Wellness Wednesday - Why I don't believe in vaccination.

I pretty much remember most of my vaccinations from pre-school and up. I remember us all standing in long queues and the terror and panic getting worse and worse the closer I got to the front of the line. I hate needles. I can't get my head around deliberately putting a long, sharp object through your skin. That's why I'll never get a tattoo!

But vaccinations aren't something you have a say about... or are they? I'm sure there are more, but I only know three other people in South Africa who DON'T believe that vaccinations should be a part of our lives. One is my homeopath, and the others are the mothers of my godchild. In fact, they first planted the seed in my head about vaccinations. Since then I have done a lot of my own research, as I've done with everything else on this blog, and I've come to understand that vaccinations don't HAVE to be a part of mine, or my pets, or my future children's lives.

This is a controversial topic. Bring it up in polite conversation and you are liable to get your head bitten off! I know my godchild's mothers got a LOT of grief from other moms about their decision not to vaccinate. Mothers threatened to keep their kids away from my godchild, said they were irresponsible and their child was going to die of a dreadful disease before she reached the age of 1!

What terrible things to say to expectant mom's and how completely out of line. It's just as bad as them retaliating and saying that parents who vaccinate are irresponsible and THEY are going to kill their child, but they didn't retaliate that way, even though they had done piles of research, unlike the other parents. My friends didn't go into this blindly, but most parents DO vaccinate blindly, based entirely on what a doctor tells them to do.

It's nobody's place to judge a parent. We all do what WE think is best for our kids and no-one has the right to judge that, unless it's something abusive towards a child. That's why, what I am saying here today is all about MY thoughts and opinions and yes, they're very much based on fact. But, at the end of the day, what you do with your kids is YOUR choice. If you feel you are doing the right thing, and you have made an informed decision, then that's what you must do and no-one can ever accuse you of bad parenting because it comes from a place of love.

So, why do I choose not to vaccinate? Where do I begin...

Did you know that diseases were on their way out long before vaccines arrived? Epidemics have a certain lifespan. According to the World Health Statistics Annual 1973 – 1976, Volume 2, there has been a steady decline in infectious diseases in most developing countries regardless of the percentage of vaccines administered. Researchers pointed out that infectious diseases disappeared as the result of improved sanitation, improved public water supplies and personal hygiene, better distribution and increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. From 1850 to 1940, diseases had declined by 90% and were at an all-time low and only THEN were vaccines starting to be introduced. Interestingly, diseases for which there was never a vaccine, ALSO declined dramatically. eg. turberculosis, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, among others.

 

You'll see in these three charts, that in each and every case, the epidemic was already decreasing dramatically - long before the vaccine was ever introduced. You'll also see that in medical textbooks, the chart showing the decline in the polio death rate is only shown from the point of the first red line forward! This unfortunately leads medical and nursing students to mistakenly believe that the polio vaccine was responsible for the decline in the disease and that's simply not true. As you can see from the chart, polio was already well on its way out before the vaccine was introduced. The same story applies for pertussis (whooping cough) and measles as well as other infectious diseases that didn’t have vaccines.

That is why doctors are very misled about the effectiveness of vaccines. The control of medical and nursing school curricula by big pharmaceutical companies through big research grants and donations ensures that they continue to promote and sell their medication. In fact, the real reasons for the decline in epidemics are running water, improved sanitation/personal hygiene, and greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables. But that doesn’t make anyone any corporations, any money... If you would like to see those graphs more clearly, click here.

People still get things like measles, chicken pox, etc, despite having the vaccines. There isn't even a vaccine for scarlet fever and I got it when I was a kid. I didn't die. I was pretty sick for a while but I lived to tell the tale. Getting a disease like measles, as a child, actually does a lot for their immune system. It's kind of like allowing a fever to run its course. It's not pleasant, make no mistake. But it teaches their bodies how to fight the way they are meant to fight. My three triplet nephews all had chicken pox recently. My poor sister had her hands full with that! But they didn't have the vaccine and guess what, they recovered just fine. And their immune systems are going to be SO much stronger as a result. We're not living in the dark ages. If things go horribly wrong, we have conventional medication to turn to if it's really necessary. I don't see how a vaccine would have changed things for them really. I think they're better off for NOT having it.

Here are 6 very good reasons for why I don't believe in vaccinations:

• Pharmaceutical companies can’t be trusted: Do you know how many times in the last 10 years a medication has been deemed unsafe and dangerous and yet the pharmaceutical companies have covered it up FOR YEARS to continue bringing in the profits for as long as possible? Believe me, it's MANY times. Here's an example: HRT became a standard thing for a menopausal woman over 40 years. Even women with no complaints were advised that this treatment was helpful as it reduced chances of heart attacks and cancer and even helped them feel younger. Those claims were actually false. Breast cancer risk is actually doubled for women on HRT, 41% increased risk for stroke, 29% increased risk of heart attack, and the list goes on and on. How many lives were lost before they finally realised?
  
  How about Vioxx? This dangerous medication caused thousands of deaths from heart attack and stroke before it was finally removed from the market when evidence surfaced that Merck had withheld information and even doctored reports on the dangers years before. Merck agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle approximately 27,000 cases from victims claiming injury or death of a family member using Vioxx. This is a huge sum of money but, in reality it represents less than one year’s profits for Merck. You can see that it certainly pays for a pharmaceutical company to cover up any risks. They made far more money than they lost! These corporate monsters have proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy based on past behavior. In a court of law, if such a company were an actual witness, an attorney would never put them on the stand due to a serious lack of credibility. Are you really going to take these companies at their word that vaccines are safe when their answer is based on money and profits? I'm not.
  
• ALL Vaccines are loaded with chemicals and other poisons - NO exceptions: Here is a list of some of the ingredients found in the vaccines on the market today: MSG, antifreeze, phenol (used as a disinfectant), formaldehyde (cancer causing and used to embalm), aluminum (associated with alzheimer’s disease and seizures), glycerin (toxic to the kidney, liver, can cause lung damage, gastrointestinal damage and death), lead, cadmium, sulfates, yeast proteins, antibiotics, acetone (used in nail polish remover), neomycin and streptomycin. And the ingredient making the press is thimerosol (more toxic than mercury, a preservative still used in many vaccines, not easily eliminated, can cause severe neurological damage as well as other life threatening autoimmune disease). These vaccines are grown and strained through animal or human tissue, like monkey and dog kidney tissue, chick embryo, calf serum, human diploid cells (the dissected organs of aborted fetuses), pig blood, horse blood and rabbit brain.
  
  Can you imagine injecting this stuff directly into your child’s blood? At least if you ate these ingredients, your body would have a better chance of detoxifying and eliminating them before any permanent damage could be done. But, to inject them right into the blood is the most damaging and lethal approach possible. How could anyone possibly think that injecting a cocktail of such lethal poison could in any way help preserve and enhance your child’s health?
  
• Vaccinated children are the unhealthiest, most chronically ill children: Fact: Vaccinated children have been found to be more chronically ill than unvaccinated children with rates for autism, ear infections, ADHD, asthma and allergies as much as 30% higher than non-vaccinated children. Look closer to home if you are questioning that. Compare notes with parents around you. Granted, MORE of them will have vaccinated than not, but hopefully you'll find some who haven't.  The kids with the most problems like allergies, asthma, ADHD, autism, coordination and other gross motor issues, etc, are the ones that are right on track with their vaccination schedule.
  
• If they're not bad then why are other countries waking up to the dangers: In 1975, Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to 2 years. Their infant mortality rate plummeted to such low levels that Japan now has one of the lowest levels in the Western world (They are number 3 on the list). Guess where South Africa is? Number 137!!!! Granted, we have other terrible issues like babies being murdered on a daily basis... Either way, it's a shocking place to be. We are higher on the list than Iran and Syria... In Australia, the flu vaccine was suspended in April 2010 for children under 5 years because a large number of children were being rushed to emergency rooms with febrile convulsions or other vaccine reactions within hours of getting this shot. Telling, isn't it?
  
• A number of vaccines have already had problems/been removed from the market (FYI: If the vaccines below have had serious problems, there's a good chance that the others do too because vaccine manufacturers follow the same basic formula for every shot):
  
  Here are some of them:
  
• In Feb 2002, GlaxoSmithKline removed the Lyme Disease vaccine from the market citing poor sales when in fact a number of people who received the vaccine reported symptoms worse than the disease itself such as incurable arthritis or neurological impairment.
• The Rotavirus vaccine (Rotashield) was removed from the market in 1999 due to an association between the vaccine and life threatening bowel obstruction or twisting of the bowl. 
• A warning was issued concerning the second Rotavirus vaccine (Rotateq) in 2007 as it caused the same twisting of the bowel problem in 28 infants (16 of which required intestinal surgery). It looks like this vaccine is still on the market...
• Another vaccine that has had a lot of problems but hasn't been withdrawn is the Gardasil vaccine for adolescent girls. A few of the reactions reported are fainting, paralysis and slurred speech and yet this vaccine is still on the market. At least 1600 adverse events have been reported since its approval in 2006, yet doctors are continuing to recommend this shot to their patients.

• You can always get vaccinated, but you can never undo it: In the vase of vaccination, procrastination is a GOOD thing. The longer you wait to vaccinate your child, the better. A child’s immune system continues to develop for years after birth. The blood/brain barrier doesn't fully develop until adolescence. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that your child’s immune system will be able to handle the onslaught with minimal damage. The best option is not to vaccinate at all but, if you delay it for a few years it's definitely better than vaccinating a baby. By the time your child is older, more research will have been done and you will have an opportunity to learn more and maybe become more comfortable with your decision to wait. Who knows, you may even realise it's not something you want to do at all.

The polio vaccine released between 1955 and 1963 is well known to have been tainted with the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) found in some species of monkey, which puts people at risk of developing cancer. 

Most people knew about it some time back and that is why a lot of people made the decision to stop vaccinating. The CDC (centre for disease control and prevention) have known about this for YEARS but they've only NOW admitted to it.They finally posted on their website that as many as 30 million Americans alone could be at risk for developing cancer due to the tainted polio vaccines. After the link went viral, they took it down but you can follow this link to read about it. Why all the secrecy, for so long, about something so vitally important? Many of the people vaccinated with the tainted polio stock are already dead from cancer with many more getting diagnosed each and every day so it's a bit late guys...

It's shocking enough that it took 50 years for the CDC to admit to this, but what's even worse is that it took 3 years to finally recall the tainted stock and reformulate the vaccine. It was actually over 100 million Americans who were vaccinated with the contaminated polio vaccine before action was taken, not just 30 million as the CDC said.

You may be thinking, well, at least they recalled it. But who's to say this is the only problem? They took 50 years to admit to it, and 3 years to recall it, so it was on the market for long enough to do some serious damage. Do you have enough faith in them to believe that they will be truthful the next time it happens, and that they are actually even looking for other problems? Never mind all the other toxins that are actually in the vaccines aside from dangerous viruses that cause cancer.

It's just not a chance I'm willing to take with my health OR with my family's health. You only have to read a few of my blog posts to know that I don't place much faith in doctors or in conventional medication. I haven't taken so much as a disprin for nearly 2 years now. I prefer to use food as my medicine and, if necessary, alternative methods like homeopathy but I don't see chemicals as any kind of solution. That's why it's easy for me to decide against vaccines. I don't buy into scare tactics that say I am putting everyone's lives in danger by not vaccinating. I honestly believe it's all about the money, not about you or me.

You might be different and that's fine because it's your decision at the end of the day. All I'm doing is helping you to make a more informed decision rather than simply doing something because a doctor told you, or because everyone else seems to be doing it and you just assume you should. This is the other side of the coin. If you prefer to hear it from a doctor, read this article. It's long but very interesting.

Now you can go and do your own research and do what you think is best for you and your family:)

Monday Mix-up - You ARE gluten intolerant, you just don't know it.

I haven't eaten wheat for about 10 years. When I say that to most people, they assume that it's because I want to lose weight. I guess I can understand why they'd jump to that conclusion. Wheat tends to be found in everything that loves to sit on your hips, thighs and stomach when you eat it!

It's not my reason though. If you've read any of my posts you'll probably know that I suffered from a condition called IBS for most of my life. I didn't know what it was at the time. No-one really did. Doctors couldn't fix it and no-one really knew how to handle it. I just knew that stomach aches, headaches and digestive problems were a part of my life. They were such a big part that, unpleasant as it was, I just accepted it as normal. Like most things in life, you just learn to live with them. But what's normal about having constant, debilitating stomach aches and an inability to keep food in and being sick ALL the time?

I only found out that food might be the cause of the problem when I was in my early 20s. A homeopath told me I had IBS and suggested that I cut gluten and dairy out of my diet. What a shocker that was! I grew up on bread. I had bread for breakfast, lunch and supper and then snacks in between, every day of my life. Let's face it, it's the easiest and cheapest thing to feed a family with 4 growing kids! What on earth was I going to eat if I couldn't eat wheat?! It was very hard to follow a gluten-free diet in those days and it took me a few years to actually get used to it and get it right.

These days it's pretty easy to avoid it. Gluten-free has become the new fad diet. It's become almost cool to say you're gluten-free. The thing is, most people are doing it for the wrong reason; to lose weight. Don't get me wrong, whatever reason you do it for, can only be for good, because I honestly believe that gluten is very VERY bad for us. We shouldn't be eating it at all and yet, it's pretty much a staple in everyone's diets.

Gluten is a substance made of 2 proteins: gliadin and glutenin. It's found in wheat, and some other grains like barley, rye, and spelt, among others. It's what gives these grains, especially wheat, its stretchiness. Ever eaten a slice of gluten-free bread? It's hard and a bit crumbly and not at all tasty! That's because of the lack of gluten. Let's face it, gluten is what makes bread so appealing! That's the thing with stuff that's generally not good for you... it always tastes so damn good!

Now let's talk about a little protein called Zonulin. Zonulin is essentially there to protect your intestines from foreign invaders. If you eat something that contains bacteria like Salmonella or E.Coli,  Zonulin is responsible for creating bowel “leakiness”. It allows water to leak into the intestine causing you to get diarrhea in order to flush them out. The problem is, Zonulin is ALSO triggered by gliadin which, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, is one of the two proteins that make up gluten. So, in effect, Zonulin sees gliadin as a foreign invader as well and it reacts by creating "doorways" in the intestines. The problem with this is that it actually generates a two-way response: Not only can water enter the intestines, but the contents of your intestine are also able to enter your bloodstream. Now, generally speaking, you DO want the nutrients in your food to be passed into your bloodstream, but you don't want massive gaping holes that let EVERYTHING through without being digested properly. That's going to cause problems.

Ever heard of leaky gut syndrome? It's a more common name for a condition called Hyperpermeable Intestines. Usually, your intestines are very selective in screening what moves through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream. With leaky gut syndrome, your intestinal lining becomes more porous. It develops holes that are larger in size than they should be and the screening out process stops functioning properly. The result is that larger, undigested food molecules and other “bad stuff” (yeast, toxins, and all other forms of waste) that your body normally doesn’t allow through, start flowing freely into your bloodstream. This is a BIG problem that has a ripple effect, causing a whole bunch of other problems.

The first reaction your body has to these “foreign” bodies in your bloodstream is to fight like mad. What will happen is that your liver will start to work overtime and try to screen out all the food particles that your intestinal lining was supposed to take care of. Unfortunately, your liver has little to no chance of keeping up with the constant flow of waste. That means that all the toxins, undigested food and other pathogens start to accumulate in your body.

This causes your immune system to sit up and take notice, and it will NOT be happy AT ALL. It goes into full battle mode to fight the evil intruders and get them out of the body as quickly as possible. Of course, the body ALSO can't keep up with that and so the unfortunate end result is that the majority of these foreign bodies and toxins are absorbed into the tissues throughout your body and THAT is going to trigger inflammation.

Inflammation is also an immune response and it causes even MORE stress on your system. Now that your body is focused on fighting a serious war, the smaller battles, like filtering out the blood, fighting bacteria, calming inflamed areas and regulating your intestines, are starting to be ignored. This process can actually lead to your body starting to fight itself and that is where you become susceptible to an array of autoimmune diseases such as Chronic Fatigue, MS, IBS, Ulcerative Colitis, and Fibromyalgia.

Your body will begin to produce anti-bodies designed to fight against what it sees as foreign objects (which can be anything from the proteins in milk, to proteins in nuts, grains and eggs). For example, when I was slap bang in the middle of my IBS, I would IMMEDIATELY react to eating a handful of nuts. I'd get an instant headache, brain fog, and I'd be running for a bathroom. It wasn't something slow. It happened immediately. But that's because all of this had been building up for a long time and I didn't realise it. My body was at war with itself.

The problem with this whole process is that, pretty soon, your body starts to see EVERYTHING you eat as a foreign object, so it won't actually matter what food you cut out. It will all cause a reaction as soon as it gets through the holes in your intestines. That's exactly what happened to me. It got to the point where I was permanently suffering from headaches, brain fog and horrible digestive issues. I was living on painkillers and I was eating next to nothing because everything made me feel terrible.

This is what gluten does to you. It's not limited to me, or people who are sensitive to it. It happens to everyone because all human beings produce Zonulin. The problem is that most people don't realise it's happening because most people are so used to being in a constant state of sickness. Like me accepting my IBS as "just how things are", most people do the same. 

You may have a headache every second day, or every day for that matter. You may often have acid reflux issues, heartburn and indigestion. You may find that your memory is getting worse and worse and you feel tired a lot more than usual. You may suffer from eczema or some kind of skin rash that just won't go away. You may catch every bug that is doing the rounds, and when you catch it, you are sick for WEEKS on end. Candida is VERY common if you have leaky gut syndrome. If you suffer with any kind of thrush, you probably have candida and may also have leaky gut syndrome. Sometimes it's so hard to pin down exactly what's wrong, you just know you feel "off". There may be underlying issues but I can guarantee that one of the problems is the amount of gluten you are putting in your body. 

The problem that really gets most people who eat a lot of gluten, is malnutrition. You may think I'm nuts saying that, because I bet you eat 3 square meals a day, just like most people, plus snacks in between. How can you suffer from malnutrition if you are eating all the time? What happens is that your body isn't able to absorb the nutrients from the food you're eating. Your intestinal lining has what's called intestinal villi and it's the job of the intestinal villi to absorb nutrients. If you have leaky gut syndrome, those villi come under attack and are unable to do their job. That means that, no matter what you eat, your body is not benefiting from it. You can be 50kgs overweight and you can still suffer from malnutrition and that is going to lead to a whole bunch of other issues like anaemia, osteoporosis and infertility, to name just a few.

These days, autoimmune diseases are pretty common. Like cancer and heart disease, they are diseases of civilisation. The more "advanced" we become, the more we rely on convenience foods, the greater the stress on our bodies, the sicker we get. What you need to do is halt the process I described a few paragraphs ago, BEFORE you get to the point of no return. I've said it many times before, prevention is far better than cure, and far more effective. An autoimmune disease is pretty hard to fix. And the underlying root of the problem is always going to be there no matter what. What you need to do is change the way you think, completely. If it's going to mean a better quality of life, why would you even think twice about it?

How do you fix this? Well, if you are experiencing any of the symptoms above then it's a little more complicated than just cutting out gluten, but that is an extremely good place to start. Give your body a fighting chance by cutting it out completely. Fixing leaky gut syndrome is quite similar to fixing candida, which I posted about a few days ago. You can refer to that post and you can also try some of these options to speed up the healing process and fix the damage that's been done:

• Dietary Restrictions: Cut out all sugars, starches, grains and processed foods. (which always contain all of the other things anyway!) This immediately alleviates the inflammation and starves the yeast overgrowth. Then the intestinal tract will slowly start to return to its normal permeability, stopping the flow of foreign objects into the blood, which will stop food intolerance symptoms and eventually help stop the vicious cycle.
• Nutritional Supplementing: As I said earlier, you are going to suffer from nutritional deficiencies and, if you don't get proper nutrients into your body, it will lead to a whole host of problems. Supplementing with a good multi-vitamin (Look for foodstate at Dischem. Don't use anything synthetic), large amounts of vitamin D, and zinc will help the intestinal lining return to normal. Fish oils also really help improve the condition of the intestinal lining by reducing inflammation.
• Probiotics: Putting the friendly bacteria Lactobacillus Acidophilus back into your intestine is very important. Cutting out all the bad food will get rid of the bad bacteria and you need a constant feed of the good bacteria to replace it. Friendly bacteria also help prevent bad bacteria and yeast. They heal the intestinal lining and help nutrients get absorbed which helps to keep the vicious cycle in check. Again, foodstate has a very good one.
• Digestive Enzymes: Usually you get digestive enzymes from the raw food you eat (which is why it's essential to eat some raw food with every meal) but your intestines will probably feel a bit aggravated by raw food initially so, to help them out, supplement with digestive enzymes. You will find them at Dischem too.

It's hard to give up gluten. I know. It means no more bread, pasta, most desserts, even soy sauce! But really, you should be focusing on eating real food anyway. Everybody should. Everything you buy on a shelf can be made by you if you know how. That's why I blog, because I can help you there and make your life a little easier! Look back in the archives and find recipes that will help you survive without gluten. It's entirely doable these days and, in fact, entirely necessary.

Your body WILL thank you.

Real Food Friday Feast - Homemade apple cider vinegar

I am so excited to be able to finally post this! I have been trying to make my own apple cider vinegar for about a year! I kept trying different recipes I found, and none of them worked... until now:)

We drink apple cider vinegar daily in our house. In case you aren't sure why, I did an entire post on the benefits of it and how to drink it. Just to recap though, apple cider vinegar has been scientifically proven to help cure, improve, and/or prevent the following:

• Diabetes
• High cholesterol
• Blood pressure and heart health
• Cancer
• Weight loss

Other known benefit and uses for it include:

• Detoxification
• Strengthen the immune system
• Aid digestion
• Prevent bladder stones and urinary tract infections
• Increase stamina
• Alleviate symptoms of arthritis and gout
• Reduce sinus infections and sore throats
• Improve skin conditions such as acne
• Protect against food poisoning
• Prevent muscle fatigue after exercise
• Fight allergies in both humans and animals
• Prevent bad breath when used as a gargle mixed with water
• Prevent body odour when used externally
• Prevent night time leg cramps

Sounds like something you might want to include in your daily diet, doesn't it? The thing is, if you are going to take it as a tonic, you don't want to be using the cheap, refined variety you find at a grocery store. Those have been stripped of all goodness and loaded with preservatives and will probably do more harm than good. You want to use the raw, organic kind that contains what's known as "The Mother". "The Mother" is that cloudy sediment that settles on the bottom of the vinegar bottle if you leave it to stand for a while and it is made of of living nutrients and bacteria which is why it is so beneficial for you.

Dischem sells a brand of raw apple cider vinegar for R19.95. It's the brand above in the picture. The only problem with it is that it isn't organic, but it IS raw. If you go for the organic one, you are looking at about R40 at least. If you drink it daily, as we do, that ends up costing a fair bit a month. So I thought, why keep buying it if I can make it?! Hence the constant experiments. 

It didn't really cost me anything to experiment because all I used were apple peels and cores, and water. I add an apple a day to our breakfast smoothie so all I did was peel and core the apple before adding it to the smoothie. I placed all the apple peels and cores in a container in the fridge and I collected them for a couple of weeks and then, when I had a decent amount, I'd experiment. But it wasn't working and I finally discovered that there was a vital ingredient missing all along that should have been obvious to me, and wasn't! The sugar was missing! Duh...

The sugar is absolutely necessary as part of the fermentation process because it feeds the bacteria. You don't have to worry though. It all gets eaten up by the bacteria as your vinegar is brewing so you won't be ingesting sugar when your apple cider vinegar is ready.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe!

Apple Cider Vinegar

CLEAN apple peels and cores (They MUST be organic, sweet apples. Granny smith won't work too well and the more you have, the merrier!)

1 cup sugar (or 3 Tbs honey)

2 litres clean, filtered water (or boiled tap water left to cool)

Big glass container

Method

• Boil your kettle and fill the glass container with boiling water and swirl it around to get it nice and clean, then pour the water out (you don't want your good bacteria to be fighting any other bacteria. You want them to focus on making you vinegar!)
• Quarter fill the container with boiled water again and add the sugar or honey
• Mix until dissolved
• Add some cool, filtered water to about halfway (so that you don't cook your apple peels!)
• Place all apple off-cuts into the container
• Top up with cool, filtered water
• Take a piece of cheesecloth, or a stocking (something that will prevent bugs falling in while still letting air in!) and use an elastic band to attach it over the top of the container.

I just used a little tea tray cloth I inherited from an elderly relative;)

• Be sure to mark the date you started the process somewhere on the container (I got this handy 3 litre jar from Westpack for about R30 and it gets used A LOT)
• Put it somewhere out of the way where it will be warm (ish) I put mine on top of the fridge because fridges tend to throw a lot of heat
• It needs to sit for about 2 weeks (yes, this is not a quick one!)
• If you peek at it during the course of the 2 weeks you'll see it starts to bubble a bit and even grow a little mold. This is all good believe it or not. Leave it be!
• After 2 week, strain the apple off cuts and mold out and pour the liquid into a clean jar that's also been cleaned out thoroughly with boiling water
• Place the cheesecloth back over the opening of the container and put it back on top of the fridge
• Keep checking it once a week to see how it smells. It'll first turn to cider and then vinegar. You'll know when it's vinegar. It's not a hard smell to pin down;) Once you can smell vinegar, taste it and see how strong it is. If you are happy with it, decant the liquid into smaller bottles, put the lids on and store in a cupboard or pantry. It keeps indefinitely!

You will notice that the longer the vinegar sits, the more of "the mother" it develops. 

Don't strain that out. It's so incredibly good for you and it doesn't make it taste bad or anything. Without that stuff, you're pretty much wasting your time. When you are going to use it, just shake the bottle up so you get some of it into you. You'll see it doesn't make it taste any different, it's not chewy or grainy or chunky. It blends in so it's not even noticeable. 

The scoby

You may even notice that your vinegar develops a scoby. A scoby is a spongy layer that usually sits on the top of your vinegar and it is a culture of yeast and bacteria. It looks revolting and feels worse but don't let it freak you out;)This is a very GOOD thing. It means you can use it to make your next batch of vinegar and it will be even easier. Put it in a container and pour some of your vinegar over it to protect it. Remember, it is a LIVING thing. Just keep it in a dark cupboard, covered with vinegar, until you're ready to make more vinegar.

This is a more frugal method because it only uses apple peels and cores but, if you want to spend a little money and get more bang for your buck, use whole apples. You'll see in the picture I posted with the 11/10/13 date, that I used whole apples. I ended up using 7 of them. Just chop them up and core them. If you think about how much you spend on one bottle of apple cider vinegar at a store, and how many bottles you end up with when you make homemade vinegar, it's not a lot of money to spend at all. I bought my apples from pick n pay. They often have organic apples so go and check them out. Failing that, visit your local farmer's market and get yourself some.

Once you have made a batch of your own vinegar, you can actually use it to start the next batch. If your vinegar didn't develop a scoby, that's fine. Just add a couple of tablespoons of your vinegar, containing "the mother" to your next batch and it will speed up the process.

You may notice that your homemade vinegar isn't as strong as the store bought one. I'm not entirely sure why this is. But it's really, really good for you and it's far easier to drink as well so I don't see it as a problem.

And how do you drink this stuff on a daily basis? Well, it's really simple. We have it before we have anything else in the morning. So I make it, and drink it while I'm feeding the cats and packing GLM's lunch and making our breakfast. Here's how to drink it:

• Half fill a mug with hot water
• Add a teaspoon of raw honey and mix until dissolved
• Add a dash of cinnamon (this is optional but it makes it taste yummy and cinnamon is also really good for you!)
• Top the mug up with cold water
• Only THEN, stir in 2 capfuls (or tablespoons) of vinegar (the reason you do it last is because it's raw and it contains LIVE bacteria. If you pour those into hot water, you will kill them and that will defeat the whole object)
• Drink!

That's it! Super easy and super good for you!

Have a wonderful, healthy weekend:)

Wellness Wednesday - Are you suffering from candida?

I briefly spoke about Candida in this post but I thought it was something worth doing a whole post about because I think there are so many people suffering from it and they aren't even aware of it. It's something I used to suffer with permanently when my IBS was particularly bad and, unless someone had told me about it, I would never have known. It's not like the flu where it only hangs around for a week or so and has very recognisable symptoms. You can have Candida for months and not even know. You'll feel "off" but it's so easy to explain away that that's what you do, and you just feel worse and worse over time.

Firstly, what is Candida? Candida is a fungus, which is a form of yeast, and you are meant to have a very small amount of it in your mouth and intestines. Its job is to aid digestion and nutrient absorption. It becomes a problem when you have too much of it. The good bacteria in your intestines are assigned with the task of keeping your candida levels in check but sometimes things go beyond their control and the repercussions are far from pleasant.

So, what causes Candida to suddenly start overproducing?

• A diet high in processed foods, refined carbohydrates and sugar (they all feed the yeast)
• Consuming a lot of alcohol 
• Taking oral contraceptives 
• Living a high-stress lifestyle
• Taking antibiotics
• Mercury fillings
• Constant exposure to chlorine and fluoride (that's why you should avoid tap water)
• Diabetics are susceptible

How would you know if you had Candida? Well, if you recognise any of these symptoms below and you are guilty of one or more of the causes above, you may very well have Candida:

• Skin and nail fungal infections (such as athlete’s foot or toenail fungus) 
• Feeling tired and worn out or suffering from chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
• Digestive issues such as bloating, constipation, or diarrhea
• Dandruff
• Oral candidiasis
• Autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Ulcerative colitis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleroderma or Multiple sclerosis
• Difficulty concentrating, poor memory, lack of focus, ADD, ADHD and brain fog
• Skin issues such as eczema, psoriasis, hives, and rashes
• Irritability, mood swings, anxiety, or depression
• Vaginal infections like thrush, urinary tract infections, rectal itching or vaginal itching
• Severe seasonal allergies or itchy ears
• Strong sugar and refined carbohydrate cravings

Some symptoms are more extreme and you may not be at that stage yet, but most of these are fairly common symptoms. The worse your Candida gets, the worse your symptoms will get. The problem with Candida is that, unless you treat it, it's not going to simply go away. People can have it for years without being aware until one of the symptoms becomes worse and they end up with an autoimmune disease. 

I've said it many times and I'll continue to say it. When you get sick, it's never an isolated incident. It's a small part of a much bigger picture. You can go to a doctor and get medicine or surgery, but ultimately, unless you get to the root of the problem, you are just going to get sick again eventually.

I'll give you an example: a few years back, I discovered that I had Endometriosis quite badly. Like Candida, so many women suffer from it and have no idea until, for some or other reason, they need to go for a checkup. There is actually strong a link between Candida and Endometriosis. A candida infection can interact with your hormones and that can stimulate endometriosis growth. (There's a really good reason to find out if you have Candida, and get rid of it!) The specialist told me I'd need an operation to get it all out. It involved a very unpleasant surgery that left me "woman-down" for 2 weeks.

When I went for my follow up appointment, I asked the doctor if it would come back and, if so, when. He very bluntly told me it would and probably in about a year! I was horrified. He never told me how I could avoid it, he just accepted that it WOULD come back. (I have said before that doctors are only interested in medicine and it's true. It doesn't enter their heads to consider telling a patient to try a lifestyle change. Their solution is always to cut it out or mask it.) Over the following few months I started doing serious research into diet and lifestyle and it dawned on me that I was really not doing myself any favours by eating the way I was eating. I thought I was healthy but most of my diet consisted of so-called "healthy", processed, low-fat foods. Processed foods always have hidden sugars and other nasties you don't want to be eating. I was giving MYSELF Endometriosis. Surely that meant I could cure it too?

Over a period of a few months, I started cleaning up my diet. Then I took it a step further and I started replacing all of my chemical beauty products with organic, natural products. Then I started replacing my household cleaning products with organic, natural products as well. If you've been following my blog, you know I've been chemical-free for over a year now. As a direct result of all that, I have remained endometriosis-free! I went for a check-up today, incidentally, and I am in perfect health:)

So, as I said 4 paragraphs up, if you don't treat an illness holistically, and get to the root of it, it will never really go away. You'll mask it, or give yourself a year's grace, but you'll get sick again, unless you get to the heart of it.

So, if it's not obvious yet what it is you need to do to cure your Candida, I'll spell it for you: F-O-O-D. Change the food you eat, and you can fix yourself. You don't need a doctor. You just need a bit of willpower and a bit of knowledge about the foods you should and shouldn't be eating. 

If you google the candida diet, you will find several links giving you a breakdown on what you should and shouldn't eat to cure Candida. I followed it for a while a few years back and I did get better, but guess what? It came back. It fixes the immediate problem, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem.

On the Candida diet, you'll feel better almost immediately, because the diet cuts out ALL sugar which feeds Candida, even raw honey. Fresh fruit, however, is allowed. Candida can trigger an allergy to molds and other types of fungi, so fermented foods including cheese and dairy are also eliminated along with any breads and other foods containing yeast. Other foods excluded from the Candida Diet include vinegar, mushrooms, tea, coffee, dried fruit and any form of fruit juices.

But the Candida diet has 2 fatal flaws:

• It allows foods like potato and other starchy vegetables. 
• It allows grain based foods.

Why are these foods going to give you Candida? Well, because they are made up predominantly of sugar! In fact, they contain DOUBLE sugars (disaccharides) Not only are you still feeding the Candida but, an inflamed, unbalanced intestine full of Candida is not able to digest double sugar molecules completely because the lack of good bacteria. So, while you may heal slightly, as long as you keep eating grains and starches, your Candida will never go away.

So, here is what you need to avoid for a while in order to get rid of your Candida: 

• All grains and any food that contains them. This includes wheat, rye, rice, corn, oats, amaranth, kamut, spelt, barley, buckwheat, millet, teff, triticale, bulgar, tapioca, quinoa and any others I might have left out. 
• Starchy vegetables like white and sweet potatoes, parsnip, arrowroot and taro, starchy beans and peas must also be avoided which includes pretty much all of them with the exception of green peas. 
• All sugars including the lactose in milk and cream. Honey and very ripe fruit are the only sweets allowed. 
• ALL processed foods

You CAN eat just about anything that is real food and isn't listed above. You can also eat things like fermented dairy (yogurt and kefir) as well as butter and ghee. For a very comprehensive list, click here.

It sounds like a nightmare, I know. If you can't eat grains and starches, won't you starve?! Well, no, because there are plenty of other things to fill you up. Vegetables are really filling. So is fat, and you CAN eat that. We have been brought up to believe that a meal without starch isn't a "proper" meal. It's not true at all. But mentally, we can't get our heads around it. I was chatting to a personal trainer a few months back who was trying to lose weight. He said he was absolutely starving because he'd cut out carbs completely. I said, "You're crazy, you  need vegetables!" He looked at me like I was nuts and said, of course he was eating vegetables, he just wasn't eating CARBS... Um, vegetables ARE carbs?! In his mind, carbs were starches and grains and he'd convinced himself that he was starving when really, all he had to do was double the amount of vegetables on his plate and add some nice, healthy fat, and he'd be so full he'd be bursting!

If you simply follow a real food diet for a few months, and make sure you stick to the above points, you WILL cure your Candida and you will feel so much better for it, it will make any sacrifices worth it. When you start reintroducing foods, your body will be strong enough to digest them because you will have given it the tools it needs and your Candida won't come back.

Monday Mix-up - Is Coca Cola really all that bad for you?

In a word: YES. But you knew that already, didn't you? I'm sure most of you have heard the urban legends about coke. There was one doing the rounds a few years back about a tooth being dissolved in a glass of coke overnight etc. Snopes picks the story apart and explains why it isn't an issue. They say that coke has the same acidity as orange juice, probably less, and both have the potential to damage teeth so it's stupid to point the finger at coke.

Ok, so if Snopes has proven that the claim was false, why am I even blogging about this? Well, here's the thing: comparing orange juice to coke is a bit like comparing an apple to a piece of cardboard that has been dipped in mercury. While orange juice may be highly acidic, there are definitely SOME benefits to drinking it whereas, drinking coke has, oh let's see, ZERO benefits.

I find the whole argument on Snopes absolutely typical of something a doctor or a scientist would say actually. No concern for health, only for what can be proven through scientific research. What I find scary is that, even a conventional nutritionist would tell you to drink a coke light rather than a glass of fruit juice! Now, I'm not one to promote fruit juice. Unless the juice is made in a blender right before your eyes, and still contains all the pulpy bits, they're not as full of goodness as you'd like to think.

HOWEVER...

To actually CHOOSE something that is man-made, in a lab, and contains absolutely nothing natural or good, over something that grows from a tree and contains a good amount of all sorts of macro and micro nutrients (in its unprocessed form) is just plain wrong. Forget calories. People are too obsessed with their body fat and not obsessed enough with their health. A glass of coke should NEVER be your first choice, period.

I'm kind of an all or nothing girl. If I know something is bad for me, that's it. It's over and it's out of my life. But I know you get people who live according to the 80/20 rule. That means that 80% of their life is clean, which gives them room to have 20% of it not so clean. If you live like that then, having a coke now and then shouldn't be TOO detrimental to your health, although it should never replace more nutritional options.

Then you get those people who live according to the "life is short and I'll do what I want until the day I die" rule. Other people who fit into this category are the "I have absolutely no clue about health and nutrition and I couldn't tell you what food is good or bad for you because it never entered my head to think about it" people. I think the former are worse than the latter only because they KNOW some things are bad for them, they just have an "I don't care" kind of attitude. The latter are simply too ignorant to consider other options. They don't know options even exist.

The people that fall into the above category are the ones that are really in danger from something that, according to Snopes, is harmless. Let's look at the damage to teeth issue first. The excuse that you'd have to hold coke in your mouth for long periods for it to damage your teeth, is a stupid one in my opinion. If you are drinking 2 or 3 litres of coke a day, that stuff is going to be touching your teeth every time you drink it.

Let's try a quick experiment: If you have a drink nearby, grab a sip and analyse the process of sipping and swallowing. How long does it stay in your mouth? If it's a particularly hot day and I'm feeling like I need some cold liquid to cool me down, I actually hold the liquid in my mouth for a second or two before I swallow it, to really feel the effects. I'm not saying this happens every time, but it happens often enough to notice it. I'd hazard a guess that I'm not alone in doing this. Not everyone grabs a coke and pours it straight down their gullet unless they're in a coke advert. Normal people savour every sip.

I happen to know several people who's drink of choice was always coke. Over a few years, their teeth literally started to turn black around the edges. These were professional people who looked after their teeth, brushing them every day, flossing and using mouthwash etc. The fact is, your average person can't brush their teeth after every glass of coke and, when you are drinking 3 litres a day, that is a lot of exposure to something like coke.

What I find interesting is that you seldom, if ever, see people drinking orange juice by the gallon the way that some people drink coke. Funny that... Why DO people actually include coca cola in their monthly budget and stock up on in as if the coke well is about to dry up? I see families doing their monthly shop with the whole bottom half of their trolleys taken up by 2 litres cokes! Why do they choose it over just about any other drink and why do they drink SO MUCH of it? It's simple.

Coca cola is addictive. Number one: it contains caffeine and number two: it is loaded with sugar, or high fructose corn syrup, a particularly nasty invention. Both are stimulants and both are highly addictive. Your body very quickly comes to rely on the boost that your glass of coke gives you and it struggles to do without it once you're hooked. You can even convince yourself it tastes really good, simply because you're that addicted. I used to be addicted. I drank coke every chance I got when I was a teenager and I thought I loved the taste of it. I found it very interesting that, when I stopped drinking it, and the withdrawals disappeared, I suddenly couldn't even stand the smell of it, let alone the taste. Speaking of the withdrawals, they are highly unpleasant with symptoms such as headaches, nausea, fatigue, loss of concentration and an inability to focus, irritability, constipation, depression, muscle pain and stiffness, flu-like symptoms and insomnia (ironically).

Does that sound like something that is doing your body any good? Here's what happens to your body when you drink a coke:

• 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system within the first 10 minutes. In case you were wondering, this is 100% of your recommended daily intake. The only reason you don’t vomit as a result of the overwhelming sweetness is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavour.
• Within 20 minutes, your blood sugar spikes, and your liver responds to the resulting insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat 
• Within 40 minutes, your body has absorbed all the caffeine; You can tell because your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your liver dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. 
• Around 45 minutes after drinking a coke, your body increases dopamine production, which stimulates the pleasure centres of your brain - a physically identical response to that of heroin, by the way. 
• After 60 minutes, you’ll start to have a sugar crash and you'll be craving another coke, or something else sweet to give you a boost, and the whole cycle will start again.

Scary, isn't it? But why stop there? Here's another downside to drinking lots of coca cola. The carbonation itself is really bad for you. It causes calcium loss in your bones and this is how:

• The carbonation irritates the stomach 
• The stomach “cures” the irritation the only way it knows how. It adds the only antacid at its disposal: calcium, which it gets from your blood 
• The blood, which is now low on calcium, replenishes its supply from the bones. It has to because, if it didn't, muscular and brain function would be severely impaired. So your bones become weakened over time. 

Unfortunately, that's not all though. Coke contains phosphoric acid (and that's not the same as the carbonation, which is just carbon dioxide mixed with the water). Snopes will tell you it contains very little phosphoric acid. But again, if you are addicted and drinking 3 litres a day, small amounts add up fast. Phosphoric acid also causes your bones to soften and become weak and brittle. So, between the carbonation and the phosphoric acid, you are probably on your way to getting osteoporosis. A big problem is that people choose coke as their drink of choice. In other words, drinks that COULD be replacing some of the calcium loss, like water and milk, are being completely eclipsed by coke, making the effects of coke even worse.

Snopes will tell you that your stomach lining is pretty tough stuff. True story. It is. And that's why coke probably won't damage your stomach. Here's what they DON'T mention:

• Mechanical damage to cells is a huge risk factor for cancer.
• All soft drinks cause acid reflux (stomach acid rising up past the oesophageal valve). It's worse when the body is horizontal (as in sleeping), however, given the sheer volume of coke people drink, it's becoming an issue at any time of the day. Any time you drink a gassy drink, you are going to start burping, and that is going to release acid into your oesophagus. The research doesn’t tell us how much is too much. We DO know that most of us are far, far, far past the limit. 
• Stomach acid is pretty strong stuff as I said. The stomach lining is built to withstand a lot of stuff like coke. But that lining doesn't extend into the oesophagus. That means the lower oesophagus is getting damaged by acid pretty much every time you drink a coke and experience acid reflux. That's going to result in mechanical damage to the cells, which is going to increase cell mutations and that means you at a much greater risk of getting cancer. Oesophageal cancer was very rare two generations ago. Now, it’s extremely common. 

Don't be fooled into thinking that coke zero or coke light are the better option. They aren't for all the reasons set out in the above paragraphs. Sugar replacements like aspartame aren't any better for you than high fructose corn syrup. Aspartame has been linked to numerous diseases and health problems. You should also take into account the fact that whether it's coke, coke light or coke zero, they all contain food dyes and other chemical additives that are known carcinogens, in other words, they cause cancer.

A main ingredient in coke and other soft drinks is tap water. What's wrong with that? A lot, actually if you follow the link. Tap water can contain any number of chemicals including chlorine, trihalomethanes, lead, cadmium, and various organic pollutants.

There is not ONE thing in a coke that is actually good for you and plenty of things that are bad. But, if you still think it's worth it for the kick, please just try and do it in moderation, and for heaven's sake, don't let your kids near it! If it's bad for you, it's only going to be worse for a developing body. You are setting them up for all sorts of future problems.

We are already battling so many environmental toxins that are almost impossible to avoid. Why would you voluntarily add to those by pouring toxins into your body?

Real Food Friday Feast - Grain-free cheese sauce

I love cheese! No... really... I am a cheese addict. If I don't have at least some every day, I feel cheated;) I love cheese in every way, shape or form. I even love that blue, stinky cheese that most people would turn their noses up at. It's been a real problem for me over the years seeing as I'm lactose intolerant. I would eat cheese and thoroughly enjoy it, but I'd feel terrible for days afterwards. Eventually I had to stop. It was horrible. I felt deprived.

And then I discovered goat's milk cheese!!! (Cue the angelic choirs;) It's not so easy to come by unless you're in the know. I made it my BUSINESS to be in the know. What's really helped is that Woolies have started stocking it. First prize for me is getting some goat's cheddar made from raw goat's milk at the organic market but, seeing as I'm an addict, I will be more than happy to settle for normal goat's cheese in a pinch;)

I've never been one to actually enjoy smothering my food in a cheese sauce. I prefer cheese in its natural state and I love vegetables so, to smother broccoli or cauliflower in a cheese sauce just seems like a waste of good cheese and vegetables to me. But GLM loves her broccoli and cheese sauce and I love having a happy wife so I made a plan;)

Now, most people would just pop to Pick n Pay and get a packet of Knorrs powdered cheese sauce...

That's what I have to say about THAT!

WHY would you NOT want to do that? Have you had a look at the ingredients of those things lately? Check these out:

Whey, Corn and/or wheat starch-modified, cheddar and blue cheese (made from pasteurized milk, salt, annatto extract, cheese culture, enzymes), partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, nonfat milk, natural and artificial flavors, lactic acid, disodium phosphate, msg, yellow 5, yellow 5 lake, yellow 6, Yellow 6 lake, silicon dioxide

Call that cheese sauce? I'd call it poison in a packet but maybe that's just me;) They will go out of their way, and add as much stuff as they want just to make it TASTE like cheese sauce, but it's not even close to the real deal.

If you've followed my blog at all, you know we're all about real food, made from scratch. As far as I'm concerned there really is no other way to eat. And once you start, it's so hard to go back to processed, made in a lab, food. Real food just tastes so good. The added bonus is that it's really good for you too.

Cheese sauce, when it's made right, is actually very nutritious as well as tasty. It can be high in calories BUT you can lower it substantially by using a grain-free flour, as I did. My other problem is that I'm gluten intolerant. My life can be complicated;)

So, to make my life easier, I devised my own grain-free cheese sauce recipe:) Mine uses goat's cheese but feel free to use cow's cheese. Just make sure it's a good cow's cheese. In other words, NO processed cheese at all. That stuff is so toxic you really don't want it in your body. It also tastes nothing like real cheese anyway so it'll just ruin your cheese sauce.

Grain-Free Cheese Sauce

2 Tbs butter
1 Tbs chickpea flour
salt & pepper
1 cup milk (use cow or goat's milk)
1-1/2 cups freshly shredded cheese (use cow or goat's cheese but cheddar seems to work the best)

Method

• Melt butter in a small pot over medium heat
• Add flour and whisk for one minute
• Slowly stir in milk still using the whisk
• Season with salt and pepper
• Change to a wooden spoon and keep stirring, keeping it on medium heat until it thickens (about 4-5 minutes) 
• Turn off heat and add cheese
• Stir until the cheese is melted and the sauce is smooth
• Taste and add additional salt and pepper if necessary
• Serve straight away

If you like a really thick sauce, feel free to add a little more chickpea flour but do it slowly because chickpea flour is very absorbent and it can suck up all the liquid really quickly.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Wellness Wednesday - Why antibiotics are so bad for you

You wake up one morning and you just feel "off". You have a slight headache and you feel a little unsteady on your feet. You step firmly into denial and try to carry on with your day until the afternoon comes and you start to feel cold, but hot at the same time. Your feet feel like they are made of lead, the slight headache is bordering on migraine, your joints are aching and all you can think of is lying down in a dark room and closing your eyes for an eternity.

Up until this point, we're all on the same page, we've all been there and we all hate being there! But from here on out is where I'll probably part ways with you. MY next step would be to go the kitchen and make myself a mug of tea using a combination of herbs and spices and some raw honey. Then I'd take my aching body to the bedroom and lie down and sleep until I felt human again which would be in a maximum of 3-4 days.

Some people would head to Dischem and buy all the over-the-counter (OTC) remedies they can get their hands on, dose themselves and then go home and sleep. Not TOO different from my method really...yet. We'll get back to that group though. The third group of people would probably call their doctor and make an urgent appointment, the aim being to get their hands on antibiotics as soon as possible to squash the infection "quickly". The great irony is that antibiotic will likely cause your illness to stick around for 2 weeks or more so there's nothing quick about it.

Let's go back to the group of people that self-medicate. (Tell me you HAVEN'T experienced this) After several days of the chills and fevers, achy body, sore throat and general feeling of un-wellness, you finally think you can't do it alone and the only solution is to go get antibiotics to "just squash the last of the bug." That statement is ironic and I'll explain why in the next paragraph. Eventually, they end up like the antibiotic group of people, heading to the doctor. It's unavoidable. The problem with OTC medications is that they essentially stop the body's natural healing process. In other words, the fevers. Read this post to see just how essential fevers actually are to your immune system. Taking OTC medication is going to prolong your illness, AND cause a secondary infection to take hold.

As I said in the previous paragraph, it's ironic, thinking that antibiotics will "quickly" squash the bug. What they do is FURTHER inhibit the body's immune system and you will very likely develop ANOTHER infection on top of the one you have. You can take it to the bank that you will end up on yet MORE antibiotics at this point. There is not a doctor that I have ever been to who hasn't taken it as a given that a flu infection/upper respiratory infection/sinus infection = antibiotics. Even when I used to refuse the script, they'd tell me to take the script just in case I needed it?!

Those were the days where I still didn't have enough faith in my own body's ability to heal itself, or in nature, to have a solution. I still believed I needed a doctor to tell me what was wrong and fix me. To be honest, my body COULDN'T have healed itself even if it tried, with the way my immune system had been so badly suppressed but I didn't need a doctor to tell me that. I knew my body was in a bad way. Doctors had TRIED to fix it, and couldn't.

When I started really investigating the reasons why my immune system was so badly suppressed and my body so sensitive to every food under the sun, I kept coming back to the same perpetrator: antibiotics. I grew up on them. I remember being sick a lot as a child. Most of it centered around my stomach and my colon but we didn't realise that, even the ones that didn't directly centre around my stomach and colon, were indirectly caused by it. When I was sick, mom took me to the doctor. How could she not? I needed a doctor's letter for school AND we figured a doctor HAD to know what was wrong with me, didn't they?

Apparently not! I remember my doctor actually calling in his colleague from the next room to ask him if HE might know what was wrong with me. That always stuck in my mind. He was stumped. I also have a memory of being alone in the room with him and him asking me if there was any reason why I'd pretend to be sick? Did I hate school? (well yes, but still!), was I unhappy for some reason? He thought it was psychosomatic. He was a bit of an idiot to be honest. I know there are better doctors out there. But his only solution was to prescribe antibiotics. Whether a doctor is good or bad, that is what they do.

They know you have flu. They see it on a daily basis and they KNOW nothing but time will cure it, but they go through the motions of checking your pulse, your temperature, your glands, throat and ears, because you have paid for their time and, admit it, it makes you feel like they KNOW what they're doing. You feel like you're in safe hands. You even start feeling a little better just because of the routine of checking everything! (Tell me I'm talking rubbish;) Then, because they have proven themselves by taking all the required steps, you feel better about taking the script they offer because they "must" know what they're talking about.

Let's make something clear in case you haven't read all my blogs yet. Influenza is a virus. Viruses CANNOT be killed by antibiotics. Doctors know this but they will go through the motions of appearing helpful and concerned (whilst making money) and they will prescribe antibiotics regardless. Honestly, this action by a “medical professional” is not only totally ineffective but also medically negligent. The reason I was so sickly as a child is BECAUSE I took so many antibiotics and my already suppressed immune system, took an even greater dive. Antibiotics not only suppress the immune system, they DISABLE it.

The immune system is, quite honestly, a miracle of nature. It has the ability to prevent and heal virtually any disease, including cancer! Bet you didn't figure that! The thing is, what we call "diseases" are now actually known to be symptoms of a condition arising from a severely compromised immune system. You were sick long before the symptoms made themselves known because your immune system was a mess. You just didn't realise it because modern medicine encourages us not to dig below the surface but rather to cover it up.

Anyone who thinks that modern medicines "heals" would be wrong. Modern medicine doesn't heal, it masks. It will never holistically heal the origin of a condition. Ask any doctor and they'll be forced to admit it. If they don't, they're lying or living in denial and they don't be able to back it up with anything. All it does is fix the symptoms while masking the actual cause of the disease. In fact, it tends to make things even worse because of the chemical medications and invasive surgical procedures. You may walk out of hospital thinking you survived and you're cured. I hate to say it, but disease will show itself in another form eventually if you don't address the actual issue.

What's really scary about antibiotics being used so casually and being so readily accessible is that the "bad" microbes have adjusted to them and they are fighting back. Sometimes TWO courses or more of antibiotics are required to kill a bug. That's because we are now fighting superbugs which are resistant to the current antibiotics available. They have "cottoned on" to us and they are getting stronger as a result. If we keep on flooding people's systems with antibiotics when they don't actually need them, then, when the day comes that they actually DO need them, they will be as effective as a sugar pill.

People laugh about "alternative" medicine. The fact is, WHEN (not if) antibiotics become ineffective, "alternative medicine" will be our only option. What's laughable is that modern medicine has only been around for about 100 years. Auyervedic medicine has been around for about 5000 years and yet they have the cheek to call it "alternative". Scientists are actively researching food, herbs and spices because they KNOW we will need them at some point.

In most people today, the immune system is often already HIGHLY compromised because of a poor diet, environmental toxins and many other factors including medication like antibiotics. Let's talk more specifically about how antibiotics affect our bodies. Our immune system is highly complex. Did you know that at least 80% of our immune system is found in the digestive system? It's regulated by the gut flora which are microbes, and they live there in large numbers. In case you can't grasp the concept of "large numbers": at least 15% of the weight of the entire body can be attributed to the trillions of microbes and other organisms, living mostly in the digestive tract.

The efficient functioning of your immune system is completely dependent on the ratio of “good” microbes to “bad” microbes. You need roughly 85% “good microbes” to 15% “bad microbes” in your colon to have a strong immune system. In most people, because of the factors I mentioned earlier, this ratio is severely skewed in favour of "bad" microbes. This particular imbalance is know as "dysbiosis." As you can imagine, this is going to have a terrible weakening effect on the immune system and, therefore, your body.

Most of us don't even know what an antibiotic actually does. We just think of them as "magic pills" and we pop them without thinking about it, because we want to feel better. Here's what is happening to your immune system when you swallow those pills: Not only are the “bad" microbes being killed off, but the "good" microbes are as well, leaving your colon almost completely depleted of beneficial, immune response-regulating gut flora. That leaves you with NO immune system to speak of. That's after just one course of antibiotics. Most people take them at least 4 times a year.

This is the place that I was at constantly as a child and, as a result, I was sick constantly. It didn't help that I had IBS as well. My colon was depleted of anything good, it couldn't absorb any nutrients, AND I had a disabled immune system. This continued well into my 30s. I was SO lucky to not find myself with some or other chronic disease. Had I carried on along that route, I have no doubt that I would've found myself facing a chronic illness. Instead, I found the problem and I took drastic steps to fix things.

A lot of women have heard of candida. A lot of women suffer from it and I was one of them. Candida albicans and candida tropicalis are two of the most common "bad" microbes that grow rapidly in a body  weakened by antibiotics. Candida is a yeast or fungus and it thrives on a high sugar (bread, pasta and even natural sugars in fruit and milk) and low mineral diet. That pretty much encapsulates the modern diet! Studies show that even TWO DAYS on antibiotics can start candida growth. The symptoms are constant fatigue, bloating, digestive problems, foggy thinking, mood swings, endometriosis, indigestion, food sensitivity, and hormone imbalances. Any of those strike a chord? I bet they do with a lot of you.

Making the decision to cut out modern medicine from your life is scary, I know. Anything unknown is scary. It wasn't an immediate thing for me. I started with antibiotics but I took longer to cut out all medication. I was the kind of person who ALWAYS had nurofen in my handbag. I suffered from headaches all the time (a sign that my body was heading for a crash of some kind) and then there was the dreaded, once a month, period pains that were inescapable. I was terrified to cut them out altogether.

How did I eventually do it? Well, I changed my whole lifestyle. I switched to only organic and free-range food. I cut all chemicals out of my life. I started eating real food. If you are unsure about that, there are several recipes on this blog that will point you in the right direction. I started using herbs and spices as medicines, the way it used to be done 100 years ago before modern medicine became the norm. Amazingly, (or not!) my chronic headaches stopped. Period pains are manageable without pain tablets now and there are the side benefits like being energetic and seldom sick! It's not so scary when you realise you have options. Food is a powerful medication when taken the right way. You have natural antibiotics at your fingertips which won't totally annihilate all the bacteria in your colon. They get to the root of an issue instead of just masking it.

I had to do all of this by trial and error. But I started this blog so that YOU wouldn't have to. I'm constantly doing the research and finding out new things because it interests me and because it benefits me, and YOU by default;) Take the time to read through some of the posts and think about stepping out the box and trying something new.

Baby steps work just fine. The main thing is that you TAKE the steps:)

Monday Mix up - Are we in danger of teaching our children to obsess over food?

Being a real foodist in a world obsessed with convenience isn't easy. Most people just don't understand why it's so important to avoid conveniently packaged and processed foods and to make a meal from scratch instead. For most of them, their whole life has been about packet sauces, margarine, fizzy soft drinks, store-bought yogurt and breakfast cereals. It doesn't enter their heads that there is any other option. As far as THEY are concerned, THAT is food.

Thankfully, since Tim Noakes introduced us all to Banting, people are starting to realise what real food actually is. I am eternally grateful to him. But there is still a massive part of the population that fit into the category described in the first paragraph.

When I am discussing kids and what they can and can't eat and drink, and I make a comment like, "Well, my kids just won't eat or drink that," I get horrified looks. They're always followed by the question, "How will you ever enforce that?!" Even GLM says, "How are you going to keep that stuff away from them?" The truth is, I can't really say right now because we don't have kids...YET. What I CAN say that our kids will grow up knowing, and eating real food. Whatever they eat at home will have been made in my kitchen. There are NO convenience foods in our house right now and I don't see why that should change when we have kids. I can say that with absolute certainty. I have to hope that, given that kind of foundation, they will make good choices.

I think that, how you react to food, and your relationship to it, is going to make a big difference to how a child reacts to food. They watch you all the time and they learn from everything you do. If you are on a constant diet, trying to lose weight, and you complain about eating salad all the time, do you really think a child is going to find salad appealing? If you happen to mention that you'd love to just be able to eat as many sweets as you want, without getting fat, your child is going to associate sweets with happy thoughts too. If you make processed foods out to be something yummy but untouchable, your child is ALSO going to feel the same way and they are going to be drawn to them.

As a real foodist, I definitely evaluate what goes into my mouth. I contemplate the nutritional value of it because that's important to me BUT the list of options never includes anything processed because I don't consider them options. In terms of evaluation, what I'll be considering is, "Do we need to add some Vitamin D to our diet this week? Ok then, time for some eggs!"

While I hope my kids ALSO consider the nutritional value of food, I guess there IS the fear that I might instill food neurosis in my kids. We all want our kids to enjoy food without obsessing over it; to have healthy appetites but to not feel like, once they have one piece of cake, that they need to eat the whole cake because of some kind of emotional issue or other. We want them to feel comfortable walking away because they've had enough, not because they're counting calories or nutrients.

It is so important that kids develop a healthy relationship with food. It should never be seen as a punishment or a reward because that is a surefire way of creating an emotional attachment to food. It's important to keep things neutral. There is no "good" or "bad" food. An attitude like that tends to create eating behavioural problems. Kids who have a healthy relationship with food recognise their own satiety cues and never feel a need to binge. If you are forced to finish all your vegetables before you are allowed to have ice cream you are immediately setting up a punishment/reward scenario. The child will feel the need to “make up” for times when they may have been deprived or “reward themselves” by binging on an entire packet of biscuits.

Interestingly enough, how we react to food all starts before we’re even born. Adults whose mothers were exposed to extreme calorie restrictions, during the first half of their pregnancies, are 80% more likely to be obese as adults. Our amazingly intelligent bodies will program themselves to prepare for a life of either scarcity or abundance, depending on the conditions they find themselves in. So, if you are terrified of putting on too much weight in the beginning of your pregnancy, and you hold back on calories, you aren't giving your child much of a chance when it comes to food.

As a pregnant mom, it is so essential to get a healthy balance of protein, fat and healthy carbs in your diet. In terms of fats and carbs, a lot of moms make the mistake overloading on wholegrains, seeds and nuts, thinking they're actually good for them. The truth is, when it comes to wholegrains, unless you are going to prepare them correctly, you'd actually be better off eating refined grains. I know, you're going to think I'm nuts but honestly, since people started focusing more on wholegrains instead of refined grains, even more gluten and wheat intolerances have sprung up. That's because our bodies aren't designed to digest wholegrains that aren't prepared properly and that's going to lead to a whole bunch of issues like leaky gut and IBS and malnutrition. Read up here to see exactly why they're a problem.

Seeds and nuts give you the same kind of problems for the same reasons but there is an even bigger issue with eating too many of these. Nuts and seeds are very high in linoleic acid, a type of polyunsaturated fat. Scientist will tell you polyunsaturated fats are good for you. They're not really. We need minimal amounts of them and we all get far too much in our diets already. Did you know that animals consume large amounts of linoleic acid just before autumn so that they can slow their metabolisms down enough to hibernate for the winter? Research has shown that it has the same effect on humans so, by eating lots of seeds and nuts, you are actually slowing down your metabolism.

There is a vast difference in breast milk from woman to woman, depending on their diet.  Moms who eat large quantities of linoleic acid, which, as I've said, is found in nuts and seeds (and liquid vegetable oils like corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed), not only slow down their own metabolism, but also produce a lot of arachidonic acid in their bodies and milk. Arachidonic acid is converted from linoleic acid. Arachidonic acid is highly inflammatory. If you have high levels of arachidonic acid in your breast milk, you will transfer that to your baby which will mean your baby will have a slow metabolism as well as inflammation. What you eat, and how you eat it is going to directly impact your child and their future. Yes, there is nothing more nutritious than breast milk for your baby. But remember that your body makes breast milk based on the fuel you give it to use so your baby literally eats what YOU eat.

A child with a slow metabolism is probably going to develop a bad relationship with food simply because, in this day and age, where the skinny woman and the lean, muscular man are placed on a pedestal, your child with the slow metabolism is going to feel like they don't match up. If they are overweight, then the minute you place restrictions on them, they are going to latch on to the punishment/reward scenario and, once food has lost its neutral position, that child has less chance of NOT obsessing over food. That will go with them into adulthood.

A child shouldn't diet. (No-one should in my opinion, but especially not a child) They shouldn't see certain foods as good or bad. A child should eat simply because they're hungry and not because some foods make them feel better about themselves, or because mom says they're "out of bounds". The minute you give food any kind of control over your life, you are setting yourself, and your kids up, for a lifetime of weight problems.

The simple solution is to provide your kids with what they need nutritionally. Don't ever bargain with treats, don't force them to finish everything on their plates, don't make one food seem less or more appealing than another food and allow them to set their own pace when it comes to eating food. At the same time, they need to know that the food on the table IS the only option and it's that simple. Children battle to make big decisions, so make the decisions for them and, if that is what they know, and what they've grown up with, they won't know to think some foods are "gross" or "yucky" because you've never given them that impression. Don't stock your cupboard with sweets and biscuits. If you want to give them a sweet treat, bake something and get them involved so that they see, and experience the reward of making food from scratch.

It's a great lesson for them to learn that foods don't actually magically appear on the grocery store shelf. When our 6 year old nephew came to spend some time at our house, he was enthralled by the fact that I had tomatoes growing in the garden. He was so excited he couldn't want to eat it! And he was also a little confused that our tomatoes came from the garden, but theirs came from the shop! As far as he was concerned, that's where all food came from. To learn that it might be possible to grow his own food was a thrilling thought for him.

If you lead by example, in other words, you don't pull a face at food, or get picky about certain foods, and don't let them see food as controlling YOUR life, then they will have NO reason to develop an issue with food. I think that the biggest danger to your child's relationship with food, outside of family, will come from advertisers. Children are SO susceptible to their strategies. Keep the tv off and rather let them watch a movie while they are at such a young, impressionable age. Even better, give them books to read or send them outside to play in the garden. If you inspire kids to move, they will also move as adults. Kids who eat a real food diet will have abundant energy, very few mood swings (aside from the terrible 2 tantrums!) and no allergy issues. They will be full of vitality and that's what you want for them.

They will also LIKE feeling good and they'll notice when they don't. It'll probably be after a friend's birthday party where high fructose corn syrup was in abundance;) They are smart. They'll figure it out eventually and, hopefully, make the right decisions for themselves. THAT is first prize.

Real Food Friday Feast - How to make bone broth

I've talked about bone broth in a few of my Real Food Friday Feast blog posts like butternut soup, chicken curry and pea soup. I've also mentioned it in blogs that focus a lot on nutritional health and building the immune system up naturally. I explained how to make it in my blog on butternut soup but I have never actually dedicated a blog post to it and I decided it was time I did that so that it would be easier to find for those who haven't been following my blog from the beginning.

Some of you are wondering why I'd even devote a whole post to something as unexciting as bone broth. Well, in my opinion, bone broth is something pretty exciting actually! In fact, if I don't have some available in my freezer, I panic. It's an essential ingredient in just about everything that I cook. As you can see from the recipes that I have posted, that use bone broth, it works especially well in things like soups and curries because bone broth is, essentially, stock and stock adds flavour to those kinds of meals.

But stock isn't there to just add flavour, or it shouldn't be. Unfortunately, the stock that you buy from a grocery store does just that and nothing else. There is NO goodness to be found in the majority of them. In fact, it would be the opposite of that. Store-bought stock cubes are generally loaded up with allergens like dairy, wheat, yeast, gluten and celery, for starters. To make it more complicated, they also contain sugar (read high fructose corn syrup), salt (Not the good kind), maize starch, vegetable fat, artificial flavourants (which you should avoid at all costs), MSG and let's not forget, preservatives. There ARE some organic stock cubes out there, but you still can't beat bone broth when it comes to nutritious value and it's so much cheaper to make.

If you are going to make a nice, healthy chicken curry with free-range chicken, and you are going to use a conventional stock cube to add some flavour, you are going to take your nutrient-dense, healthy meal and turn it into something toxic. Why would you want to do that when bone broth is literally right at your fingertips and so easy to make?

Interestingly, bone broth used to be considered a poor man's food because it's pretty cheap to make. All you need are bones and the result is a very nutritious, cheap meal. People don't realise just how nutritious it actually is. Just a few things that broth will improve are:

• Digestion
• Allergies
• Immune health
• Brain health
• Joint pain
• Bone formation, growth and repair
• Hair, skin and nails

Bone broth contains loads of valuable nutrients which all help with the development of healthy joints, bones, ligaments and tendons as well as hair and skin. It's actually considered beauty food because all the nutrients it contains help the body with proper structural alignment and beautiful skin and hair. The nutrients you'll get from bone broth are:

• Collagen
• Gelatin
• Hyaluronic acid
• Chondroitin sulfate
• Glycosamino glycans
• Proline
• Glycine
• Calcium
• Phosphorus
• Magnesium
• Potassium

Proline and glycine are vital for healthy connective tissue (ligaments, joints, around organs, etc) Here's something that will get ALL women boiling up their own bone broth: It can help reduce cellulite because it improves connective tissue! It also increases hair growth/strength, improves your digestive issues and remineralises your teeth. I think I may have had you at cellulite though;)

The Paleo Mom has a great explanation for the importance of these two amino acids:

“Glycine is required for synthesis of DNA, RNA and many proteins in the body. As such, it plays extensive roles in digestive health, proper functioning of the nervous system and in wound healing. Glycine aids digestion by helping to regulate the synthesis of bile salts and secretion of gastric acid. It is involved in detoxification and is required for production of glutathione, an important antioxidant. Glycine helps regulate blood sugar levels by controlling gluconeogenesis (the manufacture of glucose from proteins in the liver). Glycine also enhances muscle repair/growth by increasing levels of creatine and regulating Human Growth Hormone secretion from the pituitary gland. This wonderful amino acid is also critical for healthy functioning of the central nervous system. In the brain, it inhibits excitatory neurotransmitters, thus producing a calming effect. Glycine is also converted into the neurotransmitter serine, which promotes mental alertness, improves memory, boosts mood, and reduces stress. Proline has an additional role in reversing atherosclerotic deposits. It enables the blood vessel walls to release cholesterol buildups into your blood stream, decreasing the size of potential blockages in your heart and the surrounding blood vessels. Proline also helps your body break down proteins for use in creating new, healthy muscle cells.”

Sounding like something you'd like in your diet? Well, it's SO cheap and easy to make you'll wonder what took you so long! All you need is a big pot filled with water, some vinegar and a pile of bones! Let's get a bit more specific though;)

Bone Broth Recipe

A large pot
Water
Approximately 1kg bones (this really isn't a big issue. You can just make less by using less water)
2 tablespoons of vinegar (preferably apple cider vinegar) or lemon juice (Try and go with juice straight out of a lemon or something that has no preservatives. You don't want to add any to your healthy bone broth)
Herbs (optional)
Salt (optional)

Method

• Throw all the bones into the pot
• Fill the pot with water stopping about 4 or 5 centimetres from the top
• Add the vinegar
• Add herbs and salt
• Bring the water to boil and then turn down to a very gentle simmer
• Leave for approx. 8-24hrs (this is up to you but I prefer to give them lots of time)
• Strain liquid through colander and decant into small containers
• Freeze or use as needed

This all works even better if you have a slow cooker. I throw everything into my slow cooker and go about my day and night and forget about it. After 24hrs it's all good to go and there is no mess on the stove top!

Why the vinegar? It's an essential part of the mix because it helps to coax all the minerals out of the bones a bit more. As I said above, you can use lemon juice as well.

In case you're wondering where I get the bones from, well, this part is really easy. I save them over the course of a few weeks. Every time we eat any meat with bones, we put all the leftover bones into a container in the freezer. Once I have enough, it's time to make broth. I also buy a bag of free range mutton bones from The Windmill and I add one or two of those, raw, to the mix.  If you are vegetarian, and don't have any bones to collect, just buy a bag of marrow bones and use those. The more variety you have, the better. Even fish bones will work but it's not my favourite. However, if you want to make fish curry, a fish broth is handy!

It's very important to remember that the quality of your bone broth is only going to be as good as the quality of the bones you use. They MUST be from free range, grass-fed, healthy animals. The reason is, conventionally raised animals are fed a diet of genetically modified grains, loaded with pesticides and herbicides and other chemicals and heavy metals. They are also fed hormones and antibiotics. The body naturally stores these toxins in the fatty portions of the bone so that is what you will be consuming in your bone broth if you use conventional meat.

The recipe above is just for your basic bone broth, but feel free to get a little more adventurous with yours by all means. As I said, you CAN add herbs and salt for flavour. That means that, when you cook with it, you won't really need to add anything else. I often add a bit of masala because we eat so much curry;) If you only have normal table salt in your cupboards, please banish it NOW and get some sea salt or himalayan rock salt and use that instead. It's sold at Pick n Pay's, Spars, Dischems etc so there is no excuse and it's so much better for you. Read here to find out why.

As I said above, I prefer to leave mine to simmer for as long possible. Reason being that it REALLY gets everything out of the bones. You will see the bones, particularly the chicken bones, start to turn a bit lighter the longer they simmer, the water turns darker and that's how you know it's working. The longer you leave them, the more nutritious it is going to be. Once it's done, I drain it and then, using a soup ladle, I fill up several containers and freeze them. Another option is to freeze it in ice trays and have your own real food stock cubes to pop into a dish without even having to defrost them.

When you defrost them you will see that it looks quite gelatinous. That's a good thing. That's what's so good for you and it gives your meals a deliciously meaty flavour.

For those of you who are veggies or vegans and really don't want to use any bones, you can ALSO make broth. It just won't be BONE broth, it'll be a veggie broth and it's also good for you but it doesn't contain the amino acids that you get from meat, as well as the various minerals. However, vegetables are loaded with nutrients and, leaving them to simmer for hours will fill the water they cook in, with all of those nutrients. Use the same recipe as above but obviously replace the bones with all sorts of different coloured vegetables. I wouldn't leave it as long because veggies aren't as tough as bones!

I can say that bone broth has done wonders for me when I've been sick with a cold or flu and, if I have a particularly tough mountain bike ride or gym workout, a few mugs of bone broth fix me up very quickly. It's also just a great daily tonic, especially if you have achy joints or a compromised immune system. It's wonderful stuff. It also makes ALL my meals taste good with very little effort. My wife thinks I'm a great cook and I'm happy to leave her thinking that;)

You probably won't use it so much to cook during the summer months but I would still advise getting at least some of it in your diet. You really will benefit hugely from it!