Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?: Scientific American

"For a decade their user agreements have explicitly forbidden the use of the seeds for any independent research. Under the threat of litigation, scientists cannot test a seed to explore the different conditions under which it thrives or fails. They cannot compare seeds from one company against those from another company. And perhaps most important, they cannot examine whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended environmental side effects." Scientific American article by the editors, online, August 13, 2009

This is not a new article but it's news to me. As I was reading, corn popped into my head. Corn is regulated by the FDA as a pesticide - a pesticide - due to genetic modifications that cause the GMO corn blooms to disperse insect-killing chemicals into the air that were bred into the plant predecessors.

Has any research been done on the effects of this pestilential corn, just for example? Only research approved by the breeders of the seed is released.

Please read the article. If you have any interest in non-GMO foods, please consider contacting your Congresspersons about it.

Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?: Scientific American

*sigh*

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Icanhascheezburger?

Sharethis: Has the FDA lost its mind - again? - Welcome to the Alliance for Natural Health - USA

Please read this article.

I have no idea what to say about this.

Has the FDA lost its mind - again?
Welcome to the Alliance for Natural Health - USA Source: anh-usa.org
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Sharethis: Healing Wise ... An Abundance of Greens by Susun Weed

Just a quick note before the Exploding Migraine Warning of a Significant Event goes into effect.

It hurts my heart that I have a substantial belief system difference with Susun Weed; therefore, I don't recommend her books. I do recommend the health information contained in them.

I'm improving daily from the herbal and "green" information in her menopause book. I have mourned my losses from my hysterectomy and ovary removal, integrating that I will never conceive another child, never hold another soul in my body along with my own.

Mourning has broken, and I'm whole again in that respect. You never really get over the death of a child and my four miscarriages will never go away. But now I am strong again with my conception and childbearing in the "experience" column.  It hit me quite forcefully that I never dealt with all the physical things that surround surgical menopause after the surgery six years ago this month.

Time to deal with MENOPAUSE. :P

Oh, my word what a blessing Vivelle_dot estrogen replacement created from yam has been! Never, never did I dream that things could be so...even. I see now that a good number of my other maturation issues revolve and repeat themselves because I haven't physically cared for my different self which has had no ovaries or womb since 2004.

Time passes slowly when you're getting well. It passes very slowly when you're anxious to get on with living! My own belief system is maturing as my age progresses and I want to get on with practicing it as well.

In this so-far quiet year, the Mother Earth again has proven herself to be the true mother that she is. Abundant, so abundant, freely giving me her green plants and air, water and sunshine, rain and wind, and the life that is borne of flora and fauna. Husbandry and right use of Earth's abundance will restore me, rebuild me from the inside out and outside inward. Does it cost so much to give time to share what "right use of the Earth" really means?

Well, right this minute, yes! My head is pounding from tax meltdown - my mother accidentally wrote a check to IRS for $5 million. It was a clerical error one would correctly say and we caught it before it got mailed, but all the problems that would have needed to be solved had it made it to IRS burst into my mind. Her reaction to the mistake didn't help either of us. This entire weekend has dealt me an assault on my energy body. A long talk with a friend has helped as has rose quartz along with mullein, yarrow, and mugwort infusion. Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, I plan to be outside as much as I possibly can in sunshine, in the breeze, and taking a walk through the backyard if I can. I need my Earthly mother after taking care of my earthly mother!

Please read the article. Find some abundance to feed.

And go outside: Your Mother's calling. :)

Healing Wise ... An Abundance of Greens by Susun Weed
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/April10/healingwise.htm?utm_medium=email&utm_source=MyNewsletterBuilder&utm_campaign=Wise Woman Herbal Ezine - April 2010 1410249287&utm_term=Go to An Abundance of Greens Source: susunweed.com
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Sharethis: Biofilms and herbal medicine, Dr. Peter D'Adamo's SWAMI Xpress

If you want to see a biofilm in action don't clean your teeth for a day, that gunky plaque is a biofilm - an appetizing blend of bacteria, sugars, proteins and bacterial DNA.'
- Carla Ross, http://www.seedsofwonder.typepad.com/


Well, I've must have a biofilm somewhere myself right now.

Night before last, I dreamt that I was showing someone a huge growth (non-existent in real life) on the left side of my neck. Yesterday I woke up with a tremendously painful, swollen, red tonsil.

I've doctored myself with echinacea, yarrow, and mullein infusion, used smokey quartz and amethyst for comfort, and rested and slept.  A few minutes ago, my fever broke by itself.  No meds taken other than my regular daily Meniere's and Migraine preventative meds.

I imagine it'll be tomorrow before it completely quits hurting when I swallow but I've turned the corner as the old saying in our family goes.

Since the first of the year I've been following a health plan designed by the author of the attached article, Peter D'Adamo, a naturopathic physician pioneer of blood type and health issues.  I became sold on his concepts years ago when I saw improvements after making just a few changes in what I ate and how I dealt with stress using Dr. D'Adamo's blood type A secretor recommendations.  Both of my daughters have benefited as well from his type O secretor recommendations.

Dr. D'Adamo's SWAMI Xpress System is a secured online database.  With a purchased password, a person enters various bits of information such as fingerprint shape, length of certain fingers, specific head measurements, determinations such as which is longer:  Torso or legs?

It is even quite detailed about such things as mitochondrial DNA haplogroup (if known) and Y chromosome information.

The database will sort the information input by the purchaser and designate a Geno Type and Epigenetic Worldview Type.  What those facts mean to your health are explained in great detail in the printable report generated by the database.

The report includes an exhaustive list of health-improving recommended foods, foods nutritious but neutral, and foods best avoided for well-explained and documented reasons.  The report contains much more information but you'll have to explore it yourself to find out!

SWAMI Xpress and information from an associated typing kit determined that I was a GT5 Warrior/Receptor Super-taster.  I had already carefully read the book which preceded SWAMI Xpress, The Geno Type Diet by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo with Catherine Whitney.  I was familiar with Dr. D'Adamo's Geno Types and had a feel for the broad ideas of epigenetics.

To paraphrase Dr. D'Adamo's marvelous descriptive terms, I'm a survivor with a mystical bend, one who made it through the war and lived to tell the tales and sing the lays, to teach the lessons of war and live the way of peace.  These characteristics are utterly unique to the rest of the world who share my physical sort.  Conditions I faced in the womb contribute to my Geno Type and epigenetics.  Just as family members might have varied blood types and Rh factors, family members may differ vastly epigenetically speaking.

I'm a lookout of sorts too, one might say, the canary in the coal mine.  Receptor types "receive" everything around them and for me that's everything:  germs, energy, weather, wind, inflections of a voice and turns of a phrase in speech, timing, temperature, sounds, tastes, and my word the list could go on for another page.  Dr. D'Adamo identifies Receptive types as "immune tolerant" and my SWAMI Xpress plan is designed to switch on the genes that protect me from germies and deal with issues like cancer (that can be stopped, and probably frequently gets stopped, by healthy immune systems every day).

I don't believe I've read anything in Dr. D'Adamo's work about Receptives being energetic and emotional vacuum cleaners but that's what I am.  In three months my overall health has improved noticeably.  I wouldn't say I was any more functional but I'm healthier.  My mother is quite dusty and gritty energetically and emotionally, so my vacuum cleaner stays full no matter how often I change the bag, to put this in metaphorical terms.  Solving my receptivity to things of that nature is on my list.  Unfortunately, it's not covered by SWAMI Xpress!

Please read the article carefully.  Consider checking out Dr. D'Adamo's books from the library and seeing if you think you'd benefit from his ideas.  The food recommendations are balanced, varied, widely available, and most importantly they're real foods.  No diet foods on this plan!

I'll continue to post my progress.  I've got other New Year's Resolutions to work on but improving my health between attacks is progressing.

Biofilms, infection and herbal medicine
Biofilms and herbal medicine Source: 4yourtype.com
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Herbs for What Ails Me

"If you wonder what herbs you might need, see what's growing around you."
Unknown


I'm feeling better today thanks I am completely sure to the prayers and good thoughts from Sparkling readers.  Thank you, so very much. 

Today was an absolutely beautiful day - "severe clear" as our local meteorologists say.  Mom and I dug up a couple of nice big dandelions, a nice bunch of wild garlic, and found a gorgeous snake.  It was small and didn't have the characteristic triangle-shaped head of a venomous snake but we didn't bother it other than taking a few pics (well, Mom asked if I thought she should chop it with the shovel and I liked to have screeched "Don't you DARE!"  XD ).

Anyhow...

I've spent some time this late winter reading up on plants that grow around here.  One of my New Year's resolutions was to improve my health between attacks.  I've always been a plant gal but relied on store-bought and a few cultivated herbs for my oils and unguents, salves and balms as my brother used to call them.

I wish I could remember where I heard the adage quoted above but it's lost in the black abyss that used to be my gray matter.  It did pop back into my brain after all these years.  I've made a concerted effort to identify the wild plants - weeds, I should call'em what they are - that grow in the relatively protected area of my back yard.

With the help of webcrawler, a botanist Migraine-Associated Vertigo bud o'mine, and my country-reared mother, I have discovered to my unending delight that a number of useful plants and trees are growing free for the digging and clipping in my backyard:

*  Sambucus racemosa - American Red Elder
*  Taraxacum - Dandelion
*  Rumex Crispus - Yellow Dock, also called Curly Dock
*  Verbascum Thapsus - Greater Mullein
*  Viola Odorata - Sweet Violet
*  Glechoma Hederacea - Alehoof, also called Ground Ivy and gill-go-over-ground
*  Adiantum - Maidenhair Fern
*  Acer Rubrum - Red Maple
*  Quercus Palustris - Pin Oak
*  Carya - Hickory Tree
*  Allium Canadense - Wild Garlic, also called Wild Onion
*  Cornus - Wild Dogwood Tree
*  Pinus Palustris - Longleaf Pine
*  Carduus Nutans - Musk Thistle

And at least half again as many more still to be identified!

I know, I know - what on earth could Pin Oak do medicinally?  Nothing that I know of, but the leaves can be used in such things as meadmaking instead of oak chips and oak cubes for aging.  Longleaf Pine?  The green needles placed in boiling water and the steam inhaled help congested sinuses and lungs (and many parts are edible if you're Euell Gibbons, which I am not).

I don't expect to use all of these plants.  The inner bark of Dogwood is a very strong, considered "harsh", laxative.  Not going there.  The American Red Elder berries are not usable this year unfortunately.  Alehoof does have some mild medicinal properties but its claim to fame is in clearing beer.  I actually don't care for Hickory nuts and Maidenhair Fern is endangered in some states so I'll let it be.

But the Dandelion, Yellow Dock, Mullein, Sweet Violet, and Wild Garlic have already been put into use.  Gonna have boiled Musk Thistle root here in a little bit.  And, I've cultivated lavender, roses, a yearly-rotating variety of kitchen herbs, and my mother grows the best tomatoes you'll ever put in your mouth.

So, I'm now adding wild backyard plants to my complementary regimen.  Somehow I feel better already.

Or I did until I heard that my mother, who happened to run into my daughter recently, told her, "Oh, your mother is fine.  She pulled weeds out of the backyard this morning and she's eating them for lunch."  :)


Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission. Use the ShareThis link if you want to share this. Nothing in the above article is remunerated content. Remember that if my work gets published anywhere else without proper citation, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more effective.

Holiday Cheer - Sharethis: Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer

Just in time for Christmas...MORE GOOD NEWS FROM THE CHOCOLATE FRONT!

Fear not that high quality, high cocoa solids chocolate is nowhere to be found. World Wide Chocolate is one online purveyor who will bring such Elysian delights to your house, your very abode as it were. They are an online business I recommend. I do business with them and have been very pleased with all transactions.

Right now, yea at this very moment, Callebaut Belgian dark chocolate batons boulangers are melting in my mouth, smooth as liquid black gold.  This particular baking formulation has only 44% cocoa solids but I've got chocolate with 80% cocoa solids in the cabinet.  HELL yeah I eat baking chocolate!  And every sort of bonbon and confection, bakery item and savory dish containing Theobroma cacao that I can think up or find.

There may be some who consume greater quantities of chocolate than I do but I'll put my Theobroma cacao tastes up there with the biggest eaters any day.

Want to know why I don't eat Hershey's kisses?  Scroll down to the blog entitled "The Sweet Life" and look for the entry dated Friday June 5, 2009.  Read the comments.  Yep, there's one from ME.  I recommend The Bee Folks.  They carry bulk and varietal honey, some nice beeswax products, and Lori had TRIPLET BOYS last Spring.  They're good people to do business with.  I go through a lot of honey.  Lori sells half gallons, gallons, and even larger sizes as well as 8 oz and a couple of 4 oz sizes of premium honeys.

I hope to pull together some Theobroma cacao recipes and projects for the next article.  Preview:  That last swallow of sediment coffee in the pot that no one wants?  Add cocoa powder and another couple of ingredients to make a nice scrub for stretch marks that will tickle your spouse's tongue as well.  Ohhhh...yeah...

Chocolate is a Migraine trigger for some people.  It appears it may have something to do with endothelial function and production of nitric oxide, which expands blood vessels.  [Disclaimer:  I have carefully recorded my physical responses to chocolate over the many years I've dealt with Migraine and found one correlation:  The craving for chocolate is a sure sign that Migraine attacks are imminent.  Eat chocolate, don't eat chocolate, no effect on whether attacks occur in me or their intensity.]  Read this interesting article from--Hershey's--about some of the nice things chocolate does for people.  The article includes citations but frankly, I'd consider Hershey's Chocolate an expert in chocolate in their own right.  They're not my chocolatiers but I'll count on their information any day.

Eat high quality, high cocoa solids chocolate.  And honey.  Every day.  The Sparkling Mother is glad it's good for you.  :D
 

Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer
Dark chocolate prevents wrinkles, skin cancer Source: presstv.ir
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Sharethis: 9 Unhealthy High Calorie, Fat and Salty Meals at Chili's, Applebee's, Uno, Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory - ABC News

I'm just saying...

Bad restaurant ordering choices
9 Unhealthy High Calorie, Fat and Salty Meals at Chili's, Applebee's, Uno, Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory - ABC News http://shar.es/b7gw
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"The time has come," the Walrus said or "You've had a pleasant run!"

"...The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings..."
The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll


If your father was diabetic, and his mother was diabetic, and your second child weighed 9 lbs 2 ozs, you'd know that diabetes was in your future. Somewhere.

*sigh*

I've got to go for a two-hour glucose test as soon as Libchik and/or Aikichik can get me to the doc's office, so the nurse told me today. My fasting glucose was higher than it should have been, so she said.

After we rang off, I quickly checked my sugar with the little cheapy meter I bought after my father was diagnosed. It read 86, and I had eaten already. I ate cottage cheese with a glass of milk and an hour later it was 102. Two hours later it was 126. None of these readings are bad at all.

So wazzzzup? They'll have to tell me, but something has set them off. Maybe it was the 3-month overall glucose level test that they did? It would explain why weight has been falling off of me. I've lost now 47 pounds and didn't gain any over the holidays.

If the time has come to address diabetes, I'm there. I can adjust what I eat. I'll find some sort of exercise although I haven't the faintest idea what--swim, maybe? Nothing to fall off of and can't fall down in a swimming pool. There are crystals that help with blood glucose levels too, and Edgar Cayce's readings recommended Jerusalem artichokes for diabetics.

I take things as they come. Nothing is certain in this world but death and taxes, as the old saying goes, and personally I'm not sure about death. I was a tax collector in my previous Federal incarnation so I've got that covered.

So if the time has come, then I can slay this Jabberwock too. Poor Lewis Carroll is doing gymnastics, I'm sure.


"He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll


Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more powerful.

Mummy Food, just in time for...Christmas? :D

3/21/09 Edit to include copyright info according to the Usage Permissions guidelines from the Edgar Cayce Foundation. Sorry, I just found them!

*************************************************************************************

We Meniere's-y types generally take or consume some sort of diuretic every day. There are several varieties out there.

A commonly prescribed one and the one I take, triamterene, can and has caused my potassium levels to drop. Triamterene is called a potassium-sparing diuretic but that doesn't stop it from depleting potassium levels any time it wishes. I was in the ER for an allergic reaction to gadolinium contrast dye the first time anyone noticed that my potassium was low. That liquid potassium replacement is disgusting. :p

In my never-ending quest to experience quests, I found an interesting food dish given by Edgar Cayce during one of his psychic events. The recipe came from a dream he had on December 2, 1937. More specific information about how to create this dish is found in Reading 1188-11:

"...It is well for this body, or growing bodies, or elderly individuals also, for strength building and for correcting the eliminations, to use this as a cereal, or a small quantity of this with the cereal, or it may be served with milk or cream:

Secure the unpitted Syrian or Black Figs and the Syrian Dates. Cut or grind very fine a cup of each. Put them on in a double boiler with just a little goat's milk in same - a tablespoonful. Let come almost to a boil. Stir in a tablespoonful of Yellow Corn Meal.

These are good..."

He recommended this combination in Reading 275-45 also:

"...10. (Q) Outline diet for three meals a day that would be best for body.
(A) Mornings - citrus fruit juices OR cereals, but not both at the same meal. At other meals there may be taken, or included with the others at times, dried fruits or figs, combined with dates and raisins - these chopped very well together. And for this especial body, dates, figs (that are dried) cooked with a little corn meal (a very little sprinkled in), then this taken with milk, should be almost a spiritual food for the body; whether it's taken one, two, three or four meals a day. [See continued recipe below.] But this is to be left to the body itself. [See "mummy in EC's "DREAMS" 12/2/37, in 294-189, Par. R2.]..."

The first thing that grabbed me is that these dried fruits are high in potassium. I mean it--I have to have a baked potato, or some combination of a banana, raisins, a quart of milk, or a full can of tomato soup (oooo YEAH) nearly every day or I'll be in trouble shortly. Now I've got a single dish that will give me a nice dose of potassium in itself, nearly as much as a baked potato with the skin so The Calorie Counter website tells me.

Really, although I love grits and cornmeal mush (you know I'm a Girl-Raised-In-The-South! XD), the thought of these dried fruits with cornmeal and goat's milk, the way Edgar Cayce dreamt, just isn't appealing. But in Cream of Wheat or Cream of Rice and with salted butter, they are.

So, below is my version of Edgar Cayce's Mummy Food made with Cream of Wheat or Cream of Rice, along with some nutritional information.

CHECK OUT THAT POTASSIUM.

And do what you need to do to lower the Calories or sodium. I find that if I keep my potassium high, I can sneak a bit more sodium without blowing my ears out of my head.

Nice warm breakfast cereal, good fruits, sweet and buttery... Consider making it up the night before in a pre-heated thermos bottle if your mornings are busy--just pile it all in the thermos except for the butter and put the top on tight. Next morning put in the butter and it'll be ready before the coffee is.

Merry Christmas if that's a holiday you celebrate (it's mine), and warm love and happiness for all.

Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-2007
by the Edgar Cayce Foundation
All Rights Reserved


Unless otherwise noted, copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more powerful.

A Sensitive's Dream: You-Made-it?! Breakfast Sausage

Ahhh, the simple foods we loved! Years ago when I determined that processed meats (and processed foods in general) were causing me multiple problems, I began a quest to recreate the simple foods we loved that today contain food additives that cause me problems.

Food additives trigger Migraine attacks and Meniere's attacks in me, upset my stomach, cause heartburn at times, drive up the volume of the 24/7 tinnitus I live with, and just make me feel dreadful overall. Not quite a year ago, I ate a fast-food meal at a venerable institution here in this part of the country, Jack's Hamburgers, and the chemicals burned my esophagus and made the skin peel off my lips. Salad and a milkshake--salad and a milkshake...I've never been able to determine what was in those things I ate despite my efforts. Years ago I did some show-business work with the man who created some classic advertising for Jack's...didn't drop the name when I was inquiring about the nutritional information. Perhaps I should have...

Here's a picture of my maternal grandmother (b. 1895) and her five daughters. She always made her own sausage, so my mother (the little tike with my Gma) says. My mother lived on meat from their smoke house until she was 7 years old, when the family moved "into town" from the deep rural countryside. There were 8 siblings who lived to adulthood so counting my grandmother, 9 of them lived a very simple, live-off-the-land lifestyle. Estimating the age of my mother, I imagine this pic was taken between 1938 and 1040. No one knows who took the pic.

Below is my version of pork breakfast sausage. No food additives and my family LOVES IT. Experiment with the seasonings as you wish. One day I plan to make an "Italian" sausage variation with fennel and caraway seeds, omitting the sage. I'll post the recipe when I've got it right.

The more food I make myself from recipes traditional in my family, the better I feel. "Love food" nourishes the body as well as the soul.

I nursed my children, watching them grow strong and healthy on the love from my own body. The joy of nourishing all my family with recipes from the Sparkling Kitchen overwhelms me with a grateful spirit.

I plan to leave the "post time" and date as-is. I'm in the aura phase of a migraine attack and it may be some time before I can get the recipe itself posted. Right now, today is 11/13/08 and the time is 5:36PM. Sorry So Short (SSS)--


Copyright 2008-2009 Parin Stormlaughter, Sparkling With Crystals, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. I do not grant reprint permission under any circumstances. Contact me to request permission to link. And remember that if my work gets published anywhere else, I'll pray for you. And perhaps take legal action. Rest assured, prayer is far more powerful.