love

In today’s show, the Dr’s answer and discuss the following questions:

1. My high blood pressure medication is causing me to underperform in the bedroom to the point where I feel extremely anxious, embarrassed, and guilty that I am losing this part of myself to old age.    My doctor says it’s either the meds or a stroke, so I follow her advice.   My wife is very supportive, but I can’t help but feel guilty.  How can I help her understand that I do love her and that it’s not her physical appearance that is causing my malfunction?

2. Eating foods that make you feel horribly bad. Why am I abusing myself in such manner? Can you help me understand the cycle?

3. When caught between the pleasure and ego trap for food is one way out to somehow get to the point that you know you can eat whatever you want but truly don’t want to eat the high fat food? Or is the only way out to be sick and your life depends on it?

4. Can you provide a succinct, complete definition of the term, “Pleasure Trap” in your book of the same name?

5. I’m curious as to why and how we got it so wrong for so long with regards to genetics vs environment. We blame genetics for chronic diseases (diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, etc), and we blame environment for our personalities, intelligence, behaviors, and life choices. When in reality, it’s the opposite. Who we are individually is genetic, and what diseases we get are driven mostly by environment (food and lifestyle). Once we found out the earth was round and revolves around the sun, most people caught on. How long do you think will it take for society to ‘catch on’ to the truth about genes and environment?

In this replay of episode 185, Dr. Lisle answers these questions:

1. Given the profitability of prescribing pills and surgical procedures, do you believe the mainstream medical-industrial-complex will ever reach a tipping point and head in the direction of true health care? As opposed to the current system of what basically boils down to disease maintenance?

2. In church this week I felt very guilty. No one is specifically asking me for nutrition advice but every week we hear about and pray for members of our congregation that have everything from kidney stones to cancer and everything in between. All of these conditions would be helped by a whole food plant based diet. I don’t feel comfortable saying much about my diet at church but I feel very guilty about not speaking up if information that I have could help someone who is suffering.   Do you have any recommendations?

3.  I am a Clinical Psychology Doctoral candidate, and I will have my first patients this Fall. I am nervous, excited, but mostly curious. What concepts and theories from EP have you found most useful in your clinical work? And what are the one or two things from EP that I can focus on to help better serve my patients? 

4. Given that many core characteristics of personality are genetically determined, and that the evolutionary process of blind variation is bound to produce extremes, aren’t there always bound to be some individuals in society who are likely to experience impulses to commit violent acts – with particularly horrific consequencies when gun laws allow comparatively easy access to lethal weapons?In the ‘bottling up’ episode you say that some people are bound to be ‘shitheads’ – so aren’t there also always bound to be ‘psychopaths’ and no amount of moral education, religious observation or societal conservatism could ever eradicate the problem of mass killings?