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Turn Norovirus into No Mo’Virus

Posted on April 5, 2014 by beeyoutifulguestposter 2 comments

Turn Norovirus into No Mo’ Virus

by Nancy Webster

A few weeks ago, our grown son came home to visit for a few days. His appetite was just returning after a serious stint of diarrhea and nausea. He said “it hit him” 48 hours earlier, soon after eating at a restaurant. Since he was certain it had been “just” food poisoning and he was now feeling better, contagion wasn’t a concern… until two days later when I woke up sick. The other seven family members still at home followed suit within the next few days.

When this familiar scene happens, a lot of folks say they’ve got the stomach flu. But they don’t. There’s no such thing. Influenza viruses do not involve the stomach but stick to making us feverish, achy, and congested. Diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, cramping, and dizziness can be caused by salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli, and many other bacteria, along with viruses or parasites.

The Inside Culprit

These days, the most common culprit of gastrointestinal illness is the norovirus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), norovirus causes about 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and is blamed for at least 800 U.S. deaths each year.

Symptoms of norovirus include diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach cramps and, sometimes, general achiness and fever. Once exposed, a victim usually feels symptoms within 48 hours, and they last last one to two days followed by a full recovery. Complications (sometimes deadly) tend to happen in the weak and immune-compromised population, largely due to dehydration.

Norovirus is named after Norwalk, Ohio, where the first confirmed outbreak was identified in 1968. You might have heard it nicknamed “the cruise ship disease”. Its favorite haunt is where many people gather in close quarters. This means nursing homes, daycare centers, hospitals, dormitories, retreat centers, and yes, family homes, too.

What makes norovirus so famous is how easily it spreads. If an infected person- even one whose symptoms ended up to three days earlier- prepares food or drink (think restaurants and cafeterias), that contaminated food can make you sick. The virus can live on surfaces for up to two weeks; if you touch contaminated surfaces and then scratch your nose or rub your eyes or mouth, you can get it. And when an infected person vomits or flushes a toilet after vomiting or having a bowel movement, the norovirus goes air-bound and spreads when inhaled.

Norovirus is, like the flu, a family of ever-mutating viruses. You may become immune to the strain you catch, but there are plenty of other noroviruses waiting in the wings so you can suffer an encore later. It’s most often traced back to leafy produce sprayed by pesticides diluted with fecal-contaminated water, and to food handling by still-infected food workers.

Because norovirus does not have a fatty lipid membrane protecting its cell wall, it cannot be broken down by soaps or detergents. Even alcohol does not kill it, which means using hand sanitizer after a trip to the store won’t protect you from norovirus. Chlorine bleach will do the trick, but touching and breathing toxic bleach is not a wise idea for long-term good health.

If all this bad news about norovirus has you feeling hopeless, don’t despair. As long as you and your loved ones are fairly healthy, if you get norovirus it will blow through like a storm system and you’ll feel sunny again within two days. However, you can greatly reduce your risk of catching it (and other “bugs”) by following some or all of these preventive measures:

Keep Your Immune System Strong

1) Support the immune system throughout the year with a nutrient-dense diet, including a daily dose of cod liver oil and high vitamin butter oil. Cod liver oil is high in immune-strengthening vitamins A and D and butter oil is rich in vitamin K2. The three nutrients work together. If you take no other supplements, these are the most important. Consider them as necessary as food. If you cannot afford the cod liver oil/butter oil blend, Beeyoutiful also offers the option of A&D as Dynamic Duo and K2 as Katalyst. Some people are also extra low in Vitamin D3. If that’s you, or if you don’t know your levels but also don’t get much sun, you may want to add D3 to the mix as well.

2)Take in probiotics every day! Your immune system is based in your gut. A plentiful supply of good bacteria makes a strong army against bad bacteria and allows your body to absorb completely all the immune-boosting foods and supplements you take in. If you eat a portion of lacto-fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut and other veggies and fruits) every day, you get a dose of preventive probiotics. If you do not but are generally healthy and eat well, consider taking Acidophilus Blast. If your schedule hasn’t been tweaked yet to include regular, nutrient-dense meals or you’ve got some health issues, bump up your daily probiotic to Beeyoutiful’s Ultimate Defense or even Gut Guardian for high-potency support.

3)Beeyoutiful also carries Ultra Immune, a handy, all-in-one softgel with virus-enemies allicin (the medicinal part of garlic), elderberry, olive leaf, rosemary and oregano oil. Take one per day all the time so viruses will find you to be a very inhospitable environment. If a family member succumbs to sickness, take Ultra Immune several times per day to increase your chances of evading the bug. (Skip this one if you are pregnant. The oils taken internally may cause miscarriage.)

4)Then there’s the classic, all-round immune-booster and healer: vitamin C. Most of us don’t get enough of this needful vitamin in our diets, because our food is shipped far, stored long, and processed empty. Beeyoutiful’s Rosehip C contains acerola powder that has many extra, illness-fighting minerals. For those who can’t swallow pills, Beeyoutiful carries Gentle C, capsules of C plus buffering calcium which can be opened and stirred into drinks or soft food. And now there is new ChewC, too!

5) Bee propolis, packaged in Beeyoutiful’s Bee Immune, works hand-in-hand with vitamin C. Made by honeybees, propolis contains antiseptic plant resins, enzymes, flavonoids and other immune-supporting compounds. The combo of vitamin C and propolis is a safe option for pregnant mamas to stay well.

6) Check your lifestyle. Eat regular, nutrient-dense meals. Avoid a lot of sugar, especially if sickness is in your midst! Get regular, gentle exercise. Do not over-exercise as this stresses your immune system. Go outside every day. Sleep: it’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity! Your immune system is rebooted every night you get enough sleep. Keep your relationships solid and happy and lift your cares to your Creator. There’s no better stress reliever!

Keep Things Clean

We touch 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. The very best advice for staying well is to wash your hands well and often, especially after visiting the bathroom. Although the soap does not disinfect the tough norovirus, a thorough washing (including under the fingernails) will help the virus particles slip off the hands and down the drain. But if your children wash hands like some of mine (if they even remember!), you know some extra disinfecting is in order, especially when norovirus has struck.

Toilets, sinks, counters, floors, doorknobs and light switch covers all need a frequent wipe down when sickness hits home. Don’t forget phones and keyboards, too. Norovirus particles can live up to two weeks on surfaces. A 10% bleach solution kills norovirus, but it is very unhealthy to use. Instead, fill a 32-ounce spray bottle with water and add 40-60 drops of grapefruit seed extract (GSE). GSE is proven to destroy norovirus (it kills mold, too). Add 10 drops per load to the softener compartment of your washing machine to kill norovirus on sick clothes and bedding. Add a few drops to your dishwasher (or dish water). Norovirus particles like to hide in food stuck onto dishes. And don’t forget toothbrushes! After use, soak yours in a glass of water with 2 drops of GSE. Rinse before using again.

Another option for sanitizing and freshening is essential oils. Most are anti-viral as well as anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic. Use in all the places you use GSE, although not as many drops of oil are required as of GSE. Mix 5-10 drops of tea tree or oregano oil in a spray bottle of water and wipe away. Or get fancy and mix up several oils together for maximum protection. See two great blend suggestions in the sidebar.

Don’t forget about clean air quality! Remember how norovirus goes airborne. A diffuser is most helpful in doing this job well. You can run straight tea tree or oregano oil or use your blends in it. If you don’t have a diffuser, regularly spritz your spray bottle of oils and water in the air of every room, focusing on sick rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. I have heavily sprayed a damp cotton cloth and hung it by a fan in a pinch, too.

When It Hits

You are not defenseless when norovirus hits. There are many “tricks” touted to take away symptoms quickly and to keep family members of the first victim well.

1)Take iodine. Almost everyone in America is deficient in iodine, says Dr. David Brownstein, author of Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It. There are varied opinions about how much to take, but a daily dose is helpful for most people and will greatly boost immunity to all sicknesses including cancer, especially cancer of the breasts and prostate. Testimonies abound of stomach viruses being stopped in their tracks by taking six drops of Lugol’s liquid iodine in a little water (it tastes strong) as soon as symptoms develop. This may need to be repeated 2-3 times in a day if vomiting has already started or becomes severe.

2)Take apple cider vinegar (preferably raw). Two teaspoons diluted in water for adults and 1 teaspoon in water for children. A squeeze of fresh lemon juice in the water is extra help. This measure works best as a preventative when you know you’ve been exposed to norovirus but have no symptoms. The ACV helps get the body in an alkaline state. Viruses, like all disease, grow best in an acid state.

3)Take activated charcoal. As soon as you get “that feeling” in your stomach, take 10-12 capsules and it likely will go away. If symptoms get ahead of you, take the charcoal anyway and again after vomiting or having diarrhea and your sick time will be over much sooner than if you let nature take its course. Try to drink enough water with the capsules to help them work. The charcoal captures toxins and carries them out of your body. (Do not take charcoal at the same hour you take probiotics.)

4)Take a high-quality probiotic. Especially if you have severe diarrhea, large, therapeutic doses are required. This calls for Gut Guardian Supreme, with 50 billion beneficial bacteria per dose. The reason your stomach cramps with norovirus is because the virus irritates the lining of your stomach and intestines. Take four capsules as soon as possible and follow up with that many on an empty stomach 3-4 times that same day. Once your symptoms are gone, keep taking 3-4 capsules 2x/day for a few more days to help stabilize your gut. Then drop down to the regular, suggested dose.

5)Use oregano oil. This one is for when you know you’ve been exposed, but not for after symptoms start. Add one drop of oregano essential oil to a serving of food that contains fat (an olive oil-based salad dressing is a great choice). Be sure it is a pure brand like Beeyoutiful’s. Repeat twice daily. Oregano oil kills good bacteria, too, so don’t overdo, don’t use for more than a few days, and don’t take at the same time you take a probiotic. (Make sure you’re using essential oils correctly and very carefully!)

6)Rest your stomach. Some suggest no liquid (or food) be taken for up to three hours after the first vomiting episode and then just occasional sips should be re-introduced. If that is too difficult, try to just allow sips instead of big gulps.

Ginger drinks are known for settling the stomach. Old-fashioned ginger ale, made with real ginger and real sugar, is still often recommended, but not the ordinary kind found in most stores today. Ginger ale made by lacto-fermentation is another option, as is hot tea made from grated, fresh ginger and sweetened with a bit of honey. Our family sips kombucha when sick. And I admit we’ve even used Gatorade when homemade felt overwhelming.

Peppermint essential oil is also known for relieving nausea and indigestion. One drop in a little water, sipped slowly, may not only help your tummy but will also freshen your mouth.

Once symptoms abate, do not rush the re-introduction of food or your stomach may rebel one last time. Start with light foods. Bone broth is excellent (do not use MSG-laden bouillon cubes). We like salted soda crackers at this time, too.

7)Isolate the patient. If you have the luxury, isolate the patient to a certain bedroom and bathroom to help contain the virus. Caregivers should use disposable paper towels for clean up and wear latex gloves for extra protection. (As a mom of many in a small house, I’ve found this an impossible suggestion to carry out!)

Prevent Dehydration

The big complication of norovirus that causes hospitalizations and even death is dehydration. I have a daughter who will vomit 20 times or more when she gets sick with the same virus that makes the rest of us get sick 3-4 times. Some people seem to tend that way. Non-stop diarrhea is another problem. If your patient is very weak and faint, with no urine for hours and no tears, and sometimes with sunken temples (or a sunken soft spot on a baby’s head), dehydration is severe. If you cannot get an oral or rectal rehydration solution into them, the need for hospitalization to get intravenous fluids is essential and immediate.

First try an oral rehydration recipe to administer by teaspoonfuls every five minutes if that’s what it takes to keep it down. Pedialyte is what most pediatricians recommend. Unfortunately, it has many unhealthful ingredients blended with the needed electrolytes and salts, but those may not be a worry in the face of possible hospitalization. You can also mix up your own using a recipe approved by the World Health Organization. Be careful to follow it precisely or worsened diarrhea or imbalanced cell salts (and resultant seizures) may occur. Made correctly, this recipe works very well (see sidebar).

When vomiting prevents a patient from absorbing enough liquid, a rehydration enema is the answer. The body actually absorbs liquid faster rectally and this bypasses the upset stomach. Once, a grown daughter of mine was so dehydrated she could barely walk. I administered the following recipe using a $10 enema bag kit from the drugstore and her health was turned around within thirty minutes. This is another recipe you should store with an enema kit and the ingredients in your emergency medical supplies (see sidebar).

In spite of technicalities, my family has called norovirus the “stomach bug” forever. When we eat well, watch sugar intake, take cod liver and butter oil daily, our friends get the bug but we do not. Those are the most important ways to stay well. But when Real Life happens and the bug threatens or catches us, the other suggestions definitely lessen the damage.

(If despite the above measures your patient exhibits any of the following, call your doctor immediately: 1)No urine output in 8 hours; 2)No tears with crying; 3)Excessive thirst; 4)Dry mucus membranes in the mouth; 5)Persistent vomiting and/or diarrhea; 6)Abdominal pain, especially abdominal pain which settles in the right lower abdomen.)

With her eight children, Nancy Webster has accumulated over 156 child-years of parenting experience so far. She has many more stomach bug stories (“learning experiences”) she spared her readers in this article. Nancy assures all new parents apprehensive about how they’ll handle the gross factor of stomach bugs that pity will get them through it.

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Liv(er)ing Beeyoutiful- Fall 2013 Catalog

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Beeyoutiful Mary Leave a comment

from the catalog archives Livering Beeyoutiful from Beeyoutiful.com

By Nancy Webster

Have you ever felt unappreciated for all the behind-the-scenes work you do to keep things running smoothly at home or at the office? Especially after extra busy days, I admit to having more than once considered hanging an “I Quit” sign in our kitchen, thinking it wouldn’t take long before my non-stop work there was missed.

Your liver may wish it, too, could hang out a white flag when it is suffering from burn-out, but all it can do is drop hints in the form of health problems—unless the work has totally overcome it, causing cancer or cirrhosis. A multi-tasking workhorse, the liver runs over 400 metabolic functions every day to keep you going strong for even your biggest days. When it goes down, so does your entire digestive system, your brain, your central nervous system and everything they direct.

Honestly, in my younger years, I didn’t give my liver much thought. But now, as middle age is full upon me along with a few accompanying issues, I see this neglect was a big mistake. Liver care is important even for children, who may enter the world with weak livers due to their mom’s unhealthy liver.

Liver 101

Pretty much everyone knows the liver is a filter to keep toxins from harming us. Everything must pass through your liver: any food, drink, pesticides or pills you consume; lotions, soaps, make-up or bug sprays you apply; injections/immunizations you receive; and even fragrances and gas station fumes you breathe. But that’s just one of its many jobs. This 3-4 pound organ plays a key role in digestion, the formation of our blood, and in immune defense.

During digestion, the liver secretes bile into the small intestine to lubricate the intestinal walls. The bitter bile regulates friendly bacteria; destroys dangerous organisms (like parasites and candida); stimulates peristalsis (muscle activity to move out fecal matter); and, with digestive fluid from its team player, the pancreas, helps us digest fats, proteins, and starches.

When the liver is abused by bad diet and chemicals and even not enough sleep (because it catches up on “housework” during the night), it becomes weak and congested. The bile it secretes turns toxic, ultimately contributing to what we now call a “leaky gut”, which leads to allergies, acne, eczema and other skin issues, food sensitivities, and even autism and bi-polar disorder.

The liver also does blood quality control. It regulates clotting factors, weeds out old red blood cells and helps grow new ones, and provides proteins needed to make white blood cells to fight germs.

How is My Liver Livin’?

Donna Gates, author of The Body Ecology Diet, suggests a quick test of liver health you can do right now. Place the fingers of your right hand underneath your right rib cage. You may find it feels hard, “congested”, and even tender. If you can’t extend your fingers up to the second knuckle, your liver definitely needs help.

Although the liver is involved in a long list of ailments, here is a short checklist to see how yours is faring:
1)Abdominal bloating
2)Pain or discomfort over the liver
3)Excessive abdominal fat, pot belly, or roll around upper abdomen
4)Trouble digesting fatty foods
5)Gallbladder has been removed
6)Acid reflux/heartburn
7)Dark spots (“liver spots”) or tiny red flecks that come and go on skin
8)Overheating of body; excessive perspiration
9)Acne, rosacea, or itchy, blotchy skin
10)Unexplained weight gain or inability to lose weight even with calorie restriction
Also, watch for high blood pressure, fatigue, high cholesterol and triglycerides, mood swings, depression, sleep apnea or snoring, and fatty yellowish lumps around your eyes.*

Alcoholics aren’t the only ones with liver problems. If you eat a diet mainly composed of high-carbohydrate, processed foods, you risk insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Dandy Help for a Prickly Situation

Your liver can get healthy again, but you need to make some changes first. Switch your personal care and cleaning products to organic, chemical-free ones. Lessen your exposure to electromagnetic forces by keeping wireless and other electric devices a minimum of eight feet from your bed. Eat more whole, organic foods and lacto-fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut. Avoid processed, sugary foods and bad oils like canola and soybean.

You also need to support all these changes with liver-healing supplements. In the old days, Native Americans and pioneers sought out chicory, dandelion, and prickly milk thistle plants when the weather warmed. They may not have known a healthier liver was the reason, but they knew eating these plants made their bodies feel lighter and cleaner after a long winter of salted meat and potatoes.

My family enjoys wild foraging and has sought out and eaten all three of these plants. Although gathering and eating these medicinal plants is fun and definitely puts a spring in our step, it takes time and is only possible in the growing seasons.

In their Silymarin Liver Support, Beeyoutiful offers a much easier way to supplement for a healthier liver. The main liver-strengthening ingredient extracted from the milk thistle plant seeds is silymarin, a powerful antioxidant said to protect liver and other cells in the brain and body from toxins (it has even been used to prevent death from accidentally ingested poisonous Deathcap mushrooms!). Silymarin promotes the growth of new liver cells (which you’ll keep healthy by your diet and lifestyle changes) and discourages the formation of fibrous tissue (hard, congested spots). It also helps your body hang onto the aggressive antioxidant called glutathione, which is famous for its role in improving autism and other problems.

Other known benefits of silymarin are protection from certain cancers including colon and prostate, improvement in the glycemic profile of Type 2 diabetics, and increase in milk production by nursing mothers. And I know that taking 1-3 capsules per day of Silymarin Liver Extract enhanced with dandelion and artichoke compounds is way easier than dealing with prickly milk thistle plants!

To complement their silymarin supplement, Beeyoutiful also offers Every Day Detox Tea. To stimulate your liver’s natural detoxification processes, roasted dandelion and chicory roots are combined with schisandra berries, in use even 5000 years ago. Called “five flavor berry” in Chinese, schisandra is unique in that it has all five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and pungent (or warmly spicy). A cup of this delightful, complex-tasting tea should be enjoyed 2-3 times daily. What a pleasant way to heal!

Large amounts of friendly bacteria are essential for keeping the liver clean and healthy. Fermented foods are an excellent source, but if your liver and/or gut need help, probiotics like Beeyoutiful’s Tummy Tune-Up and Gut Guardian are a needful addition to your daily supplements. Also, you can use Beeyoutiful’s Liquid Chlorophyll added to water, juice, or even kombucha to aid in liver cleansing.

Get Clean First

To jump-start your liver and overall healing routine, consider doing a bowel cleanse. It is necessary for the bowels to be clear and working well so as the liver begins dumping toxins, they can move right on out of the body. Many homemade recipes for bowel cleansing are available online, including water enemas, a salt water flush, a psyllium/bentonite clay/ginger/apple juice “shake”, and the well-known, ten-day Master Cleanse of just drinking lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne, and water. There are also packaged herbal cleanses available. Even after an initial cleanse, if your liver was especially toxic, you may want to do some coffee enemas to help lessen uncomfortable detox symptoms in the eyes, joints, and skin. Take care not to get constipated!

Many times naturopaths will also recommend a parasite and kidney cleanse followed by a liver cleanse, often with recipes based on the work of Hulda Clark, author of Cure for All Diseases. If you choose to follow these routines, research carefully and preferably get under the care of a good naturopath. You do not have to complete all these cleanses before benefiting from Silymarin Liver Support or Every Day Detox Tea.

Live well. Make your liver well. And you will be well.

*list from http://nourishholisticnutrition.com/heart-health/ten-signals-your-liver-is-telling-you-you-need-to-detox/#sthash.qdzKMVaB.dpuf

Nancy Webster enjoys researching and writing about alternative health. She leads the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of The Weston A. Price Foundation. A homeschooling mother of eight (and a new grandmother, too!), Nancy, her husband, Greg, and their children live on a partially-working farm in Middle Tennessee. They have fun publishing a free, online e-zine at http://www.CreativeCountryLiving.com.

Products mentioned:

Silymarin Liver Support

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Natural Energy for You and Your Little House- Spring 2013 Catalog

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Beeyoutiful Mary Leave a comment

Natural Energy for You and Your Little House

Nancy Webster

Ma Ingalls and her girls gave their house a thorough scrub-down every spring. But if you’re like me, you’re exhausted at the mere thought of doing a Little-House-onthe-Prairie style spring cleaning on top of the regular dishes and laundry. You may also wonder exactly why it seems so hard to accomplish the things on your to-do list.

Do your hair and nails look as dragged out as you feel? Are seasonal allergies your excuse? Or maybe you’re pregnant and just counting down the months until you can feel like yourself again—who cares about clean windows anyway?

Off to a Super Start

Even if you’ve made great changes in favor of eating more nutrient-dense, whole foods, it also takes superfoods to help your body stay in top health. These days, pollution, stress, your past history of junky eating and pharmaceutical use all work against every glass of raw milk or organic veggies you consume. Superfoods, though, are super full of nutrition, and because they are nature-made, your body can easily absorb and use their goodness.

So where do you start with adding superfoods to your diet? Which one will jumpstart your system and help you feel like washing windows after folding four loads of laundry, cooking for a crowd, and/or a long day at the office? Spirulina!

This humble, algae-like plant (called a cyanobacteria) is one of the most potent protein and nutrient sources available. And boosting energy is just one of its many abilities. Spirulina also works to relieve congestion, sniffling, and sneezing caused by all types of allergies. It boosts the immune system, helps control high blood pressure and cholesterol, protects from cancer, and more.

How does spirulina come by this impressive resume? As a source of protein, it is 65 percent complete protein. By comparison, beef is only 22 percent complete. This also makes it a far healthier choice than those much-touted, dubious protein powders, especially when you consider all the other goodies you get with spirulina (see http://holisticsquid.com/the-problem-with-protein-powders/). Spirulina contains all the essential amino acids, plus some, and provides a healthy portion of Omega-3 (like in salmon) as well as Omega 6 and 9. Omega-6 is gamma linoleic acid (GLA), known to be anti -inflammatory (for arthritis relief!), to increase fat burn after exercising, and to make beautiful hair and nails.

Spirulina is high in chlorophyll, which removes toxins from the blood and boosts the immune system. Chlorophyll and iron are a great friend to pregnant mamas, as the tendency for anemia at this season of life is significant. That’s why spirulina is a main ingredient in Beeyoutiful’s SuperMom multi-vitamins. The easily absorbable, non-constipating iron content of spirulina is 58 times that of raw spinach and 28 times that of raw beef liver 1. Spirulina is replete with vital minerals most of those pretty veggies at the store can’t provide any more, thanks to being grown in depleted soils.

Better Off Teeth, Nerves, and Both Brains

If weeds get the best of your garden, or your kids (or you!) don’t like vegetables, or you simply wish you could juice but just can’t swing it, handy, mineral-rich spirulina is the way to get your cancer-fighting daily quota of greens. Calcium and phosphorus are two of the major mineral players in this fantastic superfood. If these minerals are lacking or out of balance in the blood, tooth decay is in your near future. So spirulina is also recommended as part of a tooth remineralization program. And because the calcium content is more than 26 times that of milk, spirulina is excellent for children, the elderly, and pregnant women, and especially for folks who are casein- or lactose-intolerant.

If your nerves are on edge or your digestion is off, you need spirulina for all the B complex vitamins it contains. Our gut is our “second brain,” and it needs the B’s to work well. Do you have candida? Most people do these days, and spirulina has been shown to encourage and support the growth of healthy bacterial gut flora, which helps keep candida overgrowth under control. Because candida will cause and worsen symptoms, this is especially important if you have an autoimmune disease such as Crohn’s, chronic fatigue, lupus, or fibromyalgia.

Yet another feature of spirulina is its ability to chelate arsenic from the body. Hair analysis on one of our daughters showed her to be loaded with arsenic, which mystified me until I learned of the many places she might have encountered it in her young life. Arsenic is often present in well water, in pressure-treated wood like that at playgrounds, and in insect and rodent poison (used in public places even if not at your house). Last year, the news came out that it can be present even in rice, which especially impacts the gluten-free crowd. Yet the good news for my family was that after taking spirulina for six months, repeated tests showed the arsenic had cleared from my daughter’s body!

“But wait….There’s more!”

Spirulina’s antioxidant ability ranks 24,000 on the ORAC scale (Oxygen Radical A irulina’s antioxidant ability ranks 24,000 on the ORAC scale (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity), right up there with weird spices we might use only in teeny amounts and four times the ORAC score of blueberries. Feed your eyesight with spirulina’s antioxidant-rich carotenoids (nutrients found in green and brightly-colored vegetables) including beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, and lutein. The high antioxidant amounts in spirulina also lower risk of strokes, inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells, and regulate blood pressure. They also normalize extreme cholesterol levels without the need for dangerous statin drugs 2.

Although the sixteenth century Aztecs harvested and ate spirulina from Mexico’sLake Texcoco, Spirulina is now often grown in protected, organic ponds. Otherwise, spirulina from polluted sources can cause excess levels of lead, mercury, and cadmium in the body. Beeyoutiful does multiple sample mass spectrometer testing on each and every batch harvested to assure that no environmental, pesticide or heavy metal contaminants are present in the end product they offer their customers. So you can have peace of mind knowing it is truly pure and safe! Spirulina does wonders for almost everyone, but if you are prone to gout, have hyperparathyroidism, PKU, or a seafood or iodine allergy, you should avoid it. Because it does have some carbs, you should also consult a physician before using spirulina if you have Type 2 diabetes.

So how much spirulina do you need to get you going? A therapeutic serving size is between three and five grams, preferably broken up throughout the day. Since six tablets of Beeyoutiful brand spirulina equal three grams, a bottle will last one person approximately one month. For more serious health conditions, take the higher amount, but build up slowly to this dose to avoid detox reactions. Once you re-energize with spirulina, you’ll be ready to tackle that makeover spring cleaning—and to give Ma Ingalls a run for her money!

Nancy Webster is a homeschool mother of eight and leader of the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She is an ardent researcher on nutrition and alternative approaches to good health. Nancy lives with her family on their “partially working” farm in Tennessee.

[1] But don’t let these facts keep you from taking cod liver oil daily and eating liver weekly as well. Liver, also a superfood, contains full-blown vitamin B12 and vitamin A—not the pre-cursors present in spirulina. The pre-cursors are generally usable in the body, but young children and many adults with even mild digestive issues have trouble converting beta-carotene into vitamin A. Also, since it is disputed whether or not the body is able to absorb the B12 found in spirulina, animal products are necessary, too.

[2] The Weston A. Price Foundation says “young and middle-aged men…who have cholesterol levels just below 350 are at no greater risk than those whose cholesterol is very low. For elderly men and for women of all ages, high cholesterol is associated with a longer lifespan.”

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Addressing the GAPS in Your Health, Part 2

Posted on November 6, 2011 by stevetallent

Part 2

Nancy Webster

* This is the second part of a two part series, you can find the first article at “Addressing the GAPS in Your Health”

Part 1 of this article (Winter 2011) explained the reality that health problems are not necessarily genetic but can be related to diet and particularly to digestive health. Our “second brain,” the gut determines much of our mental, emotional, and physical health. The Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Diet restores a dysfunctional gut and allows people to enjoy a wider range of foods.

Sometimes I envy people who don’t like to cook. They open a can, zap a box, or bring home fast food. Meal prep is fast, and their kitchens stay clean. But often, especially as those people age, a hefty collection of medicines occupies the bathroom cabinet.

The kitchen at my house is rarely caught up. Over-sized stock pots of bones simmer on the stove. Gallon jars of fermenting kombucha, and water and dairy kefirs line the counter. Homemade butter and lacto-fermented sauerkraut keep the food processor whirring—and constantly in need of cleaning. What’s more, for truly healthy eating, there’s no such thing as grabbing fast food, which means always thinking ahead to the next meal, especially if we have to be away from home during meal time.

In her Nourishing Traditions cookbook, Sally Fallon says if you can’t take the time and trouble to cook nutrient-dense, properly prepared foods for your family, you should drop other activities so you can. That sounds harsh, but it is truly the best gift you can give your loved ones, particularly if they have health issues the GAPS Diet can help.

Filling in the GAPS

Friends regularly ask me about various health problems, because they know how much I like to research alternative treatments. My family now jokes that my standard answer has become: “Do the GAPS Diet!” When they hear my suggestion, some folks object that they don’t have any digestive issues, so gut-healing is irrelevant. That’s a misconception, however. Because it is so beneficial to health in general, GAPS does help!

Another major objection I hear is from those who don’t want to give up grains and potatoes. They get side-tracked by just going gluten-free, which is something of a fad these days. Although gluten is often the culprit that starts leaky gut problems, it is not the only source of the problem.

Gluten-free crackers, cookies, mixes, and such simply replace gluten flours with other starchy grains like brown rice. Those starches continue to feed the out-of-control bad bacteria responsible for a leaky gut. Plus, other grains are rarely prepared properly to deliver the benefits they can offer. Most should be soaked and/or fermented. Without that step, they still contain phytates and other digestive inhibitors which keep the body from assimilating vitamins and minerals in food and supplements.

Even celiac patients will benefit from the GAPS Diet, and they may find that eventually they will be able to tolerate some gluten-containing grains.

Supplementing the GAPS

Although the GAPS diet brings a lot of healing on its own, it is greatly enhanced by the use of a few supplements. I’ve explained below (in order of importance) the four most crucial ones.

1) A quality probiotic to boost the population of good bacteria in the intestines. Probiotics are good strains of bacteria. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, creator of the GAPS Diet, offers an excellent probiotic which does not contain any starches, although many find the cost of her product beyond their budget.

Using a cheap-o version from the drugstore, however, is not the answer. You’ll likely be wasting even the lesser amount of money you do spend. Bargain varieties often contain dead bacteria because of improper, less expensive processing methods and shelf storage.

Fortunately, Beeyoutiful’s Tummy Tune-Up represents a happy medium. It contains eight viable strains of the most vital bacteria, and remembering to take it is easy because it doesn’t require refrigeration. That means you can leave it in plain sight. While Tummy Tune Up contains a miniscule amount of starches, it is an excellent, budget-friendly alternative. (By contrast, Beeyoutiful’s Ultimate Defense is not a good companion to a strict GAPS diet because it contains fermented grains.)

2) Cod liver oil. Although everyone should be taking this supplement regularly, it is especially important for those on the GAPS Diet. We believe that Rosita Extra Virgin Cod Liver Oil is the very best available, but it, too, is costly.

As a fine alternative at a much lower price, I highly recommend Beeyoutiful’s cod liver oil gelcaps. They’re not fermented, but the oil is processed without the high heat or chemicals often used to produce drugstore brands.

3) Essential fatty acids, while needful for everyone, are vital for GAPS patients, especially if autism spectrum issues are involved. Beeyoutiful’s Omega Balance 3-6-9 is a cost effective blend of borage, flax, and fish oils that wonderfully fill this need.

4) Digestive enzymes. Because the GAPS Diet focuses on treating the digestive tract so as to heal the body of other ills, digestive enzymes should be taken at the start of every meal, especially when meats and fats are included. Beeyoutiful’s Digestive Enzymes are a good choice.

Two Steps to Cross the GAPS

An effective GAPS Diet is implemented in two stages: The Introduction, which has six distinct but relatively brief phases, and the Full Diet, which usually is best followed carefully for at least two years before slowly moving back into the entire spectrum of healthy foods, including some grains and starchy vegetables.

Many people find a good way to help their families switch gears from SAD (Standard American Diet) to GAPS is to jump into step two, the Full GAPS Diet, for awhile first. This is what our family did. Even at this level, I immediately started losing weight and feeling spunkier and more “with it,” largely due to the elimination of grains.

However, after we “practiced” with the Full Diet for almost six months, we then moved our family’s “critical care patients” into the GAPS Intro Diet. That’s when we started to see calmer behaviors and improvements in attention span.

These steps and the foods permitted for each are outlined in detail in the book Gut and Psychology Syndrome (available at www.gapsdiet.com). A cookbook and a quick guide to the diet are also available at the GAPS website. In addition, you’ll find a helpful yahoo support group, plus testimonials.

There are some common mistakes GAPS dieters make that can negatively affect the outcome of this healing protocol. These include overdoing no-grain flours (like nut or coconut), not eating bone broth every day (see recipe in Winter 2011 catalog), and giving up too soon. Our family plans to do GAPS again, because we made some of these mistakes and saw the negative results particularly in family members who most needed the help. In addition, we re-introduced dairy products too quickly, another common deterrent to steady healing.

I encourage you to try GAPS now if there are any health issues in your family. Some of my older children need this diet, but I did not know about it yet when they were still living at home, eating our food. Unless an older teen or young adult is very convinced of the benefits, he or she will find it difficult to pass up pizza and chips with friends. If you can do GAPS while your children are young, their little bodies will heal much faster than older bodies with accumulated damage from a leaky gut—and you can have total control over their diet.

Worth the Effort

Those who have tried this eating lifestyle in earnest testify to its benefits. A once skeptical, fifteen-year-old friend with severe eczema is now so excited about her rash-free skin and weight loss from GAPS that she’s using babysitting money to buy her own probiotics!

Another friend’s six-year-old, fidgety, impulsive daughter with a blinking tic calmed down and focused better within five days of starting GAPS, while her father reported that his foggy-headedness decreased and his physical endurance increased within the same period.

A homeschooling friend in Chicago watched her violent twelve-year-old son with Asperger’s become a thoughtful student and advance from second grade level work to sixth grade within a year of starting GAPS. Testimonies like this abound.

The GAPS diet is highly recommended by The Weston A. Price Foundation. WAPF recognizes that many modern people have compromised digestive systems due to bad diet, antibiotics, chemicals, and more. Once the diet has had time to improve the body’s inner workings, using WAPF guidelines for nutrient-dense cooking is likely the best way to add a wider variety of foods to your menu.

One thing GAPS will not do, however, is shorten your cooking and cleaning time in the kitchen. In truth, the effect may well be the opposite. But it will help your children focus and control themselves so they are better able to help you—and eventually do much of the kitchen jobs themselves. What you put into your kitchen now may get you out of it later!

Nancy Webster is one of Beeyoutiful’s regular researchers and writers, a homeschool mother of eight, and leader of the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She is the moderator of Beeyoutiful’s health forum, www.MerryHeartMedicine.com, where you can ask questions and learn from others about this topic and many more. Nancy lives with her family on their “partially working” farm in Tennessee.

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Addressing the GAPS in Your Health

Posted on February 3, 2011 by stevetallent

Addressing the GAPS in Your Health

By Nancy Webster

* This is a two part series, the second article can be found at Addressing the GAPS in Your Health, Part 2

[Dear Beeyoutiful Readers: Of all the subjects I’ve written about over the years, I’m most passionate about gut health and am especially excited to offer this first of two articles on the subject. Since “the gut” affects virtually everyone, you’ll likely recognize yourself or loved ones in the examples in my article. After struggling from effects of unhappy digestive systems, our family has learned there IS HOPE for healing! So pour yourself a warm mug of bone broth (see sidebar on page 44-45) and read on! Blessings, Nancy]

“Diet has nothing to do with this,” the pediatric gastroenterologist told me when I asked how our nine year old son could have a chronically impacted colon after eating freshly ground, whole wheat bread, raw carrots, and apples every day.

“Your son is on the autism spectrum. Give him these drugs and this therapy and hope for the best,” the pediatric neurologist told us about our boy. (Later, we would be told this story for three more of our eight children.)

“Here are some steroid cream samples to try on the bumps on his arms, legs, and buttocks,” the dermatologist said of the same son.

“This prescription-strength antacid will take care of your severe stomach pains,” the adult gastroenterologist told him at eighteen.

A Family Affair

Although your story may have a different twist, you probably do have a story. Your pediatrician may have referred your child to a specialist for ear drainage tubes or a tonsillectomy after regular antibiotic treatment didn’t stop the earaches.

Or maybe your child is seeing an allergist. Or a reading specialist for dyslexia. Or a urologist for chronic urinary tract infections. Or a dermatologist for acne or eczema. Or a psychiatrist for ADHD or more difficult behaviors.

Children with problems like these usually aren’t the only ones in the family with health issues. In our family, I’ve been amount the others. After traditional treatments for childhood problems such as earaches and bad skin while growing up, I’ve had an “ornery” tummy. To handle the problem a few years ago, a doctor gave me Miralax (a popular remedy concocted from propylene glycol, a form of mineral oil found in brake fluid and antifreeze!). I also fought off bouts of depression with the typically prescribed anti-depressants.

Maybe in your family, there are teens or adults with painful or irregular menstruation or migraines. Perhaps a grown-up someone suffers from chronic cystitis, mood swings, anxiety, poor memory, or brain fog. It could be the problem is schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, anorexia, or bulimia. Or even Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

Most families today have some combination of these stories. The bottom-line cause for these ills is dysbiosis, otherwise known as poor gut health.

From Greeks to GAPS

Enamored with its considerable successes, modern medical practice often fails to give appropriate credit to some foundational wisdom of the ages. About 2400 years ago, the Greek scientist Hippocrates observed, “All diseases begin in the gut.” And certain contemporary-mostly “alternative”-health research affirms the ancient sage’s assertion.

Even if your health problems do not cause specific stomach discomfort, they usually began because of the state of your digestive system. Regardless of (and sometimes because of) how many pills, lotions, and potions-or even healthy supplements-you take, if you do not heal your gut, you cannot be as healthy as you were designed to be. It’s funny (and sad) how today’s allopathic medical community seems ignorant of this simple fact.

The centrality of gut health is the premise behind the highly successful gut-healing protocol of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a physician in England and the author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome and soon-to-be-published Gut and Physiology Syndrome. The Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Diet, as her program is called, has delivered thousands of patients worldwide from all sorts of physical and mental health problems standard medical treatments could not fix.

The GAPS Diet is strongly endorsed by the Weston A. Price Foundation, and as you may know, Beeyoutiful promotes the WAPF nutrient-dense, properly prepared foods explained fully in Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions However, thanks to the increasingly processed, preserved, and polluted diets of even our great-grandparents, our digestive systems and those of our children may not be able to tolerate all the WAPF-recommended foods until serious attention is given to improving gut function. The GAPS Diet provides a step-by-step path to better digestion-and therefore-better health-by improving tolerance of a wider range of healthy foods.

To understand the importance of the GAPS Diet, it is crucial to grasp exactly how health problems develop in families. It is not genetics in the way we’ve been influenced to think of “passing down” problems to our children. There appear to be familial weaknesses for things like cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and even autism. But more than “genetic weakness”, it’s likely that similar bad diets and lifestyles are the cause for this heightened possibility. So don’t resign yourself to thinking you’re doomed to get your dad’s diabetes or your mom’s arthritis!

Health risks to the next generation start when a baby is born to a mother whose intestinal health is compromised by an over growth of bad bacteria. This could be due to her diet, antibiotic use, past use of the birth control pill, or any of an assortment of other unhealthy choices. The unborn baby’s digestive tract is sterile until, just before being born, he gulps form the womb or birth canal. That fluid contains the same good or bad bacteria, viruses, and fungi as the mother’s digestive tract and determines the starting point for the newborn’s gut health.

Dr. McBride writes:

Amongst all the parents of GAPS children I have met, the mother always invariably has signs of chronic gut dysbiosis…The most common health problems (of the mothers) are: digestive disorders, asthma, eczema, hay fever and other allergies, migraines, PMS, arthritis, skin problems, chronic cystitis, and vaginal thrush. These conditions seem to be unrelated, but they are all children of one parent-Gut Dysbiosis.

She notes, too, that fathers contribute to vaginal flora, so dad’s gut health also affects the child’s well being.

Feeding in infancy also contributes to a baby’s present and future health. It is commonly known that “breast is best,” and that formula-fed babies routinely suffer more health problems. However, if the breast delivers milk from a mother with bad gut flora, the baby is getting the same bad bacteria. While the natural antibody protection of breast milk helps the baby hold off manifestations of health problems until weaning, the “polluted milk” is still harmful in the long run (although still preferable to formula). A nursing mom can benefit her baby’s tummy flora by improving her own gut health.

“Insult to injury” happens to many babies within days of being born, when their immature and often unhealthy digestive tracts are inundated with immunizations. Then come solid foods. Most moms start their children on starchy cereal and fruit, favorite foods of the Candida fungi baby most likely got from mom’s body. Next come easy-nibble foods like crackers and cookies, and it’s not long before ear infections and antibiotics start. With that, the Gut and Psychology/Physiology Syndrome spreads to another innocent family member.

The Inside Story

Gut-related problems show themselves in an assortment of ways.

Leaking

When bad bacteria overwhelm good bacteria, there is no protection for the lining of the gut. It degenerates and cannot digest and absorb food properly, leading to mal-absorption, nutritional deficiencies, and food intolerances. Protein molecules from undigested food leak through the gut wall into the bloodstream, causing allergic reactions and aberrant behaviors.

Fiber

In a healthy gut, rich with beneficial flora, dietary fiber helps the body to absorb toxins, activate metabolism, recycle bile and cholesterol, and more. But in an unhealthy gut, fiber can actually be harmful to the digestive system by housing bad bacteria and aggravating inflammation in the gut wall. That’s why the early stages of the GAPS Diet are strictly low in fiber.

Lactose Intolerance

A startling number of people these days claim to be lactose intolerant as they age. Doctors say this is caused by the disappearance of lactase, the enzyme required to digest lactose (milk sugar). Howerever, some people still manage to digest milk perfectly well. Why? Because these folks have the right bacteria in the digestive system to perform the job. So if a person improves digestive health, he or she may again be able to handle dairy products.

Vitamin Deficiencies

Children or adults with gut dysbiosis generally show vitamin deficiencies, especially in the Vitamin B group, the ones essential for mental and emotional stability. This is because another job of a healthy gut is to manufacture vitamins and amino acids. Supplementation is a good crutch, but it is not the best long-term solution, because it does not address the root of the problem.

Anemia

Iron deficiency is another condition which comes with an “off” gut. Pathogenic, iron-loving bacteria take over and prevent the body from absorbing the iron in food. These bacteria actually feed on iron supplements, making the anemia worse, so many people with GAPS are pale and lack energy.

Candida

The most famous bad guy in unhealthy guts is the fungus Candida albicans. Dr. McBride believes many of the symptoms blamed on Candida are a result of gut dysbiosis, because Candida albicans thrive with many other opportunistic, pathogenic microbes. This includes bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and other strains of yeast. All it takes to give Candida and its buddies a leg up is a course or two of broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Food Allergies

I listed the problem of gut leakage above but want to explain a bit more, since food allergies and intolerances have become such a problem for many people. When normal gut flora is present, the intestinal wall is strong and impermeable. But if things get out of whack, spiral-shaped, bad bacteria, Candida, and parasites pike roots through this protective wall so partially digested food particles “leak” into the bloodstream. The immune system sees these particles as foreigners and triggers sneezing, extra mucus production, and other allergic-like reactions to get the blood clean again.

This is why food allergies or intolerances can crop up even though they many not have been a problem at an earlier time. Nothing is wrong with the food. It simply doesn’t get digested properly before leaking through the damaged gut wall. On this point, Dr. McBride concludes, “in order to eliminate food allergies, it is not the foods we need to concentrate on, but the gut wall.” She notes that many food intolerances disappear when the gut wall is healed, and that true deadly food allergies are rare.

Hippocrates knew that all health problems begin in the gut. With a proper understanding and treatment of the digestive system problems, it could be that most of our health problems just may end there as well.

[If you can’t wait three months for the “rest of the story” in the next Beeyoutiful catalog, I encourage you to study Dr. McBride’s website www.GAPS.me Next time, I’ll report on why a gluten-free diet may not be sufficient for healing, explain ways to clear up stubborn infections without antibiotic use, and tell a few more stories about the GAPS diet and its healing effects on members of our large family-including a “booster diet” which helped relieve most of our daughter’s problems with autism.]

Nancy Webster is one of Beeyoutiful’s more prolific researchers and writers, a homeschool mother of eight, and a leader of the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She lives with her family on their “partially working” farm in Tennessee.

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A Magnificent Solution for Colon Health- Fall 2010 Catalog

Posted on November 19, 2010 by stevetallent Leave a comment

A Magnificent Solution for Colon Health

By Nancy Webster

I don’t get as much reading done these days as I used to. Andeven though I love to read, I don’t mind the change in lifestyle. Magnesium Citrate has come between me and my reading. Along with Aloe Vera, it came into my life through a colon therapist a while back, when my innards were in crisis. Now I wish we’d known each other a long time ago. But if you’re still keeping a small library in your bathroom, maybe I can help you move on to better places for reading.

A History of Colon Abuse

My story goes back fifty years to Mama’s kitchen, where my digestive system was assaulted by regular courses of white flour cakes and cookies after lunch and supper. To help the inevitable problem that resulted, Mama kept books beside the potty. It took so long for my tummy to do its things, I think I learned to read there.

In those early days, my only “supplement” was penicillin for chronic ear infections and later, long stretches of tetracycline for teenage skin. These, plus cookies and Fritos, continued to assure me of throne room study time. Then, laxatives and fiver supplements got me semi-comfortably through late night trips to Dunkin Donuts and vending machines during college.

Finally, in our early homeschooling days, the children and I began baking golden loaves of fresh-ground, whole wheat bread. That reduced my time in the reading room but we didn’t yet know about pre-soaking or fermenting grains for better digestibility. The benefits backfired after awhile, giving me gas and bloating.

A visit to a naturopath shifted me into my “raw phase.” Along with 50-pound bags of carrots for juicing, I bought organic coffee-but not to drink. Much to my coffee-loving husband’s dismay, I used it for enemas! But at last my mid-section stayed flat and comfy.

The naturopath taught me the importance of keeping my bowels clean. Removing stagnant waste material and hardened, impacted toxic residue rejuvenates the ummue tissues in the intestines so beneficial bacteria can take hold.

Love Thine Enemas

Enemas have been used as medicine for centuries but went out of bogue with the invention of easy-to-swallow laxatives. Now, alternative health providers are re-popularizing them as a treatment for headaches, backaches, fatigue, bad breath, body odor, irritability, confusion, skin problems, abdominal gas, bloating, diarrhea*, sciatic pain—oh, and constipation-all related to toxic build up in the colon.

If you don’t have a few easy moments in the bathroom at least once-and preferably two or three times-a day (after meals), your colon may benefit from a good washing. Enema kits are sold for $10 to $300 in drugstores and online, where you can find all sorts of “how to” information. Avoid the boxed, ready-to-go enemas, as they contain salts, which trigger elimination by irritating your bowels rather than stimulating their natural action.

A few months after starting regular enemas, I became pregnant with our eighth child. Since I had previously experienced the flashing colorful auras of migraines during early months of pregnancy, the naturopath suggested I do an enema at the onset of symptoms. He theorized that migraines are a sign of the body having trouble detoxing, and his idea worked for me-the symptoms stopped immediately!

Once the bowels have been cleansed with an enema using either coffee or simply warm water, periodically repopulate the bowel with good bacteria with a retention enea. Dissolve plain yogurt or about a teaspoon or two of probiotic supplement like Beeyoutiful’s Tummy Tune Up (open a couple of capsules) in warm water and hold the enema as long as posbbile to help the good bacteria settle in.

Enemas were a welcome relief to a lifelong problem for me. But because I used them as a crutch more than a tool, they started another problem that was just as bad: I became enema dependent. Too late, I learned an enema should be taken after the body has tone its thing on its own.

After years of daily enemas, they stopped working for me. I thought I was going to explode! In desparaion, I sought out a colon hydrotherapist** who told me to take magnesium, Aloe Vera, and probiotics. A few colonics and a week of supplements later, I was a new woman, on my way to better gut health. To rebuild the gut after overuse of enemas, easting well, oral probiotics like Beeyoutiful’s Tummy Tune Up, and digestive enzymes like those available from Beeyoutiful under the name Disgestive Enzyme and Yeast Assassin Lite are needed.

Supplemental Balance

I knew Aloe Vera helped lubricate the intestines and that probiotics filled them with a good bacteria, but the importance of magnesium was new to me.

About half of the magnesium in our bodies is combined with calcium and phosphorus in our bones while the other half helps cell functioning in the body tissue and organs. A crucial mineral for overall health, magnesium plays a major role in muscle and nerve function, heart rhythm, blood pressure, immune system functioning, and maintenance of blood sugar level. Good sources of dietary magnesium include dark green leafy vegetables, some legumes, nuts and seeds, whole unrefined grains, and-get this-dark chocolate, especially raw chocolate.

A deficiency in magnesium is hard to detect from a blood sample, because only one percent of our body’s magnesium supply is found in blood. However, a deficiency is likely in most of us due to depleted, processed foods and chronic stress of modern life.

When stressed, the body puts stress hormones, including magnesium and calcium team, into the bloodstream. Calcium excites nerves while magnesium calms them. Calcium makes muscles contract but magnesium is needed for muscles to relax. Calcium helps wounds clot but magnesium keeps blood flowing freely enough to prevent dangerious clots. It’s a balancing act between the two that can get off kilter easily.

Todays’ diets are low in magnesium. What’s worse is that unhealthy guts cannot absorb it well. Plus, to prevent osteoporosis, extra calcium is added to many supplements and foods. Yet we can’t even absorb calcium properly without a balanced portion of magnesium. A variety of other problems have been linked to magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium deficiency was my problem. Within a few days of starting the supplement, I had immediate relief from wakeful nights I had thought were from my changing hormones. I also was free from the jumpy legs that wouldn’t let me relax and from irrational panic that hit me when driving over bridges.

Best of all, I finally “work”-easily and completely! No reading material or (regular) enema kits required! Magnesium relaxes muscles in the intestines, establishing a smoother rhythm of peristalsis (waves of muscle action which move the stool out of the body). It also attracts water to the colon to help soften stools.

The recommended usage per day is about 300 mg/day for women over 20 (roughly the same if lactating) and about 350mg/day if pregnant. Males 19-30 should take 400mg/day, increasing to 420mg/day after age 30.

In cases of depletion like mine, it may be necessary to take extra until things get stabilized. Your bowels will let you know what’s right. You don’t want diarrhea, which will result if you take too much. And be sure to drink a full glass of water when you take a magnesium supplement.

Bear in mind, though, that just because the label reads Magnesium on the drugstore brand, I have not found anything but magnesium oxide at chain drugstores, and that form is not especially bioavailable and will irritate your bowels. All oral magnesium supplements must be combined with another substance for expedient delivery, and Beeyoutiful’s Magnesium Citrate offers an excellent delivery system.

Magnesium supplements work best, of course, in the context of better eating. The bone broths, healthy fats, cod liver oil, and lacto-fermented, probiotic rich foods explained in the info-cookbook Nourishing Traditions should accompany your gut healing program.*

Try some occasional cleansings from enemas plus regular Magnesium Citrate supplementation and those of you who have suffered as I used to do might begin doing more of your reading on the front porch, in bed, or on the beach!

Important: Magnesium is excreted through the kidneys. If your kidneys do not function normally, as your doctor before supplementing with magnesium.

Although diarrhea may seem like the opposite of constipation, it can be caused by a blockage, around which still-liquid feces leak uncontrollably. This condition is called encopresis. We took one of our children to a pediatric gastroenterologist repeatedly to treat this condition, but ultimately went away thanks to regular enemas allowing the colon to regain its natural tone and start working on its own.

*For serious bowel problems, a colon hydroptherapist administers colonics using 40 to 80 quarts of water—compared to only two quarts for a typical home enema. This high volume is administered in a sequence that should be done only by a trained professional.

**Notice I’m not advocating increased fiber intake. In Fiber Menace, Konstantin Monastyrsky details how high-fiber diets produce large stools which stretch the intestinal tract beyond its normal range-eventually resulting in intestinal damage-and a drastic upset of the natural bacterial flora of the gut. You can read more about this politically incorrect approach to digestive health at www.gutsense.org.

Nancy Webster is a freelance writer and homeschool mother of eight. She now does most of her nutritional and health research online in the family room instead of the bathroom library.

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Rooting Out Dental Problems – Summer 2010 Catalog

Posted on September 7, 2010 by stevetallent

Nancy Webster

Part 1 of this 2-part series (“The Tooth of the Matter”) appeared in the Winter 2010

Beeyoutiful Catalog and emphasized the importance of nutrition in dental health.

“Your old filling cracked, and new decay is under it,” the dentist informed me matter-of-factly. “I have time to fix it right now.”

Five minutes later, with numbing shot in effect, he casually drilled out an aging silver amalgam filling from the back molar which had been bothering me for awhile. Over the sound of the drill, I heard him tell the hygienist, “It’s very close to the pulp. If this doesn’t work, she’ll need a root canal.”

A few weeks later, my tooth still hurt, and it was slowly getting worse. By then, my research gene had kicked into high gear. I knew Weston A. Price, the dentist whose educational foundation teaches the dietary principles of nutrient-dense and properly-prepared foods, had lost a son to a root canal gone bad.

Dr. Price’s information led me to other dental experts who similarly warned about the dangers of root canals. All concluded that the only safe way to handle a dead tooth is removal. Apparently, there is no way to sterilize all side chambers of the three miles of tubules inside a tooth. Antibiotics can’t do it. Bleach can’t do it. Even lasers can’t assure adequate cleansing. In one of Dr. Prices’ experiments, he implanted into 100 rabbits the root canal fragments from a person who had suffered a heart attack, and within a few weeks, every rabbit also experienced cardiac arrest!

Modern DNA research offers additional evidence against this common dental procedure by demonstrating bacterial contamination in 100% of the tested samples of extracted root canals. Bacteria that remain after a root canal mutate once circulation through the tooth (by removal of the pulp) is cut off, and the resulting strain is many times more toxic than otherwise. These bacteria can migrate into gum tissue and from there into the rest of the body, causing autoimmune or life-threatening degenerative diseases, even decades after a root canal is performed.

Pulling for a Better Solution

My smile finally looked decent after two stints with braces, so I was not anxious to introduce a gap by having a tooth pulled. But I didn’t want to have long-term health problems, either.

Hoping for a prettier option, I called several endodontists (root canal specialists) to find out how they sterilized the tooth after removing the dead pulp. They all told me I was misled by an old theory and that thousands of root canals are performed safely every day (60 million per year is the current count). I wanted to believe them, but I didn’t feel peace about it. Meanwhile, my tooth was turning dark.

While many dentists advertise their work as “mercury-free,” their emphasis on dental cosmetics made me worry their worldview was not as radical as mine—especially when a few calls confirmed that they recommend root canals. That’s when I stumbled upon www.drwolfe.com/links.html, a collection of websites for holistic dental associations and member practitioners. On this score, I also wished we lived in California again rather than Tennessee, since the Golden State seems to have holistic dentists in every city. Our closest one, Dr. Ada Frazier, is an hour and half away in Alabama, but my long-term well-being and her services were worth the drive.

Dr. Frazier was trained by Dr. Hal Huggins, a long-time outspoken opponent of mercury amalgams and root canals and author of a newly published article titled “Root Canal Dangers: DNA Studies Confirm Dr. Weston Price’s Century-Old Findings.” You can read it online at www.WestonAPrice.org.

Even though “any dentist” can pull a tooth, by going to Dr. Frazier, I was assured of not only avoiding pressure to have a root canal, but I was also confident the tooth extraction would include an important, if non-traditional, procedure called a cavitation. Cavitation involves grinding off the periodontal ligament which holds the tooth in its socket. Although most dentists and endodontists are taught to leave the ligament in place after an extraction, the remnant tissue provides an incubator for hostile bacteria. This bacteria can produce the same damage to the cardiovascular, endocrine, nervous, and immune systems as those from a root canal. Dr. Huggins compares omitting this procedure to “delivering a baby and leaving the placenta in the uterus.”

After the deed was done, Dr. Frazier instructed me to swish gently with peroxide and saltwater and to supplement with vitamin C to prevent infection. Fortunately, the hole does not show when I smile, but if the gap were obvious, instead of a tooth implant—which also contains harmful metals—I would consider getting a bridge made from biocompatible materials.

The More, the Mercurier

Neither my visits to the holistic dentist nor my education about the benefits of going to one had yet run their course. I had a few other leaky fillings with decay underneath. Although this news worried our bank account, it excited me, because now I had an excuse to switch out a few of those “silver” (mercury-based) fillings.

A wall in Dr. Frazier’s office displays a poster delineating the body-wide negative effects of mercury—the substance delivered to dental offices, packaged as “hazardous material” and then daily put into thousands of trusting patients’ mouths. Filling material is amalgamized (mixed) either in a combination of 50% mercury and 35% silver plus a bit of tin and copper or as a “copper amalgam” of 66% mercury and 33% copper.

Copper amalgams are highly unstable, releasing fifty times more mercury into the body than even the older combination. Hardly a coincidence, when copper amalgams were first introduced in 1975, the incidence of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and multiple sclerosis jumped dramatically the first year and has grown exponentially since.

Friction from chewing and brushing and heat from hot liquids and foods cause these mercury-based fillings to release harmful vapors, which spread throughout the body via the respiratory system, accumulating mostly in the brain, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract. There they destroy good bacteria and encourage Candida growth.

The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology provides a disturbing YouTube video showing the vapors emitted by these fillings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylnQ-T7oiA&feature=related.

Scientists report degenerative changes in the brain within a few days after exposure to mercury vapors. Severe headaches, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, depression, hair loss, memory loss, and even coma can be caused by mercury toxicity. A fascinating bit of history illustrates the point. In the 1800s, hat makers working in poorly ventilated shops breathed in fumes from a mercury solution used to turn fur into felt and became known for their mental and emotional instability. That’s where the saying “mad as a hatter” originated.

Mercury binds to sulfur-containing enzymes, suffocating cells and causing chronic allergic and immune reactions. Kidney and lung damage shows up within months of exposure.

Then there is the phenomenon of “dental galvanism.” When two or more dissimilar metals are used to restore or replace missing teeth, they produce an electric current. This electrification causes the rate of mercury corrosion to increase 10 to 20 times. Many people—including those with metal fillings—worry about the mercury content of nutrient-rich ocean fish, but to put this in perspective: Every day, their fillings give off up to nine times the mercury they might ingest from eating fish!

Detach and De-Tox

Dr. Frazier explained to me the safety protocol for amalgam removal as she and her assistant donned gas masks, protective eyewear, and hair caps. The highest mercury content fillings go first, and when several fillings need to be replaced, removal should take place over several visits so as not to overwhelm the body’s detoxing system.

A special rubber “dam” was placed in my mouth to prevent particles from going down my throat during the procedure. I also wore protective eyewear and was cautioned to breath only through the oxygen mask over my nose. A venting tube much like a clothes dryer hose was drawn close to my mouth while air ionizers whirred nearby. The hygenist maintained a continuous stream of cool water to lessen the vapor-releasing heat of drilling friction, while she held a small vacuum right at the tooth site.

After the procedure, Dr. Frazier encouraged me to drink lots of water, to take extra vitamin C, and to do toxin-removing “oil pulling”—swishing sesame, sunflower, or coconut oil in the mouth for 15 minutes and spitting it out. Dr. Frazier and her assistant, who encounter mercury daily, de-tox themselves routinely, including spending time in a far-infrared sauna. This is a far cry from the casual way the first dentist removed my old filling. No wonder infertility and other health problems are worse for dental hygenists!

If you suspect symptoms of heavy metal toxicity or even after a cleaning or any dental work, you can do a lot of chelation (pronounced “kee-lay-shun”) on your own. Chelation uses natural substances to attract heavy metal particles and pull them out of the body. Beeyoutiful offers an array of excellent supplements that can help:

• Pure Chlorella

• Odorless Garlic

• Selenium Secure

• Rosehip C and Gentle C

In the process, be sure to drink lots of pure water and keep your bowels empty, because a majority of the toxins are eliminated in the bathroom.

Following a nutrient-dense, properly prepared diet as described in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and taking healthy supplements will help prevent problems in the first place, as we discussed in part 1 of this series. If you still have health issues, though, the idea of removing fillings can be emotionally and financially daunting. To help reduce the financial pain, you might consider saving up to have one filling done at a time (it’s healthier this way, too). And put yourself on a chelation regime.

If you ask most traditional dentists about root canal and mercury concerns, they will scowl and say something about contrarian “quacks.” Taking action, though, is important because the vapor cloud from mercury fillings has no silver lining.

Nancy Webster is a freelance writer and homeschool mother of eight. After enduring multiple tooth extractions, two sets of braces, and a dozen fillings through the years, she is a highly motivated researcher on alternative dental practices. Nancy is also the founder and facilitator of the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

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The Tooth of the Matter – Spring 2010 Catalog

Posted on June 10, 2010 by stevetallent

The Tooth of the Matter

Re-thinking All You’ve Ever Heard about Dental Health

[First of a 2-part series]

Nancy Webster

Part 2- Rooting Out Dental Problems- Summer 2010

When my husband and I first encountered the notion of letting God plan our family size 23 years ago, my biggest hesitation, oddly enough, was worry about not being able to afford braces and dental care for a family with “too many kids.” Eight children later, I realize the tooth concerns were real but the solutions are far different than I would have expected early-on in our family life.

The Whole Tooth

If you’ve seen Alex Haley’s classic TV mini-series Roots, you may recall from one of the early episodes that, it was not only the slave’s physique that was examined, but also their teeth. It was commonly known that the teeth provided a snapshot of the person’s overall state of health.

My holistic dentist (more about her in part 2 of this series) recently told me about a researcher who examined the teeth of people who had died from cancer. Without being told beforehand, he identified what type cancer they had succumbed to just from information he found in their teeth!

One of my heroes is yet another dentist, Dr. Weston A. Price, who, in the 1930’s, studied the teeth of people groups all over the world. In his landmark book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, he documented that eating nutrient-dense, properly prepared foods and avoiding processed, denatured foods results in healthy mouths with plenty of room for all 32, cavity-free teeth. Not only that, he noted that such eating patterns were the secret to healthy pregnancies and birthing of strong babies. Nutrient-dense eating kept subjects remarkably free from intellectual and emotional disabilities as well. Dr. Price further demonstrated that this excellent dental and bodily health will degenerate into crowded, diseased teeth and gums, as well as other health problems in just one generation if parents consuming processed white flour, sugar, trans fats, and other de-based foods before conception and, for the mom, during pregnancy and lactation.

I wish I’d known about Weston Price before we started our family. Instead, I was addicted to chocolate chip cookies made with cheap, toxic margarine, white sugar, and white flour. As we kept having babies, I knew my cookie habit was bad for me, but candida kept me addicted. To make matters worse, in my quest for good health, I dabbled in vegetarianism, throwing off my hormones with soy products and omitting the essential animal proteins and fats my babies needed. Consequently, many of our children are prospects for traditional orthodontics because of high, narrow palates and crowded teeth just like those “second generation” subjects Dr. Price studied. But thanks to Dr. Price, I believe there is yet another better way.

Straightening Teeth Gracefully, Not Forcefully

That we haven’t had dental insurance to make braces affordable may be one of our great blessings in disguise. According to the Fall 2009 Weston A. Price Foundation magazine Wise Traditions (available from www.westonaprice.org), correcting malocclusions-crooked teeth and bad bite-benefits more than just looks. It also can reduce problems with insomnia and sleep apnea, difficulty in swallowing, tension headaches, chronic neck and back pain, TMJ, and even cognitive, behavioral, or other neuro-psychiatric symptoms-including those on the autism spectrum, OCD, and Down and Tourette syndromes. But the traditional orthodontic process-extracting four bicuspids and forcing with brackets and headgear the other teeth and facial bones to move into place-is not the best route to achieve pleasing facial proportions and well-aligned teeth.

Functional orthodontics are a better option to alleviate the crowding and jawbone underdevelopment caused by faulty pre-natal, infant, and childhood nutrition. Wise Traditions notes, “This method rarely calls for extractions; instead, the dentist applies oral appliances or splints, to assist Mother Nature and encourage the growth of underdeveloped dental arches. Over time, these functional appliances gently move and expand the upper and lower dental arches, allowing the teeth and bones to grow according to-or at least more closely approximating-the original genetic blueprint of development.”

A few methods for widening the dental arch include Advanced Lightwire Functional (see http://www.drfarid.com/alternative.html for a description), Crozat (http://www.crozatdoc.com/faq.html), and SOMA (http://www.curetoothdecay.com/Cure_Tooth_Decay_img/SOMA.pdf). Although superior, this functional process is not nearly as common as regular orthodontics, so you may need to travel and pay extra for it. If you hope babies are in your future, though, I’d suggest spending your travel time and money seeking out raw milk, grass-fed meats, lacto-fermented vegetables and the like now, so you may not have to find orthodontic care later. If you eat as described in Sally Fallon’s information-packed, Weston A. Price-friendly book Nourishing Traditions before conception of your babies and afterward, you’ll quite possibly have little or no dental caries (cavities) or gum diseases bothering you and yours.

Even if your family is suffering from active decay, there is something you can do about it from home. In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price describes case after case of using nutrition to reverse serious decay in children-often within three to five months. While the cavities (holes in the teeth) never go away, teeth generate what’s called “secondary dentin,” a hard substance which grows over the cavities so they can heal, keeping teeth alive, healthy, and strong.

Truth Decay

Ramiel Nagel, in his book Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition, describes how teeth work and offers a nutrition protocol much like Dr. Price’s to reverse dental caries and gum disease (see www.CureToothDecay.com). He points out the flawed explanation for tooth decay presented by the American Dental Association and taught by most of today’s dentists. They wrongly attribute tooth decay to bacteria that eat foods left on the teeth, thus producing acid which erodes the physical structure of the teeth. Supposedly, when this bacteria eludes regular home cleaning, then fillings, root canals, extractions, and false teeth follow.

Some legitimate questions arise, however, upon examining this traditional model. If the ADA’s explanation is true, why did the Swiss living in the Alps, isolated from modern foods and clueless about toothbrushes and floss, have no cavities (or crowded teeth)? Dr. Price found people groups eating native diets from the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland to the aborigines of Australia-all with healthy, never-brushed teeth. While brushing may have removed the mossy scum Dr. Price observed on their teeth, there was no tooth decay, a result attributable only to nutrition.

The truth of how nutrition affects dental health lies in the dental structure itself. Tooth dentin consists of miles of tiny tubules. Under healthy, well-nourished conditions, there is a constant flow of microscopic fluids running from the intestinal area through the tooth pulp, out the dentin, into the enamel, and out through the mouth. This flushes the tooth, keeping the internal structures clean and free of contaminants from the mouth. If body chemistry gets out of balance, however, this flow is reversed, pulling bacteria, acids, and other toxic matter from the mouth into the tooth. The pulp becomes inflamed, and if the proper flow pattern is not restored, disease spreads to the enamel. So cavities actually happen from the inside out, not from harmful substances collecting outside and “drilling into” the teeth.

Diet, environmental toxins, and stress upset the balance of the glandular system, so glands do not secrete hormones in amounts that properly regulate bodily processes. Nagel cites research by the late Melvin Page, a dentist who during 30 years of research ran more than 40,000 blood tests on patients to identify the biochemical cause of tooth decay and gum disease. He found that a disturbance in the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, in particular, is responsible.

In Your Body Is Your Best Doctor, Page explains that when the amounts of calcium or phosphorus in the blood “are not in the exact proportion of 2.5 parts calcium to one part phosphorus, minerals are withdrawn from the dentin and bone, resulting in tooth decay. It takes a continued low level of phosphorus, over a period of several months, to deplete the dentin of its mineral structure.” Interestingly, this corresponds to Dr. Price’s observation that people with 100-percent immunity to tooth decay ate foods high in phosphorus.

Extract Your Rotten Diet

The starting point in improving nutrition for dental health is avoiding the bad stuff. Biggies to spurn are sugars of all types (not because of what they leave on the outside of your teeth but because of what they do to body chemistry), even the “healthy” alternatives like xylitol and agave syrup. Other problem items to limit include flour and grain products (unless made from freshly ground, fermented grains), hydrogenated oils, low quality vegetable oils like canola, pasteurized dairy products, excess salt, junk foods, coffee, soft drinks, soy milk and protein powders, foods with nitrates and nitrites, addictive substances, and non-organic foods.

Although blood sugar spikes from fruit are not as severe as from white sugar, Nagel warns against over-consumption of fruit because even it will alter blood sugar levels, changing the calcium and phosphorus ratio and increasing the chance for decay. If blood sugar is changed for prolonged and consistent periods, this will eventually become the body’s new “normal,” leading to glandular imbalance and tooth decay.

If you don’t make the shift to a nutrient-dense diet, you’ll become chums with your dentist, especially as you slip past 40 years old when some 46% of all teeth of people in this age group have been affected by decay. Even if you’re younger-especially pregnant or nursing-it’s important to eat according to this protocol, both so your baby will have good tooth structure and facial development, and so your own bones and teeth will not lose minerals from the hormonal stress of growing a baby.

If you’re just now switching your family from eating the standard American diet (SAD) of processed foods, these new tooth do’s and don’ts may overwhelm you to the point of giving up. But let me point out that retreating to the standard procedure of making an appointment with the dentist for yet another filling may be easier in the short-run, but in the long run, you’re in for lots of avoidable costly and painful procedures and potentially lost teeth. I admit our family does not perfectly adhere to Nagel’s tooth healing protocol, but we do have direction and hope that cavity-free teeth can be ours.

[In the Spring 2010 Beeyoutiful catalog, Part 2 will offer help in choosing a dentist for those times tooth decay gets ahead of you, including information about the dangers of root canals and the need for proper mercury amalgam removal procedures and detoxification.]

SIDEBAR:

Fix-It Formulas

(1) Eat Right. From the work of doctors Price and Page, Ramiel Nagel (see accompanying article) compiled a dietary protocol which has a 95% effectiveness rate for helping people prevent, minimize, and even re-mineralize decayed tooth structure. Include as many of these in your diet as possible:

-1/8 to 1/2 t. fermented cod liver oil 2-3x/day with meals (OR 4 T organic liver)

-1/8 to 1/4 t. high vitamin butter oil 2-3x/day with meals (OR 1 to 2 T grass-fed butter per meal)

– 1 to 4 c. raw, grass-fed milk per day with 1 oz. of cream for every 6 oz. of whole milk

– 1 to 2 c. bone broth made from slow cooking bones and organic fish

– 1 to 3 T bone marrow from grass-fed animals

– Fermented vegetables (e.g., sauerkraut) and dairy products (yogurt or kefir) 2x/day

– Seaweed, especially kelp, 1-2x/day

A recommended menu includes raw or lightly cooked fish or grass-fed meats, fish liver or grass-fed liver and other organ meats, raw or lightly cooked oysters or other mollusks, along with lots of fresh, vitamin and mineral-rich vegetables. Coconut, olive, and palm oils along with butter, lard, or tallow should be used. (While Nagel also offers a vegetarian protocol, it does not have the same success rate.)

A good way to move towards the entire tooth healing diet is to make a written plan to learn and master one food preparation method (like lacto-fermentation of vegetables or slow-cooked bone broths) at a time, turning it into a regular part of your routine. Be sure to set dates by which you plan to make each change. You may need to be a little sneaky to get foods like liver into recent SAD eaters. Try grating frozen grass-fed liver (freeze for 14 days before eating to kill possible parasites) and place the raw gratings into capsules using an inexpensive pill maker, available online or likely from your local health food store. Casseroles, smoothies, and soup are wonderful ways to disguise “yucky” foods as well. For older children and unenthusiastic spouses, a few educational discussions may help them join your tooth-healing, health-building team.

(2) Brush Right. Touted as cavity-fighting, the toothpastes we all grew up with contain not only fluoride-which is poisonous-but also glycerin, which requires something like 27 rinses to remove it from the teeth. Otherwise, it can create a barrier that keeps teeth from getting harder and stronger. Even if you are careful not to swallow toothpaste, some will diffuse through your gums directly into your bloodstream. Healthier, fluoride-free alternatives complete with essential oils are nice, but they can be expensive.

For a less costly alternative, brush with a mix of 2 T baking soda (be sure it consists only of pure sodium bicarbonate), 1 t. finely ground sea salt, and 5-10 drops of peppermint essential oil. Or you can moisten 2 T baking soda with a bit of hydrogen peroxide. This will also help whiten teeth without toxic chemicals to do the job. Brushing your teeth occasionally with activated charcoal is another natural whitener (beware that after charcoal brushing, you’ll need to re-brush to remove the unsightly black grit from your teeth).

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Exercise Your Right to be Pain-Free – Winter 2010 Catalog

Posted on March 16, 2010 by stevetallent

by Nancy Webster

Doctors would say my right elbow suffers from bursitis or “tennis elbow.” Lifting the gallon jars of our cow’s fresh milk from the fridge had become a killer chore, thanks to joint pain triggered by the bending and twisting required to milk our cow. If I weren’t dubious about medicine, cortisone would be the answer.

Instead of doing drugs, though, I started doing Windmills, the Static Wall Clock, and the Progressive Groin Stretch four to six times per week. Within a few sessions of these and several other healing exercises, my right shoulder and hip—the real culprits in my problem—regained function and stopped making my elbow do work it wasn’t meant to do. The pain subsided. No drugs. No surgery.

The feet and ankles of Grace, our 13-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, are so pronated (rolled inward) that they cause pain in her knees and hips. The typical solution is shoe orthotics and leg braces, but Grace does Knee Pillow Squeezes, the Floor Block, and the Air Bench, among the exercises in her routine. The resulting strengthened muscles are helping hold her body correctly, and we no longer hear regular complaints about her aching legs. Even more exciting: she won’t have to wear cumbersome and expensive orthopedic aids.

Pain-free Secrets Revealed

The drug and surgery-free answer to your skeletal pain issues is found in the landmark book Pain Free by Pete Egoscue, a nationally renowned physiologist and sports injury consultant to some of today’s top athletes. The Egoscue method claims an astounding 95-percent success rate in relieving chronic pain, the key to which is a series of gentle exercises and carefully constructed stretches called Egoscuecises or E-cises. These strengthen specific muscles and bring the body back to its proper alignment and full, pain-free functioning.

The Egoscue book contains photographs and step-by-step instructions for dozens of E-cises specifically designed to provide quick and lasting relief from:

Lower back pain, hip problems, sciatica, and bad knees;
Migraines and other headaches, stiff neck, and sore shoulders;
Shin splints, sprained or weak ankles, and many foot ailments;
Bursitis, tendinitis, and much more.

It also features preventive programs for maintaining health throughout body. So even if you are not hurting right now, you can prevent future pain and keep your body in alignment with the E-cises in Pain Free. The book is a wonderful gift of hope and knowledge for loved ones with chronic aches and pains. (Pain Free can be found on page 14 of our Winter 2010 catalog.)

How the Book Works

To educate and care for hurting people, Egoscue clinics have been established in major cities around the world. Our local advisor and friend, Cecilia Brewer, is currently in training to be an Egoscue instructor and says Pain Free book owners can achieve satisfying results even without a personal exercise consultant. The best approach is to choose four or five E-cises from any section of the book. Repeat those E-cises four to six times per week for one or two weeks until your muscles start to “remember” the proper place to hold the skeleton. Then follow a new menu of E-cises for another week or two, and so on. Because the body’s frame is interconnected, E-cises in the foot section, for example, will benefit the neck, so any combination can help your situation.

In making your exercise plan, note that one E-cise, the Supine Groin Stretch, stands above the others and should be included as part of every menu. This stretch can be done at the conclusion of the day’s menu, or it can be done at a separate time during the day, depending on how much time you have available. While you can improvise E-cise equipment using a belt, a chair, a pile of books, and throw pillows, I highly recommend purchasing the Egoscue “tower” which makes doing the Supine Groin Stretch much simpler (the tower is available from the Egoscue website www.Egoscue.com).

A Supplement to the Supplements

The folks at Beeyoutiful now offer Pain Free as its “third dimension” in health maintenance. Egoscue’s approach to physiological health provides a fitting complement to the Beeyoutiful line of supplements and information about nutrient-dense food preparation (see Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon in Beeyoutiful’s recommended books section).

The Egoscue method works wonders in place of, or in combination with, chiropractic care. When a chiropractor manually adjusts your spine, for instance, you schedule your next appointment and go home. But between appointments, muscles naturally return your spine to its previous position if you do not regularly teach and strengthen them to hold your bones in the correct place. This “teaching” is precisely what E-cises do for your body. The Egoscue premise is that all pain—even pain like carpal tunnel in your wrist—is related to the alignment of your body from head to toe, and regular E-cises maintain this alignment. The best news is that you can do them at home, for free, with phenomenal results if you are faithful.

Fearing that we had only costly “traditional” options for helping Grace, I had fairly well despaired of ever addressing her pain issues. But seeing her now pain-free is truly liberating. Discover Egoscue, and you’ll discover affordable, do-able options for managing and even healing your chronically sore feet, back, shoulders, neck, and more. The Webster family testimonies are just two of thousands from people helped by making the Egoscue method part of their lives.

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Pre-Natal Peace of Mind- Fall 2009 Catalog

Posted on November 3, 2009 by stevetallent Leave a comment

Pre-Natal Peace of Mind:

And Other Benefits of Folic Acid

By: Nancy Webster

After massaging countless pairs of names to prepare for the birth of our twins, my husband and I had settled on Grace and Rachel if we were blessed with two girls. Whoever came out first would be Grace. But when Greg held “Twin A,” the name “Rachel” felt more right to him. Within a few days we would realize why “Twin B” would need an extra measure of God’s grace.

After the Friday morning birth, I spent the weekend reveling in the wonder of having delivered the twins that I had prayed for nine months before. My husband spent the weekend secretly studying books and online sources about infant abnormalities. When he first held Twin B, he thought he saw something different about her eyes.

What he saw was Down syndrome. The midwife attending the birth had missed it. Our delivering obstetrician hadn’t noticed and none of the nurses at the hospital detected anything different about Grace. But at the twins’ Monday morning post-natal check-up, our pediatrician confirmed Greg’s suspicion.

Now 13, our twins are a delightful pair, if strikingly different from one another. Rachel rides pony trails and climbs mountains while Grace tours the zoo in a wheelchair, because severely flat feet make her legs and hips ache after much walking. Rachel catches on quickly while simple, often-repeated activities frustrate Grace into blank stares. Rachel’s alto contributes handsomely to classical performances of the local children’s community choir, while Grace can only attend performances.

Of course, Grace would not be Grace if she didn’t have her Down syndrome. Without her, we would miss out on the mysterious, masking-taped presents of a toilet paper tube, a rock, or utensil from the kitchen–accompanied by her standard card, a crayoned picture of a multi-layered cake with candles, signed “GRCE.” And we might take for granted her mastery of reading a new word.

Still, if there was something I could have done to prevent her Down syndrome, I would have done it. There’s no denying life is harder–and maybe burdened with a few more inexpressible disappointments—for Grace.

At the time Grace and Rachel were conceived, I was homeschooling four children, ages two to eight. My oldest daughter needed speech and occupational therapy, which meant hauling the entire crew back and forth to tri-weekly sessions. One son suffered gastrointestinal problems, which entailed specialist visits and many home treatments.

Although by the time I’d learned quite a bit about healthy eating, life was so huge that fish sticks and tater tots made their way onto our table far too often. I knew we should do better with our eating, but Real Life was so overwhelming, it couldn’t happen as I wanted. I didn’t even remember to start taking pre-natal vitamins until four or five months into the twin pregnancy.

The Folic Acid Connection

Researchers have found that nearly 60% of mothers of children with Down syndrome have a genetic mutation that impairs the mother’s ability to metabolize folic acid. “Maternal non-disjunction” occurs before conception and is responsible for 95% of all Down syndrome cases. Mothers of babies with neural tube defects like spina bifada and anencephaly have a similar problem metabolizing folic acid.

Folic acid is the synthetic version of folate, vitamin B9. Found naturally in leafy greens, citrus, liver, tuna, eggs, and legumes, among other foods, folate is necessary for synthesis of DNA, RNA and proteins, and for the production and maintenance of all new cells. The body’s requirement for this vitamin increases during periods of rapid growth, such as pregnancy and fetal development. As a result, since 1992, the U. S. Public Health Service recommends that all women who might become pregnant should take a minimum of 400 micrograms of folic acid supplement per day. Studies suggest that if all women did this, the risk of neural tube defects would be reduced by up to 70%.

Waiting until you’re expecting a baby is not good enough. It takes up to a year to build up reserve of this vitamin, and the lack of folic acid at conception may result in brain and spinal cord damage as the fetus develops. Folic acid supplements taken for at least a year before conceiving is also associated with a 70% reduction in premature births between 20 and 28 weeks and a 50% reduction between 28 and 32 weeks. Another benefit of folic acid is protection against congenital cleft lip (with or without a cleft palate). It is estimated that 1/3 of facial clefts can be avoided with the help of folic acid.

Dads are not off the hook here, either. There’s a connection between folic acid and chromosomal abnormalities in men’s sperm. Men who consume high levels of folate or folic acid tend to have fewer sperm in which a chromosome is lost or gained. Extra or missing chromosomal material causes genetic abnormalities like Down, Turner’s, and Klinefelter’s syndromes. As with moms, future dads should consume at least 400 micrograms of folic acid per day for a minimum of three months prior to conception.

You are more at risk of preclampsia, placental abruption, fetal growth restriction, or even fetal death if you take medicines for epilepsy, mood disorders, hypertension, or infections because these medications are folic acid “antagonists.” You may require more than the usual recommendation of folic acid to counteract these bad effects.

Folic Acid- Mixed Reviews

In cancer research, there’s good news and bad about folic acid. On the good side: It counteracts cancer by strengthening chromosomes. Folic acid helps prevent colon cancer in men, and a study at Harvard Medical School found it can reduce women’s colon cancer rates by 75 percent.

However, too much folic acid can be a problem. While maintenance levels seem to offer protection against prostate cancer, too much folic acid may actually increase chances of prostate cancer. In other mixed news, studies show that people who get sufficient folic acid reduce their risk of developing colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps by 40 to 60 percent. On the other hand, one researcher estimates that ingesting too much folic acid may cause an extra 15,000 cases of colorectal cancer each year in the US and Canada.

Folic Acid intertwines with vitamin B12 in many body processes, including synthesis of DNA, red blood cells, and the myelin sheath which insulates nerve cells and helps conduct signals throughout the nervous system. But, again, too much folic acid in the interaction can worsen a vitamin B12 deficiency. This problem is common in older patients and causes dementia and other complications like depression, apathy, withdrawal, and lack of motivation. Taking a combination of the two vitamins protects against this problem.

Vegetarians, whose diets tend to be especially high in folate-rich green vegetables and folic-acid fortified grains, are prone to vitamin B12 deficiencies. Because the body stores a good amount of B12 in the liver, though, there may be a delay of 5 to 10 years between the start of a vegetarian diet and the onset of deficiency symptoms.

Folic acid supplements offer good news to people over 50 through improved mental performance and memory. A study of adults age 50 to 70 who had low levels of folate were given folic acid supplements for three years with the result that memory, reaction speeds, information processing, and overall thinking tested similar to that of people two to five years younger.

In addition, a folate deficiency elevates homocysteine levels which contribute to heart disease and stroke. Folic acid supplementation is beneficial in preventing these cardiovascular problems. But too much folic acid throws these levels off in the other direction.

Allergy sufferers will likewise want to be sure their folic acid intake is good. Patients consuming higher levels had fewer antibodies that trigger immune responses such as allergies and asthma.

Folic Acid– The Sources

Since 1996, the USDA has required cereals and grains to be fortified with folic acid to ensure folks get an adequate amount of this vital nutrient. Although this has show a reduced incidence of babies born with neural tube defects, it’s wise for prospective parents to supplement with folic acid as extra insurance– especially mothers who already have a child or two (or more!) and may be depleted.

So how much should you take? Because folic acid is a water-soluble vitamin, it is hard to overdose. The ideal dosage is between 400-800 micrograms per day for all populations. This will be safe for you unless your favorite daily snack is liver, which contains 170-190 micrograms for every three ounces!

Healthy bodies seem only able to process a maximum of 1000 mcg/day. Above this, some people report itchiness and rarely, gastrointestinal discomfort or insomnia. Sometimes doctors prescribe up to 4000 micrograms per day of folic acid supplementation for special cases, like a jump-start in healing certain anemias, or for mothers planning another pregnancy when they’ve borne a child with a neural tube defect. The folks at Beeyoutiful urge medical supervision before consuming mega-doses.

The Weston A. Price Foundation recommends getting the necessary pre-natal nutrition (also good for people of any age!) from properly prepared, nutrient-dense foods. This includes organic liver and other organ meats, seafood, eggs, and the best quality butter, cream and fermented (preferably raw) milk products you can find. Organic meats, vegetables, grains, and legumes should round out the diet, with a special emphasis on leafy green vegetables. (For more about the ideal way to prepare and eat foods, I’ll recommend yet again the excellent book by Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions, available from Beeyoutiful.)

Healthy meal preparation too often collides with Real Life making a thoroughly healthy diet difficult to achieve regularly–which is where the importance of using the right supplements come in. For those in their child-bearing years, the elderly, allergy sufferers, heart patients, and people taking medicine for epilepsy and mood disorders, supplemental folic acid intake is essential. You can get it through Beeyoutiful’s SuperMom and SuperDad vitamins as well as Beeyoutiful’s separate Folic Acid tablets which contain an ample 800 mcg. of folic acid, plus 25 mg. of B12. Whatever your stage of life, knowing you’re getting the rewards of proper folic acid intake will add to your peace of mind.

Nancy Webster is a free-lance writer, homeschool mother of eight, and an avid researcher on health and nutrition. She lives with her family on their partially working farm in Tennessee. Nancy and her husband Greg’s sixth child Grace (smiling atop their old Belgian horse) is a big sister to a brother and sister who do not have Down syndrome or neural tube defects. The Websters believe siblings are the best gift you can give your child with Down syndrome. Nancy has recently started the Southern Middle Tennessee chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation (see Nourishing Traditions in the Beeyoutiful book section for more about the WAP Foundation.)