After having a nightmare experience at Anders's "well baby check-up" when he was three days old, I thought I might never go to the doctor again. Then I learned about osteopaths.
Osteopaths attend traditional medical school and get an additional naturopathic degree on top of the standard allopathic medical degree. Osteopaths generally have a specialty, so if you can find an osteopath pediatrician or osteopath family practice doctor, that is ideal. There aren't many of this type of doctor; I think there are two or three in the entire Los Angeles County.
My experience with the osteopath that I found has been nothing but positive.
I also highly recommend the book How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. My grandfather, a doctor, gave this book to me when I was pregnant, and I read it cover to cover. It made me a lot more confident in my ability as a mom to know when to worry and when not to.
A reader tried to post the following comment to this post but couldn't so emailed me instead. This is what Bob has to say:
You can identify osteopaths because they have DO after their name rather than MD. They are a small fraction of physicians overall but a larger fraction of those in family practice and of young doctors still accepting new patients. They are a growing fraction due to a shortage of doctors. In my experience, and that of my nurse sister, they tend to be more open to alternative medicine. They also have some measure of humility. OTOH, my sense is that many of them did not attend a college of osteopathy because they were committed osteopaths but rather because they did not get into a top medical school. My current MD is much more up on all the latest in conventional medicine, but is also sometimes impatient and bossy. But I would prefer him if I had some complex problem to diagnose. He seems way smarter than the DOs, but with that comes some arrogance. All other things being equal, I might prefer a DO for routine care and an MD for anything complicated.
Showing posts with label w) Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label w) Health. Show all posts
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
How to cure PMDD with Vitamins
Recently used vitamins to cure (completely) a pretty horrific case of PMDD. In case you or a loved one have ever suffered from menstrual related hormone swings, here is what I recommend trying (please let me know if it works for you!):
1) Red Raspberry Leaf Tea, 8 ounces a day
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ND3H9XT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
2) Fermented Cod Liver Oil High Vitamin Butter Oil
http://www.radiantlifecatalog.com/product/butter-oil-cod-liver-oil-blend/fish-butter-oils
3) Vitamin E
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cataplex-E2#.WPZkZVPyv2Q
4) B Vitamins
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cellular-Vitality#.WPZkglPyv2Q
5) Calcium
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cal-Ma-Plus#.WPZkoFPyv2Q
6) Magnesium
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002XSQ35I/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3) Vitamin E
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cataplex-E2#.WPZkZVPyv2Q
4) B Vitamins
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cellular-Vitality#.WPZkglPyv2Q
5) Calcium
https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Cal-Ma-Plus#.WPZkoFPyv2Q
6) Magnesium
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002XSQ35I/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Saturday, February 11, 2017
A Different Way to Think About Death: Dying People Need Our Permission To Die and Company While They Do So
I've been reading book about death for a while, wanting to grasp the psychology of it, wanting to know more about my own future. One thing that struck me is that those who care for the dying say they need two things above all: permission to die and company while they do so. In our society today we are terrible at meeting that first need.
What do we do when we see a dying creature?
In some times and places compassion for a dying animal meant giving it a quicker death. Now it means fixing it, at all costs, and caring for it, if necessary, for the rest of its life. Now it means prolonging its death for as long as possible. And if it is dying and there is nothing we can do, lying about it.
What we are doing, that we claim to do in the name of compassion, is not compassion. It is avoidance of pain and fear of death.
We, the living, don't want to confront death. We would rather the burden of carrying a dying creature for fifty years than a week at his bedside holding his hand while he dies. Yet that is what the dying need, I have read. Not to be our burden. No one wants to be a burden.
We know this, deep down, that no one will accept burden status, so we lie to them. We tell stories to make them feel entitled to being burdens; we play a dishonest psychological game with ourselves pretending that they are not burdens, that it is meaningful to carry them, that good people are genuinely happy to do so, that it is their right to be carried, that they deserve it, etc.
But this dishonesty is not kind because dying people need two things: our permission to die and company while they do so.
To turn them into a burden and then lie to them, telling them they are not a burden, is to deprive them of our permission to die.
More than denying them permission, it gives them the message that they are bad to die. It also deprives them of a possible meaningful death.
"Am I a burden to you?" What if they need to hear that they are? What if that is what will give them the strength to face what is perhaps the scariest thing a person will ever have to face? What if we said, "You are a burden to me, a heavy one. I am struggling under the weight of carrying you. But I will carry you, until you are ready to go."
The journey of death is the journey of acceptance. How can the dying find meaning in their death if we refuse to? What if their death could have meaning? What if instead of their death being a failure, it can be a gift they give those who survive them, a lightening of the burdens of the living?
The faceless society cannot bear the dying, individual people must. Because it is the desire to not burden those individuals that gives the dying the strength to go, that enables their death to be a gift. I would so much rather my death be a gift to those I love than a traumatizing event that causes them pain.
Not saying we should run around telling people to die. Not saying death will ever not be painful. But I would like to see a cultural shift in our attitudes about death and especially about choosing to die instead of live and the many times it is a highly rational choice. We treat death as such a tragedy, but it is the fate of each and every one of us. It is not a failure on the part of the dying person. Memes talk about the "courage" of those "fighting cancer" in their "battle against death." I think that often the far more courageous choice is actually the choice to go gracefully. Sometimes the battle is desperation and fear. Especially when I see pictures of courageous toddlers fighting to survive and destroying the lives of all those around them in the process. The toddler isn't courageous of course. And neither are the parents. It is not courageous to sign up for twenty years of medical bill slavery so that a sick child can die in his teens instead of now. Facing death, your own and the death of those you love, is often the far more courageous choice.
Someone wrote to ask me about my position on the elderly and here is what I have to say: In Tibetan Buddhism it is said that a person spends the first half of his life learning to live and the second half learning to die. The elderly are those in the final stages of learning to die. They should never be infantilized nor turned into burdens against their own wishes. Their death is natural and right and should not be prevented or prolonged, rather it should be treated as sacred, beautiful, and theirs.
The dying need two things from the living: permission to die and company while they do so. Most people die today, sadly, without the former. Like labor, the "no" instead of the "yes" can make the experience last much longer than it would have otherwise. Death can be dragged on for years if someone is given the message that their death will cause pain to others.
And the latter not everyone actually needs, just most people. I will want someone to hold my hand. But many people are so connected to their spirituality that they don't need anyone there. If that is the message an elderly person gives by choosing to stay in his own home alone, so be it. He doesn't want to be a burden. That is actually far more natural and right than convincing him he would not be a burden. He should be praised as heroic, honest, emotionally aware, brave, and generous. It is not sad to know that, no matter how much your family loves you, caring for you would be a burden for them – a burden they would bear, but a burden you don't wish them to bear. It is beautiful to refuse to be their burden, beautiful to give them that gift.
Perhaps this isn't a new way to think about death at all. I have read of hunter gatherer tribes in which the old were expected to get lost in the forest. That was how they died. No one offered to carry them. No one insisted the tribe go slower. Similarly, old vikings, when they saw that they were becoming burdens on the living, left to fight in a battle. They did it consciously, knowing they would not survive the fight. They said their goodbyes and then picked a cause to die for. Of course, their main cause was that gift they wanted to give their families. Because life was understood to be endless toil and death was understood to be rest, it was easy to talk about the burden of caring for the old. Contrast that with today, when we can't seem to have honest conversations about death at all.
What do we do when we see a dying creature?
In some times and places compassion for a dying animal meant giving it a quicker death. Now it means fixing it, at all costs, and caring for it, if necessary, for the rest of its life. Now it means prolonging its death for as long as possible. And if it is dying and there is nothing we can do, lying about it.
What we are doing, that we claim to do in the name of compassion, is not compassion. It is avoidance of pain and fear of death.
We, the living, don't want to confront death. We would rather the burden of carrying a dying creature for fifty years than a week at his bedside holding his hand while he dies. Yet that is what the dying need, I have read. Not to be our burden. No one wants to be a burden.
We know this, deep down, that no one will accept burden status, so we lie to them. We tell stories to make them feel entitled to being burdens; we play a dishonest psychological game with ourselves pretending that they are not burdens, that it is meaningful to carry them, that good people are genuinely happy to do so, that it is their right to be carried, that they deserve it, etc.
But this dishonesty is not kind because dying people need two things: our permission to die and company while they do so.
To turn them into a burden and then lie to them, telling them they are not a burden, is to deprive them of our permission to die.
More than denying them permission, it gives them the message that they are bad to die. It also deprives them of a possible meaningful death.
"Am I a burden to you?" What if they need to hear that they are? What if that is what will give them the strength to face what is perhaps the scariest thing a person will ever have to face? What if we said, "You are a burden to me, a heavy one. I am struggling under the weight of carrying you. But I will carry you, until you are ready to go."
The journey of death is the journey of acceptance. How can the dying find meaning in their death if we refuse to? What if their death could have meaning? What if instead of their death being a failure, it can be a gift they give those who survive them, a lightening of the burdens of the living?
The faceless society cannot bear the dying, individual people must. Because it is the desire to not burden those individuals that gives the dying the strength to go, that enables their death to be a gift. I would so much rather my death be a gift to those I love than a traumatizing event that causes them pain.
Not saying we should run around telling people to die. Not saying death will ever not be painful. But I would like to see a cultural shift in our attitudes about death and especially about choosing to die instead of live and the many times it is a highly rational choice. We treat death as such a tragedy, but it is the fate of each and every one of us. It is not a failure on the part of the dying person. Memes talk about the "courage" of those "fighting cancer" in their "battle against death." I think that often the far more courageous choice is actually the choice to go gracefully. Sometimes the battle is desperation and fear. Especially when I see pictures of courageous toddlers fighting to survive and destroying the lives of all those around them in the process. The toddler isn't courageous of course. And neither are the parents. It is not courageous to sign up for twenty years of medical bill slavery so that a sick child can die in his teens instead of now. Facing death, your own and the death of those you love, is often the far more courageous choice.
Someone wrote to ask me about my position on the elderly and here is what I have to say: In Tibetan Buddhism it is said that a person spends the first half of his life learning to live and the second half learning to die. The elderly are those in the final stages of learning to die. They should never be infantilized nor turned into burdens against their own wishes. Their death is natural and right and should not be prevented or prolonged, rather it should be treated as sacred, beautiful, and theirs.
The dying need two things from the living: permission to die and company while they do so. Most people die today, sadly, without the former. Like labor, the "no" instead of the "yes" can make the experience last much longer than it would have otherwise. Death can be dragged on for years if someone is given the message that their death will cause pain to others.
And the latter not everyone actually needs, just most people. I will want someone to hold my hand. But many people are so connected to their spirituality that they don't need anyone there. If that is the message an elderly person gives by choosing to stay in his own home alone, so be it. He doesn't want to be a burden. That is actually far more natural and right than convincing him he would not be a burden. He should be praised as heroic, honest, emotionally aware, brave, and generous. It is not sad to know that, no matter how much your family loves you, caring for you would be a burden for them – a burden they would bear, but a burden you don't wish them to bear. It is beautiful to refuse to be their burden, beautiful to give them that gift.
Perhaps this isn't a new way to think about death at all. I have read of hunter gatherer tribes in which the old were expected to get lost in the forest. That was how they died. No one offered to carry them. No one insisted the tribe go slower. Similarly, old vikings, when they saw that they were becoming burdens on the living, left to fight in a battle. They did it consciously, knowing they would not survive the fight. They said their goodbyes and then picked a cause to die for. Of course, their main cause was that gift they wanted to give their families. Because life was understood to be endless toil and death was understood to be rest, it was easy to talk about the burden of caring for the old. Contrast that with today, when we can't seem to have honest conversations about death at all.
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Kefir Cured My Housekeeper's Allergies
A woman named Dolores started working for me about a year ago. She had very sensitive skin with constant skin rashes that had been causing her problems for about five years. Her doctor had her quit dairy. She did many courses of antibiotics and took an antihistamine pill every day. Still, it just got worse.
Of course I told her I thought her entire problem was bacteria based, and she needed to stop doing antibiotics and start eating bacteria like crazy. She was more interested in drinking kefir than my fermented ginger beers or chicha, the fermented beverage native to her area, so I told her to go ahead and help herself to all the kefir she wanted as long as there was enough left over for me.
Long story short--she stopped doing antibiotics, started drinking a lot of kefir, and told me today she hasn't taken an antihistamine in four months because she doesn't need them any more. No rashes.
Just exciting! Wanted to share it!
Of course I told her I thought her entire problem was bacteria based, and she needed to stop doing antibiotics and start eating bacteria like crazy. She was more interested in drinking kefir than my fermented ginger beers or chicha, the fermented beverage native to her area, so I told her to go ahead and help herself to all the kefir she wanted as long as there was enough left over for me.
Long story short--she stopped doing antibiotics, started drinking a lot of kefir, and told me today she hasn't taken an antihistamine in four months because she doesn't need them any more. No rashes.
Just exciting! Wanted to share it!
Sunday, April 17, 2016
A Nutritionally Perfect Day in Nicaragua - 100% RDA In ALL Vitamins and Minerals
Could look like this:
Breakfast
Turmeric tea
Gallo Pinto (beans and rice with minced onions and peppers)
1 egg fried in butter
Lunch
Tilapia filet with butter-parsley-lemon sauce
carrot/cabbage salad with vinegar and olive oil
rice -1/2 brown 1/2 white
banana/mango kefir smoothie
Dinner
1 cup bone broth
Steak quesadilla made from corn tortillas and with cheese and fried in lard
Guacamole
Papaya with lime juice
*liver fritters once or twice a week instead of steak
This is a slightly-altered classic Nicaraguan diet that would provide the consumer with 100% of his RDA in all vitamins and minerals.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
The Modern Nomad's Ideal Meal - A Nutritionally Complete Combination of Foods for People on the Go
My husband, who is NOT a foodie, wanted something super easy to basically live on while working sixteen hour days that would keep him healthy (a great balance of protein carbs and fat and 100% of all vitamins and minerals).
Here is the meal we came up with that he can keep in a little fridge at his office:
*Note that the nutritionally perfect (100% of all vitamins and minerals) is an extremely rare nutrition goal that no one pays enough attention to. Everyone who has told me they are super healthy, when I have put what they eat for a week into nutritiondata.com, I have never found someone who isn't deficient in quite a few vitamins and minerals. Overtime vitamin and mineral deficiencies cause serious health problems. I recommend that everyone do their own nutrition experiment to find out what areas of their diet they "naturally" lack in.
*Also note that it was my focus on meeting 100% of my RDA of every vitamin and mineral that led me to conclude that high fat diets are the way to go, as there is no way to meet nutrient needs of vitamins A, D, K and E without a significant amount of fat in the diet. Also, in trying to help my Paleo and vegetarian friends create nutritionally perfect meals for themselves I came to a very clear conclusions: the math simply doesn't work. These are not good diets, not if you don't want to be nutrient deficient eventually anyway.
Here is the meal we came up with that he can keep in a little fridge at his office:
1 cup high quality raw kefir (Organic Pastures brand if you live in CA)
1 can high quality sardines with bones packed in tomato sauce
1 thick slice whole grain sourdough bread (a l'ancien from Le Pain Quotidien is a good choice)
the bread spread with raw butter and high quality raw honey
the bread spread with raw butter and high quality raw honey
1 cup of high quality bone broth
lemon water throughout the day
-swap sardines for 1 can oysters once a week
-swap sardines for 1 can high quality liver pate once a week
lemon water throughout the day
-swap sardines for 1 can oysters once a week
-swap sardines for 1 can high quality liver pate once a week
-snack on apples, avocados, oranges, hazelnuts, almonds, or brazil nuts on various days of the week
-When he has lunch or dinner meetings: red meat and salads with carrots and spinach
This diet is "nutritionally perfect."
*Note that the nutritionally perfect (100% of all vitamins and minerals) is an extremely rare nutrition goal that no one pays enough attention to. Everyone who has told me they are super healthy, when I have put what they eat for a week into nutritiondata.com, I have never found someone who isn't deficient in quite a few vitamins and minerals. Overtime vitamin and mineral deficiencies cause serious health problems. I recommend that everyone do their own nutrition experiment to find out what areas of their diet they "naturally" lack in.
*Also note that it was my focus on meeting 100% of my RDA of every vitamin and mineral that led me to conclude that high fat diets are the way to go, as there is no way to meet nutrient needs of vitamins A, D, K and E without a significant amount of fat in the diet. Also, in trying to help my Paleo and vegetarian friends create nutritionally perfect meals for themselves I came to a very clear conclusions: the math simply doesn't work. These are not good diets, not if you don't want to be nutrient deficient eventually anyway.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
How My Husband Cured His Eczema
*All of the things listed below in the plan may be worth trying. In the end, what worked for my husband was simply switching to only raw A2/A2 milk that he purchases from the Amish. Going dairy free gave him cold sores (not to mention the other nutritional deficiencies related to not drinking milk!) so that was not an option. Drinking only this type of milk was the key. He has been eczema free for a year now except for times when he indulges in fast food. Twice now he has gone to In & Out and had a breakout.
Before the A2 milk solution, this is the extensive plan we were trying (I have made bold the parts of the plan he still adheres to as well):
1) A series of 3, high quality colonics (or more, depending on how your body reacts)
2) Drink slippery elm tea or American Saffron tea with every meal. Experiment to see which you prefer with which meal.
3) Take fermented Cod Liver Oil High Vitamin Butter Oil
-Eat fatty fish every day. And take your fermented cod liver oil
-I like the capsules that I can swallow. It says 2 on the back, but 6-9 capsules a day is their recommended dose.
4) Black Currant Seed Oil
5) Turmeric
-It's anti-inflammatory. You can also buy fresh, organic turmeric and make a tasty tea out of it. I drink this tea every day on the farm as we have more turmeric than we know what to do with! When I am traveling I take this:
6) Vitamin E
-I tried so many different vitamin companies before finding this one–the first vitamin e that doesn't make me break out and has made my skin gorgeous!
7) Zinc
8) Magnesium
9) Apple Cider Vinegar
10) Lotion
-Always have plenty on hand. People with eczema should never let their skin get dry. Lotion should be applied at least twice a day and always immediately after bathing or swimming.
-The best lotion for people with eczema is tallow with honey in it (and never plant based oils!)
-This mom invented this particular lotion because of her daughter's terrible eczema!
11) Shampoo & Soap
-That is as pure as possible. Here is a good one:
12) An air purifier
-Eczema runs in families and is related to a certain gene. If you have this gene, you are also prone to developing asthma--and bad air can be a trigger for your eczema.
-Go to homefacts.com and check the air in your area. If it's a 7 or above keep your windows open.
-If you are stuck inside without open windows or if you live in an area with poor air, buy a high quality air purifier. Almost all air purifiers put terrible things into the air that they clean. So don't bother with one of those. Here are two quality air purifiers, the only 2 I know of:
http://www.abundantearth.com/store/airpure1.html
13) A water purifier
-Chlorine is extremely irritating to the skin. Don't swim in chlorinated pools and don't shower in chlorinated water.
http://www.abundantearth.com/store/waterfilter1.html
14) See a chiropractor
-Maybe your gut is out of alignment.
14) See a chiropractor
-Maybe your gut is out of alignment.
YOUR SKIN CARE REGIME
BATHING
-Bathe daily and always bathe immediately after sweating.
-Always use lukewarm water, never hot.
-Baths are better than showers.
-Take a magnesium bath once a week. If you must shower, do a magnesium foot soak once a week.
-Use the non-irritating soap on your shopping list, wash hair and face.
-Do not rub skin dry. Gently pat.
-Apply lotion immediately after every time you bathe or swim and at least twice a day.
-Do steams
-Do steams
MORNING
1) Vitamins with breakfast (adult dosage): 3 cod liver oils, 4 vitamin e, currant seed oil, zinc
2) Wash face with gentle soap and lukewarm water. Pat dry.
3) Tone: Mix 1/4 cup vinegar and 2 cups of water. Use cotton balls to put all over face. OR use turmeric bug. Either is fine.
3) Moisturize: with the tallow honey.
EVENING:
1) Vitamins with dinner (adult dosage): 3 cod liver oils, 4 vitamin e, turmeric
2) Wash face with gentle soap and lukewarm water. Pat dry.
3) Tone: Mix 1/4 cup vinegar and 2 cups of water. Use cotton balls to put all over face. OR use turmeric bug. Either is fine.
3) Moisturize: with the tallow honey.
YOUR SKIN CARE DIET
*Consider doing the GAPS diet. In my research on this I came across people who actually cured their eczema with this diet.
Avoid:
-Strawberries and citrus
-Nightshades (tomatoes, all peppers, and potatoes)
-Unfermented dairy
-Strawberries and citrus
-Nightshades (tomatoes, all peppers, and potatoes)
-Unfermented dairy
-Foods with chemicals, preservatives, and food colorings
-Soy and all its derivatives (You can eat fermented soy which means only tofu or soy sauce)
-Fast food. People who eat fast food regularly are like 4 times more likely to have eczema
-Food allergies. (You can experiment with eliminating certain foods to see if you have any)
-All alcohol except wine.
-All alcohol except wine.
Eat:
-Fatty fish every day.
-Bone broth every day
-Gelatin every day
-Bacteria every day (kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut)
-Drink a liter of oolong tea every day.
POSSIBLE TRIGGERS TO WATCH FOR
Clothes:
-Certain clothing materials--buy high quality, natural fabrics
-Chemicals in new clothes--wash before wearing
-Chemicals in laundry detergents--use the mild, fragrance free stuff
Bedding:
-Sheets that are too rough or washed in bad things.
Hygiene:
-Sweat is a trigger for many people. If you sweat during an activity, bathe.
-Dandruff can cause eczema. Keep yourself dandruff free and it will help keep you eczema free.
Home:
-Humidity helps. But humidifiers almost always put molds into the air. Use at your own risk.
-Sunscreen is a common irritant for eczema sufferers. The WAPF says sun is good for you and not to wear sun screen.
-Environmental allergies like dust, mold, pets, and pollens can trigger eczema probably due to the whole eczema-asthma connection. Get an air purifier.
-Chlorine is a common eczema causer, get a water filter.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Canker Sores Cured by Magnesium & Calcium
Personal health note: during our kitchen construction I got sick of eating out and opted instead for meal delivery. I chose Paleo Delivers since paleo is the closest thing I could get to the Weston A Price diet with meal delivery. I ate the Paleo Delivers meals for 3 months and definitely felt a decline in my health but was very busy and figured I would get healthier again when I got to Nicaragua--the meal delivery was just too convenient for me to give up.
Right around month 3 I noticed my teeth looking a ridged and thinner than usual and I broke out in canker sores all over my mouth--they would last around 5 days each and the minute one healed another one started somewhere else. I have never had a canker sore before so this was crazy!
I researched canker sores and because the drug-store topical cure had magnesium in it I had a sudden realization: the Paleo Diet doesn't provide the dairy vitamins and minerals. I knew better than this! I should have been supplementing the whole time!
Anyway, I made a bet that by adding homemade raw milk kefir back into my diet, it would cure my teeth and mouth issues. Since I was likely very deficient, I also bought the New Chapter Calcium and Magnesium supplement.
Canker sores and teeth ridges were gone in one day.
Right around month 3 I noticed my teeth looking a ridged and thinner than usual and I broke out in canker sores all over my mouth--they would last around 5 days each and the minute one healed another one started somewhere else. I have never had a canker sore before so this was crazy!
I researched canker sores and because the drug-store topical cure had magnesium in it I had a sudden realization: the Paleo Diet doesn't provide the dairy vitamins and minerals. I knew better than this! I should have been supplementing the whole time!
Anyway, I made a bet that by adding homemade raw milk kefir back into my diet, it would cure my teeth and mouth issues. Since I was likely very deficient, I also bought the New Chapter Calcium and Magnesium supplement.
Canker sores and teeth ridges were gone in one day.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The Vaccine Decision Is a Trust Decision Not a Science Decision
I was asked recently what my position is on vaccines. This is what I know: I am not an expert! I don't have a lab where I can do my own experiments to verify data others are presenting me with. All the reading and documentary-watching in the world won't change that. I am going to have to trust someone else's advice here.
And that actually makes my decision pretty easy.
There is the pharmaceutical industry and the government on one team. And the other team is the Weston A Price Association and Dr. Mendelsohn.
I don't trust the government at all. Nor the pharmaceutical industry. And when it comes to these two, I am extremely wary of possible hidden agendas, especially financial ones.
Following the advice of the Weston A Price Association cured my husband's hair loss, my acne, my menstrual cramps, and gave me a beautiful, healthy baby who never had cradle cap, crusty eye, or spit up. And that's just in my immediate family. I could go on and on about the evidence I have seen with my own eyes about the benefits of following their diet for my family and friends. The Weston A Price Association does not profit from telling me to not vaccinate. (They do profit from telling me to take cod liver oil, but this post isn't about that.)
Following the advice of Dr. Mendelsohn, who wrote my favorite medical book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, has saved me from a ton of parental worry, many pointless trips to the doctor, for not just my son but my husband and me too. Moreover, my grandfather was a doctor, and he gave this book to my mother in the 1980's. He said the medical industry was headed in a bad direction and no longer to be trusted. Dr. Mendelsohn and my grandfather have no hidden agenda that I can imagine either.
When it comes down to the only decision I get to make – which set of experts to trust – what decision I should make is clear.
It's terrifying – I want my son to be vaccinated against every horror life has to throw at him! And it's hard to reconcile my identity as a science-whorshipper with that of an unvaccinator. So I have to constantly remind myself of what Ayn Rand warned: Science isn't the science I love unless it's done on the free market. The meme that unvaccinators are anti-science is just advertising from two untrustworthy sources – big pharma and the government.
Personal anecdote: My vaccine free child is now six years old. He has had one fever in his entire life (when he was one and teething), he had diarrhea once that lasted a day when he was two, had a cough that was very slight and lasted a few weeks when he was three ... and that's it. He is gorgeously healthy. I don't worry when he plays with sick kids because I know he wont get sick, or if he does it will be nothing more than a runny nose. He also doesn't have any strange issues that doctors excuse as genetic, like eczema. I have two vaccinated nephews on my husband's side that have eczema (it runs in his family). My son's pediatrician - who suffers from eczema herself - says that she believes vaccines are a major trigger for eczema and that if you have eczema in your family, you should not be vaccinated.
Note: I studied nutrition pretty intensely for five years before I considered myself qualified to judge who to trust in that arena. Here is a link to a series of posts I wrote about my path to determining that Weston A Price diet is the one to follow:
http://roslynross.blogspot.com/2011/08/thinking-womans-pregnancy-before.html
And that actually makes my decision pretty easy.
There is the pharmaceutical industry and the government on one team. And the other team is the Weston A Price Association and Dr. Mendelsohn.
I don't trust the government at all. Nor the pharmaceutical industry. And when it comes to these two, I am extremely wary of possible hidden agendas, especially financial ones.
Following the advice of the Weston A Price Association cured my husband's hair loss, my acne, my menstrual cramps, and gave me a beautiful, healthy baby who never had cradle cap, crusty eye, or spit up. And that's just in my immediate family. I could go on and on about the evidence I have seen with my own eyes about the benefits of following their diet for my family and friends. The Weston A Price Association does not profit from telling me to not vaccinate. (They do profit from telling me to take cod liver oil, but this post isn't about that.)
Following the advice of Dr. Mendelsohn, who wrote my favorite medical book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, has saved me from a ton of parental worry, many pointless trips to the doctor, for not just my son but my husband and me too. Moreover, my grandfather was a doctor, and he gave this book to my mother in the 1980's. He said the medical industry was headed in a bad direction and no longer to be trusted. Dr. Mendelsohn and my grandfather have no hidden agenda that I can imagine either.
When it comes down to the only decision I get to make – which set of experts to trust – what decision I should make is clear.
It's terrifying – I want my son to be vaccinated against every horror life has to throw at him! And it's hard to reconcile my identity as a science-whorshipper with that of an unvaccinator. So I have to constantly remind myself of what Ayn Rand warned: Science isn't the science I love unless it's done on the free market. The meme that unvaccinators are anti-science is just advertising from two untrustworthy sources – big pharma and the government.
Personal anecdote: My vaccine free child is now six years old. He has had one fever in his entire life (when he was one and teething), he had diarrhea once that lasted a day when he was two, had a cough that was very slight and lasted a few weeks when he was three ... and that's it. He is gorgeously healthy. I don't worry when he plays with sick kids because I know he wont get sick, or if he does it will be nothing more than a runny nose. He also doesn't have any strange issues that doctors excuse as genetic, like eczema. I have two vaccinated nephews on my husband's side that have eczema (it runs in his family). My son's pediatrician - who suffers from eczema herself - says that she believes vaccines are a major trigger for eczema and that if you have eczema in your family, you should not be vaccinated.
Note: I studied nutrition pretty intensely for five years before I considered myself qualified to judge who to trust in that arena. Here is a link to a series of posts I wrote about my path to determining that Weston A Price diet is the one to follow:
http://roslynross.blogspot.com/2011/08/thinking-womans-pregnancy-before.html
The other thing that makes me lean on the "no vaccines" side of the fence is this study (link below) showing that 12% of children in Ulster County, NY have eczema, but only 1% of unvaccinated children from there have eczema. 8% of children have allergies, but only 2% of unvaccinated children...
It's not this study itself that makes me question vaccines. It's that these studies aren't done all the time by interested scientists. If vaccines were about real science, the scientists would be passionate about finding out whether vaccines are actually ideal or not. They would be open to questioning. They would be open to being wrong.
Businessmen wanting to make money, on the other hand, are not interested in learning more about vaccines and their consequences for human health, they are only interested in convincing/coercing you to buy their product. My experience with vaccines has been all the latter. This makes me think that vaccines studies are done by $cientists, not scientists.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Health Note - Reader Cures Her Own Migraines
I was emailing recently with a reader who mentioned she had had migraines. I asked her about them and here is what she wrote:
I actually have my migraines completely under control, I'm happy to report. I did have four during my pregnancy - all during the second trimester - but only one of them was really bad; the rest were all quite manageable. I am completely gluten-free and can only tolerate minuscule amounts of grass-fed dairy, which I found out after adopting an anti-inflammatory diet (Paleo/primal/WAPF). Diet combined with magnesium supplementation daily and regular chiropractic care keep me migraine-free and have for a few years (with the exception of pregnancy).
I actually have my migraines completely under control, I'm happy to report. I did have four during my pregnancy - all during the second trimester - but only one of them was really bad; the rest were all quite manageable. I am completely gluten-free and can only tolerate minuscule amounts of grass-fed dairy, which I found out after adopting an anti-inflammatory diet (Paleo/primal/WAPF). Diet combined with magnesium supplementation daily and regular chiropractic care keep me migraine-free and have for a few years (with the exception of pregnancy).
I am so excited to be finding such inspiring, proactive people through this blog!
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Health Note: Cayenne Pepper Stops Bleeding
Yesterday I chopped off the very tip of my finger--the chunk of skin that I found on the counter was about 1/4" diameter. The bleeding was impressive for such a small cut and it wouldn't stop. I wrapped my wound in a paper towel and twenty minutes after it happened I was shocked to see blood still rolling out of my finger. I googled it to see if I should go to the ER and get stitches. What I found was a site that recommended sprinkling cayenne pepper on the wound to stop the bleeding. I didn't like the sound of that but after fifteen more minutes decided to give it a try.
I sprinkled barely any cayenne pepper, sure that it would sting and not work and I would be sorry. But what happened was AWESOME. My wound was still producing a large droop of blood every half second. I sprinkled almost no cayenne on the wound. It stung; I swore. And then I watched as a scab formed. In about five seconds I was no longer bleeding and my finger was covered in a shiny scab. It was insane to watch since it happen so fast.
Anyway, cheers to the internet and free, natural cures!
I sprinkled barely any cayenne pepper, sure that it would sting and not work and I would be sorry. But what happened was AWESOME. My wound was still producing a large droop of blood every half second. I sprinkled almost no cayenne on the wound. It stung; I swore. And then I watched as a scab formed. In about five seconds I was no longer bleeding and my finger was covered in a shiny scab. It was insane to watch since it happen so fast.
Anyway, cheers to the internet and free, natural cures!
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Health Note - My First Cold in Nine Years & Primal Experiment Update
My last cold was in 2004. I got sick in 2004 because I had just finished taking a course on nutrition at Wesleyan University. That USDA approved-course convinced me that processed meats, non-fat dairy, diet sodas, sugar and white flour were not bad for me. They weren't good, but they weren't bad either. So for the first time in my life, I started eating them. The six months following my nutrition class I gained fifteen pounds and finally understood cold-medicine commercials. Those commercials had never made sense to me before--sneezing, runny nose, not resting, coughing, pounding head, stuck in bed--OMG this is what it feels like to be sick!?! I was in bed for three days and it was a revelation. I went back to eating the way I had grown up eating--if mother nature made it, I ate it; if man made it, I didn't.
From 2004 until last year I worked with children. They were sick all the time. Their parents would catch their colds, the other household employees would catch their colds, but I never did. I was reckless and cocky around their germs too because--why should I care about germs if they never made me ill? I had no real appreciation of how fabulous it is to be healthy because, over time, I forgot how much it sucks to be sick.
When I met my husband, Tom, he got sick all the time--usually something I brought home. Our first Winter Solstice together I was working for Reese Witherspoon. Both her kids, her ex-husband, the other nanny and her mother who was visiting came down with a terrible 24-hour-stomach bug. I didn't get it, but Tom did. It was comical.
When Tom moved in with me and started eating the way I eat he stopped getting sick and neither of us ever really thought about it again until this January when Tom went to Nicaragua for ten days. He lived off of pizza and burgers and then he sat next to a sneezing, nose-blowing person on his plane flight home. Five days later, he had the whole Sick Experience: sore throat, sneezing, itchy eyes, nose blowing, aching body, dead-head, super tired. This lasted about five days. I didn't worry very much because we both knew why he got sick and we both knew that I wouldn't get sick.
But I did. I didn't get as sick as my husband, but I got tired and sneezy. I even had to blow my nose. Did you know that if you blow your nose too many times in one day it gets raw and uncomfortable? I had faint memories of a similar realization back in 2004.
So why did I get sick? Well, during the month of January I had done a "Primal" experiment, altering my diet to see if I would feel even better than I already do most of the time by not eating grains, legumes or tubers. From my research I had concluded that the Weston A. Price Foundation diet recommendations that I follow regularly are superior to the Primal diet, but I am a sucker for science experiments and every body is different and so many people were swearing by the Primal diet... I figured I had nothing to lose. Well, I did have something to lose. The good health I take for granted! I guess there is something in those soaked/sprouted/fermented grains, legumes and tubers that I normally eat that keeps my body healthy because OMFG being sick sucks!!! How does the average American deal with this four times a year? I am totally pissed off.
You know who else got sick? My toddler. His very first cold. And granted it's amazing that my child did not get sick for the first time until he was fifteen-months-old, I'm pissed about that too.
I concluded my post about my Primal experiment by saying that the Primal diet was a good way for people to kick the Standard American Diet. Now I think: the Primal diet sucks.
Ugh, okay, in FreedomSpeak: My Primal diet experiment did not meet my need for good health nor did it meet my expectation that I would find something to share with people I like. I feel disappointed. And annoyed.
From 2004 until last year I worked with children. They were sick all the time. Their parents would catch their colds, the other household employees would catch their colds, but I never did. I was reckless and cocky around their germs too because--why should I care about germs if they never made me ill? I had no real appreciation of how fabulous it is to be healthy because, over time, I forgot how much it sucks to be sick.
When I met my husband, Tom, he got sick all the time--usually something I brought home. Our first Winter Solstice together I was working for Reese Witherspoon. Both her kids, her ex-husband, the other nanny and her mother who was visiting came down with a terrible 24-hour-stomach bug. I didn't get it, but Tom did. It was comical.
When Tom moved in with me and started eating the way I eat he stopped getting sick and neither of us ever really thought about it again until this January when Tom went to Nicaragua for ten days. He lived off of pizza and burgers and then he sat next to a sneezing, nose-blowing person on his plane flight home. Five days later, he had the whole Sick Experience: sore throat, sneezing, itchy eyes, nose blowing, aching body, dead-head, super tired. This lasted about five days. I didn't worry very much because we both knew why he got sick and we both knew that I wouldn't get sick.
But I did. I didn't get as sick as my husband, but I got tired and sneezy. I even had to blow my nose. Did you know that if you blow your nose too many times in one day it gets raw and uncomfortable? I had faint memories of a similar realization back in 2004.
So why did I get sick? Well, during the month of January I had done a "Primal" experiment, altering my diet to see if I would feel even better than I already do most of the time by not eating grains, legumes or tubers. From my research I had concluded that the Weston A. Price Foundation diet recommendations that I follow regularly are superior to the Primal diet, but I am a sucker for science experiments and every body is different and so many people were swearing by the Primal diet... I figured I had nothing to lose. Well, I did have something to lose. The good health I take for granted! I guess there is something in those soaked/sprouted/fermented grains, legumes and tubers that I normally eat that keeps my body healthy because OMFG being sick sucks!!! How does the average American deal with this four times a year? I am totally pissed off.
You know who else got sick? My toddler. His very first cold. And granted it's amazing that my child did not get sick for the first time until he was fifteen-months-old, I'm pissed about that too.
I concluded my post about my Primal experiment by saying that the Primal diet was a good way for people to kick the Standard American Diet. Now I think: the Primal diet sucks.
Ugh, okay, in FreedomSpeak: My Primal diet experiment did not meet my need for good health nor did it meet my expectation that I would find something to share with people I like. I feel disappointed. And annoyed.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Book Review & Experiment - The Primal Blueprint
I recently read The Primal Blueprint 21 Day Total Body Transformation to be familiar with the Primal diet as it is so popular right now. It was exactly what I had heard--a sexy (be a primal BEAST!) repackaging of the Atkins diet but (thank goodness) without the processed food.
Things I liked about this book:
Things I did not like about this book:
Mark Sisson is not a scientist, doctor or nutritionist; he is not someone who does studies or researches in the field of food. He is not someone who studies our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He is an "elite athlete" who took biology in college and became an armchair nutritionist. Now, I don't support certification b.s.--I do believe someone can be an expert in something without the educational credentials to prove it, but Mark isn't it. To his credit, he has become more of an expert after putting out his book and being told where he went wrong by the real experts... but I am not reviewing his blog today, I am reviewing his book which has lots of great things to say mixed in with some wrong, unproven and questionable things.
Mark's main message is the Atkins message: all grains are bad. One reason is because they have anti-nutrients in them. As do legumes. But Mark misses nuts. So the correct information is:
1) Nuts are in the same boat as grains, full of anti-nutients and not belonging in the human body unless they have been soaked/sprouted/fermented--which, no surprise, is the only way traditional peoples consumed nuts.
2) Nuts are in the same boat as grains. To support nuts and then to not support the properly prepared (soaked/sprouted/fermented) grains that our ancestors ate is to obsess over carbs rather than human health i.e. macronutrients instead of micronutrients.
The macronutrients / micronutrients issue: this is where most diets lose me--native peoples have lived off of every possible balance of protein/carbs/fat. Weston A Prince, in his research, noted that the healthiest native peoples ate all three i.e. those tribes that ate all-protein-no-grains and those that were vegetarian did not enjoy the same level of health that those tribes who ate both meat and grains enjoyed. Price and the foundation that has continued his research today focuses on "nutritionally dense foods," the foods that pack the most punch nutritionally i.e. vitamins and minerals. When you focus on this, you end up with a diet that IS low-carb compared to the Standard American Diet, but not anti-carb or anti-grain or as low-carb as Sisson advocates.
The other reason Mark hates carbs (because then we will burn glucose as our fuel instead of fat) makes no sense to me. Our bodies can burn glucose OR fat for a reason--both are helpful at certain times. If it wasn't advantageous for our bodies to be able to be "glucose-burners" sometimes, we would not have evolved with the ability to be "glucose burners". Perhaps we burned fat during the winter and spring when food was scarce but when food was plentiful we burned glucose... who knows! What I know is that my body can burn both, and I assume that it evolved that way for a reason. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't support sugar or high-carb diets but, properly prepared grains are full of nutrients and that is what I care about.
The worst part about this book was when Mark advocated eating CAFO meat (i.e. the stuff that is really really bad for you) over eating any grains whatsoever or eating "too much" fruit. Factory farm meat is poison, literally. No one in their right mind should believe that bacon from Costco is healthier than eating too many organic apples. Like I said above, this is a repackaged Atkins diet. It's not about health, it's about weight loss. (Unless you are diabetic, if you are diabetic this is the diet for you!).
The other part about Mark's diet that I didn't like was the blatant contradiction: "don't eat fake food EXCEPT buy my protein powder!!! Eat like a cave man--make shakes out of chemically altered substances that were food once!" Some of the ingredients in his "primal fuel": Whey Protein Isolate, Inulin, Guar Gum, Sucrose, Natural Flavors, Maltodexrin, Sodium Caseinate.... I have read books on how these things are made and they are NOT natural. They are NOT food. Grok would not have eaten them.
One of the other major things Mark misses is that traditional peoples ate a lot of bacteria i.e. fermented foods. These are not mentioned at all in this book.
My 21 Day Primal Experiment:
I love doing science experiments so I decided to follow Mark's diet for the first 21 days of January to see if it transformed my body like he promises. Following his diet has changed the lives of many of my friends, but I had a sneaking suspicion that that was because they went from eating a Standard American Diet to eating a Primal Diet i.e. it was not that Primal was so amazing but rather that the SAD is so bad. I would be switching from eating a WAPF diet. For those of you unfamiliar with the WAPF diet, know that it is similar to Primal in that I already don't eat sugar, wheat or anything processed.
What I had to change to eat Primal instead of WAPF :
-no soaked/sprouted/fermented oats, wild rice and beans that are a normal part of my WAPF diet
-limit my fruit and vegetable intake so that I did not exceed his recommended 100-150 grams of carbs per day
-no sweet potatoes (he only lets athletes have tubers)
-no kombucha or lacto-fermented rootbeer (both are a normal part of my diet)
-I had to "moderate" my dairy intake
-I was allowed to have nuts that had not be soaked or sprouted but I chose not to do this and continued to eat WAPF style nuts throughout my experiment
-I was allowed to have coffee, dark chocolate and red wine (as treats). WAPF doesn't support any of these things--a WAPF treat would be an apricot compote sweetened with maple syrup and served with lots of raw whipped cream).
My results:
-Getting an hour of sunlight a day helped my sleep immensely. It is also possible that it was the diet that gave me better sleep though so I need to experiment more with this.
-I neither gained nor lost a single pound. (I was at a healthy weight to begin with)
-I noticed no "glucose burner to fat burner" change. I wonder if, since the WAPF diet is a rather high fat, high protein diet, I was already a fat burner
-When I reintroduced certain foods after 21 days I learned that I have a sensitivity (I have a reaction in my sinuses) to raisins and corn. I need to experiment more on this to see if properly prepared corn gives me a reaction as well (I was at a restaurant so I don't know if the corn flour I ate had been soaked in lyme or not).
-I also had a reaction to some standard american whole wheat bread I had at a restaurant. I will definitely be curious to see if I react to properly prepared wheat.
-I had no reaction when I consumed fermented oats or any other sprouted grain. I did not feel bloated, tired, sick or any of the other things I was told I might feel.
-I did not notice any change in energy or mood and it would have been impossible for me to notice an improvement in health since I already haven't had a cold in a decade.
-So I didn't feel any better BUT I also, didn't feel any worse! Except for an intense increase in my desire to eat "forbidden" foods i.e. all the self-control required to eat this way kind of wore me out. The WAPF way of eating does wear out my will-power, in fact, the WAPF diet makes me feel quite spoiled.
Random Note:
When I started eating the WAPF way, with a focus on nutritionally dense foods like organ meats and anything fermented, I noticed a sharp decline in my cravings for sugar and alcohol. All my adult life I had loved chocolate and enjoyed having a glass of red wine with dinner. When I started drinking lots of bacteria-beverages and eating lots of bacteria-foods, I found I had no desire for chocolate and the thought of having wine was almost gross. A year later, I hardly ever drink or indulge in chocolate anymore, not because I have all kinds of will-power, but because I just don't want those things that much. The WAP Federation explains this phenomenon: our cravings for sugar and alcohol are actually cravings for bacteria. This seems to have been totally accurate in my case.
My conclusion:
The Primal diet is a great way for people to kick the Standard American Diet. It has easy-to-follow rules and instructions and is sold very well. The Weston A Price Foundation--though it has more accurate and more complete information does NOT sell itself well. "Be a Primal BEAST!" is so much sexier than "Eat a traditional diet full of nutritionally dense foods."
Because the Weston A. Price Foundation is extremely research oriented, they also weigh down some of their followers with Too Much Information. Therefore, the Primal Diet is great for people who just want a better way to eat, but don't want to get into it too much.
That being said, after a while on the Primal Diet or if you find yourself wanting to cheat, EAT FERMENTED FOODS! I think Sisson approves of some of them.
If you just want to dig a little deeper into the subject of nutrition and ancient ways of eating, check out:
westonaprice.org
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price
Things I liked about this book:
Mark brings raw dairy, natural light and ancient ways of "exercising" to people's attention. He has gotten the message out there about not eating fake food, which is very important.
Things I did not like about this book:
Mark Sisson is not a scientist, doctor or nutritionist; he is not someone who does studies or researches in the field of food. He is not someone who studies our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He is an "elite athlete" who took biology in college and became an armchair nutritionist. Now, I don't support certification b.s.--I do believe someone can be an expert in something without the educational credentials to prove it, but Mark isn't it. To his credit, he has become more of an expert after putting out his book and being told where he went wrong by the real experts... but I am not reviewing his blog today, I am reviewing his book which has lots of great things to say mixed in with some wrong, unproven and questionable things.
Mark's main message is the Atkins message: all grains are bad. One reason is because they have anti-nutrients in them. As do legumes. But Mark misses nuts. So the correct information is:
1) Nuts are in the same boat as grains, full of anti-nutients and not belonging in the human body unless they have been soaked/sprouted/fermented--which, no surprise, is the only way traditional peoples consumed nuts.
2) Nuts are in the same boat as grains. To support nuts and then to not support the properly prepared (soaked/sprouted/fermented) grains that our ancestors ate is to obsess over carbs rather than human health i.e. macronutrients instead of micronutrients.
The macronutrients / micronutrients issue: this is where most diets lose me--native peoples have lived off of every possible balance of protein/carbs/fat. Weston A Prince, in his research, noted that the healthiest native peoples ate all three i.e. those tribes that ate all-protein-no-grains and those that were vegetarian did not enjoy the same level of health that those tribes who ate both meat and grains enjoyed. Price and the foundation that has continued his research today focuses on "nutritionally dense foods," the foods that pack the most punch nutritionally i.e. vitamins and minerals. When you focus on this, you end up with a diet that IS low-carb compared to the Standard American Diet, but not anti-carb or anti-grain or as low-carb as Sisson advocates.
The other reason Mark hates carbs (because then we will burn glucose as our fuel instead of fat) makes no sense to me. Our bodies can burn glucose OR fat for a reason--both are helpful at certain times. If it wasn't advantageous for our bodies to be able to be "glucose-burners" sometimes, we would not have evolved with the ability to be "glucose burners". Perhaps we burned fat during the winter and spring when food was scarce but when food was plentiful we burned glucose... who knows! What I know is that my body can burn both, and I assume that it evolved that way for a reason. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't support sugar or high-carb diets but, properly prepared grains are full of nutrients and that is what I care about.
The worst part about this book was when Mark advocated eating CAFO meat (i.e. the stuff that is really really bad for you) over eating any grains whatsoever or eating "too much" fruit. Factory farm meat is poison, literally. No one in their right mind should believe that bacon from Costco is healthier than eating too many organic apples. Like I said above, this is a repackaged Atkins diet. It's not about health, it's about weight loss. (Unless you are diabetic, if you are diabetic this is the diet for you!).
The other part about Mark's diet that I didn't like was the blatant contradiction: "don't eat fake food EXCEPT buy my protein powder!!! Eat like a cave man--make shakes out of chemically altered substances that were food once!" Some of the ingredients in his "primal fuel": Whey Protein Isolate, Inulin, Guar Gum, Sucrose, Natural Flavors, Maltodexrin, Sodium Caseinate.... I have read books on how these things are made and they are NOT natural. They are NOT food. Grok would not have eaten them.
One of the other major things Mark misses is that traditional peoples ate a lot of bacteria i.e. fermented foods. These are not mentioned at all in this book.
My 21 Day Primal Experiment:
I love doing science experiments so I decided to follow Mark's diet for the first 21 days of January to see if it transformed my body like he promises. Following his diet has changed the lives of many of my friends, but I had a sneaking suspicion that that was because they went from eating a Standard American Diet to eating a Primal Diet i.e. it was not that Primal was so amazing but rather that the SAD is so bad. I would be switching from eating a WAPF diet. For those of you unfamiliar with the WAPF diet, know that it is similar to Primal in that I already don't eat sugar, wheat or anything processed.
What I had to change to eat Primal instead of WAPF :
-no soaked/sprouted/fermented oats, wild rice and beans that are a normal part of my WAPF diet
-limit my fruit and vegetable intake so that I did not exceed his recommended 100-150 grams of carbs per day
-no sweet potatoes (he only lets athletes have tubers)
-no kombucha or lacto-fermented rootbeer (both are a normal part of my diet)
-I had to "moderate" my dairy intake
-I was allowed to have nuts that had not be soaked or sprouted but I chose not to do this and continued to eat WAPF style nuts throughout my experiment
-I was allowed to have coffee, dark chocolate and red wine (as treats). WAPF doesn't support any of these things--a WAPF treat would be an apricot compote sweetened with maple syrup and served with lots of raw whipped cream).
My results:
-Getting an hour of sunlight a day helped my sleep immensely. It is also possible that it was the diet that gave me better sleep though so I need to experiment more with this.
-I neither gained nor lost a single pound. (I was at a healthy weight to begin with)
-I noticed no "glucose burner to fat burner" change. I wonder if, since the WAPF diet is a rather high fat, high protein diet, I was already a fat burner
-When I reintroduced certain foods after 21 days I learned that I have a sensitivity (I have a reaction in my sinuses) to raisins and corn. I need to experiment more on this to see if properly prepared corn gives me a reaction as well (I was at a restaurant so I don't know if the corn flour I ate had been soaked in lyme or not).
-I also had a reaction to some standard american whole wheat bread I had at a restaurant. I will definitely be curious to see if I react to properly prepared wheat.
-I had no reaction when I consumed fermented oats or any other sprouted grain. I did not feel bloated, tired, sick or any of the other things I was told I might feel.
-I did not notice any change in energy or mood and it would have been impossible for me to notice an improvement in health since I already haven't had a cold in a decade.
-So I didn't feel any better BUT I also, didn't feel any worse! Except for an intense increase in my desire to eat "forbidden" foods i.e. all the self-control required to eat this way kind of wore me out. The WAPF way of eating does wear out my will-power, in fact, the WAPF diet makes me feel quite spoiled.
Random Note:
When I started eating the WAPF way, with a focus on nutritionally dense foods like organ meats and anything fermented, I noticed a sharp decline in my cravings for sugar and alcohol. All my adult life I had loved chocolate and enjoyed having a glass of red wine with dinner. When I started drinking lots of bacteria-beverages and eating lots of bacteria-foods, I found I had no desire for chocolate and the thought of having wine was almost gross. A year later, I hardly ever drink or indulge in chocolate anymore, not because I have all kinds of will-power, but because I just don't want those things that much. The WAP Federation explains this phenomenon: our cravings for sugar and alcohol are actually cravings for bacteria. This seems to have been totally accurate in my case.
My conclusion:
The Primal diet is a great way for people to kick the Standard American Diet. It has easy-to-follow rules and instructions and is sold very well. The Weston A Price Foundation--though it has more accurate and more complete information does NOT sell itself well. "Be a Primal BEAST!" is so much sexier than "Eat a traditional diet full of nutritionally dense foods."
Because the Weston A. Price Foundation is extremely research oriented, they also weigh down some of their followers with Too Much Information. Therefore, the Primal Diet is great for people who just want a better way to eat, but don't want to get into it too much.
That being said, after a while on the Primal Diet or if you find yourself wanting to cheat, EAT FERMENTED FOODS! I think Sisson approves of some of them.
If you just want to dig a little deeper into the subject of nutrition and ancient ways of eating, check out:
westonaprice.org
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Ancient Child Spacing Wisdom
Here is what I know about child spacing:
Hunter-Gatherers had their children 3-6 years apart and usually had 4-5 children.
What this information means to me is that my body evolved to function best having babies every 3-6 years and to have 4-5 children, but that doesn't mean, should I want to have twelve babies in twelve years, that my body could not do it.
However, in the 1920's Weston A. Price spent over a decade traveling the globe looking for the healthiest people in the world (a control group to which he could compare Americans). He recorded the dietary and lifestyle habits of the thirteen or so native groups he considered to be the healthiest people in the world and noted that they followed this ancient pattern of spacing children no closer than three years. He learned that the native people believed that a baby born closer than three years after a sibling was considered to be unhealthy. He looked into this and found evidence enough to convince him of the validity of this concern. In the photographs he includes in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, one can see the perfectly straight, white teeth of siblings spaced 3 or more years apart and the crooked teeth of the sibling born too soon. Crooked teeth were just one signifier of in-womb nutrition deficiencies though--narrow faces, narrow hips leading to more difficult births, club feet and almost all other birth defects were more common in children born closer than three years.
Price's theory was that pregnancy exhausts a woman's nutrient stores. Nursing a baby further depletes those stores (or slows down the replenishment process). It takes a woman's body several years to replenish and be ready to give everything to a new baby. A baby born only a year or two after a sibling will most likely not be able to receive enough nutrients in the womb to develop properly.
There are many other things that can deplete a woman's biological fitness and make it not wise to have a baby. Children born soon after a woman suffers from a major illness or during a time of famine also showed signs of not getting properly nourished in the womb. This did not mean these babies couldn't survive, it just meant their gene expression was not optimized.
To put this theory into a real life example: very few Americans today, even the healthiest, will have children with naturally straight teeth. But if any of their children have straight teeth, it the most likely be the couple's first born. This could also be why the first born will have the highest IQ, be the most attractive and the least likely to have a hormonal imbalance. (If a woman's nutrient stores are properly replenished before she gets pregnant again, it is possible for all her children to be attractive with straight teeth and high IQs. Again, this does not mean that babies whose gene expression was not optimized will be stupid and unattractive, it just means that had they been properly nourished in the womb, they would have been even more intelligent and attractive than they are.) I cannot find any examples from people in my life in which this is not the case. Whenever I run into people who look like they have nice, wide mouths and perfectly straight teeth I ask about their mothers' diets before they were born. 100% of the time thus far, the person with the straight-teeth-no-braces had a mom who ate a traditional diet or some strange traditional foods that most people don't eat today or, in one case, fished and ate fish for at least one meal a day every day.
For these reasons, I would never consider having children spaced closer than three years.
Why did we lose our ancient knowledge and start having more children spaced closer together? The change took place after the middle ages due to religions pressure to not nurse and have large families. Nursing is a natural contraceptive. Native societies nursed their young for 3-6 years. When the church convinced women that nursing was sinful and dirty and babies started being weened either at birth or after a month, infant mortality skyrocketed (thus women had to have more children in order to have one or two survive to adulthood) and women were able to get pregnant again right away. The ancient knowledge, that this would lead to unhealthy offspring, was lost... and crooked teeth, narrow faces, and difficult child-bearing hips became normal.
If you would like to read more about this subject, check out:
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life
Sunday, December 30, 2012
My Baby Never Spit Up Unless...
I follow the Weston A. Price way of eating (as stone-age as I can manage) and breastfeed and my baby never spits up. On the rare occasion that he did spit up (about once a week) I wrote down the things I had eaten that day. Here is the list of things that made my baby spit up:
Think Thin bars and Kind bars
All candy
Carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting I made at home
Cookies
Deli meat (all deli meat, including the nitrate-free, organic stuff I buy)
Hot cocoa made by restaurants but not hot cocoa made with raw milk and honey I make at home
He also spit up after I ate at restaurants almost 100% of the time regardless of what I ordered. He did not spit up from many of the purer salads from Hugo's so after a while I just stuck to those.
He also spit up after I ate at restaurants almost 100% of the time regardless of what I ordered. He did not spit up from many of the purer salads from Hugo's so after a while I just stuck to those.
Health Note - Coffee
I treat myself to a cup of coffee about once a month. I have known for a long time that 3-5 days after I treat myself to that single 8oz cup, I will have a minor breakout (acne). It was always a tradeoff. But recently I have noticed something else: 3-5 days later I will also have a "dead day," a day where I get nothing done and just lay around and stare at the wall feeling useless and often depressed. I never made the connection before but now it is pretty clear that coffee is a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation--the energy I use up when I have my cup of coffee on Saturday comes directly out of my Wednesday energy stores....
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Home Birth vs Hospital: An Objectivist Is Horrified to Find Out the Hippies Were Right About Something
If you have your baby at home with a midwife, instead of in the hospital with an OB:
- you are twice as likely to survive giving birth
- your baby is three times more likely to survive his birth
- your baby is six times more likely to survive his first year
Hospital births cost around $10,000 ($20,000 if you have a c-section). Home births cost around $3000. Yet only .65% of American women choose to give birth at home. Despite their high price tag, most insurance companies only cover hospital births. Home birth is illegal in 23 states. Someone doesn't want you having your baby at home.
In addition to the above, anyone who watches television has been programmed to think hospitals are the only place one should have her baby and only freaks and hippies have their babies elsewhere.
So maybe it's not so much that people who have their babies at home don't need the establishment. It's not so much that they think for themselves that is the problem, no, it's Machiavelli 101--it's the babies. The establishment wants to parent our babies; they want to establish whose babies they are. A hospital birth serves to recruit your baby into the medical industry. Toss in an intensive regime of pediatric visits throughout the first year and your baby has been indoctrinated from birth into a lifelong dependence on medical intervention. Seeing the doctor is normal. Trusting your body is not. Doing what you are told is normal. Thinking for yourself is not.
A personal note on how my research changed my pregnancy (and my life):
The above was not what I was expecting to find out when I began my research. If you had talked to me when I was twelve weeks along, I would have said that I was "going with a midwife for now" and that I was still looking into where I wanted to have my baby--as in, I wanted to tour at least three different hospitals in the Los Angeles area and pick my favorite. I was absolutely against giving birth at home.
So how did it all work out? I went into labor at 2am on a Thursday. My baby was born 3 hours later. Unmedicated birth was fine. Doing it at home was WONDERFUL! After the baby was born I took a shower and got into bed with my newborn and my husband. The midwives cleaned everything up.
I didn't have to travel anywhere while I was in labor. I got to wear what I wanted (or didn't want). I didn't have to have an IV in my arm. I wasn't attached to any monitors. I moved when I wanted to where I wanted. I ate and drank what and when I wanted. I had one vaginal exam by someone I knew well. I had as much privacy as I wanted. I got to push in the position I wanted. There was no pressure, no timeline.
If you read the books I recommended in my previous posts, you already know that the key to having a quick, easy labor is feeling safe. My lower, primal brain felt very safe in the comfort of my own home. It's not just the drugs at the hospital that prolong labor--it's the strangers, the noises, the lights, the fact that no matter how much your higher brain insists this is a safe place, your lower brain instinctually knows it's not.
If you only read two of the books I have recommended, read Baby Catcher and How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor.
*Update on this post: A huge backlash has come out against homebirths since I wrote this post. Fascinating that before homebirths started gaining popularity, the mortality rates I could find showed homebirths to be safer. Those same reports that I read have disappeared. Now all I can find is (A LOT OF) zealous reports about how dangerous homebirth is. I imagine if homeschooling gets too popular the same thing will happen there too. We've got to get the population incensed so we can regulate birth and force those crazy homebirth women to have their babies how we say! Go government propaganda machine go!
Monday, July 2, 2012
Midwife vs Medical Establishment: An Objectivist Is Horrified to Find Out a Midwife Is the Rational Choice
As a rational person you have done your research and you know you want to give birth without drugs. You also know that women can give birth naturally with a doctor, it's just much less likely they will be successful at it. 30-50% of women who want to give birth naturally will fail if they choose a doctor for delivery compared to 5% of women who will fail with a midwife. If you are a rational woman, it's a very simple decision: the goal is to succeed at having an unmedicated birth and using a midwife maximizes your chances of success.
Due to the philosophical differences between how midwives and the medical establishment view pregnancy and labor, the choice to use a midwife will hugely impact, not just your birthing day, but your entire 40-week experience of being pregnant.
To summarize the philosophical differences:
When I found out I was pregnant, my OBGYN recommended I go on progesterone to ensure that I didn't miscarry. There was no medical reason for her to make that recommendation. She recommend it purely based on my age--29. I told her that I was a very healthy person who hadn't even had a cold since 2004 and she told me that was irrelevant. I was 29 and I should not trust my body to make enough progesterone to keep the baby.
Of course my emotional brain acquiesced to her controlling mentality but my rational brain knew better: if the tiny bunch of cells in my uterus wasn't genetically healthy and my body wanted to get rid of it--why would I want to prevent that?
After a quick Google search I learned that taking progesterone came (of course) with side effects: bloating, breast tenderness, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry mouth, fluid retention, headache, heartburn, irritability, muscle pain, nausea, stomach pain, stomach cramping, tiredness, vomiting, bleeding or spotting, amenorrhea, edema, weigh changes, cervical erosion, cervical secretions, cholestatic jaundice, skin reactions including a rash or acne, mental depression, pyrexia, insomnia and somnolence.
I said "no" to the progesterone. My doctor, with the air of an all-knowing mystic, said she didn't approve but that I could take that risk if I wanted to.
Then she told me that I was not allowed to eat alcohol, caffeine, sushi, raw dairy or take hot baths. I had heard those things before so I asked what was on my mind:
"Don't pregnant Japanese women eat sushi?"
"Pastuerized dairy has only been popular for 80 years--doesn't that mean pregnant women have been consuming raw dairy for thousands of years?"
"How does a hot bath hurt my baby and not my internal organs? What about women who live in hot climates--are they hurting their babies every time they go outside?"
My doctor practically growled at me and repeated her recommendations with a dramatic flurry that included the phrase "hot baths will cook your baby". Then my fifteen minutes were up and the appointment was over.
It was time to check out the other route, the route only 5% of women choose. I went to a presentation called "meet the midwives" at The Birth Sanctuary, a birthing center in Los Angeles. The presentation was held in their "birthing suite", a large, elegantly-decorated apartment with a bathroom and full kitchen.
The midwives were sweet, emotional types and neither their personalities nor the way they tried to sell a midwife birth did anything for me. I hadn't chosen a natural birth for emotional reasons (though that video of the drugged newborn trying to nurse and failing does haunt me a little).
The business manager sold the idea of a midwife birth to me a little better. She was from New York; she thought fast, spoke fast and didn't sugar coat anything. She talked numbers; she said things like, "Only 5% of midwife assisted births require medical intervention, unlike 30-50% of OBGYN/hospital births." Unfortunately, she didn't deliver babies.
But whether or not the birthing center was a little too touchy-feely for my taste, I loved their philosophy on prenatal care: first prenatal appointments should be somewhere around twelve weeks--unless you are feeling anxious, then you could come in earlier. It was a different world from my OBGYN who had demanded to see me immediately, like it was an emergency, when I was only six weeks along. The midwives trusted me and my body to be pregnant for the entire first trimester without their input. Oh to be treated like I have a brain!
At my first prenatal at the birthing center (at twelve weeks), I asked the same questions I had asked my OBGYN. On raw dairy and sushi, I was told to use my common sense and not eat things that smelled or looked funky. Getting really bad food poisoning while pregnant could cause a miscarriage--but more food poisoning is caused from lettuce these days than raw dairy. If the milk and sushi I had been eating for the last thirty years hadn't given me food poisoning yet, there was no reason to assume it would give me food poisoning now. On hot baths, I was told to use my common sense and that if I felt dizzy or woozy, I should get out of the tub. If it felt good, however, it was probably helping me relax which would benefit me and my baby.
And what about an occasional glass of wine? The facts on the no-drinking rule are: a full-on alcoholic will only have a 4% chance of giving her baby fetal-alcohol syndrome if she eats healthily. An alcoholic who doesn't eat healthily will have an 80% chance of harming her fetus. It's not the alcohol that harms the baby but the nutritional deficiencies related to drinking too much that harm the baby. A healthy eater who has a glass or two of wine every day is unlikely to harm her baby. Women used to be encouraged (by doctors) to drink throughout pregnancy for relaxation and then get raging drunk for labor.
So why does the medical establishment give pregnant women so many rules? Because just like in elementary school, rules are made for the lowest common denominator. There are women who will eat some pretty funky stuff, stay in hot tubs until they pass out and not know that a handle of vodka every day is drinking too much. It's easier (and faster) to just give women a blanket list of "don'ts" than to explain to them what's going on and then trust them to use their common sense and self-control.
The one downside (or so I thought) to having a midwife instead of an OBGYN is that midwives don't usually offer ultrasounds. This made me sad as I longed to see my little fetus! Then I read Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. Here is the paragraph that made me glad my midwives weren't into ultrasounds: "Frenchman Paul Langevin discovered that high intensity ultrasound could destroy schools of fish in the ocean, and when a person put a hand in a tank of water that had ultrasound waves running through it, they experienced pain, a discovery that led doctors to use the technology to destroy tissue, such as a brain tumor." That's high-intensity ultrasounds. On modern prenatal ultrasounds Susan McCutcheon says, "We do know that in the short term cells behave abnormally after just one diagnostic ultrasound exposure. The shape of cells so radiated changes temporarily and their movement becomes frenetic."
An ultrasound would make my little blueberry a frenetic glob of cells? I was happy to skip them. (I did get one, at 20-weeks, to find out the gender of my baby though, figuring since my little one was no longer a glob of cells it would be safer.)
I have to say that this was not a hard philosophical decision for me--did I think pregnancy was a natural process and I could trust my body and evolution to do it right or did I think pregnancy was a disaster waiting to happen? Did I want someone who would take my questions about baths and food seriously or someone who would bark rules at me? Did I want to maximize my chances of succeeding at natural birth?
I chose the midwife route.
Due to the philosophical differences between how midwives and the medical establishment view pregnancy and labor, the choice to use a midwife will hugely impact, not just your birthing day, but your entire 40-week experience of being pregnant.
To summarize the philosophical differences:
- Midwives encourage women to stay in tune with their bodies and think for themselves throughout the entire pregnancy. Doctors encourage women to do as they are told.
- Midwives schedule 90 minutes for every prenatal appointment. Doctors schedule 15.
- Midwives believe birth is a normal physiological process. Doctors believe birth is unpredictable, unreliable and often unsafe.
- Midwives seeks to let the woman be in charge of her birth. Doctors seek to control the woman's birth.
- Midwives believe giving birth without medication is an emotionally empowering and transformative experience leading the woman to feel that she can conquer the world. Midwives believe medical intervention is undesirable. Doctors believe medical interventions improve labor
When I found out I was pregnant, my OBGYN recommended I go on progesterone to ensure that I didn't miscarry. There was no medical reason for her to make that recommendation. She recommend it purely based on my age--29. I told her that I was a very healthy person who hadn't even had a cold since 2004 and she told me that was irrelevant. I was 29 and I should not trust my body to make enough progesterone to keep the baby.
Of course my emotional brain acquiesced to her controlling mentality but my rational brain knew better: if the tiny bunch of cells in my uterus wasn't genetically healthy and my body wanted to get rid of it--why would I want to prevent that?
After a quick Google search I learned that taking progesterone came (of course) with side effects: bloating, breast tenderness, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry mouth, fluid retention, headache, heartburn, irritability, muscle pain, nausea, stomach pain, stomach cramping, tiredness, vomiting, bleeding or spotting, amenorrhea, edema, weigh changes, cervical erosion, cervical secretions, cholestatic jaundice, skin reactions including a rash or acne, mental depression, pyrexia, insomnia and somnolence.
I said "no" to the progesterone. My doctor, with the air of an all-knowing mystic, said she didn't approve but that I could take that risk if I wanted to.
Then she told me that I was not allowed to eat alcohol, caffeine, sushi, raw dairy or take hot baths. I had heard those things before so I asked what was on my mind:
"Don't pregnant Japanese women eat sushi?"
"Pastuerized dairy has only been popular for 80 years--doesn't that mean pregnant women have been consuming raw dairy for thousands of years?"
"How does a hot bath hurt my baby and not my internal organs? What about women who live in hot climates--are they hurting their babies every time they go outside?"
My doctor practically growled at me and repeated her recommendations with a dramatic flurry that included the phrase "hot baths will cook your baby". Then my fifteen minutes were up and the appointment was over.
It was time to check out the other route, the route only 5% of women choose. I went to a presentation called "meet the midwives" at The Birth Sanctuary, a birthing center in Los Angeles. The presentation was held in their "birthing suite", a large, elegantly-decorated apartment with a bathroom and full kitchen.
The midwives were sweet, emotional types and neither their personalities nor the way they tried to sell a midwife birth did anything for me. I hadn't chosen a natural birth for emotional reasons (though that video of the drugged newborn trying to nurse and failing does haunt me a little).
The business manager sold the idea of a midwife birth to me a little better. She was from New York; she thought fast, spoke fast and didn't sugar coat anything. She talked numbers; she said things like, "Only 5% of midwife assisted births require medical intervention, unlike 30-50% of OBGYN/hospital births." Unfortunately, she didn't deliver babies.
But whether or not the birthing center was a little too touchy-feely for my taste, I loved their philosophy on prenatal care: first prenatal appointments should be somewhere around twelve weeks--unless you are feeling anxious, then you could come in earlier. It was a different world from my OBGYN who had demanded to see me immediately, like it was an emergency, when I was only six weeks along. The midwives trusted me and my body to be pregnant for the entire first trimester without their input. Oh to be treated like I have a brain!
At my first prenatal at the birthing center (at twelve weeks), I asked the same questions I had asked my OBGYN. On raw dairy and sushi, I was told to use my common sense and not eat things that smelled or looked funky. Getting really bad food poisoning while pregnant could cause a miscarriage--but more food poisoning is caused from lettuce these days than raw dairy. If the milk and sushi I had been eating for the last thirty years hadn't given me food poisoning yet, there was no reason to assume it would give me food poisoning now. On hot baths, I was told to use my common sense and that if I felt dizzy or woozy, I should get out of the tub. If it felt good, however, it was probably helping me relax which would benefit me and my baby.
And what about an occasional glass of wine? The facts on the no-drinking rule are: a full-on alcoholic will only have a 4% chance of giving her baby fetal-alcohol syndrome if she eats healthily. An alcoholic who doesn't eat healthily will have an 80% chance of harming her fetus. It's not the alcohol that harms the baby but the nutritional deficiencies related to drinking too much that harm the baby. A healthy eater who has a glass or two of wine every day is unlikely to harm her baby. Women used to be encouraged (by doctors) to drink throughout pregnancy for relaxation and then get raging drunk for labor.
So why does the medical establishment give pregnant women so many rules? Because just like in elementary school, rules are made for the lowest common denominator. There are women who will eat some pretty funky stuff, stay in hot tubs until they pass out and not know that a handle of vodka every day is drinking too much. It's easier (and faster) to just give women a blanket list of "don'ts" than to explain to them what's going on and then trust them to use their common sense and self-control.
The one downside (or so I thought) to having a midwife instead of an OBGYN is that midwives don't usually offer ultrasounds. This made me sad as I longed to see my little fetus! Then I read Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. Here is the paragraph that made me glad my midwives weren't into ultrasounds: "Frenchman Paul Langevin discovered that high intensity ultrasound could destroy schools of fish in the ocean, and when a person put a hand in a tank of water that had ultrasound waves running through it, they experienced pain, a discovery that led doctors to use the technology to destroy tissue, such as a brain tumor." That's high-intensity ultrasounds. On modern prenatal ultrasounds Susan McCutcheon says, "We do know that in the short term cells behave abnormally after just one diagnostic ultrasound exposure. The shape of cells so radiated changes temporarily and their movement becomes frenetic."
An ultrasound would make my little blueberry a frenetic glob of cells? I was happy to skip them. (I did get one, at 20-weeks, to find out the gender of my baby though, figuring since my little one was no longer a glob of cells it would be safer.)
I have to say that this was not a hard philosophical decision for me--did I think pregnancy was a natural process and I could trust my body and evolution to do it right or did I think pregnancy was a disaster waiting to happen? Did I want someone who would take my questions about baths and food seriously or someone who would bark rules at me? Did I want to maximize my chances of succeeding at natural birth?
I chose the midwife route.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Numbing Out vs Natural Birth: Where Objectivists and Hippies Can Find Common Ground
What you will hear from the pop culture herd: giving birth is a personal experience and the best path for you--natural or drugs--only you can determine.
If you don't subscribe to the cult of moral grayness that denies objective reality, there is only one choice and the thinking about it goes like this:
-Is it rational to not want to experience the pain of childbirth? Yes.
-Is it rational to sign up for an epidural unconsciously, without looking into the costs? No, unconsciousness is unacceptable.
Therefore, inform yourself by reading the following:
When you sign up for an epidural, you also sign up for an IV and a bag of fluids, a urinary catheter, a blood pressure cuff to tighten on your arm every 15 minutes or less and continuous fetal monitoring.
The forced fluids in the IV may cause your perineum to become engorged and not able to stretch so you will be at a higher risk for needing an episiotomy. The urinary catheters will put you at a higher risk of getting a UTI. The epidural itself will likely cause hypotention, a sudden drop in your blood pressure--hence the blood pressure cuff monitoring you. Your baby will also have to be monitored as a drop in your blood pressure decreases the amount of blood (and therefore oxygen) going to him/her which can lead to fetal distress.
Epidurals eliminate the normal hormone process of labor which will make your labor take three times longer than a natural birth. The epidural will slow down or stall your contractions. That is why most women who get an epidural will also require Pitocin. Common side effects of Pitocin include: nausea, vomiting, and much more painful contractions. Less common side effects include: rash, hives, itching, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue, blood clotting problems, changes in heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia, pooling of blood in the pelvis, postpartum hemorrhage and a ruptured uterus. Side effects for your baby include: bleeding in the eye, irregular or slow heartbeat, seizures, jaundice and low Apgar scores. Less common side effects for your baby include: brain damage, neonatal retinal hemorrhage and death.
Epidurals make pushing more difficult and increase the likelihood of forceps or vacuum delivery by 20-75%. Common side effects for the mother of a forceps delivery include: cuts and heavy bleeding. Common side effects for the baby include: heavy bruising. Less common side effects for the mother include: permanent loss of urinary and bowel control. Less common side effects for the baby include: broken bones, brain damage and death. Vacuum assisted deliveries are less risky for the mother but have common side effects for the baby that include: abrasions on the scalp, cephalohematoma (a collection of blood under the fibrous covering of the skull bone), jaundice and eye hemorrhage. Less common side-effects for the baby include: retinal hemorrhage, subgaleal hematoma(a collection of blood just under the scalp, injuring the underlying veins), intracranial hemorrhage and brain damage.
Epidurals increase the risk of a C-section by 25-50%. Some common C-section risks for the mother include: infection, heavy blood loss, blood clots in the legs or lungs, nausea, vomiting, severe headache, bowel problems, a recovery that takes three times longer than a vaginal birth and complications in later pregnancies (uterine rupture and placenta problems that cause severe bleeding after birth which may require a hysterectomy). C-section risks for the baby include: injury during the delivery, need for special care in the neonatal intensive care unit and immature lungs and breathing problems if the due date has been miscalculated.
If you just get the epidural (and manage to give birth without Pitocin, forceps, a vacuum assisted delivery a or a C-section) common side effects include: feeling like you are not able to breathe, uncontrollable shivering, ringing in your ears, itching around your face, neck and throat, nausea and vomiting. Epidurals also double your risk of hemorrhage.
Less common side effects of epidurals include: allergic shock, convulsions, respiratory paralysis, loss of bladder control for months, severe headache caused by leakage of spinal fluid that lasts for weeks and requires bed rest and a blood patch, epidural fever (which will result in your baby being sent to the neonatal intensive care unit), permanent nerve damage, brain damage, cardiac arrest and death.
Common side effects for your baby when you get an epidural include: respiratory depression, fetal malpositioning and an increased risk of jaundice. Your baby will be born drowsy and will exhibit the same drug toxicity symptoms as a baby born to a woman taking cocaine and opium.
The epidural-experience doesn't end with birth. For hours afterward the lower half of your body will be numb. You won't be able to walk and you might not be allowed to hold your baby. Later you might get tingling, shaky and numb sensations in your legs, a severe backache, soreness where the needle was inserted and urinary or fecal incontinence. You will heal more slowly than a woman who had an unmedicated birth.
Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, you may have trouble bonding with your newborn. You will have an increased risk of breast milk production problems and you will be at a greater risk for postpartum depression.
Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, your baby may have trouble latching on (which can lead to breastfeeding difficulties). Your baby may also have trouble bonding with you.
For up to six weeks after birth, a baby that was drugged (because you aren't just drugging yourself) will exhibit neurbobehavioral effects such as irritability, inconsolability and decreased ability to track an object visually or to shut out noises and light i.e. epidurals will make you are much more likely to have a crabby, difficult newborn.
To conclude, getting an epidural carries many serious health risks to you and your baby. It prevents you from experiencing a couple hours of intense pain in exchange for extra weeks of recovery (i.e. pain...) and over a month of caring for a miserable infant.
95% of unmedicated births have no scary side-effects. Less women tear. Tears are less bad. Babies are born wide awake. The wide awake babies nurse right away. Moms get hormone rushes that make them fall in love with their babies and prevent postpartum depression and hemorrhage. The babies get the hormone rushes and fall in love with their moms. Moms get hormones that make their milk come in. Moms heal faster... the list goes on. The 5% of natural births that have complications end up as vacuum/forceps/C-section births with all the risks listed above.
The medical establishment makes a lot of noise about breech babies but breech babies can be born naturally and easily--this is not a complication. Neither is the cord around the baby's neck--the baby is getting his air through that cord and does not need to breathe through his mouth until that cord is cut. Big babies are not a complication either.
For your entire life you have watched women pretend to give birth on television--they scream and it's horrible and doctors have to save the baby and then the mother. This is nothing like reality. The reality is: your baby is three to four times more likely to die if you give birth with a doctor at a hospital than with a midwife at home. Birth isn't a medical emergency. It's a natural process. Your body was made to do this. Your body evolved to be successful at this--that is why your genes were passed on.
Moreover, it is not rational to compromise the health and well-being of your body or your baby to avoid some perfectly natural pain. The average unmedicated birth is around five hours. What is five hours over the course of a lifetime?
A personal note: when I started researching this I was desperately hoping to find evidence that would free me from facing an unmedicated birth. I thought, "I'm so healthy! A little drugs every now and then aren't so bad, right?" Instead, I found no way to escape the reality that the best thing for the health and well-being of my body, my baby and our relationship was to take the pain.
When I decided that I was going to give birth with no medication, I cried. I was so afraid of how much it would hurt. Then someone said to me: "Why be so afraid of something you have never experienced? You know the fear of pain is always worse than the pain."
They were right. I had a natural birth, no drugs whatsoever. It took three hours. There were no tears or other complications. It hurt, but it was a fascinating life experience that I wouldn't give up.
The side effects of my natural birth have been:
-A certain fearlessness that comes with knowing pain is just pain. It isn't that scary after all.
-Intense admiration in my husband's eyes when we tell people about the birth of our son.
-A baby that was born wide awake and healthy with a perfect Apgar score, a baby that settled into life easily and comfortably, a baby that was never poked, prodded, stuck with needles or taken away from me and his dad, a baby that never got jaundice, baby acne or cradle cap, a baby that doesn't spit up. My baby is now five months old and has yet to catch a cold. He is that healthy, happy, glowing, beautiful example of life-thriving that every mother dreams of having. Everywhere I go people comment on how healthy, conscious and beautiful he is when they see him. My reward for all the hard work I put into the choices I make is that everyone tells me how "lucky" I am. Only the very few know it's not luck.
To be more informed about what kind of birth you think is rational:
The Business of Being Born: why the medical establishment wants you to have a medicated birth.
Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born: how the medical establishment took over birth. On a side note, the author totally neglects doing thorough research into current birth practices (like epidurals) but the rest of the book is awesome.
Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife: an enjoyable and enlightening read. This book taught me how to think about birth and was instrumental for me when I went into labor i.e. it's possible my labor was only three hours long because of what I learned from this book.
How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor: This book won't just help you keep your kids healthy, it will teach you how to keep yourself healthy.
http://www.homebirth.net.au/2008/06/homebirth-vs-hospital-statistics-to-die.html: See for yourself some mother and baby survival statistics when midwife births are compared to hospital births.
Sources I used in this post series (Trimester 1):
webmd.com
mayoclinic.com
drugs.com
natural-pregnancy-mentor.com
homebirth.net.au
Weighing the Pros and Cons of the Epidural by Penny Simkin
If you don't subscribe to the cult of moral grayness that denies objective reality, there is only one choice and the thinking about it goes like this:
-Is it rational to not want to experience the pain of childbirth? Yes.
-Is it rational to sign up for an epidural unconsciously, without looking into the costs? No, unconsciousness is unacceptable.
Therefore, inform yourself by reading the following:
When you sign up for an epidural, you also sign up for an IV and a bag of fluids, a urinary catheter, a blood pressure cuff to tighten on your arm every 15 minutes or less and continuous fetal monitoring.
The forced fluids in the IV may cause your perineum to become engorged and not able to stretch so you will be at a higher risk for needing an episiotomy. The urinary catheters will put you at a higher risk of getting a UTI. The epidural itself will likely cause hypotention, a sudden drop in your blood pressure--hence the blood pressure cuff monitoring you. Your baby will also have to be monitored as a drop in your blood pressure decreases the amount of blood (and therefore oxygen) going to him/her which can lead to fetal distress.
Epidurals eliminate the normal hormone process of labor which will make your labor take three times longer than a natural birth. The epidural will slow down or stall your contractions. That is why most women who get an epidural will also require Pitocin. Common side effects of Pitocin include: nausea, vomiting, and much more painful contractions. Less common side effects include: rash, hives, itching, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue, blood clotting problems, changes in heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia, pooling of blood in the pelvis, postpartum hemorrhage and a ruptured uterus. Side effects for your baby include: bleeding in the eye, irregular or slow heartbeat, seizures, jaundice and low Apgar scores. Less common side effects for your baby include: brain damage, neonatal retinal hemorrhage and death.
Epidurals make pushing more difficult and increase the likelihood of forceps or vacuum delivery by 20-75%. Common side effects for the mother of a forceps delivery include: cuts and heavy bleeding. Common side effects for the baby include: heavy bruising. Less common side effects for the mother include: permanent loss of urinary and bowel control. Less common side effects for the baby include: broken bones, brain damage and death. Vacuum assisted deliveries are less risky for the mother but have common side effects for the baby that include: abrasions on the scalp, cephalohematoma (a collection of blood under the fibrous covering of the skull bone), jaundice and eye hemorrhage. Less common side-effects for the baby include: retinal hemorrhage, subgaleal hematoma(a collection of blood just under the scalp, injuring the underlying veins), intracranial hemorrhage and brain damage.
Epidurals increase the risk of a C-section by 25-50%. Some common C-section risks for the mother include: infection, heavy blood loss, blood clots in the legs or lungs, nausea, vomiting, severe headache, bowel problems, a recovery that takes three times longer than a vaginal birth and complications in later pregnancies (uterine rupture and placenta problems that cause severe bleeding after birth which may require a hysterectomy). C-section risks for the baby include: injury during the delivery, need for special care in the neonatal intensive care unit and immature lungs and breathing problems if the due date has been miscalculated.
If you just get the epidural (and manage to give birth without Pitocin, forceps, a vacuum assisted delivery a or a C-section) common side effects include: feeling like you are not able to breathe, uncontrollable shivering, ringing in your ears, itching around your face, neck and throat, nausea and vomiting. Epidurals also double your risk of hemorrhage.
Less common side effects of epidurals include: allergic shock, convulsions, respiratory paralysis, loss of bladder control for months, severe headache caused by leakage of spinal fluid that lasts for weeks and requires bed rest and a blood patch, epidural fever (which will result in your baby being sent to the neonatal intensive care unit), permanent nerve damage, brain damage, cardiac arrest and death.
Common side effects for your baby when you get an epidural include: respiratory depression, fetal malpositioning and an increased risk of jaundice. Your baby will be born drowsy and will exhibit the same drug toxicity symptoms as a baby born to a woman taking cocaine and opium.
The epidural-experience doesn't end with birth. For hours afterward the lower half of your body will be numb. You won't be able to walk and you might not be allowed to hold your baby. Later you might get tingling, shaky and numb sensations in your legs, a severe backache, soreness where the needle was inserted and urinary or fecal incontinence. You will heal more slowly than a woman who had an unmedicated birth.
Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, you may have trouble bonding with your newborn. You will have an increased risk of breast milk production problems and you will be at a greater risk for postpartum depression.
Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, your baby may have trouble latching on (which can lead to breastfeeding difficulties). Your baby may also have trouble bonding with you.
For up to six weeks after birth, a baby that was drugged (because you aren't just drugging yourself) will exhibit neurbobehavioral effects such as irritability, inconsolability and decreased ability to track an object visually or to shut out noises and light i.e. epidurals will make you are much more likely to have a crabby, difficult newborn.
To conclude, getting an epidural carries many serious health risks to you and your baby. It prevents you from experiencing a couple hours of intense pain in exchange for extra weeks of recovery (i.e. pain...) and over a month of caring for a miserable infant.
95% of unmedicated births have no scary side-effects. Less women tear. Tears are less bad. Babies are born wide awake. The wide awake babies nurse right away. Moms get hormone rushes that make them fall in love with their babies and prevent postpartum depression and hemorrhage. The babies get the hormone rushes and fall in love with their moms. Moms get hormones that make their milk come in. Moms heal faster... the list goes on. The 5% of natural births that have complications end up as vacuum/forceps/C-section births with all the risks listed above.
The medical establishment makes a lot of noise about breech babies but breech babies can be born naturally and easily--this is not a complication. Neither is the cord around the baby's neck--the baby is getting his air through that cord and does not need to breathe through his mouth until that cord is cut. Big babies are not a complication either.
For your entire life you have watched women pretend to give birth on television--they scream and it's horrible and doctors have to save the baby and then the mother. This is nothing like reality. The reality is: your baby is three to four times more likely to die if you give birth with a doctor at a hospital than with a midwife at home. Birth isn't a medical emergency. It's a natural process. Your body was made to do this. Your body evolved to be successful at this--that is why your genes were passed on.
Moreover, it is not rational to compromise the health and well-being of your body or your baby to avoid some perfectly natural pain. The average unmedicated birth is around five hours. What is five hours over the course of a lifetime?
A personal note: when I started researching this I was desperately hoping to find evidence that would free me from facing an unmedicated birth. I thought, "I'm so healthy! A little drugs every now and then aren't so bad, right?" Instead, I found no way to escape the reality that the best thing for the health and well-being of my body, my baby and our relationship was to take the pain.
When I decided that I was going to give birth with no medication, I cried. I was so afraid of how much it would hurt. Then someone said to me: "Why be so afraid of something you have never experienced? You know the fear of pain is always worse than the pain."
They were right. I had a natural birth, no drugs whatsoever. It took three hours. There were no tears or other complications. It hurt, but it was a fascinating life experience that I wouldn't give up.
The side effects of my natural birth have been:
-A certain fearlessness that comes with knowing pain is just pain. It isn't that scary after all.
-Intense admiration in my husband's eyes when we tell people about the birth of our son.
-A baby that was born wide awake and healthy with a perfect Apgar score, a baby that settled into life easily and comfortably, a baby that was never poked, prodded, stuck with needles or taken away from me and his dad, a baby that never got jaundice, baby acne or cradle cap, a baby that doesn't spit up. My baby is now five months old and has yet to catch a cold. He is that healthy, happy, glowing, beautiful example of life-thriving that every mother dreams of having. Everywhere I go people comment on how healthy, conscious and beautiful he is when they see him. My reward for all the hard work I put into the choices I make is that everyone tells me how "lucky" I am. Only the very few know it's not luck.
To be more informed about what kind of birth you think is rational:
The Business of Being Born: why the medical establishment wants you to have a medicated birth.
Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born: how the medical establishment took over birth. On a side note, the author totally neglects doing thorough research into current birth practices (like epidurals) but the rest of the book is awesome.
Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife: an enjoyable and enlightening read. This book taught me how to think about birth and was instrumental for me when I went into labor i.e. it's possible my labor was only three hours long because of what I learned from this book.
How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor: This book won't just help you keep your kids healthy, it will teach you how to keep yourself healthy.
http://www.homebirth.net.au/2008/06/homebirth-vs-hospital-statistics-to-die.html: See for yourself some mother and baby survival statistics when midwife births are compared to hospital births.
Sources I used in this post series (Trimester 1):
webmd.com
mayoclinic.com
drugs.com
natural-pregnancy-mentor.com
homebirth.net.au
Weighing the Pros and Cons of the Epidural by Penny Simkin
Thursday, June 7, 2012
After Studying Nutrition for Seven Years: Why I Concluded that the Weston A Price Diet Is the Best One
Eat the way your body evolved to eat, foods made by nature, not man: this is only the beginning of true health.
The next step is: how did our ancestors eat those things? This is crucial because. for example: various peoples have eaten whole grains for thousands of years, even hunters and gatherers ate grains, but no one ever ate whole grains that had not been sprouted or fermented. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate grains the way we do now. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate dairy the way we do now, they usually drank their milk sour, fermented or as curds and whey. They also didn't have pesticides on their fruits and vegetables or industrially raised meats. They also ate the whole animal. We think we are so evolved because we don't eat livers, feet and eyeballs anymore but the truth is: these are some of the most nutritious and important foods in existence. They are better for you than vegetables. Yay.
Though our ancestors had shorter lives due to infectious diseases and the hardships of life, they did not suffer from the things that kill us now--degenerative diseases, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, our bodies just starting to suck, etc.
The most astounding book on this subject is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. It's 700 pages long but reading it is hardly necessary because of all the photographs. Just borrow it from the library and look at the pictures and the captions. Go here to see a few of them: http://www.westonaprice.org/nutrition-greats/weston-price
Weston A. Price was a dentist who thought that crooked teeth (and cleft palates) were not caused by genes. He thought they were nutrition deficiencies. He didn't think that the road to perfect health began with studying sick people and finding cures for their ailments. He thought the road to health began by finding the healthiest people in the world and noting what they did to be so healthy. He set out to answer the question: what health is possible for the human being?
He spent a decade (in the 1930's) traveling the world looking for the healthiest people. He judged this by their teeth, he was a dentist after all. He found tribes of native peoples living everywhere from the Andes to the Swiss Alps to tropical islands who had perfectly straight, white teeth and no cavities (or 1 cavity out of every 500-1000 teeth). None of these people ever brushed their teeth.
He noted noted that when any natives started eating a Western diet (natives of a similar race to the one he had just studied but who lived closer to Western civilization and whose diet had changed accordingly), they would retain their straight teeth but get cavities. The children born to parents on this diet would have both crooked teeth and cavities. Crooked teeth were caused by a malformed dental arch due to the diet of the parents, not by genes as he shows in photograph after photograph.
Children with crooked teeth showed marked behavioral differences as well as other health problems like narrowed hips (making child rearing more difficult) and decreased fertility.
If you are like me and you love to read things yourself (as opposed to reading a blog about what someone else read and thought), read his book! It's fantastic. But it is not as important as the 700 page book written by Sally Fallon, the woman who runs the Weston A. Price foundation, Nourishing Traditions. This book has all the same information along with all the most current and up-to-date info and recipes!
The Weston A. Price diet is very impressive as they do a ton of research and are always expanding their knowledge. They also involve people in their research. I have received emails asking what I feed my baby and how his health is and if I would like to participate in a study that would require me to eat pork and get my blood tested four times a day. Unlike most studies that are funded by the people selling the product (studies on wine are usually funded by people who sell wine, studies on chocolate are funded by people who sell chocolate, and everything else is funded by Monsanto and Coca Cola), this group is purely people passionate about health who just want to know what they should be eating and how they should be eating it.
The WAPF the magazine publishes many letters from readers. Most are personal stories attesting to how the WAPF diet changed their lives. Here is mine:
I grew up on a farm eating all whole grains, organic fresh produce and home grown meats. My parents, siblings and myself rarely got sick though I did suffer from acne and insomnia.
In college, I took a course in nutrition. I learned that most health problems are caused by vitamin and mineral deficiencies which left me wondering: could nutrition cure my acne and my insomnia?
My husband grew up eating the standard unhealthy American diet. He got sick all the time before he met me and was often sick when we first began dating. We made a lot of jokes at that time about me being a "carrier". I worked with children and would carry those germs straight from the kids to him.
My husband changed his eating habits when we began living together (he started eating like I did) and has only gotten a cold--if you can call it that since it only lasted a day--once. But he continued to suffer from dandruff, eczema and hair loss. We cured his dandruff a year ago by experimenting with eliminating different foods (we found that he cannot tolerate any dairy, even raw, unless it has been cultured).
Since we began eating the WAPF diet he has ceased losing hair but he still has eczema. I will update this post if this changes because I bet that the eczema is on its way out and will just take a little longer. Or perhaps the fermented foods cured his hair loss but he will have to join me in eating liver and fish eggs to cure his eczema. It is also possible that he is just highly sensitive to the chlorine in our water.
On the taste of foods: if you study the science of taste, you will find that any food you can't stand, if you force yourself to eat it once a month for a year, you will come to like and even crave it. Taste is just habit. I don't like liver yet, but I plan to.
I feel it is important for me to note that in order to not drive myself insane, I follow the WAPF diet 80% of the time. The rest of the time I am a delightful dinner guest.
The next step is: how did our ancestors eat those things? This is crucial because. for example: various peoples have eaten whole grains for thousands of years, even hunters and gatherers ate grains, but no one ever ate whole grains that had not been sprouted or fermented. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate grains the way we do now. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate dairy the way we do now, they usually drank their milk sour, fermented or as curds and whey. They also didn't have pesticides on their fruits and vegetables or industrially raised meats. They also ate the whole animal. We think we are so evolved because we don't eat livers, feet and eyeballs anymore but the truth is: these are some of the most nutritious and important foods in existence. They are better for you than vegetables. Yay.
Though our ancestors had shorter lives due to infectious diseases and the hardships of life, they did not suffer from the things that kill us now--degenerative diseases, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, our bodies just starting to suck, etc.
The most astounding book on this subject is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. It's 700 pages long but reading it is hardly necessary because of all the photographs. Just borrow it from the library and look at the pictures and the captions. Go here to see a few of them: http://www.westonaprice.org/nutrition-greats/weston-price
Weston A. Price was a dentist who thought that crooked teeth (and cleft palates) were not caused by genes. He thought they were nutrition deficiencies. He didn't think that the road to perfect health began with studying sick people and finding cures for their ailments. He thought the road to health began by finding the healthiest people in the world and noting what they did to be so healthy. He set out to answer the question: what health is possible for the human being?
He spent a decade (in the 1930's) traveling the world looking for the healthiest people. He judged this by their teeth, he was a dentist after all. He found tribes of native peoples living everywhere from the Andes to the Swiss Alps to tropical islands who had perfectly straight, white teeth and no cavities (or 1 cavity out of every 500-1000 teeth). None of these people ever brushed their teeth.
He noted noted that when any natives started eating a Western diet (natives of a similar race to the one he had just studied but who lived closer to Western civilization and whose diet had changed accordingly), they would retain their straight teeth but get cavities. The children born to parents on this diet would have both crooked teeth and cavities. Crooked teeth were caused by a malformed dental arch due to the diet of the parents, not by genes as he shows in photograph after photograph.
Children with crooked teeth showed marked behavioral differences as well as other health problems like narrowed hips (making child rearing more difficult) and decreased fertility.
If you are like me and you love to read things yourself (as opposed to reading a blog about what someone else read and thought), read his book! It's fantastic. But it is not as important as the 700 page book written by Sally Fallon, the woman who runs the Weston A. Price foundation, Nourishing Traditions. This book has all the same information along with all the most current and up-to-date info and recipes!
The Weston A. Price diet is very impressive as they do a ton of research and are always expanding their knowledge. They also involve people in their research. I have received emails asking what I feed my baby and how his health is and if I would like to participate in a study that would require me to eat pork and get my blood tested four times a day. Unlike most studies that are funded by the people selling the product (studies on wine are usually funded by people who sell wine, studies on chocolate are funded by people who sell chocolate, and everything else is funded by Monsanto and Coca Cola), this group is purely people passionate about health who just want to know what they should be eating and how they should be eating it.
The WAPF the magazine publishes many letters from readers. Most are personal stories attesting to how the WAPF diet changed their lives. Here is mine:
I grew up on a farm eating all whole grains, organic fresh produce and home grown meats. My parents, siblings and myself rarely got sick though I did suffer from acne and insomnia.
In college, I took a course in nutrition. I learned that most health problems are caused by vitamin and mineral deficiencies which left me wondering: could nutrition cure my acne and my insomnia?
I started keeping track of my vitamin and mineral intake. I recorded everything I ate for six months, making sure that I got 100% of everything every day. It was pretty high maintenance but it was also a homework assignment. I started inventing "nutritionally perfect meals", meals that provided 100% of the vitamins and minerals the government said I should be getting every day.
Unfortunately, the nutrition I learned at Wesleyan was from a USDA/FDA approved textbook, meaning it was a Monsanto/Coca Cola/McDonalds approved textbook. I learned things like: Aspartame only gives cancer to rats and MSG rarely hurts anyone, so though my meals were providing me with good nutrition according to my nutrition database, I was eating more processed food than I ever had in my life. I was eating very typical "healthy" American diet high in vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins like deli meat, nonfat dairy and since I was told that fruit was barely better for me than a candy bar, candy bars for treats. I also drank diet sodas.
This time period was the sickest I have been in my life. In fact, the only cold I have ever had was during this time. I remember it acutely as I finally understood those cold medicine commercials that I had never understood previously--runny nose, pounding head, etc.
I quickly returned to the diet on which I had been raised--a diet very similar to the WAPF diet--and though I continued to have B+/A- skin and terrible insomnia, I never got sick.
When I learned of Price's work my diet changed in the following ways: I eat something fermented with every meal, I consume most of my dairy raw and cultured, I drink a large quantity of homemade tonic-beers, similar to kombucha which I also drink but made with fermented ginger, and I eat liver and fish eggs.
My skin is now glowing movie-star quality skin and my insomnia has disappeared. Other interesting changes include disappearance of sugar cravings which I use to have all the time. After about a month into the WAPF diet I was upset one day and thought, "Ah man, I really need a kombucha." I laughed. "Chocolate, I meant chocolate," I thought. Only the truth was... what I wanted to comfort me in that moment was kombucha. I used to enjoy a glass of wine at the end of the day but now I would rather have a home made ginger tonic. I have always had good energy but I have so much more now it's shocking. I am also happier.
My husband's story:
My husband grew up eating the standard unhealthy American diet. He got sick all the time before he met me and was often sick when we first began dating. We made a lot of jokes at that time about me being a "carrier". I worked with children and would carry those germs straight from the kids to him.
My husband changed his eating habits when we began living together (he started eating like I did) and has only gotten a cold--if you can call it that since it only lasted a day--once. But he continued to suffer from dandruff, eczema and hair loss. We cured his dandruff a year ago by experimenting with eliminating different foods (we found that he cannot tolerate any dairy, even raw, unless it has been cultured).
Since we began eating the WAPF diet he has ceased losing hair but he still has eczema. I will update this post if this changes because I bet that the eczema is on its way out and will just take a little longer. Or perhaps the fermented foods cured his hair loss but he will have to join me in eating liver and fish eggs to cure his eczema. It is also possible that he is just highly sensitive to the chlorine in our water.
On the taste of foods: if you study the science of taste, you will find that any food you can't stand, if you force yourself to eat it once a month for a year, you will come to like and even crave it. Taste is just habit. I don't like liver yet, but I plan to.
I feel it is important for me to note that in order to not drive myself insane, I follow the WAPF diet 80% of the time. The rest of the time I am a delightful dinner guest.
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