100 Days - What is Life?

What is life exactly?

I’ve come to realize that LIFE is not only what is taking place outside of us, around us, with us and to us – it should be equally (perhaps more so?) inside of us. And for me, for a very long time, if ever at all – there was little life to be lived on the inside.

My gut had ‘dead-spots’, it was leaky, and generally non functioning in the appropriate ways to sustain life. By that I mean – there were not enough beneficial organisms helping me digest food, extract nutrients and make vitamins. 

Over the years I have seen more and more people with these dead areas in their guts mostly as a result of antibiotic medication but another big culprit are birth control pills, chlorinated water, the too numerous to count chemicals in our food and the fact that our guts are not set up from birth in the first place anymore.

Our mothers cannot pass on organisms to us as babies they no longer have, not that many of us were breast fed in the past few generations but these organisms when they are available, find ways to get to and inside of us even without the breast feeding. When they are present, they will be in our environment as well.

It appears as if entire species of gut flora have simply died off inside of our guts and are no longer to be found in the modern human.

For quite some time people have been aware of these facts (antibiotic use is deadly in so many ways) and they have been taking steps to get their probiotic flora back on track and literally regrow  damaged gut biofilm….however I am not convinced we are doing enough nor are these always the right kind of organisms that are needed to colonise our bodies. 

We have been convinced by those who manufacture these bugs that there are a narrow group of 3 or 4 types of bacterial strains and this will do the entire job of keeping us healthy, setting up our immune response, digesting food, healing and sealing the gut and to generally carry out some of the numerous other vital functions of gut flora.

I think this is entirely wrong thinking. 

We are off tract in the gut microbes department and we are paying the price with poorer health, more chronic dis-ease and a complete inability to protect ourselves from ordinary (read necessary) viruses and bugs that have co-evolved alongside humanity for millennium. 

So what to do about all of this?

One place to start is to grow a garden. Get your hands dirty, then eat some real raw foods that you’ve had a hand in producing. Next, take some of those raw foods and create kitchen magic by making sauerkrauts, kimchee, kombucha types of drinks, natural and wild yeasted foods and some of the many other alchemical processes we know can increase the presence of beneficial bacteria in and around us. 

If you want your health, body and soul back – it’s time to take back your life and that begins on the inside.

Vegetables growing in the garden......

Check out my upcoming classes on Wild Fermentation & Food Alchemy 

Onwards & Upwards - Days 6 to 9 of my Fast

Day 6 – 9

Right now I am on day 9 of this spring detox and it has been quite interesting to say the least. For starters, we broke our fast on day 6 for a few hours and ate garlic, some fermented veggies and thick smoothies with fruit. 

I am still very focused on getting all those lovely probiotics into my system – with nothing at all to slow them down! Actually, I am finding this quite easy for the most part and every system in my body is thanking me for the effort.

The next day, after our little interlude of different types of fermented foods, we carried on with liquid only fasting and have been back taking in herbal teas, fermented drinks, apple cider vinegar and beet root fermented juices again. 

Of course fasting gets easier each time I do it, but only because I get smarter about it! These fermented drinks are like liquid gold – tasty, filling and doing the job as far as gut health is concerned. Far easier then the lemon and maple syrup mixture of years ago and with faster results (but, that was a different stage of healing as well).

However, I was a bit concerned that it would be difficult to stop and start fasting again; just like that – taking a few hours out to get more solid sources of fermented foods in to me …but I found, it was just the opposite. The fermented veggies and garlic blended in nicely with our goals to flood our systems with probiotics – so it was an easy transition back to liquids.

So, you remember how I mentioned over this past few months we have been fasting in so many different ways? Well, perhaps we are now forging ahead with yet another type of fast – a few days on liquids, then a few hours on solids, the liquids again – all of it including probiotic and fermented foods, BUT, also the substrates needed to grow the beneficial bacteria once they are in our systems.

Now, as for the detox process itself….

Even with the few hours in-between we are still having all the usual detox symptoms and feeling very productive and energetic as a bonus. Usually my detox symptoms range from a headache, coated tongue, tiredness which comes and goes, bursts of energy, old memories surfacing and a need to clean (everything!) LOL.

Did I mention the clear skin, bright eyes and being able to smell, taste and sense the forces of nature....hmmm sounds like a new puppy! 

Right now I am not sure how long I will keep going, it’s just nice to feel cleaned out – we are still taking this one day at a time.

April

Wild Harvest Cordial - even my cordials are medicinal.... This one is Elderberry & Elderflower - an immune boost from nature! On my stand this week in Clonakilty & Skibbereen Farmers Markets