I just wanted to share on here what we have been doing based on mainly the advice of our naturopath as well as our own research. I’d like to emphasize that if you have cancer, I strongly advise you to not treat it youreslf, but to find someone who has decades of success. For us, we are working with someone who interned with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez (google him)

The first step was to get all kinds of tests done….piss tests, blood tests…you name it, we tested it.  Then while we waited for test results, we started the basic treatment protocol which has been worked on for decades by Dr. Gonzalez. This consists mainly of:

Pancreatic Enzymes (lots of them!)

Coffee Enemas (for detoxing the liver)

A hot/cold towel treatment 4 times a week for stimulating the lymphatic system

Plenty of different supplements of various kinds. (if I had a camera I would take a pic and you could look with astonishment at the stuff kala takes every day!!)

Dietary changes

We then waited for the test results to get back….they were quite surprising…first off the cancer marker tests came back very positive…they showed very little cancer left and the doctor told us that the little there was could be easily treated.  Hurray!

Some of the hormone levels were understandably off, there was some minor heavy metal toxification issues and we found out that kala is actually not allergic to many foods at all (far less than she thought).  And there were a few vitamin/mineral deficiencies and in a couple cases the levels were too high.  With all of this information we got…yeah you guessed it…. more supplements!!

In addition to the supplements, we have kala on a wide array of superfoods….algae, bee pollen,  and more. She is still having digestive issues so there are a whole mess of supplements for that too….

In addition we have done the following treatments at least once (and some a number of times): Acupuncture, EMDR, Massage (pretty much every day), Reiki,  Reichian breathwork and some others I can’t think of at the moment.

Kala is mostly feeling well. She has on and off days mostly due to digestive issues…outside of that I think she would look and feel like she is in outstanding health. Our main issue is just keeping up the cash flow to pay for all of this…we’ve been spending $300-$400 a week on average for months now…..it seems to be slowing down thankfully, but we will be buying mega-supplements for at least the next 6 months….We are still gratefully accepting donations from friends and family to help out with all of this (see link on the sidebar). If you know of anyone who needs a web site, it’s what I do for work so have them contact me and I will set them up right. My site is http://organicdigital.com

Thank you to everyone who has supported us in so many ways!!

lots of love,

~shiva

This is a short guide to health off-the-grid.  The truth is that our current health care system is totally unsustainable. Last month I spent eight days with my girlfriend who was in the hospital. Some of the equipment and technology was truly amazing. However with resource depletion going at its current rate most of this techno-magic will not be available to the average person within a few decades, possibly sooner.  So it’s important that we find ways to take the best of current modern medical knowledge that we can apply ourselves and combine this with ancient knowledge, folk remedies and healthy living habits so that we can continue to live healthy and happy lives no matter what happens.

When people ask me what they can do to prepare for the future, my number one answer is to get healthy and learn how to become your own doctor.  Our society is way too dependent on doctors. Personally it’s a rare day when I go to one.  I had some wisdom teeth removed about six years ago.  Before that it had been about 10 years since I gone to one needing stitches after a small mishap with a cutting knife.  I have gone to a chiropractor during this time.  Currently  I am 47 and as far as I know In excellent health. If I had health insurance I might go in for a checkup, but I don’t feel any pressing need to do this.

To most people my age this is unthinkable….How can I get away with this?  There are two basic reasons:  a healthy lifestyle and being unafraid to treat myself when conditions arise.  I seldom need health care, but when I do, I can generally treat it myself or with the help or advice of a holistic health practitioner.

A healthy lifestyle consists of a number of different things. The first is having a good diet. This can mean different things to different people as our body chemistries are all different. I have researched diet and its place in health quite thoroughly, both through books and trying different things out. I have found some general principles that I believe would apply to all people no matter what their body chemistry. While I am open to changing these as I attain new knowledge I firmly believe that applying these dietary principles would help most anyone to achieve a higher level of health than they currently have.  Here is a short version of each. I encourage you to research these more on your own.

1)      Drastically cut down or eliminate cooked oils. Doing this one thing will make an enormous difference in your health. Cooked oils are very toxic. The exception to this is coconut oil which does not break down under heat as readily. If you must cook with oil in a stir fry or recipe  try to use coconut oil. Luckily it tastes awesome! Eliminating cooked oils will likely have a drastic effect on your diet as so many of our foods have cooked oils in them….baked goods, jarred salad dressings, anything deep fried, many processed foods…luckily most of these foods are not so good for you anyway so by doing this one thing your diet will benefit in many ways.

2)      Eliminate cooked/pasteurized dairy products. Pretty much all of store bought dairy is pasteurized. Since most of these come from diseased factory farms this is probably a good idea, however pasteurizing dairy turns it from healthful to toxic. Even organic pasteurized milk is unhealthy and not suitable to drink.  If you really want to eat dairy see if you can find it raw locally. Raw milk is illegal in many states.  I buy mine under the table from a neighbor with goats. I find goat milk much easier to digest than cow milk.  Look here to see if there is a place near you where you can buy raw milk: http://www.realmilk.com/where.html. Once you have the raw milk it is easy to make raw cheese, yogurt and other raw dairy products on your own. Many health food stores will sell raw cheese.

3)      Buy organic. Yes it costs more, but will pay off in the long run. Regular produce is poisoned! Organic food is not only not poisoned but tastes better and has more nutrition. Many people try eating organic and give up because of the higher cost and they don’t see immediate health benefits. The truth is that toxic residues in non-organic produce takes years and even decades to store up in your body enough to cause problems. If you stop eating poison every day it will greatly increase your health in the long term. I’d also like to mention that most everyone can afford to eat organic. It is a matter of prioritizing how you spend your money. If you view it as important as it really is you can find a way to afford it. Also having a garden is an excellent way to get inexpensive organic produce.

4)      Start eating superfoods every day.  One way to look at food is how many calories it has versus how much nutrition it gives you. The optimal foods will have a low calorie/high nutrition content. Processed sugar for example has high calories and zero nutrition. A bowl of rice has high calories and some nutrition. A tablespoon of spirulina has very low calories and very high nutrition.  By eating superfoods you are flooding your body with nutrition making it not only more healthy but less likely to crave high calorie/low nutrition foods. Some superfoods to consider: spirulina, blue green algae, maca, goji berries, raw cacao, chia seeds, hemp seeds, raw honey, bee pollen…there are many more that you can find…just google “superfoods”.

5)      Eat more raw food. This can be easy…just have some fruit and a big salad every day and that is an excellent start.

There is more to say on this subject but in my opinion these are the most important things. Just doing these five things will boost your health….guaranteed!

There are other factors in good health. One is exercise. You don’t need lots of exercise but you do need some. I never got much exercise until I started homesteading…now it’s nonstop! But just going for a vigorous walk every day will kickstart your metabolism.

Another factor is eliminating stress. If you have a stressful job or stressful relationship reconsider it. Over time stress is certainly one of the largest factors in health and longevity.

A final component I’d like to mention is environmental issues. I strongly suggest eliminating chemical products from your life. This includes everything from shampoos, house cleaners, personal care products and more. Start shopping for these things in your health food store. Yes you will pay more, but the long term benefits will be substantial.

Getting some healthy habits will go a long way to maintaining excellent health. I will be covering part two of this which is becoming your own doctor in my next post.

If you know Kala she is the last person that you would expect to get cancer. She lives a very healthy, active lifestyle. We eat all organic and do not use personal products with chemicals, etc etc. As it turns out this cancer has been growing in her body for 8-10 years….it started long before she became a “health nut”. She has speculated that it may have been caused by environmental toxins from a couple of suspect places that she lived at around that time, though she may not ever know the exact cause.

I remember how shocked I was when the doctor told me right after her surgery. He of course recommended chemotherapy and said that she would not live unless she had it. Being very much into holistic approaches to health I was very skeptical. I did however reserve judgment on it and decided to at least look into chemotherapy along with all of our options.

I went into my research with an attempt to be as unbiased as I could. What I found about chemotherapy was absolutely shocking. My first surprise was the abysmally low “success” rate for chemotherapy patients. I say “success” rate in quotes because how success is defined is living 5 years. If you die one day after 5 years after your treatment has started you are counted as a “success”. In fact chemotherapy is not designed to cure cancer at all, but to put it in remission.

Statistics are very difficult to find in researching cancer, however even by their own admission survival rates for chemotherapy patients is very low at an average of 2.1% in the U.S. (http://truthquest2.com/chemotherapyStats.htm), with higher averages for some types and lower for others. That’s right…it is  2.1%!! That means if you did NOTHING you would have only a 2% less chance of getting better than if you pumped poison into your body with all of it’s dire side effects (and they are dire…see: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21716

Before you begin to think that I am against all forms of Western Medicine I would like to give it its props. It is *excellent* for many things…in particular they have amazing diagnostic tools (x-rays, catscans, blood testing etc) and they are excellent at mechanical things (broken limbs, certain types of surgery etc)…in fact I believe that Kala may have died without having that mass removed as it had started breaking apart…she got very, very ill very shortly before her operation so she got it removed in the nick of time.

In the hospital it all seemed magical….they put the patient to sleep, cut them open and remove things, stitch them back up and afterwards have amazing pain killers to aid the healing process. Wow! I was duly impressed…. Then of course they had to ruin the magic by serving her white bread. canned chicken soup, homogenized milk and jello for meals. It is true that they are absolutely CLUELESS when it comes to nutrition and its importance in health and healing.

Unfortunately they also seem to be stumbling around in the dark when it comes to many of their treatments to disease. They have three cures for cancer and ONLY three cures: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. That is it. No other cures are considered or discussed…in fact all other cancer cures are scoffed at, denounced, ridiculed and laughed at.  Kala’s doctor told me “this isn’t something drinking some cups of herbal tea will cure” (although I knew that essiac tea has in fact cured thousands of people of cancer, but I wasn’t about to bring that up!).

Since we already did the surgery part of the cure, chemotherapy was the next round according to them. Chemotherapy was started in the 1940’s.  Now over 60 years later with untold numbers of researchers and literally billions of dollars spent on research and chemotherapy was still the ONLY option given to Kala. They told her “chemo or die”.  And there is good reason for them saying this. The first is that most of them truly believe it. They have been taught that there are no other treatments….if there were other successful treatments wouldn’t they have been taught it? Wouldn’t it be in medical journals? (the answer to that can be found in discovering who funds medical schools and who provides the advertising revenue for medical journals). The second is that it is illegal for them to recommend any other possible cancer treatment. They would be rejected and expelled from the community of doctors and could even lose their license to practice medicine.  They have a “protocol” and they must follow it if they want to stay in the club. And hey why rock the boat when you are making several hundred thousand a year?

And this brings up the real heart of the matter….MONEY! Chemotherapy is a very, very lucrative business. Chemo treatment can run in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars (which in many cases not all is covered by insurance). It is a BIG business with some people making lots and lots of money. Of course they don’t want someone coming along saying that they have had great success using essiac tea or apricot seeds or enzymes or any of the other reasonably priced alternative cancer therapies. There is no money to be made selling apricot seeds, but there is plenty to be made selling bags of ridiculously expensive chemicals with no competition. I was looking at the cancer magazines that the hospital gave us. They were filled with ads of medicines that you could buy to alleviate chemotherapy side effects!

And so the alternative cancer therapy movement is persecuted at every opportunity. I won’t go into all the details here, but as I started researching it I was absolutely shocked at the amount of persecution that these brave researchers have endured. They have been mocked, ridiculed, slandered, lost medical licenses and even been imprisoned. Look a little into this and you will be as shocked as I was. And it also makes you ask the question WHY? (hint: reread the previous paragraph).

Of course on the surface they say that it is so people won’t be taken in by “quacks” and “charlatans” and will get “real” medicine from “trained professionals”.  Really? The truth is that there are many researchers that have had startling good success rates over decades of research and treating patients. While not every alternative cancer therapy has that kind of background or success rate it is clear that many of them match or surpass the official chemo success rate and this with little to no negative side effects!

You may not know exactly what chemotherapy is. In brief, it is (literally) poison pumped into the patients body that is designed to kill fast replicating cells in their body. This of course includes, but is not limited to cancer cells which multiply rapidly. So in addition to killing cancer cells, other cells in their body are literally killed. This not only creates many horrific side effects, but can  greatly harm the patients immune system so if the chemo does not work, then they  are screwed because their body’s natural defenses have been greatly weakened.

We were surprised at the lack of resistance from Kala’s family when she told them she wasn’t going the chemo route. Of course there was fear, but the truth was that all of them (and probably you) have know people that have died during chemo treatment. In fact some of us can name many people that we know who have died during chemo treatment. The question comes to mind…did the cancer kill them or did the chemo kill them

Luckily there have been many researchers who have been willing to step outside the system and look for alternatives to chemo and radiation therapy. We are working with a naturopath who is a former student of Dr. Nicholas Gonzales who is very well known and has worked with decades developing a technique that uses pancreatic enzymes along with a personalized nutritional consult and several detoxifying treatments with great success far surpassing their paltry 2.1% success rate.

There are many other researchers and treatments available and I strongly suggest that cancer patients consider all of their options before chemo, radiation or even surgery (depending on the case). There is a lot of information available online…. I suggest the book “Cancer: Step Outside the Box” for a great overview of alternative cancer treatments.

Know that no treatment of cancer whether it be chemo or alternative has anything close to a 100% success rate. If you have cancer there is a possibility that you can die from it no matter what you do. What’s important is that you consider all of your alternatives and not just rely on the advice of your doctor. Take your health into your own hands. If you want a second treatment do not go to another establishment doctor…again they have three and ONLY three treatments to cancer: surgery, chemo and radiation. Get an opinion from someone like Nicholas Gonzalez who has years and years of experience with alternative treatments. Then make your decision. Then you will be taking charge of your own health!

Finally I’d like to mention that what I found in my research is that it is not only about what treatment you choose for yourself. I believe that many people who try alternative cancer treatments fail because they are not taking into account other factors. Specifically these have to do with diet, lifestyle choices, emotional issues and deeper issues in their bodily energetic systems. Addressing these things and making positive changes is absolutely crucial in not only getting rid of cancer, but preventing it from recurring.

I will be posting up more posts on this subject in the future. If you are interested in helping us out we are currently accepting donations to help with the costs of Kala’s treatment. You can find the link on the sidebar of this site.

To a long and healthy life for all of us!!

My camera  broke sometime back, but hoping to borrow one soon and will post some pics on here.

In other news we have been researching inexpensive structures to make an extra room. The yurt is awesome, but we really need another space. After looking at options including tipis, yurts, large canvas tents we finally decided on a shed…the kind that you see in front of home depots. We are going to buy a kit and put it together ourselves to save some money. An 8′x12′ cost $900 and you have to buy flooring, roof shingles, paint and insulation separately so probably $1500 total. With insulation and a woodstove it should be plenty warm. If you are looking to get out of the rent/mortgage trap this could be a great option for you. Granted this is a small space but you can easily upgrade to a 12′x14′ for another $700 or so. If you can find a place to put it, for the price of rent for 4 months you could have your own little place! And then of course you can save all that money you were spending on rent to upgrade it.

Homesteading, while challenging is really opening up my eyes to so many possibilities!

In short I mostly love it. I will list here some of the advantages and disadvantages that I have found.

Advantages:

- It’s paid for! Now I have land that is paid for so I live rent/mortgage free. The single best thing about buying a yurt is that most anyone can save up enough to buy one and get a measure of financial freedom.

- For the money it’s a gorgeous place to live. If I built a similar sized place out of wood for the same amount of money it would not be nearly as beautiful. We have 6 huge windows and a vaulted ceiling. From the outside it looks a little like a circus tent because of the purple/green colors. It’s very pleasurable both in and out.

- Connection with nature. We live deep in the woods in it and you can hear most anything going on outside. Given that we are about 1/2 inch away from the elements.

- The skylight dome….we have a large dome at the top and it is excellent to be able to lie in bed and look up at the clouds or the stars at night.

Disadvantages:

- When it rains it is *loud*. Sometimes that is a bit much. Luckily we live in a place where it does rain but seldom lasts very long. If you live in a very rainy area this might be something to consider.

- One room…that’s right..unless you somehow divide up your yurt you are living in one room so you better like your partner/spouse/kids a whole heck of a lot! Or be prepared to put up another yurt or other structure. In fact I recommend doing that. Luckily you will be able to afford to save for it with all of that rent money you are saving!

- Little heat retention. The insulation kit that we got with it works surprisingly well. If you have the wood stove going you will be warm. However when the woodstove goes out, like at night when you are sleeping the temperature drops rapidly. Unlike a house that absorbs the heat and then feeds it back slowly, the yurt has no thermal mass. I can remember many a cold New England night coming home late and the temperature in our yurt being literally in the single digits….we’d light the fire and have to wait a good 1/2 hour before it was sort of warm in there. Also you use much more wood than you would in a similar sized wood structure. We used 5 cords in the winter for a 450 sq foot place. That’s a lot!  We lived two New England winters in our yurt and I would not want to do that again. We’ve moved to North Carolina where there is still winter but not nearly as severe.

- No indoor bathroom. Yep we got an outhouse….truth is I’ve gotten kinda used to it, but still an indoor bathroom is better on a cold winter morning!

Overall though we both really love it. With it’s round shape and beautiful structure it gives you the feeling you are living in a temple. On a few occasions I have slept at other peoples houses in az little low ceiling box bedroom and it makes me appreciate my expansive yurt so much! I’d also recommend Pacific Yurts as a company too. If you have a lot of know how you could make a yurt for cheaper but if you are like me and have no construction experience, getting a kit is the thing to do. It took one day to take down the yurt and another day to set it up somewhere else (it also took one day to take down the deck and three days to set that up). Anyways overall I would recommend it particularly if you don’t live in a very rainy or cold climate though I have heard they are very popular in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest so who knows maybe it would  be right for you in places like that.

Since we have been there we have seen: deer, snakes, raccoons, skunks, birds, a bear(friendly!) and more.Luckily our unfenced garden has remained untouched (except for some pesky insects that apparently love kale and cabbage).

It is so quiet there (except for the nights when the kadydids come out in force). One very interesting thing is that my sleep has deepened considerably and I have amazingly vivid dreams every night. I have (or can remember) many more dreams than I ever have before. We are guessing that this is because of the lack of electricity and general waves…not much psychic interference.

Overall we are loving it and I will share more about what we are doing there in upcoming posts! Also hoping to borrow a camera for pics too!

~shiva

I think the real key here was double digging the beds. Basically we dug out 5′ x 5′ plots one shovel-layer. Then we went and dug in again and turned the soil over before filling it again (with amendments). This does a couple things..one is that it makes it very easy for roots to grow through the soil to find nutrients. The second is that it makes it so that each bed holds massive amounts of water. Never a bad thing as our goal is have as little work as possible.

In the bio-intensive method of gardening you don’t till the soil. You start by double-digging and soil amendments, then you simply add in compost materials as you go. And you never ever walk on your bed. So while there is a lot of work at first with the double-digging, it pays off in the long run with less work and so far I am very impressed with the results.

I was a little worried at first. Although we had been reading up on permaculture and getting advice from neighbours, I had not really gotten the specifics on a few things. The first big error I made was not looking up the amount of lime to put in each plot.  As it turns out I put about 2o or 30 times the recommended amount. So far so good.

The second issue is plant spacing. We are using the square foot gardening method and ideally each plant has a certain amount needed ranging from 3″ to a full square foot. This is MUCH closer spacing than a traditional garden. Well when we went to plant we neglected to bring the book up with us so we just used our intuition to plant accordingly. It’s too early to tell if any fatal mistakes were made, but my guess is that it will mostly be OK. We won’t know for sure till the plants start to shoot.

Next in the ground is a plot of sweet potatoes and we are also going to try transplanting some wild perennials we are finding here and there.

But there is something else going on there that he told me about and that is the “greening of Detroit”. He worked at a city sponsored bike co-op. It’s a place where anyone can go in and borrow a bike. I was a bit incredulous thinking that so many bikes would be stolen and sold, but he said that is not a problem. Apparently there are lots of projects like this….entire areas being converted to grow food and more. He said that there are many like him flocking to the city and their goal is to make to make Detroit the first truly green city….one that is self sustaining (does not rely on huge imports of outside food and materials) and has low pollutions (lots of bikes and public transport).

I was very inspired by this and would love to see this. So many of my friends love and value the city…for me the noise, psychic noise and pollution is a bit much, but a truly “green” city? I may still want to live in the country but that is place I would love to visit!  For more visit http://www.greeningofdetroit.com

One of the biggest electricity hogs in modern homes is the refrigerator/freezer. I think I have found a solution to the refrigerator part (but not the freezer). My idea is to get a large broken refrigerator and lay it on it’s side (outside). We have a very cold spring that we will be piping in for our water. The temperature of the water is around 47 degrees or so.

My plan is to drill a hole on both sides of the refrigerator and pipe in water that will coil many times around at least 3 different sides of the refrigerator before exiting out the other side.

A quick youtube search showed me that someone else has already done this!:

Will post up results and pics when this gets done!

Did you know that a teaspoon of productive soil generally contains between 100 million and 1 BILLION bacteria? Pick up a handful of dirt from an established garden and you are holding an entire universe composed of trillions of living beings.

Most soil however is not this alive…it’s all in the topsoil…the top few inches of earth and even then the majority of our topsoil has been used up and spoiled through bad farming practices, not to mention paving over much of it in the past 100 years.

It takes literally hundreds of years for even an inch of topsoil to be built naturally….plants, animals and insects die and decompose and turn into rich humus. Luckily for us we can use our intelligence to build soil much faster.

The most popular way to do this is to start composting all of your live food…this includes anything left on the cutting board when preparing your meal as well as anything left on the plate afterwards. It is best to avoid meat when composting as that can attract rodents and can create a really bad smell.

In the summer heat your compost will break down very fast..in the winter not as fast. It is good practice to cover your compost with a layer of leaves or other natural materials every once in a while. You also want to stack it in a small pile so that the insides can heat up which speeds up the process.

When you are ready to put some in your garden what you will want to do is to dig off the top layer to get to the rich brown humus underneath..this will look very much like rich dirt. You can mix it into your soil or if your garden is already established just put it on top…it will very quickly become part of your garden ecosystem.

Another great way to build soil is to sheet mulch. Here is what you do:

Choose a place where you want to sheet mulch..this can be a garden bed in the fall or a place you will want to garden in the future in the spring/summer.

Get some cardboard boxes from the local grocery store (don’t get anything color or glossy). Remove any plastic tape from them, break them down and cover your area with them preferably leaving no holes.  Right before you do this you will want to thoroughly soak the area.

After it has been covered with the cardboard dump tons of leaves and other dead plant material on top of the cardboard.  The cardboard prevents plants from coming up and keeps the moisture in. The leaves on top will turn into fresh humus. In six months or so you will find that the earth underneath your boxes has become much darker and richer.  If there is still cardboard intact you can punch holes in it to plant your plants. The cardboard will prevent weeds. This is an excellent technique for building your soil and should be done on a consistent basis.

If you are renting a place you can still build your soil. If you move, simply dig up your soil into bags and you will have excellent soil for the garden beds in your new place! Building good soil takes years so if you haven’t started yet this is a great time to get going with it!