U.V. Guide Practitioner Didi Pershouse Book Project

For those in the community who missed this Valley News article, please enjoy the story about acupuncturist and sustainable medicine advocate Didi Pershouse's book-in-progress on a sustainable medicine future. To support Didi's work directly visit her fundraising page on Indiegogo.

Regarding Fish

There is conflicting information about eating fish. What is healthy, what is not? As the recent article, The Flip Side of Tilapia, from the New York Times reports, the production of Tilapia has been, like so many things, industrialized and tainted, to the point where the fish lack the very attributes that make eating fish recommended as a healthy component of diet. This is tragic. I remember decades ago, The New Alchemy Institute, a forward-thinking non-profit on Cape Cod, was incorporating Tilapia into their experimental greenhouse ponds, raising them in an organic environment as they worked to develop ecological, sustainable, local food systems. That small-scale, organic model has gone by the way-side.

Paul Greenberg's excellently written Four Fish details the issues with wild and farmed fish, as well as presenting useful solutions—highly recommended for anyone concerned about the future of food.

Slow Food's Slow Fish Campaign is full of helpful and inspirational information. At the end of May, Slow Fish held a convention in Genoa, Italy focusing on small-scale fishers. Slow Food says,

"Slow Fish celebrates and draws awareness to artisanal fishing in many ways and investigates the difficult balance between safeguarding the income of fishers and protecting the marine resources on which their livelihood depends. This begins with welcoming fishers from across the world, like Frank Fleming, the Irish fisherman who, while battling to compete with the huge quantities of industrially caught fish on the market, set up a certification system for responsibly caught fish; or 16 year old Georgios from Greece, a third generation member of a family of fishers who use small boats and traditional fishing methods; or the Oosterchelde Lobster Presidia fishermen from the Netherlands whose careful techniques ensure the survival of the species for future generations."

Thank goodness there are still fisherman working on a small, sustainable level. Explore the Slow Fish site for more information and tips.

Two of the many resources offered at Slow Food include the Chef's Collaborative report, Seafood Solutions: A Chef’s Guide to Sourcing Sustainable Seafood, and for residents and visitors of the UK, restaurants serving responsibly harvested fish can be found at Pisces Responsible Fish Restaurants.

In the meantime, I suggest some wild sardines (still available) as they are low on the food chain so don't have the toxin and heavy metal loads that tuna and other larger fish have, and, so far, are not endangered

Kimchi Lover's Rejoice

Green Med Info has highlighted two reports this week showing the health benefits of traditional fermented cabbage dishes like kimchi.

The first study shows that an active compound of kimchi inhibits atherosclerosis in rabbits (let's ignore the fact that rabbits usually eat raw cabbage). These rabbits were fed a high-cholesterol diet and then given either a pharmaceutical drug or the kimchi compound. The kimchi compound had the highest cholesterol-lowering effect.

The second study shows that a particular strain of Lactobacillus bacteria found in kimchi is able to degrade organophosphorus pesticides which include extremely toxic substances such as parathion and diazinon.

For more information about kimchi and fermented foods see the past blog post about Raw/Live Food and the health links page at the Alternative Health Guides Web Site for where to buy kimchi-like products and books about how to make your own.

Freedom of Choice

Whatever your personal decisions are regarding vaccines, it is important to have freedom of choice in the United States and the world, because once freedom of choice is taken away in one area, it can be taken away in other areas. To have informed freedom of choice, people need to have access to all sides of an issue.

Science is not one static block of information. There are different opinions, outcomes in tests and a myriad of components in how studies are conducted and reported. Science evolves and changes—you only need to explore history and you will find this consistently. The most common example is that prior to 1850 the notion of infection reduction due to hand-washing before surgery was dismissed as totally ridiculous and the doctor who promoted the theory was imprisoned. Now hand-washing is considered the most important aspect of infection reduction even with all sorts of technology available.

Antibiotics, considered miracle-cures and panaceas, are now known to cause all sorts of resistant super-bugs and other health issues. In a relatively short span of time antibiotics have gone from cure-all drugs to cautiously prescribed — an enormous shift in how the drugs are used.

So when billions of dollars are at stake in the world of vaccines, with its relatively short history, it seems prudent to allow full disclosure and transparency in all information, full access to all sides of the issues and most importantly, the freedom for individuals to make their own choices about what is injected into their bodies.

Here is a link to a referenced article from Dr. Mercola's Newsletter about the money trail of vaccine proponents and the attack on the National Vaccine Information Center, whose primary focus for decades has been freedom of information and choice.

Just as label-reading is important in the grocery store, regardless of what you choose to buy, so is virtual label reading of everything that is put into our bodies. What is considered life-saving and miraculous one day, may not be the next. Everyone has the right to make their own choices.