Eating GMO Corn Proven To Be Hazardous To Your Health

A new study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences showed that three different varieties of genetically modified corn from Monsanto are toxic to the liver and kidneys.

The difference between their study and the ones conducted by Monsanto? Monsanto manipulated the results of their experiment by using statistical analyses that would favor the safety of their product, as opposed to utilizing all tools available to them to fully analyze the data to determine whether or not there were signs of toxicity.

Another difference? Any sign of toxicity should have elicited a need to continue collecting data past the 90 days Monsanto had designated for the length of their study, since 90 days is no where near long enough to determine long-term effects and chronic illness. The authors of this recently published paper, on the other hand, are extending their experiment for up to two years in light of their results.

Makes me wanna smash things.

The thing that gets me is that these products have been deemed safe for human consumption based on the powerful truth that is science. However, the research itself is up for sale, whereby some laboratories have been paid to produce specific data and, conversely, paid to stop experiments when the data conflicts with what the agropharma companies want to see. It makes me angry.

Anyway, I'm done with my ranting. Just don't eat any GMO foods if you can help it, ok?

Women's Voices Makes Plants Grow Faster

Photo of Havy Hoag from Berkeley, CA with her home gardened tomato plant.

A fun little study they did in the UK showed that tomato plants listening to a woman's voice grew at least an inch taller than one's listening to a man's. As a matter of fact, some men's voices caused the plants to stunt in growth compared to ones left to grow in silence. Ha!

Thanks to Yo Sanner Jessica Smith for the article!

Yellow is the New Green

I had the opportunity to use a composting toilet last week. Apparently, when urine and solid waste are separated, bacteria can break them down much faster than when they are mixed, and the results can be used safely as excellent compost for your gardening and farming needs.

This NY Times piece discusses one of the main problems with the toilet:

Then there’s the sitting problem: in most urine-diversion toilets, a man must empty his bladder sitting down. This wouldn’t be a problem in some countries — Germany recently introduced a toilet-seat alarm that admonishes standers to sit — but it has been in others. Professor Jenssen was flummoxed by one participant at a training workshop in Cuba who said firmly, “If a man sits, he is homosexual.”

I wasn't crazy about sitting down to pee, either. I turned to sit down, but just couldn't make myself do it. Something about it seems... not right. So I compromised by turning as if I was going to sit down, but without actually letting my thighs touch the seat.

This seems like an almost laughably easy problem to fix. What is a urinal? Just a funnel with a tube on the end. I could make one out of half an old milk bottle and some rubber hosing. Just point the hosing where you need the urine to end up, and now you've got both a urinal for the men and a toilet for both sexes. This wonder-toilet will never be hugely popular - there's no need to make things harder by trying to break deeply seated psychological conditioning.

The standing urination position may be about more than just psychology. The Kidney channel (foot shaoyin) runs from the bottom of the foot to the inner ankle and up the inside of the calf, to the crotch and the genitals, where it dives into the body and runs its internal course, linking with the urinary bladder and the kidney, before emerging near the pubic bone and rising up the front of the body to just under the clavicle.

In TCM, the Kidneys are the root of life. In addition to filtering toxins and purifying urine, the Kidneys store sexual energy and 精 Jing. Consequently, preserving Jing can improve your sexual health and lengthen your life.

A friend of mine from Taiwan says that if you gently rise up on the ball of your foot while urinating and lift your 会阴 Huiyin point, you can preserve some Kidney energy that would be otherwise lost. Thus it can be important for a man to stand up while urinating.

There are many theories on how to preserve Kidney energy. I don't think lifting your heels is a widely accepted part of TCM therapy, but it's food for thought.

宿醉?

夏枯草 Xia Ku Cao, I have discovered, is an excellent remedy for dry eyes, dry mouth, headache and fuzzy-head sensation brought on by alcohol consumption. The variety I tried was a commercial preparation made with sugar and water, similar to the picture above. I tried making Xia Ku Cao drink at home, but it wasn't the same - probably because I was leery of putting too much sugar in.

Xia Ku Cao is known in English as prunella or self-heal spike. I bought a plant once at a farmer's market, planted it in my then-backyard and watched it grow and grow all summer long, fighting with the mint for dominance of the herb patch (the mint won).

In TCM it is categorized with the Clear Heat, Drain Fire herbs and is especially good for heat in the upper part of the body manifesting as dizziness, red eyes, irritability, etc.

Nature's Limits

I just came across a very interesting article on nature as it related to economics, sharks and politics.

Nature, in fact, places the most severe limits on animals and their behavior to make sure they stay balanced. Sharks don't have a "stop eating" mechanism in their biological blueprint. Under normal conditions sharks can't catch food fast enough to do themselves damage from over-eating. Nature has limited their ability to catch food. A shark in a feeding frenzy, however, given enough food, will eat until it quite literally bursts open like an overstuffed sausage. Its guts just explode out into the water. In some cases crazed, gut-busted sharks eat their own entrails, unable to distinguish between their innards and their kill.

What's the relevance to Chinese medicine, you ask? Chinese medicine takes nature as the all-powerful regulator. There is absolutely nothing man-made that can withstand the power of nature. If it doesn't drown you, burn you, sting you, gore you or freeze you, nature can wait you out. The power of time is on nature's side. Eventually humans will vanish from the earth, and many millions of years later even plastic will disappear. But the earth will still be here. If not the earth, then certainly the sun. If the sun itself has gone dead, the universe marches on.

Faced with this incredible power, the ancient Chinese tried to learn from and live in harmony together with nature, rather than conquer it (Grand Canal notwithstanding). The ancient maxim 天人合一 tian ren he yi or "heaven and man together as one" is an expression of this admiration and respect for nature.

One of the most basic things we as humans can do for better health is to live in harmony with the seasons. That means eating food that was grown in-season, not flown from halfway around the world. It means taking time out, at least once a season, to get away from the city, to a wilderness area where we can better appreciate nature's glory. It means dressing appropriately for the seasons and not letting our homes or cars become completely insulated from the outside environment - turn off your air conditioning!

One Doctor's View of Health

There was a revealing essay in the New York Times the other day. It's by an M.D., and the subject is the definition of health. The author shows that, despite modern integrative medicine bringing Western and Eastern models of health closer together, there is still a wide gap in how we view the body.

Women who get a diagnosis of breast cancer, for example, are usually quite healthy. It is the appendage that is sick. After they lose the appendage, they must take treatment that makes them very sick, so they can stay healthy. But, of course, some never quite make it back to that shore, for the terror of recurrent illness can itself negate health.

Rub your eyes and read it again: women who get a diagnosis of breast cancer are usually quite healthy. It's the "appendage" that is sick, so it follows that all you have to do is lop off the offending appendage and the problem is solved. This quote illustrates what Efrem Korngold and Harriet Beinfield call the "mechanistic" view of the body.

The findings of the early anatomists validated the mechanistic view that the body is made out of distinct and separate parts, connected and yet autonomous... for the mechanic, it is best if the parts of the machine are standardized and uniform. That way the parts are interchangeable, easily replaced, and the ways in which they break down become predictable from one body to the next. Standardized diseases develop from established causes, and protocols of treatment are fixed. Uniform parts sit on the shelf. This view focuses entirely on the ways in which all people are alike and tends to overlook the ways in which people are unique and dissimilar. When a group of people receives the same diagnosis, they receive the same treatment. Science and industry have enabled medicine to be practiced on a mass basis. The same mechanistic philosophy that inspired mass production in industry also inspired mass medicine and health care. --Between Heaven and Earth

By comparison, the Chinese medicine doctor views the body as a garden, an innate part of nature. This view both simplifies and complicates treatment.

On the simple side, if your garden isn't doing well, what is the first thing you think of, even if you've never done any gardening? Water and sun. Is the plant getting enough water and sun? Is it getting too much? Each plant is different - some like the shade and some like blazing heat. Almost all of your plant problems can be traced back to water and sun. It's the same with people: nearly all of our problems can be found in our immediate environment, in what we take in on a daily basis, whether that be food, air, water or emotions.

Then again, nature is an incredibly complex subject, and if knowledge of the body requires knowledge of nature, we are all far behind. For all of humanity's great achievements and machines, there is little we can do when faced with the tremendous power of nature. We still can't predict earthquakes or hurricanes.

Gardening is one of those "a little bit every day" kind of disciplines. If you take the time to weed a little every day, water a little every day, talk to your plants and tell them that you love them, your garden will be fine. You can't wait until the blackberry bush has taken over the entire fence before you start trimming - at that point the fence itself may have toppled over. You can't save up all your watering and do it all at the end of the month - some plants will have died already, and watering dead plants only gets you mud. So tend the garden of your body with a little bit of exercise every day, fresh food (maybe some vegetables from your actual garden, eh?) and clean water. Tend the garden of your mind with meditation to quiet the mental garbage you accumulate. And tend the garden of your soul with good friends, good music, and whatever spiritual or religious tradition you connect with. Don't wait until your fence needs to be torn out and rebuilt.