Women Need Preventative Medicine

I find this kind of advertising masked as an Op-Ed really frustrating.

Here are some quotes and my responses:

...state legislatures should require that all young girls be given this vaccine, which protects against a virus that causes some 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer in the United States each year — and 3,700 cancer deaths.

This is a misleading statement because there is no statistical context. In order to make a decision based on these numbers we need to know how often the vaccine itself causes severe reactions. If millions of girls and women are being vaccinated we need to know how many of them are going to have reactions to the vaccine vs. how many will get cancer from HPV and how many will actually experience morbidity or mortality from the disease. Additionally, cervical cancer is treatable and preventable through safer sex practices and a healthy lifestyle that includes getting pap smears if one is sexually active. In fact, the survival rates for women who catch pre-cancerous lesions early is nearly 100%. To me the obvious conclusion is to provide accessible and universal health care that would allow women to utilize preventative tools and treatment rather than a mass vaccination campaign.

Here are some statistics on HPV infection...

With more than two million doses already distributed, the reported side effects have been mostly minor, such as dizziness or fainting.

A preliminary google search immediately turns up evidence that this may not be true. Also, since when is dizziness and fainting a benign reaction? I would be really concerned if my child fainted (not from a needle phobia) after being injected with something. What is causing dizziness and fainting? Could it be a sign of neurological compromise? Were these patients followed in order to track whether or not this was a preliminary sign of a more serious reaction? This article validates my concern:

"The most frequent serious health events after GARDASIL shots are neurological symptoms," said NVIC Health Policy Analyst Vicky Debold, RN, Ph.D. "These young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision, slurred speech, fainting, involuntary contraction of limbs (seizures), muscle weakness, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet and joint pain. Some of the girls have lost consciousness during what appears to be seizures." Debold added "The manufacturer product insert should include mention of syncopal episodes, seizures and Guillain-Barre Syndrome so doctors and parents are aware these vaccine adverse responses have been associated with the vaccine."

According to the National Vaccine Information Center, Merck's Gardasil vaccine was tested against a "placebo" containing aluminum, which is also a component of the vaccine. A true placebo would be an injection of sterile water, not an injection of aluminum. The aluminum itself can cause mild or serious reactions and therefore can skew the results by making it look like the vaccine causes not much more reaction than the placebo. I am continually amazed at the low standards for determining the safety of pharmaceutical drugs.

Others complain that a mandate will pre-empt parental rights to make health decisions, but all vaccine mandates do that, to protect the children and those they might infect.

This statement makes me cringe. A correct response to the concern that a mandate will pre-empt parental rights, would be pointing out that you do not have to vaccinate your child and that all states have some form of vaccine exemption that will make it possible for you child to be enrolled in daycare, attend public school, etc. Also, parents have every right to be wary of laws that affect our ability to make choices about our children's health. Of course the author of this article would never publish what I have written and wrongly asserts that mandatory vaccination protects children and prevents infection of others. What about those who have been vaccinated infecting others with the live viruses from the vaccines? What about the children and adults who have been injured or killed from vaccination? Why do children and adults who have been vaccinated still get sick with diseases like pertussis or mumps?

Merck deserves praise for developing Gardasil at a time when many companies shun the vaccine business as risky and unprofitable. But it is charging $360 for a three-dose regimen, a price that might come down if a competing vaccine enters the market soon, as expected.

$360 is about as low as it's going to get, for now anyway, and it will almost definitely cost more. According to this survey of pediatric practices, actual costs will be in the range of $500-$900 dollars. Who is going to pay for this? Parents? Insurance companies? Tax payers? Not Merck, and they are sure going to get rich on this scam. I want to know how much it would cost to provide all women with yearly pap smears and necessary follow up treatment. It would be interesting to compare those figures. Additionally, if all women were getting a yearly exam it is likely that many other diseases or conditions would be caught in early stages or prevented entirely, reducing the need for costly invasive treatment. Now how much money would that save? And who would get rich doing it...not Merck!

As usual, Barbara Loe Fisher, sums it all up:

"GARDASIL safety appears to have been studied in fewer than 2,000 girls aged 9 to 15 years and it is unclear how long they were followed up. [1] VAERS is now receiving reports of loss of consciousness, seizures, arthritis and other neurological problems in young girls who have received the shot," said NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. "At the same time, parents who take their daughters to private pediatricians are going to be shocked to find that they will be paying two to three times the widely publicized $360 cost for the three-dose series. The cost is going to break the pocketbooks of parents and break the banks of both insurance companies and taxpayers, when the reality is that almost all cases of HPV-associated cervical cancer can be prevented with annual pap screening of girls who are sexually active."

Animal Abuse is Bad for Your Health

In the last two years I have become an almost daily reader of the New York Times. I don't read it because I think it is a quality news source (I don't), but because I find it to be a great source for understanding the prevailing and predominant mainstream cultural beliefs. I am particularly addicted to the Health section, probably because I am most adroit at debunking their myths on those topics. Today they have an article about PETA confronting a monastery about their abusive chicken raising practices. Unfortunately PETA's accusations will fail to be understood by the general public for the simple reason that most Americans know nothing about raising chickens. This section stood out to me in particular:

He [Father Gumula, the abbot] also took issue with the film’s criticism of the abbey for a common practice called debeaking, in which a hot blade is used to slice the tip of the beak off a chick before it is 10 days old. He said the abbey got its hens when they were 18 weeks old, long after their beaks had been trimmed by the supplier.

PETA says that the tip of a chicken’s beak is incredibly sensitive and that birds in the wild use it to peck the ground more than 15,000 times day as they forage for food.

Animal welfare experts say beak trimming prevents chickens from tearing one other to pieces.

“I guess, in this case, beak trimming is the best of two devils,” said Inma Estevez, an associate professor in the department of animal and avian science at the University of Maryland. “I’ve seen the alternative, and, believe me, it’s much worse.”

First of all, the monastery could be getting their chickens from suppliers who do not practice debeaking, or they could hatch their own chicks and choose not to mutilate them. Second, while it is disturbing to think of how much pain these animals endure through this practice, this factoid lacks important contextual background. Healthy chickens are raised on pasture and are allowed to forage for insects in addition to being fed grain and food scraps. This is why I distrust any chicken producer who brags about their chicken's 100% vegetarian diet. Chickens are not natural vegetarians and are only vegetarian when they are kept in barns or cages and denied access to fresh pasture. The fact that the chickens at this monastery are debeaked is an immediate clue to the conditions that they live in. They don't need their beaks to forage for insects, because they don't have access to insects. While debeaking may be a solution to the inherent problems of overcrowding, it is only necessary because of the inhumane conditions that the chickens are living in and therefore should not be considered a necessary evil.

The article goes on to say,

And he said he kept the birds caged because it kept them cleaner and healthier. “When they are on the floor, they are subjected to all sorts of parasites and bacteria that are around,” Father Gumula said. “They walk in their own manure. They walk in their troughs.”

Again, the humane solution to overcrowding is a facility with enough outdoor space for birds to be able to roam freely and forage for insects. Cages are only necessary when the birds are kept in indoor and overcrowded situations.

While treating our fellow creatures humanely should be reason enough to end these practices of factory farming, there are serious consequences for us humans that should be considered when analyzing farming techniques. Chicken meat and eggs from chickens that are raised on pasture, are much more nutrient dense. For example, their eggs will naturally contain Omega-3 fatty acids. If you generally eat factory farmed eggs take the time to notice the size and color of the yolk. It is generally on the small side and a pale yellow color. Now make the effort to procure good quality pasture fed chicken eggs. The yolk will be a much deeper color, more orangey, and the yolks are generally larger. Another example of nutritional differences between the chickens is that stock made from factory farmed chickens often will not contain enough gelatin to gel. These are just a few differences that are easy to see and experience, but really the physical differences between the chickens goes much deeper. In these times of mineral depleted soil and damaging diet we need our food to be as nutrient dense as possible. When we sacrifice the welfare of animals we are sacrificing our health and the health of future generations.

Note: I am not a supporter of PETA, mainly, because they are proponents of veganism which I consider to be an unhealthy diet for adults and tantamount to abuse when imposed on children. I also believe that one can be both a meat-eater and believe in animal rights.

Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part II

I've gotten to the point where I totally accept that traditional foods are good for me and that everything else has the potential to make me sick. I'm speaking for myself here. I recognize that other people who have a firmer grasp on health may be able to get away with eating trash, but this is not so for me. A few weeks ago I decided to eat a cupcake baked by a friend of mine who is a work-at-home-mom with a cake making business. Her cupcakes taste so awesome. Yet, as I swallowed my last delectable bite, I realized that my throat was sore. I wouldn't have thought to attribute the immediate sore throat to the cupcake, but I've had the exact same experience several times drinking beer. Generally, it happens when I'm already feeling a bit run down. I guess the alcohol or sugar is the last straw and my body lets me know that it is time to slow down.

The biggest challenge for me is not choosing to eat good foods vs. bad foods, it is putting the time, effort and planning into buying and preparing healthy foods. As anyone who has read Nourishing Traditions knows, these meals take some forethought! One poignant example is the need to soak, ferment or sprout grains, nuts, and legumes in order to neutralize the enzyme inhibitor phytic acid. As a person who has been food-health concious for awhile, I was very discouraged to learn that my vegetarian diet, relying heavily on grains and legumes, was so full of this anti-nutrient. Phytic acid or phytate acts as a chelator (pulling something out of your body) of essential minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc. Also, I was pregnant and experiencing fatigue and joint pain that I knew intuitively was the result of a nutritional deficiency. At that time I realized that I needed to make changes, but I struggled to implement healthier practices. A large part of my inaction had to do with fatigue. I think it is reasonable to say that many sick people who could benefit from traditional cooking methods fail to make changes because of low energy. Disease can be such a downward spiral!

However, another big reason that I failed to implement traditional cooking methods was my persistant attachment to the convenience and familiarity of modern foods. Store bought bread is easy! White rice is fast! Deli meats are pre-cooked! I did try to change while I was pregnant, but my efforts were panicked and disorganized. I was able to grasp which foods were bad for me, but I wasn't stocking my kitchen with enough healthy alternatives. This often resulted in me simply not eating enough some days, which is worse than eating bad food, especially while pregnant.

I started rereading Nourishing Traditions a few months ago and this tip from her "Kitchen Tips & Hints" section stuck out to me:

When preparing a meal, always think ahead to what must be done for the next two meals; put grains and pulses to soak and meats to marinate, as necessary. Our readers will notice that the food preparation methods we recommend call for considerable advance planning--not a bad habit to cultivate in life. [emphasis is mine]

I love how rather than playing into the modern, destructive desire for convenience and speed, the point is made very succintly that this inclination is not a healthy one. So often the solutions we are offered are all about cutting corners and saving time (GoGurt!). This simple advice has created much positive change in my life and the wisdom behind it has helped me to stop trying to find a quick fix where there is none. Other than having a store of frozen meals, it just takes time (and money, but that is a whole other post) to cook nourishing food.

Read "Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part I" ...

Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part I

I've known about Weston A. Price for over three years, and Sally Fallon for almost two, but it is only in the last few months that I have truly implemented traditional foods and cooking styles in my kitchen. In the past I've taken the bits and pieces that fit easily into my life. I've been making my own mayonnaise for awhile, although it took me awhile to give up the safflower oil I was using for it. I soaked my beans, but not for long enough. I started to eat more meat, but I didn't shell out the money for grass-fed.

I'm not sure what changed. Probably a combination of my baby being old enough to party on her own for a minute, finally having my own kitchen, and by virtue of my partner being in school full time, sliding into full on housewifedom. In the book For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, the authors describe how industrialization took over the important duties of mothers in the home. We used to be the makers of medicine, the healers, the food providers, the clothing makers, and much more. The work that women did was significant and skilled. I'm not advocating liberation through housework or any sort of naive regression to the old ways, but I do think that returning meaningful work and expertise back to mothers is vital for our spirits (and the physical and emotional health of our families!!). It certainly has been for me. Doing laundry, scrubbing toilets and toasting pop tarts, doesn't cut it. Making all of our food from scratch is hard work, but it's a skill, which means that it is something that I can practice and excell in. I need that in these days where people ask me what I've been doing with myself and I find the word "nothing" coming out of my mouth. I'm busy from morning to night raising my daughter and caring for our household, but in the light of my bustling young adult peers, everything that I do seems void. At least I'm not bragging about dumpster diving shitty pizza.

Sometimes I feel extremely overwhelmed with the amount of time I spend in preparing food for my family. While I'm cooking I feel all the love going into the food and I take great pride in being able to cook well and put tasty and beautiful meals on our table. While I'm doing the dishes, I fantasize about frozen food, plastic packaging, microwaves, and washing just three plates and three forks. I cook and breastfeed all day and then I sleep and breastfeed all night. Some days I lose it and we eat expensive restaurant or prepared grocery foods. We do the best we can.

This week I've been making a concerted effort to prepare food that I can eat on for several days or freeze. I tried out two recipes from Nourishing Traditions, Empanadas and Fish Cakes, and both came out great. I'm also planning to have another dumpling making extravaganza in a week or two, we have a great recipe from Cook's Illustrated, I'll post it up later. Additionally, I have spent the last four days soaking and roasting walnuts, cashews and almonds so that we can have some snack foods. I'm not a nuts person so I hadn't thought to bother with proper nut preparation (ala Sally Fallon) because I never choose to eat them. Now that I have, I am totally surprised at how good nuts taste after they have been prepared in this fashion. The first batch of walnuts I roasted were so tasty that we ate half of them while they were still being roasted (warm, buttery walnuts, yum!) and ate the other half as soon as they came out of the oven. I find that the nuts taste less bitter and have a more pleasing texture after they have been processed through soaking and roasting.

Read "Slow Cooking, Fast Living - Part II"...

Cream Cheese

I have recently begun acquiring raw milk. I live in North Carolina where raw milk cannot be sold legally. This is not true everywhere. In some states you can legally purchase certified raw milk, in some places they don't sell it in the stores but you can buy a share in someones milk producing cow, and in other places you can buy raw milk "for your pets". Not so in NC. Like midwifery, it's just plain illegal here. But you can get certified raw milk in South Carolina and it makes its way back to this mountain town. In my house we call it the Black Market White Milk.

One of the problems with the Black Market White Milk is that it is only available every two weeks or so. Initially this left me with the problem of trying to figure out how much milk to get. My partner and I are rather erratic about our milk consumption. We've been trying to avoid unfermented pasteurized milk and instead we purchase our dairy in the form of raw milk cheese and good quality yogurt and kefir. So now we're trying to relearn milk and its many culinary uses.

The first step to understanding how to use raw milk is to realize that it is totally different from pasteurized milk. Its nutrient content is different, it tastes different, the cream sits on the top, and it does not sour in the same way. Instead of becoming absolutely fetid and foul, it sort of mellows in a (literally) cheesy kind of way. I loathe rotten pasteurized milk to the point that I am a compulsive milk smeller. Every time I open a carton of milk or cream I have to smell it before I pour it, even if I just bought it, even if I just smelled it ten minutes ago!

So I was confused when I read in Sally Fallon's book (Nourishing Traditions) that one way to make homemade cream cheese is to allow raw milk to sit out on your counter (!) at room temperature (!) for 1-4 days (!!!) until it separates. I let it sit for about a day and the cream rose to the top and I smelled it and it was ripe. I was freaked out. Black Market White Milk is expensive! And here I was letting it sit unrefrigerated. I felt like I should make the cheese immediately before things could go really wrong (I was anticipating the rotten curds that are created by pasteurization). Although I couldn't figure out how the very much liquid milk would magically become cream cheese, I set up my strainer, cheese cloth, and bowl and poured the milk through it. As it had not yet fully separated, the milk, except for a little bit of thickened cream, went straight through the cloth and the strainer. I had ruined the milk and failed to make cheese. I poured it back in the glass jar and set it next to our compost bucket.

But fortuitously, it was extremely cold the next few days, and I neglected to take out the milk with the rest of the compost. (When you've got a baby in one arm you can't carry out the compost bucket and the half gallon of ruined milk without making more than one trip into the cold!) It was probably day four when I looked at the milk and realized that it had truly separated. There were now three distinct layers to the milk: the cream on the top, and then the milk solids, and then the whey on the bottom. I poured it through the cheese cloth, separating the cheese from the whey, and then hung the cheese in the cloth from a wooden spoon to drip the rest of the whey into a jar. The byproduct, whey, is very useful in the kitchen, for example, it is a great acidic medium for soaking grains.

After a night and the better part of a day the cheese stopped dripping. I cautiously unfolded the cheese cloth to reveal my "cream cheese". I was very proud, but it certainly was nothing like cream cheese. It was clumpy and didn't exactly smell fresh. Not that it smelled bad, it just smelled like a cheese of some kind and definitely not your mild store bought cream cheese. I wasn't so sure about it but I decided to try a recipe to turn it into a cream cheese spread. This is really the key, I think, to this sort of of homemade cream cheese. You blend it with flax seed oil and your choice of seasonings and flavorings. I highly recommend smoked salmon, green onions, and unrefined sea salt. It is delicious!

For Further Reading:

realmilk.org
A campaign to legalize raw milk

Learning to Maximize the Use of Your Raw Milk and Cream
An article with information and recipes for souring raw milk or cream

Grain Mill

I'm in the market for a grain mill. I'm not really a big baker, so up until recently, I had deemed this kitchen gadget to be unnecessary. However, the more research I do on grains, the more necessary a grinder seems. Through all of my reading lately I have come to realize that nutrient density is probably the most important factor in our food. Any time we eat food that is lacking in vitamins and minerals, it displaces other more nutrient dense foods. This is the real harm of junk food. Of course the artificial flavors, chemical preservatives, and hydrogenated oils are bad for us, but the real crime is that the food gave us calories without any of the necessary vitamins and minerals to actually sustain our bodies. This is where the grain mill comes into play for me. When I cook with flour I want it to be nutritious.

To understand the importance of fresh ground flour we must understand what a grain is. A whole grain consists of three layers: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. The bran is the outside layer which consists of fiber. Next is the endosperm, a starchy middle layer. And then we have the germ, where much of the nutrients and essential fatty acids are housed. White flour is made from endosperm only, excluding the fibrous bran and the vitally nutritious germ. Whole grain flour contains all of the nutrients found in the original kernel, with one caveat, it has to be freshly ground and refrigerated, otherwise the oils go rancid and the nutrient content is greatly diminished. Ground flour goes rancid at about the same rate as milk. That always makes me think as I walk down the grocery store baking aisle.

In doing my research I came across this:

"The nutritional importance of using fresh stone-ground grains for bread-making was revealed in the results of feeding studies in Germany (Bernasek, 1970). Rats were fed diets consisting of 50% flour or bread. Group 1 consumed fresh stone-ground flour. Group 2 was fed bread made with this flour. Group 3 consumed the same flour as group 1 but after 15 days of storage. Group 4 was fed bread made with the flour fed to group 3. A fifth group consumed white flour. After four generations, only the rats fed fresh stone-ground flour and those fed the bread made with it maintained their fertility. The rats in groups 3 to 5 had become infertile. Four generations for rats is believed to be equivalent to one hundred years in humans." -from this article

It reminds me of Pottenger's Cats. Of course humans are neither cats nor rats, but those sorts of studies have all sorts of interesting lessons for us, the most important being that a lack of proper nutrition for any creature results in a multi-generational degenerating condition.

As I said before, I'm not much of a baker, but I really enjoy making fermented pancakes. They have such a great texture! They're quite easy to do. Just combine your grains and liquids together in the evening and add something to start the ferment like yogurt, buttermilk, whey, or even plain old baker's yeast. Cover with a clean dish cloth and leave in a warm place overnight (room temperature is fine). In the morning your soupy pancake mixture should look bubbly, if it doesn't you can always postpone [ :-( ] your pancakes until the next day and by then your batter should be seeing some action. Add your eggs, oils, sweeteners, and baking soda to the batter and then fry em up. They bubble up in the pan too, it's fun to watch. Sometimes their texture reminds me of injera. I learned how to do this from Sandor Katz's book "Wild Fermentation". It's a great cookbook.

For further reading about grains check out this article:

Wheaty Indiscretions--What Happens to Wheat, from Seed to Storage by Jean Allbritton, Certified Nutritionist