Fear or Laziness: What's your excuse?

We get it. Most folks are not up for this. It’s not their cup of tea, their boat doesn’t float on these waters, they don’t like the cut of our jib. Sure, fair enough. Hard work is… well… hard.

But tribal survival, either against the zombie attack or against mass communication ennui (can we really survive on a diet of continually declining dialog skills like Twitter or baby-talk language decline like ‘where u at’?) will depend on a little hard work. Physical work. Tough play.

Heck, some of us actually enjoy this shit. We embrace the silliness of picking up something heavy, only to put it down again. Rinse. Repeat. A recent conversation I eavesdropped on had a pivotal utterance of “now it hurts NOT to move.” The profound idea behind this was as metaphysical as it was physical, but the simpler meaning was the acceptance of the craving for some intense celebration of what the body can do.

Can you dig it?

Here’s some ramblings from a real old post that I’ve expanded on a bit…

Here’s a thought: Any reason you can think of, any little story you have to tell yourself and others, any ‘out’ you might use to get out of this brand of fun that we ironhads and movement junkies lather onto ourselves like physiological/psychological shampoo - any excuse you have falls into one of two categories, Fear or Laziness.

Let’s play a little game and see which of the excuses from these lists below fit into which category (and keep an eye out for any that seem familiar to you):

The lack of resources list

I don’t have…

… a gym membership
… my favorite sexy headband
… every piece of super cool equipment I need to pump my pecs
… time

What you really ‘don’t have’ has nothing to do with external resources, but rather attitude and education, since a dash of both of those will overcome any of the above.

The self defeating list

I can’t…

… find the time
… handle the exercises
… stand the smell of burning muscles
… get around to washing my ’special strength’ undies. I NEED them, or I won’t be strong.
… get to the gym
… because of injury

Can’t or Won’t? Replace Can’t with ‘not willing to’ and you’ll see the problem.

The identifying with your weakness list

I am…

… scared
… weak
… tired
… in pain
… totally baked, dude

You’re identifying with the crappy sheen of superficial self perceptions due to the fear that if you strip all that away to get a view of who you really are, you won’t see much. This is a bummer, since your foundation is probably a pretty groovy place, one that deserves coveting.

Now here’s a big leap for some to take. Could laziness simply be a form of fear? Often we’ll embrace laziness because we fear the alternative. The list above then makes more sense. Let’s NOT DO since DOING means having to face things we may not want to face. Clearing away the muck that we identify ourselves with will find the solid decent human underneath all that, but, as I’ve quoted many times before, “freedom scares you because it means responsibility.”

What’re ya? Chicken?

Edocine Disruptors

Another thing I have been talking about for the last 10 years. This gentleman was on The Daily Show evening.

It’s Time to Learn From Frogs

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians began to sprout extra legs. In heavily polluted Lake Apopka, one of the largest lakes in Florida, male alligators developed stunted genitals.

In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.

Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.

Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine — compounded when a woman is on the pill — pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.

These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.

“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males — whether smallmouth bass or humans — tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

The scientific case is still far from proven, as chemical companies emphasize, and the uncertainties for humans are vast. But there is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. Some studies show correlations between these abnormalities and mothers who have greater exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy, through everything from hair spray to the water they drink.

Endocrine disruptors also affect females. It is now well established that DES, a synthetic estrogen given to many pregnant women from the 1930s to the 1970s to prevent miscarriages, caused abnormalities in the children. They seemed fine at birth, but girls born to those women have been more likely to develop misshaped sexual organs and cancer.

There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls.

A rush of new research has also tied endocrine disruptors to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, in both animals and humans. For example, mice exposed in utero even to low doses of endocrine disruptors appear normal at first but develop excess abdominal body fat as adults.

Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology — but there hasn’t been much public notice or government action.

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward screening endocrine disrupting chemicals, but at a glacial pace. For now, these chemicals continue to be widely used in agricultural pesticides and industrial compounds. Everybody is exposed.

“We should be concerned,” said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.”

The most notorious example of water pollution occurred in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire and helped shock America into adopting the Clean Water Act. Since then, complacency has taken hold.

Those deformed frogs and intersex fish — not to mention the growing number of deformities in newborn boys — should jolt us once again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Tapped

http://www.tappedthemovie.com/

IMPORTANT! Of course I've been telling people about plastics for years, just as i was trans fats and high fructose corn syrup. But I'm just a health freak.........