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 

Building A Gut Profile......Days 10 to 12 of Our Probiotic Fast

Day 10 to 12

We are now on day 13 of our fast and feeling pretty good. To be honest, most of the time I feel as if I could carry on indefinitely – I think this is what it feels like to make progress!

Now, to catch you up on what I have been doing….

Days 10 and 11, we just fasted on our fermented drinks, apple cider vinegar and beet root fermented juices. Oh, and I have increased my intake of herbal teas – now I am including a liver tonic along with the hormone balance herbs.

During my fasts is the only time I have experienced unprecedented healing/balancing/regulating of body systems. Therefore, it always makes sense to me to take in lots of herbal teas anytime I fast because you get results far more quickly. Even if only doing a day here and there, herbal tea is the way to go!

To be honest, I just find that all healing takes place at an unprecedented rate whenever I am fasting….healing a body ‘system’ such as immune, endocrine and especially the digestive tract, is much more straight forward when unimpeded by food, debris and by products of metabolism. 

Of course, our bodies heal from the top down, inside out, however, the largest fires will be put out first. So, healing takes time and continued effort on our parts. Deeper inflammation takes the longest. But, you will see improvements no matter how long the fast!

Then, for day 12 - we broke our fast again with lots of garlic with a plan to have some milky foods the next day. I keep craving milk (perhaps because we have so much of it right now!). Over these past couple of days I have been wondering about the best way to get it into my system – fermented milk products are awesome for gut bacteria especially homemade from raw milk.

So, I decided to include some dandelion coffee with our own raw goat’s milk in it, a couple times a week to also help build beneficial bacterial colonies. It tastes great (we gave up drugged coffee years ago) and dandelion has the added benefit of supporting our livers. 

BUT….did you know that dandelion root is also a prebiotic? This means it has components that feed and benefit gut bacteria in their struggle to survive. And roasted dandelion root or dandelion coffee tastes quite nice. It’s a bitter herb needed to keep things in a healthy balance. 

What I know about beneficial bacteria in our guts is that they need all sorts of different foods (raw, living, wild, cooked, sweet, bitter, sour, fibre) to nourish them. Because this is a probiotic fast, I can see and feel already how it is working.

Over these next few hours I plan on getting a little bit of milk into my system – raw and fermented in smoothies and with dandelion coffee as well as perhaps a little meat or fish. 

Meat sounds like a weird thing to include on a mini break from our liquid fast days, however, we also have gut microbes who are complete carnivores (just like my cat) and I want to feed them as well. 

Let’s keep everyone happy in there! 

Up to this point I am feeling very well. I always feel great when I am fasting and my energy levels are quite good – even for all of the detox, changeover and perhaps a bit of an immune boost that is taking place in our guts. There’s a lot of shifting and changing going on…..

April

Getting there!

Energy Vampires.....Leave You With Nothing in Reserve

These days I find myself back onto the subject of Energy Vampires with some further insights and deeper understanding of how they may be operating in our lives….some of the most common questions are, just what have they stolen from us, and where, how, why is it being taken?….

Well, this subject has come up for me time and again over these past few weeks. I have spoken to quite a few people as well, about the seemingly modern day problem of vampires and their own experiences with it.

For one thing….it appears to be getting worse (or at least we are far more aware of it) and there is an obsession (just look at what people are watching, reading and writing about) with vampires, ghouls, monsters and the zombies they create.

That’s right – many of us who have been leaking energy, under attack and drained of our life force are empty shells (zombies) walking around in a thick haze of nothingness.

The land that time forgot, these spaces in-between are places we humans get stuck in (feeling blocked/stuck in life?) once we have been accessed and then left ‘frozen’ (fear, pain, grief, loss, emptiness) by the many energy sucking entities roaming the earth.

This is taking place because we are allowing our essence or life force to ebb away with a steady diet of sterile, dead, plastic manufactured foods as well as walking around with guts that have never been sealed. But, this just goes hand in hand with our sterile, empty, plastic manufactured life, doesn’t it…..

Our guts, bodies, skin, inner and outer beings are not meant to be sterile (or wide open!). We are part of the living forces of this planet and as such should be fully caught up in all dimensions of aliveness taking place here.

The more we dampen down our internal gut flora, lessen our own immune defences and response as well as continue to consume food, water and air devoid of life’s essential elements – well, we just invite the energy vampires to take over, because let’s face it…..

If you’re not using it (life force), someone else is. It’s like an open door…..the nasty bugs, viruses and microscopic whatnot’s are just waiting for any opportunity (they are opportunistic organisms!) to jump in and take over.

Some of the symptoms of being drained by energy vampires are lack of interest, tiredness, unable to focus or concentrate, loss of creativity, change in facial features (especially eyes, skin), weight gain, hormone imbalance, IBS, chronic infections, and a sense of feeling badly (remorse?) about something…..

I have seen this come up repeatedly in people who reach their ‘maximum’ output where work/life/living is concerned. For example, they push themselves to do a little bit extra and then crash due to lack of energy.

There are simply no reserves (they have been siphoned off).

So….keep taking those antibiotics, drugs, Deadly Nightshades and the medication that you don’t need, instead of making changes to your diet, lifestyle and attitude. I hear zombieland is open for business…..

April 

Turtle in the grass - out for a walk