Doc Watson

Is that possible, liposuction results with a natural alternative approach? The answer is absolutely! You may be hearing about a new technique available on the market and chances are you want to know if the buzz about it is true. The treatment is called injection lipolysis.

About a year ago, I started thinking I needed to do something about my neck. After all I am over 55 years of age and getting closer to sixty every year. I wasn't excited about having any surgery no matter how minor since I had had surgeries in the past that didn't work out the way they were supposed to. Hesitate to submit to liposuction I asked around about any other treatment that might help my sagging neck and, need I say it, double chin. No sooner had I put out this thought then Carol Cifelli, Director of Nursing at LipoNOW came into my office and asked about coming on my radio show to talk about this new and exciting technique of ridding the body of that unwanted fat that no matter how much exercise you do or how many diets you go on it still stubbornly remains on your frame. This was May of 2006. I was intrigued about the procedure LipoNOW was offering their clients and Carol suggested I come in for a free consultation.

A wise man once said, “Education, not Medication.” According to Mike Adams, a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health, stated in one of his articles this year that women need to be told the truth about how to prevent and even cure breast cancer, that this disease is 90 percent preventable, mostly using completely free therapies and that the breast cancer industry does not want women to be made aware of these free therapies because most of the better-known non-profits in the area of breast cancer are, themselves, dependant on revenues from the companies that profit from the disease.

That is a pretty strong statement! But, I happen to agree with him. Before I became interested in natural medicine I believed everything my doctors told me. If they said I needed an operation, I had it. If I needed to take a medication, I took it. If they thought I needed to have a diagnostic test that shot a radioactive isotope into my vein, I let them.

Everyone has candida, a form of yeast (candida albicans), in their sytem. Normally candida is found in the gastrointestinal tract, the genital urinary tract and on the skin. If we are healthy and our immune systems are strong candida is innocuous (harmless) to us. Good bacteria known as bifidobacteria and acidophilus help to keep candida in check. It is only when our intestinal environment gets out of balance as a result of a compromised immune system or other factors like antibiotic use, high sugar intake, high alcohol intake, hormone therapy and stress that the candida has an opportunity to proliferate and become pathogenic. Once this happens candida can transform from a simple yeast into a much more aggressive fungus that can seriously compromise our health. We call this condition candidiasis.

Back last year I read Steve Jobs Commencement address to the Stanford Graduating Class of 2005 and found his words moving and inspirational. Just recently I had the opportunity to re-read it and the words he spoke still resonate with me so I took the liberty of reprinting them here.

You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5˘ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

These hot dog days of summer can leave you listless and not wanting to cook or eat. For something refreshing and also nourishing try my Doc Watson's Basic Protein Shake.

8oz of Fluid (4oz fruit juice, 4oz chilled water)
1 Serv Protein Powder
1 Serv Essential Blend
1 Tbsp Essential Fatty Acids (Flax Oil)
Handful of Frozen Fruit (optional)

My favorite juices are tangerine and pineapple juice. Best tasting

I just perused an article in the Life Extension Magazine this month by Gary Null et al about the leading cause of death in the United States. It's not heart disease or cancer or diabetes. You probably won't believe it, but, it's death by conventional medicine. That's right! According to all the reports that are published in peer review literature when added all together, medication deaths, medical mistakes, unnecessary surgeries, etc ad nauseaum the death toll tops the list at 800,000 deaths per year in the United States at the hands of doctors and for other medical reasons.

Here is a new connection for us. There are some changes being made at Doc Watson's and I am looking forward to the new grand scheme. More news later.

In today’s world stress is the number one reason individuals seek out the advice of their physicians. That’s right. According to statistics more than 90% of trips to the doctor are stress-related. In many cases patients aren’t even aware they are under stress it is so pervasive in our society. Stress comes in all forms and affects people of all ages and walks of life. And, stress isn’t always bad for us. When carrying out a task or an important assignment a mild degree of stress can be helpful in that it often compels us to do a good job and work energetically. But that isn’t the kind of stress referred to here. This stress can be disruptive to the body’s balance and function eventually leading to illness, in some cases, of a serious nature (ex: cancer, heart disease, etc).

So who is most susceptible to stress?

Every day on the radio and television we hear about people taking illicit drugs and losing their ability to think, to focus, to remember, or to learn new things. They lose everything they hold dear all as a result of taking drugs. But what if this could happen to you anyway – without taking mind altering drugs? What if – as you age you lose your ability to think clearly? You forget the telephone number you just looked up in the phone book a minute ago. Or, you walk into a room and forget why you went there in the first place. Or, you see a friend on the street and remember their face but forget their name. Right now, you may be young and full of fire, and say, “That will never happen to me”.

Cleavers is a good diuretic and blood purifier that acts to reduce gravel or stones.

More and more people, mostly women, are coming to Doc Watson’s who suffer with the condition known as Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is characterized by some, if not all of the following symptoms; tenderness and stiffness in the muscles, tendons & joints, fatigue, lethargy, poor sleep, depression, anxiety, foggy thinking, TMJ (temporo-mandibular joint) syndrome, gastrointestinal disturbances and migraine headaches. Often times fibromyalgia sufferers have been diagnosed with a variety of other illnesses and been treated by different doctors with different medications before finally receiving the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. In many instances the patient will be told it is “all in their head”.

Friends are siblings God never gave us.

If you had a choice how long would you choose to live? You probably think this is a silly question since we know we can’t live forever, but, what I am referring to here is living not only a long life but a healthy one as well. Around the world people of other cultures have longer life spans than we do here in the United States. In fact, only 3.3 percent of the US population will live to blow out the candles on their 80th birthday cake.

Die, when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought, a flower would grow.
-Abraham Lincoln

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
-Cato