I have completed an ebook on Oregano and my “Oregano” experience.

More accurately, I have completed a 28-page ebook detailing an important aspect of my digestion (and life saving) experience with Oregano Tea.  Not just any oregano, mind you, but one easily available nonetheless. I name the source I used in the book and it is inexpensive and of high quality.  I also point you to another source of Oregano that may indeed be substantially more effective.

Feel free to pick up a copy of “Oregano - The Herb That Saved…My Life“.  In this book, I tell more of my personal story and also include a fair amount of reference and research materials.  Basically, I spent over 100 hours putting this book together, so if you want to do 100 hours of research, you can probably come up with something similar.  I also got approvals from other authors to quote some of their excellent work.

If you know someone who is suffering from IBS or some other digestive problem or disease, please pick up a copy of “Oregano - The Herb That Saved… My Life“.  It could end up being a HUGE favor to your friend and the book well worth the small price tag.

All the best of health to you,

Thomas Mayhew, Publisher

http://HealthMattersBlog.com

http://CrimsonBooks.com

Get a shovel and go dig up the soil and get a garden started.

There are several good reasons for taking this action and frankly lots of people are doing so already.

Why garden?

1. It doesn’t get more local.
2. It doesn’t get more fresh.
3. It doesn’t taste any better any way else.
4. Lower your food bill.
5. Improve your health.
6. Improve the environment.
7. Improve your looks (hey, if you get out in the sunshine and do some exercise in the garden while simultaneously getting avoiding the couch, you can’t help but get fit).
8. You have to pay your mortgage anyway, why not use your land and soil resource more fully.

Now I’ve been learning that it does pay to be a little scientific about gardening. Plants need certain nutrients and the best way I’ve found to be a successful gardener is via the Mittleider Method of Gardening.

This is the specific book that is proving to be a marvelous guide to my out-of-doors gardening efforts. It’s worth ten times what I’ve paid for it. If you have any interest in gardening, I recommend you get yourself one too.

If you’d like some more information and to find out how to get your own copy of a Mittleider Gardening book, head over to an article I wrote on www.crimsonbooks.com…

http://www.crimsonbooks.com/1/50/crimson-tidbit-gardening-for-the-rest-of-us/

All the best of health to you!

Thomas Mayhew, Publisher
Health Matters Blog

www.healthmattersblog.com

What I mean to say is that my Title looks funny in print.

Oh well.

When I was a teenager growing up in Venice Beach, never could I have imagined that I’d be writing something so public about, well, such a topic.

All it takes is one health crisis and your life can change forever.
On with our topic.

First of all, I thank God that apples, with the exception of a couple months of my life when I was the most ill in 2005, have pretty much always been a part of my daily cuisine routine.

Sure, if you’ve got a case of IBS, you might want to peel your apples, but hey…in the big scheme of things, big deal right?

Even when you go see the Doctor, even if you’ve never been diagnosed with IBS, he will tell you to fast for up to 24 hours and then go on the BRAT diet.  BRAT stands for Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast in case you were wondering.

Applesauce was mentioned there right?  No skin in applesauce normally, true?

Interesting observation then.

Apples seem to be fairly innocuous to our digestive system…at least from my experience.

I have found them to be fairly neutral in terms of their relative transit time, thankfully.

Even when my digestion was not doing real well.

But life is good again folks.

I’ve been eating Organic Apples daily for nearly three years.  Apples have never caused me a problem with digestion.

Can hardly get enough of them.

If you’ve got IBS, you might try peeling them if they are problematic for you.  If that works better for you, you might try a different kind of apple.  Perhaps one without such a thick skin.

The Organic Fuji’s we get around here, in Eastern Washington State, are awesome.  Well I did find a family farm, so that helps.  And we finally learned how to can apples.  Big job, but worth the effort.  We also made applesauce out of about 50 lbs of apples (with the skin on) and it is the most delicious applesauce I’ve ever tasted.

Like I said, life is good again.

All the best of health to you,

Thomas Mayhew, Publisher

Crimson Books

www.crimsonbooks.com

I appreciate Science, but my point is that I am not coming at this post today with an air of anything but experience.

If you’ve read the www.healthmattersblog.com posts for any length of time, you know that I suffered from mercury poisoning and while I am still undergoing some chelation to rid my body of the silvery stuff, I’m doing what I would consider exceedingly well these days.  Working as a Realtor, getting ready for a full gardening season, raising my boys, serving my Church and generally enjoying life.

So, as a practical matter, B-12 is important stuff.  As a molecular structure, from what I understand, it is the largest that needs to be absorbed through the intestine wall to get into and be used by your system.  Unless of course, you are taking oral B-12, the effectiveness of which I am not knowledgeable about.

If you have a compromised gut or issues with malabsorption, you can imagine that this process might be impaired somewhat and you could end up low in B-12.

I remember talking to someone that told me an experience he knew about where someone was in a wheel chair and would never walk again, simply due to a B-12 deficiency.  What a shame!  Probably none of the Doctors she saw had any clue about it either.

The lining of the intestine actually needs to “break” a little to get the enormous B-12 molecule through to the other (or useful) side.

Needless to say, I had to take shots for B-12 and it made a huge difference for me.

Comments are welcome

In my case, back in 2004 and 2005 I could digest only a few select foods.  Everything had to be organic.  And again, only a few foods would work for me.  If I varied from my narrow course, all havoc broke loose in my gut.

Those awful times required a trip to emergency.

But when I was with a friend or other people, they would see what I ate, or rather what I didn’t eat, and they would volunteer that I just needed a beef steak.  You know, to “Get some meat on my bones.”

Right.

If only it had been so easy.  Little do they know that eating something like that could literally have killed me.  Little did they know how hard it was emotionally to deal with such a suggestion.

I’d sure like to try to communicate with some dimension, the difficulty of going through such a protracted, severe chronic illness interspersed with acute moments requiring emergency services.  I can’t do it in a ‘full’ manner, but perhaps I can give some sense of the travail…

What was it like for me?

Imagine you are an atheist in a fox hole.

You are fighting the Germans in WWII.  It’s January 3rd, three days from your 21st birthday.  You haven’t slept for more than a few minutes at a time for two days straight and it wasn’t a lot better than that the previous several days.  You are out of food.  Have a few precious drops of dusty water in your canteen.  Everything reeks of the odor of death.  You are utterly depleted.

Your comrades are dead.  In fact, your Lieutenant just lost his mind, literally, via a German bullet.  You are devastated by the image stuck in your mind.

You’ve lost communication with the remaining American forces in other fox holes.  You assume they are in the same condition as you and your squad.

It’s hopeless.

The Germans are advancing and you know it.

It’s just a very short matter of time before a bullet or grenade snuffs out your last nub of life.

Things seem to go in slow motion.  Perhaps because you are wiped out, perhaps because you’ve lost virtually all hope.

Your mind does an instant replay of your life and you see before you all your hopes, dreams, past pains and disillusionment…where was God when you needed him?  You didn’t ask for that last thought.  It was involuntary.

Your mind even replays all your atheistic walls that went up since the childhood tragedy you recall all too well.

And now, against your will, your thoughts turn precipitously to God, your last possible hope.

“IF you exist… please save me”.  It feels like your last breath.

The air is thick with deep tragedy as though night will immediately fall on your fox hole, even though it is only 7:37 in the morning.

Then your perception sharpens, as something in the air is changing.

The German guns suddenly seem halting as though either jammed, confused or melting in fear.

Indeed a new sound is coming to you.  What is it?

Is it a tank or…plane?

New sounds begin to explode in the field in front of you, which you can not see, for the thick fog.  You hear Germans yelling ’something about moving fast’.

Indeed, it appears you DO have a chance.  You don’t dare poke your head up, but you hope against hope.

You don’t know which allied forces have come to the aid of you and your surviving comrades, but come they most assuredly have and the Germans have turned tail to escape the tanks firing upon them mercilessly.

You will indeed see yourself to your birthday, just three days forward.

“Thank you God, you did it.  I was wrong about you.  I’m sorry.”  The tears are there, but they can’t come.

You’d welcome them, but your body is so run down and depleted, tears are a physical impossibility.

Friend, this is something of what it felt like to be so critically ill, for such a long time.

If you find one friend, one family member that can stick with you and take care of you, you are indeed rich beyond measure.  If you happen to be so ill and you have read this short post, please don’t worry about the others, your friends who can’t or don’t understand your situation.

Be grateful for the one that sticks with you.  In my case my wife stuck with me, like a hand in a glove.

Indeed, there is another that sticks closer than a brother.  I have found Him.  His name is Jesus.

He stuck with me, indeed at my worst points, He was there with me, encouraging me, giving me peace, when all looked dim as darkest night.

He can and will be with you too.

We are talking about what foods we should and shouldn’t eat.  My personal sense about this is that it is madness to be fooling around with modifying organisms.  Thus, it is madness to be eating unnatural foods.

Is GMO tinkering, tantamount to playing God with our food? Perhaps these things ought not be done.  With limited understanding, we tinker with genetics, not knowing whether we shall reap a whirlwind of problems from it.

Anyway, if you too think it is common sense to avoid genetically modified foods, here is a link to some of the common non-GMO (the good foods) and the GMO (the bad foods)…

GMO vs. Non GMO Foods

Hope this is a helpful resource for you.  I am going to print it out and take it to some friends today.

All the best to you.

Personal note: I had a mouthful of amalgam fillings which are typically about 50% elemental mercury when they are new. When I suggested to a friend, an expert in the sciences, that my fillings may have poisoned me, he was skeptical to put it mildly.

However, when he discovered that I had some bacterial activity in an amalgam filled tooth, he mentioned that the bacteria could be methylating the mercury.

Since then, of course, we have discovered that mercury is constantly methylating off of these amalgam fillings at all hours of the day and night.

For visual evidence of that fact, go to www.iaomt.org and watch the video.

Inorganic Mercury Compounds or Forms are as follows:

HgS Mercuric Sulfide

HgO Mercuric Oxide

HgCl2 Mercuric Chloride

Organic Mercury (formed when combined with Carbon and other elements)…

Methylmercury (common) - an organic compound having known neurological toxicity effects tending to biomagnify up the food chain. A neurotoxin in humans.

DiMethylmercury is the same as methylmercury, but contains two methyl radicals (CH3)2 and is one of the strongest known neurotoxins .

Phenylmercuric acetate

Methylmercuric acetate

Let’s talk about Monomethylmercury as their seems to be evidence indicating that this particular form of Mercury is up to 1000 times more toxic than elemental mercury (to humans). For whatever reason, MeHg somehow seems to target the Advanced Central Nervous System (CNS).

The monomethylmercury form is known to participate in biochemical reactions which is one reason it is such a terrible hazard to humans.

Somehow, mercury is able to pass through and end up accumulating in the brain.

When we ingest mercury laden fish, some of the ingested MeHg passes through the intestines and into the bloodstream. From there it just gets more complicated, but some of it can and does go into the brain.

Suffice it to say, from my simple minded perspective, you need to have a treatment plan employing a mercury removing modality capable of passing the blood-brain barrier.

How else will you succeed at getting the mercury out of your brain?

Put don’t take my word, for it, find a Doctor that knows what he is doing and discuss your options with him.

There is a great video that has been well circulated showing the effects of mercury upon brain neurons. Of course, non human brain neurons were used in this experiment performed at the University of Calgary. Here is the link…

http://commons.ucalgary.ca/mercury/

Bibliography:

Mercury Toxicity in the Human Brain

Scientific Facts on Mercury

Also used Google Define:(insert word) for some definitions which found some definitions at www.wikipedia.org.

On the one hand, these are both great questions. I can only respond with what my own experience has been. Thus, please note this caveat.

My experience comes from having been chronically ill from mercury poisoning and then subsequently acutely ill from all the complications that go along with such long term poisoning.

My physiology got so bad that, in truth, I felt there was virtually nothing left of me. At my worst, I could still think, but barely. Making decisions became difficult in the extreme. Why? My physiology was just that messed up due primarily to malabsorption/gut problems.

You are what you eat and what you absorb. You aren’t what you don’t eat nor what you don’t absorb.

You see, I went 40 days without successfully digesting a cracker.

Once I was properly diagnosed as having chronic mercury poisoning of the gut, which took three years and the introduction to a Doctor that knew the cause of all my trouble, I was put on a nutrition regimen that was specific to my needs.

One thing I had to do was take about 2 grams of Hydrochloric Acid with each meal. If I didn’t do that, I didn’t digest my meal, pure and simple.
Following are some of the other nutrition supplements that I took:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin B
• Vitamin C was basically intolerable to my system, so I avoided it like the plaque for a while. Now I take a little.
• Multi-Vitamin and Multi-Mineral Supplement from a particularly good source.
• SSKI (or Potassium Iodide)
• B12 daily

Trust me, their were other nutrition supplements (vitamins) that I took, but without digging through my file, I don’t recall them all.

The main point of all this is to mention that if I didn’t take one of the things that the exceptionally knowledgeable Doctor advised me to, I suffered ill consequences. In other words, these things were not optional for me.

The even bigger main point is that your physiology may require some of these things or more or different nutrition supplementation to get by (and hopefully thrive).

When you look for a Doctor that can help you deal with chronic illness, especially illness that has turned acute, find one that knows physiology like the back of his hand. It will make all the difference. At least it has for me in my pathway to wellness.

So what does that mean exactly? It means that if you have it in your system, it can/will affect your nerves/nervous system…adversely.

Doesn’t sound like fun does it? Folks are stressed out already these days even without a neurotoxin in their system.

So what might be the symptomatic effects of mercury on your nervous system? Well, I’m not a Doctor, but I have read about these effects and they include: tremors, personality changes, nervousness and dementia.

Not my idea of a good time.

If you’ve experienced these symptoms or know someone who has, you may want to suggest mercury as a possible culprit to consider.

Problems always have a cause. The trick is figuring out what that cause is.

Mercury is often overlooked as a culprit because of the “professional” use and thus endorsement of mercury in fillings. Nevertheless, many people have had these symptoms abate upon the removal of these fillings and for others the taking of an additional step cleared the problem.

That step is chelation.

I’ve written quite a bit about chelation (getting out heavy metals, etc.) and about mercury in earlier posts. If you are interested in reading more on these subjects, please know that those posts are available to you.

If you have a specific question about Mercury Poisoning, please leave it here…

http://app.sgizmo.com/surveybuilder/preview_survey.php?id=46782

The first 20 people to leave a question for me there, will receive the first chapter of my mercury book entitled: “Mercury Poisoning: A Story of Survival”. And thanks for participating!

But the fact is, there are lots of dear people that are struggling desperately with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s Disease and Colitis.

Am I positing that these are all the same thing. Not exactly.  I’m not saying they’re not either.  Truthfully, I am not sure one way or the other.   I am sure that most Doctor’s don’t know the cause of any of them.  These terms are convenient labels for a set of symptoms for which conventional medicine knows no cause.  They only know medications that temper some of the symptoms.  Sometimes at great risk to the entire body.

Now let’s see. What would be a source of mercury that could end up being utilized in our intestinal wall?

Fish? Amalgam Fillings (which constantly methylate? Given that both sources go primarily into your digestive tract, they are certainly two potential significant sources of mercury that your body might unwittingly use in constructing your gut wall.

How much research is there to back this up? Frankly, I don’t know. But I do like following a logical path. If you ingest a substance, isn’t it highly probable that your body will try to utilize it? Sure thing! Now shouldn’t your body know better than to use mercury to construct body parts? Well yes, but from the reading I have done, some forms of mercury can trick your body into thinking it is usable where it is in fact not healthful.

Mercury interferes with the enzymatic processes of digestion. So if your gut has a lot of mercury in the lining, how well do you think you will digest your food?

“Not well” is my conclusion.