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Running Time: 01:48:00

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Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome everybody. My name is Jonathan, I'll be your host for today.Joining me in our virtual studio from all over the planet are Erykah, Gaby and Tiffany, today. And Doug is not able to be with us due to other engagements that he had, but we will have Zoya's pet health segment towards the end of the show today.

So, welcome. Today we're going to talk about a number of things. We're just going to kind of connect the dots about some general health topics, mainly talking about the influence of the modern world on our health via the WiFi, cell towers, ambient radiation and that kind of thing. We're going to cover sleep, stress and proper breathing with the Eiriu Eolas programme; some exercise; water, earthing and a number of other topics.
So, I'm glad that everybody is with us today and we're going to start out with a couple articles: Tiffany has one that she's going to start us with, talking about the spread of antibiotic-resistant super-bugs.

Tiffany: Yeah. So, this has been a problem for quite a number of years with the overuse and misuse of antibiotics. The first article is Antibiotic-resistant intestinal superbug has spread to majority of US states, and this was posted up on sott in the last week.

So this particular superbug is called Shigella sonnei and ninety percent of the cases analysed in Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania were resistant to Cipro, which is a really powerful antibiotic and it's the top drug used to treat Shigella. The Shigella strains were also too potent for drugs like ampicillin or septra.

So, Shigella causes abdominal cramps, fever and diarrhoea and it spreads quickly in nursing homes, hospitals and daycares.

So, it's not just Shigella that's on the rise; there's also Staphylococcus aureus, Capsella, Pneumonia, E. Coli and MRSA. So the more antibiotics we use, the faster the resistance spreads. People using antibiotics to treat viral illnesses, which is not recommended; that kind of leads to the overuse of antibiotics. Plus, all of the antibiotics that are fed to animals in these large factory farms.

So, there's another article that kind of ties into this and it was posted on sott in the last week or so: It's called, Ancient Anglo-Saxon herbal potion found to kill MRSA - and MRSA is meticillin-resistantStaphylococcus aureus.

So, researchers discovered this thousand year old recipe and it was used to treat styes on your eye, like an infection in your follicle in your eyelash - I used to get those, they're kind of gross.

So, the recipe called for leaks, garlic, wine and bullock's gall, which is just an old word for ox bile. And they let it sit for nine days in a brass vessel and they applied it to the eye and it actually killed the styes, so some modern-day researchers made a batch of this stuff and they used it on mice infected with MRSA and it killed ninety percent of it. And it worked just as well as vancomycin which is like the 'top dog' of antibiotics.

There's a lot of other natural antibiotics, but it's not really a topic for this show; but there's LOADS of them - maybe we can focus on that in another episode.

Does anybody want to try this Anglo-Saxon recipe and report back?

Gaby: I will!

Tiffany: Okay.

Jonathan: You know, I'm all for natural remedies but I think I would wait until I actually had MRSA to try that.

Tiffany: I've had styes before and I had no idea about any ancient remedies, herbs or anything. I didn't take antibiotics and it just kind of went away on their own. I mean, they're pretty ugly and make your eye-sight kind of weird.

Erykah: An old wives tale for styes on the eye is a hard boiled egg, and you peel off the skin and you put it in a clean sock and you put it on your eye, and the heat and the sulphur fro the egg bring the stye to a head. So, that might be another natural remedy for styes in the eye.

Tiffany: Yeah... you stress that its a CLEAN sock.

Erykah: Yes! Clean sock.

Jonathan: Although, maybe an old sock would have some beneficial bacteria in there.

Tiffany: Yeah. It's called the "Toe Jam Cure".

Jonathan: Well, I believe that we have another article for our general intro hear about some interesting news about kids - scientists at Los Alamos - not being vaccinated.

Erykah: Yes. So, this really ties in great to our talk last week about "Virus Mania" with Doctor Köhnlein and this article is called Top government scientists say no to vaccines for their kids and it was posted on March 27th, 2015 by John Rappoport; and John Rappoport has written a lot about vaccines; he wrote a lot about the CDC whistleblower coming out about the MMR vaccines and he's got a great writing style and uses a sense of humour and some pretty obvious clues on what we're dealing with here, and I just want to give a quote he has in the beginning of the article from a book called Medical Nemesis that was published back in 1977.

It says: "The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles amongst children up to fifteen shoes that nearly ninety percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1955 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunisation. In part, the recession may be attributed to approved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms. But by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition."

So, it's kind of our topic on the show today, you know, lifestyle choices as Köhnlein had talked about in last weeks show. So, just a little overview of this article: In the Albuquerque Journal, Los Alamos schools top New Mexico in vaccine exemptions - so that's the highest rate of non-vaccination in the state. So, we're talking about parents who work at Los Alamos labs. And so, these people have advanced degrees in science but they also work for the federal government.

So, he asks the question, you would think the vaccine rate would be a hundred percent, no questions asked, since these folks work in these labs and for the government. And he speculates that they've done some actual research on their own and they've decided that vaccines are unsafe and ineffective. And for those who may not know, Los Alamos labs, they do nuclear bomb and disease research, right? So, these doctors would be in the know.

He goes on to talk about how he wrote a book about AIDS in 1987 and he began interviewing people about their health and what he discovered was that a number people were in excellent health and they had never received vaccinations. So, he comes to the conclusion that "One common factor emerged from my interviews with very healthy people is that they all had good nutrition. And the more people I spoke to, the more obvious something became: Non-medical, naturally acquired immunity to disease could become a problem for the medical cartel." And he's written a lot about the medical cartel; you can google that in the sott search engine and you'll find a good article about that.

So, he goes on to talk about the rabid campaign to inject every human with a host of vaccines and how it's just utter madness and it intentionally ignores that fact that natural immunity should be the goal, which can be achieved through non-medical means.

He cites also the National Vaccine Information Center Advocacy Portal for information, and then goes on to talk about how we talked about in the show last week how these mass vaccine campaigns of fear are all about just that: Fear. The fear of getting sick and the need for vaccines and that everybody should follow, no questions asked.

So, the Los Alamos labs, obviously these parents are not the case when it comes to vaccination. And they would play strictly by the book with everything else, but not on that one, and that should give everybody a clue that there's some serious concerns. So I got that article by John Rappaport.

Jonathan: Totally. I think it's increasingly evident that people in the know, people with scientific and medical experience, are speaking out about vaccinations and about the dangers involved. You could call it the 'pro-vax' verses 'anti-vax' argument has been, "Well, the anti-vax' people have no science on their side," which is patently false. I personally don't have a science background so I can't convince anyone on my own, but I'm happy that these people are coming forward so there can be a bit more of a reasoned debate about it instead of just being called a 'nutjob'.

Erykah: Exactly. And it gives credibility to these people that have questions, you know? "What are we really doing?" "What kind of experimental shots are we receiving?" And after last weeks show, we see a lot of these so-called "epidemics" are just really just more lifestyle, diet, natural immunity issues.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Tiffany: Yeah. I think there was even a AMA... they published or sent out a memo saying they were against mandatory vaccinations for themselves, at least. So I think the higher you go to the upper echelons of society; I mean, those people, they know what's up; they don't take vaccines.

Jonathan: Yeah. Obviously we have these other kind of pathological things in place in our society that, I do think they're a little bit nervous about instituting mandatory vaccines, in the sense that there would be such a backlash if it came out like, "You're going to be vaccinated or else you're going to be fined or face jail time", or something like that, that there really would be some sort of a backlash. But maybe I have too much faith in the society in that regard, I don't know. Because I thought there would be a backlash about a lot of other things that are already in place, so...

Well, speaking of lifestyle choices and modern society and the things that are damaging our health, Erykah has some information that she wanted to go over regarding resonant frequencies, ambient radiation. This maybe be common knowledge, but just to say that 'radiation' doesn't just apply to nuclear radiation: Radiation just means waves that radiate. So, we have a lot of ambient radiation in our environment, even just from power lines alone, but also especially nowadays from cell towers, from WiFi, and more and more information is coming out that those things are effecting our health - most importantly our sleep, which is one of the main cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle is proper sleep.

Erykah, do you want to cover some of that for a little bit?

Erykah: Yeah. So, at the end of March there was an article called The growing cell tower menace to our health by Catherine Frompovich - and she's written a lot about vaccinations as well. But she discusses this issue that's happening in Los Angeles and she says that something's cropping up all over Los Angeles, California, like poisonous mushrooms with equally toxic effects; but it's not poisonous mushrooms, it's the standard cell tower along with RF and EMF public relation pitches that are generated.

So, she basically talks about concerned Los Angeleans feeling there are several issues regarding the cell towers being constructed in their area. Most prominent concerns are the health effects of EMF (electro magnetic frequencies) and Constitutional 4th Amendment privacy matters.
She's saying that maybe if people read this article, they'll become activists and so she talks about this "Smart grid consumer collaborative" SGCC: It's an industry group that's active in discounting, nullifying and educating about the "'safety issues' of any smart technology and its inability to cause health problems".

And so, in Los Angeles, L.A. fire fighters are actually dramatically opposing cell towers near their fire stations and the cell towers are being promoted as part of a homeland security issue.

So, she has a quote here from Citizens For A Radiation Free Community and other Los Angeles stakeholders and citizens are joining the L.A. Fire Fighters Union at a Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in protest against L.A. RICS, the Los Angeles arm of the federally funded infrastructure through First Net, which is using "Homeland Security" to force their federal cell tower system into L.A. County and other areas in California.
So, on the 24th of March, fire fighters and activists presented their legitimate concern and they do not wish to have severe health effects like cancer or be surveilled by this new surveillance capable cell tower infrastructure. They believe that this is cronyism, pork barrel, federal tax payer money giveaways to private corporations at the expense of our Constitutional rights to our health, life, property and privacy.

And you need to be concerned. So they say even if you don't live near where a cell tower is being installed, you will be effected because there are special cell towers that promise to saturate 97% of Los Angeles if they go in. And that's a frightening thought, and probably other people in other places have seen this happen - like they have cell towers that look like trees, you drive on the freeway and you see them everywhere. I mean, they are just, like she's saying, popping up like wild mushrooms.

So the fire fighters and the activists were successful in getting press coverage at the supervisor's special meeting and there's a video on this article that you can watch. But basically, they say that this is microwaving people and it was even in a CBS News clip that the cancer risk is there. And so, supervisors listened to the citizens and the fire fighters actually didn't testify, but they just stood up and showed their solidarity. So she's saying sometimes actions speak louder than words.

There's also similar cell tower roll-outs in progress in other cities such as Northern California; Houston, Texas; parts of Colorado; New Jersey and New Mexico. And she said, people in those states ought to wake up to what's going on around them and she says if you're interested in more information about the nationwide programme regarding cell towers and the problems associated with them, please contact liz@peoplesinitiativenews.

And so, it's kind of interesting that this article brought this issue back into the fold again, because we've known about it and we've carried quite a few sott articles about electromagnetic radiation and how it effects your health. And I remembered a few years ago I had watched a documentary called Resonance: Beams of Frequency and we have a link to the documentary on the sott page today. But it talked about the bees - it's kind of where my interest was, that does cell phone technology and towers effect bees? And so I just want to give a little synopsis of this excellent documentary, because I learned a few things and I figured I'd share it here.

So, the documentary was made in 2012 by James Russell and John Webster and it's the biggest change that life has ever endured, but not a single one of us can see it, right? So, it's not a visible issue, this frequency. And so the movie starts out with just an introduction of Alfred Schumann and in 1951 he discovered what's called the 'Schumann Resonance' and it's basically the planet's pulse. And about thirty years before that, Hans Berger discovered the electrical frequency of the human brain - so, what they called the 'Alpha Wave' - and so this Schumann Resonance and this Alpha Wave are kind of the same hertz - and I'm not a scientist so I'm not going to attempt to explain it, but basically, they discovered that the pulse of the Earth was 7.83 hertz and then the pulse of the human brain was the same, so there's a connection there, right?
And then in 1970, at the Max Planck Institute, there was a study done about circadian rhythms in connection with this Schumann Resonance of the Earth. And what they did was, they wanted to study the effects of people being isolated from the Earth's magnetic frequency. So they put students underground in a bunker and it was completely guarded from any sort of the Earth's resonance. And what happened, almost immediately is that the students physical and mental health started to suffer. Their circadian rhythms were upset, and then when they went and they introduced the Schumann Resonance with a little generator of some sort, the students started to get better.

So, it's a pretty interesting study to show how we're effected, you know? And we'll go into this later with the earthing thing about how this Earth's frequency and the human brain, there's definitely a relationship there.

So the premise of the movie is that we're sensitive to frequency or magnetic fields and right now in the world - and this was back in 2012 - there's four billion mobile phones in use around the world and starting in the 1980's there's over five million cell phone towers. So the grid was built without any thought to safety, right?

And so, on that line, we have this relationship with the Earth and we have this magnetic connection and in 2000, Ritz studied the navigational sense in birds or a compass. So they tested radio frequency fields on birds to see if magnetics or high frequency interfered with the birds navigational sense and they found that the cryptochromes were affected by man-made radio frequency fields. And for those who may not know, the greek word, cryptochrome means "hidden colour" and it's a class of flavoprotein sensitive to blue light found in both plants and animals. And they found these cryptochromes in humans as well. So cryptochromes are magnetically sensitive and they're involved in the circadian rhythm.

So basically, they found that we are vulnerable to magnetic frequencies and again, electrical sensitivity - things like WiFi, deaf phones, cell towers. I would like to defer to Gaby here about cryptochromes and the relationship to the circadian rhythm because it's an interesting topic, something that I think Gaby can share a little bit more about.

Gaby: Yeah, the cryptochromes in our bloodstream can pick up a blue spectrum of light through our skin and that light can disrupt our circadian rhythm and it can also keep pathological bacteria thriving in the gut. That's because of decreased melatonin through the night, in total darkness, which is produced mainly by the pineal gland - it helps regulate our bodies circadian rhythm.

Melatonin is inhibited by light and artificial light is its worst enemy. The blue light spectrum, which is very popularly used in computers, television, mobile phones, is very energy efficient: That's why there's blue light everywhere. So melatonin is particularly susceptible to blue light and I have a quote here from the book Lights Out, which was written by anthropologist T. S. Wiley and she quotes a study where there was a fibre optic cable behind the knee of a person. It illuminated a patch of skin no bigger than the size of a quarter and it affected melatonin secretion. So, this person was otherwise in complete darkness and so the cryptochromes under the blue light behind the knee, this person's circadian rhythm was disrupted, so, it goes to show how wearing night eye-covers is simply not enough. So these are the notes she had on cryptochromes related to melatonin and circadian rhythms.

Jonathan: Sorry, what was the last name of that author again? Can you spell that?

Gaby: Yes, it's W. I. L. E. Y.

Jonathan: Okay.

Gaby: She's an anthropologist. She published this book, Lights Out, and she puts all the research that shows, pretty much, how a the worldwide population's health deteriorated when electricity came in.

Erykah: So now, we're being even microwaved a little bit more, you know?

So, if anybody wants to learn more about this electromagnetic radiation and your health, there's an article on SOTT with the same name. And there's some links to some other articles on there as well that we've carried. Some of them are cell phones; EMF negativity altering important regions of the brain; the Bioinitiative Report talks about the dangerous health impacts of microwave radiation; and then, new study: Thirty minutes expose to 4G cell phone radiation effects your brain activity; and also how the telecoms industry seeks to confuse about the dangers of cell phones.

So, this documentary, Resonance, it's about an hour and a half and it talks a lot about the effects on bees and birds, with some frightening numbers about the disappearance of the bees. And the movie says, "According to the film's research, four species of American bees decreased in numbers by 98%. So, there's definitely something to this cell phone technology, its artificial frequencies that we're submersed in and I really do think it's affecting people's brains on a massive level.

Tiffany: So, this kind of begs the question... I know there's an issue that cell phones are so convenient, you can use them for emergencies or get on the internet and surf and all that, and then there's also the added element of all the money that these cell phone companies are making. But, call me a conspiracy nut, if you will; but sometimes I wonder if there's an underlying reason why all these cell phone towers are springing up as if somebody or something on purpose wants our frequencies to be jammed.

Jonathan: Sure, that's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Gaby: I'm frightened by all these applications where people can measure how many steps they walked through the day and your pulse and all that all connected with the cell phone. I'm just freaked out by them - by the whole concept, you know.

Erykah: Yeah, and a real concern too is children. They talk about in the movie, like they did all these supposed health tests and whatnot - and of course, they're all sponsored by the cell phone industry - that it doesn't affect the human brain the way that we think, but all the studies have only been done on humans brains which are much larger and have a thicker skull. And I personally have seen children as young as seven and eight years old with their own cell phone. And now, with these tablets'with WiFi and all this. I mean, children are on these things for hours a day, and what are the health implications of that? Not to mention the cryptochromes that Gaby was talking about; the disruption of sleep: people are suffering from insomnia; I mean, it's just really frightening. You work in an office where it's all WiFi, or in a city, and you're completely immersed in this radiation frequency that you can't see, so people figure, like you said, "Oh, well, it's good to have a cellphone: you can contact..." but what are the long-term implications of exposure to this, 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Jonathan: Yeah, and not only the phones themselves, but also... and I'll have to find the source on this, but I remember reading, at one point, that the bluetooth headsets that have become much more popular actually magnify the signal by about three hundred percent. So, people are wearing that in their ear on a daily basis - it doesn't bode well.

I just wanted to insert real quick, too, that if anybody is doubtful of the dangers of microwave radiation, I'd encourage you to look into a man named Roger Tolces, T. O. L. C. E. S. He was a guest on Art Doll many years ago on Coast to Coast back in 2003. If you're curious, it was Sunday, November 16th, 2003 was the episode, called "Electronic Violations", and I just looked it up here because I remember listening to that and that was twelve years ago. He's a private investigator who had investigated what he calls 'Electronic Harassment" and people would report becoming sick, feeling crazy - things like that - and once he actually looked into the situation, he found out that they were being harassed by other people who had vendettas or various reasons to harass someone for whatever reason, that they were actually making home-made, microwave weapons out of an actually microwave: Converting units so they can douse a person with microwave radiation and actually make them sick over time. And this could be done from just less than one hundred yards away. And, like I said, that was twelve years ago and it was actually quite widespread at the time. So, imagine what else people are capable of now with the advanced technology that we have.

So, I have heard people who say, "Well, microwaves are safe", and "Microwave radiation is just fine. Nobody's getting sick because of cell towers and that kind of thing", but you don't have to pass out when you walk past a cell tower to know by looking at the data that it's dangerous; it doesn't have to be immediately evident; the problem with these things is that their cumulative over time.

That was just my quick point. So if anybody's curious, look up Roger Tolces; he has a lot of interesting information about that.

Erykah: Yeah, because in the video, they address what's called electromagnetic sensitivity, and it's not something where you're exposed to a cell phone and in five minutes you start vomiting, you know? And for a lot of people, it's slow exposure and in the video they were talking about how a lot of this stuff starts in your head: so it's like pains in the head, and not like a headache necessarily, but a different sort of a head pain; insomnia; vertigo; parasthesia, even - you know, the timgling of extremities; and then people have even reported gut pain, like Gaby mentioned. And so, one doctor said that it affects endocrine and thyroid function, so it's something that's happening on a very subtle level and maybe people are attributing these headaches or vertigo or insomnia to things like stress or emotional trials and tribulations, but it seems like there's definitely something to this electromagnetic sensitivity.

Do any of you folks find that, when you're in a space where there's obviously a lot of WiFi around and you just feel discombobulated or you get these sharp pains in your head and maybe even nausea or discomfort?

Tiffany: Well, not personally. I have an aunt who's very electro-sensitive; she can't even be in a room with a television; if someone uses a cell phone around her it makes her sick; she can't be around WiFi without getting sick. But, I watched a bit of that video yesterday, and there were some people out there who basically had to make their whole house, or rooms in their house, basically like a Faraday Cage just to block out all the EMF just so they can function.

Erykah: Exactly. And in that video, they do have what they call 'cancer clusters' that are centred around towers. The video was made in the UK and so they had interviews with people who lived in a village and they had put up a cell tower, and think it was up to seventy percent of the people that lived in that area started to have some sort of illness - whether it was breast cancer or sickness, you know, gut issues - so there's definitely something to it; it's really frightening.

Tiffany: And the sad part about it is that if you make the personal decision to give up your cell phone - if you have the intestinal vicissitude to do so in this day and age - there's still all the cell phone towers that will get you, and all the WiFi everywhere. So even if you don't have your own personal cell phone, you still seem to be cornered.

Erykah: Exactly.

Jonathan: Yeah, especially if you're in a city or a metro area. I live in a fairly rural area and when I look at the WiFi networks, there are seven to eight around me. But when I visited friends of mine in the city, there are upwards of twenty to thirty available WiFi networks at any given point, if not even more than that. So, it's just around. Even if you do disconnect your WiFi and try to directly cable-in to the internet with an internet cable, you're still susceptible pretty much everywhere.

Erykah: Exactly. I mean, even the EPA has come out and stated that at very high levels, radio frequency energy is dangerous and it basically can heat the body's tissues rapidly. And they use the metaphor of when you put a piece of meat in the microwave and you turn it on, that's basically what's happening. So that's what's happening to our brains.

Gaby: That's very graphic!

Erykah: Maybe the point will be made there!

Gaby: Yes, that's a very good point.

Tiffany: So, what can we do? Move out into the country where the WiFi and the cell phone towers are a little bit less? I think they make this special kind of mesh wire that you can put around your house, and I guess you can put a tinfoil hat on or sleep in silk underpants to shield yourself!

Jonathan: Well, you could build a Faraday Cage thing in your room but unfortunately the copper is quite expensive these days, so...

Erykah: Or you could just hang out in your underground bunker like that study that was done; but then you would have none of the Schumann Resonance either, so, you're still going to get sick and...

Jonathan: Well I think this touches on a really important point, which is that it's important first of all to understand these things; to know what the various influences are on our minds, on our bodies: ambient radiation; nuclear radiation, which is everywhere as well and we'll talk about that in a future show; diet; I guess I'm trying to say, all of these negative influences on our state of holistic well-being, it's important first of all to understand them and second of all to know what you can do to combat those things to a certain point. If you're going to live in the world and have a job, you can't be agoraphobic - you have to go outside; you have to interact with people; if you're in a city you're going to have to drive through the city. So all of these things are exposures that to a certain extent we can't avoid unless you can afford to move to the mountains in Montana or something similar.

So understanding ways to interpret your own thoughts - to understand when you are having anxiety or depression, where it's coming; when you're feeling sick, where it's coming from; certain natural things that you can do to combat that, like a proper diet, like getting more supplements, getting vitamin C, things like that; and being, I think to a certain extent, comfortable with the fact that these things exist because you can go the one hundred percent, tinfoil hat, be somebody who's constantly racked with crippling anxiety and paranoid about everything around them, but then you're not very effective in the world or in your own life, and so you need to understand how to operate with a modicum of foresight and responsibility about what you're doing and what you're taking in and also just being okay with the fact that there are so many negative things around you and not freaking out about it all the time, I guess; if that makes sense.

Tiffany: Excellent point, Jonathan. Just do as many positive things that you can to kind of negate the negative effects.

Jonathan: Exactly. It's not surprising to feel like you want to run away from it all; I feel that way sometimes, too. Like, "Okay, I'm going to forget work and I'm just going to go fishing for a week and everybody can leave me alone", but you can't operate that way, not bringing in any resources to continue your life or to help other people, so, there has to be a balance.

Tiffany: Right.

Jonathan: Well, on that note, talking about balance: Gaby, you have some information about ...... sleep. And I know we talked a little bit about blue light and melatonin - and if I could insert really quick, that I had thought about that while you were bringing it up. David Asprey, who is more commonly known as the "Bulletproof Coffee" guy, that's not his only area, but he has a lot of interesting information. He does talk a lot about the high-fat diet, about ketosis and about natural, holistic ways of living; that reminds me that in his interview he talks about wearing red-tinted glasses in the evening, and as soon as the sun goes down, in his house he puts on these essentially what look like red sunglasses and that is to block out the blue light so that his melatonin levels can balance out before he goes to sleep. And put black electrical tape over all the blue LED lights that are on the various computers and things around the house. So I thought that was kind of an interesting bit on information, that if you can't avoid artificial light in the evening, you can actually wear those red-tinted glasses to avoid that negative influence.....

So I just wanted to bring that up. But Gaby, go ahead with your information there.

Gaby: Yeah, that sounds fascinating. And that's the good news in that sense: that what we can do its that we can actually sleep well - it's possible. There is evidence that depression, obesity, heart disease and cancer can be prevented in many cases by sleeping well and turning the lights off. Just to quote the research in the book, Lights Out, which, somebody posted the link on the chat room, by Teresa Wiley. And that's mainly thanks to melatonin, you know? Melatonin helps to regulate our circadian rhythm; it also regulates other hormones; It has a powerful antioxidant activity; and its been researched in cancer to inhibit ...... brain cancer - there's a lot of research in melatonin, you know? If you have low melatonin levels, it leaves you susceptible to inflammation, ageing, depression; people have lower immune function, like antioxidant activity and they also tend to have leaky gut - they tend to have unbalance of the gut gut bacteria.

So yeah, melatonin is very vulnerable to blue light or artificial light. Even like exposure to an overhead fluorescent fixture can delay melatonin production in sleep by up to two hours. That's why it is important that the hour before you go to bed should be a 'no electric zone'. Even the burst of light from a phone, even to just check to time, it can break your sleep cycle and this is based on research and experience - personal and other people, of course.

Then I mentioned earlier about the cryptochromes - the importance of sleeping in total darkness, because even if you cannot see the light, if your skin senses blue light, it will disrupt your melatonin secretion as well.

So, your room should be absolutely dark and even if you cannot see the light, you have to make sure to get rid of all electronics and small surges of light, here and there.

So I will go through some tips for sleeping in total darkness:
Keeping your temperature in your bedroom no higher than seventy degrees Fahrenheit is a good idea to enhance sleepiness. It is also based on research and it is thought because when you sleep, your body temperature drops, so that's why it might be more conducive.
Remove electromagnetic fields as best as possible.

If you have an alarm clock or other electrical devices, just keep them away from your bed. Have it on a table or in the furthest corner of your bedroom, you know?

Always reserve your bed for sleeping: That is, if you cannot fall asleep within ten minutes, it's best to get out of bed, out of the room, read by candlelight or do something else and when you feel sleepy, you can go back to bed and try again. If you don't fall asleep, get out again. So this is a matter of discipline; you can be like that if you have insomnia; you can go through this ritual all through the night when you will eventually fall asleep, and then the next day, just don't take a nap - you just have to soldier all through the day until the night and then you will fall asleep earlier.
These are just a few tricks.

It's really very important to have a good night's sleep because as we have seen, we're exposed to all kind of obscene toxic waste and sleeping can really help you restore because it promotes the secretion of growth hormone, which rejuvenates you, and melatonin which also has restorative healing effect in your body.

And chronic sleep loss can actually cause toxic molecules in your blood stream to be transported to the brain because chronic sleep loss produces leaky brain - you know, the blood/brain barrier begins to degrade and it becomes leaky and all the toxic stuff goes into your brain. So, that's the other thing. And less of sleep also just makes you psychotic, and I can attest to this because I do 24 hour shifts, so when I read this article, the research shows that 24 hours of sleep deprivation leads to conditions in healthy persons similar to the symptoms of schizophrenia or psychosis; so I always keep in mind when I've finished my 24 hour shifts, that means I need to go to bed - I'm psychotic!

Jonathan: I can attest to that too; this is a little bit embarrassing but I'l go ahead and say it: When I was in college, some friends of mine and I did an experiment; now I DO NOT recommend that anybody try this, but at the time I didn't know up from down or left from right. So, we were trying to see how long we could stay awake and basically over-caffeinated and stayed awake for... I think it was almost 72 hours and actually started to hallucinate. It was pretty crazy. So, yeah, I can attest to that as well. Even just in cases where sometimes my job requires late nights or at times I have to pull an all-nighter to hit a deadline for the next day and that kind of thing, and without fail, every time, I feel down, really anxious, depressed or get sick; and you know, the lack of sleep is really damaging.

Tiffany: Well I've noticed that even if I'm short of hours on sleep I kind of feel fuzzy headed the whole rest of the day, I'm forgetful, I drop stuff - I don't know what I'm doing basically. So, even with a few hours of sleep deprivation, it's all over for me. But when the lights go down, I can just fall asleep where I am; my friends can attest to this. I'm notorious for falling asleep at night during movies.

Gaby: Yeah, I take the night-shifts really badly, like the day after, I'm depressed; it's really hard to do anything. So, I even if I'm not sleepy, I literally force myself to go to bed or lay there in total darkness, you know, meditate, and I'll eventually fall asleep. And then, when I sleep well, I'm suddenly like a different person, you know? It's like I recover my senses and I'm like, "Oh, what was that!?"

Erykah: Yeah and we see these issues coming up more and more. I mean, people are really complaining about the lack of ability to fall asleep at night, and how do we, as people who are trying to get information out there, help those people? I mean, we can see from the information about cell phones that that's probably part of it; but then also stress and your job - working 90 hours a week - and whatnot.

Tiffany: And there's also the issue of eating too many carbs. I know when I was a carb addict, I would wake up in the middle of the night, every night around two o'clock am and wouldn't be able to go to sleep for a few hours. And there's actually research that shows if you are eating carbs, sometimes in the middle of the night your blood sugar can drop and that can wake you up. So, once I started low-carb or keto, my sleep got a lot better.

Gaby: Yeah. I think for people who have sugar-spikes through the night, it's better to have a high-protein meal. Ideally, not to eat two hours before going to bed or ideally not after eight o'clock pm, but if you should have a snack, probably the best is something fatty with protein in it.
Also, avoid coffee, caffeine, dark chocolate in the night - it keeps you awake. Yeah, there are a few tricks to have a good night's sleep. It's the one thing that can really restore your health, you know? It happens in the night while we sleep.

Erykah: One thing they mention: They did a lot of research in the Frequency movie about melatonin; basically it can sweep up free radicals in your body when you sleep? Have you read that in the research.

Gaby: Yes. Melatonin is considered one of the most powerful antioxidants. It's been used even in radiation research - you know, radiation from medical tests or even Chernobyl or Fukashima. It's also researched in cancer for its antioxidant properties. It's really, really good stuff. And people that have a hard time falling asleep, they can try with a little bit of melatonin from herbal shops and the bio-stores and organic shops. And they sell very high doses - we were discussing this the other day - but ideally you should begin with the lowest dose possible, and have it when you absolutely need it: 0.25mg or 0.5mg, you start with that and you work your dose up if you need it. You just start with the lowest does because it can trigger very vivid dreams and people can have a hard time adjusting to it.

Jonathan: Yeah, I noticed that too. I wasn't aware of the dosage when I started taking melatonin as a supplement, so I was like, "Oh, 3mg capsules; I'll just go ahead and take those." And the dreams are insane.

Gaby: Yeah. People report having very vivid dreams when they first sleep in a completely dark room as well, because from our culture there's all the electronic devices or a little light coming through the window, and they first sleep in a completely dark room they have more vivid dreams; that's thanks to melatonin; you know, it gets secreted and enhanced with total darkness.

Jonathan: We have a question here from the chat, Gaby, if you want to speak to this. Someone asked, what about magnesium supplements before bedtime?

Gaby: Yes. Magnesium supplements: Magnesium is the relaxing mineral par excellence. So yes, having some magnesium before going to bed does help. In very rare cases people have reported being more awake: I think that could be related to detoxifying reactions, you know? Detox reactions from the magnesium, maybe. But, for the most part it's relaxing and it helps you ease-up through the night.

Jonathan: We have another question here, too: they're popping up about melatonin. First of all, what's the difference between a melatonin supplement and naturally produced melatonin? Is there a vast difference there? Would you want to try to naturally produce melatonin before you start supplementing or vice versa?

Gaby: Yes, and there's a lot of researchers actually who are against melatonin supplementation because they believe that it should be naturally produced - that we will break the cycle artificially. And I think that with perspective, yes: We should all make efforts to properly enhance our natural melatonin production with total darkness, like these dark goggles that you mention from the website, and just making changes here and there: avoiding electricity an hour before going to bed. But realistically, a lot of people are having a lot of trouble falling asleep and it is very important if they are going to heal from their autoimmune disease or whatever condition they're dealing with. I think in those cases - especially before trying prescription medicine - they should definitely try with melatonin supplements, you know? There are sublingual versions that get more absorbed, and you could try that starting with the lowest dose and building up.

Because even if you do do everything properly, diet-wise, and meditate and do exercise, if you're not having a good night's sleep, you're not going to recover your health. That's about it.

Jonathan: Yeah. Speaking of meditation, let's talk for a little bit about Eiriu Eolas and proper breathing. Now, I realise we could do an entire show on Eiriu Eolas: on the research behind it; on the vast benefits that come from a proper controlled breathing practice; but Gaby, couldn't you speak to that a little bit and maybe just do a quick over-view of what is the Eiriu Eolas programme and what are the kind of basic benefits that you receive from this.

Gaby: Yeah. Eiriu Eolas is our favourite programme for stress relief and stress... especially this week on SOTT.net, we published an article titled, Heal your thyroid by getting out of adrenal survival mode, and it is a very good review of why stress is so harmful for our health; even if we think we don't have it, I think it's safe to assume that everybody has it on a constant basis. And it highlights the importance of dealing with stress in effective ways.

When the nervous system is in 'fight or flight' response, it affects all the hormones of your body and it does it by affecting the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal axis which is just a nickname to explain that your brain is connected to all your hormones through your adrenals, you know? And when you're under prolonged, chronic stress, your adrenal system just tells your body to conserve energy rather than to spend too much energy, so your thyroid slows down and then we have problems of chronic fatigue and people who are in this barely-surviving mode, they have difficulty falling asleep as well. They have have poor sleep; they get sick a lot; they're anxious; they crave sugar, caffeine; they have poor mental function and they have hyperthyroidism as well.

So, the importance of Eiriu Eolas is basically, we do have a tool to enhance the relaxing system of our body and that's done through Eiriu Eolas, which combines specific breathing techniques in conjunction with meditation and belly breathing. And it's available for free at eebreathe.com.
I think it's very fascinating because it also enhances natural levels of everything we're talking about right now, like melatonin: You start doing Eiriu Eolas and you have increased secretion of melatonin. It also ups our natural Valium, which is GABA - gamma-aminobutyric acid - and our happy mood neurotransmitter, which is serotonin. It reduces stress hormones and what it does, Eiriu Eolas, it stimulates the vagus nerve; and the vagus nerve is the heart of our relaxing system which is also called the parasympathetic system. The vagus nerve uses acetylcholine - it's another brain chemical - which helps reduce inflammation in our bodies. It also has a very important role in learning, thinking and engaging our higher levels of brain function - our higher cognitive functions like the captain of our brains - and that helps us regulate our reptilian reactions: fight or flight or primitive emotions involving fight or flight.

It also helps us engage in pro-social and empathetic emotions and I stress the importance of stimulating this relaxing system because we can really do it through breathing exercises. Like, no matter how stressed we are, how lost we are, if we start doing controlled breathing techniques along with meditation, we could align everything I just mentioned, you know? And inflammation, melatonin, GABA, serotonin, and it will help you enhance a relaxed state of vigilance, mental focus and heightened awareness.

So, it's really an amazing tool for stress relief, but also for any other alternative therapy that a person goes through like rehabilitation, psychotherapy, because if it helps you engage your higher cognitive functions then you can process emotions from hidden trauma or stressful situations much more effectively.

My favourite part of Eiriu Eolas - and I think for a lot of people too - is the Prayer of the Soul: this is what makes Eiriu Eolas a unique meditation programme because it has this meditation technique which is a 'seed' which has like the role of sprouting new life from within; that's how I would call it. it's like very soul healing because it has open-ended affirmations so it allows, from an open-ended point of view, to sprout our unique potential without our preconceived notions that might actually restrict our progress because sometimes we don't know what is best for us.
So, yes, that's my absolute favourite technique for stress relief: Eiriu Eolas.

Jonathan: Certainly, and like Gaby said, if anybody wants more information on that, you can go to eebreathe.com and I believe the entire programme is available there for free, so it's quite a service to the world to present that information for free. And in the actual practice itself, there are so many gurus and charlatans and snake oil salesmen and stuff who are offering their own stress relief programmes for a hundred dollars of five hundred dollars and monthly fees and things like that. Eiriu Eolas is a heavily researched, widely practised programme that's offered completely for free. And if you do want to support the people that have started this programme, you can buy the DVDs or make a donation on the site.

Gaby: Yeah, practising Eiriu Eolas before you go to bed, that will naturally enhance your melatonin production as well, in a dark room, you know? Talk about vivid dreams, working through your emotions through the night, naturally in a stress relieving way.

Erykah: And really, it's a life-saver in the sense that it gives people a tool; so if you're in a stressful situation - you have to make a presentation or have a big interview - the three-stage pipe breathing and the belly breath that Gaby mentioned, just spending a few minutes before your stressful presentation or whatnot, really helps calm you down and give you the confidence. Because you can breathe and relax into it and personally, it's really changed my life in so many ways and I just really recommend it because it's something that you can apply in all situations: whether it's driving on the freeway or somebody's in your face, you know? Upset, just remember to breath: in through the nose; out through the mouth.

Gaby: And I do Eiriu Eolas also when I do exercise, when I do martial arts and now my doubt is if I find it so therapeutic because I'm doing Eiriu Eolas when I'm doing exercise.

Jonathan: Yeah. Well, that leads us nicely into the topic of exercise. Tiffany had some information she was going to share with us about that. Do you want to go through that a little bit?

Tiffany: Yeah, sure. More good news, or positive things you can do to decrease your stress and improve your health. So, everybody has heard that exercise is good for them, but there's actually some deeper benefits to exercise. It can activate some genes and deactivate some other genes - so when you'r genes are turned on, they express proteins that prompt physiological responses elsewhere in the body.

Genetic expression isn't written in stone: Genes are not destiny. Genes can be altered by influences coming from outside of the gene. Operation of the gene is altered, but the DNA blueprint remains the same, and how this works is that there's clusters of atoms called methyl groups and they attach to the outside of your genes and they make the gene more or less able to receive and respond to biochemical signals from the body.
So, exercise can induce immediate changes in the methylation patterns in the genes in your muscle cells. There was a study in 2012 in the journal, Cell Metabolism and in this study they showed that vigorous exercise - even very brief, vigorous exercise - causes structural and chemical changes in the muscle's DNA when your muscle contracts.

And the study also suggested that exercise causes the genetic activation that increases the production of fat-busting proteins. And also, resistance training minimises and even reverses mitochondrial dysfunction.

So, what type of exercise are we talking about here?

There's endurance training like jogging, going for a run, speed walking, cycling or there is high intensity exercise. But even regular endurance exercise - as long as it's not too much, because too much endurance cardio can actually be damaging to you - but regular exercise has benefits such as increasing insulin sensitivity and normalising blood glucose levels.

But if you're doing prolonged, vigorous endurance exercise, it can damage your heart over the years because it stresses it and it disrupts muscle fibres and causes micro-tears that can cause permanent damage. So, I'm sure a lot of people have seen these marathon runners that kind of 'bonk out' or 'hit the wall' or they're shown on T.V. with like diarrhoea running down their shorts and they just collapse or maybe have a heart attack while they're doing the marathon; so, that's probably an effect of prolonged, chronic cardio. That's not really good for you.

So, the problem with this endurance exercise is that it stresses your adrenals and it puts you into this fight or flight mode; it burns you out; it causes a lot of joint problems; and these people who are running these marathons are running long distances, day-in and day-out, they have high CPK levels, which is creatine phosphokinase and these are markers of muscle damage and they use these in hospitals in order to detect if you've had a heart attack or not; so distance runners have high CPK levels.

Excess aerobic exercise can also cause over-training and muscle wasting, which is actually defeating the purpose, because a lot of people exercise in order to lose weight or to lose fat, but if you're over-doing it, it can lead to a reduction in fat burning.

So, on the other side of the spectrum, we have high intensity interval training and this is more efficient and it's more effective at producing positive results. High intensity interval training increases myokines, which are anti-inflammatory proteins produced by muscle fibres. So, you can do high intensity interval training as cardio, where you do short bursts of speed at full-tilt for about 30 seconds to one minute, followed by a complete recovery period.

And there's also another form of high intensity interval training which is strength training or lifting weights. There is a certain type that's advocated by Doctor Doug McGuff - he wrote a book called Body by Science - and he advocates super-slow strength training where you lift and lower the weights very, very slowing, like maybe use up to ten seconds to lift the weight and then ten seconds to lower the weight; but that can be a topic for another show, it's just a really effective way to actually turn on the DNA and turn on the mitochondria in your muscle.

So, check out that book, Body by Science. There's also a lot of YouTube videos on that. But just in general, if you were going to exercise and take a walk for twenty minutes a day, you can do some weight training. The benefits are increased blood flow to the brain, growth of new brain cells, and I know that I have noticed if I exercise I'm better able able to focus after I work out. Exercise preserves both grey and white matter in the brain and I know that in Alzheimer's or dementia patients, if they do an MRI on their brains, they notice that they've lost grey and white matter, basically their brain has shrunk. So, exercise has been shown to preserve grey and white matter in your brain.

Exercise is also good for decreasing depression because it triggers endorphins, serotonin, dopamine; these all play an important role in mood control. Exercise also reduces plaque formation, and this is what's found in Alzheimers, also. And it increases BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotropic factor, and that preserves existing brain cells and it activated new neurons. So, exercise can help you think.

So, if you're going to do any exercise and you want to get the most bang for your buck, try the high intensity interval training versus going on a prolonged endurance cardio jog.

Gaby: Yeah, it reminds me of all of these stories of young people falling dead while they were running these marathons, you know?

Jonathan: Yeah. Well, the writer of the runner's bible - that's not the name of the book, I think it was The Complete Guide to Running - who died of a heart attack while he was running. And not to speak ill of the dead, of course, but I believe it was shown after his death that he had some congenital defects and they tried to blame it on the fact that he had smoked earlier in life; but he had been smoke-free for something like twenty years.

Erykah: Yeah, and exercising outside. We were talking about earlier, this connection with the Earth; going on nature walks and spending at least twenty minutes. I mean, there's quite a few articles on SOTT about it: Nature walks improve your well being and lower stress and depression; or the effects of nature on the human mind - like just getting outside and starting a little walk and making a habit of it. And practising your breathing while you're walking.

Gaby: Yeah, that's a good one.

Tiffany: And actually hugging a tree. I hugged a tree and it was pretty fun.

Jonathan: Yeah, it's too bad the word tree-huggers has gotten a bad wrap.

Erykah: It can be very arousing.

Tiffany: Maybe that's why kids like to climb trees so much.

Jonathan: Yeah, exactly.

Tiffany: I would love to climb trees when I was a kid.

Jonathan: Oh, me too. Sure.But before we talk about earthing and grounding a little bit, let's go over hydration and drinking water. Obviously, it's common knowledge that drinking water is good for you; drinking the right kind of water and the right amount.

Tiffany: Well, the generally recommended amount of water to drink - you see it in different places, people have different recommendations, like six to eight glasses of water a day - but in the Keto Adaptedbook by Maria Emmerich, I think she advocates to drink your bodyweight in ounces of water. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you should drink 150 ounces of water a day.

Jonathan: That's pounds and not kilograms?

Tiffany: Yeah; that's what I think, unless I'm wrong.

Erykah: I think it's half your bodyweight in ounces.

Tiffany: Half your bodyweight? Okay.

Erykah: I think it's one half your body weight in ounces, if I remember reading that correctly.

Gaby: Yes, I think it's half your bodyweight.

Jonathan: That would be about your bodyweight in kilograms - a kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

Tiffany: Well, the bottom line is it's important to remain properly hydrated. Since your body is mostly made of water, your cells are in water and it need water to actually be able to send chemical signals back and forth. So, tap water: I think it's pretty well established that tap water is fairly yucky. It has pharmaceutical drugs found in it: fluoride, chlorine, radioactive contaminants, hexavalent chromium, lead, aluminium, heavy metals, arsenic, so you don't want to be drinking tap water. You want to drink filtered or purified water.

So, there's a lot of filtration techniques like sand filtration which filters out the big pieces of stuff found in whatever water source you're using, like a river or lake or something like that. There's flocculation, which is chemicals added to the water to get the smaller particles to coagulate and float so that they can be removed, and then after that they'll add some chlorine to kill bacteria and microorganisms, but that's not really the best because it can leave an aftertaste - a lot of people don't drink tap water because it tastes bad, it tastes of chlorine.

But, there are EPA standards for how clean drinking water has to be, but the quality of your water is constantly changing depending on the time of the year and what's in the environment and what filters down into your water source. So if you want the best water, you want to get some purified water which is water that's subjected to some kind of filtration and then it undergoes additional purification processes, like if you have a reverse osmosis filter on your tap or if you distil your water.

So, a definition of good water is that there's ten parts per million or less of dissolved solids. But then, there's also spring water, and sometimes I think people can overestimate the quality of this spring water because it's exposed to the elements just like rivers and lakes and that. So, depending on your source - I mean, you can actually have a good source of spring water - it can be a lot better than tap water. And then there's distilled water, which is where the water is boiled out of the contaminants and it's turned to steam and the steam is collected and you drink that. But there's one problem with this, is that there's some contaminants that have higher boiling points than the boiling point of water, so you want to put your distilled water through an additional purification method and I've found that distilled water tastes best to be and reverse osmosis water is also good, but tap water, I haven't drunk that for years - it's just disgusting.

And you can see, when you use a distiller and there's all this residue that builds up at the bottom of the distiller that you have to clean out with citric acid every once in a while, imagine drinking that.

Jonathan: Well, I don't know if other people have the same experience, but a friend of mine has a gravity-fed filter and the top part of the filter smells like a swimming pool because of the chlorine that gets caught in there: It's amazing how much is really in there.

And that was a good point about making sure that your spring-fed water is clean. If you are getting water from a spring - that's what we do; there's an artesian well nearby - but we did actually get to look at the test results to make sure the water is clean, and I think it's important to have that done. So, spend the fifty or a hundred bucks or whatever it costs to have your tests run on your spring-fed water and make sure that it's alright.

Tiffany: I've also noticed that I'm a little bit less thirsty once I started the low-carb or ketogenic diet. Because before I could drink glass after glass after glass of water and never feel like I was quenched.

Jonathan: It's also important to... I think we talked about this in the past during our ketosis show, but it's important to stay well mineralised because the minerals help to retain that water within your body in the proper way so that you are hydrated. If you're low on basic minerals, you become dehydrated very easily.

Tiffany: Yeah, you can add a dash of Real Salt or Celtic Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt to your water to kind of mineralise it.

Jonathan: Yeah, I do that myself. Oftentimes if I feel a snack craving, I'll add a little pinch of Real Salt to a glass of water and then have that and it goes away.

Gaby: Also, the bone broth should be very helpful.

Jonathan: Yeah.Well, I guess the next topic that we wanted to cover just briefly here is earthing; that's come up a few times over the course of our conversation, and if anybody is not familiar, earthing is becoming a little bit more of a popular term - earthing or grounding - and a lot of people I think do this naturally, if you live in an area where you're near the woods, not in the heart of the city, is just getting your bare feet in contact with the ground.

There are something upwards of thirteen hundred nerve endings per square inch in the bottom of your feet and there's evidence now coming out... well, they say evidence - I'm a firm believer that anecdotal evidence is just as well as actual scientific evidence but I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me on that, but if you try something and you notice the results then you've essentially run your own study.

But I did find an interesting article here on the National Institute of Health called Health indications of reconnecting the human body to the Earth's surface electrons. And I won't read the whole thing, of course, but here's an abstract: "Mounting evidence suggests that the Earth's negative potential can create a stable internal bioelectrical environment for the normal functioning of all body systems. Moreover, oscillations of the intensity of the Earth's potential may be important for setting the biological clocks regulating biurnal body rhythms such as cortisol secretion."

And speaking of anecdotal evidence, I think everybody knows that if you have a stressful life and you get a chance to take a vacation and you're able to swim in the lake or the ocean or walk on the beach with your bare feet or walk through the woods that you feel better: you relax; your cortisol levels are balanced out; you're able to think more clearly; and you come back to life feeling much better.

One way to do this if you don't get an actual chance to do this in your day to day life is just to make some time to set up a chair in your yard or in a park and just sit with your bare feet on the ground, even, even up to thirty minutes a day, can have a beneficial effect on your hormone levels, on your level of well being and even on your white blood cell counts and your platelet counts.

There are some interesting results of a patient of Dr. Tents; we've mentioned him from time to time; he's a chiropractor and a homoeopath in Michigan and he had a cancer patient who they were able to tell that her platelet count returned to normal after she began doing this thirty minutes a day of basically just getting her bare feet in contact with the ground. So it's hardly unofficial.

And I actually noticed the benefits myself. In the recent past I had what's called a Herxheimer Reaction - an overblown detox reaction to a fungal detox protocol: I basically went too far with it and caused this really overblown detox reaction, resulting in hives, upset sleep, my gut flora was damaged, and it's something I recommend people to be very careful with if you're going to do a fungal detox. But I was able to feel much better by getting my feet in contact with the ground. It made me sleep better, and all these things, and of course too I supplemented probiotics and that helped quite a bit.

But the earthing is no joke. I think it's funny that it has to be given a term, you know? It has to be given some kind of a name when really it's just common sense - just get out there and get your feet in contact with the ground. Go for a walk or sit in the yard with a book.

There are other ways to do it. There are actually devices available that you can get which will plug in to the ground on a three-pronged outlet; I'm sure people are familiar with two-pronged versus a three-pronged outlet, and the grounded outlet that has that third prong, you can get some devices that plug in to a little mat. So, in the wintertime, if you're not able to get your feet onto the actual bare ground - without quite a bit of discomfort, of course - you can actually get these devices that plug into the ground in your wall and then you can put your feet onto that. And there are even sheets that plug in to the ground that you can put on your bed that will ground you out while you're sleeping.

But, there's another article on SOTT about it called, Earthing: Health benefits from being grounded, and it talks about the positive versus the negative voltage in the body versus the Earth. So, when the body loses contact with the Earth, it can carry a positive voltage relative to the Earth, which can upset these things like the hormonal balance in your body. And, let's see, there's a good little excerpt from this:
"During the normal processes of metabolism the body generates what are called 'reactive oxygen species' which are commonly referred to as 'free radicals'. These compounds appear to be important, at least in part because they have the ability to attack and destroy unwanted things within the body including bacteria and viruses. However, too many free radicals are a bad thing, and have been implicated in chronic disease and well as the very process of ageing."
And balancing out the charge in your body can reduce the level of, uhm...

So, "Free radicals lack sparks of energy known as 'electrons'. One way to quell them is to give them electrons", and that's what happens in the process of grounding yourself out. So, I'd recommend to people to just try it out. You know, as we come in to the springtime, it's warming up outside, give it a shot. If you notice that throughout your daily life, you're keeping your shoes on all the time, you're not coming into contact with the ground, just get a chair out in the yard and sit there with your bare feet and read a book - give it a half hour to an hour - and I think you'll notice that you feel better, more relaxed, over time.

Gaby: That's fascinating: I want to try that.

Tiffany: Yeah, I want to go out and put my feet in the grass.

Jonathan: Yeah. And actually, this is also largely anecdotal, but there is some mention of this in the National Institute of Health article as well, that walking in wet grass with your bare feet can also be beneficial and it had something to do with the increased conduction capabilities of the water being in the grass and on the ground so when you have that conductive layer of water between your feet and the ground, you actually get a more beneficial response.

Well, we're running a little bit short on our time here, but we're not quite done yet. We have Zoya's "Pet Health Segment" today, so let's go to Zoya for a little while and then we'll come back with our recipe for the day, which, in lieu of the recent holiday, Easter, that we have had - now you may or may not celebrate Easter, but of course, everybody knows that ham is a staple for Easter, and so we're going to do a recipe for how to make your own ham out of a pork pot roast.

So, we'll come back with that after the "Pet Health Segment" for today.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the "Pet Health Segment" of The Health and Wellness Show. Today, we are going to talk about benefits of having pets. There are enormous benefits to animals having a relationship. For example, they are very beneficial for children with developmental problems; elderly; for example college students may handle stressful situations better if they have a pet; for example, three even 'petting rooms' full of puppies in some universities for students that just need to come and unwind a bit.

But some people worry about allergies or perhaps toxoplasma, when it comes to pets. But any of those concerns, if addressed properly, basically can be handled in successful ways.

For example, when it comes to toxoplasmosis, apparently cats excrete toxoplasmosis in the faeces only for two weeks after being infected and after toxoplasma went through developmental stages in their gut to intestinal tract. After that, antibodies are formed and they become immune to the infection.

So, what you can do to make sure that your cat isn't going to infect you is to ask your veterinarian to do a test for toxoplasma antibodies in the blood of your cat and if they're present, it is safe to handle your cat's faeces.

So, coming back to our topic, it's less a question of either having a pet or not, but more about what kind of pet and how to provide the animal with proper living conditions, so you both would benefit from long, happy and fulfilling lives. But, there is also an exception to having a pet and it is perfectly relevant right now after Easter in the US, when many parents give their kids bunnies as presents. Well, as super-cute bunnies may be, people forget that it is up to ten years long commitment. Yep, bunnies can live that long, and more, and just like any other animal, they require responsible approach and specific care. So, even if it's really beneficial for children to learn how to interact with animals, you should think twice before giving them as a present to your or other children, just because it's a holiday season. What's for sure is that pets are much more than a toy.
But, if it's a responsible and well thought-out decision, then what awaits you? Years of joy and other good emotions. There are several basic things that you should provide your pet with and it has more to do with dogs, but some cats can also benefit from them.

First of all: species appropriate diet. In another segment I already talked about it. Not only will it make your pet happy and healthy, it will also significantly lessen your veterinary bill because unfortunately, most of the problems pets have nowadays - like chronic kidney disease - have to do with improper upkeep. Wild animals don't have such problems at all.

Also, having a proper litter box, when it comes to cats. Sure, we love the litter to be scented and covered in order to avoid smelling the unpleasant odour, but the fact is that cats prefer their litter as bland and as simple as possible, just like in nature. And you can avoid having a bad odour by simply cleaning the litter box every day and replacing the litter once a week.

As for interaction, all animals like it; well, cat's maybe less. But there are also various breeds, like meikun, that are very social and playful, so you should consider this too. Basically, before you take a pet, read everything you can on their breed, their predispositions, etc.

Your pet is another family member, so treat them accordingly. So, you should have daily games and interactions with your pets. On one hand, it should be a stimulating environment; on the other, stress free. Cats are particularly sensitive to stress and can develop, as a result, various health and behavioural problems.

As for dogs, first of all, dogs should have at least two walks a day: Each time, at least one hour long. Some breeds require even longer walks. If you have a saracen shepherd breed dog, then you should seriously consider training them. You can start training your puppy even when they are two months old. And if you think that it can be stressful for your tiny, furry baby, the truth is, many dogs are actually rather miserable if they have no job to do, no daily duty, or nothing that will stimulate their mind and body. And puppies require not only stimulation, but also rules and regulations - you know, regulations in the way of limitations.

There are various training programmes, but my favourite one, that the training should be incorporated into a playtime, and the animal is petted and encouraged after each successful performance. It not only trains your animal, it also creates a greater bond between the two of you. And not only large breeds can be trained, but even small ones, like Yorkshire terriers actually love to learn new tricks. This way, daily walks and daily interactions, that's much faster and much more interesting for you and your animal. And as you can see from many videos on YouTube, not only dogs love training: Some cats love to train too.

As for other proper upkeep tips: The winter is supposedly behind us, but with the upcoming ice age and all, just remember to keep your pets warm. In general, since most of them have a thick coat, except for cats like sphynx and toy terriers for dogs, etc., they can tolerate lower temperatures rather well. The key is to keep them dry. Some dog breeds like husky and lyca can even sleep in the snow, but it's important to see that there is no ice forming on the fur. If they are dry, they should be okay.

Some pets like water, swimming; some don't. In some cases, it can be rather dangerous for both of you and your pet to swim in the local river, especially is they have ducks swimming nearby, because ducks and other similar birds are reservoirs for many viruses and bacteria. If you're been in a forest or a park, just remember checking your dog for tics or even better, do a weekly massage for your pet - or maybe even more often - and at the same time, check for all kinds of lumps and unusual things.

So, the main principle of the happy and fulfilling life for both pets and the owners is to pay attention to the animal; to spend time with them; to care for them; to provide them with proper food and lots of loving attention. And you'll see that all this time and energy spent on your pet are very much worth it.

Well, this is it for now. Have a great week.

Jonathan: Awesome. Thanks, Zoya, for that information. I certainly can attest to that, that it's really important to keep your pets active. My dog gets really 'stir crazy' if she doesn't get out for walks or play with a ball for a while. And it's just as important for the psychological health of the animal as well as the physical health.

Well, our recipe for today is home made ham, and if you look up ham, there's a lot of different recipes for home made ham; a lot of them include sugar, and you don't actually need it. Of course, everybody loves a sweet ham or a honeyed ham, but if you're avoiding sugar, you can make ham without sugar, and it takes a little bit of experimentation, so I'd encourage everybody to play around with this. I'm not going to give the very exact proportions for this recipe, just kind of the general ingredients and some general precautions.

The one thing that is important is the amount of salt that you use, because if you over-salt it, it can be nigh on inedible and I've done that before and it's unfortunate to waste a whole roast when it's too salty to even get it into your mouth.

So basically, you want to start by making your own pickling spice and there are a lot of pickling spices available too, on the market, but I do like to make my own. And you can do this with, essentially, cinnamon, bay leaves, cloves, you can use mustard seeds if you want; coriander, pepper corns, and dill.

So basically, one cinnamon stick, broken up into pieces. Two bay leaves, crushed. Two whole cloves. Two tablespoons of coriander seeds. One tablespoon of pepper corns. And two teaspoons of dill seeds. And mix those together - that's your pickling spice; so set that aside. Now, you can also add, if you want, two tablespoons of dried juniper berries and you can add nutmeg as well if you want to add a half of an entire nutmeg itself, or use about a half a teaspoon of crushed - not the ground - nutmeg. And anis, or anise, depending on how you pronounce it, is also really nice in this recipe. So, I'd use about a quarter teaspoon of anise - a quarter to a half teaspoon.

So, those are the general ingredients for the pickling spice. So, you want to get those together. If you have those ingredients in your kitchen and you don't want to buy anything new, just take what you have based on what I just read off there and put together your own pickling spice, set that aside.

And you want about a twelve pound pork butt. Now, you don't need one that big, but this recipe is specifically for a twelve pound pork butt roast. If you have something smaller, then kind of adjust this to the size of your roast. But for a twelve pound butt roast, you want about two gallons of water. Then, you want two cups of salt. Now, a lot of recipes call for a pickling salt or what's called Prague powder #1, which is pink, curing salt; personally, I like to use Real Salt for this: It contains all the minerals that you need and in my opinion it works just as well. So, if you have Real Salt or Himalayan Pink salt, cheese salt - anything like that - you want two cups of that. Now again, keep in mind, this is for a twelve pound roast, which is quite large, so adjust the recipe in proportion to the size of your roast.

But if you have a twelve pound roast: two gallons of water; two cups of salt; and then three quarters to a cup of your pickling spice. And what you want to do is put the salt and the pickling spice into the two gallons of water, bring it to a rolling boil, stir everything around until it's completely dissolved and then kill the heat and let that come down to room temperature.

Once it's cooled down, make sure that it's all the way completely cooled down. Once your stock-pot isn't hot anymore you can actually throw it in the fridge and leave it overnight as well, to cool it down; but it's important that the brine is cool once you start the curing process.

So, once it's cooled down, take your pork roast, put it in to a large, non-reactive container, which is very important - personally, I just use a stainless steel stock-pot and use that - submerge the roast into the brine and if it floats up you can weigh it down with something, you know, put a plate on top of it with a clean rock or a glass bowl filled with water: Something that will weigh it down underneath the brine; and put it in your refrigerator and let it cure for twelve to fourteen days.

So, this is approximately a two week curing process; you want to plan ahead for whatever dinner you want to make this for; but you let the ham soak in the brine for twelve to fourteen days. Take it out; rinse it really well; make sure you rinse off the outside; and then you can bake it or roast it in the oven according to the way that you would roast any other pot roast. I like to do it kind of low and slow, like 225 degrees Fahrenheit for about four hours. Or if you're a fan of smoked meat, you can smoke this according to your own recipe aswell. If you have a smoker, you can use that; or if you have a grill, you can grill it - again, low and slow: You don't want to really char the outside; you want to give it time to cook all the way through.
And then, as with any pork, make sure that you check the internal temp before you're done; and you want it at between 150 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit on the inside before you're going to cut it up.

But, the brine makes a really nice ham, and I would just re-emphasise: Make sure that your proportions of salt to the size of the meat are appropriate. So, for a twelve pound roast: two cups of salt, etc. etc. etc. So, a six pound roast, one cup, and, you know, figure it out from there. But if you do over-salt it, it's going to be kind of hard to eat. But this is a very simple way to make ham.

Now, the curing salt - the pink, Prague powder #1 as it's commonly referred to - is what gives it that pink colour that you're familiar with when you eat ham. If you do it this way, it's not going to come out pink: It's actually going to look like white pork - but it'll taste like ham, which is kind of a weird experience. I haven't tried this yet, but I wanted to bring it up because I'm curious and I'll probably try this in the future, is that you could use something like beet juice or red cabbage juice. Basically, boil that in a small amount of water until the water turns red and then add that to your brine to attempt to add the red colour to the meat. And, of course, the beet juice would add a little bit of sweetness aswell to the ham.

So, like I said, that's something I haven't tried yet, but I do think I'm going to try that in the future and I'd be curious to hear anybody's stories that they've experimented with that.

So, that's ham - it's how to make your own ham - and you can do it without sugar and it tastes great.

Tiffany: It sounds delicious.

Jonathan: It is quite good.

Tiffany: Yeah, I wouldn't care if it was pink or not.

Jonathan: Yeah, I don't know; it's not really that big of a deal for me either. Some people are like, "Well, if it's not pink, it's not ham", you know? But really, the only reason ham is pink is because of the curing salt. Otherwise, it tastes like ham but it comes out white, just like pork, so it depends on your preference with it, I suppose.

So, that's our recipe and our show for today. I think we're going to go ahead and wrap it up. Just want to say thanks to everybody for tuning in and be sure to tune in next week at 2pm Eastern on Monday, and we'll be back with another show.

Tiffany: Bye everyone.

Erykah: Bye.