Dr. Ian Shillington firmly believes each individual has the right and the responsibility to take charge of his or her health. With this goal in mind, he sets out to inform, to educate, and to empower everyone who seeks his medical advice. Although he has officially retired from practice, he maintains an Internet presence with a Yahoo group where he answers health questions. He runs an online store, maintains a website where he shares information including recipes for his nutritional and detox powders and tinctures, and he owns and operates a restaurant and a health food store.

Although Doc Shillington has shared a remarkably thorough list of natural treatments, he is always hesitant to discuss quick fixes for acute symptoms. His years of practice taught him that patients in search of the quick fix usually disregard the road to true health—the holistic mind, body, spirit approach to life which includes proper nutrition, exercise, and a regular schedule of total body detox.

Naturopathy Lecture – Dr. Ian Shillington, September 21 2002

Doc Shillington’s Total Body Detox

Doc Shillington’s Total Body Detox includes a protocol for an intestinal cleanse, a gallbladder/liver cleanse, and a bladder/kidney cleanse. Together these three cleanses comprise his total body cleanse. For patients who are considered “incurable” (due to a chronic condition or a life threatening condition or disease) Dr. Shillington has designed a variation of his Total Body Cleanse, which can be found on his website.

The full Total Body Cleanse is intensive and expensive, but it is the best detox we have found to date. (Also note that many of the teas and tonics you will purchase will last for more than one detox.) Though the diet throughout the cleanse is vegan and as raw as possible, Dr. Shillington recommends eating as much as you want as often as you want. You won’t be hungry.

For most of the cleanse, we followed the incurables program and relied more on juicing than eating whole foods. Our energy was high and the results were exceptional.

One tester said, “My sleep was better. In the mornings, I woke in an instant, fully awake and aware. Aches and pains from old injuries disappeared. My eyesight improved. My attention and focus improved. My health was restored.”

One of the downsides to this cleanse is a lack of clear instruction. Doc Shillington’s website is confusing at best, very poorly designed, and at times difficult to navigate. Finding the regimen for the total body cleanse, and then making sense of it is difficult and time consuming. So we at OLM worked with Doc Shillington and put the regimen together for you (since we pulled much of Doc Shillington’s text word for word, we’ve given him the copyright from this point on).

OLM endorses this body cleanse program that requires you to adhere to a vegan diet during the duration of the cleanse. This means no meat, fish, fowl, or dairy. Eat nothing that had a face on it or came from anything that had a face on it, except for raw eggs, which are included in your Total Nutrition drink.

This is a three-part cleanse, beginning with the colon cleanse, followed by a liver and gallbladder cleanse, and ending with a kidney cleanse. If you have a particular problem with the kidneys, you can cleanse the kidneys before the liver and gallbladder.

The basic diet follows:

Upon Arising:

Drink 8 ounces of distilled water. This is a great way to start your day. The water rinses and flushes your digestive tract of any leftover food and digestive juices.

Breakfast:

Live, fresh fruit or vegetable juice is the best way to get your vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients. They are also very important for cleansing and detoxification. If you are hungry before lunchtime, you may have fruit, diluted fruit juices, and fruit smoothies. Stop all fruit or fruit juices at least 1 hour before lunch. It is best while on this program not to mix fruit and vegetables together.

Lunch:

For lunch you can have diluted fresh raw vegetable juices, raw vegetables alone or in salads, sprouts, potassium broth, and herb teas. You may make dressings for the salad if you like using olive oil, avocado, raw apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, onions, and any herbs and spices.

Afternoon Snacks:

Raw vegetables, raw vegetable salads, diluted vegetable juices, sprouts, potassium broth, Total Nutrition, and herb teas. All vegetable food must be stopped by 6 p.m.

Dinner:

Diluted fruit juices, fruits, fruit smoothies, fruit salads and herb teas.

This program requires you to exercise daily. Start with what you can physically tolerate and increase daily. Walking for 20-40 minutes twice a day is an excellent way to get your exercise. Make sure you sweat.

Hydrotherapy is the last requirement in this program. Hot and cold showers do wonders for your circulation and can speed your recovery incredibly fast. Start off taking a hot shower, as hot as you can stand it. Keep it hot for 3 minutes and then turn the hot all the way off. Stay in the cold water for 1 minute. Repeat this cycle at least twice for a minimum of 3 complete cycles. End with a nice hot shower.

Do not underestimate this procedure; it is powerful and miraculous. There are spas in Europe that specialize in curing “terminally ill” cancer patients using hydrotherapy alone. If you have a particular area of your body that is ill, buy a shower wand and concentrate more “hot & cold” on that area in addition to the above. Hot and cold packs will also work well to increase circulation to an affected area.

Special note: Never take Echinacea for more than three weeks at a time. This is one herb from which you need to rest.

Remember, this program restricts the types of food you will be eating, not the amount. If you are hungry at any point during this detoxification program, drink and/or eat more. The more you eat and drink, the more you will flush the toxins out of your body. Also remember to have a fun time. A positive, healing attitude is important. To achieve maximum benefits from this program, be loving to yourself.

Colon Cleanse, Week One:

8 oz of water in a.m.
Total Nutrition —morning.
Echinacea—2 droppers 3X a day
Total Tonic—2 droppers 3X a day
Intestinal Cleanse —Most people need from one to six capsules, but some have needed as many as 30 capsules.

To the diet listed above, add 8-16 ounces of carrot/beet juice per day with 4 garlic cloves.

Colon Cleanse, Week Two

Repeat week one and add Intestinal Detox. Take 5 to 6 times each day (every 3 hours on the average) for 5 to 6 days. Finish the jar of powder and/or bag of capsules within the week.

One hour after your morning nutritional drink mix 1 heaping teaspoon of Intestinal Detox powder with 8 ounces of diluted juice. Mixes best if you shake it in a small jar. (Or if you are taking capsules, take 8 capsules with your juice).

Do the same ½ hour before lunch, between lunch and dinner, ½ hour before dinner and 1 hour before bed, so that you are consuming a minimum total of 5 heaping teaspoons (or 40 capsules) each day.

During or after dinner, take your Intestinal Cleanse capsules as usual. When you start Intestinal Detox increase your regular dosage of intestinal cleanse by 1 additional cap, or more if necessary to have sufficient bowel movements. It is helpful to drink additional liquid after each dose of Intestinal Detox, at least 8 ounces.

Liver Cleanse, Week Three

The evening before you start, make the Liver Detox tea per instructions.

Liver Detox Tea
Total nutrition
Echinacea—2 droppers 3X a day
Total Tonic—2 droppers 3X a day
Intestinal Cleanse  &  Detox
–Liver Cleanse Day #1:

Continue with the same diet you have been eating for the past two weeks. First drink 8 ounces of distilled water. Within 1 hour prepare for the following morning drink: In Spring or Summer mix 8-ounces of fresh orange juice or a citrus juice combination (1 lemon or 1 lime and enough orange, grapefruit or tangerine to make 8 ounces). In Fall or Winter mix 8 ounces of fresh apple and/or grape juice with:

8 ounces of Distilled Water
1-5 clove(s) of garlic (start with one and increase daily)
1-5 tablespoon(s) of organic virgin cold-pressed olive oil (start with one and increase daily)
1-5 small pieces of fresh Ginger root (1 inch long – start with one and increase daily)

NOTE: IF YOU FEEL NAUSEATED AT ALL – ADD MORE GINGER
15 minutes after this drink, consume 2 cups of the Liver Detox Tea & 2 dropperfuls of Liver/Gallbladder Anti-Parasite tincture. The tincture can be taken straight or in a few ounces of purified water or mixed in with the tea. Repeat the tea and tincture 2 more times during the day.

Liver Cleanse, Days #2, #3, and #4:

Begin the 3 day juice fast. Start with your water, morning flush drink and herbal tea. Drink diluted fruit juices and herb tea until noon. Drink diluted vegetable juices, Potassium Broth, Total Nutrition and herb tea mid-day and afternoon. Take diluted fruit juices and herb tea again in the evening. Consume at least 1 gallon of liquid (8 ounces every hour)! If you get hungry, DRINK MORE!

Liver Cleanse, Day 5 – Liver Gallbladder Bomb:

This is the day you break your fast. After your morning drink, you can have some fresh fruit. Chew it very slowly and mix each mouthful with plenty of saliva. Remember, breaking your fast is a very important part of this program. Chew your food well and eat until satisfied, not full. You can always eat more later if you are still hungry. After 1:00 PM you should have a small vegetable salad and fruit again in the evening, chewing everything to a liquid pulp.

Tincture–The “Bomb”:

At bedtime, drink ½ cup of warm, unrefined olive oil blended with ½ cup of fresh lemon juice. Immediately go to bed and lie on your right side with your right knee pulled up close to your chest for 30 minutes.

Thereafter do the bomb each evening before you go to bed until there are no more gallstones (little dark green globules from the size of BBs up to the size of a mothball) coming out the following day. Do not start on the Week 4 program until the bomb is over and done with.

Kidney and Bladder Cleanse, Week Four

The night before you begin, make the Kidney/Bladder Tea per the instructions on the package.

Stop taking echinacea, Intestinal Cleanse #1 & #2, and discontinue the Liver Detox Tea and tincture. Continue taking Total Nutrition, Total Tonic, and cayenne drops (in tea or water).

Day 1 Upon Arising:

Drink your water. Within 1 hour prepare the following Morning Drink:

Kidney & Bladder Flush Morning Drink
Juice of one lemon and one lime
16 to 32 ounces of distilled water
A pinch of cayenne pepper or 1 to 10 drops of Cayenne Tincture
Optional – maple syrup (a little) to taste:
End of Cleanse, Week Five

Begin all over again at Week #3 if you wish to do a more concentrated detox and cleanse program.

Take it easy when returning to a new healthy food program. Choose lighter foods for a few days and be careful not to overeat. Chew your food well. Eating smaller meals more often is better than one or two large meals. Enjoy your new set of values on food choices and amounts. For the best health, eat lots of raw, organic foods that are grown locally and in season. Repeat this program until you are well, but do it at least twice more after you have recovered. OLM
Doc Shillington’s Total Body Cleanse Program copyright (c) 2001 by Ian Shillington N.D.

Some of Shillington’s Recipes:

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Shillington’s detox products can be found  here at Green Lifestyle Market.

All of Shillington’s Products can be found here at Green Lifestyle Market.

Further Reading:

• Hot & Cold Hydrotherapy
• How to Make a Tincture
• Total Nutrition – Make your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula
• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

Recommended Supplements:

• Shillington’s Total Nutrition Formula
• Shillington’s Liver/Gallbladder Formula
• Shillington’s Liver/Gallbladder Tea
• Shillington’s Kidney/Bladder Formula
• Shillington’s Kidney/Bladder Tea
• Shillington’s Blood Detox Formula
• Shillington’s Blood Detox Tea
• Shillington’s Cayenne
• Shillington’s Echinacea +
• Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse
• Shillington’s Intestinal Detox
• Shillington’s Total Tonic
• Shillington’s Body Balance +

In our quest to find the best organic shampoo and hair care products for our personal use, we tried Morrocco Method. Our first purchase was an expensive package with four shampoos, a hair detox treatment, oil, a hair massager, a volumizing spray, and two conditioners.

There are things we love about this company and other issues we feel they should address. First and foremost, the products are wonderful. Honestly, it doesn’t get any better than Morrocco Method. They truly represent top of the line, best of the best, without cutting any corners. The ingredients are natural, gluten free, and raw. Nothing is synthetic. This company is dedicated to fair trade and extremely sensitive to environmental issues in all of their business practices.

Their shampoos can be used as a body wash and a shaving cream; one of their conditioners doubles as a deodorant. And their products do more than detox hair and scalp and restore luster to your hair, their products actually help regrow hair. (From our experience, we can agree this claim is true).

I wish we could say we liked everything about this company. We don’t. While it would be a mistake to assume customer service for an individual would be the same as a corporate response to a magazine asking for samples for a product review, we must report we were not at all pleased with the way they treated us at OLM. Rather than go into details, let’s just say that they were more than willing to send us samples, but their level of professionalism left much to be desired.

The same can be said for the company website and the written material and instructions that accompany a purchase. Morrocco Method would benefit from hiring an editor to proof its written copy and by revamping the navigation and layout of its website to make it more user-friendly. The site also boasts about its forum, but a question we posted 11 months ago has never been answered. It looks as if no posts have been answered since 2007 Morrocco Method’s prices are steep, especially if you follow their suggestion and buy all 4 shampoos for $75.00 so you can rotate them each time you wash your hair.

Rotating the four shampoos is said to provide optimum results, so it is a bit confusing to see literature that states that one shampoo is for normal to oily hair, one is for normal to dry hair, and two are for all hair types. On the other hand, words are inadequate to describe how your hair feels after using these products. It’s as if you are rediscovering your true hair, they way it is meant to feel with its natural oils. We found for the first time that we didn’t need to wash our hair each day, or even every other day. We could go as long as four or five days between shampoos thus making these shampoos affordable in the long run.

We highly recommend Morrocco Method’s hair care products for everyone, but especially for anyone who is losing hair. Try these products and follow the written advice regarding daily brushing and massage.

Update 12/21/2013: Right we are pleased to announce that Morrocco Method is available at our store, Green Lifestyle Market.

Update 7/1/2014: Their customer service is much better, but it’s still hit or miss. The people are nicer, but there are inconsistencies that are annoying.

In this day and age, we often hear families rarely share meals, much less share in their preparation. The time we spend preparing and eating good, healthy, lovingly prepared food holds us together as a family.

I will be the first to admit that almost everything involved in preparing a meal can be a chore. But the “simple” value of passing on cooking skills and the time spent together shopping, cooking, and washing up are bonding and learning experiences for you and your little ones.

Farmers markets and local shops are more likely to provide pleasurable shopping experiences than the local supermarket. Take your time and make it an adventure with the children. Help them to learn where things really come from (eggs from chickens, milk from cows). Don’t let them grow up believing everything comes from supermarkets.

I want to give my family the best. I have learned it’s just as easy to buy organic and fresh produce as it is to buy the supermarket stuff. What surprises me most is discovering careful selection of food doesn’t blow our budget. One of the secrets is to buy seasonal foods. By buying seasonal local foods you not only save your budget, you help the planet. A recent study says our diets (consisting of flown around the world) account for up to two times as many greenhouse emissions as driving. Learn what is in season and how to make delicious meals from seasonal choices. Many celebrity chefs now have published their own seasonal recipe book; one yummy discovery is Nigel Slater’s cookbook.

This is the season for making Christmas gifts. Nothing goes down quite as well, or conveys love and care as prettily wrapped homemade goodies do. The pride of a child who hands over a parcel of something they made is immeasurable. It’s also a simple way to step back from the season’s commercialism and frantic shopping for mass produced, preservative filled, plastic gifts. Onions are easy to grow and store. They are packed with anti-viral properties—super for sore throats and coughs. Baked, they become so sweet and caramelized; children will like them. This recipe would also go well as a Christmas side dish.

There are online resources aplenty for seasonal eating, too. One very clever U.S. site I’m fond of is www.Epicurious.com. It has a seasonal ingredients map, which can also link to recipes, cooking tips, and inspiration which are then rated by readers.
Onions with Parmesan and Cream
4 medium/ large onions
300 ml (1-1/4 cups) whipping or double cream
Good handful of grated Parmesan

Set the oven at 180˚c (350 F). Peel the onions and bring them to a boil in a deep pan of water. Leave them at a simmer for about 25 minutes, until tender. Lift them out with a draining spoon. Slice the onions in half from root to tip and put them cut side down in an ovenproof dish. Tip the cream over the onions. Season with salt, pepper, and grated cheese and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden and bubbling.
One of my favourite, more unusual seasonal recipes is beetroot chocolate cake. My boys are most suspicious of the usual borscht, but this goes down splendidly. I know, it sounds weird, but trust me; think carrot cake in pretty pink.

Beetroot and Chocolate Cake

375g (1.6 cups) Organic, unrefined caster sugar
250g (2 sticks) organic butter
4 organic free range eggs
250g (1 cup) plain flour
2 tsp organic bicarbonate of soda (baking soda).
450g (2 cups) finely grated raw beetroot (beets)
100g (1/2 cup) organic unsweetened grated chocolate, high cocoa content
2 heaping tablespoons of organic cocoa powder
Half a tablespoon organic vanilla essence (vanilla extract)
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
Mix the softened butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Whisk eggs in a separate bowl, then add them to the cake mix gradually. Sift the flour, bicarb of soda, and cocoa powder into the cake batter and stir in well. Cut the stalks off the beetroot and peel them. Finely grate them and add to the cake mix. Add the grated chocolate and stir well. Add the vanilla essence. Pour cake batter into a 23cm greased cake tin. This cake takes 50 to 65 minutes to bake, depending on your oven and the depth of the cake tin. Check whether it is ready by carefully piercing the cake with a skewer. It should come out relatively clean.

For a change from all those root vegetables, there are also quite a few lettuce varieties that will happily thrive in frost (at least here in the UK!) and children will love wrapping up warm to brave the weather and plant seeds. Also sprouting seeds like chickpea, sunflower and alfalfa in a jar on the windowsill gives a super winter boost of vitamins and provides satisfyingly quick results for children. And one of the best bits of getting cold outside is coming in to hot cocoa. Again, Willie’s Supreme Cacoa wins the day. It’s a solid block of 100% cacao that’s been storming the UK. You just grate it into the milk, and for us, the milk’s sweetness and the chocolate’s creaminess means we can pass up on the sugar.

If you are not up to all that work, there is always organic convenience available such as the Mummy Delicious organic risottos and soups, ready and on the table in under 20 minutes, loved by both adults and children. Add some pure Willies Cacao to the Porcini Mushroom risotto and you have a meal that would mesmerize any dinner guest.

Barbara Kingsolver has written an exquisitely hilarious and inspiring book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A Year of Food Life regaling her family’s attempt to be self sufficient, organic, and local for a year. It will inspire you to get up and create if nothing else will!

Vanessa Arelle de Peeters is Founder and Managing Director of Mummydeli.com. This online emporium offers shoppers in the UK more than 450 local products that are natural, organic and sustainable. Watch for Mummydeli.com to expand to the U.S. and Canada with local and sustainable products.www.mummydeli.com

Holiday Sickness – Letter From the Editor

Ask OLM

Interview with The Health Ranger Mike Adams

Amy Philo Zoloft Survivor

Chiropractic Care with Dr. Kelly

Healthier Halloween

Health Issues with Non-Stick Cookware

10 Ideas for a More Organic Halloween

Bouncing Off The Walls

High Fructose Corn Syrup A Sweet Surprise?

Being Organic On a Budget

Green Halloween

Tomato Stuffed With Spiced Macadamia Walnut Cream, Endive and Watercress

Raw Pumpkin Pie Recipe

High Fructose Corn Syrup,  A Not So Sweet Surprise

The holidays are here—a time for family, friends, food, and, unfortunately, sickness. Colds and flus are common, and everyone blames them on the colder weather. But many alternative health care practitioners say the weather has nothing to do with germs, since germs are everywhere at all times. Some go so far as to say that you can’t “catch” a cold. Try telling that to a mom who just put her child in preschool or daycare. Too often the whole family will fight one infection after another.

You can “catch” a cold. They are certainly contagious. And while germs are everywhere at all times, I believe it is true that when your body is subjected to a significant climate change and other stress factors (such as in-laws visiting for Thanksgiving, or a tight budget and a Christmas shopping list), your immune system can become vulnerable. And if your immune system is vulnerable, you are more likely to “catch” something if you come in contact with a high concentration of a virus or bacteria.

There are many factors involved in getting sick. But one of those factors is always a lack of nutrition and/or an accumulation of toxins (and the two are typically one and the same). I will not get sick this holiday season. I also doubt very much that Dr. Kelly, Dr. Shillington, Eric Harr, or most of our other regular contributors will “catch” anything, either. While my opinion does differ from that of many alternative health care practitioners with regard to the issue of weather changes, I’m sure we agree you have to have the right breeding ground—a compromised immune system.

An easy way to compromise your immune system (the most common way, especially this time a year) is to eat candy, desserts, processed and refined foods, and to drink alcohol.

I will certainly partake in many of the holiday traditions which include eating and drinking some foods and beverages that are not good for me, but I will limit them. I will choose carefully, and most importantly, I will listen to my body. When you are eating something bad for you, you can feel it in your mouth and your throat and then in your stomach. You will feel the first signs of sickness in your throat and sinuses. Your sense of smell will heighten and everything will smell stale, and that’s when you can really tell if something is not good for you. Right before you get sick, your body will let you know if it doesn’t want something. Don’t ignore it.

I will also have echinacea and Total Tonic on hand at all times, and I will have Bio-gest and Vitälzym (digestive enzymes and systemic enzymes). I will also be sure to continue to get optimal amounts of nutrition from both the foods I eat and my multivitamin/mineral supplementation.

Health is not so much a goal as it is a series of choices that one makes while carefully listening to the body.

Sincerely,

Michael Edwards

Editor in Chief

Supplements on a Budget

I have a tight budget. What are the most important supplements I should get? I really can’t spend more than $40 a month.

Thanks,

Shawn

DR. SHILLINGTON ANSWERS: On a tight budget, there is only one product that I would recommend above all others since it does it all. This is “Total Nutrition” as manufactured by Organic Solutions, Inc. It has all the building blocks necessary for creating a healthy body.

Doc a Vegetarian?

Dr. Shillington, are you a vegetarian? I know you eat raw eggs, but do you eat any other meat or cheese? And what do you recommend? I am considering being a vegetarian myself and want to make sure I am making the healthiest choice.

Jessie

DR. SHILLINGTON ANSWERS: I am NOT a vegetarian. The only time I have a person go vegan is when they are cleansing. The reason for this is that I want the body’s attention to be focused on healing rather than on digestion. Eating meat takes up way too much time in the digestion process. Healing requires that the body gets REST, and this includes a rest from the heavy digestive processes of eating meat. For the most part, inactive and sedentary people eat far too much meat. Only those who labor heavily should eat large quantities of meat. I believe in balance. 4 to 6 oz of organic meat (tops) with 6 to 8 oz of vegetables in a meal is excellent. Cheese has too much fat and should be eaten sparingly. Raw eggs are brilliant since they contain the enzymes necessary to process the protein in them, and a fertilized egg contains every amino acid there is. I have two every day.

Hope this helps.

(Note from OLM: If you eat eggs, especially raw, be sure they are organic !)

Birth Control

I am trying to choose birth control. I am 30 years old, and I am concerned about the toxinsI will be putting into my body. I have tried the pill and the depo shot. I become very moody and irritable on these. My boyfriend and I have tried condoms, and he has trouble…umm…achieving his goal while using them. Also, they tend to tear or come off sometimes, too. Is spermicidal cream my best option? And if I choose to go on the pill again, any ideas to help with the mood swings?

Thank you,

Wendy (name changed)

RYAN HARRISON ANSWERS: Birth control is both a very personal and individual choice and one that should be made by consensus in a partnership. Obviously, if it doesn’t work well for both partners, it’s worth looking for a solution that does. There are many different kinds of birth control available today with new ones introduced to the market fairly regularly.

Though I certainly appreciate the health-related complexities of the common birth control pill, I’m not a woman and wouldn’t presume to give definitive advice on that topic. So, I’m turning to another expert on the subject, Susun Weed. In her seminal work the Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, she suggests three different kinds of herbal birth control: sterility promoters, implantation preventers, and menstrual promoters. Naturally, she suggests that such herbal approaches are “most effective when combined with knowledge of your fertility cycles, selective abstinence, mental control, and barriers to sperm,” but the list of herbs she presents have a long history of preventing pregnancy.

Among the sterility-promoting herbs, Weed suggests Stoneseed root (Lithospermum ruderale), used by women of the Shoshone and Dakota tribes to cause sterility. Another herb called Jack-in-the-Pulpit root (Arisaema triphyllum) was used by Hopi women, preventing conception for one week.

Implantation preventing herbs may be a more suitable choice; they safely and painlessly make the endometrium unsuitable for the growth of an embryo. The seeds of Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) can be taken daily starting at menstruation or even immediately after unprotected intercourse and continued for up to one week to prevent pregnancy. Smartweed leaves (Polygonum hydropiper) can be found all over the world as a common weed. This herb is used world-wide as a fertility regulator as it contains naturally-occurring components that interfere with normal pregnancy.

Among herbal remedies that promote menstruation are Ginger root (Zingiber officinale), which is one of the strongest and fastest actingemmenagogues (menstruation promoters) around; Tansy leaves (Tanacetum vulgare); and Pennyroyal leaves (Hedeoma pulegioides), an herbal emmenagogue that is so potent it can also act as an abortifacient.

Obviously – and I cannot stress this enough – if you want to approach birth control from an herbal angle, you need to work with a very qualified, very well trained herbalist. Collecting the herbs mentioned and trying to tackle this on your own may not only prove futile but harmful, as many of the herbs listed here can have powerful side-effects when used improperly. It’s certainly worth looking into, but I encourage you to do so with a professional at your side.

Condoms remain one of the easiest, efficient and side-effect free ways to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. They can tear, yes. To prevent this, be sure that there is plenty of lubrication involved, and that it is appropriate for the condom being used. (Mismatched lubricants and condoms are at the top of the list for reasons for condom tearing.) If the condom slips off with regularity, I suggest exploring different kinds of condoms. All condoms are not created equal! Condoms actually do come in different sizes, as well as in different textures. Some may work better for your partner than others.

That your partner is unable to achieve orgasm with a condom on speaks less about the effect of the condom on his penis than on his state of mind. Any man will tell you – at least if he’s being honest – that sexual arousal can be achieved simply as a result of thoughts, let alone physical stimulation. So, what’s going on in his head is just as important as what he’s wearing “down there.” If you’re not opposed to a little experimentation, I’d suggest you and your partner explore manual stimulation with a condom on. Find out what it takes – words, sounds, ideas, images, etc. – to bring him to orgasm while wearing a condom. Once you both know, you can incorporate those aspects into your sexual encounters.

Finally, if you do opt for a standard birth control pill, you should take time to find one that reacts well with your unique physiology. There are many different birth control pills on the market; some will cause cramps or mood swings, others may not. It can take some shopping around to find the one that works best for you. Either way, as long as you are taking birth control, you should also be taking a good, enteric coated probiotic. One of the downsides of regular birth control pill usage is that it negatively alters your body’s intestinal flora. You can do yourself a huge favor by supplementing daily with a probiotic to keep the beneficial bacteria plentiful. Additionally, you should know that women on the pill have an increased need for vitamins B6, B12, folic acid and zinc.

Hungry

I eat very healthy, but way too much. I am 6’3” and overweight by about 45 pounds. Besides being overweight, I consider myself to be very healthy. I just can’t quit eating!!! If I buy only fruit and vegetables I will eat a week’s worth in a day! Any ideas?

RYAN HARRISON ANSWERS: The human appetite has both physiological and psychological components. On the one side, we feel hunger for a reason: our bodies let us know when they require fuel. On the other side, emotional connections to food can be so powerful as to create the illusion of hunger even if it is not physiologically required.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear someone say “I eat very healthy” is “what does healthy mean to you?” Some people truly believe they follow a healthy diet, but actually consume a good deal of empty calories – calories with no real redeeming qualities such as vitamins, minerals or phytonutrients attached to them. And the problem with empty calories is that they often promote hunger, weight gain and cycles oF addiction. So, if there’s even the possibility that your version of “healthy” could be different from mine, I’d suggest you contact a nutritional consultant to get a second opinion.

Otherwise, I’d suggest that the foods you may be eating may not be in the ratio that your body requires to function optimally. In a perfect world, the human diet would consist of roughly 65% complex carbohydrates, 20% healthy fats, and 15% high quality protein. The typical American diet, unfortunately, is 28% carbohydrates (typically simple, not complex), 40% fat (including saturated and trans fats), 12% protein (often accompanied by high amounts of saturated fat) and 20% sugar. The truth of the matter is that if your body is not getting the blend of macronutrients that it needs, it might send you hunger signals even if you’re eating lots of food!

For example, you mentioned that you can go through a week’s worth of fruit in one day. In some ways, that’s actually pretty good for you; most people don’t get even the meager 5 servings a day that the USDA recommends. Unfortunately, if you’re eating mostly fruit all day long, you are not getting the amount of protein required by a 6’3” body. And protein helps promote feelings of satiety, whereas fruit – even with all its fiber – tends to digest fairly quickly (in some cases, taking only 30minutes).

If you are eating a more balanced diet, then you might take a look at your emotional connections to food. Are you an emotional eater? Do you eat when you’re happy or sad? Stressed or relaxed? To reward yourself? As a punishment or a pick-me-up? Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to keep a food journal, writing down how you feel each time you start to eat something and whether you think your feelings are affecting your appetite and/or food choices. The results may surprise you.

Some might suggest finding a supplement that curbs hunger. One such supplement recently hit the market like a tidal wave, but has since faded (as they always do). It’s called Hoodia gordonii and while it is a natural appetite suppressant, I warn against any kind of diet pill. The truth is that, even if it works, when you stop taking the supplement, your basic attitude toward and approach to food will not have changed. This is why people can take all kinds of diet pills, lose all kinds of weight, and then once the pills have run out, they gain it all back plus some. So, my advice is to simply steer clear of diet pills, including appetite suppressants.

Finally, here are a few suggestions that may help curb your appetite, or at least control it. Drink a full glass of purified water before you eat a meal. Sometimes, hunger is really dehydration in disguise. Eat 5 or 6 smaller meals during the day instead of 3 large ones. Having food in your stomach more or less all day keeps the metabolism up and can help take the edge off of hunger pangs. Limit your portion sizes. That may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s probably half the battle. If you’re going out to eat, ask for a to-go box right at the start and when your food arrives, immediately put half of it in there and out of sight. You may experience unpleasant hunger as you limit your intake, but it doesn’t take long – maybe a couple days – for the human body to adapt to such a change. I believe that most people eat more than they really require for optimal health. Making this kind of change may be one of the best investments in your overall health and longevity that you can make. OLM
Email your questions to questions [at] organicmail.net. Questions may be edited for clarity or length.

At age 30, Mike Adams was fifty pounds overweight. He suffered from chronic back pain, depression, high cholesterol, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The son of a Pfizer contractor and a clinical trial tester for some of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, he had grown up trusting conventional medicine. Extensive research led him to the truth about health: the vast majority of all diseases can easily be prevented and even cured without drugs or surgery. Within months he had cured himself of diabetes and he quickly achieved optimal health. The founder of Natural News.com, The Consumer Wellness Center, Better Life Goods, and Truth Publishing, he is known today as Mike Adams, The Health Ranger.

OLM: Tell me about what’s going on with the FTC and the FDA these days.

Mike Adams: The biggest issue that affects your readership is the irradiation of the food supply. Many people choose organic foods because they want the increased nutritional potency of those foods. Everybody knows that organic fruits and vegetables have more nutrients, more vitamins, more minerals than conventionally grown. But when you irradiate those foods you destroy the delicate phytonutrients and phytochemicals that are responsible for protecting us from chronic degenerative disease. So by irradiating the food supply, the FDA and the USDA are in fact depleting the nutritional potency of the food supply. And on top of that, they don’t want anyone to know the foods are being irradiated. They want to be able to label foods as “pasteurized” if they’ve been irradiated. Louis Pasteur would be rolling in his grave to hear his name was being associated with irradiation of foods. But it’s a symptom of what’s happening in our nation. Even this financial fiasco that is going on is all about just sweeping things under the carpet, misleading consumers, and trying to pretend these problems don’t exist. It’s what the FDA is doing as well as Wall Street.

OLM: How do they irradiate food? Do you know what the process actually is?

Mike Adams: Yes. There’s an irradiation machine. It’s a lot like the conveyor belt at the airport where you put your luggage through. There’s a tunnel and there’s a belt and the food is already packaged so it’s usually already wrapped in plastic. And then it’s just fed through this machine and it simply radiates it for a few seconds with a very high power radiation machine, higher power than what they use at the airport by the way, and then it comes out, and that’s it. It’s been irradiated, and from that point forward it’s been altered. The genes, the DNA of the plant have been altered, and so have the nutritional properties.

OLM: I know they are doing this with spinach. Are they doing it with any other produce?

Mike Adams: Well, they do it with spinach. You’re right. They are considering doing it with green onions, peppers and tomatoes. And it’s only a matter of time. You know how these things go. They will expand this effort to include other veggies. Because, you see, our federal government, in my view, would rather destroy the food supply than to try to make farmers and ranchers more accountable for the cleanliness of their own operations. You see, E. coli contamination of foods is not caused by plants. It’s caused by upstream cattle factories. E. coli doesn’t grow in plants. It only grows in animals. So the contamination of lettuce or tomatoes or anything along those lines with E. coli is really caused by upstream cattle operations. And rather than clean these up they’d rather just irradiate the food supply.

OLM: And my understanding is that the E. coli that can hurt us is actually manmade. The E. coli has to survive acidic conditions and antibiotics before it mutates and becomes dangerous.

Mike Adams: Well yeah, exactly. By Industrial Farming pumping those cattle full of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, they are breeding in, essence, E. coli superbugs. And that is what gets into the food supply when they don’t have clean operations. The problem here is upstream. And again, this is very typical of what is happening in the U.S. today, which is to ignore the root causes of the problems and simply treat the symptoms or try to mask the symptoms in some way.

OLM: Do you know of any E. coli or salmonella outbreaks with organic produce?

Mike Adams: No, I don’t know of any. I’ve heard of some organic almonds being contaminated. But they were all contaminated during the shipping or transportation phase. Organic almonds are never contaminated at the source. It’s only distributions, shipping, that kind of thing, because they don’t clean the containers. You know, the big trucks. They might ship some other contaminated food first and then they don’t wash it out properly and then the almonds get contaminated.

OLM: And what they are doing with spinach they might be doing with organic spinach, as well as conventional, right? There’s no rule that says they can’t irradiate organic spinach, correct?

Mike Adams: Well, I think there is a rule that you can’t label it organic if it’s been irradiated but I’m not actually sure about that. I’d have to check on that. Regardless, what’s happening is a trend towards irradiation of more foods and a weakening of the definition of organic. And that’s where institutions like the Cornucopia Institute, which I consider to be good friends and good allies, are working very, very hard to protect the integrity of the word organic, the definition of organic.

OLM: I’ve just recently looked at their website pretty extensively and I am pretty pleased with them. I just found out about them from… I think it was one of your emails.

Mike Adams:They represent small farms all over the country. That’s their constituency, so to speak. They are trying to protect those small farms and doing so requires the protection of the definition of organic. Because if you can let big business come in and put chemicals on the crops and chemicals in the animals and then still call it organic then, of course, the small farmers can’t compete.

OLM: It seems that they are what the FDA should be.

Mike Adams: Yeah. Yeah. (Laughing wryly) It’s very clear that the FDA and the FTC and even the USDA no longer work to protect the people, not by any wild stretch of the imagination. They work to protect the interests of the corporations that control this country. The people are protected only by the non-profits. It’s organizations like the Cornucopia Institute that are suing the USDA  or organizations like the Organic Consumers Association, which  I also support , that are suing the so called organic deputy operations. These non-profits are doing the job that the regulators should have been doing but are refusing to do.

OLM: Yeah, and you know a lot of people have a really hard time swallowing the idea that there are people in Congress, the FDA, and the FTC who want us to be sick.  But it does seem like that’s what they’re doing. That’s certainly the end result.

Mike Adams: It’s a well known phenomenon that every regulatory agency eventually becomes the marketing branch of the very industry it’s supposed to regulate and the reason is because all the people working at the FDA, or most, used to work in the industries they regulate. And the people who leave the FDA go to work at those companies. So it’s a revolving door policy is what it’s called. So it’s all the same people and they’re just pretending to be on two sides of the fence when in fact they are all working in the same direction which is more drugs, more power, more profits for the corporations.

Now none of these people actually want Americans to be sick. They don’t fall asleep at night dreaming of a nation full of sick, diseased people.  However, they are willing to look the other way while this happens.  We’ve seen the lack of integrity in Western culture where people are willing do anything to make money. We saw it with Enron. We’re seeing it right now with the big financial fallout on Wall Street where people are walking away with billions of dollars in profits while causing taxpayers to foot the bill for all the debt and fraud that they created. People in positions of power will almost always compromise the safety or the health of the public if it means more money or more power for themselves. And that’s just a basic human law.  People are inherently selfish. And there are some individuals who have high spirituality, who have learned ethics, who can overcome that basic human nature of selfishness. I think you and I are certainly among those people; however, we are in the minority. Most people think about themselves and their own financial gains, and that’s it.

OLM: The FTC is suing companies that are trying to help people, companies that say they can cure cancer or companies that say they can treat or cure disease. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike Adams: The FTC is joining the FDA in running what I call a campaign of terrorism and oppression against companies offering legitimate cancer solutions. There are many, many anti-cancer plants and herbs and natural medicines that exist. And this is widely acknowledged everywhere in the world except in the United States.  The FTC has now taken it upon itself to insist there is no such thing as an anti-cancer nutrient and anyone who says there is, is automatically guilty of a serious crime.  And they are now suing and threatening prison time and threatening bankruptcies to these companies that offer legitimate scientifically validated anti-cancer solutions. This is being done, of course, to protect the highly corrupt, fraudulent cancer industry that depends on the continuation of cancer in the population in order to stay in business. The truth is we could cure 90% of cancer right now, using what we know right now.

OLM: And the 10% we can’t cure are just people who are so far gone.

Mike Adams: Right. Those would be the 10% who got chemotherapy, who suffered freakish radiation events or things like that, that are just very, very difficult to reverse.  But 90% with confidence, we can reverse. And certainly we can easily prevent 98% of all cancers. We could live in a world without cancer. But the cancer industry absolutely does not want to see that happen.

OLM: Well, cancer, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, anything that requires continued care, is just too profitable.

Mike Adams: That’s it. And realize a full quarter of our national economy is now invested in the business of disease and sickness care. What are you going to do? Give the cures to the population? Then you will have a 25% unemployment rate. You’ll have trillions of dollars in losses, because there’s been so much investment in hospitals and clinics and oncology centers and medical schools and all of these things that are based on people staying sick and diseased. Sothey don’t want the population to be free of cancer. It would cause too much economic devastation.

OLM: Speaking of that, I think it was in one of your newsletters I read that talks about where our taxpayer dollars go. And a big chunck of that is health, or lack thereof.

Mike Adams:  Yes. The three biggest areas where our tax dollars go right now, and I believe it’s 96% of our tax dollars—that’s war, disease, and debt. If you just go look at the numbers, that’s what it’s paying for. War, which they call security. Disease, which they call health care. And debt which is just interest payments on the national debt, which is now, as of the recent financial situation, 10 trillion dollars.

OLM: And you know not one of these three could really last forever. I just don’t see how a country can spend the majority of its money on any one of these three and be profitable forever. It sounds like a house of cards.

Mike Adams: It’s absolutely a house of cards. And its ultimate outcome is not in doubt by anyone who can do math. That is the complete—the complete collapse of the United States government and a re-booting of the global economy. The USA as we know it today will not exist in a few more years. It cannot. It is mathematically impossible. Even if you could pay off all the debt. If aliens showed up with money, just paid off the debt of everybody in the world, you still have a nation that’s diseased. And you have a generation of children who are diseased and are being raised on junk food, and pharmaceuticals, and vaccines, and toxic chemicals but not getting sunlight and not getting nutrition. You don’t have a future. No nation has a future if the health of its children is compromised. So the future for the United States of America looks very, very bleak in my opinion. And it may be several generations before people learn these hard lessons and realize that if you want to have an abundant future you must invest in health rather than investing in disease.

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To learn more about Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, go to healthranger.org