Caffeine Awareness Month

Did you know that March is Caffeine Awareness Month?

Caffeine can impact health in many ways, including ­­­­­­increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, and difficulty sleeping.

You may be familiar with the usual suspects: coffee and chocolate. But did you know that tea does too? It does, and that includes Green Tea, which comes from the same plant. In fact the leaves of tea (Camellia sinensis) contain about 93,000 parts per million (ppm), while coffee beans contain about 32,000 ppm.

But maybe you don’t drink regular tea. Perhaps you drink herbal tea. Well, some “herbal” teas, if you read the label, are in fact flavoured regular tea. Herbs and “flavour” have been blended with regular tea (i.e. black tea) to create your “herbal” tea. I’ve experienced this particularly in restaurants. Next time you order or buy “herbal” tea bags, read the tea bag ingredients label… they might surprise you.

A couple other herbs that contain caffeine are Yerba Matte (Ilex paraguensis), which has about 20,000 ppm, and Guarana (Paullinia cupana) with about 76,000 ppm.

It pays to read ingredient labels.

Where have you found caffeine hiding?

Gustatory Garlic

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Garlic

Allium sativum

Most of us are familiar with garlic. It’s used in so many yummy recipes. Yet when sick many people tend to forget this important little flavour packed ingredient.

Garlic has many uses. What can it do?

·     It is an antioxidant[i]

·     It can aid the body to rid itself of arsenic[ii] and methylmercury[iii]

·     It can aid in lowering cholesterol[iv]

·     It’s useful in cases of high blood pressure[v]

·     It promotes the health of cardiovascular system[vi]

·     It has wonderful antimicrobial properties[vii]

·     It is useful for dealing with certain parasites[viii]

·     It causes cancer cell death in some forms of cancer[ix]

·     It increases bioavailability of iron, folate, and zinc[x]

·     It has anti inflammatory properties too[xi]

Some of the ways that I often use it is as an infused oil – garlic infused into olive oil. This is great to have around for cooking too. I’ve used garlic oil mixed with St John’s Wort (SJW) oil in my dog’s ears when she got an ear infection. The garlic helps with the infection, while the SJW oil helps with the discomfort. Garlic oil is also nice when you have a “chest cold” – just rub it into the chest much like a vapour rub. This can be an especially useful application for people who can’t eat much garlic or don’t like the taste.

There have been some concerns voiced about botulism and garlic oil, and this is a valid concern. If your cooking with it, it’s not as big a problem since heat kills the spores. However, it is still best to be very careful in your preparation. Treat it much like making jams and jellies. Keep your tools clean, you can do a hot water bath of the finished (and lidded) product, and it should be stored in the fridge. I also tend to add things like organic grapefruit seed extract to it.

A couple other things to be cautious about with garlic: it is a blood thinner. If you are going for surgery, including dental work, you may want to stop taking garlic for a while before hand. At least two weeks is the general recommendation. If you already take blood thinners (incl. baby aspirin) you would be wise to check with your health care providers - ideally, have your herbalist and physician work together. The other caution is about dogs. More and more “holistic” dog foods are putting garlic in their foods. While garlic can be useful for dogs, too much garlic (or onions) can be bad for dogs. In some dogs it can cause something called Heinz Body Anemia. Symptoms to watch for include: paleness of the gums and tongue, and lowered energy. The blood thinning action can also cause similar symptoms. Reducing the dose, or removing the garlic all together should allow the dog to return to normal.

I’m lucky enough that I can eat garlic by the clove. Just peal a clove, pop it in my mouth and chew. One three times a day, if you can stand it, is what I use for people with “chest colds”. I’ve heard the complaint “but I’ll smell like garlic”. Let’s face it, who cares? Your sick, and no one wants what you’ve got anyway. A few days at home smelling like garlic and getting better beats not smelling like garlic and being sick longer.

Another way I like to use garlic is as part of a protocol for people with digestive issues. It is a wonderful tool for rebalancing intestinal (healthy) bacteria populations. It’s amazing what just this one protocol can do! A client who used it reported that they were able to get off their prescription medication, for high stomach acid (a proton pump inhibitor) – they were no longer having the symptoms that had been the reason for the prescription.

Do you have a favorite way to use garlic? I’d love to hear it. If you have any questions or comments about this article, please comment below. To see more about the science that has been published about garlic, please visit garlic herb page on the Amber Leaf Wellness website http://www.amberleafwellness.ca/Garlic_%28Allium_sativum%29.html

Pasteur

An article just came out about Pasteur that I just had to write about (you can read it here).

You may have noticed that I tend to collect a lot of negative information about vaccines (you can see most of it here), but that is because I find it is easier to collect as it becomes  available than it is to sift through the ginormous amount of propaganda interspersed with positive & negative studies when searching through the journal databases. I also feel that people have the right to know the negative info as well as the positive in order to make informed decisions about theirs & their family's health. Since vaccination is pushed so hard by physicians, governments, and the mainstream media, that leaves the negative to convey... because, in my experience, they usually won't tell you.

Pasteur is interesting because we learned so much from his work. He is reported however to have said on his death bed that it was the soil & not the seed. In other words it was the state of health of the person or animal & not just the pathogen - hence the reason why some people can be surrounded by people with colds but never get it themselves. When I read this article it made me think that in some ways he was attempting to amend the soil (as gardeners would say) by building up immunity by exposing people to the pathogen.

When I work with clients I'm trying to amend the soil too, by advising healthy diets rich in colourful fruits and vegetables.  By encouraging them to expose themselves to certain types of bacteria etc, through eating fermented foods (i.e. yogurt), and by going outside, working in the soil, enjoying the outdoors. Of course herbs are often part of that too, herbs that have a reputation for balancing the immune system or promoting the body's ability to adapt (more and more with scientific evidence to back them up). Herbs such as Echinacea and Rhodiola.

What do you do to "amend" your "soil"?

Think before you pink

For years now I've felt guilty because I cannot bring myself to donate to the various pink ribbon breast cancer campaigns, despite the fact that my grandmother lost both her breasts to breast cancer. Why? Two reasons. One, because it's all become too commercial for my tastes. Two, because I feel that the research that is funded doesn't look into ALL  the possibilities, such as herbs and prevention.

I felt like I was the only one who thought this way... until recently. Several people have told me lately that they feel the same way.

Recently, there have been variations on this theme in the media as well. For example: 
On the website www.preventcancer.com they have an article about how the "Chemical Industry Funds Breast Cancer Campaign". It talks about how Zeneca Pharmaceuticals has been a major funder of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, even as it is one of the largest manufacturers of products that contain known carcinogens.
Then there's the article in the Edmonton Journal that says many of the products that promote pink give undisclosed amounts from the sale of their products to breast cancer research, and again many of the products they promote this way contain known carcinogens. The article further points out that little is being done to research ways to prevent breast cancer in the first place.

What do you think?
Do you pink?

Nature Deficit Disorder

An article came to my attention today. It said: "Do today's kids suffer from nature deficit disorder?" http://tinyurl.com/2bf5a4f

Yes! Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed. I'd begun to feel like I was. As a society, we seem to be losing touch with many things that used to be a normal part of life, and in some cases, possibly even essential parts of life.

Our modern society says we are "connected", but are we? People buy pre-packaged meals rather than cooking for themselves, or they eat out all the time (some tell me they don't know how to cook). Kids don't go outside to play hockey (or other activities) they go inside and play video games. More and more people don't talk face to face, or use a phone, but use a computer and text messaging. Um... kind of like I'm doing now.

When the power goes out, I've had people tell me they can't DO anything. They're lost without their gadgets and gismos. I remember one girl (in a group of kids) who came to my house a few years ago who was lost because I didn't own a microwave. I had to teach her how to warm up her food without one.

Not that long ago there was a young person who told me they couldn't read what I was writing - I was writing by hand using cursive writing, in other words, plain old handwriting where the letters are connected together. They couldn't read it?! Almost everyone can read my writing. I guess I shouldn't be surprised because when my kids were in elementary school there was the concern that because so many people were using digital clocks these days the kids didn't know how to read an old fashioned clock.

But I digress. This started because of an article about being disconnected from nature. We don't get outside, move our bodies, and enjoy nature itself. Our attitude, as a society, to food has changed too, to the point that we've lost touch with where our food really comes from. Have you noticed what a difference there is between the food that magically appears in the supermarket and what you can get when you grow it yourself. As time progresses, the more different it seems to become.

The potential impact of this disconnect on yours or your family's health is... is... staggering. Eating healthy food, moving your body, being connected are all essential parts of your good health.

That things have gotten so bad that it could be called "nature deficit disorder" is a bad sign. What have you noticed? What do you think?

About the Consumer Reports article: Dangerous Supplements

A recent article in Consumer Reports warns consumers about the dangers of health supplements. This article really does point out a lot of what I’ve said in my FREE Report: Myths of Herbal Medicine, that there are dangers. However, they don’t really clear things up for the consumer either.

They list a number of health risk for these supplements, “including cardiovascular, liver, and kidney problems”. While this can be true, it usually isn’t to the same extent that you would find if you read the drug monographs and adverse event reports for drugs such as asthma medications (cardiovascular etc.), acetaminophen (leading cause of liver damage according to the monograph), or statins (kidney damage).

What I find frustrating is that many side effects that are listed for herbs are often theoretical and not proven fact. Yet they get quoted as if they were proven fact.

It’s true that there is inadequate control. There are known problems with the “herbal” supplements coming from various countries being contaminated with heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, and various other things. I just don’t feel that the FDA is the right organization to be overseeing much of this. They haven’t been that successful with the pharmaceuticals - remember COX-2 inhibitors? Statins? – so why would we expect them to do a good job with supplements?

Many of the adverse events mentioned in the article, and most of those I’ve read over the last few years, point out another major problem: self-prescribing. This is why I keep telling people they need to have a family herbalist. In almost every adverse event that I have read, the person that suffers from liver damage, or other major adverse effects of herbal use, is the person who prescribed the product to themselves rather than under the recommendation and careful supervision of a qualified herbalist. In the case of the Consumer Reports article, many of the herbs they list in their “Dirty Dozen” are herbs that are best taken when in the care of a qualified herbalist.

I also noticed that they list Aconite, but failed to inform the readers which form they found it in. In my experience I’ve only ever seen it, in the stores, in homeopathic form. This is a very different situation than standard herbal preparations where it should only be used (in my opinion) under the supervision of a qualified herbalist. It is very very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.

In another part of the article they talk about “No scientific backup required” when it comes to many of these supplements. While it’s true that many supplement companies and many sales people make medical claims about their products, they aren’t actually allowed to. On the other hand, never confuse the issue of no scientific proof of efficacy for product formulas with the idea that there is no scientific backing to prove that herbs work – there is scientific evidence [example] that herbs work.

The article goes on to suggest that you consult your doctor or pharmacist about supplements. However, they are not experts in this field. If you want to know about herbs (for example) then consult a qualified herbalist AND tell your doctor and your pharmacist what you are doing. Get your healthcare TEAM working for your safety and good health!

My suggestion: consult your experts. Pharmacists about pharmaceutical drugs, physicians about disease, and qualified herbalists about herbs.

The calcium study

Once again people are getting plenty of exercise jumping to conclusions. Whether it's the mainstream media scaring people about taking calcium supplements or the Alternative health community screaming about the "Stupid Calcium Study". [To read the study article click here]

While I think it deplorable the way the mainstream media has used this study to cause people to panic about taking calcium supplements, it is, in my opinion, a valuable study because it once again demonstrates that when we isolate naturally occurring substances they can cause problems; something that many of us herbalists have been trying to tell people for years.

This study shows us that when we use calcium in isolation it can have detrimental effects on health. Yet calcium in the complexity of food, or at least taken with vitamin D has health promoting effects.

The authors of the journal article also mention the problem of taking antacids to get calcium. Wholistic practitioners have been telling people for years that this is not the way to get your calcium because you need a healthy level of stomach acid in order to absorb your calcium.

Increasingly studies are coming out that demonstrate the problem with isolating natural substances - and now we have another one. whether it's isolating phytochemicals from plants or not getting our calcium in conjunction with vitamin D, and other necessary ingredients for healthy bones.

There's more to strong bones and good health than just calcium... and this study provides more proof of that statement.