Corbie's Rant

Chaste Tree Berry, Fibroids and Doctors

2010-01-15T16:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.stevenfoster.com/education/monograph/vitex.html

When I was 18 I tried birth control pills and they messed me up so bad. I developed serious serious problems, endrometriosis, fibroids, cysts, wasn't able to have children. 3 different times they gave me drugs to try to "fix" the problem that later I found out can cause cancer in 20-25 years.

They then wanted to do a hysterectomy. I will die of cancer, etc etc etc if I don't.

I went to herbs, self taught with research and it really started my journey with a lot of alternative things. I decided no more drugs unless it was antibiotics for something that can't be waited out, I refused hormone replacement therapy, no mammograms etc., It cannot be good to radiate your boobs.

The herb I found fixed the problem within a year, it was slow but steady, I then went through natural menopause with no problems and quit the herb a few years ago. I took it over 10 years.

I had a doctor once who I proved him wrong about 4 times with drugs with me and my father in law and he fired me calling me an intelligent, independent minded bitch. People always act like I am going to die any day now as I stay away from pills, eat organic etc yet I am healthy at 59 and they are not.

Fast forward to November. We were cleaning and cleaning and I got dust in my lungs, weak from smoke from my chain smoking mother. Then we broke down the shower wall that was leaking and I got mold and got very sick. I will take antibiotics if needed. (It is too bad they so overuse them!) I ended up on them for a month. Mold in the lungs can actually kill you!

About two days after I quit, I started bleeding. Went to my herb research and found nothing. Post menopausal? You have cancer and are going to die. The spector of the drugs 20 years ago was a scary thing. I decided the antibiotics flared up the fibroids and started back on my herbs.

So I did decide to go get a pap smear and get checked out just in case. The doctor was wonderful. He gave me discounts as I have no insurance and said no matter what I was facing a hysterectomy as it is bleeding and you most likely have cancer. Bleeding at my age is just not normal.

It took one month with me not knowing what was wrong, with nurses looking at me sadly with that look of "you are doomed, I am so sorry" I had a pap, a biopsy, an ultrasound. And the whole time I am still taking my herb and the bleeding and cramping is improving a tiny bit. And panic attacks over the possibility of dying!

I finally got the call Tuesday morning, no cancer but we need to do the hysterectomy. I said I don't need one. The nurse was so confused. I told her since I was right in the first place, went through a month of hell, I am trusting my herbs to fix it. She indicated I was crazy and it will just keep getting worse until I call and beg them to do it. I will trust my herbs.

In the meantime I got a clean bill of health otherwise. I did tests I hadn't done in 25 years. Western Medicine is good for that. Thyroid, iron, blood pressure, sugar, lung ex ray all good. I think I am done with doctors for another 25 years and will wear a mask forever more when dusting or breaking down walls!

The interesting part is the doctor was very very nice. He also listened, took down the name of my herb (Chaste tree Berry or Latin name of Vitex) and wanted to research it. He also said he had come to the same conclusion about mammograms and he had also decided soy was causing a lot of female problems and was advising his patients to not eat it.

So I am still having problems and it is a bit better and I will trust my herbs! The wonderful news is that now that this much time has passed since I took the cancer causing drugs and I have no cancer, the chances are very very tiny to none I would get it in the future from taking them.

It occurred to me that one problem is that anybody with as severe a problem as I had when I was younger would have had surgery so there is not a lot of information on post menopausal fibroids. It is getting better by the day and I guess I am on Chaste Tree for the next couple of years!

Vinegar, honey and garlic for infections

2008-07-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

This is a new one. Several months ago my father in law got yet another infection. He is catheterized and he gets an very bad infection about every 4 months and almost dies. We get antibiotics and it gets better, but he always has a low grade infection. This has been going on since 2000.

One of our nurses, now gone, told me I could not keep giving him antibiotics, he will become immune. I asked for an alternative and what would happen if I didn't give them. No alternative and he will die without them. And in pain. And what happens when he becomes immune? He dies. Since he doesn't want to die yet, I saw no alternative.

He got sick again, Doctor gave me antibiotics. I decided there MUST be something out there and started searching online. No 800 number on this one.

I found a recipe for apple cider vinegar, honey and garlic. Sounded nasty. I decided to try it. Well, it has been almost two months. He got better, the symptoms cleared up and he is also more cognitive and more alert than he has been in a number of years! The antibiotics are still in the cupboard.

I gave the recipe to someone who had a bladder infection and was ready to go to the emergency and it cleared it up. I gave it to my husband and his arthritis is better. We are all on it for life.

Recipe:
1 cup apple cider vinegar ( I use Bragg's organic)
1 cup local raw honey
8 cloves garlic ( I use organic)
Blend in blender for 1 minute
Put in refrigerator for 5 days and then take 1 tablespoon with breakfast and 1 tablespoon with dinner in 8 oz of water.

It actually doesn't taste that bad. I made two batches and when the first ran out, I made another so I always have one in the refrigerator that is over 5 days. I do have to put a paper towel with a rubber band around it so that is doesn't get the refrigerator all sticky.

Soy is bad for you and Genetically Modified Foods

2008-05-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.truefoodnow.org/shoppersguide/guide_printable.html

Now that I am not sure I am actually "allergic" to corn, just the modified crap, I went surfing. I found this site. I do not know if it will work on the blog, but this is a fascinating site.

A friend told me today that her friend has been diagnosed with severe thyroid problems. She is a vegetarian and eats lots of soy.

It is slowly coming out about soy. I read an article in a magazine just lying around ( I should have stolen it ) and now I don't remember which one it was. The article said that by now we have all heard that soy is bad for you and suppresses thyroid and messes with the female hormonal system and is causing cancer. And it appears to be true. It went on to say that the original research that soy is good came from Japan where people ate moderate amounts of fermented soy. And maybe we were not meant to eat unprocessed soy in such large amounts. So instead of saying we should stop eating it, it suggested we just cut back a bit.

My CNA class

2008-05-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

I just a CNA class. This is actually funny considering how I feel about the medical profession. But I took it to learn how to take care of my 90 year old senile father in law better. What I learned is I have taken care of him for 8 years, fought the doctors, smarter than them and kept him alive when they would have killed him off, by doing everything wrong. Oh well. If I ever need a job, a CNA always can get work.

The teacher is nice. But when the class started she was bringing baskets of junk food. I would not touch it. She asked why. I think I am unable to keep my mouth shut. She tried to say the only thing that mattered was whether it had transfats in it or not.

The class stopped eating the junk after I started talking about bad ingredients. The teacher started asking me about labels. I ended up teaching parts of the class, nutrition, Reiki, holistic medicine. We had lunch with her one day and I did ask if I should keep quiet and she said no, keep talking.

So all in all I had a good time with my class even with everything I do. But I am ready to have my life back and time to do things like write in my blog and watch movies.

King Corn Documentary

2008-05-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

There is a new documentary out there called King Corn. I can highly recommend it. Two friends go to Iowa to grow an acre of corn. It shows how corn is grown and the second half is following it into the food supply.

Corn is now genetically modified and is not fit to eat. It is killing the cows, who are mercifully slaughtered before they die from the corn. So they feed it to us too.

I am really wondering if I am not allergic to corn at all. I can't eat chemicals and the corn in our food supply isn't a food at all. It is an inedible product that is mostly a chemical at this point that cannot be eaten without processing.

An experiment will be to eat some corn that is not genetically modified and see what happens. Since it gives me a headache I might try it. It also brings up the issue of how many people have the same problem I do?

Calling the Cancer Society about 1 in 9

2008-05-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

I called this number a number of years ago when they were really getting into the 1 in 9 has or will get breast cancer. I know a lot of women, it isn't that high. I must always ask why. So I called.

I got the local president of the cancer society and she actually was very honest with me. She even sent me the research numbers. 1 in 9 is a metaphor. When I said that is was scaring people, she said that it was supposed to do that. We need to be scared.

She told me that anybody who is diagnosed with cysts or fibrocystic problems and I forgot what else, it all got put into the cancer statistics. I don't think this is honest.

later, cancer rates were rising because of HRT. My doctor wanted to put me on it when I started menopause. I told him no. I think it causes cancer. He disagreed. It turned out I was right. After that, when I proved him wrong again about other things, he called me an intelligent independent minded bitch. I love it.

How I threw out my microwave and joined the nutters

2008-01-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

I am not sure what triggered this one. I didn't even call an 800 number. I have always known that microwaves may not be the best thing around. I mean it can't be good that you can't get near it with a pacemaker and it interferes with my wireless internet. I know the food doesn't taste as good, but the convenience is hard to argue with.

Just little things. A stupid picture of a water molecule after it had been microwaved looked very sick. Something someone said on the Tom Martino show about them when I was agreeing with everything else he said. Finding out that 60 seconds in the microwave will kill everything there is in a nasty sponge. What is it doing to the food?

I started looking on line. I found a couple of alarming reports, all old, no new, nothing substantiated. But what threw me over the edge and made me throw it out was the one that said the FDA says it is safe. I do not trust the FDA, I think they are out to kill us, or at least make us sick so they can make money on drugs.

I told my poor long suffering husband the next morning that I was throwing it out. He asks if I have any proof. No, just a feeling. Ok, that is good enough for me, he says.

He says we need aluminum foil. I said yes we do. He says oh, you know I need to make you a hat? I said hat? We need it to reheat stuff in the new toaster oven we are going to get.

He makes me a hat and when I told a friend she said to be more stylish I need a metal colander for my head. I agree.

The upside is the food really does taste better.

Charbucks aka Starbucks

2008-01-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

This just drove me crazy. I am not much of a coffee drinker. I didn't start drinking coffee until I was 50. I had never tried it with cream and sugar before.

I drink it with just milk now, but when I was first drinking it we tried Starbucks. It was so bitter that no matter how much sugar I put it in it was undrinkable. I didn't like the fancy foo foo candy bar drinks and just wanted plain smooth coffee with sugar and cream.

I would ask for the mildest and got bitter. After 3 tries I went to my trusty phone and called an 800 number for their corporation. I was told that they "double roast" their coffee for maximum flavor. Read burned. And the nice lady informed me if I wanted a less bitter coffee, just tell the person making it and for 50 cents extra they would put water in it .

I have since found out that they buy the cheapest beans they can find. It is a shame as they seem to have everything else together. A good place to work, all that. Just bad beans. But most people don't care as they aren't really drinking coffee. They are drinking liquid candy bars with a bit of coffee in it.

So I have never been back.

Adventures in feeding dogs raw food

2007-12-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

We have two Malamutes, or should I say they own us. They are spoiled couch wolves. They have a bay window to watch the world out of and Neeka is going to protect us from any cats or especially the fox that lives on the street somewhere.

We got Spirit first. She was 4 months old and had almost died from being sick as a puppy. She was delicate and got tired very easily and got sick several times the first year we had her. Sometimes chicken soup was all she could eat.

When she was about a year old we got Neeka. She was 3 and a half and had just had a false pregnancy and was a total mess. She also tired easily and was a very hungry girl who had no problem eating anything. The next summer she went into dehydration for no apparent reason and 800 dollars later we brought her home and I knew something was wrong with her too.

It hit me and I took them both to the vet and I was right. Major thyroid problems for both of them. It is common in Malamutes and these girls are aunt and niece.

We got them on medication and then since we were researching our own food, we researched dog food and decided to feed them raw meat.

First Spirit doesn't like chicken. Then Neeka broke a tooth with a bone that was supposed to be ok but since she had been fed so bad all her life her teeth are soft. So they get pork, beef, hamburger kongs, eggs, frozen chicken feet as treats and liver sausage for the organs as the pampered pooches don't like raw liver. What happened to that instinct to chow down on things? I even have to cut it up as the delicate things don't like to chew large pieces!

I do supplement with a raw food kibble. No grain in it. They love their kibble and I was glad to find a grain free variety. I think a dog would do fine on it if some one didn't want to look for meat sales and cut it up.

But even with all that, the over all health really improved. Neeka had what is called a snow nose, it had gone pink. We read it was a nutritional deficiency that causes it. They must be right as it went away.

Dogs do NOT need grain in any way shape or form. Not even rice. Corn is right out and soy is inexcusable to put into dog food. The same with cats. They do not eat grain in the wild. I remember when our cat got elderly and he lived for two years on cut up steak and meat baby food. He did wonderful. He couldn't keep cat food down. I think the pet food has been just as poisoned as regular food.

I know we don't do the raw feeding the way it is recommended on the raw feeding lists, but I don't think it really matters as they are healthier than any other dogs I know now and they both had such problems earlier.

I was talking to a Vet Tech about a month after we started feeding them the raw meat. She laughed and said have you noticed they don't need a bath? I hadn't. At this point we gave them a bath 6 months ago just because. They had some dust from playing, but that oily dog and dog smell is gone. Also "doggy breath" is gone. The grain is not natural to their systems so it creates skin problems, cancer, oily skin, bad breath etc. It is the same thing as with people eating all the wrong things and getting sick.

When I was a child and we had dogs, I don't remember smelly dogs and bad breath. Back then you bought cans of horsemeat. Kibble hadn't been invented yet. Kibble with grain is also why so many pets are overweight now. Let them eat natural and the weight goes natural, same as people.

NutraSweet aka NutraDeath

2007-12-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

When this stuff first came out, I tried it for some bizzare reason, even though even back then I was anti chemical. It gave me a raging headache.

Right after I started hearing bad things about it. We didn't have the internet then to look things up, so it was hard to find information. But I wouldn't drink it.

One day I was doing organization things for a social club I belong to. I was responsible for buying and stocking a hospitality suite for three days while hungry, social people socialized.

One member of the club told me she had bought a lot of diet soda and it was stocked in her bathroom and would I like her to donate it. I said sure, I was on a budget and donated meant I could buy more of other stuff.

So I went to check it out. She had several hundred 6 packs of diet soda. This was before they dated it. She said it was tasting funny. I did taste it. It has obviously gone bad.

I did what I usually do. I called the Coca Cola company and asked about NutraSweet. I also mentioned it gave me a headache. They put me in touch with their doctor. She informed me that it needed to be thrown out and it was impossible for it to give me a headache. It was good stuff. Could she send me some information? I am also an information junkie besides being an 800 number junkie so I said sure.

It came. The first piece of paper, with a stamped envelope provided, was a medical release form for me to sign and send back absolving the Coca Cola company of any liability if I ever got some illness from drinking diet Coke! I did not sign it, I did not send it back.

I have since learned that the awful flavor after it went bad was formaldehyde. It also turns into formaldehyde in the system after it is drunk. It is still boggling my mind that people KNOW this and still drink it! Folks, that is embalming fluid!!!!!

It is linked to birth defects, out of control blood sugar, migraines, and a whole host of other problems and still they drink it!

Now that there is Splenda, some are saying well maybe it is bad, but Splenda must be good. It is made from sugar! NO! IT IS NOT! It is a chemical made from corn sugar! I know it will be found to be bad. How do I know this? It isn't rocket science. Our bodies were not meant to ingest all these chemicals.

It is that a lot of people will knowingly abuse drugs, food, cigarettes, alcohol, and then they are so surprised when they get sick. We need to take some responsibility here.

Subway, Eat Fresh, Yuck!

2007-12-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

I just saw an ad for Subway. Eat Fresh! I don't think so. Many years ago we ate there. Healthy, good bread and all that. My husband had gotten a beef sandwich and didn't eat it all. We brought it home. My cat loved roast beef. We tried to give him a bite. No way. Then both cats would not eat it and looked at us as if we were trying to poison them.

I called the company. I was put in touch with the chemist (?) who was very nice and said Ma'am, I am not going to lie to you. Our slogan is eat fresh, so it must never be frozen. And it is shipped all over the country. So there are enough chemicals in the meat that your cats probably didn't recognize it as food.

I have never eaten there again.

My Husband's Recipes

2007-12-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

As we gave up High Fructose Corn Syrup, we started cooking things. As it became apparent a year later that I am allergic to corn, we started cooking everything. So I am going to start posting his recipes he has developed. They will be in no particular order, but they are things it is hard to find and then it is trial and error. He has already done the trial and error part!

Ketchup will be number one recipe. Even organic ketchup has vinegar, which is distilled from corn. I found this out after getting very sick on Rudy's organic bread. It says "cultured wheat flour". What that means is they soak it in vinegar and dry it out to inhibit mold. Yum.

Perfect ketchup:

6 oz tomato paste 3 T apple cider vinegar
8 oz tomato sauce 1 T balsamic vinegar
1 & 1/2 T packed brown sugar 1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 cup water 1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp salt 1 tsp onion powder
pinch clove powder pinch allspice

Combine all ingredients. Cook until just hot, bottle and refrigerate.

It isn't organic! Natural flavor is not natural!

2007-12-04T20:22:00.001-08:00

As I am looking more and more at ingredients looking for corn and chemicals, it is getting very bad out there. I picked up a magazine that is mostly ads for organic food and the first three pages are devoted to ads and food that I have called the 800 number and asked what was in it!

The inside cover is devoted to Nature's Path Organic Oatmeal. I called the 800 number and asked. The "natural flavor" is maltodextrin.

Just Imagine organic chicken broth. If you read the ingredients it says natural chicken flavor, or was it natural chicken broth. It is a mixture of soy and corn. I asked the company and where is the chicken in that? It is allowed by the FDA was the answer.

A lot of companies won't tell you what their natural flavor is. It is proprietary information. They will tell you what it isn't if you are allergic to something. I am allergic to corn and 99% of the time it is a corn chemical of some kind. Also what has happened to truth in labeling?

I called a lemon juice company and the nice lady told me the citric acid wasn't corn, it was a synthetic, but she didn't know what it was because it came from a lab. I asked why are you calling it organic? She said, check the label, it says made WITH organic ingredients, not that it was organic.

I just was looking at a box of Annie's Organic Cheesy Lasagna. There is natural flavor, unspecified, but probably corn or maltodextrin, citric acid, probably made from corn and disodium phosphate. I actually have not called the 800 number on them yet.

I did call Muir Glen Organics today about the citric acid. It is made from corn. When I said that wasn't right, the girl said how else do you make it? It is supposed to be made from citric fruit. Not too bad unless you are allergic to corn.

I called an 800 number a day for months asking for ingredients. The main thing I have decided it that our food supply isn't what they say. And there doesn't seem to be anything they can't put corn in.

I talked to corporate at Whole Foods and was told that invert sugar, maltodextrin, corn syrup and the like pass their standards of wholesome food. The sad part is our Whole Foods has a new sushi bar, oh so healthy. There is High Fructose Corn Syrup in a lot of the sushi! What in the world is HFCS doing in sushi? I was told it was a separate business.

Have fun today! Call an 800 number and ask about your food!

Corn Syrup and beyond

2007-12-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

After about a month of no HFCS and totally purging our cupboards, we looked into just corn syrup. There was not a lot of information on the net about it being horrible like HFCS but since my health problems were gone and my husband's arthritis was better, we decided to drop that too. We were still dropping weight and feeling a lot better.

Things stayed the same with our diet. Then we went off on the dog's diet. We researched a raw food diet and their health improved. They both have thyroid problems and it helped them a lot. I will write a whole section on that adventure soon.

Then December 2006 came and my father in law was dying. It was Christmas eve and trying to get someone out to even give us an assessment was not happening. Our doctor was out of town and the on call said she would do nothing unless I called and ordered him onto hospice. His kidneys were shutting down and he was in pain and we had already promised him no hospital. He is 89 and I was going to respect his wishes. I wanted some pain medication but it was not to be had. I called hospice and while I was setting it up the nurse said something that triggered the next year of research. Poor old man, his kidneys can no longer process the chemicals in the food. huh?

So I said I would call back, got on the computer and for breakfast, he was in pain, but wanted breakfast, I gave him a 100% organic diet. For lunch I got rid of his favorite little cups of food for children, ravioli, mac and cheese, etc that had a prominent label of "modified food starch" His kidneys started working again. Once, several months later we took him out to lunch and he ate two breakfast sausage things and was sick for two days with his kidneys messing up again. We checked and it was full of modified food starch.

So we got rid of modified food starch. I was still losing weight and people were commenting and wanting to know what diet I was on. Just quitting HFCS. One person accused me of dieting and lying about it. I am still not on a diet!

Then I started noticing my sinus headaches were not as severe, not happening as often. I am not sure now what triggered it, but I started suspecting I had a problem with corn anything. Now a year had passed and I had dropped 3 sizes and still was not dieting. I was altering clothes, giving clothes away. That was hard. I had pretty much been the same weight for 15 years and I had some fabulous plus size clothes.

So we did research and got rid of anything we knew was corn. The headaches went to just a couple a week. I had a very low grade headache for years and thought it was pollution and took aspirin every day. And Excedrin when it got bad. It was weird to not have that pressure in my head that had been there for years. My irritability I fought and kept inside went away. And my mood swings where I cried and thought it was hormones went away too.

So the summer was spent finding out what all corn was in. Rudy's organic bread made me so sick. No corn on the label. Call the 800 number. I love those 800 numbers. Cultured wheat flour. It is soaked in vinegar and dried to inhibit mold. Vinegar is made from corn.

The most amazing phone call and led to a phone call a day for 3 months to various companies started innocently enough when I called the Kashi Cereal company just wanting to know what "natural flavors" meant.

I was told it was "proprietary" information and they wouldn't tell me. It took 6 phone calls to 6 different department and threatening to call consumer activists to find out that their natural flavor and secret ingredient is maltodextrin!

I did learn after about 10 calls to various companies that most will not tell you and some don't even know what is in their products. They buy their natural flavors from the flavor lab! But if you tell them you are allergic to corn they will get back to you and let you know if it has corn in it. Very very few didn't have corn.

My favorite was Honest Tea. I called and the guy who answered said he would get back to me. He called and told me the flavor lab told him some long chemical name. I said what is it? He said I don't know. And I said you are selling tea, calling it Honest tea and you don't know what is in it? He said, you got me there.

Organic chicken stock. "Natural chicken flavor". I called them and was told it is a blend of soy and corn. I asked is there any chicken in the flavor and was told no.

Most organic food is not 100% organic. They are allowed a certain amount of chemicals and can still call it organic. Anything that says it is natural probably isn't.

Call those 800 numbers and ask what is in the food. It is amazing what they say they can't tell you. I always thought there was truth in labeling. When did it become ok to tell someone we won't tell you what you are eating?

Corn was in my aspirin, Excedrin, my vitamin C, EmergenC, We found powdered aspirin and I don't need it too much, except when I accidentally eat something with corn in it. Which is a lot as we are still finding stuff. We found out today that citric acid is corn. Hand sanitizer is made with corn. That vegetable spray wash is made with corn.

As of right now I have dropped 4 sizes. I have been stable for a month as I ate a half a birthday cake, found good ladoos, tried jaggery and made a pecan pie for Thanksgiving and my husband keeps making au gratin potatoes. I feel like I have overeaten by a lot and my weight has stayed the same. Now that it is December, I want to go back to the same foods I was eating for a year and half and my weight kept dropping. I told John he has to fix different foods than au gratin potatoes and no more ladoos and pecan pie. He made cole slaw today. He made it with rice wine vinegar and it was awesome.

The Beginning of the Corn High Fructose Corn Syup

2007-12-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

It was May of 2006 and my sister and I were heading up to the camper for the first campout of the season. I was trying to figure out how to tell her this was going to be the last year. My joints were locking up more and more and it was getting harder and harder to get around. I could not hike, my asthma was making it hard to breathe, my sinus allergies were bothering me a lot and even though I wasn't eating enough to explain my weight, I was hungry all the time.

The doctors had said my joint problems were genetic, my asthma was due to an accident with an exploding vacuum cleaner bag and sinus allergies are normal. The hunger was scaring me. I had a very bad history with a mother who was a beauty queen and sometimes for no reason would decide not to let me eat. Put me on diet pills at 11 when she decided I was 5 lbs overweight. I would eat something before going to bed because I was so scared of being hungry and more and more I was still waking up hungry at 4 am.

I had heard a rumor a couple of days before that High Fructose Corn Syrup wasn't fructose at all. That is was bad for you. I wasn't a label reader beyond looking for soy as my husband and sister are both allergic. For some stupid reason I thought the FDA wouldn't let bad stuff into the food, even though I had ample evidence from other stuff that it was probably naive of me to think something like that! I knew soy is a bad food, suppresses thyroid function and causes immune problems.

I went to the deli at the store we stop at halfway up the mountain and got my usual sandwich and a piece of "fresh in the store baked carrot cake" I read the label. It went on and on and on and there wasn't even any carrots in it! A long while later my sister called on my cell to ask where I was. I told her I am still reading labels. I spent on hour reading labels on everything! I did not buy the cake!

When I got home I started research. I stopped anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup. A couple of weeks later my husband was at the top of the stairs and told me he needed new pants. I said you just got some. He let go of his waistband and his pants fell down.

Within 4 weeks, our next camp out, my clothes were loose, my asthma was gone, my joints were working normally, and I had not touched my allergy medication.

Also within 4 weeks, my father in law, who had out of control diabetes and general very bad temper was much better. His blood sugar went rock steady, his bad temper went away and he stopped accusing us of not feeding him! He would tell any nurse or doctor we didn't feed him. Since there would be empty dishes sitting right in front of him and he is not skinny, it was just attributed to senility. He was being hungry all the time too.

The big problem we found it that is in so many things. It was in our juice, in our bread, in my cereal I ate late so I wouldn't wake up hungry. It was in just about everything. Thank goodness I wasn't a soda drinker or I might have had more problems than I did.

HFCS is not sugar. It is corn starch that has been run through several chemical processes. It goes through the liver and goes straight to the body as fat. And as the body doesn't recognize it as food the person is still hungry. And as it is a chemical, it is addictive. It is responsible for the rise in obesity, diabetes and a host of other problems. What confuses me is that someone will know all this and still eat it!

The rise in obesity goes along with a perfect graph of when they started putting the HFCS into food. The explosion goes along with them putting more and more into to food supply. It is a preservative, it is cheap. When I called Hansen's All Natural Soda and asked why they put it in there and called it natural, I was told the FDA lets them and there is not enough sugar to go around.

I called Tiger's Milk company, my favorite "energy and vitamin" bar, which is probably what started my downward cycle 20 years ago, I asked why are you calling these healthy and what are they doing in the health food section of the grocery stores. I was told they had no control over where a store put their product and "Ma'am, we never said they were healthy".

I now recognize what I call the HFCS look in people, especially children. They look overweight and their faces are bloated and round. Even before I knew about HFCS and thought it was just sugar, it did always bother me when parents bought their children soda from the machine at the store I do readings at. Don't they care about their children's health at all?

I talked to my doctor who rants about sugar and weight. If he starts it is like putting a quarter into him and he won't shut up until the quarter runs out. I asked him if he knew about HFCS and he said yes. I asked why he didn't tell people and he said he knew real sugar was better, but all forms of sugar should be quit, so he never mentioned it because he wants his patients to quit all sugar.

I stared reading labels and as I was throwing out my favorite soups, my favorite oat nut bread, my cereal, my granola bars. I was so mad as I always thought I was eating healthy! I was calling every 800 number and informing them that I would not buy their product again until the HFCS was gone.

The responses were interesting. Some said it was a lie. Some said I was misled as the FDA would never allow something bad into the food. Kellogg's was the best. I was told they knew and were working on it. A few told me I was not the only one calling about it.

Migraines

2007-12-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

December 2, 2007
I will start out this one with the phone call. I am a phone caller. I will call anyone for any reason if I want information. I am an 800 number junkie. My husband calls me Talks Much Woman.

I saw an ad for a migraine medicine and one side effect is death. With what I had learned about migraines, I called the 800 number for the migraine support group. I said didn't you know that a lot of migraines can be cured just by drinking enough water and a lot can be seriously reduced in intensity by drinking enough water? The woman on the line told me that yes, they knew that, but that they didn't mention it because they had discovered that most people would rather pop a pill that might kill them than drink a lot of water!

I had my first migraine at 12. I was walking into the kitchen and I got major black spots, could not breathe, and woke up on the floor after hitting my head on the table leg. I did discover Excedrin, which does help, and only ever blacked out a few more times.

It was complicated by the fact that I got migraines, sinus headaches, tension headaches and perfume headaches. I learned to tell which one was which and by the time I was 20 I no longer got the tension ones as I learned to relax the muscles that caused them. The sinus ones I dealt with with sinus medication and the migraines with Excedrin and cold wash clothes. At one point I discovered if you can make yourself throw up, it will get rid of the worst of a migraine.

Migraines are like a stabbing on one side of the head and I can't breathe and light hurts so bad all I could do is crawl into bed and cry. Sinus headaches are pressure on the forehead and throbbing. Perfume headaches are like sinus ones, but the sense of smell kicks in and everything stinks so bad I want to throw up!

I learned triggers and avoided them. Thank goodness I am not a chocoholic! Then I found out about water about 15 years ago now. My migraines plummeted. If I forgot to drink enough, I knew the next day! I could even eat some trigger foods as long as I drank enough water.

The sinus headaches continued until 6 months ago when I found out they were not sinus at all. Food allergy to corn. I can now 100% be sure I ate something with corn when I get that sinus headache.

The perfume headaches can still get me when I client wears perfume, hairspray, and other nasty chemicals. I don't go into stores that use incense etc. Plain aspirin will cut the pain if it is totally unavoidable. But these have improved now that I am eating an organic diet with no corn. The system has no chemical, so the outside chemical reaction is less.

I did write a poem about migraines and water.

A gallon a day will keep the migraine away,
But you had better not be far from a bathroom!

Soap, Shampoo & lotion

2007-12-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

Soap from the grocery store is not real soap. It is a detergent and it is nasty on the skin. I had huge patches of dry flaky skin, I needed to slather buckets of lotion just to be able to deal with the dry air here in Colorado. I had serious skin problems.

I researched soap and discovered that Ivory and such is actually a detergent and is no good for the skin. The chemicals just destroy the skin. And the antibacterial stuff is another thing they are convincing consumers they need and it is causing a lot skin problems.

I was buying a homemade soap at the Celebrations fair for awhile until the people who made stopped coming. I started buying Kiss My Face, which is a olive oil soap and my skin liked it.

I did some research and found out that pure, real soap that nourishes the skin, moisturizes, etc is actually made from oil and lye. It sounds contradictory, but it is true. I also found that people who make melt and pour soap are horrified at the thought of using lye!

I took a class and we were off! We took an entire day to make a batch of soap. We had vinegar ready for accidents. We had gloves, we had aprons, we were ready for anything. An hour later we had 5 lbs of soap and wondered what to do next. At this point we have in the house goat milk soap, almond oatmeal, plain, shea butter, and I have giving away a lot and sold some.

It amazes me that people will be horrified when I say I use lye. But they will buy the very expensive sponified oil $5 a bar soap at the health food store and not believe that sponified means it was make with lye!

Then we make shampoo bars and I will never buy shampoo again.

The hard part was the lotion. I could not find a lotion that did not break my skin out and I do need some for my hands and face in the winter here even with good soap. We found out that most lotions have some sort of corn product in them. So back to the classroom. We took a class for $75 and now we have lotion worth several hundred dollars to buy and it will last for years. If it ever goes bad in the fridge, I will make a much smaller batch!

People will ask for recipes. The recipes are all over the net. The tricky part is learning to do deal with the lye and not burn anything. But it also easier than a lot of sites make it seem. The best thing is to take a class and watch someone deal with it. And then you know how.

First Rant, eye make up

2007-12-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

December 1, 2007
I am starting this blog to document what all has been happening over the last year and a half. Actually it is going to end up being rants about various things from my life about food, allergies, doctors, and other things that I have figured out that society and the medical profession are doing that are killing people and or making them sick.

Eye make up is the very latest one. While ranting about corn, someone on a list posted about eye make up. It sounds so innocent. Didn't they blind thousands of bunnies to make this stuff safe for us? Apparently there is arsenic and other nasty chemicals in the make up. I went straight to the net for research. My eyes usually get so tired on days I do readings, so I assumed it was the intense concentration it involved. Being a reader, you have to look the part and it involves a lot of eye make up.

So off to Whole Foods where I found a line called Zuzu, which works quite well. My eyes didn't get tired! Then yesterday off to Ulta and they had two lines. One had quite a bit of stuff in it, but one was pure mineral. It works nice.

When I was at Walmart, I was looking at makeup brushes as the ones in WF and Ulta were very very expensive, the woman working there proudly told me that they carry mineral makeup! I went to look and found the usual problem I will be ranting about a lot and over and over. Total junk with a bit of good stuff in it so they can say it is good and we fall for it over and over .

One woman who was looking at make up told me she was already so poisoned and had so many health problems that she might as well keep using junk. I do not understand that I do not ever want to!

When I was belly dancing, I used to trowel the stuff on for the stage. We used to spray our faces with hair spray to set it and it not sweat off while dancing. I can remember then that I sometimes wondered if this was a bad thing, but then there were all those blind bunnies.

I stopped using face makeup, lipstick, perfume, hairspray and all that when it became apparent it was causing me headaches and I went to just eye make up only when I had to. The sensitives grew over the years until I could only use unscented products.

Next rant will be shampoo and soap