My Family Health Blog

Committed Family Healer's Research

My provincial travel – I see sick people all the time

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It has been a very long time since I went on a vacation.  I used to be sick and spent all my time studying about health just to live.  Now that I felt good and healthy enough it was time to travel.  Got one of those Cebu Pacific promo tickets and visited a couple of relatives in the provinces.

One thing I found out is that health is a good topic to talk about.  If I talked about the web design business, there would be no connection.  So health, food and wet markets were my thing.  I just love visiting other people’s wet markets.  Regarding health, I found out, unsurprisingly that provincial town folk are just as sick as city folk.  The unifying culprit is probably television and the medical profession.

The people I met and talked at length were sick of unexplained jaw pain, vertigo, stroke recovery, debilitating asthma, polycystic ovaries, infertility, obesity, kidney pain, heart disease, cancer, psoriasis, gall bladder stones and probably many more.

What’s funny is they all believed in the standard myths of the medical quacks.  They worshipped the cholesterol scare myth and eat margarine, reduced fat soya based mayonnaise, peanuts, cholesterol free vegetable based cooking oil from corn / canola / etc, they remove chicken skin and remove pork fat.  Plus their staple food are all rice and its derivatives and wheat and its derivatives like white bread, pan de sal, wheat bread, instant oatmeal.  They believe in pasteurized milk and have pasteurized “fresh” milk for their children, chocolate milk and powdered “milk” drink for adults.  Their animal food choices are 45 day chickens, factory eggs, gmo feeds fed pigs, farmed fish tilapia, bangus, hito, plus canned and processed meats.  They did buy sea food from time to time, but all of them are cooked to the core.  All meat were cooked to the core as they truly believed in cooking and thought that any hint of raw meat was bad for them.

One relative had a water filter with stones, but it wasn’t working as its TDS measurement showed the same as their faucet. They all used shampoos, except for my uncle, and soaped everyday and brushed their teeth with fluoride toothpaste yet they all have tooth decay.

On safety, one town I visited had a culture of not wearing helmets when riding motorcycles.  Yes really.

I think television and the medical profession has dumbed down people completely.  I think this explains the majority of illnesses I found there.  People are taught the wrong ideas about health so they suffer.  I used to be just like them… sick too.

I sticked out like a soar thumb as I ate my animal foods raw, but they didn’t mind the times I dipped the raw sea food in vinegar — when you dip a sea creature in vinegar, it is culturally acceptable to eat it raw.  But I blended well when I ate fruits in season with the townsfolk, yummy indian mangoes in season, the not so ripe kind.  They didn’t really mind that I ate my food raw because they could see my before and after pics when I used to be sick and how I looked now.  It’s interesting for them because the way I eat and the tricks I tell stories about helping people seem to be working on healthy looking me.

Fresh sea food at the fishing town of Catbalogan

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I visited my cousin living in the town of Catbalogan, Samar province.  It’s a small town with not much growth because of natural barriers.  Motorcycles and bicycles are the chief forms of transport and nobody wears a helmet.  The main attraction for me here was this is a fishing village.  This meant fresh fish, every single day.  Various kinds.  I had a blast.  I should stay longer next time.

At breakfast I had big raw sea shrimps aka sugpo, and then some raw sardines – wow, for the very first time in my life – we never get raw sardines in Manila, they rot easily.  I saw what my cousin meant when they only buy squid that is fresh – changing colors – still alive – and I ate them raw, sweet, yummy.  Then I saw some shellfish which I do not know what it was, but it was fatty and tasty.

The culture in fresh sea food land is they put zero ice on their fish.  If it has ice, it isn’t fresh.  All fish eyes were crystal clear.  And I bet most of them taste great due to the freshness.  You can see the boats dock on the steps of the fish port and the fish themselves are sold at the steps on tables.  Now this is really fresh sea food.  Why eating raw sea food makes so much more sense in these conditions.

Here are a couple of pictures.  I enjoyed Catbalogan so much, maybe my cousin will be assigned in Borongan – an even smaller fishing town next time and I will visit him there, stay longer and pig out on fresh sea food.

raw-shellfish

raw-sardines-in-bunches

catbalogan-fishport

Oil Pulling Cures Gum Disease and Dandruff

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My friend Jackie is so excited about her results with oil pulling she emailed her friends.  Here are the juicy details about her oil pulling testimonial about curing her periodontal gum disease and her dandruff:

…I’ve been practicing oil pulling with VCO since early March this year. VCO offers a lot of health benefits– anti-viral, bacterial, fungal, etc. and oil pulling is simply swishing/gargling oil in your mouth (VCO in my case) for 15 to 20 minutes and then spitting it out on a small trash bag. I usually do it twice a day. Last March 23, another dentist confirmed my periodontal gum disease (almost stage 4 daw) after looking at my panoramic x-ray, and examining my gums and teeth, telling me that surgery may be necessary all over (not just one quadrant or part). Because of oil pulling with VCO daily, from an almost stage 4 gum disease problem requiring surgery, on my fourth and fifth visit, the dentist says my gums have improved a lot and I don’t need gum surgery anymore.

Aside from my dental concerns, my dandruff problem is now gone. I always have dandruff, and it gets severe as in very thick flakes, but gets controlled when I apply and massage VCO on my scalp. Even Dr. Bruce Fife in his newest book (copyright 2008) “Oil Pulling Therapy” (subtitled Detoxifying and Healing the Body Through Oral Cleansing) shares that his chronic/severe dandruff is controlled when he uses medicated shampoo and applies VCO on his scalp, and it comes back when he does not. Now, without medicated shampoo or massaging VCO on his scalp, he says his dandruff is 95% gone just with oil pulling. Plus, a wart on his face which he had for at least two decades suddenly disappeared because of oil pulling which “is completely harmless and does not interact with any drugs” and is safe to do even for pregnant and nursing moms.

The book is actually full of testimonies from people who suffer from various chronic ailments and benefitted from this habit of oil pulling. I lent the book to a neonatal pediatrician and asked her to read it. She read it overnight til 1am. The next day she returned the book and told me she knows exactly why it works and understood the principle behind it– which is very simple and logical as explained in the book.

I’ll be sharing some more testimonies about oil pulling from my brother (who has warts), from our growth group leader and his wife, and some of my friends. Who knows, someday I may put up an informal group, an oil pulling club to encourage its practice using a very powerful oil that is indigenous to our country. So let’s patronize and promote the use of VCO (and we promote the local economy too). Mabuhay ang likhang Pinoy na VCO! Praise God for coconut trees!

You may check out my review of the book at my Multiply account: http://organicliving.multiply.com/. For organic VCO, please visit my home store.

Thanks and happy detox through oil pulling!

Kamias leaves and stems cures a 3 year old girl of body wide psoriasis?

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I bought cool coconut due to the summer heat from a nice old lady and we were chatting while I drank and ate my coconut.  Found out she’s the sister of our coconut man in our village.  We were talking about the axe I ordered from her home town, then we talked about herbs, healing and healers.  She related an interesting story of her grand daughter who at 3 years old had all sorts skin afflictions all over her body.  Sounded like psoriasis from her description, whatever it was, they saw a healer, a “manggagamot” a few blocks away from where we were talking and he recommended boling kamias leaves and stems.

The result of course, was her 3 year old grand daughter was cured in 2 weeks.  All she did was drink the tea of kamias leaves as her water the whole day.  She peed and peed. To make tea, just get a handful of kamias leaves with the stem, tie them together and boil in pot until the color of the tea is apparent.  I really don’t know how long.  15 minutes?  Then drink the whole day as your water.

I have never tried this treatment so I can’t comment on it.  I wonder what it really does.  Maybe I will experiment on it some time.

Juicing Malunggay and Vita Plus for internal injuries?

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I have a friend named Aldrin who had an accident while riding his bicycle.  He felt really bad for some time including chronic fatigue.  Then he sought a healer and this healer told him to drink 1/2 cup of juiced malunggay leaves every morning and take a supplement called Vita Plus.  He did this for 2 weeks and he swears it cleaned him out and made him strong again.

It’s very hard to juice malunggay, isn’t it?

Anyone can point me to this Vita Plus he is talking about?

Lost Paleolithic Food found: Yummy Nutritious Soft Shell Turtle

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I’ve finally made first contact with a professional hunter, Mang Jose. He walks up the mountains at 1am and hunts for wild pythons, wild soft shell turtle, wild tilapia, wild dalag, wild hito / catfish, wild palakang bukid / edible frog. In this first meeting with him, he had 3 soft shell turtles. I thought turtles were slow, but not these turtles, they are fast and feisty, they’ll bite you if you aren’t careful.

This report serves to uncover a lost old time food, that of turtles. I’m pretty much convinced that turtles were a human staple and nutritious food in the old neolithic and paleolithic times. In the Chinese community in our city, turtles are still staple food. You can visit the restaurants in Chinatown and order turtle. You can go to the Chinese wet market and buy turtles.

The protected species of Philippine turtle are the ocean going pawikans, they have a conservation effort and pawikan repopulation centers around the country. Let’s hope their efforts are successful so some of us can get back to eating them ocean going pawikan turtles when their numbers have been replenished and the ban is lifted.

In the meantime, we can legally get a taste of an old staple food in turtles with freshwater river dwelling soft shell turtles, curiously, the native people also call this “pawikan”. My hunter calls it pawikan and so do his grandchildren. You can see the joy in the eyes of the hunter’s grandchildren, they love eating turtles and find them delicious. Found out the provincial people occasionally ate turtles on quite a regular basis, this is not exotic to them… there’s my father in law, my mother in law, all our maids, my security guard friend, my brother in law’s girlfriend… I feel small, me the city boy missed out.

Mang Jose the hunter demonstrated how to slaughter and cook the soft shell turtle. Sorry, raw meat fans, my hunter is not a raw foodist so I guess I’ll have to find out by myself in the future how to eat these turtles raw. In the meantime, I found out they were very simple to prepare. Just knock them on the head with your big knife, no need to outright kill it, then put the whole turtle in your boiling pot of water with some tanlad leaves. Boil for about 10 to 15 minutes, then clean the turtle with your hands. Simply remove the coating on the shell to expose the gelatinous edible shell on the sides of the hard shell, do the same with the belly. Upon removing the top and belly shells, you remove the head, and the claws, the large and small intestines, and careful to remove without breaking the gall bladder so there is no bile spilled or your turtle will taste sour / mapait. Then you cook the turtle by some other recipe you want. In this example, Mang Jose’s wife made adobo. I just made sure he didn’t put that nasty poison MSG on our turtle. I learned it was really easy to prepare these tasty turtles ourselves.

How did the turtles taste? Very good. Very tender. Very tasty, it has its own taste. The whole family enjoyed the turtles for dinner. I hope it brought really good wild nutrition to my kids, I drove quite far to get this to the table.

Nutritional value? My security guard friend who introduced me to his neighbor Mang Jose the hunter swears it was a month long regular ingestion of cooked turtle meals that got rid of his then 6 year old daughter’s asthma. Her asthma was the killing kind where she found it difficult enough to breath her lips turned blue. His daughter is now 8 years old and asthma free.

There must be something of high nutritional value in wild turtle, first of all it is wild. I remember my acupuncturist traditional Chinese doctor giving me directions to his favorite Chinese restaurant that served turtle, but I never got to going there. Mang Jose says regular ingestion of wild turtle can make 75 year old men virile again,  my Chinese doctor also told me this.

Is all this turtle nutrition sales talk? Probably not, Mang Jose is the kind of man who can’t sell anything and will always live a hunter’s existence. No, I’m not sharing my hunter’s contact number. Go find your own hunter. Mang Jose and I hope to have a nice long professional relationship.

3 soft shell turtles in a net

3 soft shell turtles in a net

Soft Shell Turtle Top Side

Soft Shell Turtle Top Side

Soft Shell Turtle Underside

Soft Shell Turtle Underside

Soft Shell Turtle Boiled

Soft Shell Turtle Boiled

Soft Shell Turtle Being Cooked

Soft Shell Turtle Being Cooked

Raw live sheep found in a goat pen. Awesome!

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I stumbled onto a live SHEEP in a goat pen 2 days ago. I was going to buy goat meat but I decided on the whole sheep.

They weren’t going to sell me just a part of the sheep, they were selling it whole, arabs were their customers. Anyway, my son and I were excited to dig into sheep meat. We saw the slaughtering done right before us. The man stabbed the sheep 3x on the heart and bled the sheep till it died.

Then the man had a tub of boiling water and dipped the whole carcass to remove the hair / wool. Hmmm…. that doesn’t sit well with me, seems the skin is getting “cooked” or warmed. Then the carcass was burned with an lpg torch to remove the hair clean. Then it was cut up.

We are utilizing everything in this sheep. So the intestines will be made into soup. The skin will be cut up and dipped in vinegar. The bones and the head will be made into broth. Efficient use of the animal, Sally Fallon style. The rest of the family, the extended family can have some roasted lamb chops and the soup.

I and the kids had some raw meat for lunch. wonderful meat. has its own taste. I like it better than goat because it is fatter than the usual goat we get. Lots of fat. Really, like beef.

I tried the sheep’s liver, it didn’t sit right with my taste buds and gut instinct. For the past 2 days I’ve been gorging on wonderful raw beef liver so I’ve got immediate comparison.

Sheep meat is truly fat. I should get sheep as a staple food instead of goat.