Herbal Extracts

Recently I found a fascinating book called Herbal Extracts: Build Better Health with Liquid Herbs (Supplement to the Copyrighted Work) by Dr. A. B. Howard. I want to share a few excerpts with you.

The first is from the introduction:

The work addresses a host of physical problems from the standpoint of what to use and how to fix them. This is a practitioner's book about how to use herbs to get the body healthy and strong and keep it that way. The word herb is used here with a meaning of: a plant food substance that helps you more than it hurts you when you eat it. You may not find many familiar plants that you regularly eat for food in this work, but then some problems you have require some very special herb foods that you can make part of your regular diet. After all, what gets you well, usually keeps you well. It might not normally occur to you to eat a purple sea vegetable called Dulse for breakfast. But if you do, your hands and feet and the tip of the nose may warm up. The choice of herb or herbs that are given here to correct problems, focuses on the real cause of a problem. In the case just mentioned, this is a gland in the neck, known as the thyroid, that needs some decent nourishment to "set your thermostat on warm and comfortable" by increasing the rate at which your body burns food. 

Herbal Extracts has a list of human ailments and then a list of herbs for the treatment of those ailments. I've been reading in it, and learning a lot of very useful information. Whoever Dr. A. B. Howard is, he or she certainly knows her stuff! The doctor writes with an eye for cure, not just treatment.

Here's another bit from the introduction:

Stop eating "junk food." We cut too many corners in this country in food production, even when we know it is wrong in terms of how it affects health. Is your cheese not yellow enough? No problem, inject it with Yellow #5 dye. Want volumes of rich-looking, long-lasting and unnatural foam on your beverage? No problem, here is a chemical compound that will make it foam like a fire extinguisher and make the foam last for 2 days in the glass after the beverage is gone. And, while we are at it, here are literally 56 other chemicals to alter your beverage in other ways to save money or time or both. Don't want to grow or pick lemons or squeeze the juice? What something that tastes like a lemon, smells like a lemon, has a lemon color and is real sweet and has never seen a lemon? No problem. We have a chemistry set and we will give you some delicious, convenient to use chemicals instead, and who your child's favorite cartoon characters laughing and drinking it and telling your child to drink it too. It tastes just like real lemonade, boys and girls! Never mind what happens to your children's blood stream with the stuff in it, or if they get sick on it. You get the idea?

And the good doctor is exactly right, in my opinion. Eating and drinking chemicals is simply NOT GOOD for human beings or animals. Chemicals make us fat, sick and worn out before middle-age. It takes work to avoid the chemicals so deeply embedded in food production in America. It's a wonder when you find a can of a simple vegetable that simply lists "pumpkin" in the ingredient list. Just pumpkin, that's it.

In my view, this is why most everyone in this country is so sick. We eat pills instead of food, drink Lord-knows-what in our beverages (as in flame retardant chemicals in soft drinks) and then wonder why cancer, obesity and high blood pressure are epidemics. And of course, the "treatment" for these ills consists of more pills and chemicals, thanks to the FDA and most allopathic medicine.

To regain and hold on to health, eating real God-made nutritious food is essential. Drink water or herb teas instead of flame-retardant soft drinks. I'll be sure to share some of the doctor's prescriptions from this book with the blog. Ok, I'll share one more now. This is for one of the Doc's combination of herbs, plants and other foodstuffs that provides a complete vitamin combination in a whole food form that the body recognizes right away as useful nutrition.

Vita-Lixir

Is an all vegetable source, liquid multi-vitamin supplement. Vita-Lixir contains no artificial flavorings or synthetic vitamins. Vita-Lixir is produced from foods in liquid form without heat. In this form, it is available to the cells of the body for immediate and easy absorption. This provides a distinct advantage over a tablet or capsule. Vita-Lixir does not need to work its way through 25 feet of digestive tract in large quantities, and maybe get digested so it can be absorbed. Vita-Lixir can even be applied externally for absorption, as on the soles of the feet or under the ribs for babies or those who can't or won't swallow. The rationale of Vita-Lixir is to take our vitamins from foods, as we should, if we were able to eat a proper diet and digest it properly. Therefore, we use those selected foods most appropriate as a source to provide a rich, natural supply of specific vitamins. Organically grown Carrot Roots and Dandelion Leaves give us a non-harmful, rich supply of Vitamin A for healthy skin and eyes. Dandelion Leaves also provide a gentle and highly effective vegetable iron for energy and healthy blood. We use Rice Bran (the exterior covering of rice grains before they are turned into "lifeless" white rice) for the properly balanced ratio and entire complex of B vitamins for steady nerves and normal, healthy cell division. Vita-Lixir is especially helpful for babies and people who do not chew each bite 32 times and do not have whole grains in their diet. The Wild Rose Hip (a rounded structure or "protective cradle" under the petals of a wild rose which contains the baby roses known as "seeds") supplies a complete source of Vitamin C complex and all its naturally associated substances. This type of Vitamin C, just as it works to protect the seeds or "babies" for the next generation, can and does raise our immunity levels, promotes longevity, acts as a poison antidote, antibiotic and strengthens all connective tissues in the body. Raw Sunflower Seeds provide a non-harmful Vitamin D for strong, healthy bones and joints. The Vitamin E spectrum of vitamins is derived from fresh, raw Wheat Germ (the part of the wheat which sprouts and is alive). The Vitamin E complex of vitamins makes sure the oxygen which circulates through the body is more efficient, and provides for proper oxygenation of cells and tissues. This Vitamin E complex of vitamins also devours poisons known as free radicals. Dandelion leaves contribute Vitamin K for proper blood clotting properties and hemorrage prevention. Liquid Bee Pollen, which contains all the elements of new life, is included for quality protein lift. The herb Gentian supports the organs of digestion as a digestaid. For those of us who have always wanted an all vegetable, full spectrum source Multi-Vitamin liquid, Vita-Lixir answers this desire. Please note, when dealing with natural vitamins (those produced by Nature and not in a chemistry laboratory), what is desired is their dependable activity and effectiveness, not how many grams or milligrams of vitamins they contain. The activity level of vitamins from Nature whould not be confused with the manmade or coal tar source "high potency" type vitamins which are needed in large quantity to get any type of affect.

Combination: Dandelion Leaves, Organic Carrot Roots, Rice Bran, Wild Rose Hips, Raw Sunflower seeds, Raw Wheat Germ, Gentian, Bee Pollen

End excerpt. Hmmmmmm. That sounds great to me. I'll have to try my hand at combining these items and see what kind of extract I get. Most of the herbal extracts described in this book are the basic alcohol extracts. It should be relatively easy to either combine all of the above, add enough vodka to cover, then let the extracting process work for a few weeks. I'll give it a shot and let you'all know how it turns out...

By the way, by "carrot roots" I think the doctor means simple carrots, as carrots are roots.

Onwards!
HM

Bromelain in Pineapple a Cure for Cancer?

Wow! I know it is Christmas and all (Merry Christmas!) but when you get the time, check out this article at Activist Post, entitled Research: Pineapple Enzyme Superior to Chemotherapy in Treating Cancer. It's incredibly good news. I hope and pray that sometime comes of this research.

Unfortunately, I'm cynical about allopaths adopting something relatively simple and inexpensive, even if the FDA allowed it, but then it IS Christmas, and I'll be hopeful instead. All is in God's hands and I can rest easy in that.

Blessings to everyone this and every day!
HM

Nettles for Medicine and Nutrition

Lately, I've been daydreaming about nettle gathering come spring. It's only late December and much too early for tasty, slightly bitter but oh-so-good-for-you spring greens such as stinging nettles or wood nettles. The pix above shows a young wood nettle, which grows in shady areas near flowing water.

If you're thinking of getting into wild food foraging this year, try to familiarize yourself with the nettle plant before spring hits. Get a good foraging book, one with color photographs and read up on stinging nettles, which is the usual variety of nettle described. Around here, I mostly find wood nettles, but since their nutritional and medicinal profile is the same, I harvest them and am grateful to find them in such abundance. I wrote about nettles once before...

Early in the spring, young nettles make excellent eating in any number of preparations. Saute or boil them for a few minutes, top with olive oil or butter, a touch of salt and you'll have one delicious and nutritious dinner. Or make a soup with onions, garlic and nettles. Add some to scrambled eggs...ah, the list is endless.

Harvest young nettles when they are four to eight inches tall. If they get much taller than that, they'll be a bit tough. Still tasty, still nutritional, but a bit tougher. Even so, I've harvested nettle at about a foot tall and they still tasted great to me. The trick is to find them when they're young and freshly popped out of the ground. Around here, that's early spring, in late April or so. Then later, I harvest nettles throughout the summer, but these I'll dry for use as a wonderful medicinal tea or as an extract.

Nettles are the green of chlorophyll, which naturally they contain, as well as iron, calcium, silicon, sulphur, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. Rich in vitamins too: A, C, D, E and K and a few of the B vits as well. Nettles also have trace elements or more of zinc, cobalt and copper. I think nettles are so healing because of these vital nutrients. If you've read much of this blog, you've read how our food today has lost much of its nutritional value due to industrial agriculture and overall processing. One fine way to counter that is to eat wild foods like nettles (and lambsquarters, purslane, red clover....).

I found a couple of very informational articles about nettles. One is from Ingri Cassel, from a few years ago. Europeans down through the centuries have employed nettles in a variety of medicinal uses and treatments. Its a terrific article.

The other is from the University of Maryland Medical Center, which for some reason has lots of good herbal information. As you'll see from these articles, nettles can be used for many different ailments in a variety of forms (extract, tea, capsules and so on).

I mostly use nettles for a wonderful spring tonic--either as greens or simmered in a broth with other young spring greens (dandelions, clover leaves, wintercress, garlic mustard, plantain). I usually make two nettle extracts--one of the leaves and stems, one of the roots. And of course, I dry lots of the leaves for use as tea throughout the year. Whenever I'm feeling a bit under the weather, nettle tea is one of the first things I turn to.

It is definitely worth your while to learn to identify and harvest nettles. They grow worldwide, where ever rich soils are found. Both stinging nettles and wood nettles can sting, so wear gloves when harvesting. Once cooked or dried, they no longer sting. Nettles make a great fodder for animals as well. Once cut and dried a bit, nettles can be fed to horses or cattle, especially if they need a nutritional boost themselves.

During these months of winter (while I'm daydreaming longingly about these plants...), I'll describe as many as I can. I hope this will spur some of you to start foraging and boosting your family's nutrition. Foraging free, wild plants is an ancient skill--but one we should learn again.

Onwards,
HM

Hey Folks,

What's below is an announcement from Natural News about a new video series they have on harvesting wild foods. If there's any time we'll be needing these wild plants for our food and medicine it is NOW. Times are tough, prices at the store are rising even as I write this. Everything has gone up in costs. It is harder and harder to afford the foods we're used to eating. And all we eat are basics--hardly any processed foods. Anyway, this series on free, wild foods should be good. I don't know if they're charging for access to the videos--just saw the announcement and thought you'all would be interested.
HM


(NaturalNews) The most powerful food and medicine on the planet is free, and it's growing right outside your door and around your neighborhood.

Did you know that wild local plants and foods are far better for you than organic produce from a supermarket? They're naturally loaded with plant-based medicines -- phytonutrients -- and you'd be surprised how many are growing near your home right this very minute. In fact, no matter where you live, there are an astounding number of wild plants in your region that have been used for thousands of years as FREE food and medicine.


ALL plants have a purpose
You've probably been driving right past them every day without even knowing it... wild weeds and plants that can be used as liver cleansers, menstrual health support, prostate health enhancers and even for digestive remedies. Some wild plants are even powerful cancer fighters. It's just a matter of learning how to identify and harvest these amazing gifts from Mother Nature.

Unfortunately the average person today has virtually no knowledge of wild plants. They think food comes in a plastic container from the grocery store and medicine comes from the pharmacy -- it's a disturbing sign of total detachment from the natural world. We've all become so dependent on the commercial food system that we're not even aware of the edible plants that commonly grow in our own yards. This is truly astonishing considering how much expense and suffering we could all be spared if we just made use of the natural resources the earth has given us for food and medicine.

That's what this course is about: "Free Food and Medicine" teaches you how to find an astounding array of health-enhancing foods and medicines literally right in your own back yard!

You'll not only be surprised at how many edible wild plants are growing within walking distance of where you live right now, but also how many of these plants have incredible healing properties -- WAY more than the so-called "organic" produce at your local grocery store.

Yep, it's better than organic. It's better than non-GMO. It's 100% local, wildcrafted, and FREE for the harvesting!

Get instant access to this entire course right now through NaturalNews.TV:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Free_...

You'll get instant access to 21 videos totalling over 350 minutes of instructional (and inspirational) wisdom.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034079_wild_foods_plant_medicine.html#ixzz1d2KRyd4Y

Eat Those Onions!

Did you know that sulphur is in every cell in your body? I didn't, until this morning that is, when I was reading a Natural News article about it. It is one of those essential minerals, which do all the marvelous invisible things that contributes to your overall health.

Excerpt:
Sulfur is a mineral that is present in every cell of the body. It plays a key role in liver metabolism and the function of the joint cartilage and keratin of the skin & hair. It is also critical for metabolism and anti-oxidant defense systems that protect the aging patterns of the brain. Some of the healthiest cultures in the world have the highest levels of sulfur in their diet while the US has some of the lowest levels.
Industrial farming, that speciality of huge agribusinesses, depletes the soil of sulphur. Chances are, unless you are eating lots of a certain vegetable family, you may be sulphur-depleted.

And guess what vegetable family that is? Of course, the alliums! Onions, garlic, chives, leeks, shallots are all members of the allium family.

At our house, we eat garlic every day (or nearly every day--some days I forget until the Gruff Lord growls that he's being deprived of an essential health ingredient...). And I can't even imagine cooking without onions. I ran the dehydrator ragged last summer dehydrating onions, just to make sure we'd always have some around.

I have a wonderful cookbook, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Cookbook. If you think Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic is a bit garlicky, take a gander at this cookbook! All the recipes have lots of garlic: breads, soups, meat dishes and appetizers. All made with huge amounts of garlic. Here's one of my favorite recipes from the book:

Garlicky Tomato Saffron Soup
6 cans (10.5 oz. each) chicken broth (I use my homemade broth...)
1 cup boiling water
1/4 gram Spanish saffron threads
1 lb. Roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped in bits
1 bunch leeks (3 medium or 1 1/2 cups), white part only, well-cleaned
4 tablespoons virgin olive oil
5 large cloves fresh garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6 whole fennel seeds
8 large fresh spinach leaves

Place canned chicken broth in the freezer so the fat will rise to surface for easy removal. (Personally, I like a bit of chicken fat in my homemade broth so I skip this step.)
Bring water to boil. Add saffron threads and let steep, uncovered, off heat.
Skin tomatoes by putting them in boiling water for 1 minutes. Skin, seed and chop.
Chop leeks fine. Heat olive oil in soup pot over medium heat. Do not let oil smoke. Add chopped leeks and saute until limp but not brown. When leeks are limp, squeeze garlic cloves through press into the leeks and mix over medium heat for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
Remove chicken broth from freezer and remove fat clumped at the top. Add chicken broth, saffron water including threads, tomatoes, thyme and fennel to leeks in soup pot.
Simmer mixture, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Five minutes before soup is ready, add spinach leaves.
Serve hot, room temperature, or cold with hearty, crusty bread. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Sounds good, doesn't it? It's one of my favorite soups for when I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Delicious and it will beef up your sulphur intake too.

What is Garlic Mustard?

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis) is a hearty, dark green herbaceous plant. Its leaves are arrowhead to heart shaped, scalloped-edged and deeply veined, growing up to 5 inches across. A cold weather plant, garlic mustard flourishes from late fall to early spring. It can be seen in fields, ditches, disturbed soils, near creeks, on trail edges and in open woodlands. A biennial, garlic mustard spends its first year as a basal rosette, with leaves growing close to the ground. In its second year, it sends up a flowering stalk that grows to about 3 feet. The leaves have a strong garlic odor when crushed.

Garlic mustard is considered an invasive, noxious weed. The Plant Conservation Alliance posts it on their Least Wanted list, maintaining that it poses a severe threat to native plants and animals in forest ecosystems. Basically, garlic mustard out-competes other plants, using up available light, moisture, space and nutrients from the soil, leaving less for native plants. As deer don’t care for the garlic taste, they won’t eat garlic mustard. It is prolific and can take over large wooded areas.

On the other hand, garlic mustard provides a nutrient-rich somewhat bitter green that can be eaten raw in salads (a few leaves at a time as it is bitter) or steamed, sautéed or lightly boiled. Garlic mustard contains high contents of vitamins A and C and it is rich in folic acid, vitamin B6 and manganese. It is a good source of potassium as well. Old time mountain folks used to gather fresh wild greens and used them as spring tonics to spruce up their health after a long, torpid winter. That is still a good idea and garlic mustard fits the bill as a healthy, nutritious wild green.

While many people won’t care for the slightly bitter flavor of garlic mustard, others love it. A good use of this wild herb is in making pesto. Gather a good bunch of garlic mustard when it is at the young basal rosette stage, wash it and chop it up. Mix it with olive oil, chopped garlic, parmesean cheese and pine nuts or walnuts for a surprisingly delicious pesto. Freeze the pesto in ice cube trays and use the pesto cubes to flavor soups and stews. Or simply keep it in jars in the refrigerator. The garlic mustard pesto loses its bitterness prepared this way, but remains pungent and flavorful.

Medicinally, garlic mustard is antiseptic. Juice from the leaves can be used to cleanse skin ulcers or wounds. Garlic mustard tea contains most of the plant’s vitamins and minerals and gives a definite nutritional boost to anyone who feels depleted or slightly ill.

High Food Prices? Look Around Outside...

The cost of food just keeps going up and up. Just the other day we heard about peanut butter going up by 40%! (A national catastrophe! as my brother says.)

I was heading out on my normal afternoon's walk and took a look around. From where I stood outside the door, I could see plantain, dandelion, lady's thumb (pictured), a few remaining lambsquarters, now gone to seed, a bunch of some kind of mint, a really nice healthy looking mullein plant, lots of mugwort, some curly dock plants, a few red clovers, and a bit of wood sorrel.

Walking down the road, I saw walnuts galore from the black walnut tree, and some Queen Anne's Lace. And persimmons from the persimmon tree. And pine trees across the road.

While the cost of grocery store foods have surged ever upward, all of the food plants mentioned above are still free and available for the harvest with a wee bit of work on my part.

While I find plantain a bit too fibrous to eat, if I needed or wanted its nutritional value, I'd add it to a pot of water for a vegetable broth. Ditto with all the plants I just mentioned. If you're feeling run down and sickly, pick a bunch of these wild vegetables and green and make yourself some healing broth with them.

Some of these plants are greens for eating, some have medicinal uses, but all have a lot of nutritional value, full of vitamins and minerals.

It can take a while when you're new to identifying plants in the wild. But I will tell you this--I first starting learning this stuff about 5 years ago. While there's still zillions of plants I don't know, there's now a lot of them that I recognize easily. Once you're had that EUREKA moment and identify a plant--you'll then see it everywhere for a while. And you'll know it from then on, like a good buddy.

With grocery costs spiraling higher, consider learning to forage some of these green plants, nuts, berries. Learn which have edible roots (like Queen Anne's Lace--but be careful, there's some toxic lookalikes of Queen Anne's lace, so leave this one to experts). Learn which greens are better at what times of year. When you learn some of this, you can start harvesting and cut your grocery bills.

We all love lambsquarters here. It's a spinach like green and quite tasty. Highly nutritious--better for you than spinach, actually. So when it is flourishing, growing wildly everywhere, I harvest it, blanch it, freeze it, and we eat this lucious green instead of the $1.70 package of frozen spinach or $1.99 to $2.99 bags of fresh spinach from the store. See what I mean? That's money I don't have to spend, I can keep it (or more likely, spend it on something else...)

I gotta go, but I'll be back. I think for a while, I will focus on various plants ...

HM

Time to Start Blogging Again

I figure by this time, all who used to read this blog have departed for other blogs/websites. Can't blame them one bit. So, I'll just start up again, keep the focus on herbs, foraging wild foods and all my usual chatter about things consequential and not-so.

It's funny--I've gone back to read some of my old posts, and find that the information is good stuff. I'm pleased with what I achieved here, as there's good information that can stand the test of time. But now I plan to do more.

I won't be able to post every day, but there'll be a good post every week.

Thanks, everybody. Y'all come on back if you wish!

Side Effects

Oh Lord, this is a hoot! Seen on the back of a Tshirt at Secrets of Natural Health blog: I take aspirin for headaches caused by the Zyrtec I take for the hayfever I get from Relenza for the uneasy stomach from the Ritalin I take for the short attention span caused by the Scopederm Ts I take for the motion sickness I got from the Lomotil I take for the diarrhea caused by the Zenikal for the uncontrolled weight gain from the Paxil I take for the anxiety from the Zocar I take for my high cholestrol because exercise, diet and regular chiropractic care are just too much trouble. PS Just so you're warned, Secrets of Natural Health does try to sell you stuff. But there's some good info there. HM

Iodine for Radioactive Fallout

Ok, found the article I was talking about in my last post. Iodine for Radioactive Fallout by Donald W. Miller, Jr. MD. Whew!

If You Don't Have Potassium Iodide. . .

I don't know if a huge radiation cloud is coming our way, but I suspect that's the case, considering the news. I've learned to listen to Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. I never trust *anything* I read 100%, of course. I've a skeptical nature after all. But on this and many other health related topics, Natural News picks it up, reports on it, analyzes it, takes it apart and dissects it, often with wit, sometimes with disgust at the current government-mandated medical paradigm (we're here to make money off of you peasants, so just shut the hell up and do what we tell you) deal. So check out this Natural News report, check other sources and make up your own minds about it.
I'm not telling you to do anything. That's up to you as always. It is driving me nuts that I can't find the article I am looking for. This was an article posted on Lew Rockwell's excellent libertarian news and commentary page a week or so ago. Written by a doctor, it was about radioactive iodine, and how to prevent your thyroid from absorbing it. The trick is to get enough good iodine to your thyroid first, and then your thyroid will basically ignore the radioactive crap. But if your thyroid is hungry for iodine, it will take up the radioactive stuff.
If you haven't gotten ahold of any potassium iodide pills (130 mg) here's a rather simple thing you can do that's cheap and easy. Head to any drugstore and get that wound-cleaning iodine stuff called Povidone (at least that's the generic I bought). It is a 10% iodine solution for use as a topical antiseptic/batericide/virucide. The doctor's article that I haven't managed to find a link for said if you use a cotton ball and spread a goodly patch of this stuff over your stomach and chest, your skin will take in enough iodine to protect you 95% or so from your thyroid uptaking any radioactive iodine.
Now please, folks. I'm NOT giving you medical advice. I'm simply repeating something I read. However, I'm a bit uncomfortable relating even this as the fed.nasty.govs might want to smash anyone causing panic among the sheep. However, I rather doubt that any sheep would be reading this, as I'm sure Charlie Sheen and Britney and all those other otherwise useless celebrities MUST be doing something dumb enough for the media to be lamb-basting them. (HAH! Pun stumbled upon serendipitiously!)
I'll see if I can find the damn article. In the meantime, consider at least getting some of that 10% iodine stuff. If nothing else, you can use it to clean wounds with. Again, I am not a medical person of any variety, not an X-spurt, not an academic, not anyone important enough for you to listen too. :)
Onwards, take good care, wash all produce before eating, and live prayerfully and as well as you can. And don't worry about stuff you can't fix. ONLY worry about things you can do something about and even then, dinna fesh.
HM

Surviving Radiation and March of Cambreadth

Ok, here's for a really *timely* piece by Susan Weed on handling radiation naturally. Please do read it. I was getting ready to write something about it, but then found this article and thought it better than anything I might have cobbled together. And if you need to get your blood heated up and your spirit high, watch this youtube. I first saw this song posted at Mayberry's blog and it is terrific. Both the Gruff Lord and I get tears in our eyes and roused like all hell was breaking loose when we listen to it. Bagpipes are the best! Take care, all Handmaiden

Important Article on Vaccination

There's a very interesting article on vaccination and how it works (or doesn't work) at the Veterans Today website. I stumbled across it while looking for something else. It definitely caught my eye and explained a whole lot about the dangers of vaccines (and about the benefits for some) as well. The article, How Vaccinations Work by Dr. Philip Incao starts about halfway down, after many pleas for understanding and care for veterans who got Gulf War Disease back in the 1990s after the first Gulf War. Check it out--it's a damn good article.

As for us, no colds, no flu this winter. We've been eating our clove of garlic daily (as well as lots of other garlic in various dishes) and while we've had the occasional sniffles, there's been no other real cold/flu problems. If there was, we'd bring out the elderberry extract.
Onwards!
HM

Two Excellent Articles on What's Wrong with Current Medical System

Wow. This month two national magazines published two important articles that would blow your mind about Big Medical as it is practiced in the US and elsewhere. If you care about your health, read them.

Deadly Medicine in Vanity Fair

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science in the Atlantic.

You know, most of our ancestors didn't bother much with doctors. They knew doctors could be quacks and behaved accordingly by not trusting them. And here we go again. Use the Western medical system at your own risk. There's a lot of quackery out there, and they make a ton of money from it. Beware for your own good.

HM