http://www.naturalnews.com/029292_acupuncture_Iraq.html

Incidentally the Weston Price site has a list of modern cod liver oils that have an adequate D/A ratio. Carlson’s is the mass market oil that is recommended.

Some herbs that have been identified are – Ulteria salicfolia, Hydnocarpus pentandra, Gymnocladus assamicus, and Begonia tessaricarpa.

Conservation of traditional herbs and plants should become a high priority for all. Challenge
becomes more severe as many of these herbs grow in the wild and are not cultivated.

Planet Green (a discovery.com venture) reported on this earlier this month.

More details on the Ayurveda Group blog (http://www.ayurvedagroup.com/blog)

Direct link to the blog post
http://ayurvedagroup.com/blog/2010/93-of-ayurvedas-wild-medicinal-plants-threatened-with-extinction/

Link to planet green site
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/ayurvedas-medicinal-plants-extinction.html

I was watching TV the other night and I saw you explaining about acupuncture and I was so proud of our profession. I just wanted to tell you how great you are. We went to South Baylo together, you were a year before me I think. I think it’s so great that you publicize TCM so well.
Thank you.
Amy Swei, L.Ac., Ph.D., DNBAO, Ph.D.
714-392-6668

Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest by Mark J. Plotkin
great writing style and stories of his exploration in South America
Perfume ( quirky and weird but very interesting)

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9127&catid=1&Itemid=17

The study also demonstrated that the ileal interposition surgery increases production of bile acids, which are involved in fat metabolism and can increase the production of GLP-1, the hormone that improves insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity. But bitters before meals also increases the production of bile acids, and does not involve

Nice post!

You said “The herb has a very directional heat: if you light a small cone over a watermelon and keep replacing it, the cone will make a laser-like hole as the heat penetrates instead of a wide mushy area.”

Have you actually seen this? I read this as well and tried it, 200 cones of high quality floss. It just made a small soft spot, no special signs of heat penetration. I was quite disappointed

Lorraine

-Rachel, Michigan

http://twtpoll.com/3hgu5l

For the whole form I’d talk to Tom Leung at Kamwo herbs.

One of the truisms about scientific studies is that you need to look at the actual data and the groups compared instead of the executive summaries, which is what tends to be reported in the popular press. It unfortunately is not uncommon for data to contradict what is the purported conclusion. This is especially true where a researcher has an axe to grind, as Campbell, who has a long history of pushing a dangerous vegan diet,did.

If you look at the data table I posted from the China Study (click through to the China Study article I wrote) you will realize that his correlations for meat and cancer were lower than his correlations for carbohydrates and cancer. So how does this vilify meat?

And when he looked at people who were healthy eating a low meat diet, he drew the erroneous conclusion that a no meat diet was healthier. It is entirely possible to be well-nourished on a low meat or vegetarian diet with animal products other than meat. But aside from a vegan fast, which can be useful to balance years of excess, a vegan diet does not support long term health or reproduction. I see vegan or low-protein vegetarian infertility patients all the time who respond to adding meat in their diet.

A vegan diet, which is not what you engaged in yourself, is deficient in DHA, B-12, butryic acid, vitamin D, and the ability to assimilate minerals that use animal fats in their absorption. You often see osteoporosis in young vegan women, even athletes, because their excessively low cholesterol (well below 150) is not there to make hormones (cholesterol is the building block of hormones). There are many vegan women who cease menstruating and cannot make sufficient hormones to carry a pregnancy.

If you don’t compare equivalent groups, you don’t prove what your study sets out to. So the 1974 British study showed that high-dairy vegetarians had stronger bones than an undifferentiated group of non-vegetarians including those who lived on beer and junk food and sat on the couch watching television all day. Rather biases the result, don’t you think?

The 1994 study compared younger vegetarian, mostly women to older omnivorous, mostly men, and was not randomly selected. So how does that tell you anything about whether it was the meat or the age and gender?

The Seventh Day Adventist study compared to the Mormon study shows that a group interest in health in the context of strong community and spiritual practice produces health whether or not there is meat in the diet.

We simply have no studies whatsoever that compare the results of health-conscious vegetarians with health-conscious omnivores, and if someone wants to design one they should have subgroups that are free of glutenous grains, unfermented soy and which look at the kinds of meats consumed.

There is indeed no medical consensus that a diet without meat is superior, or that would form the nutritional policy of the nations or organizations that study nutrition. There is a consensus that eating a diet with a variety of healthy vegetables, nutritionally dense foods like blueberries, wild fish or yellow squashes, good fats and quality (non-industrially farmed) meats and eggs will support health. And exercise and other components of a healthy lifestyle also make a difference.

I do believe, in accordance with the traditions of Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and recent research on bio-individuality, that one size does not fit all. Different constitutional types and different genders do better on different diets. It is not just the macronutrients- there are specific foods that make a difference. I don’t think D’Adamo’s blood type diet is quite there yet either- it probably isn’t all about blood and we don’t easily test tissues. Mercola’s metabolic type diet attempts to do it, but seems short on the prescriptive end. I have found a paleolithic diet has a balance that can be adapted for different people and which seems to exclude a number of problematic foods.

On a personal note, after a disastrous “healthy” vegetarian diet which caused bloating and weight gain, I was advised by Annemarie Colbin that I would probably do better on fish and vegetables. I started limiting my carbohydrates to 60 grams a day, foreswearing grains and sugar altogether and lost 30 pounds. I did not restrict animal protein except to limit it to humanely-raised meat or wild game. My cholesterol was never high but it improved, and my triglycerides dropped over a hundred points. My blood sugar dropped 50 points on average (although patients with higher blood sugar, in the 300s, have dropped to a non-medicated 100 on this diet.) And while fat cells acquired during my pregnancies will never disappear (they can only shrink), it is clear to me that a low grain Paleolithic type diet will make my life healthier and can do the same for others.

that the first foods given by God to man in the Bible are fruit trees and herbs (Genesis 1:29) and as punishment for sin, grains: “…cursed is the ground for thy sake;…In the sweat of thy face shalt though eat bread, till though return unto the ground…” (Genesis 3:17,19).

Since we developed high gluten wheat hybrids and stainless steel mills that can release dangerous particles which injure our villi and get into our blood stream, it has become a greater curse. If you aren’t one of the 1/135 with outright celiac disease, save the bread for ceremonial and holiday celebrations and skip the sandwiches.