Today's excerpt begins on page 540 of The Survivor Volume 2.
By Cyrus Dickenson
Do you hear a strange ticking?
Not a loud ticking.
Actually it might be more of a vibration, and one that is somehow connected to your body and heart.
That’s it, your heart pounding!
Has someone somehow wired a bomb to your heart?
No, of course not, but it may very well feel like it if you are tense, full of anxiety, and under the stress well known to Survivors.
Where does stress, tension, and anxiety come from?
Well, they can come from practically anywhere.
But that question could easily be one of the most important you ever ask yourself.
Actually, tension and anxiety are the result of stress that gets out of hand.
This can be the result of the stress being (1) overwhelming (ie. ten men against one), (2) too many stresses at once (ie, fired from job, bills piling up, a bad cold, wife leaves you, or she comes home, etc.), (3) not knowing what the stress or stresses are or where they are coming from, or (4) unchanging, unending stress, including boredom.
Then, stress can turn to anxiety and tension because the mind and body become exhausted with no relief, no rest, relaxation, or variation.
If we are to deactivate tension and anxiety we must identify the stress or stresses and deactivate we must or fail to survive.
When anxiety reaches high levels for periods lasting days, weeks, or months, our body and mind begin to fail.
Ulcers, heart attacks, heart pounding, rapid breathing, ridiculous fears, poor or unpredictable mental function, as well as a host of other troubles besiege our system.
In short, we become physical and mental wrecks hardly worth saving.
Why would it be hard to detect stress when it's obviously all around us?
Well, for the very reason that most people are looking all around themselves and usually fail to look within.
Now I don’t mean within one's head, but within his body chemistry.
Often others try to convince us that there is something wrong with our minds, but we are foolish if we accept this as the cause or source of stress.
People whose body systems are in good balance don't have anxiety attacks, (I repeat, do not have anxiety attacks), are rarely tense, and enjoy a stressful situation, as it becomes a challenge to deal with and overcome, or reduce the stressful situation.
So, if you are having a rough time coping, don't make the mistake of blaming all your problems on other people, places or things, or your mind.
They are stress contributors but do not by themselves cause anxiety attacks.
Only when your body is out of balance can other people and situations contribute to your anxiety attacks and tension.
One of the best clues that the disturbing stress is coming from within the body chemistry is if the person tries to self medicate with such things as alcohol, cigarette chain smoking, drugs, or lots of sweet, gooey candies, pastries, pies, cakes, cokes, or huge amounts of white bread and other starchy foods.
This is an attempt to reduce stress by raising the low level of sugar in the blood stream.
This helps momentarily, only to make things much worse shortly thereafter.
Anxiety is our bodies' response to unyielding stress.
Anxiety can be felt by a pounding heart, rapid breathing, head aches, fearfullness of people, places, or things that don't usually scare us. or just a feeling of uneasiness.
Anxiety is real.
We never have to guess if we are anxious or not.
Stress, also, is real in every case and is the cause of anxiety.
In order to get rid of anxiety we must find the true source of the stress.
This is our toughest and most important task.
There are two places to look for that disturbing stress.
One is “out there" stress.
The other is “internal" stress.
The “out there" stress I will leave to you Survivalists to deal with.
I am a Survivalist also, but my specialty is with “internal stress."
I am convinced that one must check out the possibilities of internal stress before exploring for “out there" stress because an out of whack metabolism or body chemistry can fool us into seeing other people or situations as the cause of our anxiety attacks.
When this happens we waste ourselves defending against the wrong target while the actual source of our discomfort continues to tear our system down.
We could bomb and terrorize all the idiot's or organizations we don’t approve of from now till doomsday and would never be satisfied till we get rid of the stress that actually is causing the uneasiness.
What if we determine that an imbalance or internal stress is caused by our eating, smoking, drinking, or other habits?
In other words, if we have located a possible source of stress on our body metabolism, how do we get rid of it?
Many people do not want to hear the answer to this, but it can be extremely rewarding.
The answer is DIET.
Diet can reduce or eliminate anxiety attacks and tension, depending on how strictly the diet is kept.
Usually when people hear this they cringe.
To have to give up “habits" sends one into a quiet panic.
It hits right in the gut.
But don’t take the hard way out of this by saying “Baloney that’s the stupidest thing I've ever hear of!"
Believe me, the easy way is to think about this through your own common sense after you carefully listen to a plan to eliminate anxiety attacks.
There is no justified reason to panic.
The thing you subconsciously fear the most will not happen.
That fear is that you will have to give up your habit (like sugar and coffee for example) and you will feel even worse than you already do.
Right?
As you read on, a plan will be spelled out to you where you can give up your habits while replacing them with specific foods that will not only avoid serious withdrawal, but will leave your body in a slate of balance and feeling better physically and mentally than you can remember or even imagine.
This is no exaggeration but like anything else one must have a personal experience before fully appreciating it.
Here's how it works.
All food and drug habits (or cravings) are caused by LOW BLOOD SUGAR.
When our blood sugar is low our body signals us to eat.
The first signal is hunger sensations.
If we ignore this then our body tells us in other ways like irritability, tension, aggressiveness, fatigue, light headedness, dizziness, cold clammy and sweaty skin, nervousness, or fear, and when mixed with other stresses that we are dealing with in our life, anxiety attacks will result.
Hunger is triggered from a drop in the level of sugar in the blood stream and not by how much food is in the stomach.
The proof of this is that people are fed sugar and other nutrients through a vein, sometimes for months, without ever feeling hungry.
This is why many people feel hungry or want to chain smoke, or drink etc., even if they are full.
Their blood sugar level is still low.
What goes in their mouth only satisfies momentarily or for an hour or so and then they feel even worse than before.
What makes some people crave certain foods, drinks, or other drugs, and not other people?
The answer is faulty sugar metabolism.
Some people are born with, and others develop, imbalances in the body chemistry.
For example, a special part of the pancreas, called the isles of Langerhans, can be too sensitive to sugar.
This part of the pancreas makes insulin (which the diabetic doesn't have enough of).
Insulin normally keeps levels of sugar from being too high.
When too much insulin enters the blood stream the supply of sugar drops.
Then we feel crummy.
So we eat, drink, smoke, or take drugs which all, in one way or another, briefly raises the blood sugar and then causes an even lower level to follow for those with the imbalance.
The quick rise makes us feel good, then the drop makes us feel worse.
Are you starting to see the dilemma here?
The harder the guy tries to get his badly needed energy up, the worse his whole life gets.
His energy is either too low or it's going up and down like a yoyo.
And when the blood sugar is low the first organ to be affected is the brain, which uses a piggish 25% share of all the body's energy supply.
To make things worse, when the pancreas constantly keeps the blood sugar down, other body defenses try to help out and make things worse.
The adrenal glands, which are normally used only for emergency energy, release their many hormones, which make us want to run or fight for our life.
This is confusing to others as well as ourselves.
Then when we find ourselves in a real need to defend or escape, our adrenal glands are too exhausted to do us any good.
Did you ever rip the phone off the wall during a domestic squabble?
Or, scream and rant and rave over nothing?
This can happen and does when the adrenals are doing their thing at the wrong time.
This kind of stress we can do without.
We try to avoid low blood sugar by eating or taking things that give us a lift.
This plan backfires for those whose glands overreact.
The reward is more low blood sugar.
This, of course, lowers our chances of survival out there in the rat race of life.
This lengthy explanation is necessary before sense can be made out of what to do about it.
There are three basic foods: proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
We need all of them to be healthy.
To deactivate the time-bomb of anxiety we must understand carbohydrates.
Simply put, they are sugars and starches and would include fruits, vegetables, grains, and especially table sugar and honey, white bread and while rice.
Common sugar, white bread, white rice, and alcohol are the most deadly time bombs because they are wired directly to a hyperactive pancreas.
In short, we must stay away from the quick energy sources we need so badly.
So, we must replace these explosives with carbohydrates (sugars and starches! that work more slowly.
This includes whole grain breads and pastas, brown rice, beans, lentils, seeds, nuts which also have sufficient protein components which slow the reaction in our bodies.
To this we can include the high protein groups of meat, fish, fowl, and dairy products.
A normal amount of fat will be obtained in these high protein foods even without eating the fatty parts of the meat.
What I have just described is commonly called a high protein, low carbohydrate diet and at the end of this article will be a book list for you to refer to as this article is limited to describing the stress factors causing tension and anxiety attacks.
These inexpensive pocket books usually refer to low blood sugar as hypoglycemia.
I urge anyone who suspects they have problems with low blood sugar to read these books, which can be found in health food stores as well as other book stores and libraries.
Basically, the diet stays away from rapidly absorbed or refined carbohydrates and relies on more slowly absorbed carbohydrates and especially proteins which are not normally used by the body for energy.
Rather, they provide material for tissue building and repairing as well as nerve functions.
This diet leaches you to think protein instead of sweets, starches, or alcohols when you need an energy lift.
This is an excellent diet.
But one problem is that it takes the protein awhile to break down in the body and eventually be available as sugar or an energy source.
Once the energy arrives however, it lasts for several hours.
So if one eats small to moderate amounts of protein several times a day he can usually avoid that yoyo existence.
Within the last few months an exciting new addition has been added to this diet which quickly curbs one's desire to take addicting foods, alcohols, and other drugs.
It is FRUCTOSE, also called levulose or fruit sugar.
This must never be confused with other sugars which are strictly forbidden.
Fructose has been separated from other sugar in a chemical process in Europe and is now marketed in the U.S.
The beauty of this sugar is that it (1) does not stimulate the isles of Ungerhans to produce insulin, (2) it gives quick energy to the brain and body.
It also has the same amount of calories as table sugar.
Synthetic or artificial sugars only trick you into thinking energy is soon to come.
It won't.
Fructose will give you the energy you need without activating that time-bomb of tension and anxiety attack.
Fructose will not help if taken without the special diet because the other sugars and starches will still trigger the low blood sugar.
Fructose looks and tastes about the same as table sugar and is slightly sweeter.
It can be purchased in health food stores and through mail order.
It is expensive but easily worth trying.
Prices can range from four dollars a pound to as low as $1.30 per pound which I found in a co-op store.
Tablets are available for a ready supply away from your kitchen.
Refer to the booklist to follow for more details and technical information on fructose.
Good luck on your new diet and the new life to follow.
Abrahamson. E.M. and Pezet, A.W., BODY. MIND. AND SUGAR. New York: Pyramid Publications. 1971.
Cleave. T.L.. THE SACCHARINE DISEASE. New Canaan, Conn. : Keats Publishing. Inc.
Marlin. C.G.. LOW BLOOD SUGAR (HIDDEN MENACE OF HYPO GLYCEMIA)
Fredericks. C. and Goodman If.. LOW BLOOD SUGAR AND YOU.
Palm. J.. DIET AWAY YOUR STRESS. TENSION. & ANXIETY The Fructose Diet Book! Garden City. New York: Doubleday & Company. Inc., 1976.
Yudkin. John. SWEET AND DANGEROUS. New York: Peter H. Wyden. 1972
Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.
He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.
He also includes a subtle sense of humor.
You can find the majority of his life's work here.
Hear him read his stories.
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