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FEBRUARY 2009

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THE EARTH - Online Monthly Newspaper of the
"Ringing Cedars" movement.

Language Selection:
English | Russian | Dutch

IN THE HEADLINES:

RUSSIA:

BELARUS:

USA:

This section is devoted to the information that will be useful in the creation of a Kin's Domains.

1. Children's Upbringing and Education:

2. Meaning of Food in Our Lives

3. Health, Natural Methods of Health Improvement

4. Ecological Farming, Permaculture

5. Green Construction, Eco-friendly Technologies

THIS ISSUE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

RingingCedarsofRussia.org
Source of Life Association VladimirMegre.com
Anastasia.ca EnergyofLife.ca
Day of Earth Celebration Hosting Project

IN THE HEADLINES:

UN PETITON

PRESS RELEASE: Free Government Land for Food-Gardens

Petition Online, calling themselves "the marketplace of free ideas™", is making a powerful democratic tool available to anyone who wants to be serious about their grassroots powers to make a difference.

An example in point is one of the latest submittals, entitled UN Petition: Family-Plot Food Gardens for a Sustainable Planet, which can be accessed online by transferring their web-link into a browser window: http://www.petitiononline.com/SoLMag/petition.html . Addressed to His Excellency, Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General to the United Nations, it requests the U.N. General Assembly to help create sustainable small family-plot sized food-gardens all over the world by way of member nations dedicating unused, free government land for such purposes.

This UN Petition "sparked an enormous amount of excitement," says Dr. Regina Jensen, editor of the international Space of Love Magazine, who drafted the document in behalf of Ringing Cedars of Russia, a world-wide "green" movement originating from Russia. The signers of this petition are convinced that powerful positive change - individual, social, economic as well as ecological - can be affected through increased development of personal or government land into family food-plots and gardens. They also support the creation of eco-villages world-wide to reawaken the wholesome neighbor-to-neighbor support available in such communities. More specifically, they have great hopes that peaceful life and self-sufficiency can be created by developing hectare-size (2.5 acres) family food-gardens, especially in community, a size they believe is large enough to feed an average family and therewith protect them from survival-stress and harm under difficult economic circumstances. The petition also claims that historically, such food-producing family and community-plots have stabilized a region, state or entire country during economic and other disturbances.

Yuri Smirnov, publisher of Space of Love Magazine in Russia says: "People recover a sense of deep excitement and purpose when they re-discover the power true democracy brings. It helps all of us to come together and co-create a world that truly works for everyone. The excitement and gratitude our international magazine received upon launching the first issue last year was just astounding. It speaks for the deep hunger we all have to come back to our community roots, to Nature and its abundant nurture and to security in our own healing environment. It is contagious and exciting to return to a way of living that is joyful, peaceful and celebratory, without having to throw out the good things modern life offers. The exciting response to our joint online UN Petition seems to be another example of this hunger for a saner way of living." Although the United Nations published statements very recently in keeping with the petition's intent, if they do not respond with the urgency these world-wide issues demand, the publishers say that they will continue to present these concepts to whichever governmental organizations will be most able and committed to produce true, global change for the people they represent.

Many of the individuals signing the UN Petition, says editor Jensen, "have already been inspired by a specific global vision for healing, offered by the Ringing Cedars of Russia material, via re-connection with nature and a personal plot of land and the powers of an eco-village type of neighborly support for modern times." Some of the sample comments, she shares, are: "We are all one. What affects one affects us all. It is time to move into cooperation and real relationship with the earth and each other." "This is the path for a bright future for our children and their children." "This is essential to recovery from the global economic crisis and climate change." "We are responsible for how we treat the Earth and feed ourselves." "This is the most important thing we can do to save our species upon this planet." People are encouraged to enforce their voice and participate by signing at: http://www.petitiononline.com/SoLMag/petition.html or check with www.ringingcedarsofrussia.com and www.spaceoflovemagazine.com

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE

* * * * *

Official request to interested parties:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please reproduce this press release on your website or any available resource with direct link to PETITION: Family-Plot Food Gardens for a Sustainable Planet, for a wider spread of information regarding this initiative and gathering necessary signatures.

Sencerelly,

Editorial Board,

The Earth Monthly Newspaper

EarthLife.info

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE

Free Government Land for Food-Gardens: UN Petitioned Online

To: United Nations
Excellency Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General
United Nations
New York, New York

Your Excellency!

We, the undersigned, represent a movement of over eleven million voices strong. This is the growing number of people world-wide who are joining a brilliant "green" movement originating from Russia. We are all people who have become inspired and convinced of the urgent need for government supported development of family-size sustainably farmed land-plots, ideally located in eco-village settlements in every nation on earth. Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General to the United Nations for many decades, said with great forethought: "The world of sovereign nations is in disarray. The Earth, our vital air, waters, nature, vegetation and many species which it took millions of years to form, our climate are in jeopardy. All this will end in a global disaster without precedent, if we do not react with urgency, vision and audacity." At the time, Dr. Mueller implored the General Assembly of heads of states to "remain in session day and night if necessary, until we give birth to a new political system for our miraculous planet and our sacred human family." We, the undersigned, implore you with the same urgency, because we are convinced that this new political system will be generated easily and safely in the form of wide-spread, internationally blossoming eco-systems, renewing themselves one hectare, one eco-village, one society at a time - and at great speed.

You yourself, Your Excellency, along with Prince Charles, sent written word recently to the assembly of Terra Madre and Slow Food advocates who met last Fall in Italy emphasizing "the importance of traditional farming knowledge in finding a sustainable solution to the global food crisis." And you let them know that "the global food crisis requires a comprehensive and coordinated global response....This is why I have created a high-level task force, bringing together the UN, donor countries, civil society and the private sector in a 'global partnership for food.'" With your address, you were hoping to support small farmers and see that new technologies be adopted along with modern farming methods, which would "attract more young people to farming, especially in urban areas of the world."

We feel so very excited to have a Secretary General such as yourself, Your Excellency, with the deep wisdom that our beautiful Earth needs to prevent such a "global disaster without precedent", as Dr. Muller warned.

We have at hand simple yet highly intelligent, proven plans for action which can be implemented immediately all over the world, promptly healing our bleeding Earth and providing healthy food substances for its people; people who range from being concerned, hungry and even starving, depending upon the economic conditions of their home-nations.

Loosely embraced by the name "Ringing Cedars of Russia", this rapidly growing, world-wide movement shares one vision: the creation of ecological settlements ideally consisting of one hectare sized family-plots of land. While there are also many ideas for sustainable living for city dwellers (notably the Transition Town movement), our appeal to you and the General Assembly is for the following:

There is much unused land, ranging from very fertile to presumably unusable, marginal, even arid land. And there are precedents for the governments of many nations having provided such land to families practically free of charge for the development of family-sized plots for micro-farmed family domains. (One hectare is ideally suited to feed a family in any climate and on any soil.) Russia's Dacha Gardens; Germany's Schrebergaerten and America's Victory Gardens all represent examples where a nation's people retained their ability to feed themselves, their family and neighbors through economic hardship and thereby stabilized the economy and viability of their entire country while providing an atmosphere of hope, pride and belonging.

The granting of such land-tracts must include guidelines for changing rigid local zoning and use-permit laws to facilitate the swift creation of such food-plots, ideally as part of eco-type settlements. Visual materials (such as DVDs of the Rodnoe Settlement in Russia; or Australia's "Greening the Desert" film and Sepp Holzer's Permaculture DVDs) are available to effectively introduce these simple yet profound concepts to the General Assembly. All three sets of materials represent and confirm the conviction that "we can grow a food-garden anywhere". This includes salinity stressed, arid desert lands which can regenerate within months with intelligent perma and polyculture installations. Indeed, these installations can provide training for more people to teach these methods even as they go along recovering land for family food-gardens, effectively multiplying the blessings of such an approach to national and world-healing.

* * * * *

Declaration in support of immediate creation and promotion of sustainable family-plot permaculture land development:

We, the undersigned, are supporting the vision of acquiring parcels of land, one hectare in size, for the purpose of setting up Family Domains to build a more perfect living environment for ourselves and our families. There, food and forest gardens can be planted in accordance with careful permaculture planning and healthy seeds, so that we can grow food such as fruit, berries, nuts, vegetable crops and might include such additions as ponds stocked with fish, bee colonies or farm animals.

As practical experience has shown, the creation of such Family Domains, though developed in different nations and climates, is capable in the very near future of solving the food and living problems of many nations. Ecovillages and agricultural cooperatives around large and small cities that are able to provide the urban population with ecologically pure plant products have proven to be very viable, immediate solutions to the planet-wide problem of availability of wholesome, affordable foods.

There is no doubt that a world-wide food crisis is looming, such as sharp, significant and continuing increases in the price of food products along with poor availability. Political, scientific and economic sources of information confirm these difficulties in countries all over the world. The World Agrarian Report IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development) is a recently published 2000-page international report which was gathered during a meeting of approximately 400 independent individuals and groups from various social sectors, such as science, research, politics, business, agriculture and consumer protection. It offers advice of a very similar sort as is advocated herewith. Also represented at that world gathering were institutions such as the FAOs, World Bank, UNEP, UNESCO, WHO, UNDP, GEF.

It should be an intolerable fact to any intelligent individual or government to know that from thousands to up to tens of millions of hectares, and even larger numbers in acreage, depending upon the size of the country in question, remain uncultivated and are overgrown with weeds while up to 40% or more of food-stuffs - very often of poor quality - are imported from foreign countries at great waste of resources, while compromising the economies and viability of such countries. This includes, of course, the destruction of vitally important rainforests and therefore, imperils our entire planet. No polite words, but only terms such as "stupid" or "criminally immoral" can adequately describe what is going on in the world regarding certain agricultural approaches including the resulting, totally unnecessary starvation of innocent people in Third World countries.

This unacceptable travesty also affects a large percentage of the world's farmers who are practically enslaved to giant, heartless corporations due to the competitive struggle with which such agriculture is maintained along with the pressure tactics employed by such inhuman corporate entities. Struggling for profit with large agricultural farming approaches forces farmers to use pesticides and herbicides, grow harmful, genetically modified products via unhealthy mono-cultures, and endanger the lives of millions of people and indeed, the viability of our entire planet. And short-sighted actions such as infusions of cash into agriculture have not changed the situation for the better in any nation, but only aggravate it, as the core problems are never addressed.

While we believe it counter-productive to accuse governments or individuals, the fact that many countries are standing at the brink of great social upheavals demands immediate action. We believe that in such a situation, it is necessary that each individual or family make concrete commitments toward self-reliability and individual sustainability in the most immediate future. But they need help from their respective governments with appropriate legislation.

We posit that a fundamentally new and universally applicable global vision for another way of life for all of Earth's families is of vital and urgent importance. We have several guiding paradigms available, including the aforementioned Ringing Cedars vision for global healing, so as to be able to proceed immediately. There are already several hundred eco-villages flourishing all over the planet and 300 eco-villages in various stages of planning and development which apply the Ringing Cedars ideas for Family Domains. For instance, hundreds of families, having each obtained a hectare of land, are already building their own domains, domains in which children are being born and raised now in a more perfect ecological environment in specific areas in Russia, with many more emerging in other countries.
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that Your Excellency, bearer of the highest office of the United Nations, kindly join us in this urgent quest and realistic vision by assembling the relevant UN agencies to proactively pursue the possibility of realistic global healing, one hectare, one eco-village, one nation at a time. First and foremost, we need your powerful support toward the development of official positions and recommendations for the world-wide creation of hectare-size sustainable family-plots for food and forest gardens in all nations.

Please accept our gratitude for your attention to this important request to create a world which will work for everyone - Now.

(Our appreciation goes to Ivan Petrovich Sidorov, who acquired a hectare of wasteland 30 kilometers from Vladimir, Russia, to develop his own Family Domain, for gathering initial information for this letter: www.ringingcedarsofrussia.com and www.spaceoflovemagazine.com.)

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE

Signature Collection

For e-mail signature-collection:

Please download the file below. When each e-list is 14 voices long, will the last person please save a copy (or: copy and paste to a new document) and forward to info@ringingcedarsofrussia.org and then begin a new document. Hopefully, we will need to do this hundreds of times, until we have enough signatures to justify our collective voice and presentation of our ideas, representing a substantial portion of the international sustainability community, to the United Nations.

For paper signature-collection:

When the signatures are collected please send a scanned copy to info@ringingcedarsofrussia.org, or contact us by info@ringingcedarsofrussia.org for further instructions.

Download the file in WORD format (doc)

Submitted Comments

Living in balance with Nature is the only hope for humanity.

Mitchell A. Fleisher, M.D., D.Ht., D.A.B.F.M.

* * * * *

Consider what Sioux City Iowa has done as part of the their regional economic stimulus strategy: zero-interest loans on land purchase for people who will farm the land organically, and "free" land n the city to these people to build homes.

Philip Anderson

* * * * *

This dream of cooperation is LONG overdue...Please keep an OPEN MIND and Heart to see the benfit for MANY as an opportunity to work for peace and harmony for humanity and our planet.

Cecelia Gates

* * * * *

We have a hectare in the UK. It works. It is something that is possible right now for everyone!

Dr Eva Maria Chapman

* * * * *

I've have addressed the UN - In't NGO Conference about creating sustainable communities. This is essential to recovery from the global economic crisis and climate change.

Bruce L Erickson

* * * * *

This is the most important thing we can do to save our species upon this plantet.

Merry Hall

* * * * *

It is my experience that living connected and close to nature and the elements supports vitality, health, and balance. Simple appopriate tech agrarian living = security, prosperity, and peace.

Peter Baldwin

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE

(c) Regina Jensen, Ph. D.
(c) http://www.spaceoflovemagazine.com/
(c) http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.com/

RUSSIA

Ecovillage Skazka

Ecovillage Skazka - Surrounding Nature

The settlement of Skazka was created at the beginning of 2007. Prior to this, we spent a long time talking to many people who aspired to live in a Kin's Settlement, examined different scenarios of joining already existing settlements, but, in the end, we nevertheless decided to create our own.

In our actions, we decided to be guided by the principle of "Thought serves as the beginning to everything," therefore we initially planned to create a certain Image, which became the basis for the settlement of Skazka.

And for everyone who is interested in Skazka, it is best to begin by reading the Image of the Settlement and the Image of the Settler in order to determine to what extent this approach to life is harmonious.

The Skazka settlement of Kin's Domains is located roughly between Novosibirsk and Leninsk-Kuznetsky, in a very beautiful area.

The land, 200 hectares in size, has a slight south-east slope. Along the land flows a small spring-fed river, and on the opposite bank stretch the spurs of the Salairsky Mountain Ridge, overgrown with fir and aspen taiga, in general, mountains, not very high, but the picture is very pleasing to the eye! Near the land passes the road - well-known to many tourists - to Pikhtovyy Greben (considered to be the highest point in Novosibirsk Oblast).

There has been no agricultural activity on the land itself for many years now (the land itself has the status of a "pasture"), and in places it has begun to be overgrown with trees, but this looks just so harmonious - now and then one runs across young birch trees and, somewhat more often, wonderful small pine trees. Because they grow sparsely and in an open space, they have formed almost spherical crowns, and are so full that they are simply a lovely sight!

And, of course, what is there to say - you must see it with your own eyes.

To become better acquainted with Skazka, call us or write a letter, and we shall arrange to meet, speak, and go out to the land together.

Contact information:
Vika - telephone: 8-923-220-57-67, 352-05-52
Lena - telephone: 8-923-140-72-83, 20-30-594
Sergey - telephone: 8-923-245-47-57

VIEW THE FULL GALLERY

http://skazka.nsk.ru/

Translation Copyright http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/


Davos - Siberian style

Krasnoyarsk. The Borus-Produkt Company has begun to organize a credit cooperation network that will unite the inhabitants of the rural territories of Siberia.

The immediate plans of the company include conducting a series of topical conferences that bring together agricultural commodity producers in order to organize joint production ventures in each of the subject territories of the Russian Federation that are part of the Siberian Federal District. The first of these took place in Krasnoyarsk from January 24 to 25, 2009. The conference brought together more than 50 representatives of 18 settlements in Krasnoyarsk Krai.

The participants made the decision to establish an agricultural credit consumer cooperative in each municipal district of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The plans of the company include setting up the production of ecologically pure food products and organizing the sale of finished products in the countries of the European Union.

The final goal of the joint production programme of the Borus-Produkt company and the cooperatives is the organization of a network of stable rural settlements of the kin's settlement type. A typical plan of a kin's settlement consists of family estates with large land parcels, so-called kin's domains.

A. V. Kvashnin is the authorized representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Siberian Federal District. As he notes, "For wide sections of the population, the real possibility of having one's own home will assist in stimulating their economic activity and in overcoming attitudes of dependency. This problem must be resolved immediately, and the first thing to do is to build individual homes, thereby laying the foundations for a kin's domain."

Together with the ministries and agencies of the subject territories of the Siberian Federal District, the company decided to develop a mechanism to secure real access to budgetary funds for agricultural credit consumer cooperatives with the object of subsequent microfinancing, through the creation of a microfinancing development fund and the transfer to this fund of the powers to introduce fund and market mechanisms for the support of the operations of rural credit cooperation.

The next event will take place as part of the Credit Agricultural Cooperation Forum on March 19, 2009, at the Sibir International Business Exhibition Centre in Krasnoyarsk.

http://forum.anastasia.ru/

Translation Copyright http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/

RUSSIA

Bluzhsky Bor

Ecovillage Bluzhsky Bor - Local Forest

May all your thoughts be healthy, good people!

We invite all who sincerely desire the creation of a Space of Love - a kin's domain!

In the vicinity of the village of Bluzhsky Bor, Pukhovichsky District, Minsk Oblast, on the border of Mogilevsky Oblast, there is a beautiful good spot - simply paradise on earth!

It is a small village of ten houses, the majority of which are used as summer homes. The total area of the land is 63 hectares. There is a sufficient distance from the automobile road - approximately 4.5 km, although the road guide indicates 1 km. There is a rich, large forest here, which surrounds the land, and two small rivers - the Svisloch and the Bolochanka. There are electrical power and telephone lines. The village itself is located 25 km from the city of Marina Gorka, the centre of Pukhovichsky District. There is a long-term programme to make these lands habitable.

We await you, our good neighbors! Together let us create paradise on earth!

Please telephone 8-(01713)-52376 - Tatiana
or the cell telephone number 8-(029)-777-78-48, 8-(029)-912-27-77 - Pavel

VIEW THE FULL GALLERY

http://www.sotvorenie.org/

Translation Copyright http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/


The countryside awaits city dwellers

Government officials have decided to populate empty villages. Those willing to move will be given land free of charge.

The State Committee for Land Resources has undertaken a mass resettlement of Ukrainians to rural areas. Presently in the inner workings of the committee a special programme is being developed for the restoration of land use in villages that have lost the official status of built-up areas. In the words of Anton Tretyak, the First Deputy Head of the Committee, the State Committee for Land Resources has already identified 220 abandoned villages in the Crimea and the oblasts of Dnepropetrovsk, Zhitomir, Lugansk, Nikolaev, Kirovograd, Poltava, Kharkov, Chernigov, Odessa, and Rovno, villages that are awaiting their proprietors.

The programme, however, is currently in the development stage. "Most likely people will be able to receive a parcel either as an estate for life or on a long-term lease. But the amount of time they will want to live there depends solely on them: several months a year or permanently," noted the official. The main requirement for the settlers will be to engage in agriculture, that is, once they have received the land, people will have to work it: grow agricultural crops or rear livestock. In the event that these requirements are not met, the land will be confiscated. In the words of Tretyak, it is necessary to get the settlers interested and, to this end, certain mechanisms will be provided in the programme. "As options - exemption from taxes, or the providing of material assistance," adds the official. How much the programme will cost the state budget has not yet been calculated by the State Committee for Land Resources. The committee says they will finish their work by spring of next year, after which it will be forwarded to the government for its consideration.

We have found people who are prepared to move to rural areas. Alina Kirsanov, from Kharkov, has long dreamed of giving up life in the metropolis and moving somewhere where the air is fresh. "If in addition the state will help me do this - give me a parcel of land - I would be happy to leave. I would set up a farm, start a garden," she said. In the words of yet another potential settler, Vladimir Shevchuk, from Kiev, the rhythm of life in a large city is psychologically destructive, while life in the countryside is a wonderful alternative. "I would move to any remote area, as long as it has the Internet. I will, of course, visit the city, but not often," he says.

Dina Kuryshko

http://www.segodnya.ua/

Translation Copyright http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/


Welcome to
SPACE of LOVE Magazine!

Second Issue is out!

Many of us agree that our planet and world are in profound transition - facing a turning point in human history. Some say that we as a people have had this same chance many times before in our near and far history. Each time, so history shows, humanity sank back once more, en mass, into the same spiritual sleep. But once more, we are also closer than ever to be able to turn this planet into the paradise it was meant to be.

At this time on Earth, more people than ever are committed to awaken and to stay awake even as a large percentage of the world's beautiful people are being hypnotized and mass-manipulated out of their divine powers by only a few dark minds. We seem to have forgotten our most inviolable power, to love each other and co-create this beautiful Earth as a Space of Love, the metaphorical and literal paradise-like garden it was meant to be.

We were inspired to create this magazine by the incredible wisdom and vision of a young, beautiful recluse living in the wild of the Siberian Taiga, Anastasia, and a courageous author, Vladimir Megre. He has recorded her amazing, encouraging story and wisdom for us in a series of ten books, and eleven million best-selling copies, translated into over twenty of the world's languages.

We create and write through this meeting place, this Space of Love, for those of us who are ready to help transform and see this planet as the luscious paradise it was meant to be. Anastasia envisions and holds for us a foreseeable future where every man, woman, child and animal can eat and live in peace and harmony.

Our mandate is to share writings and ideas which help us transfer this inspiring vision into joyful lives all over the world.

* * * * *

SOL magazine is published through the efforts of a few devoted people. As a publication unsupported by commercial interest, we will not offer advertising from corporate-controlled media. Therefore we hope and rely upon your help in promoting SOL Magazine. Word of mouth is our main means of promoting and our readers are our best advertisers. So if you find this Space of Love Magazine insightful, Informative and interesting, please tell a friend. Better still, purchase a copy and give it to a friend or loved one, who just may discover a completely new world - the world of consciously living in their own Space of Love.

Now Space of Love Magazine is available to purchase in USA, Canada, and Europe, in our store at www.RingingCedarsofRussia.org! Good Source for promotion of the ideas of the Ringing Cedars Movement.

Click here to go to our online store

http://www.spaceoflovemagazine.com/

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Poetry, art, music, photography and anything else that flows from the heart.

Radomir speaking to Liubomila

Look into my eye's what is it you see?
Can you see the mountains?
Could it be blue seas?
Come into my arms, feel my love around
Put your hand in mine, don't make a sound
Feel my warmth surround you
Feel my strong embrace
Look into my eye's my Love
We're finally in our Space.
I know the roads been long and hard
Trials everyday, but now my Love we've
Finished the course and entered into our place.
The Love here is intoxicating the joy is so Devine
What else can we Co-Create all we have is time.
The Father is all around us, we're wholly in His Grace.
Let's enter His presence and sit with Him
What's He have to say...

By HeartofRadomir at RingingCedarsForums.com

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Please visit the forum at Source of Life Association and share your opinions on the books of Vladimir Megre. Discuss Anastasia's ideas about harmonic life, and how you use them for yourself. Share your impressions.

You can now discuss your ideas on the following topics:

Let's build a strong community together. Support each other with positive thoughts and create a real plan for making our dreams come true.

Visit the Forum.

Forum Talk

Posted by Rolando in a topic MEAT any one? Join the discussion of this topic here:

Dear friends:

There is no "flaw" to any one's thinking other than we are all approaching it from our current level of consciousness, of knowledge, and in the midst of many conflictive viewpoints. The fact is all animals have a right relationship to our Mother Earth. We just don't know what they all are other than the current level of knowledge which as we are all discovering is very primitive. In this time of transition into the higher awareness and consciousness, it is important to be accepting of all that is, compassionate of all we are, and allowing spaciousness in our thoughts and feelings in order to gain clarity in connecting to ALL our relations, the plants, the trees, the animals, the devas, nature spirits, elementals, to many others, and especially with each other. They have been waiting for us for a long time now. All of us present today are preparing the fertile soil for the emerging Consciousness of our children and descendants. Therefore, may Glad Tidings come to all of us in our new discoveries of the deep and broad truth.

Much joy to all,
Rolando

http://www.ringingcedarsforum.com/

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed on this forum are personal opinions of individuals creating the posts. We are not liable for any information posted on the forum.

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This section is devoted to the information that will be useful in the creation of a Kin's Domains.

Natural Parenting - Raising Your Kids Naturally!

by Leilah McCracken

Raising a natural child is a difficult task. Ask a thousand parents how to do it and you will get one thousand different answers. in fact you will find there is no right or wrong way. What matters the most is that your child is brought up in a happy and healthy environment, an environment where he or she is loved, respected and cared for in every facet of their life, and that they know you will always hold them in your heart and be there for them when needed.

Here are some additional tips in the raising of your child that I try to incorporate in my life:

  • Be a parent first and a friend second.
  • Offer praise on a task well done as well as stars for high marks in school.
  • Hug and kiss your child every day.
  • If your child makes a mistake, don't demean or punish, but discuss and console. This is a big one. Let kids learn from natural consequences.
  • Read to your child every night. I do this with my 5 year old and it has helped us bond and grow closer.
  • Listen to your child, without judgment.
  • Do not use guilt to make your child do anything he or she does not want to do.
  • Enjoy a special time with your child. Set aside a few hours a day to laugh and have fun.
  • Offer advice when asked and keep silent when necessary.
  • Get physical - what I mean is get outside and play together.
  • Show interest in anything your child seems to relate to.
  • Introduce your child to the arts including music, theatre, museums and dance.
  • Answer questions honestly and openly. Never lie to your kids.
  • Provide proper nutrition and incorporate exercise in your child's day.

These are only a few tips that you can try in raising a natural child. Every parent, however, has to go through the process of being a parent. It takes time, but it's worth every precious moment.

Today, more than at any other time, raising children is a daunting task. With so many outside influences one hardly knows where to begin. Trust your own instincts, they will never fail you. More importantly, remember that your child is relying on you to counsel, teach, listen and solve most of their problems. At some point you will have to send them out on their own and allow them to learn from their own mistakes. But until then, just love them and keep them always in your heart.

http://www.more4kids.info/

Image Sources - http://images-cdn01.associatedcontent.com/; http://www.birthgoddess.com/

Words of Wisdom For New Parents

What Your Child Really Wants in a Home

by Colleen Langenfeld

When you welcome a new child into your family, it is an exciting time. Parents usually spend a great deal of resources - time and money - to prepare for the new family member.

As someone who has been parenting for over two decades and has watched my children grow from tiny babies to productive adults, I can understand that any helpful words of wisdom for new parents need to be about more than just which stroller to buy.

My children can tell you that it is not the toys or furniture or gadgets that got them to where they are today. It was the values in our home. Here are a few of the most important values that we used in our family.

- Stability.

Stability is a value that is in short supply these days. There was a time when families often lived in the same home for years and kids attended the same schools from start to finish. A community provided stability just by being there. Those days, for the most part, are gone.

We moved a few times when our kids were growing up and they had to learn to deal with those realities. A lot of that training was good for them, although difficult at the time. As parents, we learned that it was up to us to provide a home of stability for our kids because the externals in our lives were quite transient.

So we focused on making our marriage strong, so the kids could depend upon our relationship together. We focused on nourishing long term friendships so the kids would have stable adult relationships to relate to as they grew. We committed to choosing a church community we could be a part of for years and years. When the kids developed healthy friendships that supported our family values, we made sacrifices so that the kids could maintain those friendships as long as possible.

- Respect.

Cultivating respect in a home means cultivating long term benefits. Want to have teens that will listen to you someday? Develop a respectful homelife now.

Being respectful to your spouse and earning his or her respect in return is one of the best things you can do for your marriage, too. And the best thing you can do for your kids is to nurture your marriage.

Teach your kids how to earn respect. Listen to them and honor their opinions. Then be the leader in your home and make the decisions that will take the best care of your family, whatever sacrifices you need to make. When your kids see that you put your family above your own self interests, they will know they can trust you. And the respect will follow.

- Kindness.

Kids argue. Parents bicker. Being a part of a family means learning how to handle day-to-day conflicts and frustrations. The family is the training ground for being human.

Your kids WILL learn something in your family, the question is, WHAT will they learn? It's easy to be sloppy with relationships; it's more difficult to be intentional. Make it a priority in your household to practice random kindnesses. This will smooth out a lot of the daily angst that naturally arises in a family.

You can do simple games such as requiring that family members do two acts of kindness for every act of hurt, whether intentional or accidental. It gets people thinking in terms of being good to each other. It helps people think twice before they're careless with one another. It just works.

As you begin down the rewarding path of parenting, remember these words of wisdom for new parents. Focus on filling your home with stability, respect and kindness and watch your family flourish.

http://www.raisingchildrennaturally.com/

Image Source - http://www.theparentcompany.co.uk

Home birth/Water birth of Judah Darwin

Watch Video:

Water birth of Judah Darwin

COMMENTS:

In the past year The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Medical Association (AMA) have made statements and passed resolutions against homebirth and, indeed, seek to outlaw homebirth. There are many places in this country where homebirth is already officially or unofficially illegal and where certified professional midwives and lay midwives are being prosecuted as felons.

It is my strong belief, based on what I have read, witnessed and personally experienced, that homebirth is a safe choice for 90% (or more) of pregnant women. In many other countries home birth is acknowledged as a safe and appropriate choice.

Women's rights, particularly our reproductive rights are being imperiled here in this country. Access to safe, legal homebirth is part of the larger issues of reproductive rights and quality health care in this country. Many medical experts have recently published books and reports pointing out how the current state of the birthing industry is pushing us towards unsafe C-section rates and other negative outcomes for mothers and babies. We are also in danger of losing centuries of birthing wisdom and the hands-on knowledge necessary to care for mothers' and babies' bodies, spirits and families.

Childbirth is a feminist issue: an issue of choice, empowerment, safety, and dignity. And midwifery is a feminist issue: an issue of respect and acknowledgment for women-centered skills and expertise. As the writer Laura Stavoe Harm has said, "There's a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful - it's that women are strong."

This film is, I admit, a work of propaganda, which is defined as the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. It is not my intention to judge the choices made by individual women or to imply that those who chose to birth their babies in hospitals are doing something wrong. I am committed to working to improve maternity services for all women, to keeping homebirth legal, accessible and available to those who want it and to cutting through the fear and misinformation surrounding pregnancy and birth.

Sincerely yours,

Rachel Zucker, mother, writer, doula and homebirth activist

Rachel Zucker
http://www.rachelzucker.net/

Why Economics Drives Most Food Options You Have

Being overweight is not just a disease; it's a symptom of many other things that are wrong with your diet. And much of the blame for the current American diet comes down to economics.

In a $10 trillion economy, $1 trillion goes to food companies and $2.5 trillion goes to health care. Food companies, like any good businesses, are always seeking to increase the consumption of their product. But in food, there's an unwritten law of marketing called potato chip marketing equations.

That means that 10 percent of your customers buy 90 percent of the product. You may go out and buy one or two bags of potato chips a month. But somebody else is buying one bag a day -- 30 bags every month.

When you add that extra 20 percent extra to your weight, you don't increase your food consumption 20 percent a day. You double it to 200 percent a day. Your caloric intake to maintain 180 pounds is almost twice the caloric intake you need to maintain 150 pounds.

Think of that from the standpoint a food company. Food companies, as a result, market to people to make everyone part of their potato chip marketing equation. They spend their marketing dollars getting existing customers to buy more of their product.

At what point after two, three, four, 10, 12 bags of potato chips do they no longer taste good? How about McDonald's French fries? All processed foods never get tiring -- they have chemically altered the food substances in that food to make sure you're never tired of it.

The problem with obesity, which is ultimately caused by poor diet, is really an economic problem. And when people consume this terrible diet, they end up with all types of medical problems, and they go to the doctors for treatment.

But the medical companies are in effect in a conspiracy of sorts with the food companies. They've almost said to the food companies, "We'll treat the symptoms of this bad diet. We will never treat the cause, your bad food."

Sources:
AdvantEdge Newsletter

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Renowned economist Paul Pilzer has done an excellent job of revealing what's going on behind the scenes when it comes to food production and marketing in the United States. I encourage you to read the entire article by clicking on the link above.

Regular newsletter readers know that I'm fond of exposing how much the drug industry spends to manipulate and distort your perceptions about health care. Well they only spend $20 billion a year. The food industry is spending TWICE that much to convince you and your kids to choose highly processed convenience foods that will accelerate a massive decline in your health (and facilitate your need to use drugs to control your symptoms).

You can watch this terrific video series by Peter Jennings to find out just how the food industry is quietly sabotaging your health. For instance, 90 percent of foods Americans purchase every year are processed foods, and in 2006, 2,800 new candies, desserts, ice cream, and snacks were introduced to the marketplace, compared to just 230 new fruits or vegetable products.

Food marketers do a masterful job at making it seem like fast foods and junk foods are the obvious choice. They're relatively inexpensive, they taste good, and they make fixing dinner a snap. No longer do you need to fuss with actually cleaning or chopping a vegetable. Simply pop their prepared boxes of food in the microwave and you're ready to go.

What the food industry neglects to tell you is that there is a heavy price for consuming this terrible diet. It is one of the major causes of a slew of chronic diseases facing the United States. So for the sake of convenience or good taste now, you are trading the most valuable asset that you have: your health.

Why do You Eat so Much Junk Food?

As I said above, 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food goes toward processed foods. This is, in large part, due to the successful marketing of agribusiness They have also cleverly designed your food shopping experience at most supermarkets to increase the sales of higher profit junk foods, instead of farmer's markets that display whole foods.

Another significant part of the food equation is that most American food crops are currently subsidized by the U.S. government: such as corn, wheat, soy and rice. Growing little else but corn and soy translates to a far higher likelihood we will eating more processed foods.

And then there are the food additives, chemicals added to the foods to make you want more. I found this to be one of the most interesting and spot-on parts of Pilzer's article. When people struggle with food cravings and overeating, it is typically because they are craving something unhealthy like potato chips, French fries, soda or candy.

I doubt if any physician or nutritionist has seen someone come in complaining about their desire to gorge themselves on spinach and asparagus. It just doesn't happen.

This is because your body will naturally crave a variety of different foods to keep you healthy. That is, if you eat unprocessed whole foods. Processed foods are typically chemically altered to increase the appeal to your taste buds, so they can override your body's signals in your body that would otherwise tell you it's time to stop eating and try something else.

These foods are pumped full of unnatural amounts of sugar, corn syrup, salt, MSG and many others, which radically increases the likelihood of becoming addicted to them.

In one study of rats fed a diet containing 25 percent sugar, they became anxious when the sugar was removed -- displaying symptoms similar to people going through drug withdrawals, such as chattering teeth and the shakes.

The researchers conducting the study found a link between opioids, your brain's 'pleasure chemicals,' and a craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. It is thought that high-fat foods stimulate the opioids, as when researchers stimulated rats' brains with a synthetic version of the natural opioid enkephalin, the rats ate up to six times their normal intake of fat.

Further, long lasting changes in rats' brain chemistry, similar to those caused by morphine or heroin use, were also noted. According to researchers, this means that even simple exposure to pleasurable foods is enough to change gene expression, which suggests an addiction to the food.

Meanwhile, refined sugar, which is in just about every processed food out there, because it is cheap and improves the flavor of the food, has been proven to be more addictive than cocaine! Your body's sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on your tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times' high-sugar consumption.

Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by our sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in the brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms, and thus lead to addiction.

This is why, if you regularly eat a diet of processed foods, whole foods seem to lack flavor. You have become conditioned to think that these chemically altered foods are the norm, when in reality the opposite is true.

When you switch your diet to one focused on whole, unprocessed foods, such as the one I recommend in Take Control of Your Health, your ability to appreciate natural flavors will rapidly return. Suddenly you'll experience how delicious fresh produce can be. And a piece of fruit will taste very sweet. Once you are eating this way, if you then eat a candy bar or a potato chip, you will frequently be shocked by the excessive sweetness and saltiness.

This is Not About Self-Deprivation

Many people feel that if they can't eat their favorite junk foods, they are being deprived. In reality, the sooner you switch your eating habits, the sooner you'll enjoy increased energy, normalized weight, a better mood and improved health overall.

Knowing this, many initially succeed at implementing an improved diet, but then fall back into old habits... and therefore, the "old" body.

Why?

This is largely due to emotional barriers or injuries that were never healed. This is why to truly succeed at revamping your eating habits, and breaking free from the onslaught of marketing messages telling you otherwise, I highly recommend you work on overcoming your emotional eating challenges.

There are clearly many useful and effective strategies in this area. In my clinical practice, I have tried a variety of methods, and have been exposed to many more (both traditional and alternative) but none have come close to the success rate I have experienced with the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT. This form of psychological acupressure can help you to reduce food cravings, remove negative emotions and implement positive goals so that you are ready to make a change.

Remember, subsisting on junk foods alone is a surefire way to accelerate your aging process and compromise your health. (To get an idea of how quickly and dramatically this happens, watch SuperSize Me.) There is just no way around it -- if you want to reap a healthy life, you and your family need to focus your diets on fresh, whole foods.

http://articles.mercola.com/

Watch Video:

How the Food Industry is Deceiving You

New Studies Show Benefits of Organic Milk

By Sylvia Carter, quotes Ann Cooper, CEC

Newsday.com

When it comes to organic milk, consumers like two things: what it doesn't have, and what it has.

Milk drinkers can be sure that cows that produce organic milk are not given synthetic growth hormones and antibiotics, and that they get to eat food that is pesticide- free. And in some organic milk brands, particularly those produced by grass-fed cows, there is a possible boost in the amount of an essential fatty acid known as conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.

Studies have shown that CLA protects against cancer in animals, and in humans a possible correlation has been established between the presence of the "good" fatty acid and protection against breast and other cancers. In addition, organic milk drinkers don't want to buy milk from cows given rBST, recombinant bovine somatotropin, a synthetic growth hormone that increases milk production.Organic cows may not, by law, receive it. The hormone has been approved for use in dairy cattle since 1993, and St. Louis-based Monsanto, the only producer of rBST, says there is no difference in safety or nutrition between rBST milk and organic, a statement backed by the U.S. government.

CLA study

Clement Ip, a researcher at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, was the lead author of a research paper on the possible reduction of human breast-cancer risk associated with CLA. The research results were published in the Journal of Nutrition and a number of other peer-reviewed journals. "The form of CLA present in food, primarily in dairy products, has anti-cancer activity" in laboratory animals,Ip said. "It looks promising" for humans, he said of his research, which was funded by the National Cancer Institute.

Experiments at Roswell have involved "thousands of [different] animals and many experiments" over the past 10 years, Ip said. "This was not a single isolated experiment."

Dale E. Bauman, a professor of animal science at Cornell University and another of the authors of that study, published in 2002, said the research demonstrated for the first time that "natural CLA in foods is biologically active." He called CLA "a potent naturally occurring anti-carcinogen."

In another study, Dr. John Palombo, assistant professor of surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and at Harvard Medical School, and other researchers found that CLA inhibited tumor growth and proliferation of human cancer cells in vitro. The results of the lab study, published in Cancer Weekly, need to be confirmed with more human tests, Palombo said.

Grass-fed animals

While all milk contains CLA, milk from grass-fed animals has been found to contain up to five times higher levels of the acid.

According to a study by Dr. Tilak Dhiman at the University of Utah, dairy cows that were allowed to graze freely, without being fed supplemental corn silage or corn oil, had 500 percent more CLA in their milkfat than cows fed typical diets including grain. Though this sounds like good news, not all organic milk is from grass-fed animals.

In the metropolitan area, Organic Valley, the nation's second-largest producer of organic milk, and the smaller Natural by Nature are brands that promise milk from cattle that graze on grass. (Horizon Organic, which accounts for 60 percent of the market nationwide, also is widely available but does not guarantee grass-fed cows.)

The growing interest in organic milk probably has as much, or more, to do with what it does not contain. Many scientists and consumers claim organic milk may be safer because, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's organic standards, organic cows cannot receive rBST.

The rBST debate

All cows produce bovine growth hormone naturally in their pituitary glands, but the synthetic version that boosts milk production worries some scientists and organic food advocates, who say it may lead to an increased risk of cancer in humans and is, in any case, unnecessary because there is already more milk on the market than people can buy.

Milk from cows that receive rBST may or may not prove to have significant health hazards for humans. But speculation of risks has spurred increasing numbers of consumers to buy organic milk.

Whatever the reasons, organic milk's got sales. It accounted for about $231 million in national sales from October 2001 to October 2002, and by last year sales had grown 24.3 percent, to nearly $288 million - while there was a 3 percent decline in the $10-billion conventional milk market in the same period.

Organic Valley accounts for 30 percent of organic sales nationwide, with $156 million (for all dairy products) last year; it is a cooperative, and its cows graze on grass.

Difference of opinion

Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, professor emeritus of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, says assurances from the Food and Drug Administration and Monsanto that rBST is safe have been made in the face of "clear evidence of adverse veterinary effects, especially reproductive, and a high incidence of mastitis" - the latter an infection of the udder.

Epstein (whose Web site is www.preventcancer.com) said milk from cows given rBST is entirely different from natural milk - "nutritionally, biochemically, pharmacologically and immunologically."

One 1998 study of U.S. women published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed a seven-fold increase in breast cancer among pre- menopausal women who had the highest levels of IGF-1, an insulin-like growth factor, in their bodies. RBST works to stimulate milk production by increasing cows' naturally occurring levels of IGF-1.

"Elevated levels of IGF-1 ... have been strongly associated with high risks of colon, breast and prostate cancers," said Epstein, whose most recent book, "Got (Genetically Engineered) Milk? The Monsanto rBGH/BST Milk Wars Handbook" (SevenStories, 2001) takes on Monsanto directly. (The name rBGH, for bovine growth hormone, is used interchangeably with rBST.)

A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization review, however, concluded that "there are no food safety or health concerns related to [rBGH] residues in products such as milk and meat from treated animals."

Monsanto did not dispute the idea that levels of IGF-1 increase in cows given rBST. However, according to a representative, quoted in E/The Environmental Magazine, "The critics ... have leapt on these scientific articles and tried to make a link between rBGH, cow's milk and increased levels of IGF-1, when in fact there is no link."

A link has not been positively established, though cows that receive rBST have a range of 1 to 13 nanograms per millimeter of IGF-1 in their milk, while untreated cows have only a range of 1 to 9 nanograms, according to the UN report.

The USDA has also said that synthetic rBST is safe and does not enter the milk supply.

Chef's choice

Ann Cooper, an author and executive chef at the private Ross School in East Hampton, serves milk from Ronnybrook, a Columbia County dairy upstate that pledges not to use rBST; it is not certified organic.

"As a chef and an advocate for children's health, I cannot say strongly enough that we should look to the 'precautionary principle,'" which holds that it is better to err on the side of caution, she said. "Even without specific research to tell us drinking milk with rBST causes cancer, I choose not to serve that to the faculty and students of the Ross School."

Cooper, with Lisa M. Holmes, wrote "Bitter Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It" (Routledge, 2000).

Consumer Reports research

After rBGH was approved in 1993, studies showed no difference in conventional milk and milk that included some from cows that got the artificial growth hormone, said Michael Hansen, senior research associate with Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports Magazine.

But in that first year, he said, "98 percent of the milk was still from cows that did not take rBGH, so if 2 percent was from rBGH cows, it was very diluted" in the test samples.

When the FDA approved the genetically engineered hormone, known by the brand name Posilac, the agency required Monsanto to include a warning label in every shipment of the hormone.

Among the 21 health problems associated with the hormone and listed are mastitis and cystic ovaries in the cows and birth defects in calves. The FDA cited data that shows, for example, that cows injected with rBST are 25 percent more likely to contract mastitis.

Seeking organic

According to the International Dairy Association, any increase in levels of IGF-1 is insignificant. The FDA and the World Health Organization support that stance.

But "clearly, we did not have to take this risk," of drinking milk from cows that receive rBST, said Frances Moore Lappe, author of "Diet for a Small Planet" (Ballantine, 1991).

That's why some parents seek out organic. And some just like it because they say it tastes better.

"The added nutritional benefits of milk come from the grass," said author Jo Robinson, an advocate of milk from grass-fed cattle, who spent four years gathering research for her latest book, "Pasture Perfect." "The more grass, the more benefit." Customers at Hungry Hollow Food Co-op in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., favor milk from Natural by Nature because the cows are grass-fed, said Christine Sloane, dairy manager of the co-op.

"They don't produce as much milk as confined cows," she said. "But it has a richer color, a richer flavor and an improved vitamin content."

Like other milk, organic milk is pasteurized, but Natural by Nature pasteurizes its milk at the lowest possible safe temperature to preserve more nutrients.

Legal problems

Oakhurst, a small Portland, Maine, dairy owned by the same family since 1921, became so successful that it caught the attention of the giant St. Louis-based Monsanto.

The dairy's rapid growth in the New England market, particularly in Boston, was followed by a suit by Monsanto last year. The company alleged that Oakhurst's label, saying its cows received no rBST, disparaged, by implication, milk that did contain it.

Before the Oakhurst case went to trial, the dairy, while continuing to state that its milk comes from rBST-free cows, agreed to add in smaller letters: "FDA states: No significant difference in milk from cows treated with artificial growth hormones."

Ben & Jerry's ice cream label also has adopted similar language on its labels.

In a different case, Monsanto tried to force the state of Maine to stop labeling milk from dairies that do not use synthetic hormones. Maine prevailed.

There are no dairies that are selling locally produced cow's milk left on Long Island, but Catapano Dairy Farm in Mattituck is licensed to sell goat's milk.

Drinking it raw

A small but growing cadre of raw-milk advocates seek out milk that has not been pasteurized; they say ithas superior health benefits.

But the heating of milk is "very important," according to Katie Koppenhoefer, spokeswoman for the American Dairy Association, "and any differentiation in taste is minimal and is counteracted by the benefits of pasteurizing milk."

Organic or not, "All milk iscreated equal in our eyes," said Michele McGinley, a spokeswoman for the American Dairy Association and Dairy Council Inc., for the New York, New Jersey and northeast Pennsylvania area.

Does organic cow's milk taste better? Whether or not it does makes little difference to Denise Crane.

"Tastewise, I don't know if organic milk is that different," said Crane, a customer at Hungry Hollow, the food cooperative. She said her three children grew up on organic milk, either raw milk bought from a farm in Warwick or pasteurized milk from the store. "I mostly do it because I think it's better for you."

http://www.foodandsocietyfellows.org/

Image Sources: http://www.foxnews.com/; http://seedtoplate.com/

Watch Video:

What is Organic Milk?

Tap Water Toxins: Is Your Water Trying to Kill You?

Watch Video:

Tap Water Toxins

Robert Slovak has devoted himself to the science of water chemistry and water treatment for thirty years. He and his brother were among the early developers of Reverse Osmosis technology.

In this video, he explains how attempts to disinfect your water may actually be killing you.

I'm sure you received many valuable health tips from this small segment of the expert interview. To hear the full version of this and other interviews I do with world-renowned health experts, it's easy... Simply sign up for the affordable Mercola Inner Circle and receive them monthly, with zero effort on your part. Take this small step -- and take control of your health -- 2,671 other Mercola Inner Circle members can't be wrong!

Sources:
New Scientist January 12, 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Dr. Joseph Mercola

In this video, Robert Slovak, one of the pioneers in water filtration systems shares his extensive insider knowledge about one of the more recently recognized threats discovered in your water supply -- disinfection byproducts, or DBPs.

If you have not heard of DBPs before, you need to pay close attention as it turns out that DBPs, not chlorine, are responsible for nearly all the toxic effects of chlorinated water. Chlorine by itself is relatively harmless, but its side effects, by producing DBPs, is what causes nearly all of the problems.

As it turns out, DBPs are over 10,000 times more toxic than chlorine, and out of all the other toxins and contaminations present in your water, such as fluoride and miscellaneous pharmaceutical drugs, DBPs may be the absolute worst of the bunch.

Enormously Important to Know

Unfortunately, few people are aware of this toxic threat, and those who are aware may still not realize that not all water filtration systems are capable of filtering out DBPs. In fact, there is currently no point-of-entry, whole-house water filtration system that is certified to filter out these toxins.

If you fail to understand this fact, it is virtually impossible to make a wise choice when selecting how you filter your drinking water. There is a high likelihood you are unaware of this, and the deceptive marketing of the industry may lead you to make choices that are actually NOT protecting you and your family.

In Slovak's next video segment, coming up in within the next two weeks, he will explain which three water filtration options can effectively filter them out.

How are Disinfection Byproducts Created?

The most common disinfection techniques used at water treatment facilities today involve the use of chlorine, chloramines, and chlorine dioxide to kill harmful, disease-causing microorganisms in the water, making it safe to drink.

Unfortunately, over the years scientists have discovered that toxic chemical byproducts form when these disinfectants react with natural organic matter like decaying vegetation in the source water.

The most common disinfectant byproducts formed when chlorine is used are:

- trihalomethanes (THMs)
- haloacetic acids (HAAs)

The EPA takes the dangers of THMs -- which are measured in parts per billion -- very seriously and regulates these compounds. The maximum annual average of THMs in your local water supply cannot exceed 80 ppb (parts-per-billion), and the maximum annual average of HAAs permitted by EPA regulations is 60 ppb.

However even though these are allowed, ideally it would be best to have zero. These levels have been regularly adjusted downwards over the years as science progresses and gains a deeper appreciation of their true toxicity.

As usual, cost is one reason -- and probably the sole reason -- water companies managed to prevent this EPA standard from being reduced even further. Water companies felt it would cost too much to remove a greater amount of these DBPs from their water, so they pushed for an elevated standard.

Nevertheless, it's important to note that the EPA sets the goal for some of these byproducts at zero because they are so dangerous, but unfortunately the EPA goal would be impossible to enforce.

Hence, if you are on a public water system -- meaning a utility company supplies your water -- it's extremely likely it contains chlorine and disinfection-byproducts and you will definitely want to consider purifying your family's water with a water filtration system that can effectively remove DBPs.Slovak recommends requesting a water quality report from your local water purveyor at least once a year, to see how well your municipality maintains the EPA standards. Keep in mind however that the EPA's recommended goal is zero! So if your municipality is on the high end, your water may be more hazardous than you'd like to imagine.

If you are like me and obtain your water from a private well, then DBPs are a non-issue as they are only produced when chlorine is added, and it's highly unusual to add chlorine to most all private well water systems.

How Can DBPs Harm Your Health?

The molecular structure of chloroform, one of the simplest trihalides

Trihalomethanes (THMs) are Cancer Group B carcinogens, meaning they've been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

DBPs have also been linked to reproductive problems in both animals and humans, and human studies suggest that lifetime consumption of chlorine-treated water can more than double the risk of bladder and rectal cancers in certain individuals.

One such study found that smoking men who drank chlorinated tap water for more than 40 years faced double the risk of bladder cancer compared with smoking men who drank non-chlorinated water.

A second study found that rates for rectal cancers for both sexes escalated with duration of consumption of chlorinated water. Individuals on low-fiber diets who also drank chlorinated water for over 40 years more than doubled their risk for rectal cancer, compared with lifetime drinkers of non-chlorinated water.

As the vast majority of the U.S. population continues to receive and consume disinfected or chlorinated drinking water, we can assume that Americans are consuming disinfection byproducts every single day, and the number of related cancer cases could be substantial.

DBPs are Even More Dangerous Through Skin Exposure!

As bad as it is to consume DBPs, they may wreak even more havoc when they're absorbed through your skin!

A study published in the Journal of Environmental Sciences last year found that swimming in a chlorinated pool presented an unacceptable cancer risk.

They concluded that the cancer risk of trihalomethanes from various routes in descending order was:

1. skin exposure while swimming
2. gastro-intestinal exposure from tap water intake
3. skin exposure to tap water
4. gastro-intestinal exposure while swimming

But the cancer risk from skin exposure while swimming was over 94 percent of the total cancer risk resulting from being exposed to THMs!

THMs formed in chlorinated swimming pools have also been linked to spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital malformations, even at lower levels.

This is one of the primary reasons I rarely ever dip in a pool. I far prefer to swim in a lake or the ocean.

The ocean is my favorite, and fortunately I get to do that regularly when I am in Maui over the winter. It always surprises me though how few people swim in the ocean, relative to spending their time in the pool right next to the ocean. Seems people would rather soak up these dangerous DBP toxins than swimming in natural healthy salt water.

Other Dangers in Your Drinking Water

As reported in New Scientist, a comprehensive survey of U.S. drinking water reveals that your drinking water is also likely laced with a wide variety of pharmaceuticals and hormonally active chemicals.

The 11 most frequently detected compounds were:

- Atenolol, a beta-blocker used to treat cardiovascular disease
- Atrazine, an organic herbicide banned in the European Union which has been implicated in the decline of fish stocks and in changes in animal behavior
- Carbamazepine, a mood-stabilizing drug used to treat bipolar disorder
- Estrone, an estrogen hormone secreted by the ovaries and blamed for causing gender changes in fish
- Gemfibrozil, an anti-cholesterol drug
- Meprobamate, a tranquilizer used in psychiatric treatment
- Naproxen, a painkiller and anti-inflammatory linked to increases in asthma incidence
- Phenytoin, an anticonvulsant used to treat epilepsy
- Sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic
- TCEP, a reducing agent used in molecular biology
- Trimethoprim, another antibiotic

So, What are Your Healthiest Water Options?

Your best bet for ensuring your water does not contain DBPs and various pharmaceutical agents is to filter your own water, at home, using a reverse osmosis filter.

While installing a filter to purify your drinking water is a wise decision as it will eliminate virtually all of the drugs and DBPs, it may not be enough. Your skin absorbs both water and chemicals -- as illustrated in the study on swimming pool contamination and cancer risk mentioned above - so you could still be exposing yourself to dangerous levels of contaminants when you:

1) Shower or bathe
2) Wash your hands
3) Wash laundry
4) Rinse fruits and vegetables
5) Wash dishes, glasses, and other utensils

The biggest risk here is your shower. You can easily absorb as many toxins in one shower as you would by drinking tap water all week long.
So, with that in mind, please keep your eyes open for the next video segment from my Inner Circle expert interview with Robert Slovak, where he will discuss the three most effective ways to ensure the water supply in your home is as healthy as possible.

http://articles.mercola.com/
Image source - http://www.icis.com/

Watch Video:

Tap Water Toxins

Permaculture

Sophisticated ecological understanding blended with
common sense design creates productive landscapes

by Sego Jackson

Bill Mollison

Sego Jackson is a farmer, permaculture designer, and director of the Permaculture Institute of North America, located in Clinton, Washington.

ANY HOPE for the emergence of sustainable cultures must be based upon the development of sustainable agricultural systems. No matter how just our relationships with each other, regardless of the quality of our educational experiences, despite our spiritual pursuits and freedoms, the sustainability of our culture is at its root fundamentally dependent on our relationship to the land, and especially on the sustainability of our production of food.

One approach to creating a sustainable system of agriculture has been developed by Australian ecologist, Bill Mollison. Influenced by Aboriginal ethics towards the land, painfully aware of the global environmental crisis, and knowledgeable about natural ecologies, Mollison and colleagues began to work out a process by which responsible people could purposefully design their own productive eco- systems in which to live. Mollison termed this process "permanent agriculture" or permaculture.

The overall goal of permaculture design is to establish resource and energy conserving (including human energy) landscapes that are agriculturally productive, that take into account and mimic, as much as possible, relationships and processes found in the natural environment, and that approach the diversity, stability and resilience found in natural ecosystems. The underlying philosophy is that we are a part of the natural environment and not separate from it, and that we must work with nature and its processes, rather than against it. To achieve this, Mollison suggests that permaculture needs to be a process "of protracted and thoughtful observation, rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions rather than treating any area as a single product system."

Permaculture design was originally proposed to assist Australia's "back to the land" movement. The design principles can be applied in varying degrees, however, to window sill herb gardens, urban and suburban lots, and rural properties, and have application to overall neighborhood and subdivision design.

The basic permaculture principles and guidelines are as follows:

Let nature do it. For any activity that needs to be accomplished, first consider if there are any biological or other natural ways to accomplish the goal before considering mechanical and chemical means. This doesn't mean that, in the final analysis, you will always choose the biological resource, but you should at least be aware of the natural alternatives. Do you need to fertilize an orchard? Consider a nitrogen fixing cover crop like clover. Do you need a lawn mowed? Consider sheep or weeder geese, or eliminate the whole problem in the first place by using a low growing ground cover.

In like manner, consider natural ways to trap and utilize sunshine and other renewable energies, water, and nutrients, keeping in mind that any resource, not utilized, becomes pollution.

Integrate your functions. When considering the different elements of a landscape, consider not only their products, but their functions. There should be multiple functions for single elements. For instance, the chicken is not only an egg, meat, and feather producer, but it can function as a tractor, herbicide, pesticide, and a bag of fertilizer. If well placed and managed, chickens can be used to prepare soil during planting with their scratching. They will eat weeds and weed seeds, as well as numerous insects and small slugs, all while spreading their nitrogen-rich manure. From this multi-functional perspective, hedges, ponds, chicken yards, walls, fences - all elements of the design - take on new meaning and purpose.

A related guideline is to establish multiple elements for single functions. If you are in a high fire risk area, it would be wise to design your driveway so that it passed across the direction from which fire is often a threat, thereby acting as a fire break. It would be wiser still to also locate the chicken yard, which will be fairly devoid of highly combustible grasses, in this sector, as well as a pond or fire-resistant vegetation. Likewise, if you have livestock to feed, include trees and shrubs as sources of fodder, as well as grasses, so that you will be less affected by drought or disease. Mimic nature by designing for resilience.

Plan the physical layout. The three main concepts here are zonation, sector planning, and relative location. Zonation locates the various components of the landscape based upon labor needs: those that require frequent visiting and are labor intensive are located nearest to the area of greatest activity - usually the house. Those that require less labor are placed farther away. Imagine your house with a number of concentric circles drawn around it, much like the rings of an onion. The house is zone 0, followed then by zones 1,2,3, and 4. Ideally (the actual topography of the property must be taken into account) the herb garden, salad garden with edible flowers, and the like, are located in zone 1 - close to the kitchen door. Zone 2 is a good location for the annual garden, greenhouse, chicken coop, and other landscape components that require daily or frequent attention. Zone 3 serves well for the orchard, perennial garden, and large stock housing. Zone 4 is good placement for the wood lot and animal pastures - places that only need to be visited several times per year.

Though zonation may sound simplistic and unimportant - it is not. The result of poor placement of landscape components in relationship to labor needs has been demonstrated over and over in the form of abandoned gardens, failed homesteads, and home cooked meals devoid of fresh herbs and greens.

In sector planning, the landscape is divided up into wedge shaped sectors, each radiating from a particular point or points (again, usually the house). From these points, sectors are identified such as wind, sunshine, fire risk, view, and noise. This information is then used in design decisions to locate structures, plantings and use areas in such a way to be protected from or benefit from these external inputs.

The relative location of each element to each other is next considered to conserve energy (including labor) and resources. If the chickens, greenhouse, and garden all require the installation of a water line, clustering these three elements can reduce the amount of pipe required, installation labor and money. A tool shed placed between the garden and the kitchen door encourages the proper care of tools more so than one placed on the far side of the garden. Each element should be placed relative to other elements, rather than be viewed in isolation.

These principles and guidelines are used as you proceed through the design process, which involves a clear defining of goals, a resource inventory and site analysis, a functional analysis of the site, species selection, design time-line and budgeting, and the final reality check against the original goals. Though this may all sound like a lot of work, if you think about how much time in your life has already been wasted, due to poor initial planning and lack of design, the time spent designing will be very rewarding. There is much for those of us who work in the area of sustainable culture emergence to do, and our time and resources are too valuable to waste on landscapes that are frustrating, minimally productive, and doomed to failure. We would do better to design for success.

It is a good idea, if undertaking a design on the land you live on, to involve a good friend or neighbor who does not live on the site. Often our preconceived ideas get in the way of a design process and someone not so emotionally involved can see additional relationships and design possibilities. If desired, in some areas, certified permaculture designers are available for consultation or actual design work. Also, there are rare permaculture design courses that can give you a good background to work on your design.

Though the word permaculture was first coined in 1975, it described an ideal that many had been working toward for a long time. As a result, it has established a rapidly growing and committed group of practitioners and followers world wide. There are permaculture institutes, associations, or trained designers in England, France, Germany, Algeria, Canada, United States, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, and India. It is time for more of us to get involved with practicing and demonstrating sustainability, through our lifestyles and our landscapes. Permaculture can help us along this path.

http://www.context.org/

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HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION - Radical Change Taking Root

Bioregional Plant Allies

by Lee Barnes

Lee Barnes

Discovering useful plants for your region and microclimate and learning how to grow them in your own garden is an important challenge for anyone wanting to live sustainably. I find that nature and other gardeners are my best teachers. I take a threefold approach to increasing my familiarity with the useful plant world: cultivating friendships with regional growers and seed savers (who often share extra plants and seeds), reading all the books I can on the subject, and getting dirt under my fingernails by growing at least a dozen new varieties each year.

My understanding of plants has evolved over a lifetime in the horticultural world, but my prime tip for newly budding gardeners and plant explorers is to study carefully the region's natural and introduced plant species and communities. You can check with state natural heritage agencies for plant community descriptions for your area. The book Classification of the Natural Communities of North Carolina is an excellent guide I have used to understand the dynamics and interdependence of plant and animal communities in my part of the world. Learning the local framework of plant/animal/insect associates is very helpful in designing cultivated or wild gardens. When you start to recognize beneficial plant combinations ("guilds") in surrounding natural communities, you can garden using related species in similar combinations.

Local wild and adapted species should be the first plants to introduce into permaculture gardens, especially since it is easy to collect seeds without disturbing the wild populations. As a general rule collect at most 10% of the seed crop from any single plant population, and spread a few seeds in similar habitats to expand the wild populations. Also model the vertical stacking (or structure) of plant communities in your home landscape to develop more efficient plant combinations.

Succession is the term used to describe the gradual replacement of one set of plants in a community by another. For example, in this region, when pasture is abandoned from grazing or mowing it evolves into a woodland. The first larger plants to come in are usually blackberries, sumac, persimmon, and pine; and after them, tulip poplar and black locust trees. As these mature, more niches are created for other forest species and, depending on aspect, slope, and elevation of the land, maple/hemlock or oak/hickory forest may come to dominate. By learning to recognize regional plant successions, you can work with natural processes to speed up the evolution of your own systems.

Expanding choices

How can we determine what non-native plants are appropriate for our gardens beyond those already growing and adapted to the area? Answering this question requires assessing the suitability of the plant to regional climate and ecology, balancing concerns about usefulness, genetic diversity, and risks to existing vegetation, and finally taking heed of regulations aimed at protecting the agricultural economy.

Five main factors should be considered to determine a plant's adaptability to a particular growing region. Foremost is climate, especially temperature means and extremes, and rainfall quantity and seasonal distribution. Secondly, in most plants dormancy, growth, and flowering respond to the cycles of day-length change (photoperiod). Plant pollination needs will affect successful fruiting and seed production, so pollination insects may need to bee considered. Other important but more easily manipulated factors include soil pH, organic matter, nutrient needs, drainage, and beneficial or obligate soil microflora associations (such as mycorrhizae). Lastly, regional pest and disease pressures may limit plant adaptability and usefulness.

Select plants that will grow

The ability to produce viable seed is a good indicator of a plant's adaptability to its environment. Plants which reseed themselves or from which we can gather viable seed or propagation material are more useful and more desirable in a permaculture system than those which will grow but not reproduce. The major factors affecting plant distribution, growth, and seed production are the seed dispersal vector(s), length of the frost-free growing season, average and extreme temperatures (both high and low), and seasonal moisture availability. Well known ethnobotanist Jim Duke (Economic Plants for Holdridge Life Zones: Climatic Requirements of 1000 species) lists simplified, quick reference climatic information (based primarily on annual precipitation and temperature ranges) which can be used to assess likely plant performance for any particular climate.

It is obvious that plants need long enough growing seasons to produce viable seeds (yearly or at least, occasionally), but other factors may limit seed production or viability: non-native plants (or native plants in severely disturbed environments such as clearcuts) may lack natural pollinators and thus require hand pollination to set seed. Or they may lack soil organisms upon which they are dependent.

Many plants can also be propagated asexually by means of tubers, bulbs, rooted cuttings, etc. so seed production is not always a requirement for choosing plants that will grow in your area. However, by saving seeds, one can both maintain genetic diversity (for stability against environmental changes or resistance to pests and diseases), and select for broad genetic combinations which are better adapted to a particular microclimate, soil conditions, and temperatures, or pest pressures. Suzanne Ashworth's Seed to Seed: Seed Saving Techniques for the Vegetable Gardener*, is highly recommended for many common and uncommon garden plants. My favorite books for woody plant seed and cutting propagation are Dirr and Heuser's The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation, and the USDA's Seeds of Woody Plants in the United States.

Temperate plants have evolved under environmental pressures to undergo dormant periods (such as winter and seasonal droughts). Probably the most common factor affecting perennial plant distribution in the U.S. and Canada is winter hardiness. Plants offered in the commercial trade are often rated by the minimum temperatures they can survive when dormant. Areas with the same average minimum temperatures have been organized and mapped into a series of "plant hardiness zones" by the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, based on temperature differences of 10F., ranging from Zone 10 (southern Florida, minimums of 30 to 40F.) to Zone 1 (northern Canada, lows below -50F.). The hardiness zones have been further divided by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) into 5F. differences, resulting in new maps with split zones (eg. Zone 6a, -5 to 0F.; Zone 6b, 0 to 5 F.)

Elevation influences the average low temperatures and temperature extremes in an area. A useful rule for elevation influence on minimum temperature is that air temperatures average about 3.5F. cooler for each 1,000-foot increase in elevation. Choose plants that are adapted to one zone colder for each 1000 feet increase in elevation.

Indicator Plants

Many common landscape plants can help us determine local hardiness zones. For example, plants hardy to zone 7 include mimosa, Laurustinus viburnum, kurume azalea, English holly, and Atlas cedar: they are not commonly found in Zone 6, except in protected areas.

Common indicator plants for different zones
(number = frost free months / yr):
Zone10 - bougainvillea, rubber plants
Zone 9 - asparagus fern, fuchsia, Schinus pepper tree
Zone 8 - Japanese pittosporum, cherry-laurel
Zone 7 - bigleaf maple, atlas cedar
Zone 6 - Japanese maple, English ivy, American holly
Zone 5 - flowering dogwood, common privet
Zone 4 - sugar maple, Virginia creeper
Zone 3 - Japanese barberry, Russian olive
Zone 2 - paper birch, eastern larch, silverberry
Zone 1 - quaking aspen, dwarf birch.

These plants indicate expected low temperature extremes. Of course, simple devices such as plastic tunnels or crop covers (Reemay, etc.) greatly extend the range of plants which can be grown, especially in areas where early frosts are followed by weeks of good growing conditions. Currently, a Plant Heat Tolerance Zone Map is being developed to allow more accurate estimates of plant performance in extreme heat.

Chilling Hours

While plants from temperate climates are capable of surviving a wide range of extreme low temperatures, they also respond to the duration and extremes of cold. Temperate zone plants have evolved biological techniques to measure the average length of winter, actually requiring a critical amount of "chilling" (usually recorded as number of chilling hours below 40F) to overcome internal time clocks of dormancy. For example, many woody plant species require a minimum number of chilling hours before they will begin to grow in spring. Plants native to New England will require more chilling hours (perhaps 3,000-4,000) to overcome dormancy than will individuals of the same species found at the southern end of their natural range (where they may, for example, require only 500 chilling hours). A similar timeclock is contained in seeds of most temperate perennials, which will need exposure to certain lengths of cold periods, depending on their genetic programing at their original sources. Thus it is best to obtain seeds from perennial plants grown at your general latitude and with similar climate and average number of chilling hours.

Other Factors

Temperate zone plants also measure day length (termed "photoperiod"), and are affected by a phenomenon called "provenience" where seasonal changes in day length trigger the cycles of growth and dormancy. It is best to select seeds from plants found naturally within 1 of latitude, or about 60 miles north or south of where you plan to establish them. Differences of elevation can also affect plant growth, so plant seeds should be collected from similar elevations for best seasonal hardiness. Other environmental pressures such as high local or seasonal humidity can affect the success of a particular plant which may be affected by foliar fungal diseases, e.g., many rose family plants and tomatoes are difficult to grow organically in the humid mountains of Western NC.

Diversity and Balance

There are many opinions about the introduction of non-native plants into a new region, the debate raging about the risks of potential rampancy and the possible introduction of pests (fungi, insects, viruses, etc.). I (and others) argue that plants have co-evolved with humans, have migrated with them for tens of thousands of years, and have been increasingly widely distributed in modern times from their original centers of diversity. I believe that any plant which can complete its life cycle (from seed-to-seed) during my area's average growing season (between last and first killing frosts) should be considered as part of a genetically diverse guild of useful plants. While remaining watchful for overly aggressive or invasive species, or plants with known internal pests, we should nevertheless choose food and useful plants from a wide diversity of habitats and gene pools, so that our food supply is not overly dependent on just a few species.

Less than 20 food plants now provide the bulk of carbohydrates and proteins consumed by modern societies. The dangers of our narrow food base and diminishing genetic diversity are widely reported. Bioregional wisdom suggests that food, fiber, and fuel should become more regionally produced and marketed, based on the local growing season and the available solar, carbon, and nutrient budgets. Sustainable agriculture requires shifting from the high-input monoculture of annuals to low-input culture of mostly perennial species, including native foods, and edible and medicinal "weeds." Producing foods for consumption locally and "in season" (with some cost-efficient season extension techniques) results in the freshest food and the highest levels of nutrition from our gardens. In addition, appropriate low-tech food preservation and value-added processing can greatly increase the bounty and diversity of our diets, and sometimes the nutrition value as well (as with some fermented foods).

Prohibitions

Be aware that inter-regional trade of some plant species may be restricted by government regulation. In general, seeds are more easily sent across national borders than are plants, which may be required to be grown in soil-less media to prevent the spread of of soil insects and pathogens or held in quarantine for evaluation and testing. Some seeds are known to contain pathogens (usually viruses and fungi) and their distribution may be restricted. Each country and state may have regulations for "noxious" weeds, usually based on potential economic threat. For example, in North Carolina officially noxious weeds include the potentially useful water plants elodea, salvinia, swamp stonecrop, water-chestnut, watermilfoil, and waterprimrose. One should check with local agriculture agencies (Cooperative Extension Service, state Agriculture Departments) for lists of restricted species.

Lee received the Southern Seed Legacy Award in 2001 for his commitment to saving Southern heirloom plants.
Lee "Runs with Rods" has a special interest in Sacred Sites & Earth Energies that led him to become a professional water well dowser. Over the last 5 years, he has developed a series of Applied Intuition workshops that teaches dowsing techniques to access our total conscious & subconscious awareness of unseen moving underground water & subtle electromagnetic fields.
Lee is the author of Smoky Mountain Hiking and Camping.

http://www.permacultureactivist.net/

Earth Sheltered Homes

These energy-efficient houses are bright, airy, dry and quiet.

by Rob Roy

Earth Sheltered Home

Back in the '70s, earth-sheltered housing enjoyed great popularity, thanks in part to the energy crisis resulting from the 1973 oil embargo. Adventurous builders and researchers explored various forms of earth-sheltered building, from underground excavated spaces to surface-level buildings with earth piled in berms against their walls. People searching for alternatives to conventional building showed that sheltering a building with earth could reduce energy costs for both heating and cooling by half or more - at little or no increased expense.

Once again, America's overconsumption of energy has made energy efficiency an important consideration in all facets of our lives, including home design. In addition, there is a new awareness among "green" and "natural" builders that we are "paving and roofing this country to death," in the words of architect and underground-building guru Malcolm "Mac" Wells.

An earth-bermed house can reap about 95 percent of the energy advantages of a fully underground home, and adding an earth roof, or living roof, further promotes planetary health by "greening" the house's footprint. Most buildings have a negative impact on the planet. Combining earth-sheltered walls with a living roof has the potential for the least negative impact.

Mac Wells also advocates the reclamation of "marginal" land; he says we should not build on the best, most beautiful property available, but instead take land that has been diminished by human activity and return it to greenscape. At Earthwood, our home in West Chazy, N.Y., my wife, Jaki, and I built our earth-sheltered, earth-roofed home in an abandoned gravel pit, converting almost two acres of near-lifeless moonscape to a living, green, oxygenating earthscape.

How Earth-sheltering Works

A common misconception is that earth is a great insulator. In fact, earth is a poor insulator, even more so if it's wet. However, earth is a good capacitor that can absorb and store heat; it's excellent thermal mass. It stores what we call warmth, but it can also store what I call "coolth," which is, after all, simply heat at a lower temperature.

Two independent thermal masses interact in an earth-sheltered home. The first is the mass of the earth itself, over which we have very little control. The second is the mass of the building, over which we have great control through the placement of insulation. Building a house 6 to 8 feet below grade in far northern New York, where I live, is like moving it 1,000 miles to the south, into a mild winter climate much like that of Charleston, S.C. Heating is the most important energy consideration where I live, but earth-sheltering helps with cooling as well. At the depths at which we typically build - 6 to 8 feet for a single-story home, a few feet deeper for two stories - the earth temperature in our area varies from about 40 degrees in early March to about 60 degrees in late August. We can use this narrow 20-degree temperature range to our advantage for both winter heating and summer cooling.

It is important to insulate between the home's structural mass and the earth's mass. Without insulation, the earth will wick heat out of the home and bring it to a matching temperature. In winter here, that would be 40 degrees - not comfortable, but a far better starting place for wintertime heating than sub-zero surface temperatures. But if we place insulation between the mass of the home and the earth's mass, we can keep the home's internal temperature at comfortable levels. Your climate determines how much insulation to use and how deep to place it. The entire earth-sheltered portion of Earthwood is wrapped with extruded polystyrene insulation, including under the concrete floor and around the concrete foundation footings.

Advantages of a Living Roof

You don't have to place an earth roof on an earth-sheltered home, but it has some compelling advantages in addition to the ecological benefit already mentioned:

Longevity. The properly designed earth roof is the longest-lasting roof you can build, because the earth and insulation protect the waterproofing membrane from the three conditions that eventually break down every other common roof surface: ultraviolet radiation, erosion and freeze-thaw cycling, which all damage exposed roofing over time.

Insulation. Solid earth is not good insulation, but 3 or 4 inches of light soil with vegetation growing in it has some insulation value. In winter, the cold, uneven earth roof holds snow better than other roofs, and fluffy snow is a good - and free - insulator.

Cooling. The plants growing on a living roof shade it, and the evaporation of moisture off the roof actively cools it.

Protection. Even a few inches of soil protects against fire, radiation and sound. Fully bermed sidewalls that meet the earth roof also add protection against earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes.

Aesthetics. The earth roof is hands-down the most beautiful roof you can build, particularly one planted with wildflowers or several different sedum varieties.
Effective building techniques

Within the larger field of earth-sheltered housing, I have specialized in building techniques that are appropriate for an owner-builder and involve moderate costs for materials. There is not space in a magazine article to cover the actual construction and technical details of all the various materials, but the following techniques have worked well for us on several buildings.

Surface-bonded block walls. You can build below-grade walls using poured concrete, stone masonry or conventionally mortared blocks. But my favorite is concrete blocks, stacked dry (no mortar between blocks) and coated with an eighth-inch layer of fiber-reinforced surface-bonding cement. Even inexperienced builders can construct such walls - applying the surface-bonding cement is not unlike frosting a cake. A surface-bonded wall does not have the tremendous moisture content of a poured concrete wall, which I would not advise inexperienced builders to tackle anyway. And the millions of embedded reinforcing fibers make it much stronger than a conventionally mortared wall against the lateral pressure of the earth berm.

Heavy timber roof framework. I advocate construction using heavy timbers you might get at a local sawmill at reasonable cost. For example, Earthwood is stoutly built, with a post-and-beam frame consisting of 8-by-8-inch posts and girders varying from 8 by 8 inches up to a 14-foot oak girder with a 10-by-12-inch cross-section. Our roof rafters are 5 by 10 inches, or 6 by 10 inches where spans are a little greater. Over the rafters, we use 2-by-6-inch tongue-and-groove planking.

Have your plans designed or checked by a qualified structural engineer. It is imperative that the framework be engineered to support the required load. This includes the load of the structure itself, typically 10 to 15 pounds per square foot (PSF) for this type of structure; the weight of the saturated earth (about 10 PSF for every inch); and your snow load (ask local officials; mine is 70 PSF). Earthwood is designed to carry a combined load of 185 PSF.

Waterproofing and drainage. In an earth-sheltered home, the earth is your friend, but the water in it is not. We place at least 4 inches of tamped sand below the floor for drainage, but the roof and any walls in contact with earth must be thoroughly waterproofed. Several good waterproofing membranes are available on the market, including large thick sheets of rubber, Neoprene or EPDM (two kinds of artificial rubber) and various bentonite clay products.

I prefer the membranes composed of laminated top layers of black polyethylene backed with a sticky bituminous material. Backing paper protects the membrane from sticking prematurely to unintended objects. The rolls are typically 3 feet wide and 50 to 75 feet long. I like these membranes because they provide high-quality waterproofing and they're moderately priced (50 cents to $1 per square foot) and easy for inexperienced builders to apply. You simply pull the backing paper off the underside of the membrane as you roll it onto the surface to be sealed. Each sheet typically laps over the previous one by 2 1/2 to 4 inches. Installers press the sticky bituminous mastic down with the heels of their hands. Some of these products work better after the application of a "surface conditioner" (like a primer), which improves the adhesion of the sticky surface to the wood. Factory-finished edges are pre-caulked, but cut edges must be sealed with a compatible caulking. A membrane of this type goes on very quickly. A couple of people could cover a simple, shallow-pitched roof of, say, 1,200 square feet in a few hours.

Over and over again, I tell students in my earth-sheltered building classes that "drainage is the better part of waterproofing." If you provide an easier place for rainwater to go than into your house, it will go there. I used to make my own drainage layer out of crushed stone covered with loose hay or straw as a filtration mat to keep the fine particles of earth out of the drainage layer. It worked well, but was a lot of hard work to install and added another 20 PSF to the design load.

Now, I use one of the composite drainage materials made for this purpose by several different companies. They essentially create a quarter-inch channel of air over the roof, and the water travels swiftly along it down the pitched roof and drips off the edge. They consist of a tough nylon mesh covered on one or both sides with a filtration mat. These drainage products typically cost between 50 cents and $1 per square foot.
Building the Living Roof

I recommend a pitch for an earth roof between 1 in 12 (1 foot of rise in 12 feet of horizontal run) and 2 in 12; 1.5 in 12 is my favorite. Water drains readily in this pitch range, yet the earth does not slump off the roof.

I install the waterproofing membrane directly over the roof planking. Over the membrane, we place sheets of extruded polystyrene insulation, the thickness depending on location, local codes and the purpose of the building.

Atop the insulation, I install a layer of 6 mil black polyethylene. This inexpensive layer is not intended as a waterproofing membrane - you've already installed that. Rather, it acts as the base of the all-important drainage layer. Water rides this plastic quickly to the drip edge.

The composite drainage matting goes on top of the polyethylene. The earth goes over the drainage matting. There is no gain in placing more earth on the roof than needed to maintain the chosen green cover. Remember, saturated earth is heavy - don't surpass your total engineered load.

Finally, plant the roof, choosing native plants. Sedum is a succulent plant that stores moisture in its leaves, perfect for seeing a living roof through a drought situation without the need for watering. Sedum can grow in 3 inches of soil, and many varieties are quite colorful. Grasses and wildflowers need 7 to 8 inches of soil. In arid climes, go with desert plants.

Rob Roy is director of Earthwood Building School in West Chazy, N.Y., which he has operated with his wife, Jaki, since 1981. Earthwood offers instruction in cordwood masonry, earth-sheltered housing and post-and-beam framing techniques "for the rest of us."

http://www.motherearthnews.com/

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DID YOU KNOW?

Bill Gates's house is a large earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.

Source: Wikipedia

25 Reasons You Should Consider Earth Sheltered Living

A Truly Green and Sustainable Building System

1. Abundant Natural Light
Your home will have more natural lighting and ventilation than a conventional home, because of our domed ceilings. If you think that Earth Sheltered homes are dark and damp, you'll be surprised! Call us, and come visit one of our homes.

2. An Earth Sheltered Home Is Comfortable All Year Round.
Cool in summer, warm in winter.

3. Energy Efficiency
Save up to 80% on heating and cooling.

4. Ecologically Sound and Aesthetically Pleasing
You'll enjoy your Earth Sheltered home for its beauty and design for sustainable living.

5. A Unique and Exciting Way of Living
You'll be talking about your new "green living" lifestyle and may get visits from friends that you forgot you had.

6. Insurance Breaks
Solid concrete homes don't burn, and tornadoes go right over them, so insurance costs are less than for "stick homes".

7. Long Lasting
Constructed of concrete and steel, Earth Sheltered homes will last well over 100 years, maybe a thousand!

8. Very Low Maintenance
This means much less expense, fewer headaches, and more enjoyable weekends!

9. Use of Conventional Heating and Cooling Systems is perfectly practical,
but you will only need a system with approximately 1/4 of the output that a conventional home requires. Less expense here, too!

10. Put Away That Dust Rag!
Less dust enters the home because of the seamless type of construction.

11. Great For Those Who Suffer From Allergies
Pollens and mold spores, like dust, are kept outside. Also, the negative ionization atmosphere created by combination of concrete and tons of earth is much healthier.

12. Water Lines Never Freeze,
even in mid-winter without heat, because of earth contact.

13. Solar Heating
Because the earth remains at a constant temperature in the 70's, your Earth Sheltered home can utilize passive solar, without expensive solar equipment.

14. Increased Yard Space
More room for gardens, and family fun (even a putting green) on top of the house!

15. Storm Safety
An Earth Sheltered home keeps your family safe from hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.

16. Termite Proof
Say goodbye to insects and extermination bills. So, no pesticide toxins in these homes. That's sustainable living!

17. Leak Proof
With our unique waterproofing system, your Earth Sheltered home can have a written warranty against leakage.

18. Rodent Resistant
Rodents cannot intrude in the walls of an Earth Sheltered home. No squirrels in the attic!

19. Earthquake Resistant
An Earth Sheltered home is structurally superior to conventional dwellings. As the earth moves, so does the Earth Sheltered home. Conventional homes crumble.

20. Decay Resistant
Being constructed of reinforced concrete, there is nothing to decay.

21. Fire Resistant
Reinforced concrete with earth cover offers the best fire resistance available. No need to worry about grass fires or a neighbor's fire spreading.

22. Burglar Resistant
Crooks have fewer points of entry, so your home is more secure.

23. Protection From Nuclear Fallout
Earth and concrete are two of the most efficient radiation shields available to the general public.

24. Technologically Advanced Design
With our air-handling system such things as sweating walls, mildew growth, and stale air are eliminated, and any traces of radon are expelled with the air changes.

25. Cost-Effective
With the solid construction, low maintenance and energy-efficiency of Earth Shelter, more of your assets stay in savings instead of supporting a deteriorating wood-frame home. Over 14 years, a 2,400 square foot Earth Shelter home can pay for itself in assets saved.

http://www.earthshelteredhome.com/

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Earth Sheltered Home with PAHS umbrella system

Myths & Frequently Asked Questions

The most common misconception about Earth Sheltered Homes is that they are underground, and therefore dark, damp, and claustrophobic. Our green homes are constructed at ground level, then bermed over with earth, to the owners' specifications.

Myth: Under-earth homes are always dark.

A: Most underground buildings utilize flat ceilings. The linear, flat ceiling restricts light magnification to the smallest degree. Some Earth Sheltered homes have windows on only one side of the structure. When these two factors are considered, the home would, indeed, have low light. However, we utilize a domed ceiling that is co-linear, meaning that light travels on it, rather than bouncing off, as it would on a linear surface. The end result is that co-linear surfaces will magnify light reflection three times that of a linear (flat, vaulted, or cathedral) ceiling.

Myth: Under-earth homes are damp.

A: With proper ventilation, waterproofing, and drainage, there are no problems with dampness or humidity. We have successfully built Earth Sheltered homes (with indoor swimming pools!) which have not had any humidity problems, and we offer several waterproofing options which have stood the test of time.

The key factor here is air circulation and ventilation. A domed ceiling, due to its spherical design, will circulate air three times easier than a flat ceiling.

Myth: Under-earth homes are claustrophobic.

A: Darkness is the absence of light. Claustrophobic rooms could have lots of light but still seem close, like an elevator. With our Earth Shelters, there are three factors that prevent any closed-in feeling:

Large windows and optional skylights allow for plenty of light from the outside. The domed ceilings convey a uniform lighting effect throughout the home.

The walls rising to 8 feet and the dome rising to 12 feet give a spacious feeling, not otherwise found with flat or even vaulted or cathedral ceilings. This plus ceiling fans in each room also allow for constant airflow throughout the home.

With Earth Shelter, we have an added factor produced by the earth covering called a negative ionization field. This field neutralizes stress, tension, and hyperactivity, thereby creating a physically calming effect.

Myth: Under-earth homes are always cold.

A: Since the earth moderates daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations, an Earth Sheltered home will tend to be close to the average annual temperature in the area (which, here in Central Texas, is 70 degrees F). With proper design, it's quite possible to keep the temperature within the normal comfortable range without huge energy bills.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who should consider an Earth Sheltered home?

A: Retirees. Young families. People concerned about energy use. Large families. People concerned about wise use of financial resources. Small families. People concerned about catastrophes such as tornados, lightning strikes, and hurricanes. Just about everyone. Including YOU!

Where can an Earth Sheltered home be built?

A: Almost anywhere. The only restriction is that the structure must rest on undisturbed soil and cannot be built on fill material.

Check your local building codes and neighborhood or property owners' association restrictions. Chances are that there are no restrictions against Earth Sheltered homes.

How are Earth Sheltered homes built?

A: A very brief overview:

- Site excavation to level the homesite
- Construction of the concrete forms
- Rough plumbing and electrical (by owner or by R.C. Smoot Construction)
- Pour the concrete shell(s)
- Waterproofing
- Backfill
- Set exterior windows & doors
- Finish interior and exposed exterior

What about bugs?

A: While we can't guarantee that you won't have any bugs, you'll have no worries about infestation, especially when it comes to wood-eating pests such as termites and carpenter ants. How many bugs can you think of that can get through a seamless, waterproofed, poured concrete wall?

What keeps an Earth Shelter home from getting mold?

A: Like any other construction method, under certain conditions including inadequate ventilation and excess moisture some mold can occur. Because the shell is concrete (which has little or no nutritive value to mold) and has a domed ceiling (which improves air circulation), the chances of mold growth are far less than with conventional construction. Our 20-plus years of experience and research insures that your Earth Sheltered home will be properly constructed with adequate ventilation to minimize the possibility of mold ever being a problem.

Why do we need an engineered soil analysis?

Soil conditions are very important to the foundational strength of any home. Expansive clay soils must be treated before we build in order to safeguard the integrity of your structure. Accurate soil information on your property can be obtained by talking to your county agent or, in some cases, engaging a soil engineer. Many people don't want to add this expense, but it could be the best investment you make regarding your new home. We need the bearing capacity of the soil measured in pounds per square foot (psf).

http://www.earthshelteredhome.com/

Good Vibes power tiny generator

A tiny generator powered by natural vibrations could soon be helping keep heart pacemakers working.

Created by scientists at the University of Southampton, UK, the generator has been developed to power devices where replacing batteries is very difficult.

The device is expected initially to be used to power wireless sensors on equipment in manufacturing plants.

The generator's creators say their technology is up to 10 times more efficient than similar devices.

Power packed

The tiny device, which is less than one cubic centimetre in size, uses vibrations in the world around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device wobble to generate power.

Although the generator produces only microwatts this was more than enough to power sensors attached to machines in manufacturing plants, said Dr Steve Beeby, the Southampton researcher who led the development of the device.

"The big advantage of wireless sensor systems is that by removing wires and batteries, there is the potential for embedding sensors in previously inaccessible locations," he said.

Using the tiny generator also made it possible to use larger numbers of sensors because there was no longer the need to visit them to replace or recharge batteries, Dr Beeby added.

The generator was developed to sit inside air compressors but, said Dr Beeby, it could find a future role in self-powered medical implants such as pacemakers.

In a pacemaker, the beating of the human heart would be strong enough to keep the magnets inside the device wobbling.

It could also be used to power sensors attached to road and rail bridges to monitor the health of such structures.

Work on the project was funded by the EU as part of the 14.3m euros Vibration Energy Scavenging (Vibes) project that is looking at how to use environmental vibrations to generate power.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

These articles come directly from researchers and are passed on to everybody. The company assumes no liability for any content in these articles.
For Educational purposes only. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease

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Siberian Cedar Nut Oil - Biophotons, ORMUS Minerals, Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids

I am not a qualified scientist; however, the following short paper is mostly scientific and, I would say, highly accurate. One could call it an informal research report.

The Cedar Nut Oil is discussed often as having health benefits, frequently used for treating digestive disorders in specific, as well as being useful topically. I believe the healing aspect of the oil is not due to the usually cited proteins and fatty acids, although the protein content and lack of sugars does make the nuts into a good staple food. To my understanding, the therapeutic effect comes from three factors: biophotons, or life-energy, ORMUS minerals, and polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids, when taken internally, are difficult to digest for many people, especially those with compromised digestions. The result is that they adsorb toxins and carry them out of the system during voiding of the bowels. The highly geometrical structure of the polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as those in the cedar nut oil, hempseed oil, and flax oil allows for loose binding with many healthful items, such as polysaccharides, bioflavonoids, other phytochemicals, minerals and ORMUS minerals, and biophoton clusters. In the colon, these beneficial vitamins and chemicals will be exchanged for toxins, which will be carried out of the system with the unmetabolized fatty acids.

Not metabolizing polyunsaturated fats is, for the most part, not an issue in itself, as the body only needs a small amount of polyunsaturated fats. Depending on one's biology, it may be easier for one to un-saturate dietary fats or to saturated dietary fats of the unsaturated type. In the former case, animal fats will be easier to digest; the latter situation is, I believe, uncommon; however, it can be done, and the systems of vegans will generally accommodate and up-regulate their metabolism of this type over time, as most plant fats are unsaturated.

Of course, some unsaturated fatty acids are essential, and, for the most part, they are more easily obtained from grassfed animals, seafood, cod liver oil, or pastured egg yolks than from plant fats such as cedar nut oil. However, the cedar nut oil has other qualities to recommend it.

ORMUS minerals were discovered in the 1980s as an entirely new class of elemental/chemical compounds which can be found in all living things. Because of difficulties in assaying materials for ORMUS content, science previously saw ORMUS showing up on their tests as carbon compounds, silicon, aluminum, calcium, or other elements; occasionally, a sample of material would give no coherent reading at all, and was therefore discarded without further investigation. ORMUS is frequently associated with highly evolved and complex polysaccharides and other phytochemicals, such as those in cedar nut oil. It is also conscious, and therefore responds strongly to the positive intentions of the workers making the oil. ORMUS is generally deficient in the modern diet, and so, to have a dietary source of ORMUS will help many people to reactivate their DNA and healing potential, meaning the ORMUS-rich cedar nut oil can help ameliorate many various health issues.

Related to this topic, German researchers, led by Fritz Albert-Popp, have been doing investigational research in a new field of biophysics called biophotonics. They have found that certain frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum are beneficial for preserving foods and that certain others speed up putrefaction. Thus, the common advice to keep oils out of direct sunlight is not adequate, as the oil will continually lose freshness unless it is exposed to the beneficial wavelengths while the harmful ones are kept away. This is possible through the use of a special type of packaging material. The take-home message is that the cedar trees selectively concentrate biophotons over the two-year ripening of the cedar nuts, and that eating the nuts in their fresh state in the Taiga will have a better effect than having them at any other time of less freshness afterwards. But, biophotons and ORMUS minerals, which are mutually associated with many of the same phytochemical/fatty acid structures, can re-migrate into the oil or the nuts given the proper conditions. In fact, it is through the medium of biophoton light energy and the ORMUS minerals' trans-dimensional channeling capability that communication and healing occurs; thus, prayers, enery work, and love energy can induce ORMUS and biophoton fields to once again enter the oil. These substances have no difficulty crossing the clear-glass barrier of the bottles. However, a different packaging material can hold these elements in by allowing the sun's beneficial rays to enter while exclluding the harmful frequencies, just as the cedar trees do while they are still actively informing their seed-crop progeny.

I believe these explanations can be used to account for most all healing and energizing effects physical as well as emotional from the cedar nut oil. When discussing the nuts, the protein and fatty acid components will also play a large role, as well as the fact that being in a less-refined and fresher state their content of biophoton ripeness will be greater. However, because they are a more cohesive substance, one's digestive secretions will have to be stronger to properly digest the nuts and unlock the ORMUS and other nutrients from their carbon-matrix of polyunsaturated fatty acids and other molecules. In this case, the vegans among us will have an advantage, in general, though, truly the greatest health and strongest digestion results from a diet low in sugars and high in uncooked animal, dairy, or seafood products; this will supply the necessary fat-soluble vitamins, cholesterol, and minerals necessary to make highly potent digestive enzymes and metabolic enzymes to heal one's body.

One should keep in mind the freshness factor at all times, and, for more information on the packaging technology, you may contact me. It can be applied with great effectiveness to raw milk, cod liver oil, honey, or virtually any natural product to enhance its taste and nutrition and to preserve these qualities over time, even all winter: imagine raw fresh tomatoes, fresh raspberries, unwilted baby greens, in February, uncanned, never heated, fresh and tasty four months after harvest!

Z. M. L.,
National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Personal Trainer


FOOTNOTES

Cedar Nut Oil - widely known as Pine Nut Oil in North America.

The use of cedar nut oil in the treatment of gastritis,
erosive stomach and duodenal ulcers
(methodological recommendations)

These recommendations have been formulated by:
E.I. Filchenko, M.D.
S.V. Nizkodubova, D.M.S.
V.I. Karpitsky, M.D. and A.G. Petrenko, M.D.

Essential Oils of the Siberian Cedar
Siberian Cedar Nut Oil

Published reports attest to the high therapeutic effectiveness of various types of oils in various inflammatory processes. Cedar nut oil is distinguished from other well-known curative oils by its enriched content of various kinds of healing elements. It is a natural product used from ancient times in folk medicine. Cedar nut oil contains a large quantity of polyunsaturated fatty acids, including a significant quantity of fat-dissolving vitamins E and F, which are known for their high level of physiological and anti-acidic properties. The oil contains phosphatidic phosphorous, very important to bodily health, besides being a rich source of vitally important micro-elements: phoshporous, calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, zinc, cobalt and iodine. Cedar oil contains up to 5% nitrogenous substances, of which 90% are amino acids, 70% of them indispenable acids - all of which testifies to its high physiological value.

Clinical tests of cedar oil have been conducted on patients at the Tomsk Scientific Research Institute of Balneotherapy and Physiotherapy. The aims were: to demonstrate the healing effectiveness of a given drug in both internal and external applications through sonic phonophoresis, to determine the dynamics of subjective and objective indications, to study the influence of cedar oil on the nutritional, secretory and excretive functions of the stomach and liver, to study its anti-oxidant properties, to work out the methodology of application to treatment, to determine its level of tolerance by patients under various prescribed methodologies.

The following methodologies were used for this purpose:

1. General clinical blood research (aspartate aminotransferase, alanine-aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, antioxidant activity, methane-dicarbonic dialdehyde).
2. General blood and urinal analysis,
3. Follicle-stimulating hormone with targeted biopsy.
4. Duodenal intubation with research into the chemical properties of bile.
5. Determination of the secretory function of the stomach.
6. Ultrasonic examination of the bladder, kidneys and pancreas.

The study comprised 30 patients under observation. Of these 25 had chronic erosive ulcers of the gastric mucosa, duodenal ulcers with accompanying cholane giocholecystitis of opisthorchosis etiology; the remaining five had chronic cholecystitis with chronic gastritis with a reduced secretory stomach function.

Two of the thirty subjects had reactive pancreatitis, while four had chronic hepatitis outside active procedures. With all 30 subject s motor dyskinesia of the bowels was observed.

Subsequently the subjects were prescribed a programme of treatment: one teaspoon of cedar nut oil three times a day over a two-month period. As a result of this treatment stomach pains were completely eliminated in all patients. Symptoms of dyspeptic disorder (nausea, heartburn, regurgitation and vomiting) were not to be found in a single patient. In 28 of the subjects a normalisation of bowel functions took place. According to follicle-stimulating hormone tests conducted 20 days after the treatment, ten of the subjects had experienced full recovery from ulcers and gastritis along with a reduction in inflammation of gastric mucosa and duodenal ulcers, as well as a reduction in ulcer size for the remaining 15 patients with erosive mucous stomach ulcers. There was a 50% reduction in the number of cases of fixed duodenal reflexes, according to endoscopic and laboratory tests. In evaluating the laboratory tests there was an indication of some reduction of acidity in the stomach juices in subjects with previously high acidic levels. The quantity of bilious discharge from the gall bladder doubled.

Thus, on the basis of the results obtained, one may conclude that cedar nut oil has a healing effect, meets a favourable reaction with patients, and can be applied to the treatment of digestive disorders. It is especially effective in curing erosive stomach and duodenal ulcers. During the remission stage one can apply phonophoresis of cedar nut oil to the projection area of the pathological process for a full and lasting hearling effect. When diluted with milk, the cedar nut oil has an anti-inflammation effect in treating cholecystitis and hepatocholecystitis.

TREATMENT METHODOLOGY:

1. Cedar oil is prescribed for 30 minutes or 1 hour before intake of food over a period of 21-24 days, with unhurried swallows of a teaspoon at a time three times a day. This is recommended for ulcerations located in the stomach or duodenum.

2. Cedar oil is prescribed for 1 hour before intake of food, diluted with milk (1 : 1) according to the method described above. This is recommended when ulceration is combined with chronic cholecystitis.

3. Cedar oil is prescribed internally according to variant # 2 with the following prescription of cedar oil phonophoresis. An ultrasound of the epigastrium is prescribed in a dosage of 0.2-0.6 Bt/cm2 in either pulse or continuous action over a period of 2-4 minutes, as well as of the paravertebral zone (intensity of 0.2 Bt/cm2 over a period of 2 minutes). Before the ultrasound the patient drinks 1 glass of boiled water. This is recommended when the ulceration is combined with chronic pancreatitis

4. In the case of post-excision disorders on account of ulceration, the treatment method may also be applied to patients operated on for cancer of the stomach.

INDICATIONS:

1. Patients with erosive ulcers of the stomach and duodenum.
2. Patients with cholecystitis and hepatocholecystitis.
3. Patients with endogastritis or bulbitis.
4. Patients with chronic pancreatitis.
5. Patients with post-excision discorders on account of ulceration.

There are no known counter-indications to application.

Presented at the Tomsk Scientific Research Institute of balneology and physiotherapy of Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Tomsk, Russian Federation, November 15, 1995. http://niikf.tomsk.ru.

http://www.ringingcedarsofrussia.org/
Used by permission
Copyright CedarInfo.info

Prawn Cebiche with fried carrot chips (serves 4)

500 gr. of tiger shrimp
1 tomato
1/2 a yellow bell pepper
2 shallots or 1/2 a red onion
1/2 clove of garlic
1/2 a package of fresh coriander
4 green lemons or limes
2 carrots
4 tablespoons of Siberian Cedar Nut Oil
Salt and black pepper to taste

1. Peel the prawns and flash-boil them in chicken stock; cut into cubes.
2. Cut the peeled bell pepper, tomatoes (peeled and without pips), shallots and garlic (very fine).
3. Place the prawns and the vegetables in a bowl and add the limejuice, Siberian Cedar Nut Oil, salt and pepper. Let the ingredients marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.
4. Meanwhile, peel the carrots and slice them as thinly as you can, after which they are fried in avocado oil at a temperature not superior to 160Âş C. Once fried, season with salt and dry on kitchen paper.
5. Finish the cebiche to taste with coarsely cut coriander.

Greek Salad

-1 Escarola lettuce
-1 Lolla rossa lettuce
-2 tomatoes
-16 black olives
- Siberian Cedar Nut Oil to taste
-One Cucumber
-200 g feta cheese
-1 red onion
-Juice of one lemon
-Fresh or dry oregano
-Salt and pepper

Peel and cut the tomatoes in quarters, clean the lettuce, peel the cucumber and cut in thin slices.
Cut the olives in half, peel and cut the onion in very thin slices, cut the cheese in cubes.
Mix and season everyting with Siberian Cedar Nut Oil, salt, black pepper, fresh lemon juice and finish with oregano.

For Educational purposes only
This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. These articles come directly from researchers and are passed on to everybody. The company assumes no liability for any content in these articles.

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The Strength of Siberian Health:

SPECIAL PROMOTION GIFT SET (1 Cedar Nut Oil FREE)

Essential Oils of the Siberian Cedar

SPECIAL PROMOTION for everybody! Purchace our Special Promotion Gift Set and receive 1 bottle of Cedar Nut Oil free!

The Gift Set includes: 3 bottles of Cedar Nut Oil, 1 Set of Cedar Spoons, 1 Cedar Pendant, 1 Chewing Gum of Siberian Cedar Resin, 1 Chewing Gum of Siberian Larch Resin, and one Extra bottle of Cedar Nut Oil FREE! Please go to our store for more information.

The oil from cedar nuts is being extracted for a long time in the Ural Mountains and Siberia. Our ancestors ate cedar nut oil and used it for medical purposes since the ancient times. In XIX century cedar nut oil could be bought on any Siberian market. It has been home-made with the use of only the simplest machinery. It has a soft taste, gold-and-amber color, and a wonderful smell of nuts.

In old Russian folk medicine consider that Siberian cedar nut oil eliminates a chronic weakness syndrome, increases overall strength of an organism, physical and brain activities. Siberian cedar nut oil taken regularly improves immune system. Any vegetative oil can be substituted by Siberian cedar nut oil, but nothing can fully substitute cedar nut oil. It can also be used as a facial night cream for returning a natural beauty of the skin.

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Siberian Cedar Essential Oils

Essential Oils of the Siberian Cedar
ENJOY OUR LIMITED TIME PROMOTION - get all three fragarances of Siberian Cedar Essential Oils (25g) at a discount of 25%! Click here to go to our online store.

"The ethers of the cedar represent the spirit of the Universe. They can cure the body - the ethers of the cedar can protect Man from harmful influences." - Anastasia, Co-creation.

Siberian Cedar Essential oils have a warm, balsamic aroma. Relaxing and soothing when used for massage. Can be used as a perfume.

Siberian health in every drop. Each of the three oils have their own distict fragrance. Availabe fragrances: Siberian Cedar Wood Essential Oil, Siberian Cedar Needle Essential Oil, Siberian Cedar Cone Essential Oil.

Siberian Cedar essense for you!

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Central Massage Clinic

Windsor ON

Unit C 3608 Seminole St, Windsor, ON N8Y1Y4, Canada

Tel: 519-944-1634

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CHARLOTTESVILE VA

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BOOK REVIEWS:

I have and have read all seven books. My daughter and her husband have started reading them and I have lost Vol. #2. I am purchasing a replacement in this order. I loved the books... inspiring...

Thank you so much.

Sally

* * *

I've heard so much about you and have one of your books. Since I'm disabled, this is something I can do and believe in at the same time. I'll be looking forward to see what you have in the catalog and any info you can send. I want to share it with a friend of mine. . .
Celestial Blessings!

Ava StBlancard
USA

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I am reading the series, now on book 4 and I am taking/learning a lot from it...

Marion, Crawford, UK.

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Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to thank all of you for all the fine work you have done. Your books and website are bring a very need message to the planet.

I live in San Diego, California and try to talk to as many people about your work as possible.

Keep going!

In Joy & Light,
Annette Fritz

FEEDBACK ON PRODUCTS:

Hi Folks, At the age of 57 I am bound to have had some health problems, however taking 1 wooden desert spoon and the same amount of cedar nuts I feel fitter, with more energy now than when I was 30 years of age. The oil and nuts are amazing.

J.G.

* * *

I received my pendant a few days ago now and from the first night wearing it i could feel lighter in my body, no stress, no heaviness. It was also easier to access loving energy whereas before i used to have to meditate to feel *whole*. With treating pain, i didn't feel like it took it completely away, though i felt a *fighting feeling* going on, like it was trying to diminish the pain, which in that took most of it away.
I feel naked without wearing the pendant now, i never take it off..

Thankyou so much for making these available to the world :)

Hayley,
Australia

* * *

Dear Friends,

I have received my package of Cedar Nut Oils, Spoons and Cedar Pendants, which I will share with my friend. Thank you.

I have already started using the oil externally and internally and have found several benefits. I will send you another email to explain this. I am very happy. I will say, however, that within 15 minutes of applying the oil to my face, chest and throat, my emotional feelings completely changed. I became happier and joyful as though a negative oppression was lifted from off me.

Maria Rainback

Melbourne, Australia

WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY ABOUT OUR COMPANY:

WOW! Just received the products.
What a fast service !!!

Thank you so much !

micky

* * *

Your web site is very good, the information is terrific!

Best Regards,

Molly
AU

* * *

Hi,

We just wanted to let you know that we are very impressed with the high degree of service that you and your team have given us.

Ben Johnson
UK

RingingCedarsofRussia.org is the official
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This is the official message to publishers and editors.

Dear Publisher:

We are inviting you to participate in the interesting project of publishing the books of the writer Vladimir Nikolaevich Megre.

Vladimir Megre's books embody the human striving for harmony with oneself, the nature that surrounds us, and society. His books have been translated into more than 20 of the world's languages, more than 11 million copies have been printed, the books are international bestsellers.

All Vladimir Megre's works were originally written in Russian.

If you are interested in translating the books into one of the available languages and publishing it in the appropriate country, we are prepared to consider your proposal and give you an answer within a period of three days.

Our requirements:

1) The translator from Russian to the selected language must be highly qualified, with wide experience in prose and poetry styles.
2) The fundamental meaning of the works or any part of that meaning may not be changed or abbreviated in the translation.
3) Professional design work.
4) The presence of a distribution network or a professional business plan.

Some of the existing translations of the Ringing Cedars book series can be found on the Ringing Cedars Information page

Sincerely yours,

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RingingCedarsofRussia.org
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Looking for a Hindi Translator (India).

Dear Friends!

The company "Ringing Cedars LTD." is searching for a translator from Russian to Hindi for the creation of a Hindi translation of the "Ringing Cedars of Russia" series. The translator must be highly qualified, with wide experience in prose and poetry styles. If you would like to participate in this project please send us your profile to contact@secure.ringingcedarsofrussia.org. If you have contacts of such a translator referals are highly appreciated.

With all Respect,

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Looking for a Translator to Mandarin (China).

Dear Friends!

The company "Ringing Cedars LTD." is searching for a translator from Russian to Mandarin for the creation of a Chinese translation of the "Ringing Cedars of Russia" series. The translator must be highly qualified, with wide experience in prose and poetry styles. If you would like to participate in this project please send us your profile to contact@secure.ringingcedarsofrussia.org. If you have contacts of such a translator referals are highly appreciated.

With all Respect,

Rights Department
RingingCedarsofRussia.org
Official representative of Vladimir Megre

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www.RingingCedarsofRussia.org currently has three regional warehouses in Europe, USA and Canada. Our Customer Service department is available to serve you 24 hour a day, 7 days a week including ordering by phone and inquiry assistance. Ringing Cedars of Russia Customer Service Representatives respond to our customers on a timely basis with accurate information. We work hard everyday to improve our customer service to the level of satisfaction our customers deserve and have come to expect. Personalized attention is what we provide. Understanding your questions and solving any problems as quickly as possible is of great importance to us. Our customer service department is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

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Message submitted from: Radha Theresa,

Address: 128 Main St, Montville, QLD, 4560, Australia Phone number: 61 7 5478 5889
Email: capricorndancer@live.com.au
Title: Kins Village forming in Australia User classifieds ad:
A dedicated and soul-connected group is now coming together. Land has called us and we have answered with our intent to conjointly create a Ringing Cedars Village in Australia. If you would like to know more or feel inspired to join us, please visit our 'kins ecovillage' Facebook site http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29741621717 or email Radha or Chris at christocolegmail.com

Shambhala-Shasta

SUCCESS!!!
The Anastasia Eco-settlement project has found its home in North America on Sacred Motherland!

Many great thanks to all of you who contributed to this success and to many who have supported this dream and vision with your love from near & far.

Shambhala-Shasta community has taken back 466 acres of prestine motherland. Free and clear. No debt. No Encumbrances. No liens. Free and clear!!!

To freedom, independance and sovereignty!!!

The community will steadily grow out from here as we are bordered on the east and north by national forests.

More to come soon after our visit to our motherland in the next few days.

We have several settlers who have begun the intake process and purchased their domains. If you are ready and feel the beat in your heart, come and join!!!

http://shambhala-shasta.org/become/

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