Category Archives: Medicinal Herbs

Foods Are Drugs

“Let food be your medicine.”
Hippocrates, Father of Modern Medicine

What is a chemical? And what is a chemical imbalance?

A chemical is a substance used in or produced by a chemical process. Life processes require chemicals. Pharmaceutical drugs are chemicals – yet so are foods.

When seeds sprout and plants grow, they begin pulling, dancing, tearing apart, and rearranging ingredients from the air, sunshine and earth. They are tiny, living, chemical factories. The resulting products of plant factories are a vast array of chemicals. People used to eat foods that were locally grown, without pesticides or poisonous fertilizers, and in season.

Our bodies are also chemical factories. They take food, water, sunshine and other substances and work hard to make healthy bodies and minds. To make healthy bodies and minds, they need to have the right ingredients – ingredients that nature generously and wisely provides.

But what happens when the foods we eat have been highly processed and/or genetically altered? What happens when we eat foods in combinations that are not well balanced? What happens when we eat foods that were grown far away, picked when they were not yet ripe, foods that were preserved with poisons and radiation?

How far from natural can we go before we get sick? Can we learn to feed ourselves in ways that will eliminate the need for illness, dis-ease and pharmaceutical drugs? Yes!

Once we know the key, we can choose our mode and our moods by consciously choosing foods that support the quality of life we desire. We can use foods to help us wake up in the morning. We can use foods to help us sleep soundly at night. We can use foods to help us become more mentally sharp, more emotionally aware, more socially assertive, and more able to perform physical tasks.

There’s a lot of talk about chemical imbalances in the medical community, but doctors do not ask many questions of patients, such as, “What did you eat for breakfast this morning?” “What are your favorite things to eat for a snack?” “Tell me what you usually have for dinner.” “What are your primary activities?”

When it comes to real healing, it’s pretty much a do-it-yourself job. You learn to ask yourself those important questions. You learn to wisely choose what you feed yourself and your family. Here are a few understandings to help you begin to manage your health and happiness.

The following information is compliments of Robert Gray, author of “The Colon Health Handbook”, which he asked me to not publish it until he had published it. He unfortunately died in a hit and run accident many years ago, so it is in his honor and with great respect for him and his work that I share this information with you now.

Air foods for mental alertness at work and school

Foods that grow in trees support mental activity. They help us wake up and get going in the morning. They are sweet, wet, cool and wash the waste out of our bodies. Eating fruits from trees first thing in the morning is like taking a shower on the inside. They make you feel clean and fresh and ready to greet the day.

Air foods are “uppers”. Too little of the air foods and you are mentally dull, bored and boring. Too much makes you feel weak, giddy, silly, goofy, “fruity,” “nutty,” “spacey,” forgetful.

Fire foods for social activities, competitiveness

Foods that grow on vines and stalks, foods you can reach straight out and pick, standing up, are foods that support social exchange. They are good for sales meetings, parties. Notice that most fire foods can be made into alcoholic beverages. Examples are: barley, wheat, grapes. Most of the world’s population makes rice the mainstay of their daily diet and they stay quite healthy.

Fire foods infuse you with enthusiasm. Too little of the fire foods and you may feel shy and retiring. Too many and you are overly aggressive.

Water foods feed the emotions

Emotions need to flow, like water. To have a relaxing day, you might go out on a lake and float on a raft or go to the ocean and watch the waves come in and go out. If you want to feel calm and peaceful, plan to eat water foods daily. If you are going to be working with a therapist in a healing session, you might want to eat lots of water food – like watermelon – the day before.

Water foods are foods that grow in the water and close to the ground, such as winter squash, melons, strawberries, pineapple, sea veggies, and dark green leafy vegetables. Most animals make greens a large part of their diets. To be healthy in body and mind, humans would do well to eat lots of greens too.

“But where do we get our protein?” I hear you ask. “Where do cows get their protein?” I respond. Chlorophyll is the key to radiant health.

The chemical structure of a molecule of chlorophyll is nearly identical to the chemical structure of a molecule of hemoglobin. In hemoglobin, the central atom is iron; in chlorophyll, the central atom is magnesium.

Water foods soothe; they help you sleep well. A nice large salad at dinner time will make you sleep like a baby. Too many water foods and you may feel overwhelmed on the feeling level.

Earth foods support physical movement at home and work, sleep

When you need to do something physical and practical like wash the car, vacuum the floor, or just move your body from one place to another, try a dose of earth food, a nice big glass of carrot juice or a hit of ginger in your smoothie, garlic in your salad. Root vegetables bring you back to a grounded, practical place. A baked potato in the evening will help you sleep.

Too few earth foods and you just plain don’t get things done. Too many earth foods and you feel like the proverbial couch potato. Examples of earth foods are – naturally – potatoes, carrots, beets, garlic, ginger, onions, peanuts.

Essential minerals for good mental & physical health

This is how upside down our food and drug industries have become… If someone is diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, they are also prescribed lithium, a naturally occurring mineral found in seawater. Plain, simple, dehydrated sea salt contains lithium. Bi-polar disorder is actually a lithium deficiency, similar to scurvy being a Vitamin C deficiency and pellagra being a B Vitamin deficiency. If we had been raised with naturally dried sea salt on our tables, rather than white sparkly free-flowing table salt, we would all have plenty of lithium in our bodies and no one would need lithium supplements in pharmaceutical drugs.

It is unknown how many other diseases might also be simple mineral deficiencies caused by the depleted, processed salt that pours easily from most salt shakers. The salt Americans typically use — sodium chloride with a little iodine added — is a byproduct of the mining industry, not a complete food. Where do the minerals go that were mined out of our salt? Ironically, they are sold to pharmaceutical companies which then make drugs with dangerous side effects.

Be safe — use only unrefined, naturally dried, sea salt. It’s moist, sticky, and a bit yellow or grey; not dry and sparkling white. You can get it in bulk at most health food stores. It costs more and it is worth it. Baths with unrefined sea salt allow your body to absorb salt at its own comfortable pace. You can put a few trace mineral drops in your drinking water for a smooth, refreshing drink, blessed with nature’s electrolytes.

Last but not least…

Eat as much of your food as possible raw, organic, locally grown and in season. Avoid white flour, white sugar, white salt. Packaged foods, manufactured in American factories can be hazardous to your health.

“Killer Germs” Obliterated by Medicinal Smoke Smudging

Patricia says: I have smudged in the past and will be smudging more now. I also diffuse essential oils. You can sprinkle them around, put them on a diffusion ring and place them on the top of a lightbulb, use a diffuser, or even wear the yummy ones as perfumes. Different ‘flavors’ perform different functions. Cedarwood and lavender are a good combination for bugs that bug pets. I am becoming quite fond of geranium oil. Eucalyptus encourages you to breathe fully and freely and deeply. Some scents perk you up; others calm you down for a restful sleep.

Sage Smudge SticksThe following is an excerpt from an article by Sayer Ji, founder of the fabulous website GreenMedInfo.com

…The burning of herbs and plant resins for medicinal and spiritual purposes – so-called ‘smudging’ – is an ancient practice among indigenous people around the world; one increasingly adopted by Westerners. Smudging is a technology believed to unlock the ‘spirits’ of various plant allies to restore balance and ease to the individual or group. Some liken it to taking a ‘spiritual shower,’ enabling you to wash away emotional and spiritual negativity that accumulates in your body and the spaces you live…

First, we uncovered a 2006 review published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology titled “Medicinal smokes,” that looked at single and multi-ingredient herbal and non-herbal remedies administered as smoke from 50 countries across 5 continents. The researchers found, with surprising overlap worldwide, medicinal smoke is mostly used to address the following specific organ systems: “pulmonary (23.5%), neurological (21.8%) and dermatological (8.1%).” They also found that “ambient smoke,” which is the type of passively inhaled smoke generated by smudging/incense, is traditionally believed to be an effective “air purifier.” The review argued that modern medicine should investigate medicinal smoke as a drug delivery system, owing to the following advantages: “The advantages of smoke-based remedies are rapid delivery to the brain, more efficient absorption by the body and lower costs of production”…

The researchers reported their amazing findings:

We have observed that 1 hour treatment of medicinal smoke emanated by burning wood and a mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs (havan sámagri=material used in oblation to fire all over India), on aerial bacterial population caused over 94% reduction of bacterial counts by 60 min and the ability of the smoke to purify or disinfect the air and to make the environment cleaner was maintained up to 24 hour in the closed room. Absence of pathogenic bacteria Corynebacterium urealyticum, Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens, Enterobacter aerogenes (Klebsiella mobilis), Kocuria rosea, Pseudomonas syringae pv. persicae, Staphylococcus lentus, and Xanthomonas campestris pv. tardicrescens in the open room even after 30 days is indicative of the bactericidal potential of the medicinal smoke treatment. We have demonstrated that using medicinal smoke it is possible to completely eliminate diverse plant and human pathogenic bacteria of the air within confined space.

Did you catch that?

Not only did the burning of medicinal herbs clear aerial bacterial populations by 94% within one hour, but a full day later, the closed room was still effectively decontaminated. Even more amazing, a full month later, seven other pathogenic bacteria in the open room were still non-detectable.

When one considers that modern urban air has been found to contain at least 1800 diverse bacterial types[1] – including families with pathogenic members – this finding could have profound implications for combating a increasingly deadly array of antibiotic-resistant bacteria against which even the CDC itself has acknowledged its impotence. Consider also that a recent microbiome of NYC’s subway system found close to 1700 different microbes, including those responsible for Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) and Bubonic Plague (yersinia pestis).[2]

Also, considering that conventional methods of air and surface sterilization and odor neutralization use chemical cocktails (e.g. Lysol) that are much less effective than advertised (one study found them up to 10 times less effective than believed), smudging or the use of natural incense products might constitute a far safer and more effective approach…

Read more and see study abstracts from the Journal of Ethnopharmacology here: “Killer Germs” Obliterated by Medicinal Smoke Smudging, Study Reveals | Wake Up World