This blog is a commentary on some of the views expressed by my correspondents on the subject of the lockdown, and understandably some have strongly felt opinions. Regarding natural health benefits I’ve been reminded to caution people who have underlying health conditions to always check if the food or supplement benefit is appropriate support for the illness they have been diagnosed with, and I welcome responses which can advise from experience -what did, or did not help.
Good quality food is by far the best way to maintain a healthy flow of bodily nutrition, but it must be said supermarket shopping (whilst it’s the only option for some) is a mixed blessing. For example, if you are a meat eater, most meats are from animals who have been reared on what are called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), also known as “factory farms. Cows are (mostly) fed on corn which biologically is not their natural food, they are often kept in confined spaces, and to keep them ‘healthy’ are injected with antibiotics. Once meat is exposed to air, it gradually turns from red to a not-so-festive brown or grey colour. To keep meat looking appetizing, some supplies treat it with carbon monoxide, used at low levels maintain or stabilize the natural red colour of oxygenated meat. Chicken is also factory farmed, even so-called free range chickens.
Naturally fed chickens have yellow meat -not white. Evidence from a study in 2020 in the UK showed white striping muscle disease in some supermarket chickens (appears as thin white lines, mostly impacting the breast area), and should be avoided if at all possible. If you are fortunate enough to buy from a real butcher, not only can you query where and how the meat is farmed, you will find their cow meats are grass fed, and chicken reared in natural environments. If you have no choice it doesn’t mean meat from supermarkets is bad -it all meets food safety requirements, but it will be almost impossible to determine the quality of what you are buying.
For obvious reasons much of the vegetable sold in supermarkets has been frozen prior to display. Once it starts to thaw it will lose freshness quickly, and thereby its nutritional value. A good example of this are cucumbers -if you buy one on a weekly shop for use over a week, by the time your next shop day is due it will have gone mushy. Again, the quality is also determined on how vegetables are grown -if they are force-grown, like many mushrooms are, then their health benefit will be much lower than naturally grown. Can you buy from a greengrocer who sources vegetables and fruits locally? If you can I recommend you do -the difference in quality will be appreciated immediately.
Regarding supplements, which you may well feel are necessary to ensure the ideal nutrition your body needs the best way to take them is either in powder or liquid form, not only because you can add many of them to drinks, or find they are supplied in drink form, but because you will be getting more value by doing so. Tablets are chelated -that is coated not only to preserve the supplement, but also to swallow them. It means the stomach has to digest the coating before it can get to the supplement. All tablets come with RDA -recommended daily allowance. What the RDA cannot do is determine the value your gut will get after digestion -so it’s a guide but by no means an infallible guide.
There’s a lot of talk about the need of vitamin D -you can get that in powder form too, which brings me on to another subject from my correspondents -the virus and vaccines. Studies on the frequency and spread of the virus are in agreement regarding the most virulent periods of the year. Summer and Autumn show less infection spreading -which is when naturally received vitamin D from sunlight is at its highest.
The vaccine hasn’t been warmly welcomed by all country populations despite political urging to do so -for example in France. Reason for this is a respected professional body of opinion have made their views public concerning (a) the short timescale of the Covid-19 vaccine development, (b) the virus variants, (c) immunity. In summary what they are saying is this, the hitherto profile of vaccine development has been 10 years plus or at best 6-7 years. In response to treating human to human corona flu-type pandemics quickly, viral vector vaccines, which use a virus genetically engineered so that it can’t cause disease, but produces coronavirus proteins to safely generate an immune response have been developed, and RNA and DNA vaccines, a cutting-edge approach that uses genetically engineered RNA or DNA to generate a protein that itself safely prompts an immune response have also been developed. This has dramatically cut the down the timescale for producing human to human corona type vaccines, however the current covid-19 vaccines have yet to be fully evaluated in stage 4 of development which takes place after the vaccine has been approved and rolled out to the general populations -that could take upward of 4 years, and in the meantime variants of coronavirus are evolving at a fast rate.
No one is suggesting that virologists and the industry generally are trying to ‘cut corners’ or producing inaccurate testing results. Immunity expectation after the roll out is in question. Just recently Israel advised the Pfizer vaccine as having a 33% effectiveness -a report that has since been ‘quantified’ as unreliable, though the truth may be that variants developing have made it less effective than trails showed. Norway has published in January results of 13 elderly vulnerable patients having died from taking their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Those who died were described as having severe underlying health conditions and were all aged 75 or over. (The number of deaths has since risen to 33, out of about 55,000 people who have received the first dose of the vaccine in the country). And it has made the anti-vaccine lobby more suspicious to know that the UK, USA, and Israel, are working on a legal framework which if implemented would protect manufacturers from being sued if the workability of the vaccine is challenged.
Given these reports and concerns expressed by some scientists and researchers there are too many unknowns it is not surprising that some people are reluctant to take the vaccine. It must be said, however, that many who have received vaccines have not reported any ill effects, and that includes to my personal knowledge elderly and vulnerable people. Some people who have no history of illness required to be treated allopathically (and are currently healthy irrespective of age) are particularly concerned not to have the vaccine. The indications are vaccines will need to be administered, either as they are formulated today or ‘adjusted’ to account for variant development, on an annual basis. At the end of the day it’s a personal choice -if you do or if you don’t.
I would finally like to say, irrespective of your food likes and dislikes, of your concerns over the virus and vaccines, restrictions on movements that affect all levels of society, are having an ‘ill health’ effect in all kinds of ways. Common-sense is in short supply -of course you should adequately protect yourself when it is necessary to mix with other people, of course you should make every effort to eat and exercise sensibly, but most of all you must recognise thoughts and feelings travel faster than physical viruses, and combating feelings of depression, frustration, anxiety, and anger, is your number one priority. Body and Mind are not separate -they affect one another. We are designed to be channels of energy, both mind and matter. Have purpose which does give of yourself. Do this and the basis of good health will be strengthened.
Since I’ve been talking about animals the poem I’ve written for this post is:
Slaughter
And their vacant eyes;
to me dull, relative
brother-like, unto my blood.
Lesser and labelled more the beast
for being servant,
yet I fear
I fit my moulding them
too perfectly.
To moo
and peer moronically alive
cross thicket hedge, un-decides
the place of puppet and the master,
their voices turn
the thicket’s harsh of prickles
and point its spears to Man.
I- cannot divide the poet
from the brain
let reason coldly justify,
will not take the pound of flesh;
less my Alice
lose the Elohim of Seeing.
Galactically
My one eyed prism of awareness
in their field
sees acceptance as
instrument of Right Order
in this temporal world.
It takes the fence of our divide
and blends the prickles too
the slavered green of changing grass
and into focus
brings us less our lying tongue
to the point of light.
Mine Quick Voice of Aquarius 