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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: Okay. So I’ve been holding on to a couple things here for the right time. There’s no right time to do these except when there’s nothing really big pressing or such as an Open Line Friday. One of the things that I love doing is exposing popular wives’ tales and particularly in the health area, such as, “Drinking coffee will enhance heart attacks,” or eating oat bran will somehow unclog this or that — or, you know, whatever these things are.

For the longest time (panicking), “You gotta wear sunscreen! You gotta wear sunscreen! If you don’t wear sunscreen, you’re going to die! You’re gonna get skin cancer. You’re gonna get melanoma, skin cancer! You gotta wear it!” It’s so bad, every day I play golf, you go into the restroom before going out to the range to get loose, and somebody’s in there putting sunscreen on. “You’re not gonna put any sunscreen on?” “Nope, I’m not.” “Why not?” “Because I want to get some sun!” “Well, my God. Are you not worried about…?” “No, I’m not! We’re all gonna get something. I mean, if the sun was a killer, God wouldn’t have made it or put us in the way of it.”

“Man, that’s real weird.” “I’m sorry you think that but I’m not gonna put sunscreen on.” I got some people that play golf that dress like Lawrence of Arabia because they believe this myth. And then after how many years, it was a few short weeks ago that we got this little story out there that said sunscreen was leading to serious deficiencies in vitamin D! There isn’t any other way you can get it. You can’t go to the GNC and grab some BGR, BDG, CPB, THC, whatever it is, and get some vitamin D.

You gotta get in the sun — and if you’re decked out in sunscreen all the time, you’re not gonna get right amounts or sufficient amounts of vitamin D. Now, look, I understand some people’s complexions mean that very little sun can cause burning. I’m talking about being stupid about this. I’m talking about rejecting fearmongering, crisis-controlling stories that nobody even questions. The amount of health BS that has made its way into daily adult life is striking. I wish I would have kept a record. I can’t tell you.

How about red wine? “Drink red wine and you’ll never get a heart attack! One glass of red wine a day.” You say, “No, no, no. No, no, no.” “Yes, yes, yes! Look at the French! The French are not fat, the French don’t have heart attacks, and they drink red wine and have brie cheese all the time.” “Okay, if that makes you feel better having wine and brie, go do it.” (indignant) “Well, I’m just telling you, you don’t see overweight French people!” “(laughing) Yes, you do! What do you mean, ‘You don’t see overweight French people’? You see overweight everybody!”

And then, “One drink a day, maybe two, will actually open the blood vessels and promote blood circulation, particularly in the elderly. So if you need that toddy at the end of the day, Ethel, go ahead.” And then some months later, by the way, “Even one drink can hasten the onset of Alzheimer’s!” I mean, it never ends, and with each new one, everybody gloms onto it and believes it. Remember the old coconut oil panic that was started by those two anorexic skeletons from the Center for Science in the Public Interest?

Those people were a menace. Those people succeeded in getting coconut oil banned from movie theaters, which is what popcorn is popped in commercially. And you know why? Because it holds the popcorn. If you’re running the concession operation at a stadium or an arena, you have to have the popcorn pre-popped and ready to go and have it under warmers, and it’s gotta taste pretty much like it was just popped or you’re not gonna sell it.

Well, that’s what coconut oil does. Coconut oil holds the popcorn. If you put it in Mazola or vegetable oil or whatever, it’s not gonna last beyond the next day. You wouldn’t want to eat it the next day. It’s okay, but just it’s not gonna taste right. Plus, coconut oil is what gives the movie theater the smell it has, the aroma and the taste. Have you noticed that you can’t buy coconut oil!” Well, you used to not be able to buy it. It’s not next to the Crisco. It’s not next to the Mazola. You could only buy it commercially.

Now it’s out. But these anorexic skeletons got it banned from movie theaters, on the theory that it was so rich and high cholesterol that you would die, maybe! They then then the same thing with MSG and Chinese food. It turns out coconut oil is one of the most healthy oils you can consume! I do not pop popcorn at home without it! Now, some people like microwave popcorn for the convenience of it, and they’ve tried to come up with imitation flavors in what they use to pop popcorn in microwave packs.

But there’s nothing like real coconut oil — end even now, you have to buy it commercially. You have to buy it from places that service concession stands and concessionaires. But if you get it, it’s nothing like it. I know some people say, “I don’t want my house smelling like a movie theater.” (laughs) I don’t mind if my media room smells like it, ’cause I love it. I think it smells good. Anyway, these things are all over the place, and I am naturally predisposed to never believing any of it because it’s all groupthink. It’s all conventional wisdom, and I…

It’s just the way I’m wired. If everybody thinks something along the lines… I’m not talking about core principles. I’m talking about these kinds of theories and beliefs. When people come along and everybody thinks the same thing — like the Drive-Bys with these montages we put together, such as gravitas or whatever it is. I don’t even know how they can do that. How in the world? Why do you want to be like everyone else? Why do you want to think, say, talk like everybody else?

So I naturally, just instinctively, I don’t even have to stop and think about it. So I never subscribe any of these things. I’m not gonna let this kind of stuff — and these are all left-wing control freaks in these science industries trying to control the way people live, trying to control the way people think, all rooted in some secret belief that maybe we’re not gonna die. Maybe if we do all these things we won’t die. It’s all rooted in mortality and so forth.

So whenever these things come along, I get a little smile on my face. How many do I have? I have two here. Yeah. Two of them. The first one is from the New York Post, and the headline: “Sorry, Fitness Fanatics: Your 10,000-Step Goal Is Bogus.” Now, how many of you have signed on to this one? If you wear an Apple Watch or a Fitbit or any kind of a device that tracks your physical activity, you may have signed on to the idea that 10,000 steps is an objective or a goal.

Not just upstairs or down, just 10,000 steps, just moving around, that sitting is the closest thing to getting cancer. Oh, that’s another one. The people that promote the Apple Watch and Fitbits will tell you, “I mean, if you want to get cancer, sit. It’s the absolute worst thing you can do is sit. I mean, it’s a killer. Sitting is a killer!” Right. Well, have you seen a death certificate which lists sitting as the cause you saw death?

Now, don’t get mad at me. I’m not being snarky here. Of course we haven’t. “No Rush, it’s not the sitting, it’s the inactivity, it’s the blood clots and it’s the collection of fat in certain areas when you’re not moving around. You know what it is. Don’t try to fool us.” You tell me sitting causes cancer, you lose me. Who wrote this? I don’t have a name, but it’s the New York Post.

“Since the dawn of our Fitbit, step-tracking culture, we’ve been programed to strive for 10,000 steps a day –” Dawn, are you into the 10,000 steps a day? No, 10,000 steps a day. “– and to feel guilty if we haven’t hit that daily benchmark. But a new study out of –” dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut – “Harvard Medical School says that less may be more when it comes to walking.

“The study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association Internal Medicine, says that notching only half of that 10,000 number is linked to a decreased risk for early deaths in older women.”

See? There we go. All you need, if you’re an elderly woman, all you have to do is walk 5,000 steps, and that will decrease your risk for early death as an older woman. What is early death in an older woman? If you become an older woman, haven’t you survived early death? I’m not nitpicking.

“And the benefits might even flatten out after about 7,500 steps, making those extra 2,500 paces futile.” Well, how many of you have been out there gauging and counting and recording your 10,000 steps a day, and now here comes somebody from Harvard, “You don’t need to do that, 5,000 will do it, 7,500 tops.”

You know, when it comes to health news, nothing should be shocking anymore. What is shocking is the gullibility of human beings in the twenty-first century. Drink a gallon of water a day to be healthy, you say. Okay, sure. Hey, if you’re gonna go on a diet, it won’t work unless you have eight 12-ounce glasses of water every day. Even if you can’t drink another glass, you gotta have eight. How many diets tell you this?

I’ve done it. I’ve lost weight equally rapidly drinking nothing above average as I have doing the eight glasses of water. But they say, “Well, the reason, Rush, you gotta flush it all out. You drink the eight glasses of water to flush out all the ketones and stuff that you’re burning up that actually counts for the weight loss. You gotta flush it out of there.”

“You mean it’s not gonna leave on its own?”

“No! That’s why you gotta drink the eight glasses of water, to make sure it gets flushed out of there.”

“Oh. So the human body won’t get rid of that stuff unless you drink eight glasses?”

“That’s right, Rush.” I’ve had people swear by this to me. Don’t drink coffee if you want to avoid cancer. All these steps. Here’s another one. Antioxidants. I didn’t even know what an antioxidant was until I got the first pitch from a guy on how healthy they are. This guy shoveled blueberries into his mouth like I’ve never seen.

He was putting raw blueberries into his mouth, on top of his cereal, he was putting them in milk. He was putting artificial sweetener on them, making muffins out of them, blueberries every day. Every time he opened his mouth he was eating something a blueberry was part of. “Antioxidant, man, it’s best cleansing mechanism there is. You gotta get rid of all these poisons in your system, and if you don’t do it, they’re gonna build up and they’re gonna kill you.”

“What is an oxidant?”

“Well, I don’t know, but it’s bad. You shouldn’t do it.”

“What is doing an oxidant?”

“Well, there are antioxidants and you’re getting rid of poison.” Anyway, this guy committed suicide about a year after I got to know him.

This is from Real Clear Science: “Antioxidants have been hailed as health game changers for over a quarter-century. When originally buzzed back in the early 1990s, the compounds, which include beta-carotene, Vitamin E, and glutathione, were predicted to protect against various cancers, heart disease, and neurodegradation.

“They’d do this by halting the spread of free radicals in the body, molecules with unpaired electrons that greedily rob other molecules of their electrons in order to stabilize.” Definitely a no-no.

“By stealing electrons to pair their own, however, they create more free radicals in the process, producing ‘oxidative stress.’ Antioxidants graciously lend their electrons to free radicals without turning ravenous themselves, thus halting the damaging chain reaction.

“Early on, in vitro and observational studies showed promise, exciting scientists. Health ‘gurus’ hyped the findings with books and articles. Supplement sellers had a new fad to fill their coffers. Food makers began slapping antioxidant claims on everything from yogurt and snack bars to chocolate and soda. The antioxidant craze was on.

“But then, in the early 2000s, results from randomized, controlled trials on humans began flowing in, and the stream of positive results soon turned into a torrent of negative findings. Perhaps the trials weren’t long enough, or were conducted on the wrong study populations, some scientists wondered. Over the next decade, more experiments concluded, with more inconclusive or outright negative results. Antioxidant intake,” did not do anything. “It didn’t boost cognitive performance, or stall dementia, or halt heart disease, or prevent cancer, or lower the risk of Parkinson’s.”

And today “it’s increasingly accepted in the scientific community that antioxidants are not the health promoters they were hoped to be.” Well, then how did all this get started? It’s called grant money. You get a hold of some people already neurotic about getting sick and dying, and then you feed them a study on “this can arrest something that’s gonna kill you,” if they’re in charge of the money, they’ll fund you.

And as long as you write and report things they want to read, they’ll keep funding you. And then these journals for the American this and that get hold of it, bammo, the Drive-Bys get hold of it, and that’s how these myths take hold.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: On Open Line Friday, back to the phones we go, to Louisville and Roberta. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you. Thank you so much.

CALLER: I just wanted to make a comment about what you were saying about people that sit for long periods of time and causing cancer. My mother has never walked. She’s been in a wheelchair her whole life, and she’s 95 years old, and she’s fit as a fiddle. So I just kind of wanted to put that out there.

RUSH: That is incredible.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: What is it that has her in the wheelchair? Did you say it, I missed?

CALLER: She had polio.

RUSH: Oh. Oh.

CALLER: They told her she would never be able to have kids and she had four of us and that she would probably die by the time she was 25 and she’s 95. So she’s gonna outlive all of us.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. And there are countless examples. I was thinking Stephen Hawking. You know, Stephen Hawking, he had a variation of ALS. ALS is an early killer, Lou Gehrig’s disease. But Hawking was in a wheelchair his entire life, too. And he lived much longer than they say people who sit should live.

Well, congratulations to you and your mom. That’s awesome, 95 and having polio to boot and four kids. I love stories like that. Thank you very much, Roberta. That’s Roberta from Louisville. And it was a short segment ’cause I kind of went long in the previous one, but we’ve got some Mueller report news coming up next, get back to serious stuff, so hang on.

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