Susan Pruitt

My two cents:   Pastured Organic Eggs are extremely healthy.   Seed oils are extremely toxic unless you're pressing it yourself fresh for short term use.   Processed oils in a bottle are,  well,   processed food!    A renowned cardiologist,  Dr. Esselstyn,   explains it in this video and is echoed by many other "new age nutrition experts"


There are lots of recipes online for dressings with no oil,  usually by blending vegetables like avocado or chick peas  into a creamy 'sauce'   :)

I don't think you can just request "search for any chemicals in my water".   Not an expert here but I think they have to select for specific things.   I went down this research path last summer and concluded like Michael Cox, that the best we can do at this point is remediation (and activism - just thought I'd sneak that in :)  It's so pervasive I don't even trust rainwater anymore and am probably going to have my collected water tested this summer.   I have a local company I will call who charge a couple hundred dollars to send a technician to collect samples and run some basic tests.  

Here's another company that looks interesting.   They've been primarily a medical testing facility but the website says they're starting water testing, you can order a kit, but it's 8am on saturday so no point in calling right now.     They seem very knowledgeable about our concerns

https://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/

Hahahaha!   More like I'll be arrested pending investigation into why there are body parts in my toilet!    Okay guys - I'm sufficiently shamed and I'll never do it again!   The more I think I about it, my rough, already occluded pipes clung to the mass and I'm not going to mess with it.  Calling the plumber to design my new system next week :)

Thanks William.   The bathroom sits over an 18" crawlspace.   The main waste stack which has the cleanout  and vent is in the corner of the room (single story one bath)  The toilet is to the right of the main stack and the tub to the right of that.     The sink is to the left  and drains directly into the waste stack just above the cleanout.   Toilet is to the right of the stack, which drains straight into the ground below the floor.  Tub is on the other side of the toilet, presumably feeding into the toilet drain.   The toilet was the first to clog.   Plunging caused water to back into the tub.  Sink water now causes the small amount of water in the toilet to gurgle and then seeps over to the tub.  

I've tried to open that cleanout but it is too old and crusty - I think it's cast iron.  
 

I know the rule about not putting stuff down the toilet but I really felt that chicken guts are just equivalent to un-processed poop, haha!   I think it was the volume that did it, especially if the old galvanized were already closing in.   Now that I think about it, the toilet's been good in the past but the shower water has been kind of slow to drain for a long time.....I'm a die hard, stubborn  do-it-yourselfer and researched my way through a whole house renovation in the past but plumbing is just so hard I need to cry uncle I guess.   I'll live with it another month until I get my floor plan done.  

thanks folks - yep, I forgot to mention the plunging 100 times a day in my story,  and as Wayne said it's just backing up in the tub.   I have put the guts in the trash in the past - don't know what came over me this time - creeping dementia?

I'm procrastinating on the total replacement project because it's going to be a remodel of the whole kitchen and bath deal and I haven't made all the floor plan decisions or gutted the rooms - maybe this is the cosmic 2x4 to JUST DO IT, lol.    I was hoping someone would have a magic chemistry solution.  I'll look into renting a good power snake - never had any luck with the skinny manual ones.

Question about anaerobic decomposition...    True confession here - because your secrets make you sick - and I need help -  and maybe someone else can learn from my stoooopidity -  aargh!  (must have been my triple Aries/Mars risk-taking influence)  On December 15 I butchered 7 chickens.   I'm very proud that I've used every part of the chickens to make soup and bone broth, and bone meal.   Except I couldn't think of a good use for the guts because I live in the city and don't want to attract animals to my compost pile,  so I decided to flush it down the toilet and can't explain why I didn't just put it in the garbage.      I warned myself it might clog the drain so I put small amounts in at a time, flushing after each deposit.   All seemed fine until a couple days later when the drain got slow, then slower, then pretty much became a slow trickle, as in, 24+ hrs to empty the tub or the toilet.   I thought - it's organic - it will decompose eventually.  I'm still hoping that the total volume just collected in a blob in one of the pipe turns, so after a couple weeks I put some Rid-X in hoping to speed it up.   It's worse.    Then I tried Root Kill - no change.  Vinegar and Baking Soda - no change.     Now it's been a month and I'm tired of taking sponge baths and using a makeshift composting bucket upstairs because I'm too wimpy to use an outdoor loo in winter  (the old lady 3am run you know).  

So I'm appealing to you all to tell me it will be alright in a couple more weeks, or there's another magic catalyst I can pour down, or bite the bullet and call Roto-Rooter.     This is an old house with galvanized drains that I plan to replace this spring anyway so I really hate to spend money on it now.

Thanks folks!   Lots of great info here so I feel better - especially as the more I study nutrition the more committed I am to eating more antioxidants.   The Cooperative Extension article is excellent Mike!   I hadn't thought about searching the term "biotechnology" so I searched again on NC State Extension service and found good articles there too.  And thanks for the GMO list Rebecca.    I was also listening to an interview with Dr. Seneff (MIT scientist researching connection between Roundup and Autism and finding connections to a multitude of health problems)  who mentioned that sunflowers are being sprayed and causing defects in birds.   Many crops that are not grown from GMO seed are sprayed to manipulate the harvest.  So I guess the list will continue to grow.   It helps to be able to categorize, as some here have said, that so far it's primarily the "field crops" that are being engineered and sprayed.   I also need to try harder to find local growers selling heritage cuttings.

I cannot find any references to whether or not blueberries have been genetically modified.   I've bought plants in the past from Lowes and Willis Orchards and now that I want to expand my berry selection I'm obsessing over the GMO question - actually for any of the berry family.     I want to grow enough for myself, my chickens (who will pass it on to me :)  and possibly sell some.  There's lots of articles about growing them organically but even the vendors don't specify whether their plants are "organic" or non-gmo.

Thanks Eric - I have, indeed, been following your compost story and will be watching your shrooms too :)  I'm pretty much on the same path as you but don't have the discipline to photo and write a journal reliably :(

Travis we all are influenced by our backgrounds, the people we are surrounded with, and just life in general getting in the way of critical thinking about every little thing!   Please don't shame yourself.   I only learned about Roundup 4 years ago after using it liberally in my urban landscape.   20 years ago I trusted our government and big businesses to do the right thing.   Now- I'm very cautious about trusting any business.    Dr. Seneff does mention agent orange briefly towards the end - as being in the same class as Roundup.   Other smart doctors I've watched believe that DNA pre-disposes someone to a certain disease but that's only under certain conditions,  and there's a lot of evidence that nutrients via diet and supplements are very effective in preventing/minimizing/treating diseases, and repairing DNA damage caused by environmental toxins,   I can share some other sources of info for anyone who's intereseted :)