Kat deZwart

Well folks, I just decided to take the plunge and plonk some into my lunchtime parsnip soup. It was wonderful. Very dark-earthy tasting and going well with parsnips on that account. So it seems the stuff is practically immortal. If I was wrong, then this will be my last post  

While rooting around in my cellar I dug out a jar of dark Miso premade by Clearspring. It claims to be unpasteurised and organic. Only, I bought it in like 2010 and it had a useby date somewhere in 2012. It still looks completely fine though. Since' I'm generally not to finicky about older food and use my own smell and taste to determine if things are still edible, I'm feeling like eating it. But Miso is an aquired taste and my palate is not yet developed to the the stage to diffentiate between "mmm, strong" and "oy, off" flavours in miso. What I think of as mmm, might still be spoiled or gone bad and I might toss it due to strong flavours that are new to me, but not neccessarily bad.

So, can miso go bad?

Bonnie Kuhlman wrote:Lots of bone broth from pastured animals.  I would also add gelatin (add to cool water/liquid for a few minutes to bloom, then heat), or make gelatin with juice/herbal tea.  Great Lakes is a good brand of gelatin.  Add nettle to broth.  Nettle has LOTS of vitamins and minerals.

Make a nettle infusion - 1 ounce herb in a quart jar, cover with boiling water, infuse 4 hours or overnight.  Drink this throughout the day.  Can add other herbs for flavor - mint, lemon.  Infuse comfrey the same way, but I would use mostly nettle internally, comfrey externally.

Whole food vitamin C such as rose hips, camu camu, amla.  I mix these but you can buy a similar formula from Synergy Co.  

Raw honey can be applied to the wound for healing.  I would also add lots of garlic to the diet.

Hope these help.  (I'm an herbalist)

Bonnie

This is very good advice.

I'd just like to add to the discussion that you might want to be careful about more intense herbs, especially if there are (post-operative) regular medicines being used too. To often people think that the magic fairy of a herb will heal you from the inside because of some vague whoo-ish claim. In essence it's all about biochemistry. We use the natural chemical makeup of certain plants to influence our body's processes. And in this, less if often more with either herbal or regular medicine, and interactions are a real thing.

Whenever the field of a local organic farm gets swamped in dandylions I'm torn between making dandylion syrup and dandylion portwine. The syrup is simple, but fiddly: you need to have about a literjug full of flowerpetals, without the green (that gives a bitter flavour), put that in about a liter of water with a sliced organic lemon and a spliced vanillapod. Let steep overnight, and in the morning bring to a boil, sieve and add 500 grams of sugar. Will keep for a long time. If you boil it to long, it looses much of its flavour though.
I'm in a mind to do the same with lavender this year. Or roses...

Bill Erickson wrote:
They should also last in the refrigerator up to six weeks. Since my girls are so prolific in the summer time, I have become quite determined in the preservation department.

Maybe it's a european thing and we aren't raised to be squirmish about eggs. We just have an old fridge in the shed partly dedicated to the eggs from our four hens (we have a 2 person household). We put them per dozen in reused but clean eggboxes. We do NOT wash the eggs though. If they are dirty, they don't go to storage but are washed and used immediately for heated purposes. Once in cool storage we can keep edible them for about a year. After about 3 months they no longer get hardboiled, but just are used in baking and omelettes and stuff. The eggwhite thickens a bit due to dehydration. Sometimes the yoke sticks a bit to the shell too. But I always crack each egg individually and last winter I only tossed 1 real stinker, 2 bad ones without the stink and about 4 I was in doubt about. The rest we happily eat and we never got sick. They do taste fine after storage too.

Celia Revel wrote:Hi Kat,

I read all your reasoning and feelings on the subject, but even still, you are basically just guessing. Are you sure bile is made up of lye? That stuff is so caustic, it can eat the flesh off your body

English is not my main language, I used the word to indicate a pH higher than 7 (so as an opposite to "acidic"). In Dutch we call it "basic" but I don't know if that translates the right way. By no way I meant soapmaking caustic soda / NaOH if that is what you are assuming. There are many lyes, not all pH14. I presumed it to be contextual clear.

Still: I feel that when I post a response that mainly prompts people to think for themself and be critical of youtubemovies giving medical advise without any caveats - like it was posted here - it's rather uncalled for to dismiss all arguments with the (unfounded) accusation of "just guessing". Rather I feel it's the responsibility of the OP to not only cut-paste some information, but also to delve into the depts of contra-indications, risks and research on the subject before dispensing advise. I only did what I feel was nesseccary to balance the information given. That said, unless there are on-topic points do discuss further, let's agree to disagree. My time is to scarce to spent on offtopic bickering.

To recap (and remember, just my 2cents, not neccessarily "the truth"):

- I do think that for a lot of people, a periodic juicefast is a healthy habit, mimicking the natural fluctuations in available food that the body needs (ideally, synchoniced with the seasons, in spring, dense food is scarce, and a lot of young, bitter greens are livercleansers by nature, allowing the body to rid of the buildup of toxins produced by eating highfat, highprotein and high-starch in winter.
- I do think that, for generally healthy people suffering only minor issues, a shock to the system is good every once in a while, and forcing liver and gall bladder to completely empty themselves every once in a while by overdosing on fat, can help rejuvinate those organs.

Yet:
- I despise the way it is presented as a cure-all, cancerremedy, etcetcetc because it's bogus. It does help, also with malignant disease, to cleanse, but it does not cure on it's own...
- I believe that those with genuine healthconcerns should either consult a naturopath that is well-versed in the application of these and other therapies (or go to a "normal" doc, to their discretion) or educate themselves thouroughly (not by internetbrowsing) to help themselves and those around them by following high quality courses or taking on an apprenticeship, but not dabble on because the internet says so
- I think that the whole backgroundstory of how many stones etc is idiocy and distracts from the essence: learning to be aware what it has done to your body: feeling inside, not counting outside the body. And yes: I do consider it a trick to "proof" something that isn't relevant.

So, if Celia feels it has done her some good, well, go on then. But others might get very sick by doing so, or disrupt their internal system to do more harm then good.

Hi Celia,

I don't think it's a soap formed, but saponification is not the only chemical reaction that allows oils to solidify. Bile is a mixture of lye, salts, cholesterol, (green and other) pigments, enzymes etcetcetc. The oliveoil is premixed with juice so it forms an acidic emulsion even before hitting the digestive track. So while I agree that "the stones are just soap" is probably a non-argument, neither can the fact that that single argument is invalid be used as a argument to state that the stones are real (sorry for the twist in logic).

I think the truth is somewhere down the middle, as always: real gallstones (as in medical literature) are solid, calcified, mainly composed of the bilesalts. They sink in the toilet, do not dissolve in water nor float. Small, fresh formed gallstones are brittle, dry, but not the fatty green blobs you passed the most of. Yet, I've found such green globules in the canals of a calfsliver I prepared for my cats once, so I do think they can originate from the liver, if not from the gallbladder. I still feel like the bulk of the passed "stones" is gelled up olive oil (that has been premixed with the grapefruitjuice), mixed with stomach acid, bile and passed though the digestive system to form green globules. Otherwise, you should have fatty stool afterwards, with the oil just floating on top. Since that doesn't happen, and you dont gain weight over night which would indicate that the fat is digested, the olive oil is somewhere in those "stones".

As in regards to the black stones: Dark brown to black are pigments that are in (often older) bile, so it can be the same as the green stones, a signal that the bileduct emptied itself completely. It might be a few real gallstones, especially if the black ones are relatively small ones. Black is also a colour that can come from the liver, or it might indicate anything from a stomach ulcer to a bleeding in the smaller intestine. Bleeding in the large intestine would show as red. It could also be stuck old food (especially if you eat meat) that came lose from the intestinal lining due to the flush.

As to the: "when people empty the bladder and livers, no more stones pass" I've done it a few times in succession myself and know a load of fellowstudents who did it themselves. Some really healthy rawveganfellows. Yet they all continue to create stones, one time more than the other. I have yet to hear of one person who stops producing the green fatty floaty stones. It's part of the myth that everyone repeats, but no-one checks. That's part of the danger, people just follow the advise of others without educating themselves on the subject. If I altered the recipe and added a tad of ratpoison "to kill intestinal parasites" and posted it online, I wonder how many people would just be selfdosing themselves with poison.

I've done the flushthhingie a few times, while studieing as a naturopath.

This flush may be beneficial to get rid of a heaviness and feeling of toxicity in the colon, but don't be fooled by how many "stones" you passed, that part of the theory behind it is just bullc**p. Actually, if you had gallstones one inch in diameter, trying the flush would send you into the ER. Most of the "stones" that are claimed are made of the fresh oil consumed the evening of the actual flush, solidified by your own gall-fluid. The "moving of the stones" often described is the emptieing of the gallbladder, which can feel like slight cramps. The whole cult around the flush is the result of the work of Hulda Clark, who, while having some points to her merit, might be considered, on the whole, a quack.

It's mainly the benefit of the juicefast on the days surrounding the flush and the extreme laxative solution made from epsom salts that is doing the trick. So it falls into the same category as colonic irigation, fasting, colonics with stuff like coffee. If it works for you, fine, but don't recommend it as a miracle cure.

Teatreeoil is good for topical application. I use it straight, but people with sensitive skin might want to dilute it into a carrieroil.

It also makes a great mouthwash, but you just shouldn't swallow it...

If wanting to use teatree internally, one can opt for a raw manuka honey, since it contains a lot of the same volutile components, but in a natural edible form