• The Long Now Foundation

  tags: time, culture, mindfulness, philosophy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Your Guide to Healthy Sleep | NHLBI

  This patient and public booklet provides the latest science-based information about Sleep. Learn about . . .

  * Common sleep myths and practical tips for getting adequate sleep

  * Coping with jet lag and nighttime shift work

  * Avoiding dangerous drowsy driving

  This booklet also gives information on sleep disorders, such as insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, and some parasomnias.

  tags: breathing, sleep, disorder

• PLoS Medicine: Sleep-Disordered Breathing and Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study

  These findings indicate that sleep-disordered breathing is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, particularly in men aged 40–70 years, even after allowing for known confounding factors. They also suggest that the increased risk of death is specifically associated with coronary artery disease

  tags: breathing, sleep, disorder, death, dying

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Plum Village – Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

  tags: meditation, buddhism

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Controlled Breathing: a bridge from the I-function to the unconscious? | Serendip’s Exchange

  tags: breathing

• Perfect Breath

  tags: breathing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Standard BMI Calculator

  tags: fitness, health

• Will YOU Look as Good as Jack LaLanne at Age 93?

  tags: nutrition, fitness

  • it is possible to preserve most of your looks if you follow Jack LaLanne’s approach to fitness
  • Jack LaLanne once said, “People don’t die of old age, they die of neglect.”
  • He also said, “Exercise is King, nutrition is Queen, put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.”

• Mercola: Comprehensive Plan for Optimal Nutrition – Annotated

  tags: nutrition, food, fitness, emotions

  • condensed version of a nutrition plan that can have a powerful and dramatic influence on your ability to achieve optimal health.
    • Provides a free comprehensive plan and training materials for optimal nutrition for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. – post by exploringlife

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Vitamin D Key to Healthy Brain

  tags: nutrition, brain

  • “This is further evidence from observational studies that vitamin D is likely to be beneficial to reduce many age-related diseases,” said Tim Spector of King’s College London, who was not involved in the study. “Taken together with similar data that shows its importance in reducing arthritis, osteoporotic fractures, as well as heart disease and some cancers, this underscores the importance of vitamin D for humans and why evolution gave us a liking for the sun.”
  • The researchers warned that vitamin D deficiency is widespread, especially among the elderly, who have decreased absorption from both food and sun sources.
  • Vitamin D is synthesized by the body when the sun is exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The average light-skinned person can get enough vitamin D from roughly 15 minutes of sun on their face and hands per day, significantly less than the time it takes to burn.

• The Sweet Art of Healing

  Describes the use of sugar and honey to kill infections in wounds and burns.

  tags: functional-medicine, microbes

  • He’d been receiving IV antibiotics to treat a diabetic ulcer, a wide, oozing open wound on his ankle, but this didn’t halt the steady advance of gangrene, and he was told they had no choice but to take his leg.
  • Figuring he had nothing to lose, Jerome left the hospital-against strongly worded medical advice-and came to my clinic that same day.
  • We immediately started Jerome on two therapies. First, he began a course of EDTA chelation, an IV treatment that improves circulation. Second, we dressed his ulcer with sugar. That’s right, white table sugar. We simply poured sugar into the wound, wrapped it up, and changed the dressing regularly. Within days he noticed a difference.
  • Within three weeks, Jerome’s ulcer was healed, and he was able to resume teaching and coaching the girl’s softball team.
  • Chelation is an amazing treatment, however, in this article I want to focus on sugar because it is an incredibly powerful therapy that was instrumental in saving Jerome’s leg. I’ve been using sugar to dress open wounds for 20-plus years, but this therapy has been around for much longer-at least 5,000 years.
  • Edwin Smith Papyrus, it was written around 1600 BC and is believed to be based on materials from as early as 3000 BC. This ancient manuscript is essentially a textbook on traumatic surgery, and it describes anatomy, examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of a variety of injuries in great detail. In particular, it tells how honey, along with animal fat, herbs, roots, bark, spices, and cat dung, can be used to treat open wounds and burns.
  • Today, antibiotic ointments are the treatment of choice for ulcers, cuts, scrapes, and burns. Yet honey and sugar are far superior to any antibiotic ointment ever used.
  • Bacteria cannot become resistant to the killing effects of sugar or honey.
  • When sugar or honey is packed on top of and inside of an open wound, it dissolves in the fluid exuding from the wound, creating a hyperosmotic, or highly concentrated, medium. Bacteria cannot live in a hyperosmotic environment any more than a goldfish could survive in the Great Salt Lake. Scientists have tested the viability of many types of bacteria, including Klebsiella, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pyogenes, and none of them have been able to survive in a honey or sugar solution.
  • In addition to curbing infection, this therapy facilitates healing in other ways. It draws fluid out of the wound, which reduces edema (swelling). It provides a covering or filling and therefore prevents scabbing. It encourages the removal of dead tissue to make way for new growth. It promotes granulation, the formation of connective tissue and blood vessels on the surfaces of a wound. Finally, it supports the growth of new skin covering the wound. The net result is rapid healing with minimal scarring.
  • Trying to figure out why inexpensive, effective therapies like sugar and honey dressings aren’t being used is an exercise in futility. That’s because there is no rational explanation. Some physicians claim it would cause elevations in blood sugar, which is nonsense because sugar or honey used on an open wound does not enter the bloodstream. Others think it’s unscientific or just plain weird.
  • Protocol for Treating Wounds With Sugar
    Sugar or honey dressing may be used to treat any kind of open wound or burn. (We use sugar at the clinic because it’s less messy.) It will not work on abscesses or pustules that are covered with skin. Do not use on a bleeding wound as sugar promotes bleeding.

    1)Unravel a 4″ x 4″ piece of gauze into a long strip and coat it with Vaseline. Place it around the outside edges of the wound, like a donut.
    2)Cover the wound with 1/4-inch of sugar. (The Vaseline “donut” will keep it in place.)
    3)Place a 4″ x 4″ sponge on top of the wound. Bandage it firmly but not too snugly with a cling dressing.
    4)Change the dressing every one or two days. Remove, irrigate with water, saline, or hydrogen peroxide, pat dry, and repeat steps 1-3.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Official Church of Scientology Online Videos-What is Scientology, Scientologist Beliefs, Spiritual Healing with Dianetics

  tags: religion, philosophy

• Scientology, What is it? – A Reference from the Church of Scientology

  tags: religion, philosophy

• Citizens Commission on Human Rights: Psychiatric Drugs Reactions, Video Clips, Psychiatry Museum of Death, Legislative Watch

  tags: deception

• PLoS Medicine: A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal

  tags: medicine

• HonestFoodGuide

  tags: food

  • The Honest Food Guide (HFG) is now available for downloading free of charge and is:

    • Free from the corruption and influence of various food industries (dairy, beef, junk foods, etc.)
    • Designed to benefit you, not Big Business
    • Offers genuine nutritional information, not watered-down information designed to boost the sale of milk, beef and grains

• Ontario Multifaith Council

  tags: local, beliefs

  • The Ontario Multifaith Council on Spiritual and
    Religious Care is a not-for-profit, charitable organization representing
    a wide range of faith groups in the province of Ontario. Through a Memorandum
    of Agreement, signed with the Government of Ontario December 1992, the
    Ontario Multifaith Council was given the responsibility to:

    • Ensure adequate and appropriate religious services and spiritual care
      for persons in directly-operated and transfer payment institutions and
      community-based agencies and programs
    • Assist in the formation of appropriate responses to spiritual and
      religious needs
    • Collaborate in the development of policies and standards which safeguard
      spiritual care and religious rights and practices
    • Provide an effective liaison between the faith groups of Ontario and
      the provincial government

• Michael Pollen: Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch – NYTimes.com

  tags: food, culture

  • But here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?
  • What this suggests is that a great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.
  • The skills celebrated on the Food Network in prime time are precisely the skills necessary to succeed on the Food Network in prime time. They will come in handy nowhere else on God’s green earth.
  • Television likes nothing better than to serve up elitism to the masses, paradoxical as that might sound.
  • The Food Network has helped to transform cooking from something you do into something you watch — into yet another confection of spectacle and celebrity that keeps us pinned to the couch.
  • So what are we doing with the time we save by outsourcing our food preparation to corporations and 16-year-old burger flippers? Working, commuting to work, surfing the Internet and, perhaps most curiously of all, watching other people cook on television.
  • Richard Wrangham, a Harvard anthropologist, published a fascinating book called “Catching Fire,” in which he argues that it was the discovery of cooking by our early ancestors — not tool-making or language or meat-eating — that made us human.
  • I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.

• World Digital Library Home – Annotated

  tags: media

• CDC Features – Learn more about vitamin B12 deficiency.

  tags: nutrition, deficiency

  • Vitamin B₁₂ is one of several B vitamins.  It is needed to make new red blood cells and help your nervous system work well.  Vitamin B₁₂ is found naturally in meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products.  It is not found naturally in plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and cereal grains.  Some people need to take vitamin supplements or vitamin B₁₂ shots to get enough.
  • Vitamin B₁₂ deficiency develops slowly, and symptoms appear so gradually that they can be missed.  Vitamin B₁₂ deficiency can cause anemia over time.  The symptoms of anemia include feeling weak, tired, and faint; heart palpitations; looking pale; and shortness of breath.  Vitamin B₁₂ deficiency can also cause tingling of hands and feet, changes in ability to walk, loss of vision, memory problems, seeing things that aren’t there, sadness, and changes in personality.
  • The chances for developing vitamin B₁₂ deficiency increase with age, untreated pernicious anemia, gastric (stomach) surgery, or long-term use of strict vegetarian (vegan) diet. 

• Vitamin D Newsletter May 2009 | H1N1 Flu and Vitamin D

  Vitamin D dosage recommendation re N1H1.

  tags: nutrition, virulence, microbes

  • Stock your home’s pharmacy with several fresh bottles of 50,000 IU capsules of Vitamin D3 (a medicine a this dosage, not a supplement) and if you get this flu, take 2,000 IU per kg of body weight per day for a week. As I weigh 220 pounds, I would take 200,000 IU per day for seven days if I thought I had an infection with a 1918-like influenza virus.

• Vitamin D Newsletter Jul 2008 | Supplementing With Vitamin D

  Clear information on Vitamin D Supplementation

  tags: nutrition

  • if you have little UVB exposure, my advice is as follows. Well children under the age of two (2) should take 1,000 IU per day, over the age of two, 2,000 IU per day. Well adults and adolescents should take 5,000 IU per day. Two months later have your doctor order your first 25-hydroxy-vitamin D blood test. Yes, start the vitamin D before you have the blood test. Then adjust your dose so your 25(OH)D level is between 50 and 80 ng/ml, summer and winter. These are conservative dosage recommendations.

  • Where should I get my vitamin D supplements?

    Anywhere. Vitamin D in 1,000 IU tablets by Nature Made are available in most pharmacies in the USA and Canada. On the internet, Bio-Tech Pharmacal has prices that are hard to beat and has 1,000 and 5,000 IU capsules. Life Extension Foundation also has 1,000 and 5,000 IU capsules. Capsules are important as it is easy dissolve the powder inside the capsule in juice for children. In Canada, Ddrops are now available, with 1,000 IU per drop. Ddrops will soon be available in the USA from Carlson, with 400, 1,000, or 2,000 IU per drop. Unfortunately, Carlson keeps selling products with toxic amounts of vitamin A. LifeSpan Nutrition has a variety of vitamin D preparations, including their new 30 Minutes of Sunshine which has magnesium together with 5,000 IU of vitamin D. If you don’t eat a lot of vegetables, you are probably magnesium deficient. Both Bio-Tech Pharmacal and LifeSpan Nutrition support the Vitamin D Council, so consider getting your vitamin D from them. In fact, LifeSpan Nutrition began supporting us 5 years ago and is responsible, in large part, for our website being what it is.

  • Why are you against cod liver oil?

    Cod liver oil contains toxic amounts of vitamin A. Vitamin A antagonizes the action of vitamin D. Stay tuned to the press. In several months you will see a clear warning by numerous experts not to take vitamin A or cod liver oil.

• Vitamin D – A Gene-Regulating Super Nutrient

  Provides information on Vitamin D supplementation and effects.

  tags: nutrition

  • All your body organs and cells have receptors for vitamin D, meaning that vitamin D communicates all around your body. 
  • There is no such thing as getting too much vitamin D3 from the sun. 
  • When your skin makes vitamin D then the vitamin D turns on antioxidants within your skin to deactivate the free radicals coming from the sun’s UV radiation. 
  • It is ridiculous to make 100% of the population think that routine sun exposure is a major health risk when such advice applies mostly to a small group.
  • Many vitamin D researchers believe that 2000 IU are needed on a daily basis, especially in the winter months in the U.S. 
  • In fact, only the dose of 2000 IU was able to bring the common vitamin D deficiency in children up to normal levels. 
  • Even the Mayo Clinic is churning out press releases telling everyone to take 800-1000 IU of vitamin D per day. 
  • it was found that taking 4000 IU of vitamin D per day for 21 days restored their skin’s production of cathelicidin to normal – offering protection from infection.
  • In a very large Finnish study those infants and children who consistently took 2000 IU of vitamin D per day had a 78% reduced risk of type I diabetes.

• The four steps to getting more vitamin D to prevent cancer, osteoporosis, depression and more by Mike Adams the Health Ranger

  Describes four basic sources of vitamin D

  tags: nutrition

  • There are four main points you should take from this:

    1. You have to get sunlight into your life in order to be healthy and prevent or even reverse major chronic diseases. Start getting more sun.
    2. Boost your antioxidant count, because antioxidants will protect you from the risk of overexposure to sunlight. Astaxanthin, green foods powder, Berry Green, and other green foods are all excellent sources. Get those supplements now and find ways to work them into your diet starting today.
    3. If you can’t get sunlight, visit a tanning booth to get ultraviolet radiation. It’s a secondary choice, but it’s better than doing nothing. Remember not to use tanning booths for too long, and be sure to have great nutrition for at least 30 days before tanning in a booth.
    4. If you can’t get sunlight or get to a tanning booth, find other sources of vitamin D. The best source is cod liver oil, which you can mix into a delicious shake the same as you would most whole food supplements.

• Vitamin D Deficiency Reveals an Instant Health Care Reform Solution by Mike Adams the Health Ranger

  tags: nutrition

  • “insufficient” means “deficient” in the real world
  • keep in mind that these frighteningly common vitamin D deficiencies exist even when the accepted standards of vitamin D levels in the blood are artificially low to begin with.
  • Sunlight deficiency is now at epidemic levels
  • The sunscreen industry also shares some blame in all this, as it thrives on the silly idea that sunlight is bad for children and that all kids need to be smothered in sunscreen lotions before venturing outdoors. (Of course, they never admit their own sunscreen products are filled with cancer-causing chemicals in the first place…)
  • Above all, the medical establishment is to blame for vitamin D deficiency. Rather than teaching parents and children about the importance of vitamin D, they seem to have declared a blackout on most useful information about the nutrient, preferring instead to prescribe toxic pharmaceutical drugs to treat the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency.
  • Check out all the popular cancer non-profit groups: The American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen, etc. Have you ever seen any of them actually promote sunlight and vitamin D as a way to prevent or reverse cancer? Of course not! It’s bad for business. They collect a lot more cash convincing people that they’re “searching for the cure” when, in reality, the cure already exists: It’s called vitamin D.

  • Vitamin D as health care reform

    When considering today’s grand, lumbering debate over health care reform, you’d have to be a complete idiot to not realize that vitamin D could slash health care costs across the board. Considering that this one nutrient helps prevent so many diseases — cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, depression, obesity, diabetes, etc. — it’s almost like the “miracle health reform nutrient” that our modern world has been waiting for.

  • There will be no real health reform until you admit that nutrition plays a role in human health. And the FDA, of course, insists that all nutrition is biologically inert — that only “drugs” have any ability to prevent or treat any disease, not vitamins or minerals
  • Most cancer tumors simply cannot grow in the presence of vitamin D. You show me someone on chemotherapy, and I’ll show you someone who’s deficient in vitamin D.
  • It’s the same story with zinc, magnesium, calcium, selenium or natural plant-based nutrients. They’re all ignored (or outlawed) because they generate no profits.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• John O’Donohue – Irish Singing, Old School

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • In production on next week’s homage to the late John O’Donohue, I have been researching Celtic music, attempting to not have a show full of jigs and reels, but to have a good cross-section of this genre. I came across this style of Gaelic singing, sean-nos, meaning “in the old style,” in a YouTube video of Iarla O’lionaird (fronts the band Afro Celt Sound System) singing in a pub.

• Dew of Hermon: MEMORIAL FOR JOHN O’DONOHUE

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • The Memorial Mass programme

    for John O’Donohue which

    took place yesterday

• John O’Donohue – Your Help Is Our Musical Gain

  Musical research used in SOF interview.

  tags: celtic-mysticism

• SOF Observed – John O’Donohue’s Landscape

  Audio Slideshow

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • In producing the audio slideshow, I was struck with how well the photos illustrated O’Donohue’s language in his poem “Beannacht” — a word I’ve heard translated as both “blessing” and “passage.” It’s about finding comfort in loss, and I consciously tried to match the photos to the poem’s tone, mood, and pace.

• The Inner Landscape of Beauty – John O’Donohue

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • John O’Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher beloved for his book Anam Cara — Gaelic for “soul friend” — and for his insistence on beauty as a human calling and a defining aspect of God. Before his untimely death this year, he spoke with Krista in our studios. And so this hour has become a remembrance of him. But John O’Donohue had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with what he called “the invisible world.” And he would also surely see this also as a serendipitous continuation of his life’s work — of bringing ancient Celtic wisdom to modern confusions and longings.

• Belief – John O’Donohue

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • I think it makes a huge difference when you come out of your home in the
    morning, whether you believe on the one hand you’re stepping into inert
    space, which is endless, or whether you’re stepping into something that
    is animate and alive. And I really believe that landscape is alive.
  • And yet we have
    claimed everything in our name and reduced it, and I think that is something
    that has had disastrous consequences, and we’re making our planet unliveable,
    and we’re doing huge damage. And I think that the other point is that
    landscape is the first scripture. It is THE wisest text, because we’re
    not alien to it. We are the children of the earth, and the earth is in
    our bodies – so the rhythm that’s outside is inside.
  • And
    you would have a sense that this place has a sureness in its own identity,
    a belonging, and some kind of primal spirit.
  • the biggest theological
    question is – is there anything outside God? If you say there is, then
    you’re not talking about God.
  • You have storm, rain, you have huge
    fog and mist in the West of Ireland, which is the ultimate invitation
    to melancholia. You’ve all of that negativity there. I’m not arguing for
    landscape as just a benign presence which is the source of relentless
    epiphany. I’m arguing for it as a primal companion that has all the dexterity
    and multiplicity of a huge kind of presence.
  • he was really in the presence, and he had this sense as well,
    which I suppose kind of came over to me, of the transience of things.
    He used to often say ‘Life is like a mist on the hillside. It’s there
    for a while, then it goes and you’ll barely know if it was there at all.’
    So there was this constant focus in a very gentle way, on the fact that
    we were merely strangers and visitors here.
  • suddenly I began to see that thought and perception
    are the lenses through which we see everything. And the huge privilege,
    and the awful frightening responsibility of trying to think creatively
    and critically.
  • what I’m talking about
    was the things I think the Catholic Church are really wonderful at – sacramental
    structure, the mystical tradition, the prayer tradition, the intellectual
    tradition, which can hold their own with the best in any religious system,
    where I think and where my preaching always kind of tried to make an opening
    for people was, I think they’re not trustable in the area of Eros at all.
    I think that an awful lot of the argument for hierarchy is bogus and I
    also think that there’s a pathological fear of the feminine in there.
    So I tried to always kind of open these things. And I think a lot of the
    notions of sin, particularly in relation to sexuality put huge burdens
    on people that should never have been put on them.
  • And my first morning
    in home, there was a few neighbours in, and I was saying nothing and just
    overhearing, listening to the conversation. And there was a full hour
    of discussion went on in which not one analytic sentence fell – and yet
    so many things were discussed through anecdote and the oblique respectfulness
    and resonance of story.
  • I don’t consider the invisible
    empty. I think it’s dense with refined presences, that are not coming
    up on the radar of our perception, our concepts. My understanding of ’soul’
    would be that it is the unseen, hidden dimension of the self, and that
    it is the place if you like, beneath or beside or above the mind and consciousness.
    To put it in imagistic terms and spatial terms I think it’s the kind of
    field of presence or colour or light that suffuses the body and that holds
    the body, so that the body is actually in the soul.
  • I read in the Latin writings of Meister Eckhart, where he said that there
    is a place in the soul that neither time, nor flesh, nor no creative thing
    can touch. So I think that the exciting thing then is you’ve all these
    individuality humans dwelling in these bodies.
  • The divine is itself. The divine is that which is totally and utterly
    itself. It’s the cradle of origin, the primal presence – and it’s there
    everywhere and it’s in all of us – like the most exciting thing about
    humans, which Christianity has kept from us, like it’s amazing actually.
    I find it so ironic, that at the heart of Christianity, well of any of
    the religions, you have the centrality of the uniqueness of a poet/carpenter
    … without the idea of individuality and individuation.
  • we’re kind of threshold
    creatures, we’re neither here nor there – we’re in between
  • I suppose
    one of the things that, that I really feel so drawn to, is the ol’ divine.
    And I’m not holy like, d’you know what I mean, in the traditional way
    of piousness and all that explicit, hard edged superficial old banter
    of religion. I can’t bear it, I think it’s so crude and coarse and vulgar.
    Because I think the divine, the divine is like a huge smile that breaks
    somewhere in the sea within you, and gradually comes up again. It’s an
    incredible, intimate thing.
  • Things that move me as well as human suffering
    – I hate to see people in pain. I find that really, especially really
    good people. And good people often, it’s an amazing thing to me – it’s
    so disturbing – the really kind people who’ve never done any damage to
    anybody, sometimes get wracked asunder by the visitations of pain, disappointment,
    suffering, despair.
  • I don’t look on absence as the invitation to close my account with
    God. That’s the deepening thing – I’ve always found it. An old spiritual
    director taught me in my first year I went through an awful 6 months of
    bleakness when I was studying for the priesthood. And he said ‘It’s like
    when the seed is sown’ and he said ‘the ground is raked and it’s sore,
    or the pruning, and something else comes through.’ I’ve always believed
    that. And I often think actually, against myself I often see this when
    I’m going through darkness, is that a lot of suffering is just getting
    rid of dross in yourself. And sometimes lingering and hanging in in the
    darkness is often – I say this against myself – a failure of imagination,
    to imagine the door into the light.
  • I’ve always found something awfully disturbing about
    Good Friday. It never lets me alone – even if I had forgotten which day
    it was, I’d know the day it was, because I think that something happened
    there. Some kind of awful, raw quickening that always comes alive on that
    day. It was where of course, the ultimate cry of human longing ran headlong
    into the silence of God, and was left, the cry was left out there like
    a huge, red hook trying to reach up into the heavens, but nothing received
    it. It’s a day of, of, it’s being touched by the void – it’s the abyss
    day.

• John O’Donohue Interview: The Presence of Compassion

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • Compassion distinguishes human presence from all other presence on the earth.
  • In a sense, the human being is the loneliest creature in creation. Paradoxically, the human being also has the greatest possibility for intimacy.
  • Compassion is the ability to vitally imagine what it is like to be an other, the force that makes a bridge from the island of one individuality to the island of the other. It is an ability to step outside your own perspective, limitations and ego, and become attentive in a vulnerable, encouraging, critical, and creative way with the hidden world of another person.
  • Celtic thought contributes magnificently to a philosophy of compassion, deriving from its sense that everything belongs in one diverse, living unity.
  • the exercise of compassion is the transfiguration of dualism: the separation of matter and spirit, masculine and feminine, body and soul, human and divine, person and animal, and person and element.
  • For the Celts, nature wasn’t a huge expanse of endless matter. Nature was an incredibly elemental and passionately individual presence, and that is why many gods and spirits are actually tied into very explicit places, and to the memory and history and narrative of the places.
  • One of the tragedies in Western religion is the way that we have been so elitist in reserving the spiritual exclusively for the human. That is an awful, barbaric crime.
  • What is the relationship between absence and compassion?

    O’Donohue: Absence and presence are sisters. The opposite of presence is not absence, the opposite of presence is vacancy. Vacancy is a void

  • The idea of the sanctuary of the human presence implies a lovely lyrical unity in the human person. When you stand in front of another human being, you stand before the presence of an unknown and infinite world of love, belonging, imagination, and ambivalence, negativity, darkness, and struggle.
  • Originally, the myth was that each human was two in one, but they were split and separated, consequently they spent most of their lives searching for their other half. In the Celtic idea of the anam cara, the anam cara is the other half that you have been missing.
  • Maybe death is that moment you are fully born and you are received into another world where the laws of separation and dualism no longer operate.
  • In life, anything can come along the pathway to the house of your soul, the house of your body, to transfigure you. We’re vulnerable externally to destiny, but we’re also vulnerable internally, within ourselves. Things can come awake within your mind and heart that cause you immense days and nights of pain, a sense of being lost, of having no meaning, no worth; a kind of acidic negativity can knock down everything that you achieve in yourself, giving your world a sense of being damaged.
  • Self-compassion is paramount. When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do.
  • The real heroes in human life are the mainly silent, unnoticed ones who draw no attention to themselves but through their daily acts of love and gentleness and compassion keep the tissue of humane presence alive and vital.
  • One of the best teachers in the world is suffering.
  • Suffering teaches you what you don’t want to learn, bringing you the gift that you can only receive through suffering.
  • One of the tests of spiritual integrity is whether a person is at home in his own life.
  • We always imagine that our desire is a call outward, toward something outside. In many instances, it can be, but in its fundamental intention, desire is the call to come home and to discover that which is sought outside is actually hidden under the heart in the home of your own soul.
  • But the fullness of human presence is an awakened and focused presence toward a receiver, a listener, or a hearer. Being present is what we spiritually yearn to be. To be present is to inhabit your own presence with clarity and luminosity.
  • Presence is what life is about. When we come into real presence, the eternal becomes fully active in us and around us. In other words, when we hit real presence we break into eternity.
  • The Celtic mind practiced what I call reverence of approach to experience. Experience was a profound threshold of creativity and transformation. Anything and everything that happens in experience unfolds, expresses, and embodies your identity.
  • The ultimate goal of prayer is to learn to behold yourself with the same gentleness, pride, expectation, and compassion with which the divine presence beholds you at every moment. If we can inhabit that reflex of divine presence, then compassion will flow naturally from us.

• John O’Donohue – Awakening the Mind, Awakening the Soul

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • Why must we answer the call to awaken? Why must we follow the questions of our soul? Because it is through habitual, non-inquisitive living that we lose our sense of wonder. Because eventually, even the strangest or most magical things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety, and contentment. Left to our own devices, curiosity dims and fear of the unknown binds us; we cling to the known
  • Once you start to awaken, however, nothing or no one can ever claim you again, pull you back into old patterns. Once you start to awaken, you know how precious your time here—on earth, in this body—is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation that promise you safety and the confirmations of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your innate gifts. You want your relationships to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells.
  • The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown.
  • Unfortunately, it sometimes takes deep suffering, grief, or loss to awaken us.
  • When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought.
  • On this journey, the chambers of your heart that seemed awkward, contradictory, and uneven are where the treasure lies hidden.
  • From this inner dedication, you can creatively reconstruct your own values and take action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others.

• John O’Donohue: ‘Eternal Echoes’ : NPR

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • Jacki Lyden speaks to Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue about his latest book, Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Yearning to Belong. (Harper Collins, 1999). O’Donohue’s writings are inspired by ancient Celtic traditions and are filled with vivid descriptions of the Irish imagination.

• Where No One or Nothing is Excluded « The Website of Unknowing

  An interview with John O’Donohue.

  tags: celtic-mysticism

  • But whether he spoke about the despair of youth, the numbness of consumerism, or the sheer poetry of the Celtic path, his words always shimmered with a sense of trust and hope in the final beauty and power of Spirit.
  • O’Donohue muses on the climate in our culture which has made it ripe for a spiritual renaissance. “I think there’s a huge crisis of belonging in postmodern culture. The institutions of religion have really diminished and fallen into the hands of frightened functionaries who are great custodians of the gateways but don’t really know what the landscapes are like further in towards the heart of the mystery. Politics has become synonymous with economics and the crudest form of pragmatism. Then there’s the whole homogenization of culture and consciousness in mass technology and media — although there’s a lot more interaction than there once was between people, but it’s all simulated, you know, and lacks the vitality and vigor and danger of a direct encounter with otherness. So these are some of the contexts which are creating a massive spiritual hunger.”
  • another unheld conversation is the conversation between the Christian tradition and the depth and density and intensity of peoples’ spiritual search and spiritual hunger which is a new form of consciousness.
  • “There is a roster of themes, insights and intuitions in Celtic consciousness and imagination that respond very well to what we’re going through now. Celtic sensibility and the Celtic imagination looked on nature not as ’stuff’ or ‘location’ or ‘matter,’ but nature was the theatre of a variety and diversity of divine presences. Secondly, one of the great cankers and severances of the western tradition has been dualism, which separated mind from body, self from spirit, person from God and nature from the whole lot! The Celts, in some strange way, managed to preclude that kind of fissure/opening which would lead to dualism, and were able to think in a unitive consciousness and think of all these things together.”
  • “How do we give birth to community? I don’t think we do, I don’t think we can create or manufacture community, what we have to do is to allow community to emerge. So what kind of conditions must prevail in order for real community to emerge? One of the things we need is to make some clearances for ourselves again, so that we can see the shape of our souls, and so we can see also the shape of our hungers. We are caught on a treadmill of rapidity that doesn’t allow us to pause or to see what’s going on at all. Secondly, those of us who still belong in some way to a tradition have a duty to reclaim our traditions in the name of our new hunger, and not allow the great traditions to be owned by people who are into power and control. We need to stand up and say, we are the tradition, the representatives of it now, its members and inhabitants, we have these hungers which leads to this kind of conversation, and maybe do something practical about it.”
  • “Where are the voices of those who have a trenchant critique of where we’re going as a culture?” chides Donohue. “The media need to exercise some kind of reflexivity. They’ve set themselves up as non-elected custodians of sensationalism. There are huge questions which the media never go near.
  • “Consumerism’s liturgy is in service of the god of quantity and its rituals are advertising, and advertising is essentially schooling in false desire. So when you get your desire going in the wrong direction toward ‘fast food’ spirituality or whatever, then you only deepen and deepen and deepen the hunger.”

• Plant Medicine Databae

  Links use of medicinal plants to specific issues and ailments.

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • People still use plants more than any
    other source of medicines.

    These pages make sense of the science and
    the stories.
    

  • Note: this site is being
    developed
    
    
    
    as a platform for reliable and independent information on the
    use of plants in health care

  • Most plant remedies are sold
    as dietary or food supplements. However medicine standards are the best
    way to assure useful dosage and verified quality.
    Here is how to make sense of this. Check also:

    
    Quality problems

    
    Safety issues

    
    Medicine or food?

    
    Wise tips

• Healing Cancer Naturally: Detoxification to Help Cure and Prevent Cancer & Other Diseases

  tags: detoxification

  • Dr. Carrel comments: “The cell is immortal. It is merely the fluid in which it floats that degenerates. Renew this fluid at regular intervals [detoxification], give the cell something on which to feed [proper diet & nutrition] and, so far as we know, the pulsation of life may go on forever.”*
  • “Detoxification is the final expulsion of waste materials through the various excretory organs. Detoxification takes place in the human body continually from birth throughout life. Life in the human body is maintained by the
    reproduction of cells, new cells arising to take the place of dead and worn-out ones. It is in a constant process of self-renewal. Cells are constantly being broken down and cells are just as constantly being renewed or
    replaced.”
  • Elnora van Winkle, Neurophysiologist, writes in her book The Toxic Mind, “[s]ince the time of Hippocrates it has been understood that symptoms of most
    diseases, other than degenerative disorders where irreversable organic damage has been sustained, represent the efforts of the body to eliminate toxins. Any substance, endogenous or exogenous, that cannot be utilized by the
    cells is recognized as toxic and eliminated. When elimination is impaired, toxins accumulate. The cells adapt to toxicosis, but when levels of toxin become intolerable the body initiates a detoxification process. Toxicosis
    is the true disease, and what we call disease is remedial action, a complex of symptoms caused by the vicarious elimination of toxins. Recovery from disease is not because of remedies but in spite of them.”
  • 15 Detoxification Tips: Getting/Maintaining
    Your Cells, Body and Environment Clean
    (Release/Removal of Toxin Overload)

• Wikiwix

  tags: research

  • The ultimate Wikipedia articles search engine

• The Organic Center :: State of Science :: Nutritional Quality

  Study concludes that organic foods are nutritionally superior to non-organic, contradicting FSA study.

  tags: food

  • Over 40 new studies have come out since the last review was carried out — studies that dramatically improve our ability to answer a basic question — are organic foods generally more nutritious than conventional foods?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Discover the Power of Cocoa Powder

  Link to lowering blood pressure.

  tags: superfood

  • hypertensive rats fed a moderate dose of powdered chocolate dropped their systolic blood pressure rates by an average of 50 mmHg after a single dose. The cocoa content was 70 percent.
  • the hypertensive rats that received 300 milligrams of cocoa powder had a systolic blood pressure reading that dropped 60 mmHg four hours after the dose.
  • “The results obtained suggest that [hot cocoa] could be used as a functional food ingredient with potential therapeutic benefit in the treatment and prevention of hypertension.”
  • Contrary to popular belief, the average cup of hot cocoa contains more flavonoids than other highly concentrated antioxidant drinks, like red wine and green tea.
  • look for all-natural sources of cocoa.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Organic Versus Conventional Food: UK Report Flawed – Annotated

  tags: experience-deception

  • But reading it makes one wonder if influence caused a misreading of the findings, and in addition, if the agency has addressed the wrong questions entirely.
  • Even with very few studies comparing organic to conventional out there, evidence has proven that certain nutrients, such as Vitamin C and antioxidants, are on average higher in organic food.
    • Provides evidence to contradict findings. – post by exploringlife
  • Across all the valid matched pairs and the 11 nutrients included in [The Organic Center] study, nutrient levels in organic food averaged 25% higher than in conventional food. Given that some of the most significant differences favoring organic foods were for key antioxidant nutrients that most Americans do not get enough of on most days, the team concluded that the consumption of organic fruits and vegetables, in particular, offered significant health benefits, roughly equivalent to an additional serving of a moderately nutrient dense fruit or vegetable on an average day.
  • he Soil Association in the UK also pointed out yesterday that the FSA left out a more rigorous report commissioned by the European Union that found a range of “nutritionally desirable compounds” like antioxidants, vitamins, and glycosinolates were present in greater amounts in organic crops, while the amount of “nutritionally undesirable compounds” like mycotoxins, glycoalkaloids, cadmium and nickel were present in lower amounts by comparison in organic crops.
  • ignored the 15 relevant studies that have come out since their February 2008 cut off date that could have changed the outcome of the report.
  • Aside from nutrients, contaminants are not considered in the FSA report.
  • investigators’ claimed that these questions were “beyond the scope” of this report, but that also might be due to a certain interest in keeping the scope small and thus the outcomes skewed.
  • A look at the profiles of the head of FSA reveals former employees of agribusinesses like Arla Foods (now part of Europe’s largest dairy), Sarah Lee Corporation, and UK grocery giant Sainsbury’s. Therefore it is not hard to assume that the perspective leans towards what is best for agribusiness interests.
  • By rendering the playing field equal for conventional farmers, the government and the agricultural sector wouldn’t have to begin the difficult work of shifting the unwieldy agricultural system towards sustainability.
  • Leaving aside the nutrient question, organic agriculture helps improve the soil, protects farm workers from exposure to toxic chemicals, places an emphasis on animal welfare, and keeps toxic runoff out of our waterways. In so doing, sustainable agriculture improves not just our personal health, but our collective environmental health.
  • The nutrient content in our food is going down because our soil is being degraded.
  • Instead of focusing on puny reports that tell us next to nothing and yet dominate the media with simple binaries, we should be taking an integrative approach to analyzing data and therefore face the hard truths before us. Sustainable agriculture improves the food we eat by improving our environment.

• Ignore the FSA, It is still better to buy organic – Telegraph

  tags: experience-deception

  • It is a pity that the focus has been on nutrition. All food is nutritious; having no food is what kills. The wider benefits of organic foods are still worth pursuing. It is what food does not contain and the effects that it does not have that really matter.

• Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review

  A prime example of the blinding ignorance of science.

  tags: experience-deception

  • Conclusions: On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. The small differences in nutrient content detected are biologically plausible and mostly relate to differences in production methods.

• Food Standards Agency: Nutrition: Organic vs Non-organic Food – Annotated

  States that there is no nutritional benefit to organic vs. non-organic.

  tags: body-food

  • An independent review commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) shows that there are no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food. The focus of the review was the nutritional content of foodstuffs.
    • Clearly and idiotic conclusion. – post by exploringlife
  • What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food.
  • This research was split into two separate parts, one of which looked at differences in nutrient levels and their significance, while the other looked at the health benefits of eating organic food.
    • No attention given to toxic elements present in non-organic vs. organic. – post by exploringlife
  • Dr Dangour, of the LSHTM’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and the principal author of the paper, said: ‘A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced crops and livestock, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.’

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Regional Seafood Watch Card | Monterey Bay Aquarium

  Carry the pocket guide that’s right for your region to help you choose ocean-friendly seafood wherever you live or travel.

  tags: food-animal

• Getting to know pathogens – Wikiversity

  Provides list of variants that influence to what degree people suffer from an infectious disease.

  tags: environment-microbes, body-virulence

  • Human variability [edit]

    We often speak of “the human body” and “human-microbe interactions” but it is wrong to think that all people have similar interactions with micro-organisms. It is important to keep in mind the full spectrum of human variability.

    Sources of variation in host susceptibility to microbes:

    • variation in nutritional status,
    • variation in levels of stress and circulating stress hormones,
    • variation in genes that confer resistance to microbes,
    • variations in somatic cell mutations involved in immune system function,
    • physical damage to tissues can open tissue barriers that normally limit microbial infections.
    • Behavioral differences. Some behaviors promote health and avoid pathogens, other behaviors damage defenses and bring people into contact with pathogenic microbes.
      • Example: intravenous drug use allows exposure to disease-causing microbes.

• Detoxification is the term used to describe the process your body goes through to get rid of toxins.

  tags: body-detoxification

  • What is it?

    Detoxification is the term used to describe the process your body
    goes through to get rid of toxins.

  • Clogged sinus
    Constipation
    Cough
    Diarrhea
    Fatigue
    Fever
    Flu symptoms
    Cold symptoms
    Gas
    Headache
    Irritability
    Moodiness
    Skin rash
    Stomachache
  • When you make a change in diet or lifestyle, through stopping a bad
    habit or eating better, your cells begin to eliminate the toxic
    substances. Before finding the exit, however, the toxins are released
    into the bloodstream and are carried through the circulatory system.

  • How severe are the symptoms and how long do they last?

    How long the symptoms last and how severe they are depend on your
    lifestyle before making a change and how quickly you make a change. If
    you have a diet heavy in red meats, for example, and become a vegetarian
    overnight, you might have severe symptoms for a time. If your lifestyle
    changes are gradual, the symptoms could be less severe. The duration of
    the symptoms might not be linear; there is a greater chance that they
    will come in cycles.

  • The hardest thing for many people to do is accept that they are not
    sick and realize that the body is cleansing itself. Once you get beyond
    this psychological barrier, the process becomes easy. The most important
    thing to do can be summed up in one word: Rest.

• Detoxification Symptoms – Some Unpleasant Symptoms And Their Causes

  tags: no_tag

  • A splitting headache, chills, nausea, a dripping nose, increased body odor, reappearance of old aches and pains, rashes, boils, drastic weight loss—all the symptoms that can shake the faith of the most sincere health seeker.

    Without proper understanding or support, you could panic at these symptoms and believe your new diet or way of life is the cause of them. You might revert to your old unhealthy practices because you became afraid.

• Raw Food Diet – My Detox Symptoms (Part I) | Raw And Living Foods

  tags: body-detoxification

  • And then the big detox symptoms came. I felt really lethargic, tired, and suffered an intense cold which lasted a full week. I slept most of the time, drinking only blended soups because no food could make it through the mountain of ulcers in my mouth! I had fever too, and it was simply miserable!

• Vitamin Supplements – Good, The Bad And The Ugly

  tags: body-nutrition

  • “This idea that supplements are safe to use is unproven – they haven`t been around for long enough.

    “People taking high dose supplements are the guinea pigs of the future. There’s no way you can record adverse effects for high levels of supplements, and absence of reported effects does not mean there’s an absence of effects.”

• Michael Pollan: Unhappy Meals

  tags: body-food

  • And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat ”food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
  • Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thin
  • The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism
  • Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really? But nutrients — those chemical compounds and minerals in foods that nutritionists have deemed important to health — gleamed with the promise of scientific certainty; eat more of the right ones, fewer of the wrong, and you would live longer and avoid chronic diseases.
  • The first thing to understand about nutritionism — I first encountered the term in the work of an Australian sociologist of science named Gyorgy Scrinis — is that it is not quite the same as nutrition.
  • In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient.
  • I’ll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, viewing food as being about things other than bodily health — like pleasure, say, or socializing — makes people no less healthy; indeed, there’s some reason to believe that it may make them more healthy.
  • So nutritionism is good for business. But is it good for us?
  • But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist. Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. ”The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,” points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, ”is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.”
  • But people worried about their health needn’t wait for scientists to settle this question before deciding that it might be wise to eat more plants and less meat.
  • Nestle also cautions against taking the diet out of the context of the lifestyle.
  • In the end, the biggest, most ambitious and widely reported studies of diet and health leave more or less undisturbed the main features of the Western diet: lots of meat and processed foods, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything — except fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
  • Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health.
  • In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil
  • ”Health” is, among other things, the byproduct of being involved in these sorts of relationships in a food chain
  • these ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients.
  • From Complexity to Simplicity. If there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification
  • Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick.
  • 1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

    2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

    3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

  • 4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

    5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costsmore, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

    ”Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. ”Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called ”Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the ”eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

  • 6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less ”energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (”flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

    7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

    8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

  • 9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of ”health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

• Marion Nestle: Which is better – food or nutrients?

  tags: body-nutrition

  • We are omnivores. The human body is set up to handle and make excellent use of an enormous variety of edible plants and animals.
  • Nothing could be more overused than nutritionists’ endlessly intoned advice: “Balance, variety and moderation are the keys to healthful diets.”

  • We require or do better if we eat enough of about 50 nutrients – vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, fiber, antioxidants and water – that our bodies cannot make. We have to eat these in foods. Even if you knew the exact nutrient composition of the foods you were eating, you would have a hard time computing 50 nutrients.

    Fortunately, you don’t need to. Foods contain nutrients. If you eat foods, you get nutrients. Somehow, humanity, in all its amazing variation, has survived to the present and is doing pretty well without having to deal with computer printouts of nutrient intakes every day.

  • Variety, tritely, may be the spice of life but it is also a basic principle of nutrition. Foods contain many nutrients but in different proportions
  • We are not talking about a variety of junk foods.
  • Cooking is a form of processing, but its effects are complicated
  • If you eat both raw and cooked foods, you get the best of both.
  • Japanese dietary guidelines explicitly advocate variety when they suggest eating 30 different foods a day
  • Moderation is about energy balance and calories.
  • If you include fruits, vegetables and whole grains in your daily diet, and vary the food plants and animals you eat, you really don’t need to worry about nutrients.
  • There isn’t much evidence that taking a daily supplement makes healthy people healthier, but if it makes you feel better, go for it.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Atlas Obscura | Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world

  Welcome to the Atlas Obscura, a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica. The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.

  tags: experience-places

• EDITORIAL: Healing with Subtle Energy – Annotated

  tags: experience-healing

  • During the past century, we have developed in the West a model of healing that perhaps has extended our lives, but which has also taken our personal power and ability to heal our own bodies away from us. This model says that the essential skills of healing can be possessed only by a cadre of elite beings who have received nearly a decade of complicated scientific education and training. Our bodies are no longer our own.
  • Allopathy is actually an outgrowth of ancient forms of healing that relied upon physical means. But instead of using the gentle, natural vibrations of crystals, stones, rods, trees, flowers, herbs, oils, colors, sounds, and water — natural substances that can help by using subtle energies — allopathic medicine took off in another direction. It started creating artificial medicines. And these have very powerful, unnatural vibrations. These unnatural vibrations are a part of the problem with modern medicine, for they produce side effects that are sometimes more serious than the diseases they were meant to cure.
  • And these distorted emotional and mental patterns further create distorted energy patterns in our bodies and surrounding fields. And until these distortions are removed or balanced, even if we seem to be free of symptoms, we will become sick again, developing perhaps a different illness, but one whose cause is the same as the illness we had before.
  • if the body is seen only as energy — a valid perception based on quantum physics — then healing becomes a problem solved with energy and by energy. This is the basic ground of being for all subtle energy healing.
  • It is a model of life energy, or ”chi,” flowing gently, smoothly, and powerfully through the body and the energy fields that surround it. No matter what the alternative therapeutic modality, this energetic model lies behind and beyond every form of alternative healing.
  • discarnate spirits
    • A discarnate spirit is viewed as a foreign entity that creates an unbalanced vibration (energy), and therefore leads to mental, emotional and physical distress.. – post by exploringlife
  • no matter what the healing approach, the goal is to nourish and balance the energy field. If we start at the level of pure consciousness, we will be able to know, intuitively, which physical methods might help us to replenish our life force energy once it has become exhausted, and release that which we do not need.
    • Energy – pure consciousness – intuition – innate knowing – self awareness – post by exploringlife
  • When we know who we are
    • The universal fabric of energy that is consciousness? – post by exploringlife
  • he natural energy of the soul, and that is called love
  • In healing, whether it is ourselves or another person, love is more important than technique.
  • subtle energy is a natural and innate ability within every person alive, which we have forgotten because of the way that society has developed

• More Messages in Water with Dr. Masaru Emoto

  An interview with Dr. Emoto that reveals his thoughts about water and spirituality.

  tags: environment-water, spirit-spirituality

  • From your research, are you able to discern whether the reaction of the water came from the vibration of the actual words that were pasted onto the bottles, or whether the intention of the person who was pasting the words onto the bottle influenced the experiment in any way?

    
    DR. EMOTO: 
    This is one of the more difficult areas to clarify. However, from continuing these experiments we have come to the conclusion that the water is reacting to the actual words.

  • The intention and prayers of the person still influenced the water. We have not yet tried further experiments from a long distance. However, my feeling is that distance would not make much of a difference. What would make a difference is the purity of intent of the person doing the praying. The higher the purity of intent, the less of a difference the distance itself would make.
  • Since the water reflects the composite energy of what is being sent to it, the crystalline structure reflects the composite vibrations of the group. So one person praying reflects the energy or intention of that one person. In terms of how powerful the effect can be, if you have one person praying with a deep sense of clarity and purity, the crystalline structure will be clear and pure. And even though you may have a large group of people, if their intention as a group is not cohesive, you end up with an incohesive structure in the water. However, if everyone is united together, you will find a clear, beautiful crystal, like one created by the prayer of a single person of deep purity.
  • he water is changed instantaneously.
  • he smaller the clusters, the longer the water will retain its memory.
  • Negative phrases and words create large clusters or will not form clusters, and positive, beautiful words and phrases create small, tight clusters.
  • Think of it in terms of vibration. It’s easy to understand that language — the spoken word — has a vibration. Well, written words also have a vibration. Anything in existence has a vibration.
  • Language is not something artificial, but rather is something that exists naturally. I believe that language is created by nature.
  • Does that mean that every word has its own signature vibration or cluster that is unique to itself?

    
    DR. EMOTO: 
    Yes.

  • So words actually convert the vibrations of nature into sound.
  • But even when there is this mutual underlying meaning, arigato and thank you create different crystalline structures. Every word in every language is unique and exists only in that language.
  • There is a special combination that seems to be perfect for this, which is love plus the combination of thanks and appreciation reflected in the English word gratitude. Just one of these is not enough. Love needs to be based in gratitude, and gratitude needs to be based in love. These two words together create the most important vibration.
  • REIKO: 
    Do you believe that water itself is conscious and is reacting to the words?

    
    DR. EMOTO: 
    I understand that many of your readers are people interested in spiritual matters, and I would like to answer this question from that perspective. I believe that prior to Adam and Eve water itself held the consciousness of God — that God’s intention was put into the medium of water, and that this was used in the creation of Earth and Nature. In other words, all of the information needed for God’s Creation was reflected in the water.

    And then we — Adam and Eve — were placed on Earth to be the caretakers for this Creation of God. I believe that water held the consciousness of God until then, but that after the caretakers were placed on Earth, water became an empty vessel to mirror and reflect what was in the heart. It became a container to carry energy and information. Therefore, since this time, I think water has taken on the quality of simply reflecting the energies and thoughts that it is exposed to; that it no longer has its own consciousness. Water reflects the consciousness of the human race.

  • I came to the realization that these crystals are spirits. There are many parallels. When ice melts, the crystalline structure becomes an illusion. It’s there — and yet it’s not there, because you can no longer see it.
  • I think that the soul has mass, and that it returns to water molecules.
  • We traveled here to Earth on the water crystals of spheres of ice [Editor's Note: You will hear more about this amazing phenomenon in an upcoming issue of the Spirit of Ma'at on the subject of water.] Earth is not our native home. There was nothing here. So these souls can return to their native homes for awhile.
  • ather than being able to detach from our desires, the opposite has been true.
  • So when a person dies, if they are unable to attain sattori at that time, their soul remains on this planet as water?

    
    DR. EMOTO: 
    That is what I believe, yes. The Japanese character for spirit is a combination of the words ”rain” and ‘’soul.” People who have seen ghosts report seeing them in water or in places where there is a lot of humidity. It’s as if the imprint of the soul, which is in the form of water, suddenly takes form when surrounded by water or moisture — much like a mirage.

  • We need to let everybody know about this, and all use beautiful words and offer beautiful music, and create beauty in the environment.
  • the crystalline structure of our soul emerges. It’s like water. When water turns to ice, the crystalline structure becomes visible, but it also becomes immobile. So ”crystal” equals ‘’spirit.”

• Water: Interview with Dr. Emoto

  tags: environment-water

  • Messages
    come in all forms
  • Even
    something as basic to life as water has an inherent intelligence through
    which it can communicate with us.
  • Dr.
    Emoto soon realized that everything in existence is alive and has
    a vibrational frequency, a magnetic resonance field, which is the
    source of energy behind the creation of all things.
  • After
    much experimentation, Dr. Emoto discovered that the most powerful
    combination of thoughts in terms of capacity to transform was that
    of “Love and Gratitude.”
  • So if we have the power to change the structure of the medium
    we are made of by simply producing positive though patterns, we can
    restore not only our own health but that of everyone around us, and
    even the planet itself, with our every thought.

• Procrastination Thoughts: Ideas from Dr. Neil Fiore, Productivity Psychologist — Hypnosis Network Blog

  Interesting look at procrastination, its effects, and strategies to overcome it.

  tags: experience-suffering

  • A short synopsis is that procrastination isn’t the problem — it is a symptom of other problems
  • 1. Ending procrastination and being more productive is not about tactics.
  • focus less on techniques and more on underlying causes.
  • 2. “Procrastination is a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.”
  • 3. You have to get rid of your procrastination addiction.
  • a. It can be a way to express resentment.
  • b. It defends you against fear of failure.
  • c. It defends against fear of success
  • 4. The first step towards productivity and away from procrastination is creating safety.
  • 5. Play with your internal dialogue, especially when it comes to things you “should,” “must,” or “have” to do. If your attitude is that you have to do something, then you are taking away your power
  • “flow state.” Research at the University of Chicago demonstrate that productivity and creativity flourish when this state is reached. This state can be achieved with practice. In layman’s terms, it can be defined as being totally absorbed in what you are doing without critical thought.

• Success Posts — Hypnosis Network Blog

  tags: no_tag

  • A short synopsis is that procrastination isn’t the problem — it is a symptom of other problems.
  • 1. Ending procrastination and being more productive is not about tactics
  • This has helped me focus less on techniques and more on underlying causes.
  • 2. “Procrastination is a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.”
  • 3. You have to get rid of your procrastination addiction
  • a way to express resentment
  • defends you against fear of failure.
  • defends against fear of success.
  • 4. The first step towards productivity and away from procrastination is creating safety.
  • 5. Play with your internal dialogue, especially when it comes to things you “should,” “must,” or “have” to do. If your attitude is that you have to do something, then you are taking away your power. Replace these with “choose.”
  • the “flow state.” Research at the University of Chicago demonstrate that productivity and creativity flourish when this state is reached. This state can be achieved with practice.

• Chronic Back Pain Limits Brain Power

  tags: experience-suffering

  • Recent findings by researchers from Northwestern University have turned this assumption on its head. What they found was that chronic back pain – defined as pain lasting six months or longer – can cause significant and long-lasting damage to the brain, aging it up to 20 times faster than normal.¹
  • One theory on why there is such a large decrease in gray matter is that chronic pain forces nerve cells to work overtime. Even more troubling is the possibility that if chronic back pain is allowed to continue, it may become harder to reverse and less responsive to treatment due to these changes in the brain.
  • “One explanation for the observation of short-term prospective memory deficits may be related to the link between pain and stress and the impact of this relationship on cognitive function,”
  • The brain maybe affected by pain but you should never let pain control how or what you think about. If pain relief is what you are after you must hold a firm belief that you can achieve your goals and if believe heart and soul and keep you’re your thoughts concentrated and coordinated there is no way that you can not achieve what you are after.

• How to Spot a Liar in Four Easy Steps

  States that auditory cues are significantly more reliable than visual cues in detecting lies. I wonder if it makes sense to try and pin down a specific mode of perception – isn’t the entire perceptual context the most critical aspect>

  tags: experience-deception

  • According to the research, it really is impossible if you are focusing on visual cues.

    Looking for visual cues, it turns out, is absolutely the most unreliable way to spot a liar.

  • It turns out the best way to spot a lie is to use your ears.

    It is all about what a person says and how they say it.

  • people without deception training are much better at detecting deception when listening to a tape recording of a liar than when watching a video.

  • Here are the four easy ways to spot a lie:***

    1. Liars tend to say less. The more someone says, the more likely it is that some of those words are going to haunt them. Lies will have far less detail (in other words, they will be more general).

    2. Liars also tend to distance themselves from their lies. They will include fewer references to themselves and won’t use a lot of words indicating feelings. The use of the word, “I” will be less prevalent.

    3. Liars never forget. For some reason liars forget that most people forget things so they will never admit they don’t remember a certain aspect of their story. Somehow the lie creates a super human memory – which of course they are inventing.

    4. A person will also have more pauses and hesitation when they are lying. It takes energy and thought to lie, this leads to little “thinking” pauses.

• Articles, Research, and Interviews on Hypnosis – Annotated

  tags: mind-psychology

  • • Understanding Hypnosis (22)
    • Hypnosis Research (6)
    • Hypnosis Scams (4)
    • Brain Science (1)
    • Interviews (2)
    • Product Reviews (6)
    • Via: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2006/05/16/self-help-scam-protection-101-part-1.aspx – post by exploringlife

• How to Protect Yourself From Self-Help Scams

  tags: experience-deception

  • The goal here is to provide you with screening methods that will help you decide which self-help tools are right for you and which tools are most likely complete scams.
  • A quick way to eliminate self-help scams is to spot some simple warning signs.

  • he Guru will usually create what is called “The Attractive Personality,” and use social conformity techniques to make you feel like you are an outsider if you do not agree with him (or her).

  • Another sign that the Guru technique is being used is that this person attempts to throw you off-balance by challenging your view of reality. Then once you are confused, he or she gives you an answer that makes you feel secure again
  • the self-help solution is justified by the “fact” that the person offering it has an advanced degree in the subject. The problem is that in quite a few cases, these “degrees” come from phony institutions.
  • there are definitely people who can help you who do NOT have advanced degrees. The point here is that when a person knowingly misrepresents themselves through false degrees and certifications, it is a good indication that what they have to offer is a scam.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• MOHLTC – H1N1 Flu Virus (Human Swine Flu)

  tags: environment-virulent

  • Ontario is working closely with the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the World Health Organization and all the other provinces and territories of Canada to monitor cases of H1N1 flu.

• FightFlu.ca

  tags: environment-virulent

• World Action on Salt and Health (WASH)

  tags: body-food

  • New Research reveals huge differences in salt contents in global brands

    23rd July 2009

    •  WASH surveyed over 260 food products around the world from KFC, McDonalds, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Burger King and Subway

    •  Not one product surveyed had the same salt content around the world

    New research published today by World Action on Salt and Health ( WASH ) shows that many popular meals eaten in UK high-street restaurants can contain large amounts of salt, in some cases more than twice the daily maximum limit for an adult in a single meal.

    World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) has surveyed over 260 food products available around the world from food manufacturers such as KFC, McDonalds, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Burger King and Subway. Not one product surveyed had the same salt content around the world and some displayed huge differences in salt content from one country to another.

  • New Research reveals huge differences in salt contents in global brands

    23rd July 2009

    •  WASH surveyed over 260 food products around the world from KFC, McDonalds, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Burger King and Subway

    •  Not one product surveyed had the same salt content around the world

    New research published today by World Action on Salt and Health ( WASH ) shows that many popular meals eaten in UK high-street restaurants can contain large amounts of salt, in some cases more than twice the daily maximum limit for an adult in a single meal.

    World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) has surveyed over 260 food products available around the world from food manufacturers such as KFC, McDonalds, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Burger King and Subway. Not one product surveyed had the same salt content around the world and some displayed huge differences in salt content from one country to another.

• Ethnologue: Introduction to the Printed Volume

  tags: environment-cultural

  • The purpose of the Ethnologue is to provide a comprehensive listing of the known living languages of the world. The Ethnologue is intended more as a catalog than as an encyclopedia and so provides summary data rather than more extensive descriptions of identified languages. Information comes from numerous sources and is confirmed by consulting both reliable published sources and a network of field correspondents.
  • The demographic, geographic, vitality, development, and linguistic information included in this volume can be useful to linguists, translators, anthropologists, bilingual educators, language planners, government officials, aid workers, potential field investigators, missionaries, students, and others with language interests.
  • Languages as particles, waves, and fields. Scholars are recognizing that languages are not always easily nor best treated as discrete, identifiable, and countable units with clearly defined boundaries between them (Makoni and Pennycook 2006). Rather, a language is more often comprised of continua of features that extend across time, geography, and social space. There is growing attention being given to the roles or functions that language varieties play within the linguistic ecology of a region or a speech community.
  • Language and dialect. Every language is characterized by variation within the speech community that uses it. Those varieties, in turn, are more or less divergent from one another. These divergent varieties are often referred to as dialects. They may be distinct enough to be considered separate languages or sufficiently similar to be considered merely characteristic of a particular geographic region or social grouping within the speech community.
  • Macrolanguages. With this edition of the Ethnologue we include entries for macrolanguages for the first time. The ISO 639-3 standard defines three-letter codes for both individual languages and macrolanguages. The latter are defined in the standard as “multiple, closely related individual languages that are deemed in some usage contexts to be a single language.
  • Sign languages. There are hundreds of sign languages in the world, created and used by deaf people. This edition lists 126 such languages. As the primary language of day-to-day communication for their respective communities of users, these languages fall within the scope of the Ethnologue.
  • Language endangerment is a serious concern to which linguists and language planners have turned their attention in the last two decades. For a variety of reasons, speakers of some languages stop using their language and begin using another
  • The concern about language endangerment is centered, first and foremost, around the factors which motivate speakers to abandon their language and the consequences of language death for the community of (former) speakers of that language. Since language is closely linked to culture, loss of language almost always is accompanied by social and cultural disruptions as well. Secondarily, those concerned about language endangerment recognize the implications of the loss of linguistic diversity both for the linguistic and social environment generally and for the academic community which is devoted to the study of language more specifically.

• Slow Food International | good, clean and fair food

  tags: experience-slow

  • Slow
    Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that
    was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance
    of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the
    food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices
    affect the rest of the world.
    To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.

• Carl Honore » In Praise of Slowness

  tags: experience-slow

  • What is the Slow Movement?

    It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.

  • That it’s usually a poor use of time. The latest neuro-scientific research suggests what most of us already suspect: that the human brain is not very good at multitasking. Sure there are a few simple or routine tasks we can perform at the same time, but as soon as you have to engage the brain, you really need to focus on one activity at a time. Much of what passes for multitasking is nothing of the sort: it is sequential toggling between activities. And the research suggests that this flitting back and forth is actually very unproductive: tasks can take more than twice as long to complete when performed in this way

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Anti-Quackery Ring ,

  tags: experience-deception

  • This ring is for sites that combat & debunk health-related frauds, myths, fads, and fallacies, and are more interested in real, objective, scientific proof, than in the speculative, subjective, and unproven theories and anecdotes of so-Called “Alternative” Medicine

• Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

  tags: experience-deception

• SlowPlanet.com » Blog Archive » Join the Slow Writing Movement!

  tags: experience-slow

  • As a result of the accelerating pace of both writing and publishing, much of what passes for fiction these days would have been considered no more than an early draft only a few years ago. In truth, however, the digital age has simply compounded a problem caused by the increasing hegemony of one school of writing (the Ionic) over another (the Platonic).
  • Platonic writers tend to see their works as imperfect reflections of an unattainable literary ideal.
  • Platonic writers are the antithesis of Grub Street hacks: for them, less is resolutely more. Since publication is, of necessity, an abject compromise with base reality, they agonize over endless revisions (like William H. Gass, whose novel, The Tunnel, was 30 years in the making) or grace the world with a slim volume of acerbic aphorisms whenever they can be arsed (à la Cioran).
  • Ionic Man does not speak: he is spoken through (or played upon like Coleridge’s Aeolian harp), hence the cult of ’spontaneous prose’ in its various guises. The work of art comes as easily as leaves to a tree, appearing fully formed in a blinding flash of inspiration or in an accretive, free-associative manner as if under dictation. In both cases, logorrhoea beckons.
  • ‘That isn’t writing; it’s typing’
  • Whereas the Ionics try to merge life and literature into a seamless continuum, the Platonics — spurred on by what Paul Eluard called the ‘difficult desire to endure’ — often sacrifice the present on the altar of posterity. How many works of fiction produced today have any staying power?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• National Council Against Health Fraud

  tags: experience-deception

  • NCAHF is a private nonprofit, voluntary health agency that focuses upon health misinformation,
    fraud, and quackery as public health problems. Our positions are based upon the principles of science that underlie consumer protection law.
    We advocate: (a) adequate disclosure in labeling and other warranties to enable consumers to make truly informed choices; (b)
    premarketing proof of safety and effectiveness for products and services claimed to prevent, alleviate, or cure any health problem;
    and, (c) accountability for those who violate the law.

• NCAHF Statement on Supplement Abuse

  Describes dangers of vitamin and mineral supplements.

  tags: body-nutrition

  • supplements cannot change a poor diet into
    a good one
  • Few people need to, supplement their diets with pill
  • To assure good nutrition apply the three principles of variety,
    balance and moderation
  • Combat “trophophobia” (i.e., the fear of nutritious
    foods)
  • Require warning labels on potentially hazardous supplements
  • • The amount of harm from supplementation is largely unmeasured
      which means that knowledge of the extent of harm due to misguided
      supplementation is unknown making it impossible to state with
      confidence that the amount of harm is small.
    • The basic dictum that should be followed is that nothing
      is safe until demonstrated to be with the burden of proof upon
      proponents.
    • Applying the benefit/risk ratio approach reveals that the
      potential benefits of supplementing above the RDA without medical
      indication are far fewer than the potential for harm.
    • The aggressive promotion of megadosing by orthomolecular
      zealots needs to be countered by warning labels on the very products
      they push.
    • The widespread amount of irresponsible advertising vitamin
      companies ignoring possible drug-nutrient interactions, and nutrient
      imbalances needs to be offset.
    • The failure of the supplement industry to regulate itself
      by keeping dosages low enough to discourage overdosing or provide
      consumer warnings on potentials for harm clearly shows that the
      industry needs this type of regulation.
    • The human propensity to believe that if a little is good
      then more is better needs to be countered.
    • Long term use of megadoses of some nutrients may decrease
      longevity (e.g., zinc appears to lower HDL possibly increasing
      the risk of coronary heart disease).

• TheLancet.com – Infectious Diseases

  tags: environment-virulent

  • The Lancet Infectious Diseases was launched in August, 2001, and is a lively monthly journal of review, opinion, and news covering international issues relevant to clinical infectious diseases specialists worldwide.

• WHO | Pandemic (H1N1) 2009

  tags: environment-virulent

• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

  tags: environment-virulent

• CDC H1N1 Flu

  tags: environment-virulent

  • A Pandemic Is Declared

    On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) signaled that a global pandemic of novel influenza A (H1N1) was underway by raising the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6. This action was a reflection of the spread of the new H1N1 virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus. At the time, more than 70 countries had reported cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection and there were ongoing community level outbreaks of novel H1N1 in multiple parts of the world.

• What’s “Organic” About Organic? Trailer

  tags: environment-agricultural

  • WHAT’S ORGANIC ABOUT “ORGANIC?” delves into the debates that arise when a grassroots agricultural movement evolves into a booming international market.  As the film moves from farm fields to government meetings to industry trade shows, we see the hidden costs of conventional agriculture.  We also see how our health, the health of our planet, and the agricultural needs of our society are all intimately connected.  The film compels us to look forward, towards a new vision for our culture and encourages us to ask, “What should our future food system look like?”

• 40 Superb Psychology Blogs | PsyBlog

  tags: mind-psychology

  • Forty of the best psychology blogs, chosen to give you a broad sweep of the most interesting content being produced online right now.

    The list is split into three sections: first are more general psychological blogs, followed by those with an academic slant, followed by condition specific and patient perspective blogs.

• Top 10 Food Synergy Super Foods

  tags: body-superfood

  • There are all types of food synergy, from different nutrients that are found
    together in the same whole food, to nutrients in different foods that work
    better together, to the synergy in certain dietary patterns (like the
    Mediterranean diet, Asian cuisine, The Portfolio Plan, etc.).

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Top 10 superfoods — Healthy Food Guide Australia

  tags: superfood

  • While there is no official definition for the term ‘superfoods’,
    natural foods that contain a high concentration of nutrients fall into
    the superfood category. These foods are believed to have health
    benefits beyond those of ‘common’ foods due to rich phytochemical and
    antioxidant content.

    Antioxidants are known for their ability to fight against the
    harmful effects of free radicals, which damage DNA and cells,
    contributing to the process of ageing and the development of heart
    disease and cancer. But purely focusing on antioxidants overshadows the
    broad array of other important nutrients that are found in many foods.

• The Top 10 Superfoods That Will Change Your Life

  tags: superfood

  • These special, noble foods and herbs fall into three time-proven, yet
    brand-new food groups:

    1. Superfoods: These include foods that have many unique properties.
    For example, the goji berry (a superfood) is a source of complete protein,
    immune-stimulating polysaccharides, liver-cleansing betaine, anti-aging
    sesquiterpenes, antioxidants, over 20 trace minerals, and much, much
    more. Compare this to a normal food, such as celery.

    2. Superherbs: These include herbs that have super tonic and adaptogenic
    properties as well as many other unique gifts. For example, reishi mushroom
    (a superherb) helps support a healthy immune system, heart, lungs, kidneys,
    as well as assisting with rejuvenating brain and connective tissue.

    3. Living, raw plant foods: These are important, normal foods that include
    most fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, seaweeds, sprouts, grasses, fresh
    herbs, and fermented foods (i.e. sauerkraut).

• Top Ten Super Food Items That Can Help In Avoiding Cancer ,, ( It is believed that almost one-third of…)

  tags: superfood

  • The list of top 10 Anti-cancer fruits and vegetables that can help are listed as follows:

• Top 10 Everyday Super Foods

  tags: superfood

  • “What is ultimately the most important to good health is a dietary
    pattern that includes all these foods, along with a wide variety of other
    nutritious foods and regular physical activity,” says Tufts University
    researcher Alice Lichtenstein, DSc

• Top 10 Superfoods | Food | Channel4.com

  tags: superfood

  • In nutritional terms a ’superfood’ is a nutrient dense food packed full of vitamins and minerals and other health promoting qualities, which may help to boost our health and protect us from diseases such as heart disease and cancer.”

• 10 superfoods for allergy sufferers | Julie’s Health Club – Where alternative and mainstream health meet

  tags: superfood

  • More than 11 million Americans are estimated to have food allergies, which occur when the immune system reacts poorly to certain food. If you have an allergy, you know: Within minutes of eating the offending food, you may experience hives, swelling or have trouble breathing.

    Less obvious and more common are food intolerances, which can be digestive issues that don’t involve the immune system. Symptoms may include cramps, gas and bloating. Unlike with food allergies, you may be able to eat small amounts of problem foods.

• Living Without Magazine – Top Ten Superfoods of 2009

  tags: superfood

  • New to many Americans, most of these slightly exotic foods were actually standard fare for the ancients, consumed for centuries in cultures around the world. Today, they are modern-day super-performers. Naturally gluten free and generally well tolerated by people on special diets, they all contain high levels of beneficial antioxidants and are exceptionally nutritious.

• Ten top ‘Superfoods’ | The Ghanaian Journal

  tags: superfood

  • But what is a ‘Superfood’ and how beneficial are they really? ‘Superfood’ is a term used to describe food with very high nutritional content and potential health-promoting properties, however, some of these ’super’ claims remain disputed as health benefits cannot be proven.

    All fruit and vegetables contain essential vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals that are good for health. But generally, fruits and vegetables that are given a ‘Superfood’ tag are high in antioxidants, Vitamin C, as well as other healthy nutrients, and so are considered especially beneficial.

• Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets

  tags: nutrition, medicinal-plants

  • Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets

• The Real Foods Diet – Healthy Super Food Recipes – thedailygreen.com

  tags: superfood

  • The Superfood Index

• Tropical Plant Database

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • Raintree is dedicated to providing accurate and factual information on the important plants of the Amazon Rainforest, therefore this section of the Raintree web site is the most extensive. This Tropical Plant Database is continuously under construction as we continue to add more rainforest plants which are under research and update the information on the plants in the database.

• Natural Herbs, Herbal Remedies, Herbal Medicine and Supplements | NaturalHerbsGuide.com

  tags: medicinal-plants, nutrition

  • Natural Herbs, Herbal Remedies,
    Medicines, and Supplements Guide

• NOAH: Health Topics

  tags: anatomy, health, disease

• Drugs and Supplements – MayoClinic.com

  tags: drugs, nutrition, medicinal-plants

• HerbMed

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • HerbMed^® – an interactive, electronic herbal database – provides hyperlinked access to the scientific data underlying the use of herbs for health. It is an impartial, evidence-based information resource provided by the nonprofit Alternative Medicine Foundation, Inc. This public site provides access to the 20 most popular herbs.

• Herbs at a Glance [NCCAM Health Information]

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • Herbs at a Glance is a series of fact sheets that provides basic information about specific herbs or botanicals—common names, uses, potential side effects, and resources for more information.

• RxList – The Internet Drug Index for prescription drugs and medications

  tags: drugs

• Supplement Information – Vitamins, Herbs, and Dietary Supplements on RxList

  tags: medicinal-plants, nutrition

  • Vitamins, Herbs, and Dietary Supplements

    Find evidence-based information on individual ingredients such as herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other dietary supplements. The supplement monographs on RxList include a description, review of effectiveness, how it works, safety concerns, and interactions with medications.

• Herbal Medicine

  tags: medicinal-plants

• American Botanical Council: About the American Botanical Council

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • At the American Botanical Council, we are passionate about helping people live healthier lives through the responsible use of herbs, medicinal plants. We are an independent, nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to providing accurate and reliable information for consumers, healthcare practitioners, researchers, educators, industry and the media.

• Publications

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • These pages contain a wealth of useful information that I developed over the last decade, mostly for academic purposes, including monographs of both Western and Ayurvedic herbs, sections of the textbook “Ayurveda” The Divine Science of Life”, and a few papers on Physiomedicalism.

• Welcome – Tillotson Institute of Natural Health

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • This Web site was designed by Alan Tillotson, author of The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook, as a resource and learning tool for physicians and health care practitioners around the world who want to learn practical ways of solving complex health problems using natural methods.  Simply reading through the entire website page by page, using the grey navigation bar at the left, constitutes an entire course in herbal medicine

• Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases

  tags: medicinal-plants

• Research Articles – East West School of Herbology – Come study with Michael Tierra

  tags: medicinal-plants

• Herbal Therapeutics: Articles by David Winston

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • Articles by David Winston

    David, the author of three books (which can be ordered through
    Herbalist & Alchemist) is
    currently working on two others, and has written well over 100 articles, some of
    which we will be making available here for your use.  We hope these downloadable
    versions will be useful in your education and research.

• PCA Medicinal Plant Working Group’s Website: Green Medicine

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • A comprehensive search of known
    plants for medicinal chemicals is an enormous task. Of the estimated 250,000
    plant species on earth, only 2% have been thoroughly screened for chemicals
    with potential medicinal use. Because native plant habitats are destroyed
    almost daily, many medicinally valuable plants will be gone before scientists
    can even investigate them.

• herbcraft – david hoffmann article index

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • This page is an index of the
    articles on the www.healthy.net site.  I’ve
    created it for a few reasons.  First, David
    Hoffman is a great herbalist, and his writings are
    well worth reading when researching a particular herb
    or topic.

• Healthy.net – Wellness, Healthy Living, Alternative Therapies, Body-Mind-Spirit Health – HealthWorld Online

  tags: integrative-medicine

• Matthew Wood: The Ten Most Indispensable Herbs in My Practice, Selections from The Earthwise Herbal

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • The Ten Most Indispensable Herbs in My Practice

    Selections from
    The Earthwise Herbal

• Michael Moore – SW School of Botanical Medicine Home Page

  tags: medicinal-plants

• Welcome. | Henriette’s Herbal Homepage

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • One of the oldest and largest herbal information sites on the web.

• Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard U: Biology Links

  tags: biology

• Nutrition.gov

  Large database of information on food and human nutrition.

  tags: food, nutrition

• Whats In Food : Nutrition.gov

  Database of nutritional value of food.

  tags: food, nutrition

• http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

  tags: nutrition

  • USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference

• Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets

  tags: nutrition

  • Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets

• Nutrient Data : Home

  tags: nutrition

  • The Mission of the Nutrient Data Laboratory is “To develop authoritative food composition databases and state of the art methods to acquire, evaluate, compile and disseminate composition data on foods and dietary supplements available in the United States

• National Agricultural Library

  tags: agriculture

  • The National Agricultural Library (NAL):
    advancing access to global information for agriculture

• Alternative Farming Systems Information Center

  tags: local-food

  • The Alternative Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC) specializes in identifying resources about sustainable food systems and practices in support of USDA’s effort to ensure a sustainable future for agriculture and farmers worldwide.

• Plants For A Future – 7000 useful plants

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • Plants For A Future is a resource centre for rare and unusual plants,
    particularly those which have edible, medicinal or other uses. We
    practise vegan-organic permaculture with emphasis on creating an
    ecologically sustainable environment based largely on perennial plants.

• Medicinal Herbs | Herbal Forumlas | Disease Database – eMedicinal.com

  tags: medicinal-plants

  • The knowledge of herbs is an art and should be protected, shared and preserved. From the beginning of time, herbalists have conducted history’s longest study on the effectiveness of herbs. We should honor and revere this knowledge.

• THE MERCK MANUAL MEDICAL LIBRARY

  tags: medicine, nutrition, disease

  • Merck is committed to bringing out the best in medicine. As
    part of that effort, Merck provides all of The Merck Manuals as
    a service to the community.

• Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University

  tags: nutrition

  • The Linus Pauling Institute’s mission is to:

    
    
    LPI Prize for Health Research
    Vitamin D expert Dr. Michael Holick received the 2009 Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research.
    • Determine the function and role of vitamins and essential minerals
      (micronutrients) and chemicals from plants (phytochemicals) in promoting
      optimum health and preventing or treating disease
    • Determine the role of oxidative stress and inflammation in human health and disease, and the protective effects of dietary factors with anti-oxidant or anti-inflammatory properties
    • Help people everywhere achieve a healthy and productive life, full of vitality, with minimal suffering, and free of cancer and other debilitating diseases

• Cornucopia Institute

  tags: food, local, organic food

  • Seeking economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Through research, advocacy, and economic development our goal
    is to empower farmers – partnered with consumers – in support of ecologically produced local, organic and authentic food.

• EthicsCentre CA

  tags: ethics

• EthicsCentre CA – About Us

  tags: no_tag

  • EthicsCentre CA is a registered charity governed by volunteers and supported by organizations and individuals who share a commitment to ethical values.  

    Founded in 1988, we are a uniquely Canadian, independent ethics centre. We are dedicated to promoting and maintaining an ethical orientation and culture in Canadian organizations.

    Our mission is to champion the application of ethical values in the decision-making process of business and other organizations.

    We operate in a non-judgmental and inclusive way to explore and promote the positive role of ethical decision making. We serve as a forum and catalyst for constructive discussion and debate. 

• Transparency.org

  Global coalition against corruption.

  tags: corruption

• MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine

  tags: medicine, disease, alternative-health

• Environmental Portal, Nature Preservation from Earth Clinic Planet.

  tags: living-green

  • Earth Clinic has spent a decade drawing together a global community willing to share everyday, common sense wisdom about health and healing. Together we’ve proven what a powerful thing community can be. Now we’d like to invite you into another community of healing, one aiming to save and restore that very Earth that has been our treasure chest of cures, remedies, and the riches of a healthy and happy life

• E A R T H . C L I N I C – Folk Remedies and Holistic Cures

  tags: alternative-health, food-as-medicine

  • Our readers have been testing and developing these folk remedies, with contributors from every part of the world, since 1999. We’ve been sent some of the most exciting remedies to date – dozens of restorative remedies, plus natural cures for cancer, fibromyalgia, back pain and better than 350 other diseases and conditions!

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Buy-local push prompts Ontario grocers to go independent

  tags: local, food

  • Dale Kropf calls it Independence Day: On July 3, his five grocery stores in southwestern Ontario ceased to be Sobeys franchises.

    Corporate policies prevented him from buying local products, he says, so he joined forces with four other former Sobeys franchisees and formed the independent Hometown Grocers Co-Op.

    “We feel that local food, local presence is huge in our market and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Kropf says.

    Dale Kropf, an independent Ontario grocery store owner, says his customers want the ability to buy locally produced food. (Alison Crawford, CBC)Canadians are increasingly subscribing to the “buy local” and “100 mile diet” philosophies due to concerns over imported food, Kropf adds. “The pressure was always mounting — the more recalls, the more bad press from China or wherever the product was coming from. I know that in our case, our private label pickles are made in Indonesia. I couldn’t believe that.”

    As a franchisee for a large grocery chain, Kropf says, corporate policies stipulating that he only buy federally inspected meat prevented him from stocking local products. Most federally inspected meat in Canada comes from large corporations such as Maple Leaf, Cargill and Tyson.

• Core Training is Essential to Athletic Performance – A Strong Core Equals a Strong Athlete

  tags: fitness

  • he core is comprised of nearly 30 different muscles that basically wrap around your body in the area between your hips and ribcage.
  • asically, the core is fundamental to all body movement. Whether you realize it or not, you hardly make a movement without engaging your core whether it be walking up the stairs or bending down to pick something up. Your core is involved, providing you with balance and stability. The strength, or weakness, or your core will dictate how easy or difficult these movements are.

• Breathing difficulties – WrongDiagnosis.com

  An extensive list of causes related to breathing difficulties.

  tags: breathing

  • Breathing difficulty
    of any kind
    (or any kind of “shortness of breath“)
    is a potentially life-threatening emergency.
    It can indicate numerous dangerous causes such as heart attack, pneumonia,
    or pulmonary embolism.
    There are other less serious causes, but these highly dangerous conditions
    need to be considered.
    Refer to the causes of breathing difficulty or causes of chest pain.
    These symptoms need to be diagnosed immediately by a medical
    professional because
    they can represent a life-threatening emergency.

• Studies Show Benefits of Controlled Breathing

  tags: breathing

  • Yoga masters have known it
    for thousands of years. Now scientists have evidence that learning how
    to breathe correctly can improve everything from panic attacks to
    hypertension to chronic pulmonary obstruction.

• Dmitry Orlov – Seizing the Mid-Collapse Moment on Vimeo

  tags: economy, sustainability, collapse

  • A recording of the public lecture by Dmitry Orlov on 9 June 2009, at the Davenport Hotel, Dublin, Ireland.

    This was the opening talk to the 3 day conference The New Emergency: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World.

    This conference was organised by Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.

• Feasta: The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability

  tags: economy, sustainability

  • Feasta aims to identify the characteristics (economic, cultural and environmental) of a truly sustainable society, articulate how the necessary transition can be effected and promote the implementation of the measures required for this purpose.

• ClubOrlov: Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation

  tags: economy

  • we all have to prepare for life without much money, where imported goods are scarce, and where people have to provide for their own needs, and those of their immediate neighbours

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Understanding Food Safety: Pesticides, Hormones, and Antibiotics in Food

  tags: toxicity, food

  • “Modern production of foods incorporates a wide range of synthetic chemicals,” says Jeff Gillman, PhD, associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota and author of The Truth About Organic Gardening. “Many of these chemicals have the potential to be very damaging to humans if they are exposed to high concentrations, or to low concentrations over an extended period of time.” 

    “More people are realizing there’s a myriad of chemicals in conventionally produced food,” says Craig Minowa, environmental scientist with the Organic Consumers Association, a nonprofit advocacy group. Although each has passed its own safety review, Minowa points out that “most of the studies on safety are done or supported by the companies themselves.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Hempola Valley Farms – Hemp Products, Hemp Oil, Hemp Flour, Hemp Seed

  tags: food, local, simcoe county

• WriteAway! » Blog Archive » eco-farmers’ market opens

  tags: simcoe county, local, organic food, food

  • Entirely made up of local ecological farmers (many members of the Simcoe County Chapter of Ecological Farmers’ Association of Ontario) the annual Eco-Farmers’ Market is all organic and ecological, all the time.

    Now in its fifth season, the market operates on the grounds of Hempola Farms, just north of Barrie (from Highway 400, take the Forbes Road exit or take Highway 93 north from the intersection with Highway 11, just past Barrie. Hempola is at the corner of Highway 93 and Forbes Road).

• Simcoe County Farm Fresh

  tags: local, simcoe county, food

  • Simcoe County Farm Fresh Marketing Association was formed as a grass-roots organization in 2005 and incorporated as a non-profit corporation in 2007. The association is made up of area farmers, farmers’ markets, restaurants and includes other community partners in the health field, food security, government, tourism and economic development. All have an interest in raising the awareness of the availability of locally grown food.

• Organic Farmers of Simcoe County

  tags: local, food, organic food

  • Organic Farmers of Simcoe County

• HealthMap | Global disease alert map

  tags: maps, disease

• The Local Organic Network – Size does matter: Choose Nano-Free products

  tags: nanofree, toxicity

  • Current estimates suggest over 800 nanotechnology products and component products are available to consumers.  Although some products like tennis rackets are distinct and easy to identify, other component products or ingredients like packaging and food additives are much harder to recognize as nanotechnology.
  • The term ‘nano’ refers to things that are very small, usually less than 100 nm (nano meters) in size. To put that in perspective, a human hair is about 80,000 nm wide and red blood cell is about 7,000 nm, DNA about 3 nm. What’s important about things this small is that they no longer follow the predictable laws of physics but instead often act more unpredictably according to the laws of quantum mechanics.  Substances that act one way in a naturally occurring state may act entirely differently when broken down into nano-sized particles.  Aspects such as toxicity, solubility and reactivity can be less predictable.

  • I am less enthusiastic about putting these technologies into our food and consumer products without labeling and disclosure and before rigorous environmental and human safety testing is completed and published. The Australian Government is in the process of setting up a commission to study how they may address concerns. A few companies are addressing consumer concerns by voluntarily labeling their products as ‘Nano-Free’.

     

    Some common products that may contain nanotechnology are toothpaste, canola oil, sunscreen, skin creams, hair care products, insect repellants, bandages, antimicrobial soaps, disinfectant wipes, fabrics, air fresheners, water filters, waxes,  beer, vitamins and a variety of food additives, containers and packaging.

• Artist Retreat – Wild Rose Farm

  tags: local, retreat

• The New Farm – Handmade Organic Produce

  tags: food, organic food, local

• Slow Food Toronto

  tags: food

  • Our Mission is:
    
    To build food community networks that include producers, artisans, chefs, food activists, youth leadership, and co-producers* (consumers).

    To ensure biodiversity in our local agriculture systems and to abolish GMOs, we support local, small-scale sustainable farm operations and oppose government support of corporate-controlled industrial farming.

    To create sustainable, local food economies that support just wages for producers while ensuring that we still provide access to good, clean, fair food at a reasonable price for all.

    To reconnect people with the pleasure of good food of authentic origin and flavour through taste education.

    To share traditional and ethnic food cultures to ensure their preservation for future generations.

    *A co-producer is an active participant in the food system that supports all of the missions of Slow Food, not simply a consumer of products.

• Datamonitor: The potential and dangers of superfoods

  tags: superfood

  • Although the US currently has no similar legislation, consumers may create their own form of self-regulation and act with the feet, if producers continue to make claims on products that cannot be backed up.

• Health Claims

  tags: food, health

  • A health claim is any representation in labelling or advertising that states, suggests, or implies that a relationship exists between consumption of a food or an ingredient in the food and a person’s health.

• Food Standards Agency – UK list of health claims

  tags: superfood

  • Claims eligible for consideration are:

    • those describing or referring to the role of a nutrient or other substance in growth, development and the functions of the body
    • psychological and behavioural functions
    • slimming, weight control, a reduction in the sense of hunger, an increase in the sense of satiety and the reduction of the available energy from the diet

    Health claims of any other nature are not eligible for this list.

• New Evidence: Exercise Helps Heart Disease, Increases Survival Better than Angioplasty

  tags: medicine, health, heart

  • At the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, new heart research was presented that shows one treatment in particular can provide remarkable help for patients with certain forms of serious heart disease. It’s not a new drug or surgical procedure. Instead, it’s a natural therapy — plain old-fashioned regular exercise.

• Food Fight: The Latest Battle in the US Food Wars

  tags: food, conflict

  • Officials,
    who had bought 4000 copies of Pollan’s book, a bible for the organic
    and locally grown food movements, cited budget cuts. The blogosphere
    erupted, with critics talking darkly of political censorship by
    agribusiness. When Bill Marler, a local lawyer who has litigated
    against agribusiness, offered to pay Pollan’s fee to speak at the
    university, it backed down.

    But if the grassroots are on fire -
    Pollan wants President Barack Obama to reform the “entire food system”
    - then Big Food shows no signs of surrendering. Last year biotech giant
    Monsanto, which markets genetically modified (GM) seeds and the
    herbicide Roundup, began an advertising campaign that stressed its
    sustainable credentials. “How can we squeeze more food from a
    raindrop?” one ad asked, suggesting the solution to hunger and water
    scarcity was genetically modified food.

• Explore | Africa – Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle

  tags: malevolence

  • Built by European traders in the 17th century, Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle was the point of departure for the countless numbers of Africans who were sent to the New World as free labor for the colonies. Join Explore founder Charles Annenberg Weingarten on a virtual tour of the slave dungeon, and witness the horrific conditions the captives were forced to endure while waiting to be sent across the Atlantic.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Scientists Warn of Hazards of GMOs

  tags: gmo, toxicity, disease, food

  • EXTRACT: [the study] brings to light “a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others. We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action.”

• Community Supported Agriculture on PEI @ Dave’s Educational Blog

  Very interesting idea to connect local farmers with community members that would like to eat locally grown produce.

  tags: food, agriculture, network

• Site 41 a battle of perception – The Barrie Examiner – Ontario, CA

  tags: toxicity, landfill, water

  • And it’s not difficult to see why even a casual observer can understand opposition to the landfill. These 51 acres near Elmvale are not only prime farm land, but atop a source of groundwater that’s reportedly some of the purest on earth.

• Simple Ways to Detoxify Your Body and Reclaim Your Health and Vitality

  tags: toxicity, detoxification

  • Detox, short for detoxification, is the purification of the body by removing toxins. Our bodies naturally eliminate toxins through our skin, liver, kidney and lungs. However due to the massive amount of toxins in our air, water and food supply today our bodies are unable to “keep up” with the amount of toxins invading us daily. This leads to fatigue, weight gain and a whole host of health problems. Therefore it is necessary for us to take steps to detoxify our bodies in order to reclaim our health and vitality.

• SpringerImages

  tags: science, images

  • SpringerImages provides a new way to access hard-to-find scientific content of the utmost value to researchers: images.

• Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica | Full text | Vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) in Swedish sewage sludge

  tags: toxicity, food, agriculture

  • Background

    Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat in veterinary medicine and human healthcare. Resistance genes can spread from animals, through the food-chain, and back to humans. Sewage sludge may act as the link back from humans to animals. The main aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) in treated sewage sludge, in a Swedish waste water treatment plant (WWTP), and to compare VRE isolates from sewage sludge with isolates from humans and chickens.

    Methods

    During a four month long study, sewage sludge was collected weekly and cultured for VRE. The VRE isolates from sewage sludge were analysed and compared to each other and to human and chicken VRE isolates by biochemical typing (PhenePlate), PFGE and antibiograms.

    Results

    Biochemical typing (PhenePlate-FS) and pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) revealed prevalence of specific VRE strains in sewage sludge for up to 16 weeks. No connection was found between the VRE strains isolated from sludge, chickens and humans, indicating that human VRE did not originate from Swedish chicken.

    Conclusion

    This study demonstrated widespread occurrence of VRE in sewage sludge in the studied WWTP. This implies a risk of antimicrobial resistance being spread to new farms and to the society via the environment if the sewage sludge is used on arable land.

• Find Your Brand | Environmental Working Group

  tags: water

  • Disclaimer: Drink plenty of water, but avoid bottled water when you can. It pollutes the environment and is often nothing more than tap water. When you must, choose brands with high scores (clear labeling) and advanced treatment.

• So, who need corporations, anyway? | The Smirking Chimp

  tags: corporation

  • a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that strips our corporations of their personhood. The net effect would be that our corporations would have no rights; they would only have privileges granted them by the state.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.