In the beginning

I joined the local Rotary Club at the insistence of a good friend. The club was located at a prestigious golf and country club in my part of town where the group met on a Tuesdays for lunch. It just so happened this was the only time I could count on being available because of my busy travelling schedule, so I took this as a fortunate occurrence and joined. The first thing I noticed was what a great group of people they were and I started to really enjoy my weekly lunches partly because of the camaraderie that formed and partly because the food was so great. They really took good care of us at this golf and country club.

So, the more I got to know these people and they're idiosyncrasies I realized a couple of things:

#1-these people were really making a difference in the world
#2-they were all so very conservative in their thinking

This of course was why they were so successful at their business but it was also the reason why they were in such terrible physical shape. I am not just talking about a few extra pounds but also about the great quantity of prescribed medications they were taking on a daily basis. It was astounding to me, here we have the cream of the crop of the souci-economic world, all have the time and money to golf, take vacations and there was almost an inherent resistance to taking responsibility for their own health. It was like they were so in charge of their business and in charge of their life they did not have the time to think about their health.

In my thoughts I was trying to find a way to help these people improve the their lives and enhance their quality of life and I could not find a way that would make sense to them.

About 6 months after joining I was asked to do an occupational get-aquatinted talk. At that point I was concerned, I was not sure this group was ready to hear the truth about what I did and how I could best get my message across. I mean there is just so much information to share and this group was so old school. I opted for "a picture is worth a thousand words". I decided to show them what I knew and did with the help of my microscope and projector. The big day arrives and I began my talk with, "Rather than bore you with all the details of how and what I do, I have decided to bring in some of my favorite toys and show you!"

So I turned on the projector and took a drop of blood, put it on a slide and projected onto the screen the results. You should have seen the jaws drop when they saw what a drop magnified blood, 30000x, looked like. I proceeded on with my talk and when I was just about done and I could sense that I had lost the 'WOW' that I started with and then Big Bill, the ex-president, a life of the party kind of guy, stands up and says "DO MINE". He was referring to me taking a sample of his blood and showing it to the group on the projector. So I did and the difference between the look of my blood and his blood was staggering. Mine was a reasonable example of good blood, Big Bill's was noticeably different, where my blood showed up clear and separate, his was like sludge and swamp like. It was so different I was embarrassed to ask "how many medications are you taking?" His answer was five and it was at that moment I could tell the room got it, they understood how the medications they were taking, the ones that are supposed to be making things OK, for a while, came at a very high price.

It was at this moment I realized how best to help the group and my program 'The Happy Heart, Healthy Heart, Long Life' was born.