Anti-vaccination sentiment is still spreading in our communities. People have lost faith in the authorities and in the medical field, and they are finding their own way. Unfortunately for them, the decision not to vaccinate their children will backfire.

Just this morning I read that there is a Measles outbreak ongoing in Ohio. For months now I've been reading about a resurgence of polio in New York. And of course Military personnel will no longer be required to take the Covid vaccine. The backlash against vaccination (what people perceive as an assault on bodily autonomy) will result in an increased death rate from vaccinatable diseases.

It's not an easy question, when and how to vaccinate. I don't exactly trust the official recommendations either, because I know that the guidelines are created by a council packed with representatives of Big Pharma. I am sympathetic with those who are skeptical. And I see the writing on the wall. If you don't vaccinate smartly, you are destined to be diseased.

There are a lot of anti-vax media personalities and websites that are spreading a bunch of BS. You can't believe everything you read on the internet. Of course you know that. But you also can't believe everything you read that you already agree with. If you seek "information" that supports your current position about ANYTHING, you could be allowing Confirmation Bias to steer you into a trap.

Rather than seeking supportive information, seek out the information that tries to prove your belief wrong. Test your belief. Check your understanding against what the experts say. Check your medical knowledge against the CDC, or come bounce it on me. I am not parroting anyone's sound bytes, I am a true student of medicine. I am interested in scientific studies or background information that sheds light on the hard questions.

The problem with the anti-vax craze is that a lot of the so-called "information" is coming from people who have zero science background and very little understanding of the actual risks and benefits of vaccination. Unfortunately for the anti-vaxxers, their sources are misguided and downright wrong about a lot of things. And they and their kids will suffer and die as a result.

I am always one to look for silver linings, and this particular situation has just one, which is that a reduction in the human population would be a quick way to reduce our impact on the planet. We are destroying habitat and polluting air and water at such a rate as to cause massive suffering and death in the not-so-distant future. Anti-vaxxers are offering to remove themselves and their children from the human population which will be a boon to future generations who survive diseases because their ancestors were vaccinated.

15% OF COVID DEATHS LINKED TO LONG AIR POLLUTION EXPOSURE
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/27/new-study-links-air-pollution-15-percent-of-covid-19-deaths

Don't Be A Superspreader!  They start more cases than the rest of us.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/just-10-20-of-covid-19-cases-behind-80-of-transmission-studies-suggest/

Tear Gas: The Whole Story
https://www.propublica.org/article/tear-gas-is-way-more-dangerous-than-police-let-on-especially-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic

The Party Might be Virtual but Our Pride is Not
https://theweek.com/articles/917795/pride-celebrations-virtual-during-coronavirus-pandemic
​
You Probably Want a Flu Shot This Year
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/502166-the-next-covid-19-challenge-convincing-people-to-get-their-flu-shots

A 17 year old Tracks Disease and Protest better than the Government
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/12/1002838/avi-schiffmann-17-year-old-guide-building-pandemic-protest-tracker/
​
​Diabetes is a Risk Factor for COVID, and COVID is a risk factor for Diabetes
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2018688

Cases in India Take Off
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-cases-covid-19?country=~IND

Cases Increase as States Open: Wear a Mask
https://apnews.com/feb4c26d9364497cf82ee7c0c1b1b3d5

T-Cells are Part of the Immunity You Need
​https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2820%2930610-3

The EPA sets limits for pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other chemicals on food, and those limits are not zero. There's no way you can avoid every toxin in or on commercial food, but it's worth some effort to minimize your exposures. Young people and children have the most to gain in terms of healthy life years.

Some contaminants are easier to remove than others. Strawberries are covered in little pores and it is impossible to get the pesticides off (out) of them, so it is important to buy those organic or choose another fruit. Apples are also hard to clean because they can have a coat of parrafin (to make them shiny) that seals in the pesticides. Potatoes may be less important to buy organic if you peel off a good layer and boil them too.  Boiling has been shown to remove or destroy some of the contaminants.

A review of the literature reveals that washing your veggies in tap water for 30 seconds actually removes most of the pesticides and fungicides. Unfortunately there are some that water does not remove, including chlorpyrifos (a nerve-gas pesticide) and vinclozolin (a fungicide). Thankfully these are removed by soaking in an acid solution, acetic acid being the most effective. Acetic acid is vinegar. The longer you soak your veggies the more of the chlorpyrifos is removed. My rule is to soak my cherries in a 5% vinegar solution for at least an hour.

Why do we care about chlorpyrifos? You may have heard about it in the news. It was originally developed as a nerve gas by the Nazis. Now it is used as a pesticide because it paralyzes insects. No surprise that it also wreaks havoc on the human nervous system. It was slated to be banned until Trump got elected. It's already banned for indoor use. Dow chemical (the maker of chlorpyrifos) donated a million bucks to Trump's inauguration fund to make sure that their profitable poison would remain legal. The EPA reversed course and this toxin will be sprayed on veggies and golf courses, in spite of the fact that it shrinks and deforms children's brains, lowers their IQs, and is linked to lung cancer and Parkinsons. Chlorpyrifos sticks to fruit even when it's rinsed in tap water.

For the foreseeable future we will need to work to avoid this toxin as best we can. This means seeking clean sources for our produce (gardens, farmer's markets, buying organic), washing it, peeling and boiling what can be peeled and boiled, and soaking plants that we eat with the skin on in a vinegar solution for at least an hour.

If you need a little good news to help wash off the sad feeling about all this poison, below are the kinds of food least likely to be contaminated. =-] Eat more of them.

We humans are part of the web of life in a way that is somewhat unpleasant to consider.  We think of parasites as those things that grow on trees and use the tree's sap for fuel, like mistletoe. We know about the parasites that you can get in your gut from traveling. But we don't like to think about the millions of microbes that live in our guts, on our skin, in our noses, and unfortunately, inside every cell in our bodies.  In fact, at least of quarter of us have Staphylococcus aureus living inside our noses.  This is the microbe that is called MRSA when it has become resistant to the antibiotic methycillin.

Sometimes the things that live on and in us are actually useful.  At that point it is no longer a parasitic relationship, it is more of a synbiosis or eubiosis.  There are bugs (microbes) in our guts that help digest our food, and also that make vitamins that we need.  Mitochondria are organelles inside our cells that were probably parasites at one time, but they were so useful that we came to depend on them.  They make ATP, the cash of energy currency in the body.  We know that mitochondria were most likely independent organisms because they have their own DNA.

Relatively recently in human history, a bold man drank a potion of Helicobacter pylori bacteria, and gave himself gastric ulcers.  Before that we didn't know that particular bug had much to do with ulcer formation.  But now we know.  And most of us have at least a few of this bug in us.  In fact, pretty much all of us have a few of lots of different kinds of bugs that could be dangerous if they overgrew.

We get some microbes from our parents, and gain new ones throughout life. Babies who are born the normal way, through their mother's vagina, get their mother's vaginal flora in their mouths and swallow it.  That sets up the kind of biota that lives in their guts for life.  Usually a child's gut biota is fairly stable by age 3. A lot of our gut biota depends on what we eat.  A sugary diet sets up a whole different community than a vegetable and fiber-rich diet. You can guess at which one is better for you. A stable community in your gut is protective because it stops other kinds from getting established. People with very stable healthy populations of bugs in their guts can eat anything and never get sick from it.


Stomach acid is the other normal way that we prevent new or bad bugs from setting up house inside us.  Infants don't have much acid, so they are especially susceptible to whatever they eat.  Adults normally have such strong acid that not much survives the stomach and gets to the intestines. But if we block our stomach acid with anti-acids, we are at risk for getting the wrong kinds of bugs in our guts.


The fastest way to mess up your microbial communities is to take antibiotics. The more high powered the drugs, the more imbalanced your biota will be as a result. The more often you take antibiotics, the more the remaining community will be antibiotic resistant.  The bug that really hits hard on people who've taken a lot of antibiotics is called Clostridium difficile.  It is on the CDC's list of extremely dangerous antibiotic resistant bugs.


In naturopathic-speak we call your body the "terrain".  It is the ground upon which things grow. The list of possible infections is endless, and the number of bugs on and in you this very moment is also endless. As long as we are strong and relaxed and young enough, we don't get sick.  When we get run down and weak the microbes can get the better of us.  Stress from life events raises our cortisol and decreases our immune response, and the microbial populations start booming.  We feed them sugary junk, and don't exercise enough, and don't keep our bowel movements regular, and they start running the show.  It is possible to end up sick from the same bugs that you've been carrying around for 40 years or more.

There's new research that shows that depression, anxiety, and obesity are linked to particular sets of gut bugs.  Experiments in mice and humans have shown that taking the microbes from an anxious person's gut and putting them in a calm person will make change what we thought was their personality.  And switching gut bugs in mice can make a fat mouse skinny and vice versa.  The wrong gut bugs are linked to all kinds of diseases of the gut, from ulcerative colitis and crohn's disease to IBS.  There's a lot more information coming down the pipe about this.  Supplement companies are trying to figure out how to introduce the right microbes into people's guts to help them heal from various diseases and mental states.

There's not much you can do about the fact that you will be exposed to microbes.  No amount of antibacterial soap will protect you.  The thing that will is keeping yourself healthy and calm enough to mount a good immune response.  That way you keep the populations down to reasonable levels, where they may even help you somehow.  Oh, and garlic will help.  Garlic turns out to be the very simplest way to keep your gut biota in line.  If you can stand it, some raw garlic every day kills the baddies and keeps the goodies.  If you can't stand it, you might need some more advanced help.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases a list of best products each year, and it has come out.  Look here before you buy another bottle!

The Key Points about Sunscreen:

1)    SEEK sunscreen that contains zinc oxide or avobenzone to protect against UVA.

2)    SEEK sunscreen with an SPF between 15 and 50.

3)    REAPPLY your sunscreen often, no matter the SPF.

4)    AVOID any type of application other than rubbing cream onto your skin.  No powders, sprays or towelettes.

5)    AVOID Super high SPF (over 50).  SPF only refers to protection against UVB (the burning rays); they may not protect against UVA which can accelerate aging and cause cancer.

6)    AVOID:
           a. Oxybenzone.  It’s estrogenic and linked to endometriosis.
           b. Retinyl Palmitate in sunscreen.  It might make lesions grow faster.
           c. Bug Repellant in your sunscreen.

SOURCE
http://www.ewg.org/2013sunscreen/what-not-to-bring-on-vacation/

Every year the Environmental Working Group tests fruit and vegetables from grocery stores and comes up with their list of the most pesticide-contaminated foods.  This year's list is almost entirely food that I personally eat, so I am very glad that we are growing a lot of them in our home garden.  The spinach overwintered and came up on its own!  But for the foods that are on the list, which we don't grow, I plan to buy organic.  I would recommend that you do, too.  Only by voting with our dollars can we change the market.  Without further ado, the dirty dozen:

1. Apples (99% of apples tested were contaminated)
2. Strawberries (these are bad because it goes in the pores and you can't wash or soak it off)
3. Grapes (one grape tested positive for 15 different pesticides)
4. Celery
5. Peaches
6. Spinach
7. Bell Peppers
8. Nectarines
9. Cucumbers
10. Potatoes
11. Cherry Tomatoes
12. Hot Peppers (looks like they lumped a lot of kinds of peppers together)

Well folks I've relocated my kit and caboodle from SE to SW Portland.  I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that moving incurs stress equivalent to a death in the family.  I hope that's not true because I've moved so many times it would be like having lost my whole family more than once.  I think that would be worse.  Still, it's stressful.  Even now I am looking for my slippers, my clippers, my this and that.  Nothing is normal for a while after a move.  But it's getting better.

I just received word that Satya Ambrose and her team have finally found a suitable site for our dream hospital.  It is 84 acres of old growth forest beside the mighty Clackamas River here in Oregon.  The hospital is intended to be a lovely inpatient facility where one can go to heal, recover and renew.  Imagine a room with a view of the forest and river, excellent fresh organic food, cheerful staff and supportive treatments, instead of invasive procedures, benign neglect and crappy hospital food!  At this point we need investors and contributors who can help purchase the property and break ground on the facility.  We need to raise several hundred thousand dollars in a few weeks.  Do you want to help?  Please contact Satya.  Comment and I will provide you with phone numbers.