This Journal considers some important health concerns, and offers some health insights into one aspect of healthy cell expression.
It’s Easter Day and time to resurrect Crestone and Beyond with some new writing
This morning I read the Day 110 meditation from Franciscan priest Richard Rohr’s 2010 book On the Threshold of Transformation, Daily Meditations for Men. Day 110 is entitled “Addiction.” Here is a quote from this page, “Addiction happens when we no longer want to feel our feelings. Addiction happens when we don’t want to know our own thoughts or feel our own pain.”
As I sometimes say to clients who are stuck in re-entry loop patterns of behavior, “an addiction is any behavior that we do which is a fear of internal growth.” Such punditry usually allows for a suspension of client mental machinations and suffices to freeze the re-entry loop of their thinking momentarily. In that frozen frame of the non-thinking non-dual client, I must deftly insert a new thought program; a finer alternative, if you will. Such is the art of the practice. It is akin to the insertion of new belief system hard drives, or at the very least, laying the seeds of such.
Most people who live in industrialized consumerist cultures live in their heads; rarely spending any meaningful time and discovery anywhere below their neck. Our individual ways of thinking are consumptive, and may be regarded as a universal addiction. Simply put, we are addicted to the way we think. We rarely allow our thinking to soften and quiet and explore what may lie underneath our thoughts in the silent spaces of the breath. Instead, our thinking addictions foster our pervasive obsessions, co-dependencies, and dualism.
If you practice slowing down a bit in your thoughts and actions, you may come to notice the addictive qualities you have nurtured therein. Even as most people might dismiss or deny the relevance of this last sentence to their own personal brand of narcissism, the truth is that we all indulge in incessantly conjured addictive patterns; so much so that we just think our patterns are normal and healthy. Being so deluded as to the sanity of what we repeatedly self-sanction inside of a day, let’s just have you consider what might happen in your life if you simply switched off your cell phone for an entire day. Would you feel…unplugged?
It is all too easy to pick on any of society’s currently favorite addictions. While considering our perpetual consumerist bingeing, we should also give due attention and concern to the unsustainability of our incessant consumption of all of the types of natural resources which are used to feed that which is being marketed and consumed. The principal addictions which are being fed, of course, are our fear of scarcity or lack, and our sense of not being good enough.
Such is our modernity.
Let’s meander down one avenue of consumersism…
Southern Living
Because my wife is married to one from the Deep South, me, an Alabama person, her mother once kindly thought to gift her daughter with a subscription to Southern Living. I had to cancel the subscription due to the insanity of the contents.
This magazine publication is devoted to “ideas & inspiration from across the South.” Such an enticing subtitle theme of the contents reads well, but the plot of this edition is badly watered down by the advertising content seen on the pages therein; a full 50% of the pages in all editions are advertisements. I counted them. That is alot of unsustainable consumerism which is being encouraged. Nonetheless, the subtitle theme did act itself out in me to the extent that I viewed the ideas in the publication, and became inspired to comment…about the perceived insanity…my perception, that is.
On the front cover of the May 2014 edition we are invited to consider: 1) the South’s prettiest porches, 2) some bright garden ideas, and 3) some inviting table settings. On the back cover we are invited to consider a highly glammed up iteration of Charlize Theron, posing alluringly in an advertisement, of sorts, for Dior’s j’adore perfume. While Theron is not a true southern girl (she is from South Africa, however), she might as well be considered as a type of southern emissary for she did play a pretty smashing role as Adele Invergordon in a classic story from southern golf lore, “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”
However, as an emissary for Dior, Theron may not be acting in the consumers’ best interests. Southern women should be aware. The j’adore perfume receives moderate to severe ratings as being chemically toxic in ratings scales from the Environmental Working Group.
Crestone and Beyond recommends that Southern women look for skin care lines that are formulated with fewer toxic ingredients, such as: Alima Pure, Amala, Annmarie Gianni Skin Care, Aubrey Organics, Beautycounter, Dr. Hauschka, Emminence, 100% Pure, Primal Life Organics, Ren, Sumbody, Sunshine Botanicals, Tammy Fender, Tata Harper, and Weleda. You can look up the websites for these lines.
On average, American women use (and absorb) an estimated 5 pounds of cosmeceutical chemicals in a year. The toxic lipophilic components of these unguents will depot in the body’s fat cells if they are not detoxed out of the body by the liver and kidneys. Be advised that 80% of the ingredients in common cosmeceuticals have never been tested for safety, and may be linked to a growing list of diseases. The regulatory laws regarding ingredients and consumer safety are very loose in America; almost non-existent I would say.
I became interested in this toxicity concern in 1989 as a result of my work with a particular patient who had breast cancer. I became a disciple of her process. She brought this vital subject to my attention after writing her best selling autobiographical account of her cancer treatment experience in Breast Cancer Journal, a Century of Petals. This account was a finalist for the National Book of the Year Award, but was withdrawn because the author was born in Great Britain, and was not an American by place of birth.
Early book publications which informed my awareness about household products and cosmetics toxicities are: 1) The Safe Shopper’s Bible (1995), by David Steinman, and 2) Drop-Dead Gorgeous (2002), by Kim Erickson.
Here is a related, and helpful, statement from the Breast Cancer Fund where the plea is made for consumers to become mindful of their cosmetics.
For more up to date and comprehensive information, just check out the Environmental Working Group’s massive database listings of over 70,000 products. You can also use the EWG’s page, Skin Deep, to assess your own personal products and exposures. Here is a statement about this concern from the EWG Skin Deep section, which has been around as a resource for consumers since 2004.
We are addicted to consumerism…a set cultural phenomenon, definitively evolved in our social structure in the exuberance of the post WWII period. Many of the things we procure because of our acculturated consumerist tendencies are toxic; being laced with endocrine disruptors and petrochemical carcinogens.
Crestone and Beyond recommends that you research the toxicity of a specific product before you buy it and consume it; especially for those dozen or so products that you use regularly.
The Plot Thickens
While the front page plot subtitles of this year’s May edition of Southern Living do not thicken well, the recipes in this edition most certainly do…indeed…thicken.
Page 77 offers a foreshadowing of concepts on pages to come. On this page is an advertisement for the International Biscuit Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, coming this May 15-18. Please see www.BiscuitFest.com for more information to satisfy your curiosity about “are they really going to have a 4 day biscuit festival…???”
This particular festival might be far more indulgent than any festival New Orleans might have to offer as competition, such as the Jazz Festival (sponsored by Shell Oil, of course) and the Crawfish Festival. Just for the moment, imagine consuming a bunch of those crawfish that have been creeping and steeping in the petrochemical milieu that the Louisiana bayou marshlands have become. Every industrial and agricultural xenobiotic (think xenoestrogen) that you can imagine has made its way down the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi River valleys to the Atchafalaya, and on beyond to the festival’s hapless crawfish vectors.
You can also savor alligator meat at these amazing Louisiana festivals. To help your body deal with the unknown toxicities of consuming Mississippi river xenobiotics via the vector of alligator meat, please consider a read of my Journal on detoxification, where I presented an extensive writing on important cleansing considerations.
I’ll never forget an experience I had as an 8 year old. My father took me out on a tour of the bayou country south and west of New Orleans. The unforgettable thrill was walking on a narrow bridge over a huge alligator pit that was teeming with writhing and snapping alligators who were vying for survival as whole chickens were thrown into their midst. The stench and mayhem in this pit are etched into my memory centers forever, and there is no need for any further embellishment. Of course, the alligators being fed to today’s festival participants are surely being raised in pristine, organic, and sustainable alligator farms…yes?
Did you look at all of the pictures on that page? Need a psychic detox?
Ah…I digress…back to Southern Living…but, no…wait…this is Southern living!!!
The top of page 77 offers definitions of the word…”bis cuit/biskit/noun: 1) a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon, 2) the perfect Southern food, 3) a delicious excuse for a Festival.”
On pages 119 to 123 the plot thickens up a bit more in a recipe expose of some down home Southern cooking, “Make the Best Biscuit Ever.”
The recipes are excellent biscuit recipes and include my former personal favorites, the buttermilk biscuit, as well as the biscuit cooked in a cast iron pan. If you are an advanced biscuit aficionado, I recommend the peerless combo biscuit version: the buttermilk biscuit cooked in a cast iron pan. I should add, for the sake of endless completeness, that cornbread cooked in a cast iron pan surpasses the cast iron biscuit in flavor and nutrient density.
A Surgeon’s Realization
It was in my past surgical chapter that I was introduced to one layperson’s descriptive for those who have attained to a thickening of their corpus by the layering of adipose tissue all thereabout. While in the midst of a surgical procedure on one who was carrying a greater than average number of adipose cells, the assistant surgical technician let out with a simple descriptive of the morbid corpulent process in which we labored.
“Biscuit poisoning,” he said.
And with those words, the re-entry loops of surgical thinking and habituated procedural muscle memory came to a point of pause and rest in the weary battle at hand. In the moments needed to digest that peculiar novel word abstraction, a new declarative memory file was opened for future filings and considerations of same.
Indeed…biscuit poisoning it is…the word is made flesh. And furthermore, biscuit poisoning is on the spread as this map and article demonstrates. This is a creeping misery that is part of the foundational chemistry of all of our current diseases.
Buicuit poisoning may be broadly defined as the consumption of any type of grain based high glycemic index foods, processed or unprocessed, which are rapid inducers of insulin release. Biscuit poisoning is a euphemistic terminology for how to create obesity and the myriad associated co-morbidities which attend obesity states.
Let’s consider other of the biochemistry dynamics relevant to biscuit poisoning.
Based on our paleolithic ancestral genetic blueprint and eating patterns, and well substantiated supportive anthropological research, grains are considered by some nutritional experts to be a problematic human food. The post WWII push for grain consumption by the food industry, the political mob, and the media puppets in our American society culminated in the 1980’s and 90’s epidemics of obesity, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes and insulin resistance, hypertension, osteoporosis, and other associated maladies; all of which are related to the biscuit poisoning phenomenon.
In addition, the so-called epidemic known as cholesterol elevation is also caused by biscuit poisoning. Unfortunately, the cholesterol phenomenon has now turned into an overwrought misinformation campaign to support statin drug usage, and those houses of non human chemistry who make them.
Crestone and Beyond has taken a stand on the truth about cholesterol chemistry, and has debunked the perceived morbidity of elevated cholesterol in 4 recent writings posted from July 4, 2013, to December 25, 2013.
Biscuit poisoning has resulted in a massive, unnecessary, and injurious Big Pharma industry build up to help Americans “manage” some of the problems that biscuit poisoning causes. Big Pharma is a bully player in the realms and spheres of corporatocracy influence, political sway, media propaganda, and consumerist gullibility. Beware of Big Pharma, Big Agro, and their ramrod hammer known as the FDA.
Such is our post WWII modernity.
Here are some reliable antidotes to biscuit poisoning which can be practiced daily:
- normalize blood sugar
- normalize insulin, leptin, cortisol, and thyroid status
- improve gut health and function
- reduce inflammation
- reduce all carbohydrate consumption, such as biscuits
- use appropriate nutritional supplementation
- improve hydration
- remove food sensitivities
- improve negative stress states
- improve sleep
- exercise correctly and adequately
- develop loving social interactions and networks
- understand your spiritual nature and pursue your life purpose
The action points listed above are important life long studies and should be ongoing works in progress.
A future Journal will cover a very important adjunctive chemistry which is foundational to each of these action points…mitochondrial biochemistry. The mitochondria are the organelles inside of our cells where cellular energy in the form of ATP is made. The production and utilization of ATP in the cells is the largest chemical activity in our bodies.
ATP supplies the energy for all biochemical life process.
Thank you for reading.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Additional Reading
- Minding your Mitochondria…the Journal writing on mitochondrial chemistry referenced above.
- An Editorial for Health Consumers…Part II…more editorial commentary stimulated by the next issue of Southern Living.
- 25 Most Dangerous Drugs…this is from mainstream MSN.