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AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE
From the Kerosene Cowboy’s SPORTS PAGE JOURNAL
By: Charles W. Boatright
Book Review of Operation Dog-Tags for PTSD– How to use Health, Fitness, Sports, and hobbies to address PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Operation DOG-TAGS is a holistic treatment for our Military & First Responders dealing with trauma
The massage to our U.S. Military and/or First Responders- DO NOT deal with PTSD alone, reach out to a group of friends that has walked in your boots. Use sports, fitness, your diet, and hobbies to help address PTSD!
This contains a book review of my book entitled- Operation DOG-TAGS to help those to deal with traumatic experiences in their line of work whether in defense or our first responders. Even if you don’t purchase my book to help deal with PTSD, just don’t ignore PTSD and its symptoms that are buried in the subconscious mind. This could be something that you aren’t even aware of that your mind is trying to deal with, just don’t deal PTSD alone; You have given so much to your country.
You have to find ways to bypass the conscious mind in order to deal with the subconscious and unconscious (or permanent) where these memories are located and sometimes buried. Please seek out a confident trusting person or group to help you that should include sports, fitness, hobbies, and diet that all are ways to deal with your PTSD.
Guys and gals, 9- months before I retired, I started making plans to attend a VOTECH College to pick up welding as a hobby that is now my second career. This allowed my conscious mind to lose track of time to allow me to get in touch with my subconscious mind and just relax. I can spend 6- hours in my welding shop that seems like just one-hour. I enjoy welding, even handling 115- pounds of stock metal. Below, I’m welding a mounting bracket onto a neighbor’s Jeep for him to install a winch on his Jeep for hunting.
Ten-Rules of the Subconscious to help address PTSD’s:
1. The subconscious mind does not and must not differentiate between visualizations (practice) and real situations (performance).
2. The subconscious mind has no concept of time.
3. The Quicker and longer the subconscious mind believes and proves something, the harder it will be to alter this belief in any way.
4. Every thought causes a physical reaction. The subconscious mind can’t distinguish between a positive or negative thought.
5. What you expect tends to be realized.
6. Finding proof of your beliefs strengthens them.
7. The subconscious mind always prevails in conflicts with the conscious mind.
8. An idea, once accepted, will remain firmly in place until it is replaced by another.
9. The greater the conscious effort reduces the subconscious intuitive response.
10. Suggestions and beliefs can be used to “program” the subconscious mind.
Active Mediation (CBT) to Deal with PTSD
Using some type of hobby, as I have done, or team sport or fitness that can help to develop connections with others, these activities are essential in dealing with PTSD. Sports and fitness are considered active meditation like golf and yoga is. This type of active meditation is referred to as Cognitive Behaviors Therapy, or CBT. Professionals use CBT that includes simple fitness routines (e.g., yoga, boxing bag workouts, and hobbies) to treat PTSD. What’s IMPORTANT is DON’T surfer alone, we all have to deal with Traumatic experiences on some level in our lives, like a lost of a love one.
I use sports, fitness, and my hobbies to deal with my dramatic experiences that include past injuries and dramatic events. I call sports, like golf, boxing, and fitness, my active meditation, where my conscious mind is preoccupied allowing me to focus on my subconscious and unconscious mind that I can then engaged. The conscious mind acts like camouflage that covers up the deep traumatic experiences we need to address and sort out as past events.
Our conscious mind is actually acting as a safeguard to allow us to function while a dramatic event that is currently happening. But, what we need to do after the dramatic event takes place is to be able to place this dramatic event into the deactivated file in our subconscious mind for valuable experience. And not as an active issue that is consistently being replayed in our mind as a current event. This is like a quarterback that just threw a pick-6 in one series of downs; then is hesitant in throwing another pass route. We need to use that pick-6 as a precaution and not as an inability to perform.
The issue with PTSD’s is our subconscious mind that doesn’t have any concept of time are treating a dramatic past event as a current issue. Above, I have posted 10- Rules of the Subconscious mind that should help you understand why PTSD’s are issues that we need to deal with to not be dominated by repress emotions.
Recognize to Deal with Suppressive Emotions
Sports, fitness, and hobbies allow us to properly deal with unresolved traumatic experiences and allow us to sort them out and recognize them as not being current events but past events. Recognizing suppressive emotions is over half the battle in dealing with past events. It is similar to dealing with what is known as refer pain and not knowing what is causing the pain. I dealt with refer pain before, refer pain caused me to have four knee surgeries that were actually from my right hip causing the issues that caused me to have a hip replacement.
Operation DOG-TAGS also addresses the need to follow a proper diet as another way to deal with PTSD. The nervous system can’t properly function due to over refined and processed foods in our diets. Even Robert F. Kennedy, points to the negative impact of refined and processed foods on us that are packed with saturated fats, trans fats, simple carbohydrates (those hidden sugars), and refine sugars. These unhealthy foods not only negatively impact our body’s; but negatively impacts our mental ability to function property, now and especially long-term.
Article by Dr. Eva Selhub in the Harvard Medical Journal, supporting the Importance of our Diet on Mental Health
The negative impact of diet on the body and mind is covered in an excellent article entitled: Nutritional Psychiatry: Your Brain on Food written by Dr. Eva Selhub of Harvard Medical.
Dr. Selhub in her article highlights the harmful effects of refined and processed foods that contain saturated fats, trans fats, glucose, and those hidden sugars, these are your simple carbs. Simple carbs are what people forget about. Simple carbs, or starches are responsible for the biggest part of our weight gain and other negative impacts on our health, including our mental health.
I actually had a diabetic on the platform “X” that made a huge mistake by considering that all carbs are the same. This is a huge mistake on his part. Complex carbs are what dietitians consider healthy, because complex carbs have a healthy effect on the body that includes levelizing and regulating our blood sugar.
Below are Four (4) excerpts from Dr. Selhub article–
(1) Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function — and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.
(2) What’s interesting is that for many years, the medical field did not fully acknowledge the connection between mood and food.
(3) Start paying attention to how eating different foods makes you feel — not just in the moment, but the next day. Try eating a “clean” diet for two to three weeks — that means cutting out all processed foods and sugar. See how you feel. Then slowly introduce foods back into your diet, one by one, and see how you feel.
(4) When some people “go clean,” they cannot believe how much better they feel both physically and emotionally, and how much worse they then feel when they reintroduce the foods that are known to enhance inflammation.
Eighty Percent (80%) of Physical and Mental Health is our Diet
For those dealing with PTSD, hobbies, sports, and fitness and our diets have a tremendous impact, but 80 percent of a healthy body and mind depends on eating a healthy diet- high in protein, fiber, omega-3 and 6 fats (essential for mental health and healthy skin), and probiotics. While we are eliminating those simple carbs, those hidden sugars from our diet. Simple Carbs are the biggest contributor to weight gain, low energy, and experiencing feelings of depression.
Included with my book is The MELIORA Diet Program that allowed me to use the standard nutrition label to figure out what my calories are composed of. Not all calories like not all carbs are considered equal; because they aren’t.
The MELIORA Diet allowed me to turn my body into a turbocharged-calorie-burning juggernaut where my body is using my food for energy instead of storing my food as fat and raising my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels.
I’m Proof The MELIORA Diet Works
I’m proof that The MELIORA Diet works, because in November of 2014 I decided to retire in June of 2015 after 35- years as a grid engineer to start my sports performance and apparel business. To add a little caveat to my objective, I was planning on modeling my sports apparel in September of 2015 then, and even now at age 67.
But here’s the catch, I had gained 45- Lbs and 6- inches to my waistline leading up to and rehabbing from my hip replacement in October of 2014. This prevented me from working out in my gym for almost two years. As a result, I gained weight starting in 2012 leading up to my hip replacement in October 2014.
Just during the month of December of 2014, after starting back doing my rehab in November, I dropped 26- Lbs. and 4.75- inches just following my MELIORA Diet; because I couldn’t fully workout until January of 2015 in my gym. Then by January 22, 2015, after I started fully working out in my gym, I reached my goal of dropping 5.75- inches and 32 Lbs. This is when most people are wanting to start seeing results from their New Year’s Resolutions.
Just a NOTE: A healthy waistline is based on taking half your height in inches. My healthy waistline is 64- inches / 2 = 32- inches.
Then by the time I had planned on modeling by September 2015, I dropped 9.25- inches and 52- Lbs. But that wasn’t all that I dropped, I dropped 3-decades off the appearance of my skin to look, feel, and function as if I was in my mid-30’s, see my AB Challenge, above. This allowed me to model even now at age 67 with young models in their mid-20’s, see below:
To purchase The MELIORA Health & Fitness Program from Kindle, please use the link below that will take you to my ACE SPORTY Cockpit Store to purchase directly from Kindle:
01-THE QATSPY® MELIORA Health & Fitness Program Turbocharged DIET w/ Age-Defying Results!
You can also go directly to Kindle and either use my name Charles W. Boatright or the title of my book or my other books below: