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This will be the first post of it’s kind here on CF. I recently recieved an email from someone seeking advice on how to cope with having ADD and being completely unmedicated, a task which is fairly difficult. The email I received read as follows:

“Hello, Im a fourty year old man that has been diognosed with A.D.D.. I have been on Aderall for four years. Prior to that I was an alcoholic and drug addict. I have tried just about every med available in the last few months trying to get out of the zombie stage. I decided to stop all meds two weeks ago. I have not felt this good in a long time. I am concerned becase I feel myself not being content with what I have and I worry about the old me returning. Do you know of anything that might take the edge off and yet not make me a zombie? I am trying excercise and diet but I feel myself getting board… Thanks Cory”

I totally understand. It was a rough transition for me to kick the meds, but it was well worth it. You’re right, you feel great in comparison to all those drugs slowing you down. You are right though,it is easy to get bored and distracted without any chemicals to keep your brain on a leash. I do have a few suggestions though:

1. Coffee/Tea. I can’t drink either because the caffeine makes me pass out. However, I know plenty of people who have ADD and survive just fine on two cups of coffee a day (one at breakfast and one at lunch). You do have to watch out for the crash afterwards though, it’s just something to keep in mind.
2. Chocolate, also contains caffeine. If I find that I need to focus, I’ll often snag a piece of chocolate. The sugar and caffeine helps to get my brain moving in the right direction again.
3. Meditation. It’s boring as… well… just sitting there for long periods of time. However, the discipline garnered from training your mind to shut up and be quiet is priceless. I use both meditation and self hypnosis techniques to get myself to sleep every night. As I’m sure you know, many who suffer from ADD also find it hard to sleep because their minds just won’t stop thinking.
4. Martial arts. Working out and eating right is great, but you don’t train your mind much with just that. Keeping your brain engaged and forcing some discipline on yourself with martial arts can be extremely helpful. Even something like Tae Bow (which is just the kung fu / kick boxing workout taken from the martial art) can be extremely beneficial.
5. Stay away from additive/preservatives. There is some scientific evidence and a wealth of anecdotal evidence to support the claim that ADD is caused by these artificial chemicals in our food. Although I’m not entirely sure if I believe this, it isn’t a bad idea to at least keep in mind that these artificial additives/preservatives and colorings are probably not good for you. I’m not saying “go all natural”. But rather that you try not to eat/drink overly fake/processed food. Here’s a link to some of these findings:
   http://www.chem-tox.com/pregnancy/artificial.htm

Well, that about sums it up. I hope that was helpful. Keep in mind, I’m not a doctor and the consumption of caffeine and chocolate may be contraindicated for other conditions (such as hypertension, high blood pressure, and diabetes). Not to mention the dangers of martial arts. I’m not giving medical advice, just sharing what works for me. (heh, just covering my butt).

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel Summers

P.S. Thank you Cory, for allowing me to post this here as well. I sincerely hope that this dialog was helpful to both you and any others with similar situations who happen to stumble upon this post.

As an inviatation to my readers, if you have any comments, and especially if you have any more suggestions for managing ADD without medication, please, by all means, leave a comment below.

I just got a facebook account. I’ve been meaning to get one for the longest time. All I knew about it before signing up was: You could upload photos, and a lot of people where on it. THAT’S IT! Wow, I was a little surprised to find that it has a much as it does. I’m all ready using a few apps, slinging comments all over people’s walls, and trying to snag as many friends as I can (of course all people that I actually know/knew… for now).

Now, why the heck does this matter to anyone?

Well, I’m working on an experiment. I’ve heard that facebook is a great way to drive traffic to websites, if done properly. I’ve got little blurbs about this and my other two sites up there at the moment. I also uploaded several pieces of my artwork and posted a link to this in the gallery description saying that I’ve got more here. On top of that, the items that I sell on t-shirts, I’ve got links to their product pages.

Facebook Seems like it was
practically made for artists!

I knew facebook was popular but I had no idea. I can totally see how much potential it has for connecting people. Because of the way it works, it’s perfect for visual artists. I’ve said it once, and I’ll probably say it a thousand times: getting traffic to your site (and eyeballs on your art) is all about increasing your presence on the web. People can only view your work if they know you’re there! Facebook looks to me like a great way to get exposure. At the very least, it will keep you in touch with your friends, and your friends in touch with you… and your art. Some of my best customers (and by that I mean they buy a lot of stuff ^_^) are friends and family. Let’s face it, we could all use more friends.

Let’s recap

As an artist you can build your traffic very simply by getting a facebook account, staying in touch with friends and family, uploading samples of your artwork with links back to your website (for if they want to see more).

Question for the artistic masses:

“Do you use Facebook? Do you use it to build you traffic for your site and get eyeballs on your art? If so, how successful is it?”
I’m very interested to see how others are doing with this. I’ll keep everyone updated on my results with facebook advertising.

Hope that was helpful,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I know you can’t really explode your eyeballs if you try to stop a sneeze but suppressing a sneeze is never a good idea. The fact of the matter is that a sneeze can leave your mouth and nose at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. Trying to stop such a force isn’t something I would advise. In fact, doing so could cause damage to your eyes, nose, and/or eardrums.

However, there is a way to stop a sneeze without causing damage. You have to stop it before it starts. It is possible to simply relax, clear your mind, and concentrate on stopping the involuntary spasm that is a sneeze, however, that’s not very reliable and its not easy to summon the will power to subdue something as powerful as a sneeze. Imagine that you’re an international super spy, you’re on a stealth mission, you’re in someone’s office trying to steal top secret plans and as you open up the drawer to the desk your nose begins to itch, then tingle and you sneeze. This alerts the guards outside who promptly rush into the room and shoot you in the face, mission over. Oops! I sneezed!

It’s actually really easy to stop a sneeze. Just one conveniently easy pressure point will do the trick. That’s right, all you have to do is take your index and middle finger and press them to the little indention that your super-orbital ridge (your eyebrow bones) make where they meet just above your nose (between and slightly above the eyebrows).

If you trace your eyebrows with your fingers you can feel the bones. You want to press right where they join up with the forehead. The bones form a shape that’s almost like a “W” that will perfectly fit two fingers. I’ve provided the illustration to help… well, illustrate this.

Now, I’ve got to lay out a few things. This pressure point will stop most sneezes. However, it won’t stop all sneezes, including:

• Those brought on by high concentrations of irritants (such as pepper up the nose).
• Those caused by extreme allergy attacks (such as sneezing fits that last several minuets).
• A sneeze that’s right about to happen.

It’s also very important that you catch the sneeze early. If you wait too long to apply the pressure point, it won’t work. Upon applying the pressure to this point, you should immediately stop feeling like you have to sneeze. If you can still feel the sneeze building up, get your fingers away from your face before you poke your eye out.

I personally use this technique all the time. Sneezes actually do serve a purpose, so I use it sparingly. I tend to use this when I’m on the phone, with a customer at work, when I’m trying to be sneaky, etc…

Give it a shot, you’ll be amazed at how well it works.

Caffeine is a wonderful thing right? I know plenty of people who can’t even start their day without a cup of coffee or a nice cold coke. That caffeine rush sure is invigorating isn’t it? Heck, once you’re hooked on the caffeine, water just doesn’t compare to a cold bubbly soda. But have you ever thought about what happens to your body after drinking a Coke? This Article lays it out in detail and it’s some narly stuff. To summarize, you consume 100% of the daily recommended intake of sugar (in one serving), your blood sugar spikes, your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and it increases dopamine production (not unlike the effects of heroine that make it so addictive), it severely dehydrates you and depletes you of vital nutrients.

The dehydrating qualities of caffeine where somehow kept from me in my youth. My assumption was “if I’m thirsty, I should get a drink” Apparently, however, the type of drink is VERY important.
Read the rest of this entry »

I recently discovered an interesting strategy for bathroom etiquette that results in benefits for both myself and my wife that I thought so helpful that I simply had to share. Before you read on, I should mention that I do not have any shame… just something you should be aware of.

You see, my wife often complains about the odor produced by my bowel movements. In fact, the restroom is generally off limits as a biohazard zone for quite some time afterwards. I understand this is also a problem for many other men. Generally speaking all the females I’ve known are completely repelled by the odor produced by male feces. They tend to avoid it like the plague, spray all manner of odor eliminators and scents in an effort to cover it up, and make funny faces while rebuking the source of the odor.

With this in mind, I sat down to think about what I could do to help ease my wife’s olfactory discomfort. Because it is often difficult for anyone to wait several hours for the stink to clear before they can use the toilet, I decided that it might be more considerate to wait until just after my wife uses the toilet to “take the browns to the super bowl”.

Judging by both common sense and anecdotal evidence, we can all agree that people tend to relieve themselves every few hours and are thusly unlikely to need to use the toilet within a few hours of relieving themselves. By waiting until my wife has just used the toilet to “drop the kids off at the pool” I can maximize the amount of time that the air has to clear before next she must visit the restroom, thusly sparing her from as much of my foul reek as possible. I find this to be the most considerate course of actions possible. It’s also very easy to do so long as there happens to be no immediate urgency to your situation.

As an additional benefit, because a woman must always sit in order to use the toilet, using the toilet right after her ensures that the seat is nice, warm, and ready for your posterior. The only exception is when your wife is a germ-aphobe who simply “hovers.” However, baring that one exception, this situation will likely be the same across the board. I must admit, I do not miss the cold seat, and although my wife thinks I’m a bit of a jerk to specifically wait for her to “warm up the seat” for me, she does appreciate the less frequent assault on her nostrils.

Someone once said that marriage is about compromise. I think this is a perfect example of this. There are obvious benefits for both parties and very little effort is required to reap these benefits. Because of this, I’ve got a new rule for toilet etiquette: if at all possible, wait until directly after my wife has used the toilet to “take a dump”. By sparing her of my noxious fumes, I am rewarded with a freshly warmed seat. Seems fair enough to me.

As some of my readers may know, I am also the owner of a budding Free Traffic Community called Free Traffic Works. This site is completely dedicated the various methods through which website owners can generate free traffic to their sites. Before it was just one big ad page. People could sign up and have their links shown on that ad page. Now the site is COMPLETELY different.

Now users can actually see the various free traffic services and rate them according to their own personal experience with them. They can also suggest new free traffic generating services for us to rate and to advertise for. On top of that every user can leverage the ENTIRE SITE to display their affiliate links. That’s right, when users advertise their FTW affiliate link, those that surf the site from their links will see that user’s affiliate links for those services. Even if they visit the site and come back to it weeks later, they will still see that user’s affiliate links.

It’s a powerful system with great potential. The best part is, there is MUCH more to come. I also intend to monetize the site so that users can not only use the site to advertise for them, but to also generate them actual affiliate sales to earn them money! And it’s all free, forever, I’ll never charge a dime.

Go on, check it out, it won’t hurt to take a peek. Free Traffic Works and it can work for you.

I just happen to be a poor college student. That being the case, I like to share the things I’ve learned as a poor college student with other poor college students. One thing that always was difficult for me was finding the right gifts for everyone during the holidays. However, it didn’t take me long to figure out a quick and cheap way to give gifts that I knew everyone would love. Read the rest of this entry »

Another little bit of advice for college goers. Veggies will keep your brains alive! I am a big carnevore. I just love meat. I eat large amounts of meat at every meal. Protein keeps me from becoming anemic and it settles my stomach. Now, meat is good for you but you also need veggies. Yeah, I know, that green stuff. Trust me, it can be good. In fact, I have noticed that if I do not eat my veggies that there is a marked decline in my mental state. That is to say, that I am more stupid when I’m not eating my veggies. I have noticed simple things like the fact that my vocabulary will increase after eating plenty of veggies in comparison to eating none at all. I just recently noticed that I was having problems coding pieces of my new online community website only to figure out that a few simple misspellings where the culprit (which I only noticed several hours after eating a large salad… when the previous few days where mostly burgers, bacon, and pizza… yes those are the three main staples of my diet).

Now, I know that fat is good for your brain, or rather the right kind of fat… mostly the kind found in fish. However, there are plenty of vitamins and minerals found in plants that we need too. Perhaps these vitamins are the reason for my mental incline after consuming veggies. Who knows. All I know is that if you don’t eat your veggies, your brain will suffer.

On another note, for general health, eat a ton of garlic. No one will like you… because your breath will stink… but your body will love you for it. Whenever I start to feel the slightest bit ill, I start eating copious amounts of garlic. The good thing is that I usually don’t get sick because of this… the downside is that my wife won’t kiss me when I smell like garlic. My only consolation is that she wouldn’t kiss me if I where sick either, so it’s not like I’m missing out on anything. Garlic is actually a pureative, and an antibiotic. It kills germs. If you’re spiritual, it also wards off evil spirits (which isn’t to say that it won’t ward off evil spirits if you aren’t spiritual). Garlic is just plain good for you because its so bad for almost everything else. I suppose it helps that I like garlic, huh? It’s great for knocking out a cold or the flu. But works best if you start eating it in large amounts right after your first symptoms.

If you don’t like garlic, cinnamon also helps… although it’s not as strong as garlic and tends to have adverse effects if consumed in large amounts.

Figured that was worth knowing, and certainly worth sharing,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Lucid dreaming is defined as a dream where the dreamer is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. Often, the dreamer can exert conscious control over the dream as well. If you have ever controlled your dreams before, then you may have experienced lucid dreaming.

The only prerequisite to being able to control your dreams is that you realize a few things:
1) that you realize that you are dreaming
2) that you realize that everything that occurs in this world occurs because your mind invents it
3) that you realize that you have control over this world because this world was built by your mind.

Essentially once you realize that its all in your head, you realize that you can do whatever you want. Often the only limitation is your ability to suspend your own mind’s concept of reality. For instance, we all know that walls are solid. If you run straight at a wall you brain will expect you to hit it and it will react on instinct. In the dream world, you must override that instinct in order to run through that wall.

First I’m going to start off with an anecdote, then I’ll give some tips.
Read the rest of this entry »

I remember back when I was going to college in Phoenix AZ that all of my friends and classmates had myspace accounts. I sat there thinking “This is some messed up fad, I can’t believe they all bought into this.” I promised myself that I would never get a myspace account.

However, I did eventually get an account simply to find an old friend (which I did). The cool thing was that I discovered how important social networking sites are for targeted traffic generation… at least for personal sites. This website is full of my artwork and opinions. Thusly, it is something that many of my friends may be interested in. Admitedly, I don’t have much of a social life and I find social networking sites like MySpace, Elftown, and Zaadz to be great ways to make friends online.

Now, that being said, don’t spam your friends. They don’t appreciate it. I post information in relevent forums and I also post bullitns/blog entries that my friends can see. That’s it. Still, it starts you off with a decent visitor base to work from.

For artists, I would definately suggest getting Elfwood and Deviantart accounts. These sites are ranked very highly in the search engines. Getting accounts with them and posting a few “teaser” pieces can only increase your traffic. However, you have to stay active. You have to get out there and comment on people’s artwork. You have to respond to comments on yours. Get out there and get involved, it’s fun and it is very rewarding.

For bloggers it is important that you visit other blogs and comment on them. Every comment you leave provides a link back to you. This is important because it not only increases search engine ranking but also, if your comment is provocative enough, will prompt people to come visit your blog. BlogRush is also useful in this capacity. Read this article to find out how.

My advice boils down to this:
Get out there and get involved. Make your presence known in the web community. At the same time, don’t spam. I happen to think Spam tastes good in person… but I hate it online. If you are an unknown on the web, your website will also remain unknown. I see far too many blogs with no comments in them. I try to make a point to try and comment on something.

An invitation to all bloggers!

If you have a blog and no comments, comment on this post here and I will be more than happy to drop you a line. Feel free to look around my site in the meantime. I’ve got ADD pretty bad, and if I could sit down long enough write out all of this stuff, you shouldn’t be too bored reading through it.

Get out there, mix it up, have some fun. That’s what this is all about anyway. Oh… and I wouldn’t mind selling a few T-shirts while I’m at it. :P

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Many children, and even adults, are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD(Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder… hereafter referred to as ADD) every year. Some would argue that there is an epidemic. While others, such as myself, debunk it as a load of bull. Yep, this rant is about the ADD excuse as I like to call it. Now, that being said, I have been diagnosed as having ADD and I have noticed odd difference between those with and those without this supposed disorder. The main difference is that stimulants and depressants work backwards on us. Most of the medications prescribed to those with ADD are actually amphetamines. I can’t imagine giving a hyper kid a stimulant would make them any easier to deal with… however, that is the case. For instance, drinking caffeine will make me lose consciousness fairly quickly whereas Benadryl will make me jittery and fidgety. So I recognize that there is a fundamental difference between those with and without this supposed disorder. Studies have actually shown that people with ADD actually have decrease levels of activity in the parts of their brain that govern impulse control. However, I don’t think it’s a disorder at all, nor do I think it’s a learning disability. However, the entire country is using it as an excuse. Students, teachers, and parents are all saying “it’s not their fault… they’ve got ADD”. It’s all garbage.
Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, so my traffic isn’t that great but I’ve come up with a fairly decent strategy for getting myself more exposure and visitors though the free link exchange program, BlogRush. First, lets go over how BlogRush works:
Read the rest of this entry »

Readers beware, there has been a long, on-going scam dealing with the flu vaccine. Many health care facilities have been pocketing your hard earned money by injecting you with immunologically useless, and often dangerous materials. Be very cautious with considering getting the flu vaccine. What’s going on you ask? Have some groups replaced the actual flu vaccine with something else in order to make money? Not really, in fact you might be safer if they had!
Read the rest of this entry »

I remember the good ole’ days of my being in a college apartment. I didn’t have a job and was surviving off of the $100 a month that my father could spare for me. It was tough not having much money for food, but I manged to get by. I’m going to share some simple tips for super low budget food to help keep the college goer (any anyone else for that matter) at stay least alive. Read the rest of this entry »

This category (dream journal) is dedicated to my subconscious mind. Herein I will be a detailed dream journal. I’m essentially just using this part of my blog as an easy place to keep all of this crud in my brain. I would suggest that everyone create their own dream journals. They can be a useful therapeutic tool. Psychologist Carl G. Jung (1875-1971) believed that dreams where conduits to our unconscious minds. Keeping track of our dreams may help us understand the messages that this relatively unused portion of our brain may be trying to send us. Dreams also tend to be fairly entertaining, both to ourselves and to anyone else who hears them. They are odd and seemingly random although steeped in symbolism. You can pretty much guarantee that your unconscious mind will come up with a story you’ve never heard before. Dreams can also be a great source of inspiration. Many artists, composers, song writers, singers, etc… credit their dreams with inspiring them to create great things (including myself). In any case, the average person will sleep away one third of their life. During this time we dream and upon waking a great many of us forget the experiences we had during this time. Knowing this, it’s crazy that we actually forget about one third of our life experiences. Writing them down seems like a small effort with huge benefits if you ask me.

Expect much more,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel