Immunity Strength Quotes

Urja chakra is the chakra of strength and vitality. It removes the fatigue from overwork, blood deficiency, illness, emotional upset and insomnia. Shilajit is the key herb for this chakra.

We can't pray that God make our lives free of problems; this won't happen, and it is probably just as well. We can't ask Him to make us and those we love immune to diseases, because He can't do that. We can't ask Him to weave a magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people, and never to us. People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or good boyfriends get them as a result of praying. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of they have lost, very often find their prayer answered.

Paradoxically .. the very feminist movement that gave women more options also helped create pressure on many of us to be strong, successful, and independent—the kind of women who would theoretically be immune to any form of abuse from men. As a result, women who are in gaslighting and other types of abusive relationships may feel doubly ashamed: first, for being in a bad relationship, and second, for not living up to their self-imposed standards of strength and independence.

Since the obvious purpose of pain, misery, and suffering is to tell you something is wrong, fix it, change it, reform, improve, get help; if you don’t have the strength to do it, you are stuck with the pain. This is not to say that people with strength don’t suffer—they do. They have no immunity to life, but when they feel pain, they get moving or at least they try to do something, and the more strength they have the more successful their efforts are.

It's worth remembering that [having a baby] is not of vital use to you as a woman. Yes, you could learn thousands of interesting things about love, strength, faith, fear, human relationships, genetic loyalty, and the effect of apricots on an immune digestive system. But I don't think there's a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn't be learned elsewhere. If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then-in truth-it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whiskey with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in the winter; growing foxgloves, peas, and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a minute that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume, Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.

Break a bone..and as the broken part heals it becomes the strongest part in it....get hit by a virus, survive that and "supposedly" it can never get u again... observe how ur skin that gets rubbed on a surface often becomes thicker and more rough with time ....remember how naive you were before and with each incident and accident with people that you've had ..it brought you to the "knowing better" person you are now............you cant be stronger..if life doesn't try you every now and then ....and after each trial..it promises a stronger more immune version of you

I wake with tears in my eyes. I wake to Jeanine’s scream of frustration. “What is it?” She grabs Peter’s gun out of his hand and stalks across the room, pressing the barrel to my forehead. My body stiffens, goes cold. She won’t shoot me. I am a problem she can’t solve. She won’t shoot me. “What is it that clues you in? Tell me. Tell me or I will kill you.” I slowly push myself up from the chair, coming to my feet, pushing my skin harder into the cold barrel. “You think I’m going to tell you?” I say. “You think I believe that you would kill me without figuring out the answer to this question?” “You stupid girl,” she says. “You think this is about you, and your abnormal brain? This is not about you. It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!” I summon the last of my strength and launch myself at her, clawing at whatever skin my fingernails find, digging in as hard as I can. She screams at the top of her lungs, a sound that turns my blood into fire. I punch her hard in the face. A pair of arms wrap around me, pulling me off her, and a fist meets my side. I groan, and lunge toward her, held at bay by Peter. “Pain can’t make me tell you. Truth serum can’t make me tell you. Simulations can’t make me tell you. I’m immune to all three.” Her nose is bleeding, and I see lines of fingernail scrapes in her cheeks, on the side of her throat, turning red with blossoming blood. She glares at me, pinching her nose closed, her hair disheveled, her free hand trembling. “You have failed. You can’t control me!” I scream, so loud it hurts my throat. I stop struggling and sag against Peter’s chest. “You will never be able to control me.” I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her. I broke her.

But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self.

Still, I also had grasped enough of the West’s views of such fatalism—that it made of us primitives, naïfs, and fools—to keep such beliefs to myself. In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned no one was immune to capricious tragedy. What I didn’t know then was that ignoring my own southern African knowledge was its own kind of mischief: it rendered me speechless when I should have spoken, helpless when I was profoundly capable, and broken when in fact the very places inside me that had been damaged and snapped were their own kind of strength. I saw the landscape around us as tattooed with death, fraught with the possibility of unrecovered land mines and undetonated ordnance.

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.

fact that a woman cannot drive or travel without authorization, for example, gives a special sense of strength to the man. And this strength is directly connected to the violence. It creates a sense of immunity; that he can do whatever he wants, without sanction.

Now, sitting among the Biters and getting a glimpse of what battle against humans looked like from their perspective, she began to see things a bit differently. Sure, up close they were formidable with their strength, seeming immunity to pain, and their single-minded dedication to biting human flesh. But in the open like this, against trained soldiers, they were cannon fodder. They could not use weapons, moved slower than humans, and did not seem to have enough intelligence for anything more than the most rudimentary tactics.

Have you ever seen a rabbit go to a pharmacy, a hospital, or a mental asylum?” he asks rhetorically. “They don’t look for medicine, they heal themselves or die. Humans aren’t so simple; they’ve let technology get in the way of who they really are.” It’s an idea that I’ve thought a lot about, and one that doesn’t always sit comfortably. Yes the modern world has its drawbacks, but nature can also be brutal. So I interrupt the budding diatribe. “But rabbits get eaten by wolves,” I say. Hof doesn’t skip a beat at my interjection. “Yes, they know fight and flight. The wolf chases them and they die. But everything dies one day. It is just that in our case we aren’t eaten by wolves. Instead, without predators, we’re being eaten by cancer, by diabetes, and our own immune systems. There’s no wolf to run from, so our bodies eat themselves.

It’s come around to that point of view at the end of a long evolutionary process, in which the rule of law has slowly been replaced by giant idiosyncratic bureaucracies that are designed to criminalize failure, poverty, and weakness on the one hand, and to immunize strength, wealth, and success on the other.

The everyday work of real life—taking out the trash, moving things around in the garage, mowing the lawn—is the kind of activity that keeps the body nimble and strong. And this, more than any other fitness regimen, keeps you young. Don’t outsource your chores; when you do, you’re cheating yourself out of the best kind of ongoing workout.

The Scripture nowhere states that the believers of God are 'immune' from suffering. Instead, we are called to expect troubles (Each day has enough trouble of its own)! But there remains a promise from the Lord himself "My Grace is Sufficient for Thee; for My Strength is made perfect in weakness". Yes, the steadfast love of the Lord NEVER ceases, they are New every morning. Great is His faithfulness!

The tyranny of caste is that we are judged on the very things we cannot change: a chemical in the epidermis, the shape of one’s facial features, the signposts on our bodies of gender and ancestry—superficial differences that have nothing to do with who we are inside. The caste system in America is four hundred years old and will not be dismantled by a single law or any one person, no matter how powerful. We have seen in the years since the civil rights era that laws, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, can be weakened if there is not the collective will to maintain them. A caste system persists in part because we, each and every one of us, allow it to exist—in large and small ways, in our everyday actions, in how we elevate or demean, embrace or exclude, on the basis of the meaning attached to people’s physical traits. If enough people buy into the lie of natural hierarchy, then it becomes the truth or is assumed to be. Once awakened, we then have a choice. We can be born to the dominant caste but choose not to dominate. We can be born to a subordinated caste but resist the box others force upon us. And all of us can sharpen our powers of discernment to see past the external and to value the character of a person rather than demean those who are already marginalized or worship those born to false pedestals. We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity. The goal of this work has not been to resolve all of the problems of a millennia-old phenomenon, but to cast a light onto its history, its consequences, and its presence in our everyday lives and to express hopes for its resolution. A housing inspector does not make the repairs on the building he has examined. It is for the owners, meaning each of us, to correct the ruptures we have inherited. The fact is that the bottom caste, though it bears much of the burden of the hierarchy, did not create the caste system, and the bottom caste alone cannot fix it. The challenge has long been that many in the dominant caste, who are in a better position to fix caste inequity, have often been least likely to want to. Caste is a disease, and none of us is immune. It is as if alcoholism is encoded into the country’s DNA, and can never be declared fully cured. It is like a cancer that goes into remission only to return when the immune system of the body politic is weakened.

Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

Conditions such as long-term infection, exposure to toxins, food allergies, vitamin D deficiency, abnormal overgrowth of bacteria within the gut, or even constant emotional stress can create undue pressure on the immune system. As you will read in greater depth in chapter 4, this distress leads to chronic low-level inflammation, a major component of many chronic diseases, including osteoporosis.

The glial cells support every neural fiber, collect these fibers into bundles, and separate these bundles from the surrounding tissues and fluids. They give the nerve fibers the tensile strength and elasticity to stretch where stretching is needed, and they fix the nerve bundles securely to other structures where stability is needed. This surrounding glial tissue also comprises the ground substance for the intercellular metabolic activities attendant to the needs of the neurons, mediating the interchange of nutrition, gases, hormones, and waste products between nerves and capillaries, and carrying the white blood cells, antibodies, and other immune factors which guard the lives of the irreplaceable neurons. Other specialized glial cells—oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells—insulate the long axons with a tough, fatty coating called myelin. This insulation prevents signals from one axon inadvertently “leaking” into adjacent axons, and it also speeds up the passage of a neural impulse considerably. Myelin is whitish in color, giving the so-called “white matter” of the nervous system its name. “White matter” contrasts to “grey matter.” the color of cell bodies and axons that are not coated with myelin sheaths.

After you read this book, you must go to your hospitals/Doctors and get tested for HIV and you will be declared negative to this spirit of HIV/AIDS. This is a life giving book you will keep for the rest of your life

Depression is a Virus, handling it Once, Builds Your Immunity to it.

We confront individuals, here at home and abroad, who seek to steal life. They seek to inflict great harm, and no one is immune. No race, no religion, no ethnicity, no way of life. And so we must do everything in our power—in government, in law enforcement, and in society—to stop them. We must do everything in our power to educate people about diversity and the strength that comes from our differences. And we must do everything in our power to bring those who act on such hatred to justice.

STEP THREE: MAXIMIZE YOUR ENERGY & REGENERATION Consider what aspects of Vitality Pharmacy (Chapter 10) might help you accelerate your energy, your strength, your vitality. Or help you to recover from challenges you may be facing. 1. Are you going to expand your capacity by optimizing your hormones through H.O.T. (hormone optimization therapy)? 2. Would peptides be something you may want to consider? Are there any peptides that you’d like to look into that could make a difference in anything from your immune system to sexual desire and drive? 3. What are some of the pharmaceutical-grade supplements that you might want to have to start your day with energy or to get yourself to sleep at night without side effects? 4. Or would you like to tap into NAD3 or other NMN-like products to maximize your energy and vitality? STEP

STEP THREE: MAXIMIZE YOUR ENERGY & REGENERATION Consider what aspects of Vitality Pharmacy (Chapter 10) might help you accelerate your energy, your strength, your vitality. Or help you to recover from challenges you may be facing. 1. Are you going to expand your capacity by optimizing your hormones through H.O.T. (hormone optimization therapy)? 2. Would peptides be something you may want to consider? Are there any peptides that you’d like to look into that could make a difference in anything from your immune system to sexual desire and drive? 3. What are some of the pharmaceutical-grade supplements that you might want to have to start your day with energy or to get yourself to sleep at night without side effects? 4. Or would you like to tap into NAD3 or other NMN-like products to maximize your energy and vitality?

Compassion is fueled by understanding and accepting that we’re all made of strength and struggle—no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of “better than” or “I can fix you”—it’s a practice based in the beauty and pain of shared humanity.

Choosing what to eat according to the different seasons is a way to listen to the body, to heal it naturally, to strength your immunity, and to minimize the chance of the body becoming imbalanced because of seasonal changes. The key difference between western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine is that western medicine is used to cure diseases, whereas TCM focuses more on preventing sickness from starting.

When he was younger, he used to marvel at the strength of the human body, how hard it is fights to continue living. Our skin repairs itself, bones heal, immune system battles intruders. He used to think dying ws difficult. The older he gets, the less convinced he is of this belief. A spontaneous rupture in the brain. Monster cells ravaging the body. Death eat away at you or take you all in a flash. Human beings are too vulnerable, he's decided. All that separates us from our own end is one or two malfunctioning organs. It should be harder to die.

What deserves a bigger punishment—someone with a college education who knowingly helps a gangster or a terrorist open a bank account? Or a high school dropout who falls asleep on the F train? The new America says it’s the latter. It’s come around to that point of view at the end of a long evolutionary process, in which the rule of law has slowly been replaced by giant idiosyncratic bureaucracies that are designed to criminalize failure, poverty, and weakness on the one hand, and to immunize strength, wealth, and success on the other.

I wake with tears in my eyes. I wake to Jeanine’s scream of frustration. “What is it?” She grabs Peter’s gun out of his hand and stalks across the room, pressing the barrel to my forehead. My body stiffens, goes cold. She won’t shoot me. I am a problem she can’t solve. She won’t shoot me. “What is it that clues you in? Tell me. Tell me or I will kill you.” I slowly push myself up from the chair, coming to my feet, pushing my skin harder into the cold barrel. “You think I’m going to tell you?” I say. “You think I believe that you would kill me without figuring out the answer to this question?” “You stupid girl,” she says. “You think this is about you, and your abnormal brain? This is not about you. It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!” I summon the last of my strength and launch myself at her, clawing at whatever skin my fingernails find, digging in as hard as I can. She screams at the top of her lungs, a sound that turns my blood into fire. I punch her hard in the face. A pair of arms wrap around me, pulling me off her, and a fist meets my side. I groan, and lunge toward her, held at bay by Peter. “Pain can’t make me tell you. Truth serum can’t make me tell you. Simulations can’t make me tell you. I’m immune to all three.” Her nose is bleeding, and I see lines of fingernail scrapes in her cheeks, on the side of her throat, turning red with blossoming blood. She glares at me, pinching her nose closed, her hair disheveled, her free hand trembling. “You have failed. You can’t control me!” I scream, so loud it hurts my throat. I stop struggling and sag against Peter’s chest. “You will never be able to control me.” I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her. I broke her.

Pain gives you will power to survive, to survive you have to fight, the struggle makes you strong. strength makes you mature, maturity makes you immune to the things that causes you pain. Things hurt today will not matter tomorrow, all you have to do, hold on and deal with it. Let this pain make you immune.

He’d seen so much pain over the past few years that in some ways he’d become immune to thinking about what others felt. But when it came to his mother—his indomitable, invincible mother—he, too, hated the thought. She was the epitome of strength to him,

Once we are able to relate with our own self from a place of self-empowerment and strength, we become imperturbable and immune to their crafty ways. This is when they drop us. And please believe me, being dropped by them is the best scenario possible. I know it hurts. I know it’s messy. But it is far better than the alternative of living as only part human with a crushed spirit, or worse, no life at all.

Physically. Fredrickson has found that positive emotions improve physical well-being by increasing strength and cardiovascular health as well as by improving coordination, sleep, and immune function. Additionally, positive emotions are associated with reduced inflammation.20 In other words, being happier helps to keep you healthier, even if you work in a high-intensity or stress-inducing environment. In fact, positive emotions speed up recovery from the cardiovascular impact of stress.

Because ibis don’t eat silverside and pickles sandwiches,’ Dad says. ‘You’re only giving it the sandwich chunks because you want to feel good about yourself. That’s a selfish mindset. You start feeding that bird from this window every day then it’ll start dropping by every afternoon like we’re fuckin’ Big Rooster and it brings its friends and then none of those birds get the strength and exercise they usually get from finding food the hard way so you drastically alter their metabolisms, not to mention cause widespread civil war among the Bracken Ridge ibis community as they battle to be the first to chomp into your silverside and pickles treat. Moreover, you suddenly get an unnaturally high level of birds in one place, which affects the ecological balance of the whole Bracken Ridge area. I know I don’t always practise this but, basically, you know, the whole point of life is doing things that are right over things that are easy. Because you want to feel good about yourself, suddenly the ibis are spending less time in the wetlands on a tree and more time on the ground in a fuckin’ car park rubbing shoulders with the pigeons, and then we start getting inter-species contact and weaker immune systems in the birds and higher stress hormones and from that little petri dish of dynamite springs salmonella

What the majority of definitions share, including these, is that compassion includes action. It’s not just feeling, it’s doing. Compassion is fueled by understanding and accepting that we’re all made of strength and struggle—no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of “better than” or “I can fix you”—it’s a practice based in the beauty and pain of shared humanity.

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

Our task, is not to fear the distracting world, but to learn to thrive within it, to become the eye of the storm, calm amidst chaos. To be like the oak that stands tall against the howling winds, not because it is immune to the storm, but because it has learned to weather it. Such is the power of an unyielding focus in a world beset by distractions.

Visibly concerned, Holden drove Powers to his home in Palm Springs, where she rested for nearly five weeks, while taking a variety of medical treatments. To reduce the risk of liver damage, Powers modified her diet and exercise program. The sunlight helped to boost her immune system with the increase of vitamin D, which she absorbed in large quantities, and the actress slowly regained her strength.

For this reason I have come to think of positive self-esteem as, in effect, the immune system of consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. Just as a healthy immune system does not guarantee that one will never become ill, but makes one less vulnerable to disease and better equipped to overcome it, so a healthy self-esteem does not guarantee that one will never suffer anxiety or depression in the face of life’s difficulties, but makes one less susceptible and better equipped to cope, rebound, and transcend.

Whereas the analytic-synthetic distinction considers some statements absolutely certain and others merely probable, with a rigid barrier between these two categories, it seems more accurate to say there are degrees of belief and certainty throughout one's worldview. Some beliefs are held more firmly than others; some beliefs are held more passionately than others. But the firmly held beliefs are not necessarily the so-called analytic ones, in that they are not trivial, nor are they necessarily self-evident (though they will at least seem to be self-evident to the one who holds them at the center of his network). What determines the strength of a belief is far more complex than the analytic-synthetic distinction will allow. Such factors as past experience, upbringing, self protection, cultural and social background, intelligence level, educational training, stubbornness, pride, prejudice, religious convictions, and so on, can all influence the way we hold our beliefs and the way we revise them. It may be said that our belief system is regulated and controlled by our most basic beliefs, or presuppositions, which are neither trivial analytic truths nor purely observational synthetic truths. Or, to put it another way, everyone will end up treating some beliefs with the authority and certainty of 'analytic' judgements, but give them the significance of 'synthetic' judgements...In other words, not all beliefs are of equal importance to us. Some beliefs are granted virtual immunity from revision while others are held quite loosely. Some are at the center of the web, others on the periphery. But the strength of any given belief is not determined automictically; it is determined in the overall context of one's beliefs...Of course, this does not drive us to a form of relativism. To construe it as such would be to ignore the fact that not all presuppositional networks are equally valid. Some worldviews, or webs, are philosophically stronger than others. Some clearly destroy the intelligibility of human predication and experience and therefore must be rejected.

To me empathy is the single most important trait of a leader. A leader needs to make others feel good about themselves, about their company and about the importance of their contributions to the good of the company. The reality is that no one is immune to bad days or even a longer stretch of challenges at work and/or in our personal lives. A great leader will recognize this and respond appropriately to ensure that the people working for them feel a sense of strength and hope. Tom Golway 2009

It’s about those longevity genes AMPK and mTOR, which are important nutrient sensors. mTOR controls a number of cell functions, including cell growth and cell proliferation. For younger people who are growing or whose bodies are in reproductive mode, mTOR has many benefits. But when we get older, we don’t want to encourage cell proliferation (cancer is cell proliferation).

The goal at this point is to inhibit mTOR. Animal protein, especially red meat, contains high amounts of branched chain amino acids like leucine, which stimulate mTOR. Plant protein does not contain much of these amino acids, so it does not stimulate mTOR as much; mTOR also gets in the way of autophagy (the body’s cell-cleaning function). So turn up the plant protein, turn down the meat and dairy.

How much protein do you need? Protein can be tricky, because your needs change as you age—

But between ages 45 and 65, it’s more important to eat less meat and dairy than it is to go crazy with protein. A person in this age range weighing 150 pounds needs about 55 grams of protein a day. Most people get this amount without too much effort. After age 65, protein becomes extremely important. At this point, your body needs more protein, to combat sarcopenia—loss of muscle mass—which is just a natural part of life (see Maintaining muscle mass is critical for more on this). So you want to increase your protein intake by about 25 percent: A 150-pound person who’s 65 or over should aim for about 70 grams of protein a day. This, combined with exercise, especially strength training, helps minimize the loss of muscle mass.

Once your body has changed from production mode to preservation mode (at about age 45), too much animal protein can support the growth of things you don’t want growing. The tipping point is around age 65. From 65 on, if you need to eat more animal products than you’ve been consuming to get the amount of protein you need, so be it. It’s very important.

Good salts contain more than 80 trace minerals that aid in all sorts of functions. Sometimes good salt is the solution to a specific health issue. If you’re feeling faint or dizzy when you exercise, or if your blood pressure is very low or your brain is foggy, you might need more good salt. If you feel perpetually exhausted, sometimes a glass of water with a half teaspoon of salt is the fix. Muscle spasms can happen because people are short on salt.

good tea is magnificent. Rich in polyphenols, which activate important longevity gene pathways, repair cells, prime the immune system, and reduce inflammation, high-quality black or green tea is powerful. (The difference between black and green is just the timing of the harvest.) Buy organic tea, because conventionally grown tea is one of the most pesticide-laden crops, and enjoy two, three, four cups a day.

For protein, the order from good to problematic is plant protein (unprocessed nuts, seeds, and beans), then fish, then eggs, then dairy, then meat.

We’re talking about cellulose plant fiber, especially the parts of raw vegetables and fruits that your body can’t easily digest. This stuff—also known as prebiotics—is gold for your microbiome. It’s the material that serves as food for good gut bacteria. It’s pretty simple to get plenty of prebiotics: Eat the parts of vegetables you normally toss out: the end of carrots, the stump of the lettuce head, the stemmed tips of green beans. This is cellulose fiber (aka insoluble fiber). It gets down to the large intestine undigested, where the good bacteria is waiting to feast.

As for probiotics—you probably know you can get them in yogurt, kefir, kimchee, sauerkraut, and other fermented foods.

We’ve all seen what age can do to posture; as muscles tighten, shoulders round. But it’s not inevitable. Like a lot of things, good posture just takes more effort as you get older: more attention (are the settings on your work chair ergonomically correct?); more breaks (take a walk, cop a squat, shake out your arms); more movement all day long; more stretching, more foam-rolling, more strengthening. And more awareness, so you notice when you’re slumping and correct it. It’s worth it.

after age 45 or so, because most people become increasingly carbohydrate intolerant, meaning the body doesn’t metabolize carbs as efficiently as it once did. This is why the risk of diabetes goes up. Starchy foods also cause inflammation (see Inflammatory foods age the body) and, no surprise, weight gain, especially in the belly region. The solution is to change your eating behaviors so your body becomes fat-adapted; that is, it gets in the habit of using fats rather than carbs for energy. This is achieved by eating lots of leafy greens and healthy natural fats, some protein, and very few carbs. So nuts, salad, eggs, avocado, non-starchy veggies, grass-fed meat, fatty fish. Healthy

As your body adjusts to smaller meals high in natural fats, which will take a few weeks, you’ll notice changes: Cravings may fade or disappear, you’re probably going to be less hungry, and your energy will likely be steady throughout the day.

A two-meal pattern tends to become more doable as we age because of lifestyle changes. If you’re a parent, the kids may be grown or in their teens, with independent schedules. You’re no longer regularly called upon to put three meals a day on the table, which lets you accommodate your own needs with a bit more ease.

The trick of using smaller plates is not new but is really effective: Store away those giant dinner dishes, and dine off of “salad” plates instead.

Olive oil should come in a dark glass bottle (which protects it from sunlight damage) and should be no more than 18 months old.

Some people think that because its smoke point is fairly low, extra-virgin olive oil is not great for cooking. That isn’t true. It does have a low smoke point, but the polyphenols compensate for any damage caused to the oil when heated. Uncooked olive oil is especially beneficial to the body. So drizzle it generously

virgin coconut oil (unbleached and not “deodorized”), and unrefined palm oil (we should mention that some players in the palm oil industry have devastated the rainforest; you can find ethically sourced palm oil with some research).

Packaged snacks are often made with canola or other inflammatory vegetable oils—just one of many reasons to avoid them.

Really fresh high- quality eggs are a great source of protein, natural fat, vitamins, and minerals. “Superfood” is an overused term, but eggs actually earn the title. They’re loaded with key nutrients like choline—essential for brain health and often deficient in plant-based diets—and lutein and zeaxanthin, which support eye health. For most people, it’s fine to consume two good-quality eggs a day. Spend more to get the best-quality eggs you can find. The language you’re looking for is “hormone-free and pasture-raised” (“free range

Take bitters or apple cider vinegar before meals. Either one can help with digestion. At the start of a meal, a tablespoon of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar (you can mix it into water) or a slug of Swedish bitters (Nature Works makes a good one) stimulates your natural digestive enzymes. Keep a bottle at work too; it doesn’t need refrigeration.

Many of the good things in life—wine, bread, pasta, ice cream, pizza, fries, cake, corn—cause inflammation in the body.

Most of us lose about 1 percent of muscle mass each year after 40. So by the time we hit 70, we’re probably working with about half the muscle mass we had when we were in our 20s. It’s just a natural part of aging, called sarcopenia, and minimizing it is a priority for aging well. Until your late 50s, you shouldn’t worry much about sarcopenia; as long as you’re taking good care of yourself and exercising, you should be okay. Beginning at around 60 or 65, many of us need to increase protein by about 25 percent (even if this necessitates consuming more animal protein).

Though cardio doesn’t necessarily help muscle mass, it increases blood flow, multiplies mitochondria in the cells, brings more oxygen to the muscles, builds endurance, and turns on (or “upregulates”) longevity genes. Do both, and mix things up as much as possible. Cross-training is like eating a lot of different vegetables:

Micro movements matter too. Manual dexterity is something we don’t necessarily think about unless it becomes a problem. Making sure you mix it up in terms of micro movements—not just typing, but cooking, playing an instrument, gardening, kneading clay, knitting, or doing origami, say

20 minutes a day of something meditative

Resveratrol affects the activity of enzymes in the body called sirtuins (one of the so-called longevity genes). Sirtuins control certain biological pathways and are known to be involved in the aging process. Resveratrol gives them a boost. You may have heard that red wine contains resveratrol. This is true, but you’d need to down 150 glasses a day to get the recommended amount.

Many contemporary Yoga practitioners, especially those in Western countries, look upon āsana as a tool for achieving physical fitness and flexibility. The yogic postures have certainly demonstrated their physiological benefits in millions of cases. They improve musculoskeletal flexibility, strength, resilience, endurance, cardiovascular and respiratory efficiency, endocrine and gastrointestinal functioning, immunity, sleep, eye-hand coordination, balance. Experiments also have shown various psychological benefits, including improvement of somatic awareness, attention, memory, learning, and mood. The regular practice of postures also decreases anxiety, depression, and aggression.1 All these effects are clearly beneficial and highly desirable. Yet, the traditional purpose of āsana is something far more radical, namely to assist the Hatha-Yoga practitioner in the creation of an “adamantine body” (vajra-deha) or “divine body” (divya-deha). This is a transubstantiated body that is immortal and completely under the control of the adept’s will (which is merged with the Divine Will). It is an energy body that, depending on the adept’s wish, is either visible or invisible to the human eye. In this body, the liberated master can carry out benevolent activities with the least possible obstruction. ĀSANA AS A TOOL OF NONDUAL EXPERIENCE2 The transubstantiated body of the truly accomplished Hatha-Yoga master is, realistically speaking, out of reach for most of us—not because we are not in principle capable of realizing it but because only very few have the determination and stamina to even pursue this yogic ideal. Does this mean we have to settle for the more pedestrian benefits of posture practice? I believe there is another side to āsana, which, while not representing the ultimate possibility of our human potential, is yet a significant and necessary accomplishment on the yogic path. That is to cultivate and experience āsana as an instrument for tasting nonduality (advaita). Almost all Yoga authorities subscribe to a nondualistic metaphysics according to which Reality is singular and the world of multiplicity is either altogether false (mithyā) or merely a lower expression of that ultimate Singularity. Typically, Yoga practitioners assume that the experience of nonduality is bound to the state of ecstasy (samādhi) and that this state is hard to come by and is likely to escape them at least in this lifetime. But this belief is ill founded. In fact, it is counterproductive and should be regarded as an obstacle (vighna) on the path to enlightenment. While we might not have an experience of ecstasy, we can have an experience of nonduality. The ecstatic state is simply a special version of the nondual experience. As Karl Baier, a German professor of psychology and practitioner of Iyengar Yoga, has shown, posture practice can be an efficient means of nondual experience in which we overcome the most obvious and painful duality of body and mind.

How often should I do this? Start with two days a week.

Don’t use Listerine or other antibacterial mouthwashes; these kill the good bacteria too.

your body can repair itself better when it isn’t constantly diverting energy to digestion. Third, fasting causes major changes in several crucial hormones that impact aging and weight, including insulin and growth hormone. Fourth, fasting is one of those hormetic “small stresses” that stimulate the longevity gene pathways. Fifth—and this is big—fasting kicks in autophagy, the cellular detox process critical to strong immunity and aging well. So here’s the plan: A couple of times a week, have dinner on the early side, and the first meal the next day a little later, leaving a good 16 hours in between.

What if I can’t go 16 hours? Do what you can. Any short fast is a good fast. Twelve hours is better than 10, and 14 is better than 12. If you increase gradually, it may be easier than you think.

It’s actually great to exercise without eating because there’s no glucose being used for energy, so your body burns fat. It’s a myth that you have to eat something before you exercise.

ProLonFMD.com to learn more.

Seventy percent of the immune system is found in the gut.

Feed your body prebiotics (garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus) and probiotics (fermented foods) every day. Sleep, hydrate, meditate, use antibiotics only when you absolutely need them, and don’t take stomach medications like Nexium for long periods. In other words, many of the lifestyle habits that are good for general wellness are also key for gut health and immunity as you age.

How you metabolize caffeine is a genetic thing (genome testing like 23andMe can test for this, in fact). Some people can have caffeine after dinner and conk out at bedtime; others are so sensitive, they feel jittery all day from one cup of morning coffee.

Caffeine can have a half-life of seven hours, meaning that seven hours after you drink a cup of coffee, half the caffeine is still in your body.

You need a lower core body temperature for sleep; being too warm could inhibit sleep hormones. A hot bath an hour or so before bed actually lowers your core temperature, which is good. There are also cooling mattress toppers that might make a difference. Keep the thermostat low or the windows open. A

Exercise as you age is not just about defined workouts. It’s about moving as much as you can every single day, all day long, in regular daily life. Be a physical person. An active life overall is more beneficial than an hour at the gym (especially if that hour comes between a day at a desk and a night on the couch). Of course, gym time is also great. But the real key to aging well is to be active every chance you get.

ankle, some of the energy that goes to daily maintenance has to be diverted. Your body needs to produce enzymes and anti-inflammatory nutrients to repair that ankle, and this may detract from its ability to keep up with other necessary recovery. Because resources decrease as we age, it’s smart to be protective. Not getting injured is a positive, proactive thing you can do to maintain overall health.

Alcohol is not good for your body for a few reasons (among them, it weakens the immune system and ups your sugar intake), but the fact that it interferes with sleep is especially problematic, because of the domino effect: If you’re not rested, your body craves sugar and carbs (for quick energy); you might be too tired to exercise; you overdo it on caffeine and throw off your internal clock, which messes up your next night’s sleep.

function. Wash citrus rind or cucumber skin if you’re dropping unpeeled produce into your water. Tea counts toward hydration, by the way, but coffee doesn’t (it’s a diuretic).

In the “blue zones”—those places around the world where people live longest and are healthy beyond our wildest imaginings—there are three things you see across the board: lots of movement in daily life, a sense of purpose, and communal living. Build and cultivate your community. Have people over.

Working out with a pattern that builds to microbursts is sometimes called high-intensity interval training (HIIT). It sounds specific, but it’s nothing you can’t craft on your own. A simple format you can apply to pretty much any type of exercise: Ramp up for 1 minute; go hard for 1 minute; drop back down to a comfortable pace for 3 minutes; repeat.

Real life provides many opportunities for hormesis—moments of “that which does not kill me makes me stronger.” One of the easiest examples of this, and one of our favorites, is ending hot showers with 30 to 60 seconds of cold water.

Mitochondria are the energy sources of your cells—the essential force of life and longevity. They transform food and oxygen into ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, a type of molecule that powers biochemical reactions. ATP molecules are especially abundant in the cells of your heart, brain, and muscles. The advice in this book, on food, sleep, and nearly everything else, supports mitochondrial production and optimal function. And this little trick—a cold shower at the end of your hot one—does too.

Or just step outside in winter for a few minutes without a coat. It’s so refreshing, especially after hours in an overheated indoor environment.

The solution is rolling out muscles regularly: Foam-rolling is as important to the body as exercise. You should be rolling out your muscles—quads, glutes, calves, deltoids, pectorals—a few times a week; it doesn’t take long—just five or 10 minutes.

Rolling out the fascia Very often it’s not the muscle, it’s the tight, constricted fascia that’s causing pain in your body. Fascia is the stuff that encases the muscles, like a layer of Saran Wrap (think about that film on a raw chicken breast). As you age, it tightens. Stretching doesn’t really get to tight fascia. It needs pressure to help it release, like what you’d get from a deep-tissue massage or from using a foam roller. Tight fascia doesn’t just cause aches in muscles and joints; it can also change your gait and compromise your posture, generally making you look and feel old.

Take 300 to 500 milligrams of magnesium glycinate or magnesium threonate. If you tend to be constipated, instead take magnesium citrate (400 to 600 milligrams) at night—it usually helps get things going by morning. If that dosage doesn’t help with the constipation, increase slowly, up to 1,000 milligrams a night; decrease when you don’t need as much. Buy the best-quality supplements you can afford. Good brands include Allergy Research Group, Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, The Well, and Designs for Health.

Dim the lights an hour or two before you turn in. Relax your muscles with an Epsom salt soak. Add a couple of drops of soothing lavender oil. Relax your brain by dumping out whatever is in there: Make a to-do list or write in a journal. Pour out resentments or anger, and follow that exercise with a gratitude list. Think about what kind of content you consume at night. Some people can read a tense thriller and conk out, and others need to neutralize. A crossword puzzle, a YA novel (yes, adults can read these too), gentle poetry, spiritual essays. Find what works for you. If you can’t turn off your brain, listen to relaxing music or use a white-noise machine.

might seem like meditation is a fit here, but many people find meditating energizing. So we don’t usually recommend meditating before bed. Breathwork can be nice, though, just concentrating on long, easy breaths: Inhale for a slow count of four, and let the breath fall out in a slow exhale for a count of six. Do this for five to 10 minutes, then relax and breathe normally. You’ll likely find that your breath has “stretched” and become fuller, longer, and easier.

Inversions, aka being upside down, are anti-aging. They improve lymphatic drainage, up your energy and mental stamina, and lift your mood. Going upside down shifts organs a bit and reverses blood flow, which increases circulation to spots that normally don’t get as much “nourishment,” including the brain. Inversions also improve digestion and can relieve pain in the extremities. And they make you feel fantastic—high in the best, most natural way. You don’t necessarily need props to help you invert; any position where your head is lower than your heart counts (standing and touching your toes, for example). But props make inversions more fun and make it easier to stay upside down for longer.

when doing a headstand, you should be taking the weight in your forearms, not in your head and neck. It’s strenuous without support (and can result in neck compression, which is not good). Props can prevent that.

standing forward bend is an inversion. So is lying on your back on the floor (or the bed) with your legs up, resting on the wall—or a variation, lying on your back with your lower legs resting on the seat of a chair. This is a great pose to welcome yourself home with, after work and before dinner. It can really lift your mood. You can do it with your partner, catching up on your day while the pressure flows out of your feet. It’s a nice way to decompress. This is all part of a general policy to counterstretch whenever you can—to wash away a static pose with the opposite shape. If you’re on your feet all day, go upside down for a few minutes. If you’re rounded over a keyboard most of the time, lie down on the floor and,

The brutality of language conceals the banality of thought and, with certain major exceptions, is indistinguishable from a kind of conformism. Cities, once the initial euphoria of discovery had worn off, were beginning to provoke in her a kind of unease. in New York, there was nothing, deep down, that appealed to her in the mixture of puritanism and megalomania that typified this people without a civilization. What helps you live, in times of helplessness or horror? The necessity of earning or kneading, the bread that you eat, sleeping, loving, putting on clean clothes, rereading an old book, the smell of ripe cranberries and the memory of the Parthenon. All that was good during times of delight is exquisite in times of distress. The atomic bomb does not bring us anything new, for nothing is more ancient than death. It is atrocious that these cosmic forces, barely mastered, should immediately be used for murder, but the first man who took it into his head to roll a boulder for the purpose of crushing his enemy used gravity to kill someone. She was very courteous, but inflexible regarding her decisions. When she had finished with her classes, she wanted above all to devote herself to her personal work and her reading. She did not mix with her colleagues and held herself aloof from university life. No one really got to know her. Yourcenar was a singular an exotic personage. She dressed in an eccentric but very attractive way, always cloaked in capes, in shawls, wrapped up in her dresses. You saw very little of her skin or her body. She made you think of a monk. She liked browns, purple, black, she had a great sense of what colors went well together. There was something mysterious about her that made her exciting. She read very quickly and intensely, as do those who have refused to submit to the passivity and laziness of the image, for whom the only real means of communication is the written word. During the last catastrophe, WWII, the US enjoyed certain immunities: we were neither cold nor hungry; these are great gifts. On the other hand, certain pleasures of Mediterranean life, so familiar we are hardly aware of them - leisure time, strolling about, friendly conversation - do not exist. Hadrian. This Roman emperor of the second century, was a great individualist, who, for that very reason, was a great legist and a great reformer; a great sensualist and also a citizen, a lover obsessed by his memories, variously bound to several beings, but at the same time and up until the end, one of the most controlled minds that have been. Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. We know Yourcenar's strengths: a perfect style that is supple and mobile, in the service of an immense learnedness and a disabused, decorative philosophy. We also know her weakness: the absence of dramatic pitch, of a fictional progression, the absence of effects. Writers of books to which the work ( Memoirs of Hadrian ) or the author can be likened: Walter Pater, Ernest Renan. Composition: harmonious. Style: perfect. Literary value: certain. Degree of interest of the work: moderate. Public: a cultivated elite. Cannot be placed in everyone's hands. Commercial value: weak. People who, like her, have a prodigious capacity for intellectual work are always exasperated by those who can't keep us with them. Despite her acquired nationality, she would never be totally autonomous in the US because she feared being part of a community in which she risked losing her mastery of what was so essential to her work; the French language. Their modus vivendi could only be shaped around travel, accepted by Frick, required by Yourcenar.

For a realistic assessment, one had to turn to those who remained inside Germany. They painted a very different, much grimmer picture. One of the most sensitive and valuable witnesses was the journalist Sebastian Haffner, who stayed in Germany until 1938. Though no one expected it when Hitler became chancellor, Haffner notes, his policies were remarkably successful at first. Within three years, Germany went from deep economic depression to full employment. Hitler also rearmed the nation, making it once again the dominant military power on the continent. And then there were the foreign policy triumphs: the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the incorporation of Austria, the acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Looking back in April 1939, Hitler could say, “I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields of our national economy. . . . I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans, who had been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space.” To which a despondent Haffner could only reply: “Damn it, it was all true, or nearly all.” Former opponents, Communists and Social Democrats among them, were won over by Hitler’s undeniable accomplishments. Haffner estimates that at his height, Hitler had the support of 90 percent of the German people, and that a majority of those who had voted against him in 1933 were now Nazi Party members or at least party sympathizers. This, Haffner says, was “perhaps his greatest achievement of all.” What’s more, such wide popularity made it difficult for critics to find fault, even when they weren’t being hounded by the Gestapo to conform. “I don’t like that business with the Jews either,” Haffner would hear from acquaintances, “but look at all the things the man has achieved!” What could one say? Haffner himself was immune to Hitler’s appeal in part because he had many Jewish friends and a Jewish girlfriend. But articulating a response was not easy because rejecting Hitler for his faults seemed to require rejecting his achievements as well, and few wanted to go back to the frustrating political paralysis of Weimar. Opponents of the Nazis who had the inner strength to resist the inevitable self-doubt that had to creep in when everyone around them was applauding Hitler for his all-too-obvious achievements found themselves increasingly living in a world of intellectual isolation and muted skepticism. According to Haffner, “What passive resistance there was to the wave of Hitlerism in Germany was mainly caused by his anti-Semitism,” but how many wanted to stand up and be labeled defenders of the Jews?