The weather is beginning to get a little cooler out here on Fair Hills Farm. It is definitely getting darker earlier in the evenings now. The seasons change, and so do those to-do lists, when you live in the country. Always there is something outside to do! And this brings me to my first point today.
I have been reading lately on the value of vitamin D, and how that nutrient is so necessary to the vital functions of the human body. The two main ways we absorb vitamin D is by getting outside in the sunshine, and by consuming foods which contain vitamin D. Many people are deficient in vitamin D because they don’t get enough sunshine. We actually need something like 20 minutes a day exposure to full sunshine in order to get enough through our skin. But what lie have people fallen for in the last 30 years? That sunshine will kill you, stay out of it, and when you venture outside, slather on lots of sunscreen to keep your skin from absorbing any sunlight. Be afraid! Be very afraid! Now, aside from this whole notion lacking common sense if you just think about it, it has proved to be an outrageous untruth that millions of people have been sold, because the media reported what the “experts” determined.
Now I am not advocating sunburn here, and if you are going to be outside in the sun at the beach or fishing for an extended period of time, you may have to wear sunscreen or wear clothing that covers up the vulnerable spots. But as a general rule, getting outside in the sunshine and fresh air on a daily basis for atleast 20 minutes or more is a good idea. And do it without sunscreen. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to diseases such as osteoporosis (because you have to have vit. D to absorb calcium), melanoma, colon cancer and viruses such as colds and flu and other chronic diseases. And since when have these diseases sky-rocketed? In the last 30 years. And what else has been popular in the last 30 years? Lowfat everything. Lowfat milk, lowfat cheese, fake- fat- not -real butter, and skinless everything. Now let me tell you a secret. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. That means that it is stored in fat and uses fat as its carrier to do the work it needs to do. So when you take out the fat of a nutritious food which contains vitamin D – such as milk and cheese, you rob it of the vitamin D and its ability to do its work.
So the best way to utilize vitamin D in foods is to make sure you eat full fat dairy, real butter, and hopefully meat that has grazed out in the sunshine! Taking cod liver oil is also a way to ensure you are getting adequate vitamin D. In our house, we take Carlson’s Cod Liver Oil in the green bottle which has added lemon. It does not taste bad, and we take it in a little no-added-sugar fruit juice. The young children get one teaspoon, the older children who are adult-sized get two teaspoons (as well as my husband) and I take three teaspoons since I am still nursing my 2 year old and yes, sometimes the 4 year old as well. After all, little ones need raw milk as long as they can get it. We generally take the cod liver oil during the week and skip one or two days over the weekend. This is to give the body a break which is a healthy thing to do when taking superfoods or supplements.
Another interesting thing I have been reading up on is the role of lecithin in keeping your arteries clean. I saw recently that Dr. David Williams advocates taking lecithin to melt the plaque in arteries instead of going through chelation or taking cholesterol medication that doesn’t even address plaque formation. This got me to thinking about what foods naturally contain lecithin. I already knew that egg yolks have a wonderful concentration of lecithin, but other foods which contain it are milk, peanuts,garbonzo beans, cauliflower, and wheat germ! So if you regularly consume these foods, there is a good possibility that you are helping your body keep your arteries clean. Now I know there are lots of soy lecithin supplements out there and I would never venture to try to figure out which ones would be good to take, for a few reasons. Soy as a food product is best consumed in small amounts as a fermented condiment. This is the way the asians consume it. (For more info on this see www.westonaprice.org) Secondly, the majority of soybeans farmed in this nation now come from genetically modified seed (recent figures I saw were 80%). The only way you can be sure the soy is not genetically modified is if it is labeled “organic.” Thirdly, most supplements contain additives that I am not comfortable with and I would really rather get the nutrients through food. My husband’s grandmother (she is 90 years old) and grandfather (he is 93 going on 94) have eaten eggs and bacon and white bread toast every morning for breakfast for atleast the last 50 years if not more like 60 or 70. They don’t eat nitrate-free bacon either. And they eat white bread. They have been through a lot medically, but neither have ever had cancer. Grandmother has broken her hip and had 2 corrective surgeries and she had a bypass surgery years ago. She had a stroke after she had an exploratory catheterization which revealed her arteries looked fine for her age. She probably would not have had the stroke if the doctors had left well enough alone. Papa Joe and Grandmother Mary used to have a huge garden and ate lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, canned and froze alot of the produce and made the best homemade icecream. Years ago when grandmother had a young son (my father-in-law) she milked a cow every day and had to haul water to the house. Years later they used to go on fishing trips to the Gulf every Fall and enjoyed having suppers with fried fish, tomato relish, coleslaw and french fries. It makes me hungry just to think about that! My point in sharing all of this is that here are two elderly people that grew up working hard and eating good food and even in their nineties when they are no longer out and about very much, they still have a strong underlying constitution that is surviving even though they are taking probably more prescription drugs than they really should.
And finally, I can’t seem to get away from the political environment and the recent meltdowns in the financial and housing markets. It is a hard time for this country to be taking on more debt through bail-outs. I want you to be very careful and discerning when you look at what is going on in this country. There is a lot of lies and untruths being told in the name of politics right now, and the facade needs to be stripped away and the reality seen. If one even tries to be objective and sort out facts, it is not hard to see what is going on. The Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae debaucle was started back in the 1990’s by the Clinton administration. The policy to make mortgages available to people who would never be able to pay them back was a way to equalize housing opportunity with no regard to credit risk. The current democrat-run Congress has drug their feet on the offshore drilling for oil issue and has made no attempts at encouraging energy independence in this nation. When Pres. Bush tried to make progress on this issue a few years ago, it was blocked by the democrats by one vote. And when President Clinton was in office and the Republican -controlled Congress tried to make an energy law for offshore drilling, Pres. Clinton vetoed it. And just within the last year, when the U.S. was making a deal with Iraq to contract with U.S. oil companies to drill in Iraq for oil, three democrat senators (Sen. Shumer, Sen. Kerry and the woman from Missouri (can’t remember her name just now) wrote to Sec. of State Condi Rice telling her not to do this deal until Iraq can implement some environmental regulations.
Of course, the Bush administration was going to ignore this, but the press got wind of it and made enough of a stink about it that Iraq decided instead to go and make the deal with China. This was from an article in the Weekly Standard. I should compile a list of sources for all of this and will try to do so. But what it all amounts to basically is that democrats seem very adept at screwing the government up more and more; the more opportunities they get, the better they do. I am just being objective here. The problem with the Republicans is that they either let the Democrats get away with it, or they don’t do enough themselves when they have opportunity. We need stronger, righteous people who will do what is right and not be out for self gain. I think this is going to require a miracle. May our God who is Yahweh help us. And may we all work at discerning the truth in everything we see on the media and read in print!
