road sign from the crusade for health-educate instead of medicate

It was around the one hour, 14 minute and 31 second mark that Schulze spoke this very statement he'd just overheard from a person in his audience and which motivated him to say "that would make a great bumper sticker". This was just as a round of applause was quieting down from the point he'd made and emphatically so only a few moments prior; commitment to health. In having soaked up many hours of his video material the past few weeks, so far I've found that Richard Schulze seldom sugar coats his philosophy on how people can go about achieving improved health. I suspect he may not last long at all on a support forum; too controversial, too harsh.

The point he'd just arrived at in somewhat dramatic fashion came at the conclusion of the segment that began at the 1 hour, zero minute and 59 second mark of this video. From that point to the end several minutes later he had reiterated the need for people to take responsibility in combination with the need for education as keys for anyone who is willing to be commited to the task of improving theirh health. 

Up to this point another hallmark of Schulze's had already been on full display; chopping down various of the numerous sacred cows that decorate (and or interfere with, depending on one's view) many of the diverse traditions of our collective way of modern life. On a few occasions he takes some fierce chops at the hallowed beef cow itself. Schulze took no prisoners en route making this point, skewering along the way the likes of a father making a public plea for on behalf of his young boy seeking a liver,  down to the rather rude eviction from his office of a woman he described as a wonderful, sweet-as-can be little old lady. Why? In the case of the latter, because she would not follow the program, something Schulze says he has no time for... there are too many other sick people to spend time with who are willing to follow the program. In the case of the former, Schulze had seen the father's plea for somebody to give his son a liver "... so he can be a normal boy again, and eat hot dogs, and M&Ms". With all respect to Schulze, I can imagine the father may or may not have given a lot of thought to those words....just giving benefit of the doubt, I'm inclined to say he didn't, but Schulze immediately seized upon them "why, so he can go out and wreck his new liver?.....education!.". It didn't help the father's case that his example followed nearby the news that Schulze had seen of a woman reported by the news to have just gone through 16 grewling hours of liver surgery... ".. and is now resting comfortably in her hospital bed, where she just enjoyed her favorite meal; pizza!".

Bear in mind I do not exclude myself from all of this. Over the last few years, especially in recent months, I've been increasingly doing a lot of thinking to myself...wondering whether or not I ultimately am willing to be responsible enough to make the commitment to the task of improving my health a priority over any of the many other aspects that have been programmed into my life over 49 years of existance. Schulze has been at this for close to 40 years, and this after having gotten his own rather rude awakening....start, from age of 16. He tells of how he has, by birth, inherited a predisposition for major cardiac problems. He tells how at age 11, his father of 55, died in his arms, and miserably so, of a massive heart attack that took the better part of 3 hours of groaning, chest pains, sweating, losing control of his bladder, and eventually bowells, before succombing. 3 years later, also at the age of 55, his mother died of a massive heart attack. By the age of 16, Schulze himself was diagnosed to be in need of major surgery to repair and replace badly defective valves in his heart. He uses his own biography to explain how we people are similar, but nonetheless we are not identical. Over our lives we are all exposed willingly and unwillingly to different thigns and as such we should consider losing the habit of always wanting compare ourselves to each other; "so and so got well on this N that diet using these N those pills, in 3 weeks!, so why shouldn't I expect to have the same results?" He then points out how we are all born with a given constitution. Some people - like he and his brother, are born with somewhat of a short deck compared to others. Some people are fortunate to be born with much stronger constitutions and therefore less predisposition for failing health during their lives. The odd thing is, Schulze now thinks of the short deck he was born with as blessings, because it was these shortcomings that ultiamtely required him to figure out that he was the one responsible for taking charge of his own health, not the heart doctors, not the hostpitals.

To hear him tell it, the habit of always tryign to compare ourselves, our health, our choices, with how the same or similar turned out for other people, is a mistake that more than likely often serves only to set up people for more disappointment.... sometimes it's a crapshoot... life is like that. Some people may not need to make many drastic changes in their life in order to achive the health they believe they are in pursuit of. Others, such as himself, had little room for compromises. He was required to make drastic changes to his lifestyle and diet choices. He did. He's reaped the rewards. Even now that he has, he realizes that he has little room for cheating...backsliding. I see him talk about these kinds of considerations and naturally begin to think about the deck of cards I was born with. In comparison, best I can gather, I've been very fortunate as far as this goes. There have been no recurring major illnesses on either side of my family that I know of. Sure, there have been aunts, uncles and grandparents and cousins that died of this cancer, that stroke, but as far as I know, these were just as likely to have been lifestyle-induced illnesses, not congenital. Then again, who's to say for sure about the genetics creature? Both sides of my family have been smokers, and one side has also been drinkers.... maybe that's a predisposition too, I dunno for sure. Short of that, I still think of smoking and drinking as a self-inflicted health problem. That's the real kicker for me and my deck of cards. I can directly see the connections to the majority of my own health problems, and these are not attribtutes to having been born with bad family genetics or weak constitutions, but instead on self-inflicted illnesses that come from lifestyle choices that come from making poorly educated decisions in conjunction with the lack of conviction to give up some of these in an effort to improve the health I currently have..... I can almost see Schulze booting me out of his office just lke he says he booted that dear sweet old lady.

The CZ calling card quote comes from the ending segment in video 2 of 8 of Richard's 1997 Natural Healing Crusade.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2858664994346796595&q=Richard+Sch...