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life to a million words and millions of functions, like contemplating, traveling, studying, choosing, engaging, analyzing, loving, and striving to name a few.

From eat, survive, and reproduce, we can see how our whole lives revolve around their equivalents of food, money, and sex. Money is so important to us because it truly represents our survival. In our modern world it is hard to survive without any money. With a lot of money, you can more than survive, you can thrive. With more money you can have more food, more shelter in the form of a bigger house, and more sex because money is an attractive feature for anyone, ugly or handsome. The ultimate survival guarantee is a fortune. That's why people play the lotteries. If you won a hundred million dollars, you know you could spend a million dollars a year for a hundred years. You would have all your wants and needs fulfilled. Money is the ultimate tool for survival.

With money being so important in our lives, though, isn't it strange that "the best things in life are free?" When you're with the love of your life, is this something you can purchase? I met the love of my life when I was a poor student completing my pre-veterinary courses at UCLA. I lived in the back apartment at Wilshire Animal Hospital in California. I had very little money to work with so I used my creativity to make a romantic evening. For about a dollar, I would cook a dinner to be eaten by candlelight at my vet hospital apartment and then take my sweetheart to the beach for an evening stroll along the shore. I would point out the stars, constellations, and planets and talk about the wonders of the universe. These were the most romantic evenings we could remember. Other women I've told about these evenings, too, said they wish they could have had such romance in their lives.

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/

"The First Wealth Is Health," Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having grown up in New Hampshire, I had the benefit of that "Live Free Or Die" New England independent thinking to shape my childhood. I also had the good fortune to be exposed to great books by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his buddy Henry David Thoreau. These men weren't afraid to think differently and express their ideas to the public. Luckily they weren't inhibited by political correctness and the associated law suits that come with today's attempts to express something other than the media-confined, perfectly-phrased, sound-bite niceties that limit us to a very narrow modern existence. Can a person even get angry any longer? What about raising your voice? Nope, those two behaviors will bring you charges for sure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, like Benjamin Franklin, knew even in their times, that being healthy was far preferable to being ill. Isn't it amazing that more illness exists today than did a hundred years ago? We live longer now, but do we live healthier? Obesity was a rarity in Emerson's day. People worked too hard to get fat. And there was not the leisure activities that fill our days, and our years with 3568 hours of media entertainment. Back then, a good book was as far as the entertainment went on a day to day level. Medical science intervenes to keep us alive today, but a century ago, people were generally healthier.
I enjoyed the family photo albums of my grandparents and relatives that I had from a century ago. You could see in the photos what filled their daily lives. They had picnics and read books and socialized with friends and family. Today we seek solitude. When was the last time you went on a picnic? What was the name of the last book you read? How often do you have parties at your house each year? In our modern lives, most people will answer, "never", "don't recall", and "we don't", to the previous questions.
So, our new definition of personal peace is that of solitude, and not finding peace within ourselves and amongst our community. A new state of loneliness has emerged where the television is more of a companion than your spouse. I have married friends who tell me the biggest problem in their marriage is that they feel lonely all the time. How can you be lonely when you're married? We have gained so much with our modern technologies, yet we have lost a little more of what makes life great.
Some things never change though. The first wealth is still health, and I imagine it always will be.
Dr. Doug Ikeler www.lifeextensionbooks.net

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Our least romantic evenings were when we would go to an expensive restaurant, wait two hours for a table, have a cranky waiter, and spend a hundred dollars for the hassle of being there. In Southern California I rarely enjoyed myself going out to eat. The restaurants were so busy and they didn't care if they were nice to you or not.

The joy of seeing your child born has to be the very best thing in life! Does making a baby cost anything? Does hearing her first laugh cost you a dime? Does hugging and holding your child cost money? Our lives are so full of the most wonderful things. You can live richly and happily with very little money at all.

So why do we pursue riches so vehemently? Why do people even kill for money? I think it comes back to our basic survival instinct of "kill or be killed." People think they will not survive without that money. In actuality they will, and they would be far better off just getting a job and learning higher skills to make more money in time.

I think the most important thing to do with your money is enjoy it. You should take a portion of each paycheck, decide on a figure, say five or ten percent, and do with that money whatever you want. Buy some new clothes, put it in a savings account for a trip you want to take, get an ice cream cone. The key being you should consciously spend your money on what you want. You earned it, and this reminds you that working is not just to pay your lousy bills, but to make your life great.

I have always thought how you make your money is important, too. If you make a lot of money but you hate your job, then your life is not better. There are empty jobs. Making money on the stock market or by turning over (flipping) houses is a way to earn a living, but is it rewarding? Do you

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/

Thomas Parr Oldest Man To Live Past 150

I am writing a second article about Thomas Parr because there is exceptional interest about him on the internet. For my own search results, Thomas Parr is number one for this blogspot. It goes to show people are interested in his life and in the possibility of living to 150 years of age.
Thomas Parr, otherwise known as "Old Parr" in England, is buried in Westminster Abbey and his tombstone claims he lived to 152 years old. Born the son of a farmer in Winnington, Shropshire, England, Thomas Parr lived a quiet life that allegedly began in 1483. He died in 1635 and was given the honorable place of burial in Westminster Abbey Church by King Charles the First. Back then, people were actually buried inside the churches to guarantee their ascension to heaven and eliminate the possibility of their being sent to hell. He was said to have married late in life and even had children after he was one hundred years old. Controversy surrounds The Thomas Parr 152 year life span, but he was interred by the King of England, and even back then, they had reliable records.
Modern science confirms we are built to live 150 years. The only known and proven method for getting there is by Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. It was said that Thomas Parr was a vegetarian and lived a simple farming life until he moved to the city late in life and was debilitated by the "change of air" that the city life brought him. The next oldest person is Jeanne Calment of France who, with accurate records, lived to 122. She loved red wine, chocolates, and bicycling. She was also independently wealthy after the passing of her rich husband.
Old Parr's autopsy focused heavily on his genitals with remarks that they appeared to be in good working condition and showed no signs of deterioration due to his advanced age. Whether or not Thomas Parr actually lived 152 years will never be proven or dis-proven. We can only acknowledge that he is recorded to have lived that long in one of England's most prestigious burial places. Autopsy results were of a cursory nature in the sixteen hundreds too, as medical science was still doing more harm than good. It wasn't until 1920 that the AMA, The American Medical Association, itself stated that it felt medical doctors had reached a point in there practice of medicine where they were as a whole doing more good than harm.
We have had less than a century to use this medical knowledge to improve our lives. But improve them we can, and we can go on to break Thomas Parr's record of longevity. There are people alive today, born in the twentieth century who will live well into the twenty second century. Learn more about this technology and technique in my book on Life Extension at
Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.lifeextensionbooks.net/

Recommended Daily Allowances. Do you need them every day?

One of the great servants of the food industries' productive process is The Recommended Daily Allowances of certain vitamins and minerals. Do you really need your RDA of vitamin C or Calcium or Vitamin D? What happens if you don't get them? Well nothing actually, because you don't need your RDAs of every vitamin every day. The Recommended Daily Allowances of vitamins and minerals is based on deficiency syndromes that only occur after very prolonged deficiency of a vitamin. The one most people are familiar with is scurvy and it occurs if you go over a month and a half with no vitamin C at all.

All the RDAs are based on the concept that if you are getting your RDAs every day, then you can go forty five days without that vitamin or mineral and not get the disease. You won't get the disease either if you're getting a little of the vitamin along the way too. Just like the British Navy discovered when they started adding a little lime juice to their sailors diet on long voyages.

So without this pressure to eat everything you can every day to get your RDAs in, you may discover that dieting is a lot more easy. You are awash in nutrients. I wouldn't worry about ever getting a deficiency disease. Especially if you eat a variety of foods. The last recent case of scurvy was reported on a woman in England who ate nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and milk. She ate what is called a mono-diet and did eventually get scurvy. Few people eat the exact same things every day, so again deficiencies would be hard to produce.

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.lifeextensionbooks.net/

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come away a better person because you bought a house lost in foreclosure by some unfortunate family and resell it for a twenty-two thousand dollar profit? What if you had instead helped the people to keep their house and refinance it into a better loan so they wouldn't have lost it in foreclosure?

When I chose to become a veterinarian, at age ten, I couldn't think of a better way to earn a living and do so much good on a day-to-day basis. I still feel that way, but I have chosen to change professions and work in human health care because I see a world full of agony. Misery seems to be the norm for the average person in our world. Happiness should be the norm. With all I know about human and animal medicine and behavior, I could no longer sit back and watch people suffer because, in turn, they are the ones who make animals suffer.

People are eating more. A lot more than they used to. This translates into a lot more animal suffering as the meat industry slaughters more animals for people to eat. The average person should be eating half what they are eating today. They would be far healthier if they did. Overeating is the scourge of our modern world. Is this the future we've always wanted?

The take home message on money then is how much do you want to earn and how do you want to make it? The wealth you want is determined by your mind and your will. Riches are a mixed bag of good and bad. I have also seen that when the good goes up, the bad goes up as well. I enjoyed life fully and travelled around the world when I was just a poor college student. I have also enjoyed life fully and traveled around the world as a rich five-hospital-owner veterinarian. You could then ask, "When was life better?" I would say when I was a poor student.

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.lifeextensionbooks.net/

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When my ex-wife and I use to travel the world together, it was almost not worth going. We would have to do a mountain of work to get everything ready for us to be gone two weeks. Then, when we got back from our vacation, everyone and everything would be busting loose, and we would end up having to hire and fire more people and undo the two weeks of disaster that occurred while we were gone. Our home phone would typically have about nineteen emergency call-me-as-soon-as-you-walk-in-the-door panic calls that would completely neutralize any relaxation that might have occurred on the trip.

When I was a college student I had no debts or mortgages to worry about either. After a trip overseas, I would have time to reminisce on the experience and how it broadened my horizons and changed my perspective on the world. With my vet hospitals, I would return to a pile of bills to be paid, and the stress of getting caught up again. So, wealth comes with a price. It was a price I chose to pay, but I do look back on it differently now. If you want to be wealthy, I say go for it. If you chose to live modestly, that is an equally wise choice. My advice to everyone about money is: "Earn more than you need and spend less than you earn." This is a formula you can never go wrong with.

As I write these last few pages for you, I feel the sadness of a departure. We have had a wondrous voyage together. We have shared a great secret and yet an amazing fact of life. You are built to last 150 years. This is a fact. How you spend those years is up to you. If you eat twice as much, you will age twice as fast, and only live to sixty or seventy. If you drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, you will shorten your life even further. My mother only lived to sixty years old. She showed me pre-

Dr. Doug Ikeler www.lifeextensionbooks.net