Author: Christina Bruni

Christina Bruni is the author of the new book Working Assets: A Career Guide for Peers. She contributed a chapter "Recovery is Within Reach" to Benessere Psicologico: Contemporary Thought on Italian American Mental Health.

The Truth About GMOs

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Roundup–the Monsanto pesticide–was proven to cause cancer in a legal trial.

Farming communities have high rates of cancer. Pesticides cause all sorts of health issues.

Eating produce that’s locally grown is better if you’re able to do this.

The cost of shopping at a Greenmarket offsets the catastrophic cost of becoming ill from disease. You either pay more for healthful food or you pay more for medical costs.

After skimming pages in How to Be Well I’m committed to changing my behavior in terms of consuming food.

My goal is to persuade blog readers to buy mostly organic food.

As I see it, to eat healthfully 80 percent of the time is a great goal. I’ve talked about this 80 percent rule before in the blog.

Monsanto and the other biotech firms will stop at nothing to keep advertising GMO crops as safe and nutritious. Only GMO food isn’t better for you than organic food.

Luckily, I can buy organic food and shop at Greenmarkets where I live in New York City.

In the coming blog entry I’ll talk more about the benefits of eating mostly organic food.

How to Be Well

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how to be well

This book is the real deal just like How to Make Disease Disappear.

In the coming blog entries I’m going to write about health topics touched on in How to Be Well.

It was my goal to turn back to talking about fitness and nutrition.

With January 1st coming up soon a lot of us are going to want to achieve resolutions.

As always, there’s one goal-setting book I recommend. I seem to have altered the title before in the blogs. The actual title is Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.

This method is effective no matter the kind of behavior you seek to change.

One goal I have–I really don’t like to use the word resolution–is to create a better weekly meal plan and fitness routine.

Step 1 of the Changeology method is Psych. In order to be effective in realizing your resolution you first have to get in the mental game to do this.

Joining a gym and firing away at exercise before you engage in the Psych Step you’re going to run out of steam two months later and quit.

I’m going to end here with the truth that I’ll continue to detail in the coming blog entry: M.D.s don’t eat junk according to Frank Lipman, M.D. the author of How to Be Well.

He devotes a section of the book to GMOs which should be required reading.

I’d like to start in the next two weeks to use this blog as a forum for New Year’s goal-setting.

My aim is to show how it’s possible to realize your resolutions.

 

Dark Horse

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In only five hours I read the book Dark Horse: Achieving Success through the Pursuit of Fulfillment. Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas have written the definitive guide to finding the career that is the right fit.

From the inside book flap:

“This mold-breaking approach doesn’t depend on your SAT scores, who you know, or how much money you have.

The secret is a mindset that can be expressed in plain English:

Harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence.”

The authors detail the achievements of a high-school dropout who created her own telescope observatory in her backyard. She found and named an asteroid and found a planet. This put her in the ranks of astronomers with PhDs.

This woman and the other people talked about in the book are dark horses because no one could see their success coming.

My memoir Left of the Dial is a full-length book recounting of my own dark horse life.

Those of us who are dark horses got here via a long and winding path.

Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas in their book rail against the “cookie-cutter mold for success that requires us to be the same as everyone else, only better.”

This “standard formula” is the root of inequality. People are competing to get better grades, get into elite colleges and universities, and get coveted jobs.

It really is a treadmill. One woman featured in Dark Horse willingly got on this competitive treadmill thinking this was what she was supposed to do.

She crashed, and had to rethink her whole life. Today she is successful as the operator of an underground supper club.

I say: stop living life on autopilot. Live an authentic life.

We don’t have to trample over each other in our lives like it’s a Black Friday sale every day. We don’t have storm through the doors reaching to achieve things at the expense of everyone else.

The book flap asks:

“As much as we might dislike the standard formula, it seems like there’s no other practical path to financial security and a fulfilling life.

But what if there is?””

I recommend readers of the blog buy Dark Horse.

I for one think the book is the most uplifting and inspiring literature I’ve ever read of any genre.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about having a career linked to your individuality.

The Snob Diet

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Years ago I remember reading in a magazine–was it Glamour–about the Snob Diet.

The editors claimed this diet works. I’m no fan of diets.

No–I didn’t ever go on a diet when I lost 20 pounds in my twenties.

Though I gained a little in the form of muscle I’ve dropped one pant and one skirt size by lifting weights for over 7 years. In fact I dropped one size only one year after starting to lift weights consistently at the gym.

On the days I’m unable to go to the gym I work out at home. See my blog entry Setting Up a Home Gym for details about the equipment I bought.

OK–so the Snob Diet involves eating quality food–regular food–and not eating junk that is totally crap.

In the Dr. Chatterjee book How to Make Disease Disappear his section on the Eat Pillar disproves the claims that experts and adherents make for diets such as low-carb or keto or paleo. This British MD details the truth about how to eat to fuel your body to function optimally.

I can vouch for being a snob in terms of what I eat: mostly healthful food and a once-a-week indulgence in a chocolate croissant or some other kind of delectable.

Dr. Chatterjee busts the longest-running myth in staying slim: that how you maintain your weight is as simple as calories burned versus calories consumed.

Forget going on kooky and restrictive diets. You could tone up lifting all those diet books on the shelves.

I wrote a number of blog entries about the tenets of How to Make Disease Disappear. Dr. Chatterjee’s approach to health is sane and simple. It’s not difficult to maintain the kind of eating plan he talks about.

In this blog about a year or so ago I wrote about my own sensible eating plan: having a consistent habit of eating 80 percent healthfully and 20 percent anything.

The name Snob Diet has a ring to it.

I don’t advise acting like a snob towards people in your everyday life.

Yet being snobbish in the kind of food you eat might have advantages.

Healthful Snacks

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pulse chick peas

This photo has been uploaded in a gigantic way. Apparently there’s a new way of saving photos that your iPhone has sent to your email as an attachment.

The chickpea and olive food products shown here do have salt. The Pulse version I prefer is the lemon-and-oregano chickpeas offering.

Either way these and the Gaea olive container are portable healthful snacks for on-the-go eating. I have on hand plastic-coated wire clips to use to close the Pulse container.

You can order these food items from FreshDirect online in New York City.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about a so-called diet talked about if I remember in Glamour magazine years ago.

While I’m no fan of diets and I’m absolutely against the standard diets books poured out into the marketplace I want to talk about this “diet” because a couple of elements of it make sense to me.

After this I will return to talking about careers. This month–October–is National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

5-a-Day the Easy Way

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Dr. Chatterjee recommends having 5 servings of vegetables a day.

The MD includes avocados and olives in this “5-a-day” lineup.

You can print up copies of his Rainbow Chart and use them to check off the vegetables you’ve eaten each day.

In tandem with the “5-a-Day” eating plan Dr. Chatterjee recommends not eating food products that contain more than five ingredients.

The longer the ingredient list the more likely it’s processed food.

The government allows food  and drink companies to get away with not listing the actual names of chemicals contained in food and drink products.

Instead they’re listed as “natural flavor.” Food  or drink that companies claim is organic or otherwise good for you often has natural flavors in the ingredient list.

It’s perfectly legal to load up food and drink products with chemicals without having to list the chemicals on the ingredients list.

Any kind of protein bar is most likely high in sugar and has natural flavors.

Kind bar now lists on the package: Made with Real Food. Only when you read the ingredients list it also contains chemicals in the form of natural flavor.

I urge you to read the ingredient lists of food and drink products:

Anything that makes an emotional claim as being good for you most likely has chemicals added to whatever “good” part of the food they’re championing.

In the next blog entry here I’ll talk about some great snacks you can buy that are truly healthful.

You can do away with products that have natural flavors.

With 100 percent confidence I can tell you: stay away from any food or drink that didn’t come out of God’s green earth.

You’ll be healthier and feel better eating real food that isn’t doused in chemicals.

It’s fine every-so-often to have pastry or a cookie or doughnut. That should be an occasional treat. I stand by indulging once-a-week.

In a coming blog entry I’ll talk about a particular diet that was championed in Glamour magazine years ago.

The Pillar of Relax

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Engaging in the habits outlined in the Pillar of Relax is imperative to our health.

In this go-go-go world we can have a breakdown. Our bodies are not machines. We’re human beings that need rest and recreation every day.

The strategy I employ is a simple one predicated on mindfulness: pay attention to what your body is telling you to do and how your body feels at any given time during the day.

One Sunday it was unseasonably colder. My body had gone on strike it seemed. There would be no going to the gym and no going outside.

Pushing yourself to do demanding activities is a mistake when your body is telling you to slow down and rest. Yet too often people think that being busy is a sign of health.

Being busy isn’t a sign of health. Being fit and active is the barometer of health.

You can do less every day and achieve more peace of mind and better health.

We should not be checking work e-mails from home. In my house I have the inviolable rule of not checking work e-mails when I’m on vacation.

The corollary to relaxing is the Pillar of Sleep. Dr. Chatterjee recommends establishing the 90-Minute Rule: shutting down all TV, cell phone, and tablet use 90 minutes before you go to bed.

Getting enough rest and recreation can absolutely halt disease from starting or progressing.

I’ll end this blog entry by saying that for years I was skeptical that a person’s behavior and lifestyle choices could cause disease.

Now I know without a doubt that the keys to unlocking optimal health are in our own hands. We are not passive victims of illness. Disease is not the natural outcome of getting older. It’s too often the result of inactivity and poor choices.

The Myth of Being a Superstar

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Surf on over to my Left of the Dial blog to read an entry about the absolutely gorgeous Nike video with Colin Kaepernick. You can view the short film on YouTube.

The video is uplifting and inspiring. In one way I feel like I have a connection to Serena Williams and the others featured in the film. Like the lyrics to the Lorde song “Royals” each of us came from nothing spectacular and rose up to become winners.

When you have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or another mental health issue you’re told that you succeeded “despite having” schizophrenia.

Your achievements have most likely come via your own efforts. Yet minimizing your role in your success discounts how hard you worked.

In keeping with the Nike claim to be “The Greatest Ever” each of us needs to base our identity on who we are as a person not on what our illness is.

What if who you are is a biker, baker, or book lover?

Being defined by your symptoms locks you into what I call an identity straitjacket.

Using your illness as the barometer of your abilities is a mistake.

It’s quite the opposite: people can and do recover every day.

It can seem like it’s out of the ordinary to succeed when you have a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Yet telling people they have succeeded or thinking people succeed despite having schizophrenia reinforces the myth that this is a rare occurrence.

I’m trying to publish an Op-Ed piece soon timed to October–Disability Employment Awareness Month.

I’ll give the link here if (I hope when) the Op-Ed piece is published online.

I’m confident when I tell you that being The Greatest You is all that counts.

26 Years in Remission

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I’ve decided I want to act as a storyteller to tell stories from my own life. I’d also like to have other people tell their stories in this blog.

As always, I don’t have a license to practice medicine–I’m not an M.D.

So I can’t give medical advice. I can’t tell people to take medication. Nor can I give instructions on how to discontinue medication.

My goal in telling my story is to uplift and inspire others that there’s hope for healing and having your own version of a full and robust life.

Ann Bartlett at HealthCentral years ago told it like it is:

“Healing is as potent a medicine as a cure can be.”

The reality is critics have attacked me for writing about how taking medication helped me heal.

There’s a whole contingent of anti-psychiatry folk who champion that people have the right to be psychotic. Underneath their contempt of what I write there’s most likely a grain of envy.

They don’t like that I’ve done great things in my life precisely because I take medication. This disproves their claim that medication causes disability.

If I went away, if I watered down my vision to please these people, if I sold my vision to the highest bidder (Pfizer et al), nothing would change in society.

Peers who need to hear my message of hope and healing would be left in the dark. Families would think there’s no hope for there loved ones.

This is my story:

I’ve been in remission from schizophrenia–with zero symptoms–for 26 years as of this month.

This has been possible because I take a dose of maintenance medication.

The details about my recovery are out in the open in my memoir Left of the Dial.

What’s different about my story is that when I was only 22 and first diagnosed I dared think a better life was possible than the one presented to me: living in public housing and collecting a government disability check forever.

I’ve written in here before a blog entry that if I remember right was titled the Myth of Competitive Employment.

One anti-psychiatry critic denounced my success as impossible for most people to achieve.

If that were so, why would I dangle in front of peers a goal that can’t be reached?

Those of us who are doing well–most of us who are doing well–don’t have the courage like I do to talk about this publicly. So it can seem like no one’s able to recover.

The point–as expressed in The Myth of Competitive Employment–is that each person’s definition of recovery is going to be different.

Each of us can find our own version of well inside the illness. My version of well is simply my story. Your version of well is your story.

I really wish more people would come forward to tell their stories.

I wanted to publish Left of the Dial to show how getting the right treatment right away can create a better outcome.

I’ve been in remission 26 years as as of this month.

In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about the book in more detail.

Giving Stigma the Boot

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This discovery just in:

I figured out why most people don’t understand you.

Their lack of compassion comes from a place of hurt.

Think long and hard about their envy, their critical nature, their attacks.

Doing so you’ll most likely find they feel threatened.

You’re able to have or do something they can’t have or do.

Be empathetic; be ethical in how you interact with these and other people.

Yet remember: you are a person of worth equal to others in society.

You are worthy, regardless of whether you’re in remission or not.

You are a human being and are entitled to be treated with dignity.

Are you struggling? When will this end you might think.

It’s foolish to assume that other people have it easy. You don’t know what’s going on behind their closed door or in their head.

I say: try to have compassion for people who don’t seem to have compassion for you.

One day they could be tested by getting ill. Then suddenly they’ll be clamoring for a way out of pain and for others to understand.

I’ve said it before in my blogs and I’ll say it again: the role of stigma in impeding what a person can do is overrated.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to bounce back from rejection. About how to feel good about yourself when it seems other people don’t understand what you’re going through.

Meet me in the next blog entry for info on how to soldier on in the face of the heavy artillery of other people’s hurtful comments.

They just don’t understand. Get it? I no longer expect outsiders to understand what it’s like. We can’t expect the impossible from other people.

We can only expect ourselves to do the best we can with what we’re given.

I choose to make a lemon meringue pie out of the lemons life throws.