My New “Raw” Life

Well, I’ve got lots to say today!  I’ve been really researching a new topic for myself any spare moment I can since early January.  The topic is “Living Foods”.

I have a hormonal disorder that many more women are finding out they have, too.  It does have a genetic component and, therefore gets passed on in families.  I’m pretty sure mine is from my dad’s side of the family.  Part of the problem is insulin resistance but that’s not all of it.  So, my metabolism and my body’s ability to process certain types of food has been changing and actually getting much worse the older I get.

So, for the past few years since becoming a mom, I’ve not focused that much on my special needs and more on how to live a balanced life in society and eat like a “normal” person can.  Clearly it’s not working for me and this past holiday season really hammered it home to me.  I cannot tolerate dairy and refined carbohydrates pretty much at all anymore (although I love them!).  Even complex carbs are becoming a problem for me, too.  It’s depressing, actually because there goes my attempt at being “normal” and fitting in with everything in society.

An old friend of mine gave me a book for my birthday a few years ago written by one of our herb school teachers.  It’s all about raw and living foods and how it heals myriads of diseases in the human body and gives long life and vitality, etc.  I even went to see a live debate betw. this author and another famous herbalist about the benefits of the raw diet vs. a cooked food  diet when my son was 4 months old.  So, this has been a topic of great interest to me for several years now but has been pushed to the back burner for many different reasons.

My dear friend started on this path at that time, gradually at first and has since gotten really into it and has become “all raw” and it really changed her.  She seems more grounded, happy, glowing, mentally clear and generally happy and full of light.   I was so impressed and very happy for her but still I was not ready to commit.  I thought it would be too much work and my son is the pickiest eater in the world and I would still have to make him separate foods although he does love fruit and different raw veggies.

Well, since I turned 40 a few months ago, it’s like a light bulb has  gone off in my head and I am obsessively studying older adults as if to catch a glimpse of what is in store for me as I get older.  I have to say, I don’t like what I see!!  In fact, I’m kind of grossed out.  I see death and decay and lots of sadness everywhere.  I don’t think this is normal or the way we were meant to age.  It has just become the way we are from the foods and substances and the accompanying chemicals and preservatives that go into our bodies on a daily basis.

When I look at the people who are older and living their lives by consuming the living foods, they look good and vibrant and at least 20 years younger than what they actually are.  They are pain free, happy with lots of energy and very clear spiritually.

I’ve decided I want this bec. I’m disgusted with the alternative.  Also, because I don’t want to die a painful death in my 50’s like my dad and 2 of his female cousins did from pancreatic cancer.  Now that I have the answers, it’s an unnecessary and completely avoidable path.  And, if I did develop it, it would be completely my own lazy ass fault because obviously, my family has a hard time digesting cooked grains and simple sugars and it basically wears out the pancreas to the point that they develop type 2 diabetes and then cancer.

I’ve purchased a new juicer that also does “homogenizing” so it can make nut butters, frozen desserts, baby food, etc and a new dehydrator which is like my oven now, because I can make many, many dishes but the foods are not heated over 118 degrees so all of the enzymes are still viable and available for easy digestion.  I have a vita mix blender for many years (I used it mostly for making my herbal products) and I also had a food processor for many years and that is basically all the necessary tools for this way of eating.  One other fun tool I got is called a saladacco which makes angel hair type of “pasta” from zucchini and squashes and also can make chips and ravioli shells from vegetables.

I think I’m able to do this program now because there are hundreds of recipes to make everything I love but the “raw” version like lasagna, mexican food, cheese (made from diff. nuts and veggies, seasonings, etc that are pureed and dehydrated), ice cream,  nut burgers, bread!! from sprouted grain seeds then pureed and dehydrated.  Like essene bread or Ezekial bread but living, not baked, just dehydrated at 105 degrees.

And the best one, raw chocolate!! I love good chocolate and this is raw cacao, processed from the tree at low temps so all the vitamins, enzymes and super antioxidants are all still intact which makes it a superfood, not junk food!  Truly a food of the gods!  There are tons of recipes and you sweeten it with raw, unfiltered honey or raw agave nectar.  Divine!  Believe me, I’ve tried several recipes already!

So, the foods are basically any vegetable, fruit, nut, seed, sprouts, grains (sprouted only) and superfoods (which are actually either a fruit or veg. really).

The only problem I have with eating this way is that alot of the specialty ingredients I buy right now are not local and sustainable to where I live and I really believe in eating a sustainable diet.  It would be no problem if I lived in California!

As I have found out, alot of these recipes and bulkier foods like nuts, avocados, etc I eat more now as transitioning into this way of life and to feel full like you do from cooked foods goes away as you cleanse your body from stored toxins and you will crave more of the lighter foods like veggies and fruits.

So far, I’ve been doing more of a hunter-gatherer type of diet which is this raw foods diet mostly with about 10% of cooked food daily coming from either organic eggs or free-range poultry or wild caught fish.  Haven’t had any beef since xmas and the beef we eat is grass fed.  This is the diet recommended to me to heal my hormonal disorder but I’ve been thinking of taking it one step further to try to be completely raw for a month and see how it goes.  It surely is doable and very enjoyable from the many recipes I’ve been making everyday (different salads, fruits, raw almond butter, almond milk, raw granola, raw jam from dried and fresh fruit, blueberry scones, fudge balls, smoothies, green juices, chocolate coconut shake – amazing!, etc).

Today, I am making a raw lasagna.  There are lots of steps involved bec. of the many layers so I saved it for the weekend.  My wheat berries have also sprouted for a few days now so I am making my first round of bread today,  too.

But, I’ve noticed that if I drink a juice of fresh greens and an apple or a fruit smoothie or some coconut drink, I’m not hungry for a long time and I realize that I’m not eating that much bec. I’m just not hungry!  My body is getting all the nutrients it needs from the raw foods and I don’t crave any cooked foods.  How cool!  And, all of my bloat is gone (I get swollen from eating the foods I’m sensitive to like dairy and cooked grains) and now I’m just left with some saggy skin that I need to work out a bit more to get rid of.  I am detoxing the stored junk in my body from living on cooked, dead food my whole life and this part isn’t so fun.

I see how once you get going with the right tools and ingredients from the store (or my garden in a few months!) it’s really easy and only takes a few minutes of prep work for a recipe.  I’ve been trying to soak a new batch of seeds or grain for sprouting every night or soaking some different raw nuts for different recipes so you do need to think a few days in advance of what you want to eat and when since some recipes have to be dehydrated which can take a long time depending on the recipes.

And yes, my husband is totally into it, too. He says he craves the green drinks and loves the coconut drinks and while he’s fine with eating cooked grains, etc he doesn’t seem to want to eat much of that and really is into the raw recipes we make.  Leif, however, is slow to come around and I have to bribe him to take a sip of the green juices (which taste really good!).  He likes it but  is not ready to willingly drink it without some form of bribery.  I’m going to make up a batch of raw cookies and see if he will eat them bec. he loves cookies.  He wouldn’t even try any of the chocolate stuff I made and he loves chocolate.  I couldn’t figure that one out!

It’s funny, even the desserts and treats are all healthy and nutritionally good for you so I could technically eat a whole dessert (maybe a raw pecan pie) as a meal if I wanted and it would be just fine!

I will post some updates periodically and hopefully some pictures one day!

I’m Tired of All The Lies

You know, living in America is great.  Really, I know it is bec. I’ve lived in other countries that were equally great but not as much as the good ole US of A.  I just hate that Big Business has the final say on everything from “terminator seeds” and “genetically modified organisms” or how about all the extremely nasty pesticides and other chemicals all over our crops that are at the base of our corrupted food supply to all the polluted water most people drink to our basic fundamental rights for healthcare.  Because we are lead to believe that all the pretty packaged processed foods and all the chemical laden, mostly devoid of enough vitamins and minerals produce the general public eats, we don’t get enough correct supplements to offset all this garbage coursing through our veins that the majority of Americans will get some kind of health problem developing in their bodies that if you make it to old age, you will have alot to deal with medically.  If you don’t have basic insurance, well then you’re screwed.  Even if you do, basic insurance doesn’t really cover much, anyway.

The business of being sick generates billions of dollars every year for big business.  They love it and feed off the profits.  We are all just a bunch of lab rats, anyway buying their prescription drugs to offset this symptom or that one and not working well with the other drugs in your system, anyway and then creating a whole host of other ailments just from side effects.

If people would listen and WAKE UP and realize they have the power to fix things by just educating themselves, it really is not that hard to find natural answers to your most pressing health issues just by looking it up on the internet, even.  The truth is, most people are lazy and  don’t like change and like being told what to do.  So if eating processed crap 3x/day and living in a permanent fog and then being surprised that you have a tumor or type 2 diabetes or chronic acid reflux from the food you eat, you have no one to blame but yourself.

What really pisses me off is that there is real, actual data about cancer or other ailments that can be told to the people to prevent needless pain and suffering but big business doesn’t care, they will take your money and give you toxic, deadly treatments until you die and then move on to the next person.  It’s sad but true.  I have been working and researching studies in this field for the past 18 years, actually and it still amazes me that all these “race for the cure” type of events that raise tons of money for research really bring about no difference in what science can tell us, truthfully, about preventing or reversing cancer.

There is a TON of info out there about prevention and reversal of tumors.  It’s pretty basic info, actually but we, the lab rats are not allowed to know about it bec. it cuts into big business’ profits and would also affect other industries big business would have to lose money in like chemicals and pollution, raping the earth for finite resources, the food industry, drugs, chemo treatments, etc.  We’re talking big bucks.  They make money off of your day to day ingesting of stuff that breaks you down and makes you ill and then they make money off of treating your illness – usually over and over again.

Here is a good article based on recent clinical research about Vit. D preventing breast cancer.   Vitamin D, you know is very cheap to take and is free if you go hang out in the sun for 15 min. every day with no sunscreen on.   Why doesn’t the American Cancer Society want us to know this?  They don’t endorse the taking of any nutritional supplementation.  They actually don’t endorse prevention, either.   In this day and age of depleted soils and processed foods, we have to take supplements even if you are a vegan that only eats 20 pounds of organic veggies every day.  Really.

Now there is some weird strain of staph going around killing children around the country.  We need to be more aware and AWAKE over what is around ourselves and our kids.  What chemicals are we cleaning our homes/dishes/clothing/bodies with, what chemicals are we eating, what chemicals like nitrates are in our meat, what chemicals are sprayed on our produce and what is in our water supply if you don’t have a filter to remove it.  What is in the vaccines being injected into our babies?  Why does my baby need mercury in his vaccine and in his body?

If we don’t all start thinking about our immune systems and giving it support everyday, it’s only going to get worse.  Especially kids.  I know most parents say it’s good for their systems to be challenged, it makes them stronger.  That never made sense to me bec. that would mean that we adults should never get sick since we lived thru the challenges of childhood illnesses.  Let me tell you, I was a sickly little kid until they took out my tonsils at 3 yrs old.  I still got sick but not as much.  I even get sick occasionally as an adult.  Maybe not as much as others but then I take lots of different supplements, eat a healthy diet with as little chemicals in it as I can and I try to exercise and drink pure water.  I put effort into it and still get sick sometimes.  So, little kids need extra support in the way of bioavailable (meaning the body absorbs it, not poops it out hardly broken down) vitamins and minerals, glyconutrients, herbs, clean water and organic produce and more chemical-free, free range meats and eggs.  A healthy, balanced diet with as little chemical additives as possible.  We all have occasions to eat junk but if it’s at a minimum, it won’t deplete the immune system and then our systems will be able to fight off tumors and other ailments like the deadly staph infection going around.  If you have a baseline of good nutrition and supplementation and then are faced with a threat, you increase your supplements to ward off that threat and usually can do it either unscathed or with just a minor cold while your immune system attacks the invader.  I’ve learned so much about the immune system, we should all be grateful that we can (inexpensively) help it work better and avoid most of what goes around.  Also proper hand washing helps, too.

That’s what bums me out seeing kids die from bacteria or viruses.  The parents don’t know that there are herbs, vitamins, minerals, things that nature gives us to cure everything.  They rely on doctors and hospitals to be our medical gods and you know what, they are human and are also in partnership with big business and if a pill can’t cure ya, your screwed.  You never get advice about your diet or chemicals building up in your liver and blood or what nutrients have been studied and proven to help the body and immune system.  Never.  Nature has all the answers.  She is there to help and protect us no matter what the disease.  There is a cure in some plant found somewhere in nature for every illness.  Amazing how that works.

Well, I can write a book about this but I won’t.  I will stop my venting now.  I just get so sad for people who don’t know and won’t know about the simple, inexpensive remedies found in nature to help themselves and their families be healthy and in balance. Big Business has found a way to actually cause law suits and make it illegal to talk about the benefits of nutritional products for the body and how they can prevent different diseases.  I’ve been hearing ridiculous stories of what they are doing to stop people from educating themselves and empowering their own healing.  There was even one case where a mother of a 17 yr. old boy who HAD cancer, cured it with natural therapies had to go to court, had her kid taken away from her and he was FORCED to undergo chemo bec. she didn’t do that for him.  The cancer was already gone!!  It’s sad but true, fellow lab rats.  Big bucks are at stake here.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

I had my first ever mammogram last week now that I’m officially old.  I knew I was ok but it was nice to see in a letter I received this week that all is normal.  Yay! I love modern technology and all the cool stuff it can see inside your body.

On the same day I found that out, I read this blurb in a newspaper.  It says,

“Booze Fuels Breast Cancer”

Startling fact: A recent study showed that breast cancer in women makes up 60% of alcohol-attributable cancers worldwide, says Jian-Wei Gu, MD of the Univ. of Mississippi Medical Center.

For the first time, the researchers demonstrated in a novel mouse model that even moderate alcohol intake can stimulate breast tumor growth and malignancy and it promotes development of blood vessels to feed the cancer.

Danish researchers also found that women who consume 22 to 27 drinks a week more than double their chances of breast cancer compared with women who have one to three drinks per week.

I think this study is very interesting.  It still seems like alot of drinks to have everyday to reach that 22 -27 drinks/wk level, IMO.  That is more than 3 drinks per day.  I guess if you would consume that much alcohol each week, you would be self-medicating or just not dealing with a bigger issue in your life which suppressing a big, emotional issue would just make you more likely to get tumors somewhere in your body, anyway.   I know, I saw this suppression (not drinking) bring on cancer in my father.

On another breast topic, I asked the woman doing the mammogram on me if she used anti-perspirant or deodorant.  She said she used deodorant most of the year but did use anti-perspirant in the summer.  I asked if there was any clinical evidence out yet regarding using an anti-perspirant that consists of rubbing aluminum into a place where lymph nodes are located right next to the breast tissue in order to suppress sweating.  She said there wasn’t any documentation found yet.  Of course not, because the big companies don’t want you to know about that and have endless amounts of money to suppress studies like that.

Think about it – your pits were meant to sweat, to release and cool down your body.  A normal bodily mechanism even though we don’t like to smell and people find it offensive to smell like b.o. and not like say, flowers or “spring rain” whatever the hell that really smells like.

I’m really glad that when I moved to CO from NYC to attend herbalist school in ‘95 I  was around a bunch of hippie chicks that never shaved and were ok with b.o. and even some of my teachers were this way, too.  I loved it.  One teacher kept telling us to never use anti-perspirant for exactly what I said above.  Made perfect sense to me and even to other older, mainstream women like my relatives stopped using the aluminum stuff and only use deodorant since I told them about this.

To avoid the b.o. smell, esp. in the summer, make sure you wash your underarms well everyday, apply a deodorant – I especially like the crystal stone (which I have dropped and made jagged edges and hurt myself over the years so I switched to the roll-on version of the crystal deodorant stone and love it) and if it’s really hot out, I apply pure cornstarch powder on top of it.  It totally works. I told this to the mammogram lady and her eyes lit up when she heard that she could use deodorant and cornstarch in the summer and no more anti-perspirant.

Tea Tree Oil deodorants work well, too but I’m not into that smell so much.  If I’m exercising in the heat, I may have to do this more than once but it’s worth it to me to not be clogging my lymph nodes and breast tissue so I can smell pretty like “Summer Rain”.

I have a really hard time with all those fake smells – it gives me a headache – and much rather use essential oils in products.  And what is up with those “feminine hygiene products” that make you smell like fake weirdness in your crotch?

Seriously, if you are a woman that has a strong, funky smell down there, go to a doctor because your body is letting you know you have a problem that needs to be taken care of, not covered up with fake smelling sprays.  I don’t know any heterosexual guy that would rather smell flowers coming out of your crotch, ladies.  There are pheromones located there.  Fake flower smell will suppress those and still your funky smell will be exposed.

If you are normal and healthy and don’t have an “off” smell and still choose to use these awful products, please don’t buy into what the product manufacturer’s advertising wants you to believe about your normal, healthy, amazing womanly body.  These products are loaded with chemicals and aren’t we assaulted with enough chemicals in our environment all around us 24/7 that we don’t need to be adding more directly onto our bodies everyday too.

Tolerance, Compassion and Wisdom

Since today is “Blog Action Day” for the environment, I thought of all the things I and many others would want to talk about. There’s buying/growing/eating organic food, composting, using water wisely, not polluting the air by not driving or flying so much, don’t litter, use alternative energy sources like wind, solar, etc technologies, use compact fluorescent lightbulbs, recycling, buying recycled products and aiming to be “zero-waste”, etc. I could go on and on.

What I really think our planet needs is a good dose of tolerance, compassion and wisdom from her inhabitants. We, the intelligent life forms on this planet need to realize that once it’s gone, it’s gone and we all need to come together and work for the good of all.  We need to care.  So many people are so out of touch with the Earth they live on that they don’t notice all the damage we are doing to her.

All the fighting and war and hatred is energy that is poisoning the Earth. All the intolerance of people being “different” – different religions, different races, gay or straight, all of this really doesn’t matter in the long run, we all go to the same place when our time here is done regardless and the more we have compassion for all the beings residing on the planet, the more we are open to hear the innate wisdom that nature has for us. This can be in the form of medicines from the plants, ways of using renewable energy sources that work in harmony with the Earth not raping the Earth for a finite source of fuel, humane livestock practices, organic farming, clean water, using non-toxic products, recycling, etc.

If we could try to be more open to tolerance and compassion to the people and the animals and the Earth herself then we would all *desire* to practice better habits and eat better, cleaner foods and to do our part to keep our world the best it can be. The more conscious you are, the more you are able to see just what a bad state our Earth is in and how she is struggling and hurting.

We all need to remember that it is a gift to be alive on this amazing planet and to experience all that she has to offer us. Why must we keep polluting and destroying her so that our children and our grandchildren won’t get the chance to experience her fully? What kind of life will they have if the planet is damaged beyond repair because we were too greedy and selfish to care?

The Wonders Of Tea Tree Oil

There are so many great herbal preparations and remedies that can be used for all sorts of things and on both people and animals. I always use Tea Tree Oil on my dog when he gets a cut or something to avoid the $100+ vet bill for them to give me some antibiotic ointment or a pill for something minor. Yes, I will go to a vet if it seems major or if my home remedies don’t do the trick in a day or 2.

So, my dog Sammy all of a sudden had a big lump on the side of his nose the other day and we thought, oh no, it ’s a tumor! and then on closer inspection, it was an infected bite or cut. I think it was a bug bite like from a spider that he probably got outside. And, lucky for me, it was in a spot he can’t obsessively lick at so whatever I put on there would really sink in and work. I cleaned it out and put like 4 drops of Tea Tree Oil right on it and he hated it bec. let’s face it, the smell is strong and not that pleasant. It can be used right on a wound without a carrier oil like other essential oils (except lavender) need. Another great thing about it. I also gave Sammy a capsule of Transfer Factor to boost his immune system which was fighting off the infection. It is the transfer factor molecules themselves extracted out of colostrum (mother’s first milk before her real milk comes in). These molecules are extracted out of bovine colostrum and being that we are all mammals, are interchangeable between us. It’s amazing stuff, really.

So, the next day after treating the wound twice that day, the infection went down by at least half. I squeezed out any puss that would come out, washed it and reapplied the same treatment but this time I added an herbal “anti-everything” and soothing skin salve over the tea tree oil. The next day (today) the infection is completely flat and gone (yay!) but there is still a wound so I put more tea tree and salve over it to speed the surface wound healing.

I’ve seen tea tree dry out and kill off a puss-filled wound on pets and on people over the years. I think it’s something everyone should have on hand in their medicine cabinets bec. it’s dirt cheap, you need just a few drops on the wound and it doesn’t sting or burn or anything on a cut. It really gets in there and kills off the pathogens and speeds the healing of the infection or prevents getting an infection if you or your kids or pets have a cut. If the dog licks it, he likely won’t do it again bec. it does have a strong, kind of numbing taste to it. They hate it!

You can use it in your mouth bec. it is numbing and is great for mouth wounds or tooth problems, too. I wouldn’t recommend this for a kid, though. My husband and I have both used this on canker sores with great success. It is not used for the eyes, though.