alternative medicine
Today on the Health and Wellness show we'll be doing an overview of alternatives to mainstream medicine.

Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Orthomolecular Medicine, and more.

While discernment is necessary, and it's not black and white that "alternative is good, big pharma is bad," there are many conditions for which natural remedies are safe and effective.

Please join us for a discussion framed around these possibilities. Included as always will be Zoya's Pet Health Segment.

Running Time: 02:13:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome everybody my name is Jonathan, I'll be your host for today on the Healthand Wellness show, it is the 4th September 2015. Joining me in our virtual studio from all around theplanet, we have a full complement of our hosts today: Doug, Erykah, Tiffany and Gaby. Say hi
everybody.

All: Hello.

Jonathan: Today we're going to talk about alternative health modalities, alternative medicine, in comparison to Big Pharma. We'll be talking about Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Herbalism, Bach flower remedies, and orthomolecular medicine and a couple of other things. So, we'll be going over a wide variety of topics. This is a general overview of alternative medicine; we thought it'd be good to cover some of these broader topics today.

I wanted to start the show off with our general disclaimer, just to avoid the hot water; the lawyers, guns and money. We are not your doctors. We are not intending to give you medical advice. Some of us here are medical professionals but we are not your doctors and so, we encourage you to do your own research but we also encourage you to talk to your own practitioner about things that you might need done or questions that you might have. Find somebody in your area who knows what they're talking about, who you trust, and basically don't take the things that we talk about and go off and try them out, even with alternative medicine or natural medicine you need to be really cautious. Things may seem that because they're natural you can just do as much as you want and that is not true, that is patently not true. You need to be really careful with a lot of these things, even with vitamin C.

So, having said that, let's get into the show. Let's start with some connecting the dots, some of the week's health news. Gaby, do you want to get us started with this article about histamines?

Gaby: Sure. It's an article that Jill Carnahan, from jillcarnahan.com, called; Is histamine intolerance the cause of your problems? And the reason I wanted to cover these articles is because a lot of people in the forum have problems with hives and skin rashes, very itchy skin rashes, with the low carb diet, with the Ketogenic diet. And this could be one of the potential reasons as to why.

Basically histamine is classified as a bio-active amine; it comes from the breakdown of amino acids. You can find amino acids in protein. And that's why when people have histamine issues, they are highly advised to eat only fresh meat. Because when the process of spoiled food starts, all the bacteria from the gastrointestinal tract of the animal leeches out and starts to break down the protein. That's why those suffering autoimmune diseases are more (Bad audio) ... the less fresh. And so bacteria break down the amino acids, in this case specifically histamine, and histamine is produced. And a lot of people have issues with it. Also with fermented foods, where generally bacteria are added to foods to ferment them, usually normal people don't have a problem with these, but people who are histamine intolerant will have a big issue with it.

And symptoms of a histamine reaction, it ranges in severity, but basically it's histamine so think of something that makes you itchy, but it could also be scratching of the face, headaches, runny nose, dizziness, anxiety, abdominal cramps, and in most severe cases it's like a basic allergy emergency like bronchial restriction which is difficulty breathing, your tongue swells and you break out in hives and so forth. So, the reason some people are very intolerant to histamine is because they lack the enzymes that breakdown histamine or there is an under production of these enzymes. And these can be genetically related, like we talked about in a previous show about the MTHFR mutation, people with these genetic polymorphisms and genetic mutations have lower enzymes that breakdown histamine, also they could be lacking some vitamins and also they could be taking medications which increases histamine or most commonly it's because there is a bacterial overgrowth in the gut; it can be a bacterial overgrowth or a yeast overgrowth.

And what happens is that people on a Keto diet or a very, very low carb diet, they have trouble adjusting to the diet because some of the good bacteria thrive on fibre and, even though you don't need excessive amounts of fibre, the restriction of the Ketogenic diet, some people take it too far or they usually need more carbs then what is generally suggested. So, they start to break out in hives and this can be a transitional period or actually they need more carbs to feed their good bacteria, but it has to be good carbs. So, that's one way to address it. The other way to address it is with natural anti-histemics like; Quercetin, Vitamin C, and Vitamin B6. There is also the enzyme that specifically breaks down histamine, it is sold as a supplement, as a medication that can be taken, and foods that are very rich in histamine need to be avoided like; processed foods, cured sausage products, alcoholic beverages, chocolate some spices like; cayenne, nutmeg and so forth.

So, it's really a good article to check out if you think you have this problem, it will give you some ideas of what to check and what to address.

Tiffany: So, you shouldn't start popping Benadryl because that's an anti-histamine.

Gaby: Vinegar you said?

Tiffany: Yeah.

Gaby: Sometimes the vinegar helps to digest the meat and sometimes that's good. But people with a histamine intolerance, vinegar can produce some hives. There are some typical foods, and it's always the same in each person, like pickles, citrus fruits, that can be a very common one, but...

Tiffany: No not vinegar, Benadryl.

Gaby: Oh, Benadryl! Yes it's something that's found in lower concentrations in stomach acid to help us digest food. And it is blocked by proton inhibitors like Omeprazole, and it's also blocked by Benadryl, and also similar drugs like histamine blockers. And, I think that on an emergency basis, like if you have really bad hives, that will make you itchy-crazy, I would go for the Benadryl and just be done with it. Just cut the vicious cycle. Because if you keep scratching yourself it's going to release more itchiness, and sometimes, you know a little bit of drugs don't hurt. (Laughter)

Doug: One natural anti-histamine is Quercetin. I know there are a lot of people who've had success with some of their environmental allergies that can be quite helpful. You have to take quite high doses of it. And you have to take do loading dose...

Gaby: In the article they suggest 3 to 6 grams daily of Quercetin - I thought, "wow!" that's a lot.

Doug: It is a lot, yeah.

Gaby: "This is the dose that works the best." And the powdered version of Quercetin works best.

Jonathan: Cool, well, let's move on to our next item here. Erykah, it sounds like Doritos are starting to have Stockholm syndrome on people, maybe we should start calling it, 'Doritos syndrome'?

Erykah: Well, we decided to ditch the Doritos since they're not part of the diet (Laughter) and I actually found something that's a little more on topic - so if our listeners are interested in Doritos and their addictive behaviour, just type it in to Sott.net and you can find some rather disturbing information about Doritos and additives.

I found this article that went along with our topic today called, Good Medicine: Do as much nothing as possible. It was carried on GreenMedInfo, by Sayer Ji, on August 28th 2015. And basically, he had a pretty interesting opening quote by Samuel Shem, from 'The House Of God': ''The delivery of good medical care is to do as much nothing as possible''. That must be where he came up with the name or the title for his article. But basically the article talks about; "Medicine is undergoing an existential crisis today. Its core value proposition - to help and not hurt -- is failing to manifest. Patients are suffering. Doctors are suffering. The only exuberant party on the battlefield against disease" - that's profiting, basically, is Big Pharma - "is the pharmaceutical industry."

We've covered that extensively in other shows, "The entire system is on the precipice of a collapse, if not for economic reasons alone, then certainly for ethical and intellectual ones. The irony is that the system has become so ineffective and dangerous that avoiding medical treatment except for emergency care has become one of if not the best healthcare strategy you can implement to protect your health and well-being."

He goes on to talk about, in this article, the cancer industry, and we've covered that in previous shows as well. The entire different organisation associated with the cancer industry and how it's become big money. And how this whole idea of preventable cancer research and questionable diagnosis, and then the organisations like the Breast Cancer Foundation and how it's not really addressing the issue. And then he talks about a journal that was released, called: 'It is over treatment, not over diagnosis that points out the real issue behind the epidemic of cancer over diagnoses'.

And it's interesting to connect the dots with that; we see that with the HPV vaccine, the Gardasil vaccine, the paranoia of giving this vaccine to young children, to possibly prevent cervical cancer later in life. He goes on to talk about how, "over treatment doesn't happen in a vacuum. These industries produce treatments, and they also create and support awareness campaigns, that use fear to corral the population into early screening", breast cancer and things like that. At the end of the article, he draws his conclusions of how modern medicine has become an Orwellian institution. "With 'detecting cancer early' the biomedical equivalent of the Thought Police, 'detecting crime before it even happens.'" And I just it was a really good point that he made he also said;
"Medicine has also adopted the metaphoric of another powerful global force; the military industrial complex, with the cancer 'prevention' being equated to 'striking first,' eerily similar to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war to secure peace."

"The precautionary principle is co-opted and inverted from its true meaning. Instead of 'doing no harm,' unnecessary medical intervention is considered the only non-violent solution even when the collateral damage is so great that the patient often dies from the violence of treatment with weapons-of-mass-destruction grade radioisotopes and chemicals and not the condition."
So, I thought that would tie in well with our discussion today. Because, like he says in the article, if you have a fever or a Staph infection - doctors, pharmacy, and antibiotics that's all good. But this medical industry which is profiting off of people and illness, and really again not doing, 'no harm'.

Gaby: It's corrupted from the top. This is an article by Sayer Ji, right?

Erykah: Yes.

Gaby: It sounds like Sayer Ji - I love his research, he has uncovered a lot of research on breast cancer screening; how it's pretty much, useless and dangerous to promote cancer and a lot of people are being diagnosed and then mutilated, because they basically cut your breasts and give you chemo and radiation therapy. And the untold suffering that all these over diagnoses, it's the same with prostate cancer.

Erykah: Yeah, and also this whole, new approach, with doing mass hysterectomy's and removing all their female organs because of a possible cancerous cell in the uterus. And, again, going back to the HPV thing, it's just frightening to watch. And as you said Gaby it's the people suffering under the stress of the possibility that this could happen. I've had a few friends go back and have a false diagnosis, after weeks of them freaking out about the fact they could have, you know, some terrible disease.

Tiffany: Yeah, that happened to my mother. She got a false positive on mammogram and she totally lost it and freaked out, and was trying not to think - then she went back for a second test and they were like, "Woops! That was nothing. We don't know what that was! Sorry for making you suffer for the whole two weeks."

Jonathan: Jeez.

Doug: Yeah, it's interesting the celebrity connection with a lot of the celebrities getting the mastectomy even though they don't have any cancer but there's a genetic marker for it. That would seem to being promoted in the press; Angelina Jolie had it done; Christina Applegate had it done as well. And they got all this press for having these completely unnecessary surgeries, rather than addressing the fact that, despite the fact they have these genetic markers, there are still lots that you can do to avoid actually getting cancer. But no, they want to promote this - just mutilate themselves, essentially, as a means of prevention. I thought it was really interesting that it seemed to be getting a lot of press.

Gaby: It creates so much hysteria. I had a rotation in a radiology department, where women got screened with ultrasound for breast cancer or to find out what a nodule was about, a lump here and there whether it was benign or did it have signs of malignancy. And with no exception, every woman was nervous; "What was that?!" It's crazy; just multiply that with millions and millions of women around the world, by just that issue alone, it's just scaremongering, basically.

Doug: Yeah, not to mention the whole stress connection.

Tiffany: The same thing goes for all these men in their 60's and 70's; they keep testing for their PSA, their prostate antigen levels, and, if they did have cancer, it would be so slow growing they would probably die of old age before they even developed prostate cancer. And yet they're getting their prostates ripped out and, pretty much, having their manhood taken away from them.

Gaby: The absurd thing is that even an expert panel pronounced themselves on that that there is no need to do this screening of cancer with PSA, it doesn't work. It over diagnoses people and causes unnecessary suffering; it doesn't mean anything from a scientific point of view. But it's so ingrained in people, in medical doctors that they just automatically test for it, even though it's useless. So, it's like over diagnosing, and all the alternative remedies or alternative therapies, don't get a word, in all this craziness.

Erykah: It's enough to make you ill. (Laughter)

Jonathan: I think too, speaking to our topic today, the point here, that we're talking about, it's not that modern medical advancements are not good, that things like, you can get screened for diseases, you can find out things ahead of time, you can have surgery without getting an infection, things like that, but the establishment as a whole is like a runaway train. And it's hard when you talk about this stuff to not fall into black and white thinking, but to pull back and dissect the issue and say, 'well here are the things that are negative and here are the things that are positive and cancer screening can be good, it can be very bad, and at the same time it can be over done.' It's about finding a balance and keeping you're self sane. It's like a mass OCD has taken over people.

Gaby: What you say is very important Jonathan because it's the basic fact of human psychology; we all have 'cognitive biases'. And we are always on guard with healthy questions, our mind set question things, researching, comparing results, networking, because data that is shared throughout a whole network and if there are consistent results, you have this higher chance to be objective. But it's just not black and white thinking. I was joking the other day; "Well, what if, in a thousand years time, the alternative community medicine would be the equivalent of Big Pharma today?"

Jonathan: To that point, unfortunately, I think we're actually seeing a lot of foreshadowing of that with the recent issue of supplements being sold at Wal-Mart that were either tainted or were a placebo or had like 0.1% of the active ingredient. It is unfortunate but you also have to watch out for that where ever you're looking. There are a lot of natural companies selling natural supplements that even their products are not preferable.

Erykah: Yeah, we see that in the big food industry too, with this whole ongoing debate about organic versus conventional agriculture. And you go back and look at all these companies that are buying up these small natural food companies and they're selling their 'natural products', their organic products, and organic is three times as much and people think, "oh well, if it's organic it's better for me" but then you start to look at the companies that own these other companies, and it's like Coca Cola or Kellogg's; they're not dumb, they see that they can make money. What is it, like a multibillion dollar industry now Doug? The whole health food and health store...

Doug: Oh yeah, easily. You see it both in the supplements and the health food industry. It's like people, specifically with the supplements, like you were saying Jonathan with the Wal-Mart stuff and Costco vitamins and things like that, people are getting a little bit more educated and realising that maybe they need some natural supplements and stuff, but then they go for this dirt cheap garbage, essentially. I get people all the time in the store all the time where I'm like, "maybe you want to try this?" and they're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I got some of that from Costco." And I'm like, "well....you might want to look at the quality of your supplements there" - you definitely do get what you pay for when it comes to this stuff.

Erykah: Yeah and one thing at Costco is the fish oil; a lot of people are into fish oil now and the Costco brand has GMO oils in it Canola oil or something. That's why it's important to read labels.

Gaby: That is so unfair; it's like selling their trash as supplements. Its like, "Oh, extra GMO and mercury oh, let's sell it as fish oil, people will buy it!"

Doug: Exactly. As one example I know the multivitamins and the calcium supplements themselves, in these cheaper brands, they're grinding up limestone and sticking it in a capsule, "here's your calcium" it's like, "Oh, great, how well absorbed is that going to be?" and then they're surprised when they have these studies where they find that people who take calcium supplement have atherosclerosis and calcium deposits in their tissues. Its like, "What do you expect if you're taking something like that, you're eating rocks!"

Erykah: Or seashells.

Tiffany: It goes with everything, if you don't do your research or have your own discernment, and if you don't have discernment, you better get some discernment real quick. Just because it's natural it doesn't mean it's all good and you can just take whatever you want, and take as much as you want. Because people will say to me, if they've tried a supplement for this or that, especially for weight loss and they're like "Hey, you should try this." And I'm like, "Well, what is it?" and they're list some herb or something and say, "It's all natural!" And I'm thinking to myself, "Well, so is cocaine but I'm not going to take that..."

Jonathan: Yeah, definitely important for people to look up what they're taking in. Like on the fish oil, I wish I had the primary source for this but I don't so I want to be clear I'm not 100% on this, but I would encourage people to check it. There was a story going around a while back, that a lot of the fish oil that was being sold in the larger chain stores had actually been taken from fish in the gulf, after the BP oil spill, because there were so many fish that died that they just pulled them up and harvested all this oil. Just to be clear, again, I'm not 100% sure this story is true so I would encourage you to look into it if you're really curious. If you're taking something, call the company and be like, "Where does this come from?" and if they can't tell you don't take it. Because they should at least be willing to tell you, "Well, we don't know but we'll look into it." But if they're just stonewalling you about where their products come from, don't take it, look for something else.

Doug: And look for third party testing as well. The best quality fish oil supplements are using third party testing which is something you want to look for. The best companies are doing their own testing as well as third party testing to find out exactly what is in there; you can get good quality fish oil that doesn't have mercury, that doesn't have all these toxic, ocean pollutants in them. You got to do your research; you got to look at what the company your taking is actually doing.

Jonathan: Well let's go to our next thing here. Doug, did you want to tell us about mandatory vaccines in Canada? Sounds like Canada kinda picking up on this.

Doug: The CMA, the Canadian Medical Association, had its annual meeting in Halifax, at the end of August. It's an eighty thousand member group and it's heavily influenced by the American Medical Association, in the states. It looks like they're looking into pushing mandatory vaccination onto all children who are registering for school or day care. The parents are going to have to show proof that their children have been vaccinated. So, they're voting on this. It says; "Under the guidance of some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and in addition to calling for proof of vaccination, the CMA board is endorsing a multiyear plan to increase vaccination rates."

It also goes on to say;"The most extreme pro-vaccination lobbying groups, those that are strictly endorsing that all vaccines are safe and effective for all people, all the time, by force if necessary, it is now part of the extended network of medical Mafia matrix."

The author then compares it to what happened in California, with their recent Senate Bill 277. Which was to apply to public and private schools, children enrolling in day care, mandatory vaccination. So, it seems that Canadians will soon be deprived of their medical right to informed consent. Abrogating constitutional guarantees under the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms of that nation. It's an aggressive attempt disempowering parents from deciding which, if any, vaccines the child will get and when they should get them.

So, there's a group in Canada called Vaccine Choice Canada and they provided a fully referenced letter to the CMA. And if you look at that article they have a link to it so you can read that article. It details both the legal and scientific issues surrounding mandatory vaccination. So, it's not just hype and hysteria, it really is very well referenced. So, they call in the article for writing to the CMA, if you are Canada, to state this it is a bad idea to institute these mandatory vaccines for the following reasons: First of all it's illegal to mandate vaccines in Canada without personal or religious exemptions due to the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms. Further they say mandating vaccines without personal or religious exemptions would breach the following laws, codes and conventions on informed consent. This is the right to understand the risks of medical treatments, and the right to choose to refuse them. So, that includes Canadian medical law, provincial regulations such as Ontario's Healthcare Consent Act, the CMA's own medical code of ethics, as well as international conventions to which Canada is a signatory; including the Nuremberg code, the Helsinki Accords and UNESCO universal declaration of bioethics and human rights.

As a matter of justice, policy of mandatory vaccination which carries medical risk must be accompanied by a vaccine injury compensation programs. Unlike every other western nation except Russia, Canada does not have such a national compensation program. So, of course this completely ties the hands of parents, if the child does have some kind of negative effect due to the vaccine, they have absolutely no recourse, there's no compensation program in place. So, the idea of putting forth mandatory vaccination, and then just completely washing their hands of the entire thing; "Yes, we forced you to have this vaccination but your child's had a negative reaction to it, there's absolutely nothing you can do and there's no compensation available." So, it's very enraging but it's kind of a sign of the times unfortunately.

Gaby: It is hysteria.

Erykah: Yeah to add to that, in connecting the dots, in Los Angeles when school started last week, they pulled over a hundred kids and put them in an auditorium because they claimed they didn't have the proper paperwork or that their exemptions were wrong, it was on the Sott.net Health and Wellness section; about how this mom said it was just so upsetting. Because it turned out all these kids did have the proper documentation, the school just hadn't bothered to look at it. And that they basically pulled all these children and put them in an auditorium and the parents had to come and pick them up, the first day of school. So, talk about fear mongering and signs of the times, these parents were in compliance, under their legal right and did have exemptions, but the school, for whatever reason, chose to make examples of them. One mom said her daughter was so excited to go to school and then came home crying, "What did I do wrong?!" I must have done something wrong, based on the parent's choice, that was just one little blurb, that was in just one school in L.A, or in one district. But it really sets the template for what's going to be coming down the line.

Gaby: Poor girl. It's also the fear mongering going on in other countries where vaccinations are not mandatory, because then you will hear stories about schools or childcare centres, where they ask for certification that the child was vaccinated and has no diseases, and some of the doctors are puzzled because it's not mandatory in this country to have vaccinations and it's confidential, you don't need to disclose it to the school. In any case, it's more fear mongering and the psychopathology that comes from the top, which puts the fear in all the people.

Jonathan: The hypocrisy is also something that strikes me - as an example, insurance. It's federally mandated that you have to have insurance, mainly because if you run into somebody else's car, they have the opportunity to be compensated for the accident that you have caused. Now, you know there are many more reasons for insurance and a lot of it is a racket but I think the general principle has to do with the fact that if you are responsible for causing harm to someone else that they can get compensated. And yet, as you said Doug, they have no compensation program for any harm done by these vaccines. So, they're like you having to get this but we don't have to do it. I think it's symptomatic of the nature of the government as it is today.

Tiffany: Really though, there's no amount of compensation that will take the place of your child being damaged. It doesn't matter how much money they give you - of course it will help with your medical bills, but it still - I don't know how to describe it. Your child is hurt for life but is not dead, from these vaccines.

Doug: Unbelievable.

Jonathan: Well, let's see next up on our connecting the dots here, I have a little article on the Health and Wellness section on Sott.net; it's a short interview with Joel Salatin. A lot of our listeners may be familiar with Joel Salatin, he runs poly based farms in Virginia. He's been in a lot of documentaries, notably Food Inc, if anybody hasn't seen that I'd recommend seeing it. He's also author of a lot of books including, Folks, This Aint Normal. He's a really cool guy and very interesting. This article is Joel Salatin, Secrets to Reconnecting with your Food; he talks a little about his farming practices and stuff and this part that I thought was really interesting is - the interviewer says, "Can you explain your concept of true farming and how it re-establishes the sacredness of food for you and your consumers?" And Salatin says,
"We all have benchmarks of truth and value. If it doesn't heal then it's not acceptable, if it causes harm then it's problematic. We don't want to deplete the commons; we want to increase the commons. We want to protect all the value that is in the soil from the earthworm factory to the bulbs and the moles. The truth in farming is that if it doesn't balance out somewhere there is a lie. One of the biggest lies is that food is cheap; this is a lie that dishonours life. In regards to the sacredness of food: if you don't view the pig-ness of the pig or the cow-ness of the cow as important, and only view it as a sack of protoplasmic protein, then you have already committed a sacrilege. You cheapen the life that has been sacrificed to sustain your own. How we make this sacrifice sacred is by respecting and honouring their life."
I just thought that was really cool. And it's interesting how he runs his farm, everything supports something else; the chickens fertilise the grass, the grass is eaten by the cows; they use snow melt and rain water to water the fields, everything goes together. And the last part of this interview, the interviewer says, "What are some specific ways people who live in cities can participate in their own local food chains?" And Salatin says "I have three ways: Number one, turn off your TV and find a food source. So, many people say that they don't have time. Well you have time to watch TV, shut it off. Find your farmer; see your local CSA or farmers market. Many farmers want the additional one to two customers. So, if you invest the money you spend on HDTV, on finding your food source, then your life would change. Number two: Get into your kitchen. You can't have a food chain with integrity if you are not willing to participate; you can't have a connection with your plate if you don't have a connection with your producers. Number three: Do something yourself. Pickle something or get two chickens; they're so much more useful than exotic birds and boa constrictors. They are a great role model for teens; they wake up early, work hard, turning trash into treasure and go to bed early." He says,
"The most important thing though is to do something to connect viscerally with the awesomeness of life."
I just felt like the phrasing and the way he says some of this stuff is really powerful. And we do, I think, get caught up a lot, in the idea that, 'Well, I go to the store and I get some burgers, or I get a steak or a chicken and then I cook it', or you just go to a restaurant and you don't even think about that. You're not involved in the process at all, you're served your food by someone else, you eat it and you're done. Of course on the extreme end of that is a processed food where you just take it out of a package and just shove it in your mouth. I think that we're so far removed from the actual source of the food that I think it's really important to respect of where it comes from.

It reminds me, reading this article, of a story that I heard recently of a guy who went to a sushi restaurant and had experienced what it's like to eat a live prawn, probably something that I don't know I would try! He said it was so powerful and so unsettling because it was the first time he had ever killed anything with his own teeth. And going through the process of this made him realise that, "Wow, now, when I eat a steak I'm going to realise and think about that cow that it came from, the life it had led and how it did. Did it live well; did it die quickly? Was it respected or, was it just shoved into a pen and grown with hormones. So, that experience, for him, even though it was an unsettling and really quite a dramatic experience, caused him now to think about where his food comes from. I think that's an important reminder for all of us."

Gaby: I love Joel Salatin.

Jonathan: Yeah, he's great. If you haven't read any of his stuff, at least Google his name and look up some of his videos on You tube or check out one his books, he's a really powerful speaker and highly intelligent. Really speaks well. And actually goes through the technical aspects of how he farms, so you can take those tips and use them in your backyard, which I think is pretty cool. Ok, for the last of our connecting the dots for today, Tiff, do you want to tell us about this smart pill? Sound like an FDA approved smart pill? So yeah, we'll all be smart.

Tiffany: I guess a lot of people want to be smarter. (Laughter) The article is called: 'Smart pill' approved by FDA for healthy people with little to no scientific evidence of improved cognitive function. The drug is called Modafinil, the name brand is called Provigil, and it's made by a drug company called Teva. It's traditionally used as a medicine to improve wakefulness in adults who are very sleepy, due to having narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnoea or shift work disorder; otherwise known as 'how am I going to do the nightshift' - I can't believe they made a disorder out of that but, anyway. So, the researchers reviewed twenty four studies on this drug, Modafinil. The studies were carried out between 1990 and 2015. And they found that it appeared to improve cognitive function. Some of the studies showed gains in flexible thinking, increasing people's abilities to combine information or to cope with novelty. And they said that in the studies the drug didn't seem to influence creativity either way. And how it works is by increasing the brains level of dopamine and norepinephrine, to boost concentration and alertness.

One of the snags they ran into when they were researching this drug is that the improvement wasn't seen every time, it wasn't seen on every test, and it wasn't seen in every person. They found that the studies failed to show any enhancement in areas of attention, learning and memory. And they only used about 30 participants in each group. And the type of cognitive tests that they used, were more appropriate for people with neural psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia, depression and autism, or neurological disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So, people without these disorders will perform well on these cognitive tests anyway, so how can they tell that it was Modafinil that made the difference? Another big thing is the researchers of the study only gave the participants the drug one time so they don't know what the long term effects are.

Jonathan: Wow.

Tiffany: So, I was looking into this a bit more and went on to the drugs website and of course there's a laundry list of side effects like, serious rashes, mental health symptoms like depression, anxiety, hallucinations, extreme increases in activity like mania, thoughts of suicide, aggressive behaviour and other mental problems. There are also heart problems, abnormal heart beat, headache, back pain, nausea, feeling stuffy, diarrhoea. They say to, "stop taking Provigil if you have skin rashes, hives, sores in your mouth, blisters or peeling skin, trouble swallowing or breathing dulling of the eyes, of the skin, whites of the eyes or dark urine" - so, basically it sounds like it can really screw up the liver. And I looked some more - people are taking this, I think in the article they said more college students than ever are taking drugs like Provigil or Adderall, or Ritalin, which are common ADHD drugs, to study and concentrate so they can take their exams.

And also, I looked on Dave Asprey's site, the 'Bulletproof exec', and he had been taking it, I don't know if he still is but he wrote a blog post about it. There was definitely a buzz on the internet about Modafinil. There were a lot of comments underneath Dave Asprey's blog post, about people saying it makes them feel like they're 'constantly in the zone and they don't need to sleep as much and they can get a lot of stuff done'. I think it's a short cut...I think it's like cheating.

Gaby: I think it sounds like robotic behaviour. You basically concentrate on doing stuff, mechanically, and that's it.

Tiffany: One guy said if he goes too high on his dose, that if he's not careful, he'll spend 18 hours just looking up stuff on Wikipedia. (Laughter)

Jonathan: It's crazy, it sounds like cocaine.

Tiffany: Yeah, it sounds like speed to me.

Doug: It's just so funny that Dave Asprey would be doing this kind of thing, I usually think that he's pretty on the ball with a lot of f stuff - I mean I guess it's because he's into all these kind of 'hacks' that you can do to improve your performance. I don't know, it seems a bit non-discriminating to me, he really should use a bit more discretion on these kinds of things. Because we know, from our research, how you can boost brain function, get on the Ketogenic diet. You can use different supplements, L-Carntine to get more fuel to your mitochondria; even using things like Ginkgo Biloba or Ginseng or something along those lines; all those things are natural ways to improve your performance, improve your intelligence, and it doesn't come with a side of suicidal thoughts. So, it just seems so ridiculous. This short cut mentality is endemic that people just want to take a pill and solve all their problems it's just...

Tiffany: The funny thing is, Dave Asprey does all that stuff - because you know he sells all those products like super Glutathione and this and that, and he's always hacking himself. But he doesn't seem to care very much. Like I was reading through his posts and the side effects he said there weren't any or they were very mild; maybe he just hasn't experienced any and he's a healthy guy so he can handle it. But I would be cautious.

Gaby: The problem of taking the easiest way out, it's not only the system, it's like people are so lazy, I mean come on, they just want things resolved quickly.

Jonathan: There's one thing, people call it, 'bio hacking or life hacking' with Dave Asprey I've heard the term Bio hacking. I think it's interesting. I'm all for experimentation. If any person wants to make their own choices about their own body, and try something out, and they're aware of the potential consequences and things like that, that's fine and I have nothing to do with the choices that they make. However, you shouldn't be putting it out there saying, "Hey, you guys should try this too." I think that's a subtle difference there. And you need to be really careful with this stuff. And it's clear - going back to our topic today; Modafinil and other smart drugs, are clearly just another push by the pharmaceutical companies to make money on a new product.

They're not out their saying L-Tyrosine will boost your dopamine or that it can increase your energy and your cognitive function. Like Doug said, you can change your diet and you can use certain natural supplements to achieve this. Well the Big Pharma companies aren't telling you that, they're not putting that information out there; they make a product that's really dangerous and they're like, "Hey, try this one". And I know this is kind of a simplistic example but in my mind it's pretty clearly a scam.

Doug &Tiffany: Yeah.

Jonathan: Well, I guess that kind of leads us into our topic for today, talking about Alternative Medicine, and the benefits that could be had. I guess I wanted to start off with a discussion about: How did we end up with this word 'Alternative'. Why is Alternative Medicine considered alternative because it's not really, it's the way things have been done over thousands of years. And I almost wonder if it came out of the Big Pharma push, and how these companies have grown so massively over the last sixty to a hundred years. That natural medicine has now become called 'Alternative' and it's gotten such a stigma. I can't even count the number of times I've gotten into discussions with people either in person or on Facebook or wherever, where you just mention the word supplement and they're like, "You're a quack!" things like, "BS and just go to your doctor..."

Gaby: For me there's no one medicine really. Yes everybody talks about Alternative medicine, Integrative medicine, Conventional medicine.... (Bad Audio) there are several applications and it's just a problem of corruption in this science. Like what you said Jonathan, that somebody mentioned supplements, "OK, that's crazy." like you must be shot up or something. It's just that type of laziness, of cognitive biases that ruins every single science.

Doug: It's even amazing what is considered 'alternative' or the 'woo-woo' stuff. You look at chelating therapy or diet recommendations, suggestions for meditation or body work or any of these kinds of things, doctors actually aren't allowed in a lot of cases to even recommend this kind of stuff. Like chelating therapy? That just seems so main stream, it doesn't seem like something that's wacky or 'out there'. But actually I was reading an article and in Kentucky, doctors aren't even allowed to mention chelating therapy; they're not allowed to even suggest that it exists, or they'll face some kind of reprimand. It's really crazy. I was on Facebook the other day - which is always a bad thing to do (Laughter) - but, I was on Facebook and saw this discussion and one guy, who's a friend of mine, is having a lot of back problems and he said; "I'm going to try acupuncture". And the amount of derision - he was being called, "A woo-woo fairy and Why don't you go try witchcraft?" And all these other kinds of things and I'm like; "It's Acupuncture." (Laughter) There are so many studies out there that actually show that this is beneficial in many situations. I just couldn't get my head around this mentality, this idea, that this is the equivalent to getting leeches or treating body humours or something like that.

Its like, "No, there's a lot of evidence that this actually works", but these people were so closed minded and black or white about it, and that's by design, I think. It's been painted with this brush it's all, "new age airy fairy and I'm going to pray with crystals" or something, it's just insane.

Jonathan: Yeah, I've had the same experience with chiropractic. And I have a hard time really understanding why that's a quack science in a lot of people's minds; "Oh you're neck or back is sore? You should go check out a chiropractor, try it out" and they're like, "Oh, I don't know...chiropractors. I've heard a lot of weird things about those crazy kooks." It's such a lack of...

Tiffany: They call them, 'quacko-practors'. I was talking with another nurse and she called a chiropractor, a 'quacko-practor', and I immediately knew she was an enemy of health (Laughter). Because it makes perfect sense, why would you not go to somebody who will do an adjustment on you if your back hurts or your neck hurts. That's what you want to do, that's why people twist themselves in their chairs and crack their backs. It's like a law against common sense. If somebody is overrun with heavy metals, why would you not chelate them or do something to pull those heavy metals out; it doesn't make any sense. And these alternative medicines are backed up by science and they do work in a lot of cases, or they're at least no worse than Allopathic medicine or conventional medicine. But people still - I don't know, it's like a superstition.

Erykah: And there was an article back in 2011 on the signs page about how doctors use natural remedies but don't prescribe them. It was an interesting study, done in 2011 but published in a health services research journal. And they looked strictly at healthcare workers, doctors and nurses; who were more than twice as likely to seek treatment from "alternative practitioners". Doctors and nurses were more than three times as likely to tap natural remedies for self treatment such as herbs, yoga or exercise. And then a Harvard study published in 1990, documented a shift to a more natural medicine, finding people opted for as many as two hundred and fifty million more visits to alternative healthcare practitioners annually compared to medical doctors. And it says, "the study indicates that the majority of people do not want medicine to vanish rather they want to stay healthy and use medicine as an emergency backup when more radical interventions is necessary", says Dr. Reichman.

So, it's kind of like that article at the beginning, "Do as little..."

Gaby: Yeah everybody knows instinctively, they know their practise doesn't work for prevention, it actually creates more problems. And the result from that study is a clear indication of the reason as to why. And it goes back to beginning of the article, conventional medicine; it's just for the emergency room, that's about it.

Erykah: Exactly.

Gaby: Chiropractors they train for many years and they know a lot more than even average doctors. And it's not fair that they are called quacks.

Doug: I agree.

Jonathan: Yeah, not at all. I think like Tiff said, there's such a lack of common sense, there's such a lack of critical thinking. Any kind of motivation to think for yourself - or even, it almost makes me think that people have lost the idea that they are able to learn about these kinds of things. I think if people thought that they could actually find out what was going on, for basic things that they would actually look it up and try it. Now I think a lot of people are and the news of natural cures has been gaining traction for some time.

But at the same time essentially Big Pharma and what we call conventional medicine - which again, why is it conventional? These things are going at the same pace as the ideas of using natural cures. That people have lost the ability to even look into it because they think that they can't, it's maybe this expert mentality where it's, "oh well I need an expert". Well you do need an expert for some things but there are other things that you don't and it's not like you can't take the time to study and use your intelligence and intuition and maybe become an expert in certain things. I've found in my own experience - and I'm not, I would not call myself an expert in like home medicine but I have done certain things, I've looked up information and used it for myself. But now there are some friends of mine who'll come and be like, "What should I do for this?" like I'm their doctor all of a sudden and I'm like, "You need to look it up man!"

Tiffany: Doctor Jon!

Gaby: They see your results so they trust you just by that. You are healthy or you recovered from this or that problem that the doctor didn't solve, you did your own research. That's the kind of examples we all should be showing you know. Be your own healing worker (Laughter.)

Tiffany: What you mentioned Jonathan, about people feeling like they need an expert to tell them what to do, that's one thing. And I think another thing is people are just scared and ignorant, and I don't mean ignorant in a bad way, but ignorant of how their body works. And they don't trust that their body can't get better on its own without these major interventions. I know I've never been sick and never gotten well, I've always gotten well! I've been sick a few times and my body always bounced back. So, I have faith my body knows what to do, I may not know exactly how every single thing works but I know my body can take care of itself if I give it the right tools. And I like to bio hack as much as the next guy but I know enough to not to do stuff that I don't know what I'm doing.

Doug: It's a lack of faith in the body's own innate ability to heal itself. And I think this perspective really does get encouraged. You see it in the media, on TV, in the magazines, and things like that, all that's encouraged is this, 'take a pill' mentality. There is no understanding that, wait a minute, your body is incredibly intelligent and can actually heal itself of a lot of these things. Like you were saying Tiff, I've never gotten sick and then not gotten better. Even if I didn't know what it was doing, it's a lack of faith in your own body's ability.

Gaby: And also networking and researching should never be discouraged. I know some physicians take that line, "don't look it up on the internet, you'll just become scared." That's absolutely crazy because, even with the corruption of science by Big Pharma, there is great research in conventional medicine that gives results. But doctors won't be able to find it because it's not in their daily talks at the clinics or hospitals which are all sponsored by Big Pharma.

It creates division as well because the people from the alternative community won't look into the research because they mistrust completely conventional medicine; complete black and white thinking, while it still could have these applications. So, I think people should understand, in the end that you should really network and do your own research. Of course if people are very sick they will find this troublesome or tiring, that's why a network is needed so we can all help each other. And witnesses and strength, I think it's really necessary to research and network, share data and compare.

Tiffany: Facebook is not just for Farmville.

Doug: The things you do see getting promoted in the mainstream media are all the times it goes wrong. And that's not to say that every natural intervention is always going to be successful or that there aren't going to be mistakes that happen, but those are the ones that get promoted. Like this person who died because they were doing X-Y-Z natural remedies and they would forgo the conventional treatment, "Oh my god, isn't this terrible. It just goes to show how dangerous it is, to have people just talk about this on the internet." Meanwhile these situations are probably one in a million, where other people are very safely able to help themselves using natural remedies. They keep on promoting this viewpoint: that those who don't go with the conventional are wacky. That they are tin foil hat wearers that they all think there's this conspiracy of doctors to try and kill them and they won't go to hospitals; they promote this idea. So, of course people are scared, they're scared to look into anything but what their doctor is telling them.

Jonathan: The fear is a big part of it, I've found that too. I think I've mentioned in the past on this show too. Last year I went through a bout of shingles. The way it happened, the way it cropped up, was, I got this weird hockey puck scar tissue feeling under the skin on the left side of my torso, and it started to itch. Then the little rash started to come out and I was thinking, "What in the hell is this?" So, I started to look it up and realised that it was shingles. And then I was like, 'here is a chance to try to treat something myself' and so I started looking into it. And everybody that I would talk to was like, "You've got to go to the hospital now!" and I said "No!" If it was something way more serious then maybe but its shingles, it's a virus, it results in flu like symptoms and really bad rashes, but it's not going to kill me. So, I was looking up the various things and I realised this virus feeds mainly off Arginine in your system and if you take Glycine, you can upset the balance of Arginine; you can avoid Arginine rich foods, you can mega dose Vitamin C to a certain level. But then I also looked into Hemochromatosis and make sure that I wasn't going to have a problem with Vitamin C. So, there was all this research that went into it, and after that it cleared up in about three weeks. Normally shingles lasts over a month to two months, with really severe pain. I did have pain and I did have itching but nowhere near as severe as a lot of the other cases that people told me about. I was trying to explain to friends and acquaintances that - I don't want to brag - but it turned out a lot better than if I had gone to a hospital.

Tiffany: You saved money too.

Gaby: And you learned all these things

Jonathan: There are cases where shingles can be life threatening, especially to older people, elderly people, so every situation is in its own context and needs to be taken as such. But for me at that time it worked out. But the point I wanted to make was it was scary; I was actually scared. I was thinking, "Oh, shoot, this might turn out really bad." or "What's going to happen?" But I guess you need to have an exploratory attitude, I was like, "Let's just start looking it up", start researching the topic. And I think that's like what you said, a lot of people are really afraid to do that, they're thinking, "I'm not going to be able to learn about this". But you can.

Doug: It's like every ailment you have is actually a learning opportunity. It's a possibility to start researching, learn about it, and learn about yourself and all these different things. That's the kind of attitude you need to take, "OK, I'm being challenged here, life is challenging me, what can I learn from this?" Instead of being like, "Oh my god, I'm freaking out, I need to take a quick pill to take care of this."

Jonathan: Exactly, maybe one of the other things that are being lost, we were talking about the ability to learn to do these things, is this idea that; everything is a lesson. Everything has something that can be learned from it. And suffering is necessary. I think everybody intuitively understands that but once we actually get into the experience of it it's like, "You can't go through life without suffering" so when your presented with suffering and if you don't use it as a lesson, or if you whine about it or complain or just devolve into this apoplectic mess, where you just freak out, you're not learning the lessons that can come from that.

Doug: One thing I know that the sceptics really seem to hate, and seems to be the favoured whipping boy for alternative medicine, is home Homeopathy. And in a way I can kind of understand it because not many people really know what Homeopathy actually is. It's just used as a term synonymous with any natural remedy. People will talk about homeopathy in terms of herbalism but it's actually its own modality. It's based on it's the idea of; Like cures like. So, you take a substance to cure an ailment that, if you were healthy and you took that substance, it would produce symptoms similar to what you have. Say you have some kind of rash, and that rash is similar to poison ivy, you would take a remedy, like poison ivy, to counteract those symptoms. Which to mainstream medicine or to any mainstream thinker sounds absolutely ridiculous, like why would I take something that would possibly cause the symptoms I'm trying to cure. But it seems that it actually does have a basis. And the way that they do this, is they take these remedies and they dilute them. So, they'll take something like poison ivy and they'll dilute it. And they don't just dilute it a little bit; they dilute it and they dilute it and they dilute it, until you've got a remedy which basically has no molecules of the original substance in it. Now nobody really knows what's going on here and why it seems to work, but it does seem to work, that's the thing about it. But to any mainstream thinker, they think in order for something to work in the body there has to be a substance, there has to be something working there; it has to be connecting with receptors on the body in some way.

But it seems that by diluting these things actually makes them more powerful. But to mainstream sceptics, "this is just witchcraft", "there's absolutely no way that taking something that has no molecules could possibly be working". And yet there is so much, there are studies but there's also anecdotal evidence - this has been used for hundreds of years, this goes well beyond the placebo effect which is what the sceptics love to say; 'Oh it's just a placebo.' There's actually an article on Sott.net called Why Skeptics Love to Hate Homeopathy and it's written by Amy Lansky, who wrote a book called The Impossible Cure, which is a great book I highly recommend anybody, read that one. It's about how she cured her son's autism using Homeopathy.

Anyway, I just think this one is held up as the ultimate quackery, when I've had a lot of success with homeopathy myself.

Erykah: Just to add to that Doug, there's a great article that was carried back in 2011 called Homeopathy: Modern Medicine's First Target. And they talked about how Homeopathy, that Samuel Hannhnemann, he tested his medicine on volunteers and basically the article says this was the first evidence based medicine. And by 1900 Homeopathy was considered a relatively old medical tradition, and at the time 43% of medical schools taught Homeopathy, including one of the top medical schools in the world. That homeopathic formulations could be purchased through like you Sears catalogue by individuals who wish to care for their own health.

And then all of a sudden the profession began to suffer, from infighting, complacency and the rise of Big Pharma and opposition from modern scientific medicine. The AMA (American Medical Association) was formed in 1847 to improve ethics of medical practises and to put out of business those who engaged and trafficked secret remedies and patent medicine. And it says in the article that 'Homeopathy gained the unforgivable label of quackery'. In the final part he says, "There were two other important reasons for the disdain of Homeopathy by doctors, the idea that a person's illness was uniquely individual and the fact that its remedies were inexpensive."

The short story about Homeopathy could just as easily be applied to the fields of Chiropractic, Osteopathy, Acupuncture, Nutrition, Massage, and Naturopathy. So, what is common about the professions listed above is that they cost far less than drugs, surgery, and imaging and lab tests. So, as far as our listeners want to get a little read on that it's; Homeopathy Modern Medicines First Target. And that was Dr. Harvey Bigelsen who wrote this article for North Atlantic Books.

Gaby: How mechanical is modern medicine? Just because we don't understand how Homeopathy works doesn't mean it doesn't work. Because I've read research about how it could be related to Information Theory and there's speculation based on research, maybe there's no single molecule of the original remedy left but there's information and the water molecules arrange themselves around that and they can carry even more information. We just don't understand the concept because it's so - because we're so mechanical, basically.

Doug: It completely goes against the modern method of diagnosing things as well. If you in to see a doctor, you'll see them for 5-10 minutes maybe, they write you a script and your done. If you go see a Homeopath, they interview you for a good 2-3 hours, as they interview and get every detail of what you're going through, a complete picture of who you are. Everything from the kinds of dreams you're having, how you react to different weather patterns, what your psychology is, what your emotions are; all these different things, they have to look at the entire picture. And from that entire picture they find the symptoms that really stand out and choose a remedy based on that.

Comparatively speaking, a doctor would never spend 2-3 hours with a patient. That's just insane, they don't have time to do that, they have a line up of patients that they have to see. So, they're not really getting a picture of who you are as a person, they see one symptom and they find a way to suppress that symptom; that's the entirety of it. Whereas a Homeopath is like, "I want to see this entire person, a picture of the whole person." And people who take Homeopathic remedies may go in for one thing, like I mentioned a rash, maybe they've got depression or something like that, and they'll find that all kinds of their symptoms start to disappear.

Stuff that they didn't necessarily notice like, "My ankles used to always click when I walked", suddenly they take this remedy and it's not even what they were trying to address but that goes away so, it's like treating the entire person and it's a very holistic method.

Tiffany: So Doug, what have you used it for? What's your experience using Homeopathy?

Doug: Yeah, well, I'm always pretty gung-ho and reading about things, wanting to experiment on myself, which I don't necessarily recommend to people; if you do want to try homeopathy you should probably see a Homeopath. I actually borrowed this book off a friend of mine called, Homeopathic Psychology. It was looking at the various remedies and what psychological picture they are in tune with and what they are treating. Basically like personality types and how they fit with different remedies. So, I was reading through the book, making notes, thinking, "That one's kinda like me", "I do have that - but that doesn't really match and that doesn't fit" and then I got to one remedy and it was like reading my biography, it was like exactly 'me'. And I was like, "Ok, this is absolutely me." So, I ended up buying the remedy, taking that remedy, and certain things started to improve. I used to suffer from periodic nausea, I would be so nauseas at times, I would wake up in the middle of the night and be really, really sick. I would have to make myself a peppermint or ginger tea and just sit there and sip on it, to relieve the nausea and be able to go back to sleep. And that went away once I started taking the remedy. This wasn't even necessarily what I was looking for. But I actually ended up looking up the different things that the remedy was supposed to treat and that was one of them, severe nausea, and I was like, "Oh, ok! I guess I got a good match there."

But anyway, eventually, I realised I didn't know what I was doing and I better go and see a Homeopath and they confirmed it actually they said, "Yeah, that is your remedy." So, I've been taking that remedy periodically ever since and I've found it to be very helpful, especially whenever I'm feeling off balance or going into dissociative states, and maybe not feeling quite there; I'll take the remedy and it brings me back to balance, I've had a lot of success with it.

Gaby: That's very good detective work. That's what's needed to fight against cognitive biases and laziness, the brain pain, making the least effort. That's great. Good detective work!

Doug: That approach can work for people, I think, but you do need to know yourself pretty well. Have the ability to look at yourself in an unbiased manner. To be willing to see your flaws and not look at yourself - we all have a tendency to see ourselves in the best light. And we justify our different actions, we have all these narratives, that are like, "I'm perfect, it's everybody else's fault." or something like that. In order to do this detective work, you need to be willing to look at the darker side of yourself.

Tiffany: It reminds me of what we talked about last week: the shadow self and the need to integrate and address it. And maybe that's one of the reasons, like in Homeopathy and Bach remedies are helpful because it requires you to do detective work and actually delve into your psyche, and take matters into your own hands. And that probably changes your mindset which starts you on the path to healing, and then the alternative remedy or herb or something, it lends a hand. But I think people who generally try to follow alternative methods of healing are probably a tad more curious than the average person out there. They take the impetus to do some research for themselves and I think just that alone helps them get better.

Jonathan: Doug when you were talking about the, 'like treats like' aspect of Homeopathy, that made me think about how they use organs to treat certain organ conditions, or bone to treat (Bad audio) and things like that. I was first introduced to this concept by Dr. Tent who I think we have talked a little bit about before. And if anybody hasn't come across Dr. Tent, look him up, I think he has like forty lectures on You tube and they're all really good. He's a Chiropractor and a Natural Practitioner in Michigan, in the Detroit area. He talked a little bit about what are called Protomorphogens. This is a concept that came up in the 1940's by a man named Dr. Royal Lee who was the founder of Standard Process, the vitamin company. And he posited that cells from certain organs contained the blueprint for the restructuring for that specific organ. So, that if you have a problem with your liver you take liver, if you have a problem with your kidneys you take kidney, for teeth you take bone, things like. One of the things that really struck me was a story Dr. Tent told about Sacagawea in the Lewis and Clark expedition. And in the journals of Lewis and Clark there is this conversation they had with Sacagawea, at the time she was 17 years old and she had a new born baby and she was feeding the baby raw brain and raw bone marrow.

And they asked, "Why are you doing that?" and she said, "Well, the brain so that he will be smart and the bone marrow is so that he will be strong". And she hiked with these seasoned explorers nearly two thousand miles across the entire country at 17 years old with a baby on her back. So, if you really needed any anecdotal evidence about the strength of that kind of a person, I thought that was pretty interesting.

Also in Dr. Tents experience with this kind of thing in the animal world, he had a patient who came in with a parrot with eye cancer, the eye was bulging out of its head, it was really bad, and there was a tumour underneath the eye. And he said, "Well, I'm not a vet but give it eyeball." And so they looked it up and found that they could order, essentially, dry powdered eyeball, I think it was bovine eye. She fed it to the bird and it was cured. He also had similar experiences with human patients, like one guy with liver cancer, I think it was stage four, he had gone through a bunch of treatments, chemo and so on. And he was like, "I'm here as a last resort, what do we do, I'll try anything." And he said, "Well, start eating liver." And so he started feeding him raw liver and it went into remission. That's just two stories about that but there are a lot interesting things in that area, it's fascinating to me.

Along the lines of what you said Gaby, in terms of Information Theory. The idea that cells from specific organs could contain the information that's needed to rebuild that organ. We may just be going about this whole healing thing in the entirely wrong way. With a lot of the pharmaceutical treatments and the radiation treatments like we're talking about for all these illnesses. When it's been known for thousands of years that, "If you have a problem with this, you take that and that helps that." Like treats like. Fascinating.

Doug: There's a long history of using organs in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). For thousands of years they've been treating specific organ ailments with the specific organ, so there's a long history for that type of holistic healing.

Jonathan: While we're going over some anecdotes, there's another really interesting one from Dr Tent which came to mind. There was a professor, I think from Texas, who was having basically toxicity. He was getting really sick and they determined his body was building up toxins and they couldn't figure out why. They brought in five major doctors from different large hospitals from all around the country, to look at this guy. Nobody could diagnose what was going or help him.

Finally, again with this whole alternative thing, as a last resort, they brought in a Chinese doctor, who was practised in Traditional Chinese Medicine. And he took one look at the guy and asked, "What are you taking?" and one of the medications that the guy was on, was - I forget the exact name - but it blocked the detox pathways in the liver. And he discovered that, this professor who was a natural, I guess we could say, 'a hippy type of dude', would walk around campus barefoot. And it turned out he was absorbing the toxins from the fertiliser and the pesticides that were on the grass, on this college campus, through his feet. And because he was taking a medication that blocked the detox pathways in his liver, it was building up with toxins from the grass, in his liver, that was making him sick.

So, they got him off that medication and he got better and that was it. Major doctors couldn't figure that out because they couldn't get into that mind set of, 'let's just look logically at what is going on here.'

Tiffany: Has anybody ever tried Acupuncture?

Doug: I had a small experience with it. I did a service exchange with an Acupuncturist. I did some nutritional counselling for her and she did some acupuncture treatments on me. I wasn't trying to address anything in particular so I'm probably not the best person to hail the benefits of acupuncture. I may be noticing a greater sense of well being that lasted for a few days after the treatment but nothing specific.

Tiffany: Well, it's kind of like Homeopathy in that it works on the energy in the body. The thing I can't understand is that it's supposed to be over 2500 years old. And these Chinese doctors were able to tell that long ago, that there are these energy channels or Chi channels that flow through these meridians of the body. How did they find that out? I just don't understand how they could've done that. We can't even do that now. So, where did they get this information from? But I guess the whole point of acupuncture is, through these little needle sticks, to increase blood flow, increase muscle relaxation and to reduce pain, and they work on certain areas of the body.

There are twelve major organ systems divided in to Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. Fire has the heart, the pericardium, the small intestine and something called the Triple Heater, which is like the body's natural thermostat, even though it's not technically an organ. And Earth has the stomach and the spleen; Metal is the lungs and large intestine; Water is kidney and bladder; Wood is liver and gall bladder.

So, it's this Ying-Yang relationship. What effects one organ in one of these elements, effects the organs of the other elements. But I still can't figure it out how it really works. People swear by it and they get relief from it. There's got to be something that we just don't understand.

Gaby: It means the ancients knew much more than we do; especially when it comes to the information field type, of ideas.

Erykah: Just recently an article came out about, Ancient knowledge confirmed: Acupuncture very effective at treating Hypertension & BloodPressure. So like you were saying Tiffany, it makes sense, the article was saying that acupuncture regulates blood pressure, blood flow and body temperature. Patients who were treated with acupuncture experienced drops in blood pressure that lasted up to a month and a half. Then the reports of side effects showed that acupuncture works. Editor of a textbook Fundamentals of Complimentary Alternative Medicine and executive director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, says, "People need to understand that part of taking alternative medicine seriously is to look at and understand the side effects". So yeah, it seems to be another one of those things you can add to your tool kit in looking at other options.

Gaby: I recently read about it in Why Can't I Get Better by Dr. Richard Horowitz, which is all about Lyme disease and co-infections, people that are really, very sick. He had a case of a person who was so disabled due to neurological stickiness; he was in a wheelchair and could not move his leg because of these co-infections. And he recently hired a Chinese doctor who did acupuncture but combined it with something else like acupressure, or some kind of technology. And she said that she could fix 'anything', in her broken English she said, "I can fix anything!" So, there goes Dr. Horowitz, who in his mind is thinking, "Let's see if you can fix this!" and wheeled the patient in her office (Laughter). Later when the Chinese doctor called Dr. Horowitz and the patient had like 16 needles on his leg, but he was moving the leg. (Gasps) Yeah, he was like, "Wow!" and so he hired her as part of his staff for complimentary therapies for Lyme's disease.

Doug: Chinese Medicine is very interesting but it's one of those things, kind of like Homeopathy, it really requires you to look at things from a very different perspective to what how we're used to.

And just being a holistic practitioner I've come across different Chinese Medicine things. I've actually taught Western nutrition at a Chinese Medicine school, and the way that they look at things is so completely different, it's very metaphorical. It's a very difficult thing to dabble in, there are a few things we can take from it, and herbalism can be very helpful, organ therapies, things like that.

It's one of those things that to really benefit from it you have to find somebody who knows it well, who's studied it for a long time with lots of experience with different patients. It's not the kind of thing where you say, "Well, I'm going to try the Traditional Chinese Medicine approach!" because it really does require such a different view of things; one organ system effects another organ system and that one effects this one, you have too much heat in this area or too much dampness in this area. Its like, "What does that mean?!" you have dampness in your colon? Ok, "What does that mean; I have dampness in my colon? How do I get rid of that? Do I need to take start taking fire enemas or something? That's crazy!"

Gaby: It's supposed to be damp then dry. (Laughter)

Doug: Well a lot of people say that dampness in the colon relates to Candida overgrowth and that that might actually be what they were talking about. But they had such a different way of looking at it. Like a lot of the time in Traditional Chinese Medicine when they're talking about kidneys apparently what they're actually talking about is the adrenals. So, it requires a very different perspective and a way of translating what you're actually seeing there.

Gaby: Western terms.

Jonathan: I think to the point of: How did they figure out these kinds of things, all these thousands of years ago, that they were lacking in this unholy trifecta of toxins; for the body, for the mind, for the spirit, the way we see now. We have so many industrial toxins, we have bad diets, we have pollutants, and we also have EMF. Then we have the dampening of our creative spirit, by the media by psychopathy, in the way all of these things have come together, society right now is really sick, on the whole. And I think if you were to remove a lot of these aspects, if you were eating healthy, you were lacking EMF and you were able to lead a peaceful and contemplative life, that you would be able to get in touch, more so, with the natural, intuitive capabilities and discover things. Which is probably how, they came to discover these things because they were so unrestricted, in a way.

Tiffany: Yeah, they were so unrestricted that they could do these things; they could sit around and just observe nature, and ponder how things in nature really work. And apply that to human beings and their body. So, I think that's how they maybe did it.

Erykah: Well speaking of observing nature, I wanted to mention Bach. Because we've mentioned him quite a few times and for people who are interested there's a really good book out called, Practical Uses and Applications of Bach Flower Emotional Remedies by Jessica Bear who's a Naturopath. And Dr. Edward Bach was a physician, a bacteriologist, a homeopath and a researcher in the UK. He had two passions in life that were overwhelming for him, compassion for mankind and his love for nature, of all kinds. Little did he know that his two great compassions would combine and mature as one. He was always enquiring and researching and prying and studying. His father was a doctor. So he was always searching and question for new ways to make medicine painless. He was famous for discovering the seven Nosodes which is basically a type of intestinal bacteria that is used as a vaccine in the approach of chronic illness. The discovery of the Nosodes was Bach's first glimpse and insight that the different personalities of the bacteria seemed to relate to the different personalities of his individual patients.

He was surprised and amazed as he monitored the rate of patients recovery based on their personality. And he watched carefully for signs of changes in their attitudes in recovery. Whether or not the patient took control of their own life and how each patient dealt with their inner conflict. Bach spent many years in hospital wards studying and analysing his patients, and it was at this time that he started to come to the realisation that the personality and the attitude of the individual seemed to play a more important role in the recovery than the medical treatment.

Doug: Wow.

Erykah: The body was receiving information from the disease and Bach noted patients who were not recovering, with further study he recognised the personality- attitudes of the non-healing patients, seemed to be holding them back recovering and healing. So, in essence, he discovered that disease was the result of a conflict between the soul, the mind and the body. And if this premise holds true, then medical and physical methodologies never could or would totally eradicate this disease, either within or without the body. So, Bach saw that disease, though seemingly cruel, was beneficial and good for the patient. Bach pervading sentiment was that the physicians and patients must seek within themselves to find the origin of their disease or illness. He felt that medicine needed to be more natural and kept within the realms of nature. So, in 1930 he returned to nature and the land that he loved, where his discoveries and studies led him to his flower remedies. He studied great healers, especially homeopathic healer Hahnemann and he developed 38 flower remedies. It had the saying was, "Treat the cause, not the effect". And one of his most famous remedies is, Rescue Remedy.

It's very popular, you see it in health stores. They make tablets, salves to put on your body, sprays. And basically it's what he called, 'an emergency combination containing five flower remedies'. And the flowers are; Impatiens, Star of Bethlehem, Cherry Plum, Rock Rose, and Clematis. I've used Rescue Remedy extensively, and maybe it's the idea that, "I'm going to take this rescue remedy and it's going to calm my nervous system" or "I'm going to feel better" but I definitely think there is something to these flower essences. We were talking before the show and how I used to give these remedies to my children, it was called Holly, like Christmas Holly, and it was jealousy. (Laughter)

You get kids and they argue and fight and I would carry this little Holly remedy around with me, and I definitely noticed when I would give it to them they would calm down and not be so jealous of each other.

Gaby: That's very interesting. I just wanted to comment on Holly. I read the experience of Bach's flowers through a book; Radical Healing: Integrating the World's Great Therapeutic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine by Rudolph M Ballentine. He also had a lot of experience with these flower essences, and holly was one of the first one he tried, and apparently it was one of the first ones Bach tried. And he said that the leaves of Holly, it is spiky, but it curves down and inwards. So, he talks about the essence of the flower and it's basically the generic essence flower to be given when there are negative impulses; hate, jealousy, self hatred, and he was surprised with the results he had; people started to be become more compassionate, externally considerate, polite towards people, considering their feelings, like they grew, literally. So, I thought that was very interesting.

Erykah: Has anybody else tried any?

Doug: I use Rescue Remedy on my cat fairly often, and it definitely seems to work. When he's getting really anxious or weird about stuff - he has a thing where he works on his eye to the point where he's losing fur because he gets so anxious. So, I just put a few drops in his water and that seems to curb that behaviour.

Erykah: I've also used Impatiens, which is actually in the Rescue Remedy. Nobody likes to wait in line, at all, especially at the Department of Motor vehicles or the bank, well I used to be a very impatient person and even with my kids when they were getting the Holly, I was taking my Impatiens. And it basically is as it implies - you don't want to drink coffee and take this - but I found a lot of relief from the Impatiens remedy. That's one of the different flower remedies.

Doug: There are actually lots of different remedies out there right now. I know there's another company out there called FES that's kind of continued the work of Bach, by doing all kinds of other different types of flower remedies. Here in Canada we have got one called; Canadian Tree essences, where they take different trees native to Canada and make essences from them. There are gem essences as well, there's one called; Living Light which is making remedies based on gems. There are Australian flower essences; there are all kinds of things at this point that you can experiment with.

Tiffany: It makes me wonder, if you weren't so cut off from nature and you spent your time hugging trees, sniffing the flowers, would you even need a Bach remedy? So, maybe the remedy, ultimately, is to get your ass outside, go on a hike and roam around in the prairies. (Laughter)

Gaby: That's the thing I find fascinating because it requires observation, intuition, and also a lot of self work, on your emotions, to figure out the right remedy. Just reading through Rudolph M Ballentines' experience and in which cases he applies them, he made me want to try a couple of remedies for myself! I read about, for example Absinthe, the leaves tremble very quickly with a minimal amount of wind, so it's actually given to people who are very nervous or anxious. Then Wild Oat, as the name suggests, is given to people who cannot assume responsibility or concentrate. And then, reading about Walnut and Star of Bethlehem. Star of Bethlehem, which tries to let go of past trauma or related feelings of trauma. And Walnut, is supposed to protect you against negative influences and also allows for change. And I read it and I thought this is fascinating I'm going to do some Bach's flowers to palliate my herxheimer reaction from my anti-microbial protocol. And I have to say that, yes, it does seem to work.

Doug: Wow.

Erykah: Well we'll have to report back later. (Laughter)

Tiffany: Does anybody know anything about Craniosacral therapy.

Gaby: I've tried it.

Jonathan: I've no experience with it personally but I've a couple of friends who have and they said it was really effective on them.

Gaby: I had it with my Rolfing and with the Bach so I don't know which one worked, but it definitely worked.

Tiffany: So, it's like a head massage right?

Gaby: They move the bones of your skull around a little bit.

Doug: The impression I got is it's very subtle, like chiropractic for the head, skull and the sacrum as well. It's like aligning the cranium with the sacrum, in a certain way. It can become misaligned and results in all kinds of psychological effects. So, it's rebalancing that communication between the two.

Tiffany: I just read about how people think the bones of the skull are completely fused by the time you're an adult. But I read they move in very small and subtle ways and they be can manipulated and they respond to energy. Which brings up back to energy, a lot of these things are based on energy. I think that's going to be the next big thing, if Big Pharma doesn't kill us all. Because there's a lot of researchers who are talking about Information Theory and Field Theory and how we're energy beings and we need to reconnect to Earth. That's one of the reasons EMF is so incredibly bad, worse than a lot of people think. But I think energy medicine is going to be one of the big things, if we're not all dead first.

Doug: I agree.

Jonathan: The Craniosacral therapy, made me think of another thing, again referring to Dr. Tent, where he has had more than a couple of patients with issues with the Atlas, which is at the base of the skull and the top of the spine, actually moving out of place and pinching the brain stem; causing a lot of symptoms that were then diagnosed by mainstream doctors, as even something as extreme as Palsy; also diagnosed as many other types of diseases that resulted in paralysis, numbness, chronic migraines, things like that. And he had this specific technique that he had been taught, to move the Atlas, it looks really dangerous when you see it, he demonstrates it at one point and it's like, "Holy crap! How could somebody's head actually move that way." but he does. And it moves it out of the way and it stops pinching the brain stem and it just completely alleviates all of these symptoms. So, I thought that was pretty fascinating. And I think Doug what you said about micro-chiropractic for the skull, is a really interesting idea, it's something I'd be curious to check out but I've never had it done.

So, we're about at the time here to go to Zoya's pet health segment, so let's check that out and when we come back we will have a recipe for one of the Bach flower remedies, so you can experiment with that. And Zoya is going to talk to us today about farm abuse. So here's Zoya.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the pet health segment of the Health and Wellness show. Today, I'm going to share with you a very important talk by Wayne Pacelle. He's the president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and he's talking about animal factories and the abuse of power. I've mentioned this topic several times in the past but it requires reiteration since it is so important; we simply can't ignore it and can't accept it. So, here it goes Wayne Pacelle.

Thank you Laurie, thank you Diane for inviting me and thank you all organizers for including the impact on animals when we're talking about food and agriculture. As Laurie mentioned I feel very privileged to serve The Humane Society of the United States. This is our logo, and you can see it consists of 19 different animals in the shape of the country. We work on all animal issues, and we work on a national scale; not just conducting rescue, which is so important but inevitably deals with the symptoms of the problems, but looking to prevent cruelty, and looking at the broadest, and biggest issues of our human relationship with animals. One of the central questions that we confront at the Humane Society of the United States is the incredible moment of contradiction that we live in now, in our society.

With so many expressions of love and appreciation for animals but so much cruelty occurring on a vast and industrial scale. You know, I did write a book called; The Bond and the thesis of this is there's a bond built into every one of us that gives us a head start in doing the right thing for our fellow creatures. All kids have this connectivity to animals, and all of us here, at some level, have a connection to other creatures. We have so many expressions of this bond and appreciation for animals in our society. Two thirds of American households have dogs and cats, 171 million dogs and cats; we let our cats on our kitchen tables, we sleep in the same bed as our dogs.

There are another 140-150 million pets in our households, there are more pets than people in American households. We spend more than $50 billion a year on our pets. Another 80 million of us are active wildlife watchers. We take to the forests and the fields to watch the incredible feats of flights of birds and other creatures, and take in the tonic of being in the natural world and experiencing an area that's not completely controlled by humans. These ideas are embedded in our culture. There are 20,000 animal welfare groups in the country. There's an animal group for every kind of animal; there are groups that work on Chihuahua rescue, St. Bernard rescue work, feral cats, or you name it, there are rabbit rescue groups.

We run a rabbit sanctuary for homeless and injured rabbits, we say we're providing hope for the "hopless." (Laughter) There's an animal group for every kind of creature, of course there are farm animal groups and there are groups that are thinking about every sort of creature in crisis. And we have a nation where the basic notion that cruelty to animals is wrong is already a universal value. All 50 states have anti-cruelty statutes that codify the notion that malicious torment of animals is not just a moral problem, it is a legal problem. It is a felony in 47 states. Cockfighting is a federal felony, and it's now illegal in all 50 states. Dog fighting is a felony in every state, so staging fights between animals, even if you have some sort of interest in that, get some sort of titillation from it, we as a state, as a nation, say no, you're not allowed to do that, we're going to protect the animals from that sort of vice and that sort of entertainment.

But what about farm animals? The largest category of animals in use, in our society. Ten billion animals raised for food in the United States every year. Ten billion. More animals go through slaughterhouse lines every year in the United States than there are people on the planet. Just as a logistical enterprise it's an extraordinary sort of thing. And how do we feel about this?

I mean we love our dogs and our cats, and we express all sorts of appreciation, fascination for wildlife, but do we care about farm animals? Well, all of the surveys show that indeed we do.

Here's a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, kind of the symbol of industrial agriculture, through Oklahoma State University, measuring public attitudes towards farm animals:95% of people believe farm animals should be well cared for, 95%.Every survey shows this. That we care about all animals, including animals raised for food.We, at The Humane Society of US don't talk so much about animal rights; we talk about human responsibility.

It's really more about us than it is about them. I mean, we need to understand a basic frameworkwhen we're talking about animals; that they think, that they feel, that they make choices,that they want to live just as much as we want to live, that they want to avoid pain and suffering just as much as each one of us does. But it's really about our choices, because in the relationship between us and animals we hold all the cards. We have all the power. We're the lords of the animals. We make life and death decisions in our society without even casually thinking about it sometimes.The little actions that we take have such consequences for these creatures.

And one of the greatest disconnects that exist in our society is our relationship with animals, and what we think we believe, and how we act in this world, where animals are not just a sideline to the human experience, whether we realize it or not, they're at the centre of the human experience and they've always been at the centre of the human experience. Are we syncing up our values and our beliefs with our conduct? This is a barren battery cage; 280 million laying hens in the United States and 95% of them are in these barren battery cages; six or eight birds jammed into a cage. Each bird under the industry standard has 67 square inches of space, now this is an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper, 8.5 times 11 is 93, so 67 is two thirds of this page. That's the living space that a laying hen has as the industry standard and norm in our nation for the year and a half that she is alive.

A year and a half in this space? I mean, it's as if eight or nine of us were in an elevator for our whole lives. Imagine after five or ten minutes how you'd feel stuck in an elevator, imagine if you were stuck in there for a whole day or a week, or a month or a year, or a year and a half. I mean are we this uncreative when it comes to agricultural practices? Are we this miserly? Are we this oblivious to the needs of other creatures to do this sort of thing to them? Confine them in a space where they can't even turn around or extend their limbs, is that the way we are? Is that the kind of country we are? Is that the kind of people we are?

Or take pigs. This is Smithfield Foods, it's one of their farms, and we did an undercover investigation there. These are pigs in gestation crates, the breeding sows; the females have it worst in the general sense. These sows are in a two foot by seven foot cage, they can take one step forward and one step back, they can't turn around. The only time they get out of that cage is just before they give birth and they are moved into another cage where they are similarly immobilized, and then after a short time with their piglets, then they're re-impregnated and put back into the gestation crates. Seven, eight, nine, ten successive pregnancies, three years, three and a half years in a cage. Now these are intelligent, sociable animals. Is this what we should be doing to them?

If we did this to a dog? You could be prosecuted under one of those anti-cruelty statutes. So how do we narrow the gap? How do we address these problems of ten billion animals, so many of them caught up in this industrial food production system where the animals are no longer animals, they've been turned into meat, milk, and egg producing machines. They've been genetically manipulated to exaggerate certain body parts. They've been moved from outdoor settings, where they could feel sunlight on their backs, soil beneath their feet, where they can amble around, where they can interact with others of their kind and they can have a decent life.

Yes, they're going to have at least one bad day when they go to slaughter, but the rest of their life, the rest of their life does not need to be one of misery and privation. Of course, the answer is human creativity and innovation, which has solved so many things, and made moot so many past problems through the advance of entrepreneurial activity and imagination.

This is an aviary system where these laying hens can actually, to some degree; they can act like laying hens. They can perch, get up on a high place, they can go to a nest box and lay their egg,they can move around, I mean, what a radical notion, that animals built to move should be allowed to move. Or pigs, you know Fred talked about this, these animals want to be around others, they live in a herd environment, but there are limits to the herd, you don't press them together side by side, so the ammonia overtakes the atmosphere, that they're living above manure that falls between the slatted concrete floors.

They should be able to feel some grass or hay beneath their feet. The science is clear on these issues; I mean our common sense leads us in the right direction. This is a Netherlands study about a variety of different egg-laying hen production systems. You can see that the cage system, the barren battery cage, on a scale of 0 to 10, doesn't come in at 7, or 8, something that's a little deficient, it comes in at zero. Zero.

The barn system, again, not free range, comes in at 5.8, and the aviary system, the one that you saw, at 5.9. These incremental improvements, little decisions for us that are entirely inconsequential in our lives, mean everything for these animals, everything for them. Temple Grandin, there was a movie about her on HBO - here's Clare Danes as Temple Grandin - says; "I feel very strongly that we've got to treat animals right, and that gestation stalls have got to go."

The Pew Commission on Industrialized Farm Animal Production took a look at all of these issuesthat we've been talking about today, and they looked at the issue of the overuse of antibiotics and the manure management systems, the effect on rural communities, and they looked also at animal welfare. A commission which consisted of a wide variety of stakeholders, including a former US DA Secretary, a former Governor of a Midwest state said; "The Commission recommends the phase-out of all intensive confinement systems that restrict natural movement and normal behaviours, including battery cages and gestation crates."

We've got to have these principles of anti-cruelty, the words humane, they're not abstractions, they are things that need to be put to work in our daily lives. And we have no better opportunity to put them to work in our daily lives than with the food choices that confront us every single day.
We've got to eat with conscience, wherever we are in the spectrum, whether we're a vegan or vegetarian or an inveterate carnivore.

We can all make choices that have better consequences for animals. And we've got to change the legal framework. Eight states have recently adopted laws that are urging to ban confinement crates or cages. Prop2 in California, which was a measure to stop the extreme confinement of laying hens, and breeding sows, and veal calves, got more votes in a contested election than any citizen initiative in American history. People voted for farm animals, even though they were told it would cost them more, that there would be all sorts of problems and complications. People don't want the animals treated this way.

Even the United Egg Producers, the group that was our biggest adversary, has now seen the writing on the wall. It is now jointly supporting with HSUS in efforts in Congress to have a minimum standard of care for laying hens, to ban forced moulting, to reduce ammonia levels, to require labelling of all eggs in the marketplace, to double the space allowed for the birds and to give them enrichments. And of course, all of us, as individuals, can take action.

Meatless Mondays is a great, easy way to ease into this. Choosing higher welfare products which are now more and more available in the marketplace, we've got to demand that they're more widely available. And urging corporations. We're a capitalist economy; corporations have an enormous sway on our behaviour, the opportunities that we have.

All of these companies have taken preliminary steps to infuse their supply chain with more humanely produced products. And we've got to spread the word. It's said that not a sparrow falls without his Maker knowing. We've got to be mindful of all these creatures, every single one of them.

Thank you.

Tiffany: Well. That guy was really passionate. I don't know about... (Bad audio)

Jonathan: Here come the goats (Laughter). Yeah that was a really great talk. I think it's something, like with the Joel Salatin interview earlier, we don't think about where our meat comes from. And while I think, personally, that there are many arguments that can be made for the legitimacy for eating meat, animals, it has to be done with kindness and compassion. That's a whole other discussion we can get into, how can you kindly kill an animal? But the points that the lecturer made is important. Confining an animal to a space like that, for the duration of its life is quite cruel, and hypocritical.

Tiffany: Yeah, it's terrible. It's like being in solitary confinement for your whole life.

Jonathan: Yeah. Well Tiff, do you want to give us the recipe for the Bach flower remedy that people can play with.

Tiffany: Yeah, I'll tackle that. I've made tinctures before, like herbal tinctures, but I've never made a Bach flower remedy. But I think it's worth a try. You need to pick a very nice, bright sunny day, not many clouds in the sky. And choose your flower, you don't want to choose anything dangerous or poisonous, you don't want to pick Belladonna or something like that, and make a Bach remedy out of it. But if you have like some Roses or some other flowers... I'm not a big gardener.

Erykah: Chamomile, Lavender even.

Tiffany: So, you want to go out there - this is what I've read - with an attitude of gratitude, and be very thankful to the plants or the flowers that they're going to give their energy to you on this day. You want to only pick the flower tops or the leaves. So, when you pick the flowers tops and cut them off, you want to have a bowl of clean spring water or well water or distilled water, right side up, and let it sit in direct sunlight.

So, that's the importance of doing it on a nice sunny day. So, let them sit in direct sunlight for two to five hours. And after that, you want to strain it through some cheesecloth, and you'll be left with something called the Mother. This is the essence of the flowers. And from the Mother you want to take a dropper and put 10 drops of the essence in a tincture bottle with either 30% vinegar or 20% Brandy - don't drink the Brandy - and then you want to succus it. Which is like shake it, pound it up against your palm in the tincture bottle. Succus it about ten times and then you have your flower remedy! So it's pretty simple. That's it.

Erykah: And you're on your way to emotional wellness. (Laughter)

Jonathan: Well it sounds pretty simple and definitely worth trying.

Tiffany: Flower remedies can be a little pricey, so it's nice when you can make your own stuff.

Erykah: It also gets you out into your environment to become familiar with your flowers. And as Tiffany said, make sure you do a little research to know that it doesn't hold some hazardous properties.

Jonathan: Definitely. Well, cool. That's our show for today. We'd like to thank everybody for tuning in and all the participants of our chat. And we'd like to remind you of our two other shows' on the Sott Radio Network: the Truth Perspective, Saturday, and Behind the Headlines on Sunday. We're going to have some more good topics coming up and those are great shows so check them out.

Please come back and we look forward to talking to you next week!

All: Good bye