Lowering Healthcare Costs and Promoting Wellness Through the Vegan Lifestyle (part -1)

This time we examine how the vegan lifestyle can significantly lower the cost of food, health insurance and healthcare while promoting wellness.

We’ll hear the views of three individuals in the US who’ve made important contributions to the field of public health: Dr. Pamela Popper, a vegan nutrition expert, naturopath, and founder and Executive Director of the Wellness Forum;  Dr. Neal Barnard, a vegan physician, researcher, bestselling author and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Ellen Jaffe Jones, a vegan former Emmy-winning TV investigative reporter and anchor, certified personal-fitness trainer and author of “Eat Vegan on $4 a Day.”

We hear first from Ms. Jaffe Jones, who shares how a plant-based diet, free from meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, can substantially reduce our grocery bills.

I wrote, “Eat Vegan on $4 a Day” because I saw so many stories on the news that said you can’t eat well on a budget. I just felt like reporters need more resources than that very biased opinion that, in order to eat healthy, it has to cost a lot of money. I have eaten this way most of the last 30 years. So I knew personally that it wasn’t true.

And I also knew that it costs so much money when you don’t eat this way, not only at the grocery store, but then when you start getting the diseases of affluence like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. You know, a bypass surgery in the United States can cost upwards of US$100,000 to US$200,000.

So if you really average out, as we liked to do when I was a financial consultant, the cost of that bypass surgery into the cost of a US$5 burger, that US$5 burger may actually cost like US$100 or US$1,000, depending on how many years you live and how many burgers you eat.

So it’s not just as simple as what you save at the grocery store. It’s the amount of money you have to pay when you get sick or when you have to go to the hospital or when you have to hire people to help you when you are so debilitated.

How is it possible to eat on just US$4 a day? It is simpler than one might think.

The big secret to eating well on US$4 a day is buying foods in bulk, and buying them when they’re on sale. For example, a big bag of beans at a big box store is about 10 cents for a four-ounce serving of cooked beans, with high fiber, and is a great source of protein. You compare that at the same big box store to the cheapest form of hamburger meat.

Now that’s going to be 30% fat. I don’t know what else is in the other 70%, stuff you wouldn’t want to eat anyway. But that is going to cost about 60 cents. So burger meat is six times more expensive than bean protein. And if you start going to more expensive cuts of meat like tenderloin, for example, it’s going to be even more expensive. And if you go to a restaurant, it’s going to be even more expensive.

So, you really save a lot of money by eating bean protein. And even if you don’t buy the biggest bag of beans, canned beans are only twice as expensive as cooking beans from scratch. And it’s just not a big deal to cook beans from scratch. My book has a lot of tips on how to do that in a quick way, in an easy way. I give all the proportions of water to beans. So if people have never cooked beans from scratch, it’s not a big deal.

Ms. Jaffe Jones has several recommendations regarding shopping for groceries. First, make sure you eat before going shopping, as we tend to buy “impulse foods” when we’re hungry. Second, purchase fruits and vegetables when they’re in season or on sale. Third, if the price of some of the fruits or veggies is exceptionally good, buy extra quantities and freeze or dehydrate them for use in the winter months when prices are much higher.

There’s a great deal of variety in a plant-based diet, even eating on US$4 a day. The big secret to eating on US$4 a day, is, “beans, greens, and grains.” The more extended answer is to cook foods in their natural states. Stay away from the frozen processed food aisles. Shop the perimeter of the store.

But it’s very easy to have beans be the source of your protein, whether it’s lunch or dinner. You can combine it with a wholegrain, and even grains are only about 5 cents to 10 cents more expensive per ounce than beans. So when you combine those two, you get all your calories.

And then you have plenty of money left over to go buy the vegetables and the fruits that might be a little more expensive. But even a banana costs only 22 cents. So it is nature’s perfect “fast food.” You just don’t need to buy Twinkies.

For the price of one Twinkie, you can have three servings of bean protein. So you really can save your health so much by looking at different options in the plant kingdom. People say, “Well, isn’t that kind of a boring diet?” And I go, “Excuse me? There are 90 different fruits and vegetables out there. So if you don’t like one or two fruits or vegetables, try another one.”

Produce comes in a wide range of colors, and for good reason.

Nature gave us these beautiful colors and foods. Why? So we would eat them; so we would be attracted to them. And I like to say, “Eat the colors of the rainbow, because nature did a great job in putting almost every color with an associated anti-oxidant or nutrient or vitamin that makes you just want to crave that purple cabbage or the eggplant or a red apple or a yellow squash.” There are just so many different colors out there. They’re great and they’re cheap.

Many meat-based recipes can easily be converted into delicious, money-saving vegan dishes.

An example of a specific recipe would be if you’re used to making chili with hamburger meat. Given the example of beans costing 10 cents versus the same quantity serving of hamburger meat costing 60 cents, just in that meal alone, if you’re cooking for your family, you can see how this would multiply out not only over that meal but over that day, the course of a week, the course of a year and a lifetime.

The savings are really phenomenal when you start multiplying this out. And that’s just the food that costs money at the grocery store. When you figure out that you don’t need the US$100,000 bypass surgery, the savings are tremendous.

One of the best ways to save money and improve one’s health is to avoid purchasing processed foods.

Cookies and crackers are probably some of the worst kinds of processed foods that you can buy, in part because they’re so addictive, but they’re also very expensive. So if you are eating rice as a whole grain by itself, that’s going to cost you maybe 10 cents to 15 cents for a quarter-cup serving (45 grams), and that’s going to fill you up for that meal, as opposed to a package of cookies, which costs maybe US$3-US$4.

Another big one would be cereals that are very processed and very expensive, in the big boxes. Then when you look inside the box there’s not quite so much inside, and a whole a lot of sugar, a lot of high fructose corn syrup in many products, a lot of added sugar in different forms. What I like to eat in the morning is a quarter cup of oats, and that cooks into a half-cup serving.

And I add some fruit to that and that costs me maybe 20-25 cents; verses 50 cents to a dollar for a grocery store serving of the same quantity. And that doesn’t even include the fruit.

Once people experience how wonderful they feel and how much money they save on a plant-based diet, they become enthusiastic advocates of the vegan way.

My book has only been out four months and already I’m getting a tremendous response from people on Facebook. I have close to 4,000 followers, and the response really has been amazing. People are getting the book and within a week of reading it saying, “I’m already seeing a difference.” And some of the people are already vegan. Some of them are not.

So especially, when they’re not vegan and they trade out a few meat meals a week for bean protein, for example, they really start to see some significant savings. And if it’s more than just them, say they have a family of four, it’s really quite noticeable. And I give a lot of tips in the book about how to save money at the grocery store.

And it’s important to understand that it’s not just looking for beans in quantity but there are other ways to save money, like understanding that products, especially the more expensive products, are placed right in front of your eyes, at eye level, so you will be sure to buy those things. And understanding what the stores are doing to try to get us to buy is important, too.

But saving money on grocery bills is only the beginning. Consuming animal products leads to many serious, life-threatening illnesses which are entirely preventable.

It is really important that you understand you will save not only money in the choices of the food that you buy, but by avoiding the diseases and illnesses that making poor food selections will cause. Many people tell me, and I certainly have had this experience, that once they adopt a vegan diet, they don’t get sick. Every time when I was younger and I used to run a great distance like six miles, I would get sick like clockwork.

And since I have adopted a plant-based diet, I just never get sick. When most people make this change, they never go back. They are amazed how delicious the food tastes, how colorful and vibrant it is, how energized they feel by it. And then, when they start saving money on their medical bills, they’re going like, “Well, why didn’t I start this 20 years ago?”

And how much time is lost because they didn’t start it sooner. So my advice would be: “Do it now. Don’t waste another minute.” You’re going to have so much energy. You’re going to save so much money, and I think it’s something that you will never regret.

Consumption of animal products is the primary cause of heart attacks and strokes which, according to the World Health Organization, are the world’s most common diseases, and account for about 23% of all annual deaths globally.

We know that in the United States, the cost of a (coronary) bypass surgery, just one bypass can be between US$100,000 and US$200,000. So if you are able to avoid that surgery, whether you pay for it, the insurance company pays for it or the government pays for it, that is just for one person. If you multiply that by all the heart procedures that could be avoided, I think billions of dollars could be saved, billions.

And the bottom line is preventable diseases are just not sustainable. It doesn’t matter who pays for them. It’s not only the medicine that is used to treat cancer, but the caregiver expenses that must be maintained. Again, billions of dollars will be saved if we can avoid just one of these diseases.

So many people, especially in the United States are going bankrupt because they can’t afford either insurance or the diseases that they’re getting, that insurance companies won’t pay for, or can’t pay for.

So I think this is really, at least in my mind, very much a solution, that if everybody went vegan, we would save so much money in insurance and medical costs.

And I’m amazed at how many women probably could have avoided a hysterectomy if they’d had a doctor who said, “Why don’t try a plant-based (diet).” And I am also astounded at the amount of money that could be saved with women who are seeking answers in the medical community for menopause treatments. If they could just try a plant-based diet. Food really is powerful medicine.

Ellen Jaffe Jones http://www.VegCoach.com

Dr. Richard Teo – I had to learn it through the hard way.

In Memory of Dr. Richard Teo (1972 – 2012) Below is the transcript of the talk of Dr. Richard Teo, who is a 40-year-old millionaire and cosmetic surgeon with a stage-4 lung cancer but selflessly came to share with the D1 class his life experience on 19-Jan-2012. He has just passed away few months ago on 18 October 2012.

Hi good morning to all of you. My voice is a bit hoarse, so please bear with me. I thought I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Richard, I’m a medical doctor. And I thought I’ll just share some thoughts of my life. It’s my pleasure to be invited by prof. Hopefully, it can get you thinking about how… as you pursue this.. embarking on your training to become dental surgeons, to think about other things as well.

Since young, I am a typical product of today’s society. Relatively successful product that society requires.. From young, I came from a below average family. I was told by the media… and people around me that happiness is about success. And that success is about being wealthy. With this mind-set, I’ve always be extremely competitive, since I was young. Not only do I need to go to the top school, I need to have success in all fields. Uniform groups, track, everything. I needed to get trophies, needed to be successful, I needed to have colors award, national colors award, everything. So I was highly competitive since young. I went on to medical school, graduated as a doctor. Some of you may know that within the medical faculty, ophthalmology is one of the most highly sought after specialties.

So I went after that as well. I was given a traineeship in ophthalmology, I was also given a research scholarship by NUS to develop lasers to treat the eye. So in the process, I was given 2 patents, one for the medical devices, and another for the lasers. And you know what, all this academic achievements did not bring me any wealth. So once I completed my bond with MOH, I decided that this is taking too long, the training in eye surgery is just taking too long. And there’s lots of money to be made in the private sector. If you’re aware, in the last few years, there is this rise in aesthetic medicine. Tons of money to be made there. So I decided, well, enough of staying in institution, it’s time to leave. So I quit my training halfway and I went on to set up my aesthetic clinic… in town, together with a day surgery centre. You know the irony is that people do not make heroes out average GP (general practitioner), family physicians. They don’t. They make heroes out of people who are rich and famous.

People who are not happy to pay $20 to see a GP, the same person have no qualms paying ten thousand dollars for a liposuction, 15 thousand dollars for a breast augmentation, and so on and so forth. So it’s a no brainer isn’t? Why do you want to be a GP? Become an aesthetic physician. So instead of healing the sick and ill, I decided that I’ll become a glorified beautician. So, business was good, very good. It started off with waiting of one week, then became 3weeks, then one month, then 2 months, then 3 months. I was overwhelmed; there were just too many patients. Vanities are fantastic business. I employed one doctor, the second doctor, the 3rd doctor, the 4th doctor. And within the 1st year, we’re already raking in millions. Just the 1st year. But never is enough because I was so obsessed with it. I started to expand into Indonesia to get all the rich Indonesian tai-tais who wouldn’t blink an eye to have a procedure done.

So life was really good. So what do I do with the spare cash. How do I spend my weekends? Typically, I’ll have car club gatherings. I take out my track car, with spare cash I got myself a track car. We have car club gatherings. We’ll go up to Sepang in Malaysia. We’ll go for car racing. And it was my life. With other spare cash, what do I do? I get myself a Ferrari. At that time, the 458 wasn’t out, it’s just a spider convertible, 430. This is a friend of mine, a schoolmate who is a forex trader, a banker. So he got a red one, he was wanting all along a red one, I was getting the silver one. So what do I do after getting a car? It’s time to buy a house, to build our own bungalows. So we go around looking for a land to build our own bungalows, we went around hunting. So how do I live my life? Well, we all think we have to mix around with the rich and famous. This is one of the Miss Universe. So we hang around with the beautiful, rich and famous.

This by the way is an internet founder. So this is how we spend our lives, with dining and all the restaurants and Michelin Chefs you know. So I reach a point in life that I got everything for my life. I was at the pinnacle of my career and all. That’s me one year ago in the gym and I thought I was like, having everything under control and reaching the pinnacle. Well, I was wrong. I didn’t have everything under control. About last year March, I started to develop backache in the middle of nowhere. I thought maybe it was all the heavy squats I was doing. So I went to SGH, saw my classmate to do an MRI, to make sure it’s not a slipped disc or anything. And that evening, he called me up and said that we found bone marrow replacement in your spine. I said, sorry what does that mean? I mean I know what it means, but I couldn’t accept that. I was like “Are you serious?” I was still running around going to the gym you know.

But we had more scans the next day, PET scans – positrons emission scans, they found that actually I have stage 4 terminal lung cancer. I was like “Whoa where did that come from?” It has already spread to the brain, the spine, the liver and the adrenals. And you know one moment I was there, totally thinking that I have everything under control, thinking that I’ve reached the pinnacle of my life. But the next moment, I have just lost it. This is a CT scan of the lungs itself. If you look at it, every single dot there is a tumor. We call this miliaries  tumor. And in fact, I have tens of thousands of them in the lungs. So, I was told that even with chemotherapy, that I’ll have about 3-4months at most. Did my life come crushing on, of course it did, who wouldn’t? I went into depression, of course, severe depression and I thought I had everything. See the irony is that all these things that I have, the success, the trophies, my cars, my house and all. I thought that brought me happiness.

But i was feeling really down, having severe depression. Having all these thoughts of my possessions, they brought me no joy. The thought of… You know, I can hug my Ferrari to sleep, no… No, it is not going to happen. It brought not a single comfort during my last ten months. And I thought they were, but they were not true happiness. But it wasn’t. What really brought me joy in the last ten months was interaction with people, my loved ones, friends, people who genuinely care about me, they laugh and cry with me, and they are able to identify the pain and suffering I was going through. That brought joy to me, happiness. None of the things I have, all the possessions, and I thought those were supposed to bring me happiness. But it didn’t, because if it did, I would have felt happy think about it, when I was feeling most down.. You know the classical Chinese New Year that is coming up. In the past, what do I do? Well, I will usually drive my flashy car to do my rounds, visit my relatives, to show it off to my friends.

And I thought that was joy, you know. I thought that was really joy. But do you really think that my relatives and friends, whom some of them have difficulty trying to make ends meet, that will truly share the joy with me? Seeing me driving my flashy car and showing off to them? No, no way. They won’t be sharing joy with me. They were having problems trying to make ends meet, taking public transport. In fact I think, what I have done is more like you know, making them envious, jealous of all I have. In fact, sometimes even hatred. Those are what we call objects of envy. I have them, I show them off to them and I feel it can fill my own pride and ego. That didn’t bring any joy to these people, to my friends and relatives, and I thought they were real joy. Well, let me just share another story with you. You know when I was about your age, I stayed in king Edward VII hall. I had this friend whom I thought was strange. Her name is Jennifer, we’re still good friends. And as I walk along the path, she would, if she sees a snail, she would actually pick up the snail and put it along the grass patch. I was like why do you need to do that? Why dirty your hands? It’s just a snail.

The truth is she could feel for the snail. The thought of being crushed to death is real to her, but to me it’s just a snail. If you can’t get out of the pathway of humans then you deserve to be crushed, it’s part of evolution isn’t it? What an irony isn’t it? There I was being trained as a doctor, to be compassionate, to be able to empathize; but I couldn’t. As a house officer, I graduated from medical school, posted to the oncology department at NUH. And, every day, every other day I witness death in the cancer department. When I see how they suffered, I see all the pain they went through. I see all the morphine they have to press every few minutes just to relieve their pain. I see them struggling with their oxygen breathing their last breath and all. But it was just a job. When I went to clinic every day, to the wards every day, take blood, give the medication but was the patient real to me? They weren’t real to me. It was just a job, I do it, I get out of the ward, I can’t wait to get home, I do my own stuff. Was the pain, was the suffering the patients went through real? No. Of course I know all the medical terms to describe how they feel, all the suffering they went through.

But in truth, I did not know how they feel, not until I became a patient. It is until now; I truly understand how they feel. And, if you ask me, would I have been a very different doctor if I were to re-live my life now, I can tell you yes I will. Because I truly understand how the patients feel now. And sometimes, you have to learn it the hard way. Even as you start just your first year, and you embark this journey to become dental surgeons, let me just challenge you on two fronts. Inevitably, all of you here will start to go into private practice. You will start to accumulate wealth.

I can guarantee you. Just doing an implant can bring you thousands of dollars, it’s fantastic money. And actually there is nothing wrong with being successful, with being rich or wealthy, absolutely nothing wrong. The only trouble is that a lot of us like myself couldn’t handle it. Why do I say that? Because when I start to accumulate, the more I have, the more I want. The more I wanted, the more obsessed I became. Like what I showed you earlier on, all I can was basically to get more possessions, to reach the pinnacle of what society did to us, of what society wants us to be. I became so obsessed that nothing else really mattered to me. Patients were just a source of income, and I tried to squeeze every single cent out of these patients. A lot of times we forget, whom we are supposed to be serving. We become so lost that we serve nobody else but just ourselves. That was what happened to me. Whether it is in the medical, the dental fraternity, I can tell you, right now in the private practice, sometimes we just advise patients on treatment that is not indicated. Grey areas. And even though it is not necessary, we kind of advocate it. Even at this point, I know who are my friends and who genuinely cared for me and who are the ones who try to make money out of me by selling me “hope”. We kind of lose our moral compass along the way. Because we just want to make money.

Worse, I can tell you, over the last few years, we bad mouth our fellow colleagues, our fellow competitors in the industry. We have no qualms about it. So if we can put them down to give ourselves an advantage, we do it. And that’s what happening right now, medical, dental everywhere. My challenge to you is not to lose that moral compass. I learnt it the hard way, I hope you don’t ever have to do it. Secondly, a lot of us will start to get numb to our patients as we start to practice.

Whether is it government hospitals, private practice, I can tell you when I was in the hospital, with stacks of patient folders, I can’t wait to get rid of those folders as soon as possible; I can’t wait to get patients out of my consultation room as soon as possible because there is just so many, and that’s a reality. Because it becomes a job, a very routine job. And this is just part of it. Do I truly know how the patient feels back then? No, I don’t. The fears and anxiety and all, do I truly understand what they are going through? I don’t, not until when this happens to me and I think that is one of the biggest flaws in our system. We’re being trained to be healthcare providers, professional, and all and yet we don’t know how exactly they feel. I’m not asking you to get involved emotionally, I don’t think that is professional but do we actually make a real effort to understand their pain and all? Most of us won’t, alright, I can assure you.

So don’t lose it, my challenge to you is to always be able to put yourself in your patient’s shoes. Because the pain, the anxiety, the fear are very real even though it’s not real to you, it’s real to them. So don’t lose it and you know, right now I’m in the midst of my 5th cycle of my chemotherapy. I can tell you it’s a terrible feeling. Chemotherapy is one of those things that you don’t wish even your enemies to go through because it’s just suffering, lousy feeling, throwing out, you don’t even know if you can retain your meals or not. Terrible feeling! And even with whatever little energy now I have, I try to reach out to other cancer patients because I truly understand what pain and suffering is like.

But it’s kind of little too late and too little. You guys have a bright future ahead of you with all the resource and energy, so I’m going to challenge you to go beyond your immediate patients. To understand that there are people out there who are truly in pain, truly in hardship. Don’t get the idea that only poor people suffer. It is not true. A lot of these poor people do not have much in the first place, they are easily contented. for all you know they are happier than you and me but there are out there, people who are suffering mentally, physically, hardship, emotionally, financially and so on and so forth, and they are real. We choose to ignore them or we just don’t want to know that they exist. So do think about it alright, even as you go on to become professionals and dental surgeons and all.

That you can reach out to these people who are in need. Whatever you do can make a large difference to them. I’m now at the receiving end so I know how it feels, someone who genuinely care for you, encourage and all. It makes a lot of difference to me.

That’s what happens after treatment. I had a treatment recently, but I’ll leave this for another day. A lot of things happened along the way, that’s why I am still able to talk to you today. I’ll just end of with this quote here, it’s from this book called Tuesdays with Morris, and some of you may have read it. Everyone knows that they are going to die; every one of us knows that. The truth is, none of us believe it because if we did, we will do things differently. When I faced death, when I had to, I stripped myself off all stuff totally and I focused only on what is essential. The irony is that a lot of times, only when we learn how to die then we learn how to live. I know it sounds very morbid for this morning but it’s the truth, this is what I’m going through. Don’t let society tell you how to live. Don’t let the media tell you what you’re supposed to do. Those things happened to me. And I led this life thinking that these are going to bring me happiness.

I hope that you will think about it and decide for yourself how you want to live your own life. Not according to what other people tell you to do, and you have to decide whether you want to serve yourself, whether you are going to make a difference in somebody else’s life. Because true happiness doesn’t come from serving yourself. I thought it was but it didn’t turn out that way. Also most importantly, I think true joy comes from knowing God. Not knowing about God – I mean, you can read the bible and know about God – but knowing God personally; getting a relationship with God. I think that’s the most important. That’s what I’ve learnt. So if I were to sum it up, I’d say that the earlier we sort out the priorities in our lives, the better it is.

Don’t be like me – I had no other way. I had to learn it through the hard way. I had to come back to God to thank Him for this opportunity because I’ve had 3 major accidents in my past – car accidents. You know, these sports car accidents – I was always speeding , but somehow I always came out alive, even with the car almost being overturned. And I wouldn’t have had a chance. Who knows, I don’t know where else I’d be going to! Even though I was Baptized it was just a show, but the fact that this has happened, it gave me a chance to come back to God. Few things I’d learnt though:

1. Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart – this is so important.

2. Is to love and serve others, not just ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with being rich or wealthy. I think it’s absolutely alright, because God has blessed. So many people are blessed with good wealth, but the trouble is I think a lot of us can’t handle it. The more we have, the more we want. I’ve gone through it, the deeper the hole we dig, the more we get sucked into it, so much so that we worship wealth and lose focus. Instead of worshipping God, we worship wealth. It’s just a human instinct. It’s just so difficult to get out of it.

We are all professionals, and when we go into private practice, we start to build up our wealth – inevitably. So my thought are, when you start to build up wealth and when the opportunity comes, do remember that all these things don’t belong to us. We don’t really own it nor have rights to this wealth. It’s actually God’s gift to us. Remember that it’s more important to further His Kingdom rather than to further ourselves. Anyway I think that I’ve gone through it, and I know that wealth without God is empty. It is more important that you fill up the wealth, as you build it up subsequently, as professionals and all, you need to fill it up with the wealth of God.

Near Death Experiences: The Journey of the Soul

Near-death experiences (NDEs), which can illuminate the process of dying and the world beyond the physical and thus eliminate the fear of death. As Sufi poet and enlightened Master Rumi stated, “Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only when you set in the west can you rise in the east.” So what exactly is a near-death experience? Let’s hear some answers from radiation oncologist and author Dr. Jeffrey Long, co-founder of the US-based Near Death Experience Research Foundation and the author of the book “Evidence of the Afterlife.”

“A near-death experience may be defined as two components— being near-death, and having an experience. The near-death part means that the person is so physically compromised from some accident or illness that they’re generally unconscious and may even be clinically dead. They’re so physically compromised that if they don’t improve physically, they will suffer irreversible, permanent death. And yet at that time, when they’re unconscious and should have no possibility of a remembered conscious event during that period, they do have the experience part of a near-death experience. “

The testimonies given by those who have had NDEs reveal the existence of certain identifiable stages that are universally observed regardless of cultural or religious background.

“A basic scientific principle is that which is real is consistently observed. So you would expect if near-death experiences were real, you would consistently observe elements, not only among the over 1,300 I studied, but you would also expect that consistency of what goes on during near-death experiences from what all the other researchers are seeing in the thousands of other near-death experiences that have been reported.

From extensive review of the scholarly literature and looking over what other researchers are seeing and having studied near-death experiences as I have, what we’re observing in near-death experiences is consistently observed. And that consistency runs deep. We see the same consistency in the near-death experience among very small children. We see the same near-death experiences all around the world. It’s as if it doesn’t make any difference if you are a Hindu in India, a Muslim in Egypt, or a Christian in the United States, the similarity of the elements of near-death experience worldwide is striking.”

What are the consistent, comparable and identifiable stages of a near-death experience?

“A typical, detailed near-death experience would involve first what’s called the out-of-body experience. Consciousness separates from the body and goes above the body. They can often from that vantage point see below them their frantic resuscitation efforts.

They may then go through a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, there’s very often a mystical, bright light. In that area, they may also encounter deceased loved ones, not as a haunting or frightening event but as a joyous reunion. They may have a life review where they see parts or all of their prior life. They may be in unearthly, beautiful realms sometimes called heavenly realms. They may encounter what’s called a barrier which means, like for example, a stream across the path they’re on or a bridge, or something which they can’t cross. And then usually at that point in time, they’re involved in a decision, and that being a decision about returning to their earthly body.

Some of the most dramatic near-death experiences that I read involve the point of consciousness leaving far away from the physical body. They may travel outside of the emergency room where they’ve suffered, for example, a heart attack and cardiac arrest. They’re actually able to see and hear ongoing events far from their physical body and far from any possible sensory awareness.

For example, we’ve had people have consciousness and during this out-of-body experience part of their near-death experience go to the nursing station where they were, even though they are in the operating room with their heart stopped. We’ve had people in an operating theater where they had their heart stop and then yet their consciousness was in the cafeteria of the hospital where they were seeing and hearing right at that point in time what their family was talking about and that is absolutely medically inexplicable.

After they have their out-of-body experience, even if they were in an incredibly painful situation that caused them to nearly die, immediately they’re feeling no pain at all. They may feel a profound sense of peace and connection. In fact the most common word, what they feel and what is described in near-death experience is “love.” They feel love intensely, compassionately. They feel a connection or unity of people that they see and all other people. Very dramatic, incredibly intense, positive emotions described in near-death experiences.”

As Dr. Long just stated, subjects often report that during their near-death experience they felt a profound, deep connection with everyone. A tenet that is common to all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions is that all beings are one. Scientific experiments in the field of quantum physics have demonstrated the fundamental unity of the universe.

In recent decades the medical community has shown great interest in near-death experiences, which has led to an increase in research on the phenomenon.  Do those who have undergone an NDE typically have an incomplete or vivid recollection of what happened while they were unconscious? Mr. Rene Jorgensen, an author and founder of the Canada-based non-profit organization NDE Light, studies the parallels between near-death experiences and the world of religion and spirituality.

“We all know when we pass out, when we come back we are very confused. We don’t remember the seconds just before we passed out, the brain is confused because it doesn’t have enough blood flow. When there is not enough blood flow, the brain is very confused. It can’t produce clear and coherent experiences. What you have with the near-death experience is it’s a very clear and coherent experience. Psychologists have analyzed the experience saying there are no signs of schizophrenia or hallucination. It’s a very clear and normal sane experience that people remember many years after. And you will have people who say, “I had my experience 30 years ago but it’s still to me as clear as day, as if it was yesterday”.

First we know from scientific experiments set up in hospitals that about one in five, 20% of people who have cardiac arrest are clinically dead and then brought back successfully, they report having a near-death experience. It’s something that we can predict scientifically. It does happen to people and it happens quite often. There have been some estimates that in the US alone, at least 8 million people have had this experience. So it’s a very common experience.

If we look at what happens when somebody is clinically dead and this goes to the theory of it being a hallucination, very few seconds after the heart stops beating after cardiac arrest, the blood flow to the brain stops completely; that means without blood flow to the brain, the brain can simply not function. The brain needs blood to produce conscious experience. The near-death experience is a very lucid and real and coherent experience so you need blood flow to be able to produce this experience. After eight to 10 seconds, there is no longer any blood flow. The mind cannot, when it’s inactive, produce a hallucination.

Everything is interconnected. That’s what we learn in religion and spirituality, that everything is one and we have the same principle in quantum mechanics. Particles, even though they are separate in space, are still interconnected.

There’s this science of quantum entanglement. It’s also called non-locality. The way that quantum entanglement works is that in experiments they take two particles apart and scientists said these particles communicate but they don’t communicate at the speed of light, these particles are actually communicating instantaneously, which means that they communicate beyond time and space. And there they’ve concluded that these particles are in fact interconnected. That’s why it’s called entanglement, that all particles in the universe are not separated. They might look like separate physical entities, but in reality, they’re still entangled, they’re still interconnected.”

For more information, please visit the following websites:
Dr. Jeffrey Long
http://www.NDERF.org
Dr. Long’s book “Evidence of the Afterlife” is available at http://www.Amazon.com

Rene Jorgensen
http://www.ReneJorgensen.com

Books by Mr. Jorgensen are available at the same website