
00:04:03.440 | I remember when people would have a client who said, "I'm really worried about hyperinflation.
00:04:07.820 | I think I'm going to buy gold coins."
00:04:09.240 | They would say, "Well, call Joshua and ask him or let's ask Joshua for his opinions."
00:04:13.140 | And I remember writing an email one time when a fellow advisor consulted and I said, "Here
00:04:17.860 | are the types of gold coins you should buy.
00:04:19.420 | Here's what you should buy it for.
00:04:20.540 | Here's when you should sell," and et cetera.
00:04:23.660 | But what often happens is people pit these ideas against each other.
00:04:27.940 | For example, frequently I read knowledgeable perceived experts who will make fun of some
00:04:34.620 | of the products that are advertised on right-wing talk radio.
00:04:37.900 | Things like food insurance, which is basically the idea of buying significant amounts of
00:04:42.340 | food so that in case of an emergency you have food to pull, to fall back on.
00:04:47.800 | Frequently these types of approaches are criticized as being foolish or scare, fear-mongering
00:04:53.300 | of some kind.
00:04:55.260 | That's never made sense to me.
00:04:56.620 | I think that's a really short-sighted and silly way to approach life because if you
00:05:01.340 | don't have food, it's hard to think about the value of anything else.
00:05:08.660 | As I've previously discussed extensively, I'd a whole lot rather have food and no health
00:05:13.500 | insurance than have health insurance and no food.
00:05:19.860 | One is a very significant need.
00:05:21.820 | The other deals in the abstract.
00:05:23.900 | If I have major medical bills, I declare bankruptcy.
00:05:26.260 | The financial system protects me from the claims of those creditors and I go on to rebuild
00:05:29.940 | my life.
00:05:30.940 | If I don't have food, I can't get up and go to work tomorrow.
00:05:35.300 | If you've never lived at the bottom of society or if you've never tried to work with people
00:05:38.580 | at the bottom of society, what you find is those who don't have the resources to maintain
00:05:42.920 | their daily life, people who don't have food or a place to sleep, it's very hard.
00:05:46.620 | They can't get ahead.
00:05:47.620 | They can't even get a hand up.
00:05:49.940 | I encourage you, spend some time talking with homeless people in your town or if you don't
00:05:53.860 | want to do that, spend some time online listening to people.
00:05:58.100 | There's a great YouTube channel called Invisible People where the host of that channel or the
00:06:02.700 | hosts of that channel go and interview people with a video camera who are homeless.
00:06:07.220 | And what you see again and again is they're stuck.
00:06:10.420 | Well, why are they stuck?
00:06:13.660 | It's not because they're stupid.
00:06:17.220 | Certainly they may be ignorant, but there may be many reasons and I'm not here to opine
00:06:21.180 | on homelessness.
00:06:22.660 | But the point is when you're missing these basic things of life, the basic needs of life,
00:06:28.980 | it's very hard to be able to rebuild.
00:06:32.740 | But if you have the basic needs of life, if you have a bed to sleep in, if you have a
00:06:36.260 | roof over your head, if you have food in your stomach, if your family is secure and you're
00:06:39.780 | not fearful that your things are going to be stolen, you're going to be physically attacked
00:06:43.360 | on a moment by moment, day to day basis, then you can afford the longer term thinking of
00:06:49.380 | building something more significant.
00:06:53.340 | Most of us live at a level of affluence that provides us with the luxury of never even
00:06:58.340 | thinking about those things, those basic needs.
00:07:04.600 | We should be grateful that we live in such affluence.
00:07:08.920 | But for all of us, those basic needs can, in a moment, through a storm, through a medical
00:07:18.500 | emergency, those basic needs can all of a sudden become very, very important.
00:07:26.060 | I had some experiences in my life that I never really guessed that I would have.
00:07:35.780 | And I guess I knew intellectually that it could happen, but it wasn't until I could
00:07:38.820 | see them with my own eyes that I realized how important these things were.
00:07:43.860 | And what you see is that if you're not prepared for the basic needs, the things that can't
00:07:48.700 | be solved necessarily with the financial system, no matter how vast your resources, you can
00:07:57.420 | quickly become desperate.
00:07:59.180 | A couple of years ago, there was a hurricane headed for where I live in West Palm Beach,
00:08:05.740 | Florida.
00:08:06.740 | So those of you who live in Hurricane Alley or hurricane regions know the drill.
00:08:15.180 | Everyone waits to see what the hurricane's going to do.
00:08:17.500 | And then when the hurricane starts heading your way, then people go out and they start
00:08:20.860 | buying water and flashlights and gasoline.
00:08:23.700 | And all of a sudden, everything disappears.
00:08:24.900 | And it's always amazing how you don't even have water.
00:08:28.080 | But I remember I went to Costco and I decided to go out.
00:08:31.380 | And part of it was to buy some stuff.
00:08:34.240 | But part of it was to just to kind of see.
00:08:37.300 | I've always had this interest in disasters.
00:08:39.740 | I've always enjoyed being one of the volunteer responders and being involved in them.
00:08:44.660 | I'm a sucker for information flows.
00:08:47.020 | My wife would make fun of me when there's a disaster.
00:08:50.340 | The most recent one that I remember doing this was the Houston floods.
00:08:54.420 | And I was just entranced by the Houston floods.
00:08:56.380 | I had four screens going with all these different web feeds of different video feeds from the
00:09:01.060 | local TV cameras.
00:09:02.660 | And I've really been interested in that topic for whatever reason.
00:09:06.780 | So I went out to Costco to pick up some additional supplies for my own family.
00:09:14.540 | And also just because I like to be out in that.
00:09:16.680 | It's kind of a different season.
00:09:19.260 | And in this case, Costco had been closed over the weekend due to a holiday.
00:09:22.860 | And it was a Monday morning and the storm was expected on something like Thursday.
00:09:26.860 | And I went there.
00:09:28.020 | I was there about 20 minutes early and the line was hundreds of people deep.
00:09:33.100 | And this panic set in where all of a sudden everyone felt like, well, there's more people
00:09:38.300 | and the store is not open yet.
00:09:40.260 | And there's people pulling in, in expensive cars and then just running across the parking
00:09:45.220 | lot to get in line.
00:09:47.420 | I don't know what Costco is like where you live, but where I live, I don't see a lot
00:09:51.540 | of poor people in Costco.
00:09:54.780 | The Costco where I live is very filled with a lot of affluent people.
00:09:58.700 | You get all these elderly retirees that have loads of money and they go into Costco and
00:10:02.540 | buy three or four things.
00:10:03.740 | And it's just very, it's very obvious from the cars that people drive that the clothes
00:10:09.180 | they wear and the age of the face is present, that it's a very affluent community that shops
00:10:15.300 | at my local Costco.
00:10:17.660 | And I looked around and I, nobody, I'm not exaggerating.
00:10:21.980 | Nobody was ready to pick a fight.
00:10:23.980 | But you could just feel this tension in the air, this tension among people that if things
00:10:30.980 | were a little bit worse, they would have been ready to fight over cases of bottled water.
00:10:37.940 | And I realized how close we live to the edge in society.
00:10:42.980 | Now there are a number of other experiences that I've heard, but they're immaterial for
00:10:47.780 | the moment.
00:10:48.780 | Excuse me, other experiences I've had.
00:10:52.260 | But by watching some of these things and some of the things on TV where you see, you realize
00:10:57.020 | that all of a sudden things can happen.
00:10:58.980 | And this is really important.
00:10:59.980 | It's a really important part of financial planning to be prepared for things that can't
00:11:06.780 | perfectly be covered by the insurance policies that we all have and should have.
00:11:13.960 | And that's one of the changes that I've experienced since I left the world of product sales.
00:11:21.140 | I realized that in order to do good financial planning, we always need to take a more holistic
00:11:26.220 | approach.
00:11:27.220 | Now, don't get me wrong.
00:11:29.820 | Money and insurance is a component of good planning.
00:11:34.640 | Money should always be your first thing that you go for.
00:11:38.300 | Stacking up money, which is why I seek to emphasize it to you again and again and again,
00:11:42.380 | pile up money.
00:11:43.540 | Money is the most marketable commodity in the world.
00:11:46.620 | And if you have money, you can solve most problems.
00:11:50.060 | If we dump you out of an airplane in the middle of a war zone and your skin is a completely
00:11:55.700 | different color than everyone that's fighting and they're all hunting for you, if you have
00:11:59.020 | enough money, though you don't have food, you don't have water, you don't have contacts,
00:12:02.620 | if you have enough money, you can probably buy your way out of the problem.
00:12:07.900 | So money is always your first step.
00:12:11.180 | But often money is a very expensive step.
00:12:15.420 | And if you'll spend a little bit of money now, you can avoid spending a lot of money
00:12:18.300 | later.
00:12:19.300 | So I'm going to riff on this preparedness theme during the month of September with a
00:12:25.540 | number of different shows on a diverse range of topics, because I really think that by
00:12:33.380 | my sharing with you some ideas, I can stimulate your thinking to look at your own situation
00:12:38.780 | and to apply good financial planning to the topics that you're not usually thinking about.
00:12:44.780 | If we do that, you'll build a more robust and resilient life and have a whole lot more
00:12:56.020 | money available for your longer term financial goals.
00:13:02.820 | Just consider the logic of a few examples.
00:13:07.620 | I think you should have disability insurance.
00:13:10.860 | But doesn't it make a lot of sense for you to think carefully about what you eat and
00:13:15.620 | how you move and the toxins that are in your environment so that you can avoid the need
00:13:21.340 | to draw on the insurance policy?
00:13:24.340 | Or doesn't it make sense for you to wear your seatbelt and drive a safe car at a safe
00:13:29.100 | rate of speed so that you lower your risk of being involved in an automobile accident?
00:13:35.220 | Or with your home insurance?
00:13:36.220 | Yes, your home insurance will compensate you if your house burns down, but doesn't it
00:13:41.940 | make sense to make sure that your house has wiring that's up to code and has properly
00:13:47.500 | functioning smoke detectors and fire extinguishers that can come to hand easily, rather than
00:13:53.620 | going through all the hassle of having your house burn down and dealing with an insurance
00:13:57.100 | policy?
00:13:58.100 | A $5 fire extinguisher that is in the cabinet beside your stove might put out the fire before
00:14:05.660 | it burns the house down.
00:14:08.700 | But if you don't buy the $5 fire extinguisher and you just buy the homeowner's insurance
00:14:12.220 | policy, you've done incomplete planning.
00:14:15.660 | Now the inverse is also true.
00:14:18.820 | If you have a bunch of fire extinguishers, but you don't have a homeowner's insurance
00:14:22.300 | policy, then you've also done incomplete planning.
00:14:26.300 | Because although you may be very careful, a fire may sweep in from your neighbor's house
00:14:32.020 | and light yours on fire, or it may sweep up the valley through the trees and light your
00:14:37.060 | entire development on fire.
00:14:39.460 | The volcano underneath your community might ooze lava out that bursts your home on fire.
00:14:46.420 | So both of these are important.
00:14:50.500 | But I hear a lot of people focusing on homeowner's insurance and not a lot of people talking
00:14:54.440 | about fire extinguishers.
00:14:55.660 | My hope is to bring these together for you.
00:15:00.220 | There's a much more efficient planning process if you start with root causes.
00:15:07.220 | And by the way, all of this applies to accumulation goals as well.
00:15:10.860 | I've repeatedly emphasized in my work that before you try to save millions of dollars
00:15:17.900 | for retirement, you should build a life and a work that you don't want to retire from.
00:15:23.240 | Because you may or may not successfully save millions of dollars for retirement, but you're
00:15:27.580 | going to be working to get there.
00:15:30.560 | So why not embrace that work along the way and build a life that you don't want to retire
00:15:36.860 | from while you're on your way to building enough reserves and investments that you could
00:15:43.100 | retire any day you want.
00:15:45.740 | Doesn't that make more sense to you?
00:15:48.740 | Or with college savings, this is probably one of my personal pet peeves, but I've done
00:15:55.300 | so much college planning over the years, but college planning is a really short-sighted
00:15:58.580 | thing to do if your definition of college planning is simply, "How can I save money
00:16:03.700 | in some kind of tax-advantaged fund so that my children can go to college?"
00:16:10.820 | There are far too many of us who are parents who just haphazardly throw money at the problem
00:16:15.780 | thinking that's going to make our children's lives better.
00:16:18.380 | Well, I'm here to advocate for a little bit more of a thoughtful approach and say, "No,
00:16:23.500 | that doesn't necessarily make your children's lives better."
00:16:26.140 | First, college may not be right for them.
00:16:28.940 | Frequently, college is not a good solution or a good option for many students.
00:16:34.060 | Now you've heard all these arguments, but there's a high percentage of degrees that
00:16:40.260 | many of my compatriots in my peer group have found are entirely financially worthless.
00:16:46.220 | They don't result in any skills that are valuable in the labor market.
00:16:49.380 | I have so many friends who are embittered about their college decision because they
00:16:54.460 | came out the other side with a diploma and no job prospects.
00:17:03.380 | College may be a very damaging thing to your son or daughter.
00:17:07.080 | It certainly has been damaging to many of my friends.
00:17:10.940 | College can lead you into a lifestyle that is so morally debauched that it leads to a
00:17:15.860 | lifetime of personal injury.
00:17:19.320 | One of my major concerns is excessive drunkenness on college campuses.
00:17:24.300 | You may save all the money in the world so that you can send your son and daughter into
00:17:28.140 | this environment.
00:17:30.940 | And the excessive drunkenness leads to, of course at the most extreme, death or disability
00:17:38.300 | in some way due to alcohol poisoning.
00:17:40.780 | But more frequently, it just leads to a whole series of life decisions that impact people
00:17:45.600 | for years.
00:17:47.620 | DUI infractions, killing people while they're drunk behind the wheel, high rates of sexual
00:17:54.180 | activity and sexual promiscuity, sexual assault.
00:17:58.820 | So frequently, that decision to encourage your son or daughter to go into a morally
00:18:03.200 | debauched environment filled with excessive drunkenness leads to your son or daughter
00:18:07.820 | being sexually assaulted, which leads to lifelong problems.
00:18:12.180 | And if you've ever been involved with marriage counseling or talking with somebody who's
00:18:16.380 | been sexually assaulted, that has the impact of generations.
00:18:21.880 | Somebody who has never healed from a sexual assault that they experienced during their
00:18:25.580 | college years, and all of a sudden they're married 15 years and yet they are still experiencing
00:18:31.520 | major emotional, psychological problems from that.
00:18:35.380 | And yet it may have been avoided by a more careful decision related to college.
00:18:43.980 | Back to the financial aspects, let's say that college is a good decision and you can account
00:18:48.860 | for the social pressure, you can account for the morally debauched environment, you can
00:18:56.660 | account for the theory that's being taught and all of the worldview that's going to be
00:19:05.140 | foisted upon your child.
00:19:06.540 | Well, now back to the finances.
00:19:08.460 | There's no reason in the world why a young person should need outside funding for college
00:19:12.460 | in today's world.
00:19:14.380 | There is so much money available for college for students who have high academic results.
00:19:21.900 | There's so much money available for college for students that demonstrate character proficiency.
00:19:26.500 | There's so much money available for college that no student who is academically qualified
00:19:31.620 | for college should ever need to borrow money or ever need to be provided for by parents.
00:19:39.220 | But yet it's those decisions years before that result in a high school student demonstrating
00:19:45.640 | academic competence or an elementary school student developing the character qualities
00:19:51.300 | that will lead them to the ability to perform well in high school and to perform well in
00:19:55.980 | college.
00:19:58.100 | So shouldn't we spend 80% of our time talking about those things that prepare a young man
00:20:03.500 | or woman for college and perhaps 20% of our time talking about thinking, figuring out
00:20:09.700 | which particular type of college savings account we're going to use or not use?
00:20:16.460 | But the financial planning industry, because we in the industry are very effective at selling
00:20:23.460 | those solutions and not so good at sitting down and having a difficult conversation with
00:20:27.220 | you about the academic readiness of your child or their personal character.
00:20:33.180 | We just sell the solution that we can make money on.
00:20:36.180 | We sell the 529 account because we can do it easily and it makes us a little bit of
00:20:40.580 | money and increases the amount of money we earn in investment fees.
00:20:45.900 | I don't for a moment think that the average financial planner is competent to discuss
00:20:51.420 | with you or me what we're doing to prepare our five-year-olds to have the necessary character
00:20:58.340 | they'll need to stand strong and focus on their academic studies when they're 22 and
00:21:04.980 | not go and indulge themselves in excessive drunkenness.
00:21:10.180 | It would be a little bit weird for that to be a component of the CFP curriculum.
00:21:16.980 | But I do think that you and me as parents should be spending about 80% of our time thinking
00:21:22.820 | about that and 20% of our time talking with the CFP practitioner about which particular
00:21:30.660 | state's 529 plan would be appropriate for us.
00:21:34.580 | See, the financial system can work really, really well in many circumstances.
00:21:42.460 | But you have little control over the financial system.
00:21:47.380 | You have a lot of control over those other things.
00:21:50.620 | And if you'll focus on these other things, whether it's seeking to instill a strong character
00:21:56.060 | and moral fabric in your child's life, or whether it's making sure that your kitchen
00:22:01.380 | has fire extinguishers, these things are much more tangible than trying to understand the
00:22:06.880 | day-to-day vagaries of the stock market.
00:22:09.340 | I don't know if the stock market will continue its record-setting success or not.
00:22:13.700 | How do I know?
00:22:15.640 | But I do know that a fire extinguisher in your kitchen is a very cheap piece of insurance
00:22:21.580 | to buy to make sure that you can put out that grease fire.
00:22:26.980 | Of course, I would be remiss in not pointing out that a fire blanket or a large pot that
00:22:33.740 | you know where it is mixed with a small fire extinguisher would probably be a better solution
00:22:38.880 | for the grease fire.
00:22:39.880 | Or what is it, salt that you can put on it and will also put the fire out?
00:22:44.060 | Anyway, a fire blanket and a small extinguisher has always been, in my mind, the simplest
00:22:49.980 | thing.
00:22:50.980 | You have a huge degree of control over these things, and safety and prevention are a huge
00:22:56.380 | deal.
00:22:57.620 | We are fortunate to live in a very orderly world that's governed by the laws of cause
00:23:01.500 | and effect.
00:23:04.340 | And if you'll think in advance and prepare for the circumstances down the road, then
00:23:10.140 | I think you'll get better results.
00:23:13.440 | When I was younger, I spent a lot of time mowing lawns and I didn't wear ear protection.
00:23:18.620 | I think I still have pretty decent hearing, but I'm sure that impacted me.
00:23:22.820 | But I'm going to make sure that my 8-year-old, when he's out mowing the lawn, is wearing
00:23:27.840 | proper hearing protection.
00:23:29.940 | Because a set of earmuffs can cost $5, but a set of hearing aids at 50 years old will
00:23:36.120 | cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
00:23:39.380 | Some of these things seem to be relatively inevitable as you age.
00:23:43.080 | It seems to be inevitable that you'll lose some of your acuity of hearing and you'll
00:23:46.860 | wind up purchasing some form of hearing aid.
00:23:51.080 | But you can forestall that to a much later age if you think ahead now and don't listen
00:23:57.360 | to music at very high volume in your earbuds and you make sure that you're always wearing
00:24:02.500 | appropriate hearing protection.
00:24:06.900 | Health is a big deal.
00:24:07.900 | In a moment, I'm going to go through a number of the health-related factors that lead to
00:24:12.860 | early death and are some of the top leading causes of death.
00:24:16.240 | But you can either spend more money on higher quality food, it seems to me, or you can spend
00:24:23.000 | more money on medications.
00:24:25.140 | Well, I'm happy that we've got high quality efficacious medications, but I'd a whole lot
00:24:35.980 | rather feel better and not need the medicine and spend a little bit more money on food.
00:24:43.360 | So I hope you'll consider some of these ideas and that they will stimulate you.
00:24:46.460 | Some of them are very important in terms of their likelihood, their statistical likelihood.
00:24:52.720 | Some of them are just going to be just a little bit fun because I think they're interesting
00:24:55.380 | topics.
00:24:56.380 | But I'm going to start today by discussing some of the leading causes of early death.
00:25:02.340 | And it's important that we always keep a firm grasp on the actual data, the actual likelihood
00:25:09.500 | of certain things happening.
00:25:12.720 | We need to maintain a sense of perspective and be firmly grounded in reality.
00:25:17.780 | Although we may have a vigorous national debate on the subject of gun violence, and we should
00:25:23.740 | have that debate, you are many, many, many times more likely to die from slipping and
00:25:32.900 | falling in your home.
00:25:35.900 | So you would probably be better served to leave your 12-gauge shotgun loaded, cocked
00:25:42.820 | and locked, ready to go, and leaning in the corner of the room and make sure that you
00:25:47.220 | pick up your throw rugs and make sure that your house has good handrails in the shower
00:25:51.980 | so you don't slip and fall and kill yourself in the shower.
00:25:55.960 | And make sure that you don't slip and fall on the step outside.
00:25:59.100 | Statistically, there's a very low chance of your experiencing even an accidental discharge
00:26:04.680 | of a firearm than of your falling.
00:26:08.740 | Falling is one of the leading causes of early death, as we'll go through not today.
00:26:15.500 | It's the number one cause, the number one category of preventable injuries in the United
00:26:21.860 | States.
00:26:24.100 | So the obvious, you should immediately recognize the logical fallacy in what I've just said.
00:26:29.960 | It's not either/or.
00:26:30.960 | I don't think you should leave your loaded 12-gauge cocked and locked in the corner of
00:26:35.180 | the dining room.
00:26:36.740 | I think that should be properly secured and set aside.
00:26:42.060 | But the risk to you is much higher of falling than is the risk of being injured by a firearm,
00:26:51.220 | whether during an actual assault or not.
00:26:56.460 | So let's today just talk through some of the leading causes of death.
00:27:01.940 | Because of course, it's hard to imagine a circumstance that is more difficult financially
00:27:09.980 | to plan for and also just from the reality of life than death.
00:27:15.340 | Here is the data on the leading causes of death in the United States.
00:27:19.060 | And today's data is all coming from the Injury Facts Report, which is published by the National
00:27:27.680 | Safety Council, which is a government-run organization where they take the data and
00:27:31.780 | collate it.
00:27:32.780 | So I'm reading here to you all leading causes of death in the United States for the year
00:27:36.460 | 2016.
00:27:38.760 | And the total number of the total cases of death in this particular data set is $2,744,000.
00:27:52.380 | The number one leading cause of death is heart disease by a strong, strong margin.
00:27:59.180 | 635,000 of those 2.7 million deaths are due to heart disease.
00:28:04.500 | And number two, following closely behind with almost 600,000 deaths is cancer.
00:28:10.160 | Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death by a wide, wide margin.
00:28:16.840 | Now the number three category is preventable injury, which is where we can spend a significant
00:28:24.120 | amount of time.
00:28:25.600 | But I want you to recognize clearly that the medical risks are much more significant than
00:28:31.680 | the physical risks.
00:28:33.800 | Number one is heart disease.
00:28:34.800 | Number two is cancer by a wide margin.
00:28:37.480 | And number three, following along with only 161,000 deaths is preventable injury.
00:28:43.080 | Number four is chronic lower respiratory diseases.
00:28:46.260 | Five is stroke.
00:28:47.660 | Six is Alzheimer's disease.
00:28:49.900 | Seven is diabetes.
00:28:51.660 | Eight is influenza and pneumonia.
00:28:54.000 | Nine is nephritis.
00:28:55.560 | And ten is suicide.
00:28:58.360 | Now maybe you are much more competent with medical terms than I am.
00:29:01.540 | I didn't know what nephritis was.
00:29:04.140 | According to Wikipedia, nephritis is inflammation of the kidneys and may involve the glomeruli,
00:29:10.800 | tubules or interstitial tissues surrounding the glomeruli and tubules and their various
00:29:17.240 | medical conditions.
00:29:18.240 | So I'm just going to call it kidney problems because I'm not entirely clear on what nephritis
00:29:22.880 | is.
00:29:23.880 | But it's a big deal, obviously, because it shows up with a significant factor in the
00:29:28.320 | data set.
00:29:30.000 | Now the point I'd like to draw your attention to and my own is of these top ten leading
00:29:35.820 | causes of death, either eight or nine of them, depending on how you personally characterize
00:29:42.340 | suicide are medical conditions.
00:29:47.260 | Only one of them, preventable injury, has anything to do with physical situations that
00:29:52.600 | you'll be in.
00:29:54.680 | Heart disease and cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes,
00:30:01.480 | diabetes mellitus, if that particular modification of the word diabetes makes a difference, I
00:30:06.280 | don't know, influenza and pneumonia, nephritis, and then suicide is number ten.
00:30:12.280 | And depending on how you desire to treat the topic of suicide, that will determine whether
00:30:18.220 | you include that and how you include that in your personal planning.
00:30:22.520 | So the point here is figuring out a plan for physical health, for strong physical health
00:30:28.120 | and the avoidance of disease, this should be very high on my and your, on our priorities.
00:30:37.200 | And it should be very high on the amount of time that we spend thinking about these topics,
00:30:42.080 | studying them, and trying to figure out how to maintain long, healthy, disease-free lives.
00:30:48.760 | How to avoid these particular medical conditions that we may suffer from.
00:30:54.240 | And my caveat here, as I give you a few things to consider, is I would not consider myself
00:31:01.040 | a medical expert.
00:31:03.120 | The problem with medical experts, in my analysis, after listening to a lot of them and reading
00:31:08.640 | a lot of them, is you can't seem to find any that really agree, and it's very hard for
00:31:15.800 | those of us who are non-medical experts to figure out who's telling the truth and who's
00:31:20.040 | not.
00:31:22.520 | So I'm going to proceed forward with giving you just a few ideas that make sense to me,
00:31:27.920 | because I think we have swallowed a lie, which is to always revert to experts and the idea
00:31:32.880 | of expertise instead of using a little bit of common sense.
00:31:36.800 | I find this particular topic of health and figuring out how to maintain health to be
00:31:41.120 | very personally frustrating, because no matter how much research I do, no matter how much
00:31:47.680 | reading I do, no matter how much listening I do, it seems like there's always one more
00:31:52.080 | person who disagrees with the person I just heard and has more compelling data.
00:31:56.760 | And perhaps those who are more competent and have more experience can identify the problems
00:32:02.520 | in one person's argument and another person's data sets, but I struggle to do that.
00:32:07.040 | I struggle to figure out who's right.
00:32:09.740 | So I've taken a fairly simple approach to this, and I hope it helps you.
00:32:16.200 | Without advocating for any one particular approach or one viewpoint, here are the three
00:32:23.760 | things that make sense to me that we should focus a lot of our time and attention.
00:32:29.800 | If we're going to engage in a fight against these particular diseases and these particular
00:32:35.200 | health conditions, which have a very strong probability of ending our lives early, I think
00:32:41.240 | there are probably three core ones and perhaps some more connected ones as well.
00:32:48.240 | Number one, quality nutrition and adequate hydration.
00:32:54.520 | Quality nutrition and adequate hydration.
00:32:57.520 | Number two, maintaining and living in low toxicity environments.
00:33:02.320 | Number three, assuring that we get adequate physical movement throughout all of our lives
00:33:08.440 | seems to be extremely important.
00:33:10.400 | Now, I think there might be some other factors.
00:33:13.240 | For example, I'm sensitive to an argument that somebody like a chiropractor would make
00:33:18.960 | towards the value of making sure that your skeletal alignment is optimum, but I think
00:33:26.560 | these three are good enough for us to focus on.
00:33:29.040 | Number one, quality nutrition and adequate hydration.
00:33:32.720 | Here's my layman's understanding of this topic.
00:33:36.260 | Your body is made up of the physical substances that you put into it.
00:33:44.480 | There's nothing else that your body can work with to generate new cells, generate new tissues,
00:33:50.840 | and heal itself than the physical substances that you ingest.
00:33:55.080 | Now, those physical substances, of course, come through your mouth, the food that you
00:33:59.240 | eat and the water that you drink.
00:34:03.120 | So making sure that the quality of those substances is very high seems to me to be a very important
00:34:10.480 | topic.
00:34:11.480 | Now, that term quality is very subjective and open to interpretation.
00:34:16.540 | Different people have different ideas about what quality food really is, and there are
00:34:23.720 | some very strongly held opinions and beliefs about this.
00:34:27.840 | Now, I don't know who's right, but I'll tell you what I think seems to be a bit of consensus
00:34:33.560 | on the topic.
00:34:35.620 | People frequently argue and debate about whether you should eat a diet that is high in fat
00:34:41.820 | and low in carbohydrates, high in carbohydrates, low in meat, low in fat, high in carbohydrates.
00:34:48.360 | There's all these various debates.
00:34:51.500 | But I don't think there's anybody that I've ever read that advocates for eating a lot
00:34:56.800 | of processed, packaged foods.
00:35:00.920 | So one of the first movements towards making sure that there is quality nutrition going
00:35:05.320 | into your body seems to be making sure that we approach the topic of food and very clearly
00:35:11.040 | understand that highly processed, highly packaged foods are probably not going to be a cornerstone
00:35:18.240 | of good nutrition.
00:35:20.680 | I think that if I were to do a survey of researchers who advocate for a vegetarian diet and I ask
00:35:30.560 | them, "Would you rather somebody eat vegetables and meat from time to time, or would you rather
00:35:38.720 | somebody eat vegetables and packs of processed foods, Oreos, Twinkies, I don't even know
00:35:46.720 | the names, Kellogg's cereal for breakfast, which would you rather somebody eat?"
00:35:51.680 | I think most of them would probably say, "Well, we'd rather somebody eat vegetables and some
00:35:55.640 | meat."
00:35:56.880 | And this seems to me in some of the diets that I have read to be one of the big challenges
00:36:01.680 | is figuring out what your control group is.
00:36:04.280 | If your control group is people who engage in the standard American diet and the standard
00:36:08.040 | American lifestyle, it seems like when measured against that control group, almost anybody
00:36:14.200 | who adopts almost any diet will have some improvement.
00:36:19.720 | I've seen analyses in some books written where people talk about certain foods, getting rid
00:36:26.240 | of certain foods, adding on certain foods, adding in pasta, getting rid of meat, getting
00:36:30.600 | rid of pasta, adding in meat, adding more vegetables.
00:36:33.600 | There are people who advocate for a diet that simply involves changing the amount of sleep
00:36:36.660 | that you get.
00:36:38.220 | But what seems to be the case is by the control group usually seems to be the people who are
00:36:43.000 | involved in the standard American diet and standard American lifestyle.
00:36:46.760 | And I personally think that almost any diet works to some extent because it forces people
00:36:55.240 | to pay attention to what they're eating.
00:36:56.760 | And if you just look at your food and it kind of seems really bright orange or it seems
00:37:02.360 | dead or it came out of a package or it's the kind of thing that you realize that usually
00:37:07.480 | fat people eat this stuff and you start paying attention to what you eat, that seems to be
00:37:12.120 | sufficient to cause some significant changes in many people.
00:37:15.920 | So I think most people would agree on avoiding the standard American diet and especially
00:37:20.520 | on avoiding processed foods, junk foods, etc.
00:37:23.360 | Now, the good news here is financially those are your most expensive foods because they
00:37:29.280 | are value added foods to use the nomenclature of the food industry.
00:37:33.440 | See, if you take wheat and you sell wheat berries, you have to sell it pretty cheap
00:37:39.600 | because that's pretty close to what the farmer is selling.
00:37:42.880 | And if the farmer is selling wheat for $20 a bushel and the person who's reselling the
00:37:48.040 | wheat into your grocery store is reselling it for $30 a bushel, that farmer is going
00:37:53.720 | to figure out a way to sell it directly to you for $25 a bushel.
00:37:58.320 | So there's not much of an ability for the food maker to mark up that particular bushel
00:38:02.880 | of wheat that they're trying to sell you.
00:38:05.560 | But if you take wheat and you start to process it, now it starts to go beyond the farmer's
00:38:09.480 | ability.
00:38:10.480 | The farmer sells the wheat and the wheat gets turned into flour.
00:38:13.240 | Well now the price can go up pretty significantly because the farmer doesn't have an operation
00:38:17.640 | to create flour, the farmer has an operation to produce wheat.
00:38:23.280 | So the price of flour is higher than the price of wheat.
00:38:26.280 | Well, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on what kind of flour you buy, you've probably
00:38:32.560 | degraded the nutritional value of the wheat.
00:38:35.360 | I'd a whole lot rather eat some bread that was made from flour that was freshly ground
00:38:41.640 | and was whole wheat than bread that was made from a highly refined processed flour that
00:38:46.920 | had some of the nutrients stripped out.
00:38:48.720 | And I think most people would seem to agree.
00:38:50.760 | We may have a good debate about gluten and wheat and et cetera, but I think there's just
00:38:55.800 | something where most of us would look at a loaf of freshly baked whole wheat bread and
00:39:01.200 | recognize, "Hey, that's probably going to have more nutritional value for us than a
00:39:05.680 | loaf of bread that is made out of a bunch of bleached enriched wheat.
00:39:11.080 | And it's probably also going to have fewer toxins."
00:39:13.920 | Now back to the value add and then I'll come back to the making of bread.
00:39:18.040 | If that particular reseller can then take flour and turn it into bread and sell you
00:39:22.280 | bread, they can charge you a whole lot more money for the bread than they could charge
00:39:28.920 | you for the raw flour.
00:39:31.400 | And things would continue of course, because a lot of people can make bread.
00:39:34.240 | But if they can take that wheat and they can add some corn syrup and some hydrogenated
00:39:38.320 | blah, blah, blah, the names I don't know, then all of a sudden they can turn that wheat
00:39:44.640 | flour that they turned and turn it into Oreo cookies.
00:39:47.780 | Now the price per unit is very, very high and you're going to pay a lot of money for
00:39:52.200 | the Oreo cookies and the farmer can't make Oreo cookies.
00:39:56.280 | The farmer just makes the wheat.
00:39:59.040 | So it seems to me that one of the most intelligent things to do for your health and also for
00:40:03.800 | your pocketbook is to work back in the food chain towards those more basic, simple, elemental
00:40:10.800 | factors.
00:40:11.800 | And I think this is doable on many different levels.
00:40:18.240 | If you have a choice between buying whole wheat bread in the grocery store and buying,
00:40:22.520 | I hate to pick on Oreos, but crackers or something like that, you're going to get a lot more
00:40:29.240 | value for your dollar buying a loaf of bread than a box of crackers.
00:40:33.960 | And you're going to get a lot more nutritional value from buying a loaf of bread than a box
00:40:38.520 | of Oreos.
00:40:41.720 | Now you may consider working back another time.
00:40:44.700 | You may get more value for your dollar by purchasing the flour from the grocery store
00:40:50.000 | and making your own bread.
00:40:52.800 | Doesn't cost very much, will save you a good amount of money, and I think it'll be healthier.
00:40:57.440 | Because to make the bread that they put on the grocery store shelves, if you read the
00:41:01.040 | ingredients, then all of a sudden you have to finally have preservatives and stabilizers
00:41:05.600 | and color stabilizers, et cetera, to make that bread sit there, even though it's only
00:41:08.940 | sitting there for a few days.
00:41:10.820 | But if you buy the flour and the yeast and the oil and the water and honey and you make
00:41:15.600 | the bread yourself, even if you're buying flour, then you can go ahead and make sure
00:41:20.480 | that some of those preservatives have been pulled from the mix.
00:41:23.760 | And I think you're getting fewer toxins, which you get to a low toxicity environment in a
00:41:27.680 | moment, and you'd think you'd get a little bit more nutrition.
00:41:30.560 | I can't prove that.
00:41:31.560 | I don't have all the data.
00:41:32.560 | This just seems to be my common sense approach.
00:41:35.480 | You judge it for yourself.
00:41:37.920 | And then finally, of course, if you want to have the lowest cost financially, and I think
00:41:43.320 | probably the highest nutritional benefit of the highest quality nutrition, then buy a
00:41:49.120 | bucket of wheat and a wheat grinder, grind the wheat and make the bread.
00:41:53.720 | Now I think it's worth our trying to figure out if our wheat bellies are large because
00:41:58.440 | we're eating wheat or not.
00:41:59.760 | I don't know.
00:42:00.760 | I'm not competent to know that.
00:42:02.080 | I don't know about gluten.
00:42:03.080 | I read people who make the arguments about gluten.
00:42:05.400 | I know if you're intolerant, you should need it, of course.
00:42:08.040 | But of course, some people say that everyone's intolerant.
00:42:10.480 | I don't know how to judge that.
00:42:13.120 | But I think you get better results if you go closer to the elements and simpler, and
00:42:20.160 | you also save a lot of money.
00:42:21.680 | When I was younger, that was one of the things my mom did.
00:42:25.600 | My family didn't have a lot of money.
00:42:26.600 | We had a lot of kids and a basic income.
00:42:30.240 | And growing up, I always remember her making bread and she would buy buckets of wheat.
00:42:35.240 | She had a wheat grinder.
00:42:36.240 | She would grind the wheat and make the bread.
00:42:37.720 | And it was, well, delicious and nutritious.
00:42:42.120 | Now, take that and apply it to other things.
00:42:46.960 | You can apply this to almost any kind of food group.
00:42:50.480 | I think if you were to ask most low-carbers, most paleoprimal people, I guess low-carbers
00:42:58.400 | would be better.
00:42:59.400 | Let's say if somebody is pursuing a low glycemic index diet and you were asking a nutrition
00:43:04.000 | consultant, I think generally if you said, "Would you rather I eat baked potatoes,"
00:43:10.280 | which of course have a very high glycemic index or very high on the glycemic index and
00:43:14.980 | stimulate a lot of insulin production in your body, "Would you rather I eat a lot of baked
00:43:19.320 | potatoes or would you rather I eat a lot of potato chips?"
00:43:24.720 | Think they're going to say, "You should probably go for the baked potatoes."
00:43:29.560 | Just seems a lot better.
00:43:30.880 | Potatoes have a lot of nutritional quality and they may mess up your blood sugar, but
00:43:34.280 | depending on your approach on that, it's just all around it's going to be better than the
00:43:37.400 | potato chips.
00:43:38.980 | The good news is eating the potatoes instead of the potato chips is really good also for
00:43:45.360 | your budget.
00:43:46.360 | Now, I think it's really good for your food budget now and I also think it's really good
00:43:50.760 | for your medication budget later.
00:43:54.640 | Think if you eat a lot more potato chips now, you're going to spend a lot more money on
00:43:58.240 | medications later.
00:44:00.080 | But if you eat more baked potatoes now, I think you're going to spend less money on
00:44:04.900 | medications later.
00:44:08.920 | Now from here, you're on your own.
00:44:11.920 | This is my best guess at the principle, but the principle is look for quality nutrition
00:44:19.320 | and minimal processing.
00:44:23.240 | Now the next category is low toxicity environments and here I want to talk about another group
00:44:27.840 | of food.
00:44:29.840 | I think that when you're analyzing your foods and you're trying to figure out what do I
00:44:35.420 | eat, although I appreciate the debates among people about should I eat meat or should I
00:44:42.240 | eat grain or what?
00:44:44.320 | Here's what I think.
00:44:45.320 | First, everyone agrees you should eat vegetables.
00:44:47.920 | I've never read somebody that doesn't think you should eat vegetables, but I think you
00:44:52.720 | got to look and say, "What's in those vegetables?"
00:44:56.240 | Now it makes all the sense in the world to me to recognize that a biodiverse environment,
00:45:02.600 | growing environment, has a stronger chance of leading to a biodiverse vegetable product.
00:45:10.480 | I just don't see how, since the vegetable is also a component of its growing environment,
00:45:16.960 | just like our bodies are created by the food that we intake, I just don't see how a vegetable
00:45:24.920 | or a fruit that's grown in an environment that doesn't have a lot of biodiversity is
00:45:32.520 | going to have as much nutritional value for your body and mine as a vegetable that's grown
00:45:38.860 | in a high biodiversity environment.
00:45:42.840 | So let me touch briefly for a moment on the organic question or my best guess at it.
00:45:49.260 | It doesn't make sense to me to shop primarily for organic if organic doesn't mean biodynamically
00:45:57.880 | alive.
00:46:00.680 | Just because something is grown without pesticides and fertilizers, I think that might be fine,
00:46:06.280 | and I might prefer to have fewer pesticides and fertilizers, but I'd probably rather eat
00:46:11.280 | some carrots that are grown in a rich black earth that you know, you can just see.
00:46:20.200 | You can see the earthworms wriggling in it.
00:46:21.760 | You can pick it up and you can smell it, smell all the smells, and you know, "Hey, this soil
00:46:26.040 | is alive."
00:46:27.040 | I'd rather eat a carrot that came from that soil that also had been sprayed with insecticide
00:46:32.760 | than a carrot that came out of a biodynamically dead field where the insects were killed,
00:46:39.920 | well, herbicide.
00:46:40.920 | So there was herbicide on the carrot versus a biodynamically dead field where the carrots
00:46:46.720 | were weeded by flamethrowers.
00:46:49.960 | Just seems to make sense to me.
00:46:51.200 | Now, if we can avoid the insecticide or the pesticide, that sounds great to me, you know,
00:46:55.600 | to avoid it.
00:46:56.760 | But I think a lot of our focus on the organic is just misplaced, and our actual question
00:47:01.240 | should be biodynamic.
00:47:03.760 | How much nutrition does this vegetable have?
00:47:07.200 | Now, some of that can probably be measured by how it looks.
00:47:09.720 | Is it rich?
00:47:10.880 | Is it vibrant?
00:47:12.200 | Some of it I think is only going to be measured by trying to figure out how do you go to the
00:47:14.880 | farm where it's grown so that you can see the soil?
00:47:19.280 | Because when my vegetables are grown in Chile and flown in on an airplane, I can't go there.
00:47:24.120 | But I can go to the farmer's market around the corner, or I can go to the local farmer
00:47:28.080 | and I can look at their farm and I can see how are they doing and what's the soil look
00:47:32.320 | like?
00:47:33.320 | In my mind, that should be the question.
00:47:35.360 | Now, back to toxins, and let's talk on another one.
00:47:38.680 | I think a big focus should also be on a discussion of meats.
00:47:44.520 | And I think figuring out how to get high-quality meat would seem to be in a more important
00:47:50.360 | discussion than figuring out whether to avoid or not to have meat.
00:47:55.160 | A lot of times you get into the debates over vegetarianism and meat eating, but I think
00:48:01.920 | if the parallels between somebody who's a vegetarian and they eat lots of high-quality
00:48:08.600 | vegetables and high-quality fruits that are packed with nutrients because they're grown
00:48:13.720 | in a biodynamically alive environment, and you were to compare them to somebody who eats
00:48:19.120 | a whole lot of meat, but all of that meat comes from sick animals who are raised in
00:48:27.000 | very unhealthy environments.
00:48:29.320 | And the only way that meat can be cleaned up is to add all kinds of chemicals and bleach
00:48:33.320 | and chlorine and whatnot to make it safe.
00:48:35.920 | I'll take the vegetarianism.
00:48:39.420 | But if on the other hand, you're comparing somebody who eats vegetables and meat that
00:48:43.880 | are from pretty clean sources and the meat is really carefully raised and it's really
00:48:48.760 | carefully treated and it's made by healthy animals versus the vegetarian who just eats
00:48:54.360 | those depleted vegetables and stuffs their face with potato chips all day long, that
00:49:00.760 | just doesn't seem to me to strike very good.
00:49:03.200 | It doesn't seem like it's going to work out really well.
00:49:06.280 | So I think the quality is a big, big deal.
00:49:08.720 | So one was quality nutrition and adequate hydration, of course.
00:49:11.560 | A lot of people lose weight and live longer just by drinking more water.
00:49:17.280 | But that seems to be number one, quality nutrition and adequate hydration.
00:49:21.400 | You develop those concepts in whatever way makes you feel best.
00:49:26.640 | But I think if we focused on that word quality and tried to understand different applications
00:49:32.060 | of it to our vegetables and our grains and our meat, I think we'd get a long way.
00:49:36.640 | I think that, in my opinion, is the 20% that gets at 80% of the results.
00:49:43.240 | And I'll let the scientists debate the rest of this stuff.
00:49:47.600 | Quality nutrition, adequate hydration.
00:49:49.240 | Number two, of course, is low toxicity environments.
00:49:52.040 | Now toxins seem to me to be bad things because your body has to filter out those toxins.
00:49:58.680 | It's got to figure out how to make those things better.
00:50:01.720 | Now here, the toxins can be many, many things.
00:50:07.000 | We usually think about the toxins that come in from our foods, maybe.
00:50:12.380 | Those toxins, of course, could be many things.
00:50:15.520 | It could be from the toxins of the preservatives that are put in the food to make it sit for
00:50:19.680 | two years on the shelf and not fall apart.
00:50:22.040 | But it could also be the toxin from the E. coli that's living on the surface of the thing
00:50:26.200 | that you didn't get rid of when you washed or prepared the food, or salmonella, or improper
00:50:31.960 | cooking or improper care for food.
00:50:35.000 | So those are both toxins, in my opinion.
00:50:37.680 | But toxins are not only those things that are absorbed in our food.
00:50:40.920 | They're also those things that are absorbed in our water.
00:50:43.540 | Whether it's the water that we drink, perhaps your water has chlorine in it or fluoride,
00:50:48.200 | I think those things should be taken out.
00:50:50.720 | Or whether it's the toxins that we bathe in, the chlorine in the water that is absorbed
00:50:55.320 | through our skin.
00:50:56.320 | It just doesn't strike me to be a very good thing.
00:50:58.640 | I don't think my body is meant to absorb chlorine constantly.
00:51:04.360 | Unfortunately, though, the discussion about toxins isn't as simple as simply the food
00:51:11.440 | or the water and trying to figure those things out.
00:51:14.120 | Toxins are everywhere.
00:51:15.760 | Whether it's the candle on the table that's just pumping out a bunch of junk and chemicals
00:51:20.200 | that you're then inhaling, that's a concern.
00:51:23.080 | Most of us don't think about that.
00:51:24.400 | Whether it's the air freshener that's sprayed in the bathroom or the fragrance that's in
00:51:28.120 | the soap, some people are super sensitive to that stuff.
00:51:30.960 | Some people aren't, but still, at the end of the day, it just seems like a toxin.
00:51:34.580 | Whether it's the electromagnetic radiation that, you know, if I sleep next to the router,
00:51:39.040 | the wireless router that's just pumping out electrical energy all night, that doesn't
00:51:43.080 | seem like a good plan to me.
00:51:45.800 | You know, hanging out, living with my cell phone to my ear eight hours a day, regardless
00:51:51.620 | of what the current study that I can put my hand on, it doesn't seem like a good idea
00:51:58.600 | to me.
00:51:59.600 | Electromagnetic radiation or whatever that stuff is.
00:52:02.560 | You know, of course, there's some people that are very sensitive and some people aren't,
00:52:05.280 | but to me that also makes sense.
00:52:06.880 | It makes sense that some people's bodies are going to be weak and not able to fend those
00:52:11.340 | things off, and some people's bodies are going to be strong.
00:52:15.400 | But figuring out how to limit toxins in our environment seems to me like a pretty good
00:52:20.440 | idea.
00:52:21.440 | Now, how you apply that, I don't know, but anything that goes into your body that your
00:52:26.880 | body can't use for positive food to build itself, it's got to be removed.
00:52:33.000 | And if your body's spending all kinds of time removing things, it's going to do that well,
00:52:38.680 | but at some point it seems like to me like it could get tired and it could just get overloaded.
00:52:47.440 | So I don't know where the range is where asbestos causes one thing and electromagnetic radiation
00:52:55.800 | causes another, but I do think we probably should just take a careful look at eliminating
00:53:00.540 | toxins and have a healthy skepticism about most of those things and figure out how to
00:53:07.840 | minimize the toxins and the things that attack us.
00:53:11.920 | Finally, number three, adequate physical movement.
00:53:16.320 | Seems pretty clear to me that getting a lot of movement is a good thing, but I think either
00:53:22.380 | extreme is probably damaging, but damaging in a different way.
00:53:27.800 | Most of us, of course, are far too sedentary and just about everything associated with
00:53:32.680 | a sedentary lifestyle seems to be destructive.
00:53:35.520 | It doesn't seem like the human body is designed for sitting constantly.
00:53:41.920 | So most of us probably just need to figure out how to move more.
00:53:45.800 | Now on the other end, it seems to me like there's a little bit of excess from those
00:53:51.160 | who move a lot in some really repetitive ways.
00:53:54.520 | I've known a number of Ironman triathletes and it seems like they all got a bunch of
00:54:00.200 | injuries.
00:54:01.200 | Now, is that required?
00:54:02.200 | Probably not.
00:54:03.200 | Could you do it safely?
00:54:04.200 | No, but anything that's super extreme also seems like we should be careful.
00:54:09.320 | But from there, you're on your own.
00:54:13.280 | Now if I'm wrong and you have information, I would actually invite you to talk to me
00:54:17.920 | and I'll be happy to bring you on and discuss this with you.
00:54:20.040 | But of course, there's such a plethora of discussions on these topics already.
00:54:24.000 | I don't know that that particular area is a good way for me to focus right now.
00:54:33.080 | But I will say this, financially I struggle to figure out where to invest my money in
00:54:37.800 | health.
00:54:38.800 | I've heard anecdotes.
00:54:41.160 | I remember Joel Salatin gave some percentages one time in one of his talks or books that
00:54:46.240 | I read.
00:54:47.240 | I can't cite the exact data, so hold it something like this.
00:54:51.560 | And he said something, 150 years ago, the average US American spent, and again, these
00:54:57.360 | aren't the exact numbers.
00:54:58.640 | This is directionally appropriate enough to drive the point home.
00:55:02.600 | The average US American spent 25% of their budget on food and 5% of their budget on health
00:55:08.560 | expenses.
00:55:10.800 | Today the average American spends 5% of their budget on food and 25% of their budget on
00:55:16.000 | health expenses.
00:55:17.460 | So we don't spend any less money on our health, we just spend it in the wrong way.
00:55:21.920 | Spend it on healthcare or sick care instead of food.
00:55:27.160 | That makes sense to me.
00:55:29.240 | I can see that.
00:55:30.240 | I think that's right.
00:55:31.240 | Whatever the data actually is, I think that's directionally right.
00:55:35.120 | What I find difficult to figure out is where your dollars are best spent.
00:55:43.320 | On food, that is of course one of a big category that we face that changes on a monthly basis.
00:55:51.880 | Many financial categories such as your housing expense, your rent, or your mortgage payment,
00:55:56.400 | those are fixed by big decisions that you've made.
00:55:58.360 | You can change them, but once you change them, then they're going to become fixed again.
00:56:01.440 | But food changes every week, every month.
00:56:03.560 | It's a fresh decision every time.
00:56:05.400 | You're standing in the grocery store saying, "Should I buy the organic carrots or the conventional
00:56:10.120 | carrots?
00:56:11.120 | Should I buy the butter from grass-fed cows or butter from grain-fed cows?"
00:56:17.960 | Standing in the meat department, "Should I buy the grass-fed bison or should I buy
00:56:22.080 | the conventional factory-raised chicken?"
00:56:25.560 | Looking at your eggs, "Should I buy the cage-free eggs?
00:56:27.680 | I don't even know what that means.
00:56:29.120 | Or should I buy the conventional?"
00:56:30.440 | It's maddening to me because I find it a very frustrating decision tree because I don't
00:56:36.320 | know what makes the biggest difference.
00:56:40.480 | I don't know.
00:56:41.480 | I want to spend more money on food because I think that'll make a bigger health, but
00:56:45.640 | I don't know what to spend it on.
00:56:49.200 | So if you have any ideas on this subject, here's the specific question that I'd be happy
00:56:52.920 | to hear from you on.
00:56:53.920 | You can email me, use the contact form on the website at joshuatradicalpersonalfinance.com.
00:56:58.360 | You can comment on today's show, but let me know how you would describe these things,
00:57:04.600 | especially if you have a background in medical expertise.
00:57:06.720 | I'd love to hear your opinion.
00:57:09.200 | If you were going to increase, let's say that your family spends, I'll use my numbers, your
00:57:13.160 | family spends, well, depending on the month, $400 to $500 a month on food.
00:57:17.280 | Let's say that you're going to change your food budget and you're going to go intentionally
00:57:20.640 | from $500 to $1,000, let's double it.
00:57:25.520 | Let's say you're going to double your food budget, $500 to $1,000 a month.
00:57:30.000 | And you're doing that for the purpose of good health.
00:57:32.880 | My question to you is this, what would you spend that money on?
00:57:37.800 | Would you spend an extra $100 a month on vitamins, supplements, green concoctions, extra nutritional
00:57:45.920 | stuff?
00:57:46.920 | Would you switch all your vegetables from conventional to organic?
00:57:50.520 | Would you move all your meat purchases from farm-raised to wild sources?
00:57:57.040 | Would you buy a grass-fed beef cow?
00:58:00.720 | Would you quit eating meat so you could eat more grains?
00:58:03.360 | What would you do?
00:58:04.360 | I'd love to hear from you.
00:58:05.360 | There's a problem I've struggled with for a long time and it's, in my mind, a maddening
00:58:10.200 | problem.
00:58:11.200 | But I hope you consider your own situation and hope in conclusion of today's show that
00:58:15.360 | these simple ideas are helpful for you for health-related factors.
00:58:19.540 | My ideas are this.
00:58:20.720 | One, quality nutrition and adequate hydration is essential.
00:58:24.940 | And by focusing on the word quality, I think that you and I are equipped to make reasonable,
00:58:31.160 | common sense decisions without having to try to consult the 37 new medical studies that
00:58:36.360 | were published this month.
00:58:38.200 | Just look at something and say, "Is this quality?
00:58:41.440 | Is this of high quality?"
00:58:44.320 | Number two, seeking to live in a low-toxicity environment, pulling out toxins, whatever
00:58:51.740 | those toxins are, taking a look at the cleaners under your sink.
00:58:55.800 | What's in that?
00:58:56.800 | What is the chemical in that?
00:58:58.140 | Taking a look at the stuff that's in the air.
00:59:00.540 | What's in that?
00:59:01.540 | What do I smell?
00:59:02.540 | What's coming off of my walls?
00:59:03.540 | What's coming out of that candle on the table?
00:59:05.180 | What's coming in the window from the factory next door?
00:59:10.980 | And then number three, making sure that we get adequate and significant physical movement
00:59:15.300 | that seems to be in line with the way that humans are designed to move.
00:59:20.740 | Take those ideas.
00:59:21.740 | I hope they help you because at the end of the day, the major leading causes of death
00:59:28.180 | are all related to health.
00:59:29.660 | So if you want to protect your finances, make sure that your insurance policy was a waste
00:59:33.420 | of money, kind of figure out what to do about those lifestyle diseases.
00:59:37.460 | If you want to make sure that your family is continuing to enjoy your presence, kind
00:59:41.820 | of figure out what to do about those lifestyle diseases.
00:59:43.780 | They're far more important than worrying about getting shot by a gun or worrying about getting
00:59:49.960 | in a car accident.
00:59:50.960 | We'll cover those another time.
00:59:51.960 | Thank you for listening.
00:59:52.960 | I hope this information has been helpful.
00:59:53.960 | Big Boy's Comedy Kings is coming to Yamava Resort and Casino Saturday, December 9th with
00:59:54.960 | D.L. Hughley.
00:59:55.960 | That sweater so tight, look like a snot between the legs.
00:59:56.960 | Cedric the Entertainer.
00:59:57.960 | Once we stop running, I'll find out what it was.
00:59:58.960 | I'll find out what it was.
00:59:59.960 | I'll find out what it was.
01:00:00.960 | I'll find out what it was.
01:00:01.960 | I'll find out what it was.
01:00:02.960 | I'll find out what it was.
01:00:03.960 | I'll find out what it was.
01:00:04.960 | Once we stop running, I'll find out what it was we was running about.
01:00:08.540 | And Paul Rodriguez.
01:00:09.540 | What is it about old Mexican men?
01:00:10.540 | They could be missing a leg, they still want to get into a fight.
01:00:11.540 | Hosted by my man Eric Blake and a special performance by Mario.
01:00:17.540 | Big Boy's Comedy Kings, December 9th at Yamava Resort and Casino.
01:00:20.820 | Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com.
01:00:23.580 | This is a 21 and over event.