tuffy monteverdi

Actually the Liberator rocket heater guys have actually gone through all the modifications (if needed) and paperwork to bring their Rocket heater to EPA air quality and safety standards.

That is something I looked for when purchasing one. I appreciated that extra safety step(s) greatly.

“Already built and properly built, safety and longevity-wise* were key to our decision.

I would have loved it even more if some kind of mass came with it, prefab’d.
Our house is small, so the RH is highly functional as is, but I know it could be even more useful w mass.  It’s unlikely to be built by us, unfortunately. That would involve a whole rabbit hole into safe and correct ways of doing this in the (very small) space available 😔

I realize we appear ignorant and un-enterprising compared to all you experts, but that’s just the situation here- we are busy elsewhere in our lives, by choice.

Ken Peavey wrote:Aloe.  Cut the leaf open, wipe it all over, gooey side down. 

Also, a cool shower will help.  So does ice-try it in a ziplock bag.  A damp towel can help cool you down.  Cooling is important, the heat energy must be removed-thats the cause of the burn.  The blood vessels are expanded, offering heat from the inside which also needs to be removed.

Cool down first, then use the aloe.  Stay in the shade, wear soft, loose, breathable clothing such as cotton.  If you go outside, keep the sun off your burn by wearing dark clothing.  Some will tell you white, but it lets the sun in.  Some say don't wear dark, it takes on heat, that's why it has to be breathable material.

Ken,
Yes!
Cool down is most important.
I’ve found Bad burns, like from the cook stove take a good couple of hours of very cold water soaks to dissipate the heat. The burns disappear completely then. No blisters, no pain, no redness!
If I’ve still got pain, I know to soak more

I’ve been told it’s important not to use freezing water or ice though.

*Cold* air conditioning, for several hours believe it or not, works GREAT for sunburn for same reason. Though cold water is more conducting than air. (Though getting rid of the burn, does not get rid of UV damage of skin cells however).

And yes, AFTER heat is dissipated, THEN use aloe or other succulent gels. 👍

Melba Corbett wrote:If you can't get hydrogen peroxide, use lemon juice, diluted in warm water, at least half and half.  I used it on my infant daughter some 35 years ago and it worked immediately.  The only time she was ever sick was an infection in her ears after flying in a plane.  (probably due to the toxic chemicals they use to disinfect them).  

Caveats and upfront statements:
My writing here does not constitute treatment advice for anybody. These are written personal experiences only. And basic anatomical facts that I’ve looked up on my own.

Yes 🙌
The reason lemon juice solution works, is the same reason a vinegar solution works:
It changes the pH of the ear canal back to normal.
The ear canal has an acidic pH ranging from 2.9-4.5. Average around 3.5.
That is VERY acidic.

Some facts:
•When an ear infection occurs in the external canal, the pH goes up, ie the pH goes alkaline, significantly.
•The normal bacterial and fungal flora of the ear canal growing in such an acidic pH, is VERY different from the bacteria and fungi that are responsible for an ear infection.
•And these abnormal flora can ONLY take hold and cause an infection when the environmental pH changes and becomes less hospitable to good bacteria (that colonize and protect the ear canal from invasion) and more hospitable to infection bacteria.
•Bacterial infections occur first, usually. Fungal infections set in after that. But not always.
•People vary genetically in their susceptibility to ear canal pH changes that last long enough to allow ear infections to occur. (This is true for vaginal infections too).
•Most ear infections, (and vaginal infections by same mechanisms) can be easily cured simply by changing the pH of the ear canal back to its normal pH.
•A really bad ear infection should probably be cultured at a doctor’s office just so one can know if it’s also fungal infection on top of bacterial infection, or if it is a serious bacterial infection that can cause further harm elsewhere should it enter the inner ear, nervous system, or GI system.
And a bad infection might need the help of conventional medicine just to get it out of one’s system.
If the ear drum is broken, you’ll definitely want to see a doctor.

How does the ear canal become more alkaline?
(I’ve learned both from experience and from textbooks) :
•Diet is a big one: sweets/sugars/white flours/ etc can significantly change pH and encourage the growth of infectious bacteria.
•Swimming is another - one is dousing the east with alkaline waters or water that has a preponderance of bacteria that can take hold when our pH isn’t quite right.
•Food or other allergies - whether slight or unknown, or more significant- can cause enough inflammation that the pH can turn alkaline slightly, and allow for a secondary infection to set in. And then they build on each other and further increase pH, and then one’s off to the races w a full blown ear infection.
•Itching one’s ears causes more inflammation, which in turn raises the pH again, which causes more infection, and so on…
•”Bummer genetics” that don’t allow for a stable acidic pH in one’s ear.


Treatment:
Acid solution.
“Right the Wrong, by Righting the pH”.  
But not too acid or too little acid. Both of those extremes will *discourage* the right flora to grow.
(I’ve found) it should be an acid solution of around pH 3-4, same as the ear canal, tested by either a test strip (simple but more crude) or a calibrated pH meter (most accurate).

Hydrogen peroxide is acidic so that’s why it works. But, it’s also a chemical….
I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect it could make it a bit more difficult for ANY bacteria to grow, as it kills most of them.
(That’s how chemical disinfectants work too: kill everything).
And I wonder if peroxide could also cause microscopic local skin cell or follicle changes? I don’t know this info for sure.

But to bring it back to permaculture principles, it’s like soil pH: change it and the right microbes grow. Kill everything w a chemical and yeah you’ll get some relief from some pests, and a period of no growth, but you’ll also get impairment in the ability of the soil to grow good organisms and insects and plants to absorb nutrients via those good organisms.

Anyway:
The nice thing about lemon or vinegar is that it doesn’t wipe out *everything* or cause undesirable changes in the local skin cells - as far as I can tell..
It probably does a number on alkaline-growing bacteria though! But it will nicely and pretty quickly encourage the right flora.

So:
•I Use a simple pH strip to check the pH of my solutions. (cheap books of them on Amazon for 4$)
I measure out plain white table/cooking vinegar or lemon juice, plus water to get an acidic solution of about pH 3-4 in a squirt bottle or just a dropper bottle..

I find this solution works out to be ~about~ 1/4 acid (*white table* vinegar concentration, NOT industrial concentrated vinegar!) to 3/4 water. That’s just a guide.
How much acid to add depends on the starting pH of your water of course, too, and what kind of vinegar (apple cider/rice/wine/acetic acid/etc) and which concentration is used. Apple cider vinegar is less acidic than white vinegar, for example.
*(There’s industrial highly concentrated vinegar too - I’d NEVER use that, it could burn out one’s skin and ears).*
Lemon juice is quite acidic - I believe estimates are around pH 2-3.

It’s VERY important to test the pH of one’s solution before use. It would not be good to cause harm by using a solution that is too acidic or too alkaline.  

Results:
Instant relief, if I do this often while I have the infection. Only one treatment needed if gotten early on.  The solution causes copious balls of crud (it’s often dried up at that point!) to come out on its own, via the tiny hair follicles in the ear canal that actively push this stuff out for us.

So in conclusion:
I’ve found continuous dropping of acid solution at 3-4 pH, into the ear, is a great treatment for infection. And periodic use is a great preventative for ear infections and inflammations I get.
*The minute I feel the slightest itch, I start applying the acid solution. I just keep a bottle of it going*.  
🙏

Permethrin vs Tick disease… everyone’s hard choice.

Just be aware that Permethrin, like many other pesticides, has hormonal influence on mammals including humans. It is apparently estrogenic in females and anti-testosterogenic in males 😬😳

Also it absorbs really well into skin.
Maybe only spray it on clothing?

Check out the research:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15599112/

We used to have lots of ticks. Now we get maybe 1 or two a year.

What worked for us was to fix our environment.
We have the animals graze down the property to 4-6”. Then use weed whacker to cut anything to 4-6” that the animals didn’t get.
This is so ticks can’t drop on us from high up.
And, so birds, mammals, amphibians, and lizards can easily find the ticks and eat them.

We encourage ground insect eating birds like wild turkeys (we have a flock of like 35 come daily from neighboring wildlands) to come to our place by never having our dogs out without supervision, and having a thriving environment here for them (that neighbors with lawns or chemicallybtraayed land, simply don’t have).
Pheasants, quail, and Towhees also eat them. As do insectivorous mammals like possums and skunks (which we also encourage here).
Certainly chickens eat about a pound of ticks a day per chicken, so that’s a viable solution too (IF you can 100% secure the grain, if feeding that. More on that later). We don’t have chickens tho. We rely on the wild birds, as noted.

We don’t go the spray or chemical treatment routes for our property, because this kills so many other vital parts of the full circle system.
It seems the more one sprays, the more problems one gets in the future.

Rodent control is a big one. Rodents - mice in particular are what really bring in Lyme disease on ticks - much more so than deer, research shows.
So we make sure we have no rodents: we don’t use or grow grain here, so that’s a big attraction neutralized. We’ve sealed our home and nooks and crannies in the barn where they could nest.
We use tall hard plastic water buckets for livestock that rodents can’t climb to get water, and we don’t put the buckets next to fences.
We’ve enclosed all kitchen compost piles in large wood-framed gopher wire pens, that rodents can’t enter. Compost piles from leaves + grass + manure from ruminant animals that aren’t fed grain, are not attractive to rodents in our experience… so those do not need to be enclosed. Just covered and turned EOD for a continuous supply of rich monthly compost! .
Lastly re rodents, we don’t mind feral cats roaming, so that helps w discouraging rodents too. Tho we really dislike their bird killing.
Yeah rodents don’t like our place, nothin’ for ‘em here 😁

Lastly we encourage lizards, who enjoy eating ticks, by providing them with wood and rock piles frequently throughout our property. (The lambs like to climb these too, so win-win).

Something cool that probably folks already know about, but I’ll mention anyway, is that certain lizard species have a really cool compound in their blood stream that effectively neutralizes  the Lyme disease bacteria in ticks when they bite lizards. So if the ticks then bite something else, no Lyme disease can be transmitted. This may well be true or partially true of other tick borne organisms too, but these have not been researched as well, yet.
But Lyme bacteria (Borrelia bergdorferi) is effectively neutralized for sure.
Very cool 👍

Larisa Walk wrote:It's incorrect to say that ticks need to bite for several hours to transmit an infectious organism. In the case of erlichiosis or anaplasmosis the transfer happens at the instant of the bite, much like malaria is spread by mosquito bites. Some of the nasties, like Lyme, do give you a bit of time to get the tick removed. Better to keep them from biting at all to be on the safe side. I know this from experience.

Totally agree Larissa
Some tick borne organisms are instantly infected by a tick bite, and, these happen to be super serious diseases. Nearly all affect red & white blood cell counts, and weaken our immune system’s fighting capacity  
Best not get get bitten at all.

Su Ba wrote:Happened to see this discussion…….not that I plan to debate the pros and cons. Just wanted to interject some information to clear up what I noted as a tad of confusion……

Precocious lactation —— it happens with mammals. The animal produces milk even though it was not pregnant. It most commonly occurs with pseudo pregnancy, that is, a false pregnancy. BUT in my vet practice I have seen both cats and dogs be precocious milkers. It is quite uncommon but it happens. And decades ago, one of my friends had a young Alpine doe do it too. Now here’s a very interesting case: a spayed 2 year old husky bitch adopted a litter of kittens and allowed them to suckle. 2 to 3 weeks later it was noted that the bitch was lactating. She lactated for 4 to 6 (I cannot remember to exact details of the case anymore).

Precocious lactation is not the same as natural lactation. The amount of milk is much reduced and the duration appears to be shorter. I have only seen about half a dozen cases in my veterinary career, so it is not all that common, but it does exist.

YESSSS!! Thank you 🙏
I’m a vet too, it’s been frustrating reading a few of the posts on this thread. Your explanation is much needed here.👍👏

I LOVE audiobooks and great radio productions (BBCRADIO4 is fantastic and free)..

I find I don’t like many readers though.

I pretty much will only buy audiobooks with great readers/narrators.

A good reader/narrator/actor is hard to find. It’s surprising how difficult it actually is to be good at it — just as difficult a job to be really good at, as anything else one pursues, career-wise.

r ranson wrote:The news keeps talking about bluesky.  I noticed more and more creators, news companies, and even some governments, now have bluesky accounts.

I thought it was just a flash in the pan, but it seems to be sticking around and growing.  

Anyone tried it?  

I like it.
I’ve been on it maybe a year?
It has really great hashtag functions and random people don’t really get into one’s hash tagged feeds. I guess their algorithm must be pretty good. (It’s not that a random public member can’t get in, it’s more that they don’t show up one one’s feed).
Also no ads, right now anyway.
It’s basically what Twitter was way back when, but tighter functioning.
Also, I haven’t tried this, but apparently they have “rooms” where it’s just for group member discussion. No public viewing. Kind of like FB I guess.