Garlic and Honey Medicine

I really struggled to get up this (very cold and unwelcoming) March morning; my nearly-3-year-old daughter went to bed coughing and it just got worse every hour. At 11pm I decided I had to do something, and with a somewhat less than enthusiastic view on calling the out of hours GP service (I'll write more on that another day...in the meantime, if you want a bit of an eye-opener on allopathic medicine, check out this website) I decided to make another batch of garlic medicine.

Now, I know a lot about garlic and I really don't hesitate to shout it from the rooftops round here where I live, because there always seems to be someone who has something or a mum who can't rid of her child's ear infections or tonsillitis or whatever, and I always say "take garlic!". But it wasn't until last Christmas time, when my kids (all 3 of them) got Whooping Cough that I really started taking this stuff seriously. I threw together my first batch of this medicine at 4am on the 21st of December, while waiting for a call back from the out of hours service that didn't happen until around 7am; just as we were falling asleep, of course.

My husband was on night shift and although my daughter had taken a full prescription of antibiotics (I was told at the call back that she'd been given the wrong type anyway) she was still presenting with high fevers and not only was her cough getting worse, her breath had turned putrid, a clear indicator to me that there was something more afoot than just the Whooping cough. So at about 3am, after I called the docs, I was sitting with her propped up against my shoulder and with the window open to combat the heat coming off her, and googling complications of Whooping cough to see if I could pin point what her symptoms could be indicating. PLEASE NOTE: I DO NOT ADVOCATE GOOGLE AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL, ONLY AN INFORMATION SOURCE WHILE YOU WAIT FOR PROPER ADVICE!!

I found some information on the NHS Direct site that indicated she was heading for Bronchitis or even Pneumonia and at that point, frightened enough to feel the edge of panic sliding in (I was also, amongst all of this, preparing for our first Christmas with everyone at our house, might I add) I searched for herbal remedies to combat infections. Guess what the first ingredient was that came up? Yup, garlic. Here's a little exerpt from one of the pages I found by Jon Barron, who talks about how antiobitics only attack  from one direction and how garlic works in hundreds of ways (read the rest here):

"Take garlic for example

For a long time, many people thought there was only one active component in garlic, allicin (in fact, many companies still promote that concept). It was believed that raw garlic had very little biological activity, but when you "damage" garlic cloves - by slicing, cooking, or chewing them - the enzyme alliinase immediately converts non-active alliin into the active ingredient, allicin.
As I mentioned, it was once thought that allicin was garlic's principal active ingredient. However, researchers now know that allicin is rapidly oxidized. In the process of oxidation, allicin breaks down into more than 100 biologically active sulfur-containing compounds. While allicin may still serve as a general marker of garlic's potency, research increasingly points to S-allylcysteine and other compounds as the most therapeutically active ingredients in garlic.
So how many possible pathogenic defense combinations can you get from garlic's 100 biologically active compounds? A whole bunch!! Thousands and thousands and thousands, in fact!
The formula for finding the number of combinations of k objects you can choose from a set of n objects is:
                   n!
n_C_k = ----------
             k!(n - k)!
With 100 objects/compounds to work with and possible combinations ranging from any 2 of them to any 99 of them, the complexity is just far, far, far too much for simple pathogens to evolve around.
And that's the secret. But it gets even better.
When you combine several natural substances in one formula, the combinations of compounds are beyond counting. Quite simply, microbes cannot evolve around them."


Now, what this told me was that not only was I right about garlic being the best, but that I was way more right than I ever realised. I had never read anything as indepth or scientific as this in the short months I'd been self-studing herbalism and as an avid fan of biology I not only understood the implications of such excellent information, I saw it as a lifeline and a means to forego the unpleasantness of allopathic antibiotics (such as the destruction of beneficial bacteria in the gut) unless absolutely necessary. Along with the other ingredients he speaks about, and information from other herbalist websites, I formed a rough list of good things to put together and how they were best prepared, put my then (thankfully) sleeping daughter down on some propped up pillows and headed for the kitchen to see what I had.

This is what I pulled out the cupboards:
2 bulbs of organic garlic that needed using up since they were sprouting
Last few drops of Apple Cider Vinegar, about a tablespoon
powdered ginger and turmeric
3 lemons
Some vitamin C powder
2 jars of honey
Some old medicine bottles and a jar (my husband really hates my jar collection, but I prove its use time and again!)
Cold water sterilisation liquid

I took photos as I went to make sure that (a) I didn't forget what I put in it and (b) in case I ever did get round to creating this blog! So glad I did, because I didn't write down the recipe until a couple of days later (when I was sure it really really did work) and had trouble remembering everything...

So I set to work on the garlic first, peeling, flattening with the blade of the knife and coursely chopping each clove, while the kettle boiled. This gave the garlic some time to oxidise before I even started cooking it.

I put the bottles and jar in a solution of the sterilisation liquid,

 

and measured 2 tablespoons of ginger and 1 tablespoon of turmeric into my little glass pot. (Glass seems to prevent a mettallic taste and smell entering my homemade products and I like the fact that it's completely inert.) I poured 500ml of boiling water into the pot and added the garlic, setting it over a low/medium heat and added the rind of one of the lemons.

Once it had simmered very gently for around 10mins I took it off the heat to cool with the lid on. I got to work juicing all of the lemons

Upside down funnel in a jug works in a pinch if you don't have a juicer ;-)

 and dissolving a tablespoon of the Vit C powder into it, before adding the last bit of ACV (I didn't measure it, but it looked about a tablespoon, though more would be beneficial if you have it, just be careful not to make it too sharp). Once the garlic decoction had cooled to body temperature (dip a clean finger in to test; this is because ayurvedics believe that honey shouldn't be heated above 40°C if it is to be ingested and I also wouldn't want to kill off any of those all-important beneficial enzymes) I strained the decoction with an ordinary kitchen seive

 and added the lemon juice mix. I measured it and had around 500ml all together and so added half that amount in honey (250ml).

For all that it completely stank up the kitchen (and the house for the next couple of days) it actually tasted quite pleasant; strong, but not bad. I took the bottles and caps out of the strilisation liquid and dried the outsides, lined them up and with a funnel decanted the whole lot into the bottles to the very top. I didn't want any air to be trapped inside to prevent it going off. I sealed them up quick and took the last bit that didn't fit in the bottles upstairs to my daughter, who'd woken up just a few minutes before I'd finished, with another coughing fit.

This was around 5am. I gave her two 5ml measures and after about half an hour she dozed off again, but I was too busy watching her temperature to see if her fever would come down to sleep much. By the time I'd gotten the call back at around 7am her temperature was all but normal and she was sleeping soundly, so I told them I'd see how she went and call them again if I needed to.

But I didn't need to; her temperature stabilised and she even started eating again, something she hadn't done much of the two weeks prior. She'd lost a lot weight with the vomiting after the coughing fits and lack of desire to eat, but it was a bit of baby blubber she could afford to lose, thankfully. My oldest I gave high strength garlic capsules to from the minute he woke up with the fever and that awful cough and he sailed through the disease. My middle son got through without much fuss too and only a few doses of the garlic medicine, but he'd only just had the preschool booster a few months before, and I imagine his immunity was still high.

So when it came to my daughter getting another chesty bug last night, and having used up the bottles of garlic medicine I hadn't given away, I needed to make a new batch last night. I had to substitute Rosehip tea bags, which are 50% rosehip and 50% hibiscus, for the lemons and I didn't have any ACV so used white wine vinegar (I have no idea if my theory of it being similiar for the resveretrol content of the wine used to make it is anything to go by, but I figured it couldn't hurt). So it has a lively red colour this time thanks to the hibiscus, but worked just as well, and though she was still off her food today, her cough has decreased in severity and she is currently sleeping quite soundly.

Last night's batch, made a bit more than the time before, not sure why!

So if you or anyone you know is suffering with the endless bugs doing the rounds this Spring (I hesitate to say Spring now with the foul weather we are having...) knock up a batch of this stuff, and watch the magic of nature heal without harm.

Agave Nectar: The New "All Natural" Sweetener

I know I said I'd be posting some recipes next time I wrote; and I do have one to share but it will have to wait a little; as my day took a decidedly different turn.

I got a call from my mother this morning (we are both very taken with this new Primal lifestyle, but she has more money to spend!) and told me that after her order of agave nectar arrived, she noticed something worrying. Now, I have been going on and on about agave to any and all who'll listen, and raving about how great it tastes, how it stops my son's high-low blood-sugar swings and how it's totally natural, 100% organic and not nearly as expensive as xylitol (more on that one in a minute). So when my mom said that she was not at all happy I was completely crestfallen.

On the bottles of agave I've been buying it says under ingredients: 100% organic agave nectar, and I was, foolishly, trusting enough that I didn't think to question it. But on the brand that my mother received, it actually states fructose syrup and glucose. My mother is, by now, quite savvy on the different sugars and syrups, and knows that the US problem with high fructose corn syrup is severe. HFCS is 55% fructose. After doing some research she came across this site, which explains agave in detail, and found out that agave is up to 90% Fructose.

But, you say, fruit contains fructose, doesn't it? Technically, no it doesn't; not the highly processed stuff in the bottles of agave or even in HFCS. Naturally occurring fruit fructose is referred to as levulose and is accompanied by all the other great-for-you nutrients that is found in fuit. But, you now ask, why is this processed fructose so bad for you when it's naturally occurring counterpart isn't?

In order to understand why fructose is so bad you need to understand what it does to your body. This site explains it really well, but to give you the gist of it: instead of being digested like normal sugar (though don't take this to mean normal sugar is good, please) it goes straight to your liver because your body doesn't recognise it as a food substance, where it is converted into liver fat (triglycerides) and increases visceral fat formation. Visceral fat is the lining of fat that cushions your organs; you need a little, but a lot can kill you, literally. When a person is carrying a lot of subcutaneous fat (under the skin) you can be pretty certain that they'll be carrying heightened amounts of visceral fat too, particularly those who have a large stomach. Pear-shaped people are less at risk. Read here for more info on fat (adipose tissue).

Another problem with fructose is that it suppresses leptin (the protein hormone that tells you when you have had enough to eat) so you end up eating more than you need, increasing even more your chances of gaining that dangerous visceral fat as well as the unsightly subcutaneous fat. This is particularly dangerous for diabetics, as it's the insulin resistance they suffer that causes their condition, and the more they eat, the higher their blood sugar levels (especially those on the recommended high whole grain, low fat, low sugar diets), and the more insulin they require to deal with the glucose in their blood, the more resistant their cells become to the insulin, requiring more and more insulin to be effective. Lots of insulin in the blood inhibits the body from using the fats already stored, increasing weight gain, and compounding the problem in a never-ending, terrifying cycle.

In case you were wondering, insulin is the hormone that shuttles the glucose in your blood to muscle tissues that require it for energy, for instance if you were working out, and there it is converted into glycogen. But if your glycogen stores are full, it then deposits the glucose in your adipocytes (fat cells) and stores it as triglycerides (fat) because too much glucose in your blood is toxic.

But agave is being touted as great for diabetics since it is so low on the glycemic index (because it doesn't get digested but converted straight into triglycerides in the liver) but it's been suggested that those who consume a lot of fructose are shown to be even more insulin resistant and in danger of the complications that arise from it, than those who consume similar amounts of glucose. Considering that agave contains almost double the percentage of fructose than the frightening HFCS, it is shocking to see how they are promoting it as for the diabetic community.  

I don't think agave nectar is very common here in the UK yet, but with our obesity rates climbing to match the USA's very swiftly, I don't think it's going to be long before it becomes a lot more high-profile. I only hope that people who are wary enough of their diets to buy something unconventional to avoid the sugar that is so cheap and freely available, will also be wary enough not to be dazzled by very clever packaging, and not to take the ingredients list as Gospel. I've made that mistake with agave and I certainly won't be doing it again! But all this begs the questions: what on Earth can I actually use?  And especially for diabetics, what is natural but not high GI?

The best thing I've found also happens to be the most expensive. Xylitol. At around £10 per kilo it really does hit you in the wallet area, but it is so beneficial in so many ways it's hard to find fault with the stuff.
Pro's: low GI (7 on the scale of 100, 100 being glucose and just beneath that is honey) and perfectly fine for diabetics; naturally occurring sugar found in many fruits and vegetables, though usually mass produced from hardwood trees and corn; very sustainable; looks and tastes like sugar, though produces a cooling effect in the mouth; extremely good for your teeth as it renders the plaque on your teeth inedible to bacteria, literally starving them of their food source (which is why it's great in the chewing gum industry), reduces middle ear infections and is also 33% lower in calories than sugar. Read more here.

Great, you say, but what's the catch? Well, aside from the price tag, it just doesn't behave like normal sugar in some cooking and baking applications. For instance, you can't make meringues with it and it wouldn't feed yeast for a yeast baked product such as bread. But if you did some reading after my last post, you would know that bread is no longer a concern! Meringues on the other hand, if made with a natural sweetener would be beneficial for the protein in the egg whites. And I don't know about you, but I can't resist a meringue when I see one...

So what else is there on the market that would fit the bill? Well stevia is gaining in popularity, and rightly so if you read here, but unfortunately I have found it to have a bit of "sweetenery" taste, and hence didn't do much experimenting in the kitchen with it as I bought the agave at the same time and loved it. So I don't know if you can make meringues with it, but I'd guess that you could. I plan to hunt around and see if I can find stevia in a form that tastes good (I tried the little pill variety for hot drinks) and play around with it. If anyone reading this knows of a source of great-tasting stevia extract, and has had success with it in the kitchen, please do share!!!

I hope this has been informative and I hope you follow those links, because there is a world of information out there, at our very fingertips. And at the end of the day, in our sickening modern world where capitalism is king and the power of advertising is literally killing people slowly with smiles on their faces, if you don't take charge of your health and ask the questions, you will end up one of the numbers in the statistics. Don't be a sheep; take control and start right now!

A New Day

On my way to take the kids to school this morning I saw the first purple blooms of the vinca minors popping up, instantly putting a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Despite the dreary, rainy day and patches of snow lingering, Spring really is here. Sure, the trees have started to bloom and the snowdrops and daffodils have started making an appearance along with the pretty crocuses, but for me it isn't really Spring until that patch of vincas bursts into life. It spurred me on to finally start this blog; something I'd been thinking about for months, but with more urgency in the last couple of weeks.

I have started this blog as a means to share and externalise a number of significant changes that my family and I have been going through and bring a certain thing called Primal Living (or going paleo or turning caveman or whatever you want to call it!) to the UK since it doesn't seem to have reached very far beyond the confines of the US of A. Which is a shame, really it is. The UK's obesity rates are fast approaching the USA's rates along with the incline of Diabetes and Heart Disease.

I'm not the best person to tell you what Primal living entails so I'll tell you who is, but I think it's worth mentioning how I got here, to this point at which I have totally reworked my life, have started on my children's lives and gotten not only my husband on board (off his own back too, amazingly enough) and my mother; and through her my step-dad who has Type 2 Diabetes; but several of my friends are now looking into it, for themselves, or for their own family members with T2D.

I have always been burdened with creativity, and if you have read my other blog you'll know more about this, but over the last couple of years health and longevity have been at the forefront of my mind. Having children will do that to you. Gone are the days when I could ride a rollercoaster without terrifying images of greusome death flashing through my mind. So it's safe to say motherhood unhinges (or perhaps tightens?) the danger sensors in your brain to the point when even a walk to school can be fraught with many a mini heart attack as they stumble when they aren't looking, or nearly walk out into the road despite the number of times you've played the "stop, look and listen" game. Naturally their health has come to fit in the same category.

My smallest one, about a year ago.

I digress. My creativity led to take up making herbal preparations as a sort of fun hobby since I was suffering so much with my skin and wanted to try a more natural approach to skin care. As a result the only commercial stuff I use on my skin now is plain old dove bar soap, dead sea spa magic minerals shampoo and herbal essences conditioner. I've completely wiped all liquid soaps from our bathroom due to the SLS/SLES (sodium lauryl/laureth sulphate) content, which is a detergent that can be found in anything liquid for the simple purpose of making bubbles. Once I've mastered a toothpaste recipe that my hubby and kids will happily use the commercial toothpaste will be gone too, for the same reason.

I know that there's been a lot of hype over the years about how just about everything causes cancer, but more and more I've come to suspect that there just wouldn't be so much smoke without a fire. One day I'll get really technical and list the studies I've read (if I can find them again; one downside of link-hopping your way through an evening) but honestly all it takes is a google search to find what you're looking for these days. Sometimes it's bogus, sometimes it's valid; the trick is learning how to filter the gold particles from the mud. There is honest-to-goodness REAL information out there, and usually, I find, once you reach a reputable source, you will find links to other reputable sources.

I subscribe to DIY Natural; an American couple who blog recipes, tutorials and information on natural living in the modern world. Matt and Betsy's site is a really excellent source of down-to-earth, sensible information that is applicable to just about anyone anywhere. It was their post on natural butter vs margarine (and in particular the picture of the ants ignoring even the reduced fat butter and going straight for the real thing) that really caught my attention. After reading the link from their site to another all about how margarine is manufactured I felt utterly sick to my stomach and highly liberated at the same time.

For years I have been unable to decipher from the vast sources of misleading information as to what really is good for us and what really is bad. I was raised on E-numbers, high sugar, highly processed foods since they were cheap and we were not well off, at all. Nothing on my mom, she did what she had to do and fed us whatever she could afford because usually that was the only way we'd eat after her and my dad divorced. But I always took the view of, "well it didn't do me any harm..." And then I started thinking, was I right? Am I a picture of health? Erm...no.

So the more I delved into this new found world of "healthy fats" and good versus bad nutrition I was slowly accruing a rather vast amount of information that I knew somehow had to fit into place, but I just couldn't get it to piece together quite right. And just when I thought I wasn't going to get any farther, that I'd found the best information that was available to the lay person at the moment (unless I wanted to read a scientific dictionary), I discovered Mark's site and suddenly everything; EVERYTHING; I'd learnt made complete and utter sense. Mark is my new hero, and fast becoming the hero of my little bubble of close family and friends. He is the one to tell you all about Primal living in the modern world.

After the whole horsemeat scandal (which didn't in itself cause me a concern as we never eat ready meals aside from fish fingers and chicken nuggets on overly busy days) I really did start to wonder...if they can cover up such a huge conspiracy and mislabel something so badly and get away with it for so long, what else are they doing? And then finding Mark's site and realising that actually, the way we're engineered to eat and live is far simpler than the way we do things now. And though it takes some doing to go primal in the modern world, if a mother of three, who spends her hours cleaning, doing washing, cooking, writing, standing in as acting chair for my daughter's pre-school and generally trying to have a life in between can do it, then just about anyone can.

It takes more thought, though. And that mental energy is sometimes the least available; but it is worth it, more than I can say. I'm only just beginning and I'm still learning a lot, but the gist of eating the right foods when you are hungry, avoiding grains at all costs for their toxicity, and getting adequate sleep and the right kind of exercise really make a great deal of sense. I've gone from eating around 1900 cals a day (yes, I sadly went and measured it) of which 75odd% was carbs (bad) and 15% was fat, to eating around 1500 cals a day of which only 21% was carbs and 56% fats. I feel like a new person, that is the only way to describe it. After just a couple of weeks I've drops a few pounds, lost the constant bloating of my stomach, hardly ever feel hungry and have a lot more energy. I actually want to run around with my kids and spend time in the kitchen preparing a carefully proportioned meal because I understand now how our bodies work and what they really need to be healthy.

The whole concept of LOW FAT- HIGH CARB diets are a mystery to me, now that I know how utterly idiotic it is. It's only the last 20odd years that we have been doing it, and guess when obesity rates started increasing steadily from...? If you guessed when we started the low fat-high carb way of eating, you'd be right. Why is it that we have all been duped for such a long time? That our governments are still listening to the faddy advice from the late 70's when such life-changing and life-saving information is now being recorded (or re-recorded, snigger...)? WHY are there posters in the hospitals telling people that their plate should be made up of 60% carbs, only around 10% fats (and they very cleverly include sugars in there...once you read more on sugars, carbs and beneficial fats, you'll understand my chagrin) and a low percentage of protein? How is it that even the Healthcare system doesn't realise that they are touting the very recipe for obesity as "Healthy"?

One of Mark's big openers to a post is "What does a lion eat?" and of course it eats meat, and no one would question it, because lions are designed to eat meat; they evolved that way. Once you take that view on nutrition, it gets easier to change your thinking about what you, as a human being, eat now and how you should be eating to be healthy.

At the end of the day (and a rather long introductory post...sorry) we all have to make up our minds about what is healthy and what is not. But in my humble opinion, if it wasn't something we evolved on, then we don't need it, and potentially it's even harmful, as in the grains that we rely on so heavily. This day is a new day; make the most of it, and every day to come.

Next time I'll go into more detail as to what I've changed in our daily diets and post a couple of recipes that were a success with the kids. In the interim, go spend some time with Mark ;-)

Update:
This is one of the reasons I started this blog: so that more people can find a path to the success this amazing young woman found.