"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalm 119:105
Spring blog cleaning, a little early
posted Saturday, January 7, 2006 :: 4:27 PM
I am moving all my health category posts
over to my other blog at homesteadblogger.com, where I discuss natural
healing a lot more, and where that discussion is a better fit. This
will be the last post I make in this category on this blog, then I am
going to delete the category from the sidebar. I will have the category
permanently linked, however, from the sidebar of this side of heaven, my
homesteadblogger.com blog, so that all the posts I have made while
going through the two-week detox will be easily accessible.
Also, since the “next page” function for category browsing is broken on
the homeschoolblogger blogs, I decided to list all the posts made in the health category
here. It will act like a kind of table of contents until the tech people can get the category browsing bug fixed:
My husband and I went grocery shopping this weekend. I keep a little list in my purse, which I learned from Dr. Gittleman and my detox diet.
On it is the ten most sprayed (with pesticides, herbicides, and
fungicides) fruit and vegetable crops in the United States. When
one of these ten are on my shopping list, I always buy
organically-grown. If I need to buy conventionally grown to save some
money, I make sure it is not one of the big ten. Here is the list:
apples apricots celery cherries peaches pears potatoes raspberries spinach strawberries
I
also avoid conventionally-grown cantaloupe from Mexico and grapes from
Chile. Those countries do not have a ban on DDT, and those fruits are
regularly sprayed with the stuff before being imported here.
Detox
update: I have lost 16 pounds since detoxing at the beginning of
September, and maintaining detox benefits in my diet since. My clothes
this winter are a size smaller than last winter, wooo hooo! Now I am
trying to slow the weight loss down a bit since I need to wait till
spring to go down another size.
True story: this happened last year to a young couple from church.
The wife went to her doctor because of a suspected UTI, a urinary tract
infection. The doctor confirmed the UTI and prescribed antibiotics to
take care of it. Now this young couple didn’t have health insurance and
were pinching their pennies like many young couples, and the antibiotic
the doctor prescribed was $75.00 out of pocket! Dutifully, however, the
wife got the prescription filled and started taking it. The next day,
the doctor franctically called her back and told her to stop taking the
antibiotic immediately! Further tests showed she was pregnant, and the
antibiotic she had been prescribed was toxic to the developing baby. Of
course, the wife stopped taking the prescription, and asked the doctor
what, then, was she to do about the UTI? The doctor told her to drink
lots of cranberry juice and water, and it would clear up on its own. I
am not making this up. The doctor prescribed a $75.00 antibiotic to a
struggling young couple without health insurance when cranberry juice
and water would have taken care of the problem. The couple did lose the
baby, BTW. The wife believes the antibiotic killed the child.
I
am not dissing doctors. We have the finest health care professionals in
the world in this country. But conventional and status quo cures are so
ingrained in the medical establishment that alternatives don’t even
enter the mind, even when those alternatives are safer and cheaper.
Cranberry juice is a natural antibacterial from the food that God made.
Another is garlic, a powerful antibacterial, antiviral, and
antifungal. One winter evening two years ago when I was getting ready
for a night out with my husband, I started feeling a little sniffly. I
had just been learning about the antiviral properties of garlic. We
were going to the Olive Garden, so when I ordered my dinner, I asked
for several extra cloves of roasted garlic to be added to the dish.
They complied, I ate every last bit of garlic in that dish, and the
next morning the cold I had felt coming on was gone. I never did get
sick. Antibiotics have their place. But we have learned in our family
to stay healthy without them.
So what does a modern problem like bird flu have to do with Civil
War history? During the Civil War, prisoners of war in disease-ridden
prisons like Andersonville
experienced high death rates. In some prisons, the death rate from
smallpox was 90%! But when “soured cabbage” was added to the prisoners’
diets, the death rate from smallpox plummeted to 5%! Now the bird flu
connection: I ran across this article this weekend: “U.S. Sauerkraut Sales Soar on Reports it Could Cure Avian Flu.”
Why sauerkraut of all things?
“Your
small intestine is home to 60% of your immune system ... which largely
depends on the more than 400 species of good bacteria which reside
there. In the healthy intestine, good bacteria, bad bacteria [the kind
that cause disease], and yeast create a kind of balance of power. When
the good bacteria is free to do its healthy work - synthesize vitamins,
break down toxins, digest fiber, transport nutrients, produce lactase
and other enzymes to help digest milk sugars (some research even shows
that a shortage of beneficial bacteria is linked to cirrhosis and
diabetes) - their presence inhibits the bad bacteria and yeast from
growing and spreading.”
Back to sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is a
fermented food, and food ferments when bacteria gets into the food and
starts to grow. The kind of bacteria that ferments cabbage is one of
the good guys in our intestines. Sauerkraut is high in lactic acid, an
organic acid that is the most powerful inhibitor of the bad bacterias.
But
I notice there is no mention of raw sauerkraut in this article. Make
sure the sauerkraut you add to your diet is RAW. Cooking sauerkraut
kills the enzymes and microflora which is the source of the health
benefit. You can get raw sauerkraut from organic supermarkets such as Wild Oats or Whole Foods. Or you can make your own; there is a recipe in The Fast Track One Day Detox Diet, where the above quote is from. I had to add raw sauerkraut to my diet following the one day juice fast, to boost my beneficial bacteria.
But
once you restore the good bacteria to your system, don’t kill them off
again. Stay off of antibiotics. This also means no non-organic meat and
dairy products, because antibiotics are given to conventionally raised
livestock, including dairy cows. When we eat meat and milk from them,
we introduce those antibiotics back into our systems.
So the next time your children complain about learning history (which they shouldn’t be doing if you are teaching from Guerber’s histories and living books), you can tell them that you never know when a little knowledge of history will save your life some day.
Speaking of detox benefits, I discovered quite by accident why I
think the Lord told the Israelites to eat no pork under the Old
Covenant. I couldn’t eat pork while I was on the detox diet. Why?
Because pigs have no sweat glands in their skin (which is why they like
to lie in the mud to cool off). Sweat carries away toxins, and pigs
retain more toxins than animals with sweat glands in their skin. Which
we ingest when we eat pork.
Since I finished the detox diet I was on, I have lost another 8 pounds. The permanent changes I made to my diet are 1) eating five servings of fruits and vegetables per day; 2) one of those five to be raw apples, pears, carrots, or berries (for the high fiber content); 3)
one of those five to be deep leafy greens (kale, chard, watercress,
parsley, dandelion, mustard, or beet greens, cilantro, collards) or
from the crucifer family (broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower,
cabbage, brussels sprouts) - for their detoxifying and purifying
properties; 4) one or two of those five to be deep red, purple, or
blue fruits or vegetables (for thier high antioxidant and biofavonoid
content, which I was deficient in); 5) avoiding gluten, which I discovered I was allergic to; 6)
avoiding the liver stressors, such as caffeine, sugar, alcohol, over
the counter drugs, processed foods with added preservatives, dyes,
etc., trans fats, fried foods, and processed fats such as margarine or
shortening; 7) shopping at Wild Oats
for their organic produce, dairy, meats, and many gluten-free products
(I bought pasta made from quinoa flour, and I can’t wait to try it!); 8)
taking supplements of flax seed oil (I was deficient in essential fatty
acids), probiotics (I had a yeast overgrowth), betaine hydrochloride
with pepsin (I didn’t make enough stomach acid), and my usual vitamin
and mineral supplement.
I am trying to read Dr. Gittleman’s Fat Flush Plan,
but haven’t gotten through more than the introduction. So far, though,
obeying the Lord, when He told me to eat the food that He made and less
processed and refined food (“fake food”, He called it), has been working great for me.
A funny thing happened when I had my first piece of bread again after having no wheat for almost two weeks while doing my detox.
My nose ran, my eyes watered, my skin itched everywhere, my hands dried
out, and no amount of hand cream helped. I think I must be allergic to
gluten, since wheat is the only thing I ate which I didn’t eat on my
detox diet. I never knew. So now I need to find out about gluten
allergy and get a good cookbook with gluten-free recipes. If anyone has
any suggestions, I’m all ears.
Yesterday was my final day on the Fast Track detox diet. Now that I
am finished, the hardest part was not the one-day fast, but going off
of caffeine; even though I was only drinking one cup of coffee per day.
But I have not had a headache since finishing the caffeine withdrawal,
and I used to get them all the time. So I am very thankful for that,
and I am not going to go back to drinking coffee or sodas. I feel too
good now.
I did lose 6 pounds. Some permanent changes I am
making to my diet since doing this detox include making sure I get five
servings of fruits and vegetables daily, two of which to be high fiber
choices (apples, pears, berries, or carrots, raw), and two of which to
be high flavonoid choices (deep-colored red, purple, or blue fruits and
vegetables). Berries count in both groups; cranberry juice has become
my breakfast juice of choice.
Another change is the
addition of crucifers and leafy greens; even though I was used to
eating salad almost every day, the leafy greens on this diet don’t
figure regularly into most salads. So I am going to try to get
something from one of those groups into my diet every day. I am hooked
on juicing my own veggies; I want to find more recipes for a little
variety. And on this diet I had to drink eight glasses of filtered
water per day, and I am going to keep that up, now that I am used to
it.
I
have also altered my shopping habits; since we are eating more fresh
fruits and
vegetables, I am buying just enough for a few days at a time; and
stopping at the market more often. I throw out less wilty
and moldy food when I buy smaller quantities. So I am saving money too!
And we have switched to buying organic fruits and veggies if possible.
We have always had an organic garden at home, but since organic is so
much more expensive at the market,
I never paid money for organic. But not anymore. Since I feel so much
better getting toxins out of my system, I am going to be much more
careful about putting toxins back in again.
Benefits I am seeing right away from detoxing, include
the swollen lymph glands I used to get have gone away; my energy level
and stamina have greatly increased and I really like that; no more
headaches; and oh! I noticed last night while out with my husband at
one of our regular restaurants, that I could only eat half of my
favorite meal before getting full. Dr. Gittleman did say in her book
that after detoxing, you will probably need to eat less food every day
than before, since your body, once it loses its toxic overload, can
digest and process nutrients more efficiently. It is nice not being
hungry all the time.
The juice fast wasn’t
too hard. I was hungry and tired from about noon to bedtime, but made it okay. Dr.
Gittleman recommends 8 oz. of juice or water every hour, but I will do 12 oz.
next time to see if that doesn’t help. But today, I can’t get over how much
energy I have! I was running up and down the stairs with laundry instead of
dragging! And I was on my second trip up the stairs with a laundry basket when
I realized I was running and not dragging, LOL! The three-day post-fast diet is
almost like the seven-day pre-fast diet, but with additional probiotics from
yogurt, sauerkraut, or supplements with the other foods. I have quite a bit
more to post on (not about health, LOL); if I can’t get it done tonight, I will
try to get the posts up tomorrow. Now I am off to make my green v-8 juice!
I am doing the one day juice fast
today. The juice is watered down unsweetened cranberry juice (just 100%
cranberries), orange and lemon juices, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and a
little stevia plus for sweetening. The citrus juices provide vitamin C,
which helps the liver do its detox job. Cranberry juice is rich in a
variety of vitamins and minerals on which the liver depends, and it
also contains a natural diuretic which helps flush excess water from
tissues and toxins with it. Cranberries are also high in organic acids
which help regulate many bodily functions. And cranberries contain
higher amounts of antioxidants than nearly any other fruit or
vegetable. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger contain flavonoids which help
regulate blood sugar and increase metabolism.
So far, so
good. I am little hungry, but nothing too bad. I used to fast
periodically from the time I became a believer until my children were
born, and then of course the whole pregnant and nursing situation put
an end to that. I just never got back into it while I was raising my
children. So it has been a very long time, LOL. My first four days on
the detox diet were miserable, undergoing caffeine and sugar
withdrawal. But I have felt much better every day since then, with no
more head or muscle aches, less fatigue and more energy. After today,
there is a three-day post fast diet, then I am done!
I have been reading The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet
by Ann
Louise Gittleman. I have a stubborn Candida overgrowth from taking
antibiotics
last year when I was sick with bronchitis (I try to avoid taking
antibiotics at
all costs, because I hate killing off the hundreds of strains of good
bacteria that my body needs), and my lymph glands sometimes get swollen
when I am
not otherwise sick. I have known for months that I need to help my
system get
rid of built-up toxins. I looked in our local health food store in the
spring,
but three weeks on psyllium husks to do a colon cleanse is just not
feasible
for me. Quite by accident I discovered this book when doing research
about
something else.
Long story short, I am wary of diet books,
and most people, according to the author,
follow this plan to lose weight overnight. But I am interested in the
detox
part. The Lord has been telling me all year to eat less processed food
and more
food that He made, and that is the message
of this book, too. To detox, you follow a seven-day preparatory diet,
when you
cut liver and colon stressors such as caffeine, sugar, and alcohol out
of your diet, and
add liver and colon boosters such as crucifers, leafy greens, and
citrus fruits to your diet. Then you fast for one day, drinking water
and this juice you
make from cranberry, orange, and lemon juices. The information on the
amazing
benefits of the humble cranberry which have been recently discovered
was worth
the price of the book to me. The juice is designed to help your liver
do its
job of detoxifying your system, while keeping your blood sugar stable
all day
and boosting your metabolism. Then you follow a three-day post-fast
diet, to
help your system finish flushing out the toxins that have been released
from
your tissues, and ease back into normal eating. Less than two weeks
altogether;
I can do that.
I am finishing my grocery shopping today and starting the
seven-day preparatory diet tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.
Normally the health news
roundup will be posted on Fridays, but I got busy yesterday and ran out of
time. Why am I doing these news roundups, anyway? I’m not homeschooling … my
children are all grown. I have time to read the news, and I figure other
homeschooling moms don’t. I can sift through it all and post what is of
interest to us as moms, homeschoolers, and Christians, thus making keeping up
with the news much less time-consuming and more interesting for homeschooling
moms. My first time using smilies!
Scientists in Hong Kong have shed new light on
why cell repair is less efficient in older people after a breakthrough
discovery on premature aging, a rare genetic disease that affects one in four
million babies. Not to be outdone, Dutch researchers have shown that high-dose
folic acid pills — providing as much of the nutrient as 2.5 pounds of
strawberries — might help slow the cognitive decline associated with aging.
And on the sci-fi
frontier of medical breakthroughs, scientists have created eerie zombie dogs,
reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to
develop suspended animation for humans. The eventual hope is to use the same
procedure in cases of accident or battlefield trauma, to preserve a person’s
life until they can be transported to a qualified medical facility. And, a
bionic man has moved his artificial arm with his brain (hat tip: Glenn Beck again!). This breakthrough
technology could change the lives of amputees and patients with spinal cord
injuries.
Cancer researchers have
been given a million-dollar grant to investigate the therapeutic value of the
folk medicine propolis and the food spice turmeric. In a related story, omega-3
fatty acids, found naturally in oily fish such as salmon or tuna, may fight
breast cancer. As these two stories seem to indicate, alternative medicines are
beginning to find their way into curriculums at traditional medical schools (it
is about time!).
In this month’s
Scientific American, a growing number of dissenting researchers have accused
government and medical authorities--as well as the media--of misleading the
public about the health consequences of rising body weights. But then we are
told obesity and smoking leads to faster aging. Speaking of packing on the
pounds, over at Science Blog the discussion is about soda and sweet drinks
being the main source of calories in the American diet, displacing white bread
from the top spot. But there is hope: children aged 2-12 snack on fresh fruit
more than junk food such as potato chips or cookies.
American researchers
have found a method of growing batches, or lines, of fully mature brain cells,
a breakthrough touted as the end of such neurological diseases as Parkinson’s
and Alzheimer’s. And in related news, researchers have found that shed baby
teeth are a valuable source of stem cells, joining umbilical cords as a
life-respecting source.
Last week I noted that a 12-year-old girl with cancer
was taken from the custody of her parents when they refused radiation
treatments for her. This week a judge has ruled that the girl will remain in
state custody while she completes her radiation treatments. The Orwellian
nightmare continues.
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I am researching the holy days which were instituted by God as a celebration of the Messiah, instead of celebrating the holy days which were instituted by man to honor nature in place of nature's God.
:: Israel's Feast - Wooten
:: Annals - Ussher
My first time using smilies! 