Edited

From his website
http://www.herbdoc.com
(my thoughts follow):

Dear Dr. Schulze ,

You often say that a person should be more selfish. This sounds bad and not very nice or healthy. Could you please explain to me what you mean?

Louise A. — Pinecrest, Florida

Dear Louise,

I would love to explain!

When I say this, I simply mean that the greatest gift you can give to your parents, siblings, children, loved ones and friends is YOU, and to give this gift, you must be alive! In order to create the longest life you possibly can, you have to create the healthiest life you possibly can, and this takes a lot of self-attention. You have to get really good at taking care of yourself. In every instance, YOU must ALWAYS come first. In other words, you can’t help anyone if you are dead, so staying alive and healthy is the most important thing in life.

After decades of helping people to heal their diseases and create powerful health, I learned that most people take great care of everything, except themselves. Most of my patients took great care of their kids and their parents. They were great friends and even greater partners. Many really took care of business and were dedicated to their profession. Some took incredible care of their belongings such as cars, boats and other toys, while others made certain their homes were tidy, beautiful and well-kept. But almost all of my patients dropped the ball when it came to taking great care of themselves. Usually, because they were just too busy taking care of everything and everyone else.

Then they got sick, sometimes really sick, and this is when it hits them. Everything you have, your family, your friends, your job or your business, your church, your toys, EVERYTHING, only has meaning if YOU are ALIVE!! When you are dead, sure, life will go on, but without your contribution and without YOU!

So when I say that everyone needs to be more selfish, more self-centered, more self-involved and more self-ANYTHING, I am saying this so people will stop for a minute, and take a sobering moment to realize that their health, vitality and longevity is the necessary foundation for everything else in their life to exist.

Just ask any of your friends or loved ones what they really want and their answer will be that they want YOU much more than what you have or do.

So my message is take care of everything in life, but always make sure your primary focus is on yourself and that you take care of yourself better than anyone or anything else in your life. Focusing on yourself and your health will make everything you do in life for others much, much better.

– Dr. Schulze

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As many of you know, I am a Christian, and I love the Lord Jesus Christ/Yeshua with all my heart. If you are a Christian, you know the cute little anacronym JOY, which stands for Jesus, Others, Yourself. Christian women ALWAYS get told that this is how to order our priorities.

We give to Jesus first, in serving Him with prayer, daily devotions, weekly church attendance, serving in the church/ministry, and living out the scriiptures in our daily walk, being careful to model Christ to our children, and respond appropriately to our husbands' godly leadership.

Then we give to others- our husbands, our children, our extended families, our neighbors, our friends, our community, we bless others with a clean home, with nourishing meals, by running the kids all over town or possibly homeschooling them, we bless our husbands in meaningful ways, we bake casseroles for the new mammas or people going through difficult times, we volunteer for all kinds of things, if we have outside jobs, we "minister" to our employers and co-workers, we do all the things that come with owning a home, and we make all the plans for holidays and vacation trips.

Finally, if we have a spare minute to breathe, we take care of ourselves. But who has time?

I have watched an interesting phenomenon in my little church. Out of 40 adult women in our church, two women are battling breast cancer, and two have died from cancer already. Only one man has cancer, and one died from it. Four women have fractured something. Only one man has (to be fair, one man blew his knee out during a weekend warrior basketball game). One woman has chronic fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Several women have osteoarthritis. Only one man has it. Two women have diabetes. No man has. Two women have osteoporosis so bad it's noticable. No man has. One woman has muscular dystrophy (me). So within our small church body, about 40% of the women have something really wrong with them, as opposed to about 10% of the men.

Now how is this "JOY?"

We have been taught that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it can't bear fruit. We are taught to die to ourselves (the picture is Self on the throne) and rise again to live for Jesus Christ (Christ on the throne). We are taught to take no thought of ourselves, but to esteem others more highly than ourselves. We are taught to give, and then we will receive. We are taught to love one another, as Christ loved/loves us. We are taught to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

But y'all, it's not talking about our health!

How are we to serve Jesus Christ and others for a lifetime if we are sick and needing attention ourselves? This is what Dr. Schulze is talking about.

This is EXACTLY what those of us who have been diagnosed with something serious mean when we say that the diagnosis has been a blessing. It's a blessing because it FORCES us to re-evaluate our lives. What we've been doing in the past has led to this monstrous disease. Oh, but MD is genetic! Yes, but why weren't we born with it? Why did it wait so long to manifest? What triggered it? Why was it lying dormant in our DNA, only to show up, in my case, in my late 30's?

All I know is, if I continue to do what I've done in the past, I will continue to get what I've gotten. I've GOT to try to get well and strong. My children, my loved ones, need a healthy Mommy. I don't want them to have to "deal" with an incapacitated mother... because it's a non-life-threatening disease... twenty years from now. So I've GOT to focus on "me" right now. Plus, with a 50% "chance" of my children inheriting this disease, and with 50% of their children and beyond inheriting it, I've REALLY got to try to heal this thing so we'll know how to beat it, if it's beatable.

Now is that being selfish?

I don't think so.

-Donna