by Aimee Perrin

Several years ago, I decided to eat only organic food, and I felt great about the decision our family had made. It seemed a little obsessive way back somewhere between 1996 and 2003. I guess it was a gradual development. Denny and I had been shopping individually, before we were married, from health food stores since the early 70’s.  Denny even owned a health food store in Hammond Louisiana, where we met. Then in the 80’s, when we started having children, we began making more conscious decisions about our food and where it came from, still figuring that USDA Organic was the best.

The Best?

Fast forward to 2003 when we both began our 7 years as Raw Foodists, we were certainly obnoxious, and elitefully (is that a word? it should be, anyway we were it) declared that everything we put in our mouth was not only raw, but (air quotes) “Organically Grown”, by golly!

But, in 2010, we discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation, and thus, the local farm movement. This is how it happened.

While on the all organic Raw Food diet my husband Denny had developed seriously painful, infected teeth. He didn’t want to go to the dentist since: 1. He felt the problem was partly caused from dental work he had had in the past;  2. He knew the dentist would offer doses of anti-biotics, their only option to fight a serious tooth infection. And, if you have read any of my other blogs, you probably know our opinions of anti-biotics. Put briefly, they destroy the bacteria in the gut, which can ultimately cause further disease.

I googled the words, “Cure tooth decay” and found the book,Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel’s. I highly recommend his book, you can purchase it through our Amazon link. While explaining the cause of tooth decay, Rami mentioned the Weston A. Price Foundation. And the fact that indigenous peoples still eating their traditional diets had absolutely no tooth decay!

The Weston A. Price Foundation is highly supportive of small family farms, for good reason: the only way to find these foods that traditional peoples included in their diets are to grow or raise them yourself or buy them from local farmers.

I’m talking about the new Super Foods, healing foods such as organ meats from grass fed animals, humanely raised on their natural diets. broths made from bones and meats of these same animals and raw dairy from animals raised on grass from your local area.

While Denny was healing his teeth and I was making the shift to a new diet, researching, we began a commitment to buy only locally grown foods.

For the year of 2010, while reading Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, we decided we could survive eating only food that comes from local farms.

At this same time I was still producing crackers for my company, Aimee’s Livin’ Magic. Most days I was using at least a pound of peeled garlic, impossible to get locally. 98% of the peeled organically grown garlic came from China! Yes, that was the only place I could get that much garlic. At the time our company was also using seeds, like sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds from China all claiming to be organically grown.

A few of our concerned customers stopped buying our products because of this. I was feeling more and more uneasy about buying Organic Food from China. What were their practices like, was it really organic? I was making these decisions to eat only local, farm-raised food for myself. This was one of the main reasons Aimee’s Livin’ Magic went out of business. I no longer felt ok about importing all the raw ingredients to make the food.

A great quote from an article on Natural News, “Organic farming in a clean environment produces clean, organic foods. But organic farming in a polluted environment produces contaminated organic foods. And China is one of the most polluted chemical cesspools on the planet.”

Yuk!

Read the whole article:  http://www.naturalnews.com/039195_organic_foods_China_pollution_nightmare.html#ixzz2Lpe12SIl

When you buy Organically Grown food from the grocery store or even the local health food store,

1. What do you really know about how it was raised or grown?
2. How much fuel did it take to get to the store?
3. How long did it take to get there?

These were all questions I was asking myself.

Yesterday, February 23, 2013, Denny and I went to the Seacoast Eat Local Winter Farmers’ Marketin Rollinsford New Hampshire, a mere 20 minutes by car from our house. This Farmers Market has become a huge deal in our area. There were at least 1/2 mile of cars on both sides of the road on each side to the entrance and a parking lot full of cars, and a steady stream of eager shoppers and community members entering the huge greenhouse where there was about 75 booths, mostly of farmers from farms within a hundred mile radius.

Our Happy Farmer

 I didn’t start out to write a review of our local farmers market, although I certainly could do that—all favorable.

I could walk up to any booth and have a discussion with the farmer whose food I am getting ready to purchase. I could ask,

“What do your animals eat while there is snow on the ground?” To this I would like to hear,

“Hay, that I produced on my farm, without the use of pesticides or fertilizer.”

We can still buy some vegetables like cabbage and some greenhouse grown kale and lettuces. And I can ask these farmers, who may not have an organically grown sign at their booth, “Do you use fertilizers or pesticides?” Becoming certified can be prohibitively expensive for a small farmer.

Is it possible to actually Stay Out Of the Grocery Store? 

What items we might purchase at a grocery store, large chain, or even our local health food store:

1. Toilet paper – we could use a clean wet rags, but not yet;
2. Paper towels – Denny uses these to paint with, but we could use rags, right?;
3. Raw ground chicken for our pets – I would love to buy this directly from farmers, we are working on this;
4. Shampoo, conditioner and soap. Ok, soap we could definitely buy from farmers. I saw a farmer yesterday with her Goat Milk soap for sale;
5. Coconut oil and coconut, shredded and arrowroot, see my blogs about my Coconut Cookies and the Miracle of Coconut Oil http://liveinmagic.com/yummy-coconut-cookiesbutter-transports/ and http://liveinmagic.com/alzheimers-coconut-oil-miracle/;
6. Tea and coffee, like Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, there are some things you just have to import. p. 35, “Hedging, we decide to allow ourselves one luxury item, each in limited quantities, on the condition we’d learn how to purchase it through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows. Stephen’s (here I could substitute Denny’s) choice was a no-brainer, coffee. If he had to choose between our family and coffee, it might be a tough call.” I absolutely loved reading this book, I’d let you borrow it if I could. You can order it from our Amazon link.

Some of these items we certainly could get on line, but that is not the point, and I still enjoy the community of the local health food store. Our local store does a good job of stocking lots of locally sourced foods and personal care products: cream and yogurt from a local dairy, meat from a local farm, chapstick and candles from a local bee keeper. I search out these products when I find myself between Farmers Markets still in need of supplies.

Living without packaged foods.

This was an easy decision for us. And this is how it went. I was already eating very low carb, because of the type 1 diabetes. Denny joined me on this, because of his hypoglycemia. We are always researching diets, trying to find the perfect diet for healing. We did a lot of reading about the paleo diet and the success many were having on this diet.  Since I had been eating low carb and no grains since 1996 and having great results with my health and balancing my blood sugars giving up all packaged food was automatic!

Basically if you are eating No Grains, you are eating no packaged food! Funny right. All packaged food are made from grains and most have added GMO hormone- wrecking soy, high fructose corn syrup, GMO corn and its derivatives. Once these substances come into a factory, do we really know where they came from? Or what’s done with them? But I KNOW what happens in my kitchen!

I buy food from local farmers I trust. Then I add Salt, Pepper and dry herbs, and organic extra virgin coconut oil. We currently do fine without imported olive oil by using Lard that I make myself (http://liveinmagic.com/why-lard-by-aimee-perrin/for my blog about the health benefits of lard) and coconut oil or Bacon drippings from our local bacon. That’s it. I always spend less than 20 minutes preparing a meal completely from scratch. Its simple and delicious.

Yum!

by Aimee Perrin

Here’s a blog about butter and how to make it. And why bother?

First of all, I ran out of the beautiful raw grassfed butter that I was getting from a local farmess. Farmess, meaning a woman farmer, just to give her credit. She makes the best butter, it’s always dark yellow and I think her cows must love her for taking such good care of them, because her butter and cream is the best I’ve ever had. This farm is in New Hampshire and is 2 hours away. We were just unable to get there, to buy more butter.

Why Bother?

I was having trouble getting raw local cream that I could make butter from, for quite a few days. So, I actually decided I would buy organic butter from California from grass fed cows at my local health food store. Our local health food store usually has cream from a local dairy, one of the main reasons we still go there, but they were out.

After I ate this non-local, non-raw butter for a few days I developed a fever blister!

I had fever blisters several times a year when I was a kid, but almost never get them anymore since I started eating real food. This is serious!  But really good information.

Does the pasteurization of milk cause the activation of the herpes virus? Wow! That is extremely interesting!

Can I get any verification on that other than my own personal experience? Lets see…

http://www.oceanremedies.com/files/admin/uploads/W306_Field_21_53599.pdf

This link is a good free on-line book about the Herpes Virus.  Here are 2 such quotes from this eBooklet which support my hypothesis:

1.“Reduce the amount of processed foods that you consume.”

2. “Fresher is always better.”

This booklet also states that:  “Butter is high in lysine,” the amino acid that helps prevent herpes breakouts. Its hard to imagine that this pasteurized, organic grass fed butter from CA would be considered processed, but as I eat more and more raw dairy from local farms I can definitely tell the difference!

I believe that any pasteurized milk product is actually processed junk food! 

It makes sense that the action of heating, as happens in pasteurization, actually destroys lysine, as well as many other nutrients! Hence, pasteurization can cause the activation of the herpes virus, and could have been the reason I had so many fever blisters as a kid! PASTEURIZED MILK PRODUCTS!

Now, the process—“How to Make” this delicious BUTTER:

In this first picture is shown the 2 pints of cream I started with.

Raw and Grass Fed

Here’s the raw cream being whipped in the food processor. I use the plastic blade, this picture shows the cream in the process, like really good whipped cream. I use the plastic blade so that the fat molecules will be left intact, the metal blade actually cuts the fat molecules so they are harder for your body to recognize!

Butter Churn?

In this picture, you can see the cream becoming separated from the whey and the solid bits of butter turning yellow!

Now I pour it into a large strainer, over a large glass measuring bowl.

I use a plastic spatula to work out the whey and pour it away in the first bowl.

You can see the whey gathering away from the butter, and the butter clumping together as I press the butter together.

I continue to pour off the whey, which I save because it is valuable, high in protein, and can be used to add to batches of fermenting vegetables.

Now I am working and kneading the butter in my hands, squeezing and squeezing over the whey bowl.

Here I am actually rinsing the butter under cold water to insure all the liquid milk is out of the butter. This is important because if any liquid is left in the butter, it could cause the butter to go bad. If your butter is fat only, absolutely no liquid, it can last almost forever.

For 2 pints of cream  the finished butter weighs 11 and a half ounces!

Here’s my butter in my depression glass Jadite container, looking beautiful!

And here I am tasting my Homemade Grass fed Raw BUTTER!

Delicious! Beautiful health creating homemade Grass fed Butter. YAY!

Finally, my supper each evening, including my delicious butter mixed with Surthrival’s Colostrum and One World Whey, both of which you can buy right here through our affiliate buttons. Add a little stevia, mix it up, and it tastes like cookie dough, but without the carbs and so good for you!

by Aimee Perrin

The Kimchee I started last week was harvested today and it came out delicious. So, I decided to write a blog about how I made it.

First step, I bought the ingredients at a local market, Rosemont Market in Portland, Maine. We shop at this market in between Farmers Markets, because they buy directly from local, Maine farmers. We also buy most of our meat from farmers at the local Farmers Market, but we will buy meat from Rosemont Market. The butcher there knows the farmers and knows that they all treat their animals with respect and make sure they eat 100% grass from the pasture. I also am able to talk to farmers at the farmers market and ask them about how they feed their animals. During the cold winters, here in Maine, most grassfed animals will be eating hay grown on the farm.

The ingredients:   

Start with Fresh

1 green cabbage

1 red cabbage   I love to include red cabbbage. The red/purple phytonutrient adds anthocyanins which helps prevent many illnesses from heart disease to cancer, plus it makes my kimchee beautiful!

4 sliced shallots, also slightly purple

6 grated carrots, a gorgeous crop in Maine

1 whole bulb of fresh garlic, sliced in the food processor

3 inch hunk ginger, whole raw, chopped into large pieces. Buy it whenever you see it at the farmers market, because, it sells out fast and is only available for a short time. I had to buy mine this time from the health food store.

4 Tablespoons Celtic sea salt

1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon Chipotle pepper

This list of vegetables, all of which at I can buy in the middle of the winter in Maine, allows me to make kimchee, an amazing fermented, delicious vegetable combination. Kimchee and other fermented vegetable combinations like sauerkraut, are filled with healthy bacteria and probiotics. These bacterias help to heal our guts, which have been greatly damaged by taking antibiotics and other drugs. Think about it. Anti-biotics actually is translated to “against life”. While pro-biotics is translated to “for life”! Denny and I will be eating kimchee all winter and beyond. Also, I have found that a lot of the sugars in the vegetables have been eaten up during the fermentation process, which translates into these veggies containing very little carbohydrate. When I eat fermented veggies like homemade kimchee, my blood sugars are much better controlled.

What kind of conditions can be caused by an unhealthy or damaged gut? Type 1 diabetes is one of the first on the list. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. All cancers. Pretty much all mental/brain issues including autism spectrum, depression, schizophrenia, ADD, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia etc. Crohn’s disease, and celiac disease. Allergies, all. All autoimmune diseases. This list is incomplete by far and all these conditions can be improved by adding fermented vegetables to one’s diet.

Method:

After all the vegetables are gathered, cut and slice as directed in the ingredient list.

Place all the cut up veggies in a very large bowl;

Add the Salt, cayenne and chipotle. If you like things really hot you can add a little more cayenne and chipotle. Also, be sure to add a few tablespoons of liquid from a previous batch of kimchee or kraut. If you don’t have your own, add some from a high quality jar you bought at the health food store or farmer’s market.;

Now, here is where it gets fun, mix it all up with your hands, then start kneading, and kneading, squeezing and squeezing until liquid starts to form in the bowl;

Add the veggies to your crocks, or large bowls. Cover each container with a plate then add weight like a water filled glass jar or large bottle as in the picture. Be sure the liquid completely covers the veggies and comes up over the sides of the plate. If the veggies are exposed to the air, the batch will rot, not ferment.

Let the kimchee sit out on a counter for at least a week. The first time I made kimchee I left it out on the counter in the kitchen. It came out great the next time I made it. I placed the crocks over a radiator in the winter because I thought it would be better in the warmth. It still came out great, but it was actually a little dry, so I’ll probably just opt for the counter next time.

After an impatient week of waiting I was alarmed to see some puffy bubbles around the edge of the plate. Bravely I decided that was a natural part of the fermentation process, so I scraped off the bubbly stuff and removed the plates. Oh my, what a beautiful red-violet color! I stirred it up with a large spoon. And tasted it.

Bubbling with Probiotics!

How did my Kimchee come out?

Yum! Delicious and spicy! AND the beautiful red violet color makes it look amazing on my plate.

Here’s a picture of my first lunch with my new kimchee.

Ahhhh....Delish!

Why Lard?

My Homemade Lard

I’ve been posting some pictures of my meals of paleo style, local farm food. One of my favorite, nutrient-rich lunch side dish is Dulse seaweed fried in lard—yes, lard. Am I crazy? No! I got several comments and questions like “Looks Great, but why lard?” or, “I thought lard was bad for us.”

Lunch with Dulse fried in Lard

So I thought it was time to explain my madness. And to really understand it myself. Isn’t that why we write blogs and do research? Just to be sure, right?

First of all, I’ll remind you, I spent many years as an ethical and health promoting vegetarian. In 1976, when I was 22, two things happened that changed my life. During my first marriage, my ex was a hunter, as in deer. We had a freezer full of paper wrapped deer meat and the electricity went off for several days after a hurricane in deep south Louisiana. By the time we got there, a family “farm” where my ex and his friends hunted, the white packages of deer meat were swimming in an ocean of blood! Gross, right? Yuk! I questioned: Blood? Really? Suddenly the idea of eating meat seemed quite cannibalistic!

Next, back in town, I went to the University library at my alma mater, Southeastern Louisiana University, from which I had graduated with a degree in Fine Art a year earlier. I perused the shelves, not really knowing what I was looking for. I remember so much of this experience, except, alas, the name of the ancient volume I found. I saw beautiful, old, black and white pictures of cows grazing in fields of grass. I read what I assumed was true, that it took hundreds of acres more land to raise a pound of meat than to grow a pound of vegetables. I must have read more about vegetarianism because I left there declaring that I would never eat meat again!

Over the next 20 years, I did not eat meat. I had years of veganism, back and forth with stints of ovo-lacto vegetarianism. I raised my kids on the vegetarian, health food store, lifestyle. I created fun, family recipes, just no meat. Lots of tofu, soy, etc.

By 1996, I was sick, but that’s another story. But the shortened form is: I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 16, in 1971. And in the same year that I stopped eating meat, through my reading and research, I began to believe that the body is able to heal from any condition, including type 1 diabetes. By 1996, I was suffering with several health issues, most of which were caused from uncontrolled high blood sugars. I ultimately found Dr. Richard Bernstein and his book Diabetes Solution.  Dr. Bernstein introduced me to multiple injections of insulin a day and very low carbohydrate. This meant my diet needed to change. Vegetarian diets are very high in carbohydrates and these carbs were making me sick.

I started Bernstein’s plan: no more than 30 grams of carbs a day, adding chicken, turkey, fish, tuna fish, eggs, more tofu, more soy hotdogs, cottage cheese, etc. My health issues magically disappeared. I was a healthy type 1 diabetic! I stayed on this plan for the next 7 years, but I never forgot or lost hope of healing the type 1 diabetes. Then, in 2003, I heard about a kid who, after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, his mother put him on a Raw Food Diet and he healed and never had to take insulin injections. So, overnight I went on the raw food diet. And this I did with a fervor for the next 7 years. I fasted, did colonics, cleansed, ate as low carb as I could, hoping I would heal and be able to discontinue giving myself insulin injections.

I know this seems long-winded. Isn’t this blog supposed to be about Lard?

Yes, but I have to give you the back story!

During Raw Food, friends around me began changing their diets dramatically. Then, Denny, my husband, who was also a Raw Foodist, started having tooth aches, basically his teeth were starting to rot. He didn’t want to go to a dentist because he felt it was the fault of the dentist, and dental procedures that his teeth were rotting. And since I believed your body could heal any condition, couldn’t it heal teeth. Aren’t they part of your body? So, of course I googled, “cure tooth decay.” A book, Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel came up, so I ordered it right away. The author encouraged a diet including liver, raw eggs, raw dairy, raw cream…. A lot of the same foods that my former Raw Food friends were now including in their diet. Denny started right away and he saved his teeth. My daughter, who had started adding local farm animal foods in her former raw food diet, encouraged me to try these changes for just a month, 30 days, and if I didn’t like it, go back to being a Raw Foodist.

I saw people among these former raw foodists, including my 20-something daughter become stronger, more energetic and happier. I know I’ve written about this before, but my experience was that I also felt so nourished, more than ever before. And even though I didn’t feel bad on the raw food diet, I couldn’t deny that I felt amazingly nourished with these new additions to my diet.

I dove right in, researching eating local foods. I read numerous books, namely: The Vegetarian Myth, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Animal, Vegetable Miracle, Omnivore’s Dilemma, Primal Body-Primal Mind, Deep Nutrition, and Nourishing Traditions. I still recommend these titles and you can click on these links to purchase them on our Amazon button. I started buying meat directly from local farmers and learned that animal fat was so important to indigenous peoples. Why?

From a blog on www.wellnessmomma.com it is stated:

“Vegetable oils (and margarine, made from these oils) are oils extracted from seeds like the rapeseed (canola oil) soybean (soybean oil), corn, sunflower, safflower, etc. They were practically non-existent in our diets until the early 1900s when new chemical processes allowed them to be extracted. Unlike butter or coconut oil, these vegetable oils can’t be extracted just by pressing or separating naturally. They must be chemically removed, deodorized and altered. These are some of the most chemically altered foods in our diets, yet they get promoted as healthy.”

We can all agree that heart disease and cancer, the two major modern day killers, were practically nonexistent in the early 1900‘s. I can say that with the inclusion and increase of animal fat, I am able to keep cravings completely under control, which I was sorely unable to do so on the raw food diet. I have found so much positive information on animal fats that I hardly know where to begin. Sally Fallon, in her well researched volume, Nourishing Traditions, explains that as Americans were urged to eat less and less butter and animal fats, obesity, hearts disease and cancer has been flourishing. (Nourishing Traditions, pages 4-20)

And in Deep Nutrition, Catherine Shanahan, MD, and Luke Shanahan, give a good argument in favor of animal fats:

“Why, if cholesterol is so deadly, were so many of my oldest patients enjoying excellent health after a lifetime of consuming butter, eggs and red meat?”  (page 166) They then follow with an almost 40 page chapter on the virtues of animal fats and the dangers of most vegetable fats, except for coconut oil, olive oil and palm oil.

I will get to lard, I promise! Here’s a list compiled by Sally Fallon from The Four-fold Path to Healing:

“The list of foods that supply substantial amounts of fat-soluble vitamins (vitamin A,  vitamin D and the Price Factor [vitaminK2] is relatively short.

• Butter, cream and whole milk products {milk, cheese, yoghurt, etc.}    from cows on green pastures

• Organ meats {liver, kidneys, heart, brain, etc.} from cows on green    pasture

• Lard from pigs raised outside {who then make vitamin D and store it   in their fat}

• Eggs from chickens and other fowl raised outside or fed insects

• Shellfish {oysters, clams, mussels, crab, shrimp, lobsters,}

• Fish eggs

• Wild caught oily fish, such as salmon, sardines and anchovies

• Fish liver oils, particularly cod liver oil

• Insects (for those who have the courage to eat them!)”

So did you notice LARD in that list? Quote: “Lard for pigs raised outside” so that the pigs absorb the vitamin D from the sun and the nutrients from the grass and insects.

Happy Pigs from New Roots Farm

Sally Fallon also says,  “…the absolute fundamental requirements of healthy diets cannot be found in pasta, nor vegetable juices, nor oat bran, nor olive oil, but only in certain types of animal fats. These fats come from animals who consume green, growing organisms{ such as grass and plankton)or other animals who have consumed other animals who have consumed green growing organisms (such as insects).”

Here’s an actual fat pyramid from the Four Fold Path to Healing.

Fat Pyramid

What is it about lard that is so special? I already knew that the Crisco shortening my mom used was a substitute for the lard that she grew up with. I’ll remind you that I was born in 1954, mid century. My mom was dutifully using Crisco shortening, margarine, but she was still cooking with Bacon Grease. I had so many health issues, visits to the doctors, operations, prescription medications, headaches. Would my life had been dramatically different with the inclusion of lard? Well, I don’t know, the meat that was available back then was factory farmed, animals raised on antibiotics, growth hormones torture, etc. We are so fortunate now to be able to buy from farmers who know about raising their animals on grass, out in the sun, as you see this is so important.

“Butter—so long as it comes from grass-fed cows—may actually help keep arteries clear, thanks to newly discovered vitamin K2. K2 has been shown to both strengthen bone and prevent arterial calcification. Coconut oil, long shunned as one of the most highly saturated of all fats, has been shown to improve the HDL/LDL ratio, raising the level of “good” HDL cholesterol in the blood while lowering “bad” LDL. And, interestingly, lard—rendered pig fat—is mostly unsaturated oleic acid, the same exact fat in olive oil—monounsaturated, the healthiest of all fats. Lard: the new health food. Who’d a thought?” This quote comes from http://www2.citypaper.com/eat/story.asp?id=16103. It’s  written by Michele Glenow and is a good read and great to see the mention of grassfed animals. Hey, it’s time for the word “grassfed” to be recognized by spell check! Ha ha! And here’s a fun picture from the past, now relevant again:

Rebuilding now, adding animal fats, raised this way, is possible and that’s what I am doing!

Yay! Dulse fried in Lard. It’s what’s for lunch!

Dulse for Lunch

• 76.82 grams carbohydrate in total recipe
• 36 cookies in each recipe
• 2.14 grams carbs in 1 cookie

I invented these delicious cookies/crackers, gluten and grain free, with ingredients that were in my kitchen. They are so yummy. Here’s the recipe:

4 cups of shredded coconut

3 egg whites

1 whole egg

1/3 cup melted coconut oil

1/4 cup arrowroot powder

1/2 teaspoon salt of your choice, I used Himalayan

1/2 teaspoon powdered stevia

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Blend the coconut in the blender to make coconut flour.

Combine all ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Make a batter

Grease a large cookie sheet with a bit of coconut oil.

Spoon batter onto sheet.

Spread, flatten with hands, fingertips or heel of hand, till it covers the whole pan.

Cut into squares with spatula.

Place cookie sheet in oven.

Bake until golden brown. 

I started with 12 minutes but in my oven it took a total of 20 minutes.

All ovens are a little different. Denny really likes them crispy and well browned. Sometimes he even re-crisps them before he eats them in a preheated oven for a few minutes.

Serve with a generous slab of raw Grassfed butter.

Yum!

I usually don’t eat these yummy treats because they do have carbohydrates and I am on a very low carbohydrate diet (less than 20 grams of carbs a day). So I need to let you know how many carbs are in these cookies/crackers.

In the total recipe I figured 76.82 carbohydrates. I divided the recipe into 36 crackers, which comes to 2.14 carbs in each cookie! Yay! I think I might have one!

Coconut Oil

In our local Sunday newspaper there was an article, http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20130120-LIFE-301200309, about a 62 year old man, David McCullen with early onset Alzheimer’s, and how he and his wife were seeking medical treatment now that he had been diagnosed. This story was in the new “Medical Section” that is filled with articles about people going to allopathic doctors for chronic diseases, and I might add, full of advertisements for local hospitals, doctors, and cancer treatment centers. Maybe if you pay for an ad, they will run an article that mentions you.

Anyway, as soon as I saw this article about the relatively young guy with Alzheimer’s, I thought about the many youtube.com videos like this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iScs0uzQZFk, touting the miraculous healing effects of coconut oil on Alzheimer’s disease! I also thought about the book I had just heard of by the Coconut oil Guru, Dr. Bruce Fife’s Stop Alzheimer’s Now

Please tell everyone you know about this book, and better yet, buy it by clicking on the Amazon button above. And Thank you! I have this book on my list to read, I have yet to read it, but I have read Bruce Fife’s other bool, Coconut Cures, which is an excellent resource. I am particularly interested in the new book since my mother died at age 54 from ALS. Could I have saved her with coconut oil? Well I didn’t know. But that is no longer an excuse. The information is out there with one click on google!

I assume this new book is about how to eat coconut oil to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s as well as many other “dis-eases”. I, for one, have upped my intake of extra-virgin raw coconut oil!

Why would people be going to doctors to get drugs to treat their or their loved ones Alzheimer’s disease or dementia when coconut oil works better? Fear? We are so fortunate to live in this time of google, where you can “virtually” meet people who have used natural means to heal themselves and then put their story on the internet.

I actually referenced these youtube videos on Alzheimer’s to heal my cat, Mango. My beautiful, loving, 17 year old cat, Mango, had been progressively removing himself from human interaction, sitting in a chair all day and not joining the other pets at mealtimes. I had to go find him for meals. I then saw the videos on coconut oil for Alzheimer’s and wondered if it would help Mango.

The Mango Miracle

The people in the video said it made a difference almost immediately. I stirred some melted coconut oil into Mango’s food and that night he sat on my lap while we were watching a movie. He eagerly came to mealtime the next morning. It worked right away. He now is socialable with our other cat, Manny and our dog, Rosetti. And, of course, Mango, Manny AND Rosetti are all getting 1-2 teaspoons of coconut oil in their food every morning and evening. And I take it by the Tablespoons, and I would hint to David McMullen that he try it, too.

As 2012 ends I am renewing my hopes for healing Type 1 diabetes and Dupuytren Contracture. Both of these conditions are, when researched, considered by most doctors—even alternative doctors—to be incurable. I have spoken to and heard many alternative health practitioners, doctors, etc., who say “There are no incurable diseases.” But when asked directly about Type 1 diabetes or Dupuytren Contracture, the reply is, “Well, that’s different.” Both conditions have reasonably effective treatments AND neither is fatal, but are either healable? Is that even a word?

Dupuytren Contracture in my Hands

To me, “healable” is different that “treatable.” My interest is to get the body in such a state of Health that dis-ease is possible. That is what healing is.

So what is my plan for the new year of 2013? Here it is today as I write this:

Daily Coffee Enemas. Coffee enemas cause the liver to cleanse itself. They are used by many practitioners for part of a cancer treatment. If the liver is sluggish, many conditions could be created. And the liver is very close to the Pancreas, so you never know;

Enema Paraphenalia

Heavy Metal Detox.  This includes getting the mercury fillings and root canals out of my mouth. Mercury fillings and root canals have been linked to auto-immune disease. Type 1 diabetes and Dupuytren Contracture have both been called auto-immune diseases. I’m especially apprehensive about this step because it involves extracting 2 of the largest teeth in my mouth that I still use to chew my food. I would have two large spaces in my lower jaw. One extraction is my only root canal, the other contains a large amalgam filling. The dentist, Dr. Marjan Seward, a biological dentist trained by Hal Huggins, says the tooth is already cracked and wouldn’t stand up to being drilled out, so it has to be extracted. Although I have been putting it off, I see this step taking place this year. If anyone has any suggestion as an alternative to pulling the teeth, I’m open to suggestions;

Mercury in our mouths!?What were they thinking?

Far Infrared Sauna. This really belongs in the Detox step, but I gave its own category since I’m planning to purchase one this year, most likely the RELAX Far Infrared Sauna. These saunas are helpful and are high on the list of detoxing heavy metals. I can get one for just over $900. Through my research I’ve decided these are the best for detoxing heavy metals, and I am looking forward to welcoming it into my home. Contributions accepted . Please click here to go to my Paypal website: www.paypal.com. Use perrinpainter@gmail.com.

 GAPS & Ketogenic Diets. My dietary plan is to marry these two approaches to healing. The GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), which I’ve blogged about before, is used to heal and seal the gut. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride came up with the diet to successfully autistic son. It worked for him and has worked for many with Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADD, ADHD, and many other mental and emotional disorders. Campbell-Mcbride has theorized that the GAPS diet could heal ALL auto-immune conditions Type 1 diabetes. I have been on the basic GAPS diet for a while. This includes no grains while eating fermented foods, bone and meat broths, etc. (http://www.doctor-natasha.com or www.gapsdiet.com ) But I have yet to do the systematic intro diet. I’ve read the Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia

Gut Check

and many of the blogs written about the diet, but still not implemented the exact intro diet. It has eluded me, but I’m determined this year to give a complete effort starting right after the New Year. More later on this. As for the Ketogenic diet, I’ve been on this diet as well, using all locally-farmed grass-fed meats and fats, except for coconut oil (organic and raw). My diet by calories is 80% fat, 15% protein, and 5% carbohydrate from vegetables. This is ratio holds most days if I’m not in the kitchen making chocolate. This is one of the main reasons I discontinued my company, Aimee’s Livin’ Magic. Even though the chocolate I was making had no sugar and sweetened only with stevia, very dark and organic, it still raised my blood sugar, usually for several days. So even indulging in stevia sweetened organic, raw chocolate is a no-no. It either simply has too many carbs or something about it actually makes me insulin resistant. Insulin resistance, the diabetic’s nemesis, means that insulin in having trouble getting the cells to open and take up the glucose in the blood, resulting in elevated blood glucose or high blood sugar. This high blood sugar leads to the many health issues that are characteristic of diabetes, something I try to avoid as much as possible.

So on a strict ketogenic diet, the goal is to have enough calories, but very low carbs, so that the body learns to burn fat or ketone bodies instead of glucose. This diet has become very popular in the treatment of cancer, Type 1 and 2 diabetes, heart disease, weight loss, all autoimmune diseases, epilepsy, and autism. I just read a new book on the ketogenic diet, The Cantin Ketogenic Diet: For Cancer, Type I Diabetes & Other Ailments
by Elaine Cantin.(More on this book in a later blog.)

Excellent book!

Exercise – I have been a proponent of exercise as part of a healing program for many years. I continue to research the best exercise program. My husband, Denny, and I have developed a program of daily exercise. We do five exercises to a Tabata timer, including two with weights, two with body weight, and one which is a stretch (flat-footed squats). This routine we do 2-3 times a week, then a day of sprints 2 days a week, with walking and/or rebounding the other days. Exercise helps me to become more insulin sensitive. So if I’m exercising every day, my blood sugars are better, always under 100 mg/dl. Plus exercise helps to maintain a good body image, so I feel more worthy of healing. We’ll soon post a blog dedicated to exercise.

Aimee blasting her abs

Our "Gym"

Denny contorting

We just finished reading The 9 Steps to Keep the Doctor Away: Simple Actions to Shift Your Body and Mind to Optimum Health for Greater Longevity. 
I loved this book! Yes, I did already know much of what was in it, but I found so much more. Some of it was a reminder to drink more water, exercise is important to healing, detoxification is essential for healing. I know this, but the book re-educated me on the subtleties of attitude for healing. Dr. Buttar’s book is very much worth your time!

Let’s have a great Year of HEALING!  My resolution is to get one step closer to complete healing every day.! 

When Did Diabetes Become an Industry?

Industry?

Dedicated to our nephew, Jude Mapes, who died 4 years ago today as a result of the failure of the Diabetes Industry. Jude was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in his 30th year of life to die a week later as a type 1 diabetic on November 14, 2008, completely failed by a misdiagnosis, during the month of Diabetes Awareness and on World Diabetes Day.

The other day I was watching a video posted by my dear friend, Haidee Merritt, who was interviewing people at a Joslin Clinic Innovation Conference. You can watch it here if you’d like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epcQP70zReQ   Haidee did a really good job, looks great and, like me, is a long time type 1 diabetic.

Underwriters of Diabetes

If you’ve read any of my blogs, you will know that I differ from most diabetics in that I believe type 1 diabetes can be naturally healed, and I am working toward that goal with high hopes! I also believe that keeping your blood sugars as close to normal as much as possible will keep your body healthy so that when healing takes place, you will be physically ready to house these beautiful new beta cells. I’m not talking transplants, but a natural regeneration that takes place because your body no longer feels the need to kill these insulin producing cells in the pancreas.

Now, let’s go back to the video. As Haidee was interviewing Robin, a type 1 diabetic herself, who wears an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitoring device, it was said that she works in the “Industry”.

Well, I took offense! When did diabetes become an Industry? I know, I know, its all about the paraphernalia that it takes to care for yourself as a diabetic.

I even use some of this stuff. I use injectable insulin, Regular and NPH. These insulins were the first ones made. Yes, they’re artificial, but they are so basic, I can buy them without a prescription. I don’t even know how many insulins there are on the Market, several, and they sell for between $80 to about $120. My insulins sell at Walmart for $25 each!

Most diabetics do take 2 kinds of insulin, a short acting, before meals and a long acting to cover all day and during the night. Five shots, during the course of the day, unless of course you are on the pump. I have no idea how much the pump costs, I just know its a lot, like thousands.  Actually, here it is! From www.health.costhelper.com.

According to the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, insulin pumps cost between $4,500 and $6,500 for individuals without insurance. The price varies depending upon the features, brand and size of the pump.

And you still have to tell the pump what to inject! At that price, you would hope it might think for you!! Some people really like it, since you no longer have to stick needles in every time you inject. But I never liked the idea of being attached to a device, and a lot of my diabetic friends have had issues with it. Of course, you have to have really good insurance to pay for it! Don’t get me started. And there is still no escaping the injecting, since the pump tubes are stuck into the body and the site has to be changed every couple of days. And like most of the diabetic paraphernalia, the real cost comes with the need to frequently buy or change the accessories, like the pump’s tubes, the syringes, the blood meter test strips. The initial cost pales in comparison to the long term costs of these devices used daily for years and decades. Industry, indeed! Where’s the incentive to “cure” diabetes when it has become such a cash cow for so many?

So I use syringes and inject five times daily, twice for the long acting insulin and one for each meal.  I get a box of 100 for about $12 and fifty cents. Yes, from Walmart. Of course I use 100 in just 20 days, but still my costs are minimal.  I also need a blood glucose meter to make sure I’m on track. Walmart has a decent meter for about $9 and 100 test strips for $36. That adds up. 36¢ every time I test, which is at least 3 times a day, but sometimes as many as 10 times. But most of the other major brands hit you up for 50¢ or more for each test. The assumption throughout the industry is that everyone has insurance, so the costs are exorbitant. I don’t have insurance so I shop around for the best prices. Yet I still have to stand in line at Walmart and be part of a community that I don’t want to be a part of: Big-Pharma.

Bottom line is I use the simplest, least expensive tools to manage my blood sugars. No complicated, fancy technology that costs a fortune or necessitates high-priced insurance. With a notebook, a purple pen, an inexpensive glucose meter, the most basic insulins, and generic syringes–along with discipline and an appropriate ketogenic diet—I’ve achieved an hemoglobin A1C of 5.1! This is what a non-diabetic would likely have! Yet an entire industry of technology and an army of doctors, diabetic specialists, nurses, and more couldn’t even come close to that. And did I mention that I’ve done this without the help of said doctors or diabetic specialists, since I haven’t seen one in many years? (See story below.)  I research and self-treat, since I know more about me than anyone else could. I don’t necessarily recommend this for anyone else who’s not committed to taking total responsibility for their health, but it works for me.

Because I am on the ketogenic diet and take such good care not to run high sugars, I am on no other medication. Most long term diabetics are on several medications for the many complications that ensue from higher than normal blood glucose, drugs like statins for cholesterol, high blood pressure meds, arthritis meds, anti-depressants. Yes, uncontrolled high blood sugar can cause depression! There’s more, that’s just the short list. My point is it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Eat a low carb, ketogenic diet, no grains, no processed foods, and lots of fat for satiety’s sake. Please see my previous posts on this subject: http://liveinmagic.com/why-i-eat-the-way-i-eat-by-aimee-perrin/, and http://liveinmagic.com/why-i-eat-the-way-i-eat-part-2/.

I know that it seems like I’m being simplistic, but through my research I have found that most degenerative and autoimmune conditions, i.e., Parkinson’s, ALS, Rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, even Cancer, can be successively treated and even reversed on an all natural, ketogenic diet. Please google it.

How did all this “Industry” get started? At the time that insulin was first extracted from dogs and then pigs and was made a product in 1920, Dr. Elliott P. Joslin, the pioneer in diabetic treatment, was getting very good results with type 1 diabetic children with a ketogenic diet, which is basically a very low carb, high fat diet. But that was too much trouble for many patients and could not be patented. The business model of the pharmaceutical industry seems to be: if you can turn a patient into a life of dependency on your products, the company is insured a river of profits for the life of that patient.

What if researchers had looked at why more and more children are getting this crazy disease? Would it be too much for diabetes researchers to simply ask the question why?  When a child starts getting sick from type 1 diabetes, they lose excessive amounts of weight, get really thirsty and hungry, have no energy. Their bodies are wasting away. So, why ARE more and more children—and now young adults, into their 40’s—being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? To know that, you would have to be researching what probable causes there are. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 35 or so years.

This is what I have come up with, after reading countless studies, papers, books, and websites on health. My Probable Causes List:

          •   Mercury, amalgam fillings and root canals;

•   Any and all Vaccinations;

•   Environmental toxins;

•   Antibiotics, especially long run regimens, destroying the good bacteria in the gut.      These are often prescribed for acne, like in my case, at age 15, for 1 year. My diagnose followed immediately after;

•   A diet of gluten-containing foods, flour and grains;

•  Any food with GMO’s, genetically modified organisms, that includes all soy and corn products;

•  Any food that wasn’t around for my grandmother’s grandmother. And that means all fast food, all food in a package, box, or bag;

•  Pasteurized dairy products;

•  A diet lacking high nutrient foods like organ meats, bone broths, fermented foods, high quality animal fats as found in grass fed meats, raw grass fed dairy products;

•  A lack of hard physical labor, which may be more about type 2 diabetes. But my husband and I were thinking about the lack of hard physical work as we were sawing wood we had collected from our land to burn in our wood stove. How often does this go on today?

Again, what stops researchers from looking at these issues?  I did find an exhaustive journal on “The Rise of Childhood Type 1 Diabetes in the 20th Century,” by Edwin A. M. Gale: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/51/12/3353.full This article is very lengthy, but the author concludes that there has been an apparent rise of about 40%  or more since 1950 or so, in some European and North American countries with other countries following. The evidence is there, but difficult to conclude or follow because of record keeping and other factors.

Could it be that monetary gain and commercial interests have influenced the direction research into diabetes, or any other chronic disease, for that matter? How do we define “progress?” Is it reducing the impact of a disease like diabetes on the health of the population? Or even eliminating it altogether by changing the conditions that cause the disease? Or is it creating a “customer for life” by providing marginal management treatments that lessen the immediate ravages of the disease in exchange for the long term complications. What could be better for an industry? Don’t even look into how to help these kids get well. What if instead of looking for a drug to treat the disease, there had been interest in real healing? If Joslin had continued on the path of healing with the ketogenic diet, instead of the easy fix of injectable insulin, what would the Standard of Care for type 1 diabetes look like today?

The Solution?

The industry saw progress as producing a drug to manage the disease, instead of learning how to produce healthy children. By this I mean studying traditional cultures who hand knowledge down of how to eat sacred foods during the child bearing years so that they were insured of creating beautiful, healthy, strong offspring.  And cultures who treat their children as sacred precious beings, feeding them fresh, beautiful foods from the Earth, not from the grocery store shelf. Cultures who know how to get children well with herbs and other natural remedies, instead of drugs and antibiotics. Have you ever thought what that word means?  Anti-biotic, “Against life”.

I have found a few fun sources for you to further study. One is a video of a doctor explaining a study of a 5 year old child diagnosed with type 1 diabetes being put on a gluten free diet who has not had to go on insulin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnLotUtY9H8. 

And this link is to a book on Amazon that I have yet to read, so I am not recommending the book per se, but recommending reading as much of the Preface and Introduction as allowed on Amazon. Even though, it is not about type 1 diabetes, it is about an autoimmune type of chronic pain and I found it compellingly interesting in a ”How to Create Ultimate Health” way. http://www.amazon.com/Performance-without-Pain-Step-Step/dp/0967089778

And, yes I am planning on reading the book.

And this last link is to an interview by Dr. Joseph Mercola, of Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, where she is talking mostly about the rise in autism but includes reference to the rise of type 1 diabetes in children and its very likely cause:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/07/31/dr-natasha-campbell-mcbride-on-gaps-nutritional-program.aspx

So, when did type 1 diabetes become an industry? I guess when a lot of things became an industry, like farming, “Health”-care, Education, insurance, the Pet industry, Elder-care industry. I’m sure there are more. Is it just a sign of the times? Wow! I ache for a simpler time. Can we create one?

So, let me repeat:

My point is: It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Eating a low carb, ketogenic diet, no grains, lots of fat for satiey’s sake. And “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

One more short story before I go. An HbA1c is a blood test that you can now do at home thanks to the Diabetes Industry. This test gives an average of blood sugar over the last 2-3 months. The American Diabetes Association recommends a result of 6-7%, which correlates to a blood glucose of 125-154, which is well above normal. Normal blood glucose is around 80-90. My last A1c was 5.1 which correlates to a blood glucose of 100, this seems a little high but is actually great for a a type 1 diabetic. Why does the ADA and all diabetes doctors want a diabetic’s number so much above normal? Is it a conspiracy to keep us sick and coming back, helpless, to the “Big-Pharma” and the allopathic system? About 18 years ago, the last time I saw an allopathic doctor, I went because I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I had 2 frozen shoulders, 2 frozen hips, I couldn’t hold my head up when sitting in a chair, was generally stiff. I couldn’t play with my little kids! The doctor tested my A1c, which was 6.5 and said, “You’re Fine, Great numbers!” And she made me an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon! Dejected, I went home. I did not keep the appointment with the surgeon. This diabetic specialist had no idea that stiffness of joints and frozen shoulders and hips were long term complications of running higher than normal blood sugar. A couple of years later, I found Dr. Richard Bernstein’s book, Diabetes Solution, the 1996 edition. This book saved my life! I followed his recommendations and all of my stiffness and frozen joints went away, I felt great, my children were happy, their mother wasn’t grumpy anymore. This doctor, a type 1 diabetic himself, recommends a very low carb diet and tight control for all diabetics. He has practically been ostracized by the diabetic Industry because his plan gets most diabetic off of many drugs. With his help through his writings, I’ve been able to gain mastery over my blood sugar and move forward on my healing path.

U.S. Capitol

During my transition from disinterested, disgusted, disillusioned Democrat to lively, engaged, informed Libertarian, I’ve often mused on just why it is that a large Federal Government is such a menace and how to explain it to liberals so they “get it.” I mean, I was one, but to walk someone over the same bridge I walked over seems a difficult task. Thus the genesis of this blog.

What is it about highly centralized government that is so abhorrent to the Libertarian? After all, doesn’t a strong central government keep people relatively healthy, happy, and free, you know, with health care, jobs, crime, the environment, the economy? Isn’t that the intention of government, after all? Well, no, not as the Founding Fathers saw it. And let’s make no mistake—these were not holy, wise men who could foretell the future and thus carefully crafted an infallible document to guide the nation into the murky waters of said future. They were very fallible men who had a solid grasp of history, who knew the scheming and devious ways of those who would use government and good intentions to place a yoke around the unsuspecting masses who had no interest in governing and leadership. They came to this continent to escape the rabid and explicit exercise of power by the European royalty, declared severance from this system, fought for the privilege, then were determined to create an environment that would be the first of its kind to place the keys to freedom and self-determination into the hands of the individual.

The Framers

The struggle to craft the tools of navigation for this new kind of experiment in liberty, which they called a Republic (a form of government that rules by law), was fraught with infighting, heated argument, and compromise. Although each state (re: former colony) had established relatively efficient governments, the new nation struggled to find an identity that would create a cohesive government that still respected the individual states. A suggested reading on this process is Max Farrand’s The Framing of the Constitution, which can be read in its entirety online at http://www.questia.com/read/11207080/the-framing-of-the-constitution-of-the-united-states.

For all of their foresight, born of history and seasoned with idealism, the Founding Fathers could not have envisioned the elaborate and diabolical schemes that the power-grabbing elite would come up with to subvert the Constitution and its safeguards designed to preserve personal liberty. For those who study and revere the wisdom of the Constitution of the United States, especially the libertarian minded, the Constitution guarantees two things above all else—personal liberty and property rights. That’s it. But it is upon these two fundamental principles, some say Divinely given, that the Republic is built. Everything else is packaging. If and when these two principles become the twin beacons that guide the Republic, governing simply flows from them to reinforce them. The interpretation of how these principles are manifest in government is up to the individual states and their governing bodies. In practice, this creates a collection of slightly differing cultures that find suitability in how the individual resonates with them. Ideally, they are like religions, each of which expound similar doctrine, but vary in how they practice those doctrines. Like the freedom to choose one’s house of worship, the choice is there to choose the state that most reflects one’s ideal.

All well and good, if things had proceeded this way. The framers envisioned a kind of utopian nation of states that satisfied every human need (unless you happened to be black or female). And, sure, these were white, well-bred men of learning—gentlemen farmers, philosphers, and businessmen—that simply wanted government to protect their rights and stay out of the way of living, very unlike the governments of Europe of the day, though the tide of revolution was surely in the air. But, over time, these United States rattled its (or their) way through a constant assault of antagonists who attempted to steer the system to serve their own interests. And of course the first in the self-serve line were the bankers.

The European bankers already knew that, if they could control the money supply, then the leaders, the laws, and the form of government was irrelevant to them. Mayer Amschel Rothschild is famously quoted as saying,”Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.” And they had an ally in Alexander Hamilton, one of the framers and a staunch advocate for a privately-owned central bank.

The Underminers

Through his influence, with the blessings of George Washington, the Europeans gained influence in detemining monetary policy of the new Republic and it has never been fully extricated. Those who have tried usually met untimely ends (see Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, Kennedy). Two others tried and narrowly missed buying the farm in office, Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. After several tries and near misses at total control over the U.S. banking system, the installation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 was essentially the coup d’etat that overturned the U.S. Constitution and created the current climate of government that prevails today. No coincidence that very same year the 16th Amendment to Constitution, giving the power to tax wages and income, came into being, though many say it was never ratified. With this two-headed monster in place, the feudal lords of the Middle Ages, now called bankers, had their feudal system lined up to restore them to their rightful place in the Castle on the Hill surrounded by armies of serfs that supplied them with a steady stream of riches. Only this time the serfs suffered under the illusion of freedom. The best quote to describe this ugly circumstance is that of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

Now to the original theme of this blog that I wanted to discuss before I got sidetracked with a history lesson:

Why does a strong, centralized government inevitably work in opposition to the benefits of the individual, always and without fail?

When government is concentrated into the hands of only a few individuals, these individuals wield a much greater influence on the affairs of the nation. They become targets for corruption and untoward influence. If a single congressman holds a position of leadership on a committee that oversees a particular industry, they soon become a target of the powerful, monied interests within that industry that seek to steer government laws and regulations in their favor. If industry lobbyists had to spread themselves throughout every state legislative body seeking influence among many more state legislatures, that influence would be buffered and perhaps even neutralized, or, at the least, be much more difficult to achieve. But when Federal legislation rules the land, the relatively few legislators, regulators, and bureaucrats at the top become easy pickings for lobbying by industry. Soon, government regulations, originally intended to, say, keep the banking industry from overreaching its greedy tendencies, legislation comes into being that has the opposite effect for the very upper echelon, yet leaving the appearance that the Federal government has done its duty by regulating the industry. Later, when the greed reaches epic levels, and “too big to fail” banks are bailed out by the government in order to prevent catastrophic collapse, the call goes out for tougher regulations and the cycle begins anew. All the while those on the inside of government and commerce continue their cozy relationship, which is entirely enabled by the burgeoning size and undue influence of the Federal government. What starts out as the best of intentions—regulating industry at the Federal level—invariably falls back into business as usual corruption.

At the heart of the paradigm is lobbying, that method of persuasion intended to influence legislators, regulators, and other persons of government in a particular direction. Regardless of how one perceives the act of lobbying as a positive or negative entity, the fact remains that virtually all lobbying is conducted by professionals who have been trained in the art of manipulation. Most lobbyists of significant influence are lawyers, many of whom have been inside government themselves and are intimately familiar with the legislative nuances of the government body they are targeting. Although lobbying is a tool that minority groups and underrepresented segments of the population may use to further legitimate, benign, or humanitarian causes, it is undoubtedly the purview of highly influential, monied corporate interests that hire professional lobbyists to further their commercial agendas.

When the added influence of campaign contributions are added into the mix, even the most noble legislators fall under the spell of corporate influence. The coup d’etat is complete, yet no one knows it even happened. Worse yet, this government takeover then becomes the acceptable norm, “business as usual” in the Nation’s Capital.

 Ironically, those on the Left who abhor the growth of corporatism and the accumulation of wealth by the 1% continuously call for greater regulation of industry and corporations, but this backfires as the lobbyists go to work twisting the regulations to their favor. Yet those very same liberals call for a strong Central government to insure the welfare of all the people. Little do they realize that strong, centralized government plays right into the hands of the very people they wish to control. Do we really think the powerful elite are going to sit on their hands and allow the people to “regulate” them? Think again. And remember the residents of the Castle on the Hill. They’re back, only this time they’ve lulled us into believing we have a democracy, a government by the people. The Framers of the Constitution saw this coming, but they couldn’t do anything about it. They left a document that guaranteed our rights, but they couldn’t prevent it from being shredded by the very element they hoped to escape.

The Way it Was

And Is

by Aimee and Denny Perrin

The other day I was at the local health food store picking up toilet paper. I was at the counter waiting to pay and a young woman came in, maybe 28 years old or so. I recognized her from seeing her around town, and I found myself eavesdropping on her conversation with an employee of the store. She was asking about a supplement she could take for her painful joints, and the employee, who was maybe 25 or a bit younger, said she too had joint pain after she went running and had had good results with this particular supplement that was at the end of the counter. This first young woman, while reading the label said, “Where do they get the collagen from, is it shark collagen?” The young employee said she had talked to the sales rep for the company and he had told her the collagen was from “chicken feet!” Well I thought about filling them both in about how “everybody used to eat broths, and soups made with chicken feet and that we don’t anymore, and that’s why there is so much arthritis pain, knee replacements…,” but I thought I should mind my own business.

Monetary Historian and Chicken Feet Expert Andrew Gause

So I get home, walk in the door, and the guest on a radio show was saying the words, ”Chicken Feet.”

Really!? This money historian, Andrew Gause, was saying that we no longer use chicken feet, so we send them to China. They make us pay a tariff on them and all we’re trying to do is get rid of them.

Twice in one morning….:-/

Weird.

So, does anybody eat chicken feet anymore? They eat them in China, most of the Asian countries, and Mexico. My friend’s Portuguese mother loves them. What do they all know that we no longer know, or care about? Chicken feet are like an arthritis supplement with glucosamine, chondroitin and collagen. But some of the most lucrative drugs dispensed by the pharmaceutical industry are those prescribed for arthritis.

 I started to look them up but there were so many, accompanied by a tidal wave of side effects and warnings not to stop taking them without talking to your doctor! It was all so depressing.

All because we stopped eating chicken feet and the broth from whole chickens?Is it really that simple?

The Chinese Love Chicken Feet

Broths from Chicken Feet and Bones are high in collagen and silica

Let’s take a closer look. People in this and virtually every country regularly made broths from chicken feet or ate chicken feet. But somewhere along the line, the practice ended. Do you know anyone who makes chicken feet broth? Or eat fried chicken feet? Did your mother or grandmother do this? This traditional practice, along with many others, like eating nutrient-rich organ meats, has fallen from favor across our culture and the consequences are far-reaching. The rise in degenerative diseases like arthritis and osteoporosis is approaching cataclysmic levels. Could the consumption of foods rich in the building blocks of the skeletal system be the simple answer? We’ll follow this trail for a time and see where it leads us. Along the way we’ll visit the dentist’s office, the doctor’s office, and the dinner table.

What are the constituents of chicken feet, organ meats, butter, cream, and other animal foods that are so crucial to human health? Start with collagen, the building block of connective tissue. A major source is chicken feet, as well as bone broths made from beef bones and knuckles. Throw in silica for bone health, high in those animal foods, as well as some key herbs like horsetail and alfalfa. What allows the body to metabolize and absorb these nutrients? Vitamin D and Vitamin K, nutrients that are present in large quantities in organ meats, butter, and cream. These foods, which are vilified by current medical thought, are completely absent in the modern diet. The contemporary diet has been stripped clean of the nutrients that were once the mainstays of the traditional diet. Today we eat lean chicken breasts (mostly muscle) and dispose of the organs, feet, beak, even the fat. And that’s just the chicken. The same applies to every other animal—cow, pig, duck, turkey. Yet we’re told by the government sponsored experts that low fat, lean, skim, and skinned is best. That way we avoid the ghastly cholesterol that will bring us to an early grave. (See our blog, “Health Care,? Diabetes Rising, Closing the GAPS,” http://liveinmagic.com/2011/03/.) The contemporary version of the traditional nutrients that built strong, robust skeletal systems are fractionated supplements and pharmaceuticals to ease the pain of arthritic conditions.

Yikes!

Why do we wander into the health food store to begin with? For that matter, when we seek a dentist or doctor, it’s because something has gone wrong, health wise, correct? We’re seeking a solution—in this particular case, in our skeletal system, teeth, bones, joints—to our pain or inability to otherwise function normally. The dentist, for their part, is highly unlikely to recommend a diet high in traditional foods, including chicken feet broth, organ meats, raw dairy including butter, then come see me in six months. More likely will be a round of drilling, capping, filling, root canals, every god-awful horror they regularly inflict. Will you fare better at the doctor’s office?  Hmmm…how about a round of some heavy duty pain killers, anti-inflammatory drugs, joint replacements? Is there an allopathic doctor you know who would suggest a diet high in nutrient-dense, traditional foods, then come back in 3 months for a follow up visit? Yet, would this not be a wise, even compassionate protocol for a patient suffering from any sort of skeletal issue? Even the impulse to find a supplement pill at the health food store is not far from the allopathic model, seeking a quick fix to a problem years, even decades in the making. For this and so many other chronic and debilitating conditions, the answer may be found waiting at the dinner table.