10 steps to maximize self-sufficiency TODAY *Update*

Colloidal silver is indeed a broad-spectrum antibiotic. But there exist better compounds...

If you can't get the FDA approved stuff, you can go to a well-stocked pet supply store and find a wide variety of antibiotics. People frequently use these off-label for animals other than fish, and that list includes humans.

If you need to perform basic surgical procedures, you administer antibiotics BEFOREHAND, sterilize your instruments, and coat the skin to be incised with iodine. Colloidal silver just isn't fast-acting enough to cut it for some tasks.

If you CAN get the FDA approved stuff, Ciprofloxacin is about as broad-spectrum as it gets, and it's reasonably cheap. But be careful... broad-spectrum antimicrobials will also destroy the flora in your gut that help you digest food. So be prepared to lose nutrients and water while on them.

Jesus Christ... I hope it doesn't get this ugly. Infection is a killer that we lightly dismiss these days.

My Shelfari page

Have you ever wondered why the bagged popcorn in the store tastes so buttery? Have you ever wondered what’s in it that makes it so yummy? And what makes it smell so good when you open the package?
An article I read on the Internet, by Jesse McKinley called “Flavoring-Factory Illnesses Raise Inquiries,” New York Times. The article explains just what the buttery component in popcorn is, and reveals scary information about how harmful this chemical appears to be. It said that:

“The workers in flavoring factories who were young and healthy. None of whom were smokers, and none had any history of lung disease. But after working at plants that produce food flavorings, they all had one thing in common: they could not breathe.

“Over the last several years, California health officials have been tracking a handful of workers in flavoring factories who have been incapacitated with a rare, life-threatening lung condition — bronchiolitis obliterans — for which there is no cure or treatment. Usually found only in people who are poisoned by chemical fires or chemical warfare or in lung transplant patients, bronchiolitis obliterans renders its victims unable to exert even a little energy without becoming winded or faint.

“ ‘The airways to the lung have been eaten up,’ said Barbara Materna, the chief of the occupational health branch in the California Department of Health Services. ‘They can’t work anymore, and they can’t walk a short distance without severe shortness of breath.’
Ms. Lieber, the California legislator, said a better solution might be to take the chemical out of the workplace altogether.

“ ‘It’s not like we’re talking about a potential flaw in the polio vaccine,” she said. “We are talking about a potentially devastating disease caused by buttering flavor. And there are alternatives out there. Including butter,’ Ms. Materna, the California health official, said.
Also another interesting fact in this article said that the flavoring industry made about $3.5 billion in sales in 2006. “

Now you know why popcorn at the store has such a nice, yummy smell.
That article is just the one of many articles that links horrible side effects to artificial flavors and colors and sweeteners.

The FDA argues that most artificial sweetener, colors and flavors are perfectly safe in small amounts, but is that absolutely true? How can it be, especially when people are getting sick? How can they let out these artificial poisons for the public to use when lab rats only come down with better cancer or some other non- important disease.
My absolute dislike for artificial flavors and sweeteners did not begin until I started linking my chronic sinus infections I’d been experiencing, with the artificial vanillin ingredient in some foods I’d been eating.

I’d eat ice cream that had artificial vanillin in, and about two days to three days later I’d come down with a chronic sinus infection that would last for weeks. I didn’t start linking my sinus infection to fake vanillin, until I decided to research causes of sinus infections.
My finding was, in fact, astonishing. Many people on e-groups said that after eating ice cream with artificial colors and flavors in they’d get a raging sinus infection. Ice cream, I thought, what does eating ice creams have to do with sinus infections? I decided there must be something more to my sinus infection than just ice cream itself. So I
I went to stores and read the ingredients on the ice cream labels. Half of the ice cream I had eaten, or bought, had vanillin in, and artificial flavors.
I again went to the Internet, to find out what the ingredient vanillin was made out of.
Research from the microbial organic geochemistry, of the university of Washington, stated that
“Artificial vanilla is composed of only two compounds, vanillin and ethyl vanillin, and lacks the hundreds of other compounds that add to the nuances of real vanilla.”
Research said that perhaps the most interesting thing about artificial vanilla is that it is made from the petroleum by-product Guaiacol. Yep, that's right - the artificial vanilla you buy at the store is made from oil byproducts. A dinosaur that died millions of years ago might be in your cookies.
I wondered if somehow I might be having an allergic reaction to this vanillin. But it didn’t make sense, because some weeks earlier I'd get really bad sinus troubles and I hadn’t touched anything with vanillin in. The only thing that I taken that was different than normal was Ibuprofen.

I then decided to find the exact ingredients in Ibuprofen. So I did a search on the internet and found and that Ibuprofen not only has artificial food colorings in it, but it also has artificial flavors in it, such as Strawberry/vanillin.
Now, I’m not totally sure that vanillin is the cause of my sinus troubles. Somehow the whole thing seems a little strange. So that's what started my interest in why such un-editable things are put in our foods. I decided to search the Internet for information regarding artificial flavors, colors and sweaters, and how they affect the body.

Here are some my interesting finds.

First

Splenda is an artificial sweeter, one that I’ve noticed is in many things. It’s in juices, in gum, in Yogurt, etc. .My sister’s voice lesson teacher decided to go on a diet and only use Splenda as a sweetener so she could lose weight.
M sister said that since her voice teacher had been using it, her teacher had become quite forgetful and air- headed. It bothered my sister so we decided to do some research.
We wondered if there might be a link to Splenda use and the side affects her voice teacher seemed to be having.

I came across an interesting article on the internet, By Marcelle Pick
“Sugar substitutes and the potential danger of Splenda — the public health experiment.”

Exerpts from it stated that.
“Products featuring Splenda are perceived as ‘natural’ because even the FDA’s press release about Sucralose parrots the claim that ‘it is made from sugar’ — an assertion disputed by the Sugar Association, which is suing Splenda’s manufacturer, (McNeil Nutritionals).”
She went on to state that
“The FDA has no definition for ‘natural,’ And that : Splenda contains three chlorine atoms.”
She say’s that: “ And that the manufacturer’s own short-term studies showed that Sucralose caused shrunken thymus glands and enlarged livers and kidneys in rodents. But in this case, the FDA decided that because these studies weren’t based on human test animals, they were not conclusive. Of course, there are countless examples of foods and drugs that have proved dangerous to humans that were first found to be dangerous to laboratory rats, and then again, countless others that have not. So the reality is that we are the guinea pigs for Splenda side effects.”

This is really interesting. In her article it said that,
“Observational evidence shows that there are side effects of Splenda, including skin rashes/flushing, panic-like agitation, dizziness and numbness, diarrhea, muscle aches, headaches, intestinal cramping, bladder issues, and stomach pain. These show up at one end of the spectrum — in the people who have an allergy or sensitivity to the Sucralose molecule. But no one can say to what degree consuming Splenda affects the rest of us.”

After reading this article it not only scared me that Splenda could be harmful, it went on to state that other sweeteners such as “Aspartame, Saccharin, Neotame are all sweetners that you would want to avoid, something that you wouldn’t want to eat.”
It said that “Almost all of the independent research into Aspartame found dangerous side effects in rodents. The FDA chose not to take these findings into account when it approved aspartame for public use. Over the course of 15 years, those same side effects increasingly appeared in humans. Not in everyone, of course — but in those who were vulnerable to the chemical structure of aspartame. As food additives, artificial sweeteners are not subject to the same gauntlet of FDA safety trials as pharmaceuticals. Most of the testing is funded by the food industry, which has a vested interest in the outcome. This can lead to misleading claims on both sides.”

“Aspartame, the main ingredient in Equal and NutraSweet, is responsible for the most serious cases of poisoning, because the body actually digests it. Aspartame should be avoided by most women, but particularly in those with neuropsychiatric concerns. Recent studies in Europe show that aspartame use can result in an accumulation of formaldehyde in the brain, which can damage your central nervous system and immune system and cause genetic trauma. The FDA admits this is true, but claims the amount is low enough in most that it shouldn’t raise concern.
Aspartame has had the most complaints of any food additive available to the public. It’s been linked with MS, lupus, fibromyalgia and other central nervous disorders. Possible side effects of aspartame include headaches, migraines, panic attacks, dizziness, irritability, nausea, intestinal discomfort, skin rash, and nervousness. Some researchers have linked aspartame with depression and manic episodes. It may also contribute to male infertility.

Her article went on to state that Stevia is one sugar that has no side effects.
“For this reason, we recommend the herb Stevia (Stevia Rebaudiana) over Sorbitol, as a natural, sweetener to our patients. Known in South America as the ‘sweet herb,’ stevia has been used for over 400 years without ill effect. Stevia has been enormously popular in Japan, where it has been in use for more than 20 years, now rivaling Equal and Sweet’N Low. It’s 200–300 times sweeter than sugar, so just a small portion of stevia will sweeten even a strong cup of tea.”

My sister copied this information off the internet and gave it to her voice teacher, when my sister found out the risks of eating artificial sweaters. She a also gave her teacher a sample of Stevia that we had on hand---so her teacher could try it.
I’m not sure if her teacher read the article, but the more I read about Splenda, the less I like it. It made me wonder how many more harmful artificial flavoring are in our foods.
An article
By Eric Schlosser explained it a little better to me.
It read.:
“ Consumers prefer to see “natural” flavors on a label, out of a belief that they are more healthful. Distinctions between artificial and natural flavors can be arbitrary and somewhat absurd, based more on how the flavor has been made than on what it actually contains.

"A natural flavor," says Terry Acree, a professor of food science at Cornell University, "is a flavor that's been derived with an out-of-date technology." Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes contain exactly the same chemicals, produced through different methods. It also went on to say that A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Burger King strawberry milk shake,” contains almost 99 ingredients.
He said that: “The federal Food and Drug Administration does not require companies to disclose the ingredients of their color or flavor additives so long as all the chemicals in them are considered by the agency to be GRAS ("generally recognized as safe"). This enables companies to maintain the secrecy of their formulas. It also hides the fact that flavor compounds often contain more ingredients than the foods to which they give taste. The phrase "artificial strawberry flavor" gives little hint of the chemical wizardry and manufacturing skill that can make a highly processed food taste like strawberries.”

It is my firm belief that the public need to be aware of what they’re buying. Artificial flavors, colors, and additives are sweet and yummy, in the short run. But in the long run they are sick and horrible.
We need to be aware of what we are feeding ourselves and what we are feeding our kids.

Moms, look at the ingredients in foods before you buy them. Just because it’s on the store shelves it doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat.

I realize that to many people, this information is a huge paradigm shift. That is totally understandable; it was for me. We live in a fast-food nation, a nation of knowledge-- and of stupidity. A nation where we are being kept so safe with all the preservatives and additives, and and high temperature cooking that we are slowly killing ourselves (in more ways than one)

If we are what we eat, “artificial” is what kind of body were slowly moving towards.And I'm not kidding.
I don’t think that any one person can completely swear off artificial colors, or flavors, since they are completely accepted and a part of our culture. Not to mention the stuff they're getting away with putting in our soaps, and shampoos/ the make up

. But, shouldn't more people know that were being killed from the inside out.
Toxic stuff is being a loud into our Grocery stores. I kind of find that disturbing. Don't you?

Sorry this is so long.

I wrote it/complied the info for a college paper/speech and decided to share.

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest."

Hi,

I've enjoyed reading Daily Paul posts for a long while, and now I figure it's time that I contribute a few things I've researched and found to be useful health wise.

Emergency or no emergency we all want to be healthy, right?

First off, I'd like to to give a few pugs for MsM. Its an amazing health food,and its suppose to help get rid of toxins in your body and clean out the blood.

If you put MSM on burns along with honey, fresh aloe vera and Neem cream, a really bad burn won't even blister----at least my burns didn't, and my they healed super fast and cut the pain in two.

I've even made eye drops out of MSM, it's suppose to get rid of tired eyes and cataracts. It's wonderful stuff!

Type it anywhere on the internet and you'll come up with some neat facts
Just make sure if you buy some, get the stuff that's pure.

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MSM has been proven to be rapidly metabolized by the body. Sulfur is found in all tissues measured within 24 hours of oral ingestion.

Sulfur has a rapid turnover in the body. Therefore it is very important to be sure that sulfur be replenished on a regular basis.

If our body doesn't receive the proper nutrition and the building materials it needs, it will produce unhealthy, dysfunctional cells that are deficient in the basic ingredients that constitute a healthy cell.

The human body is amazing and always tries to heal itself, but with deficient materials, it draws from other resources, and usually takes what it needs from other parts of the body.

If we give the body what it needs to heal itself, it will repair damaged parts and become healthy again. If we want a good flexible cell, capable of maintaining good health, we need to supplement our diets with MSM, to enable the body to heal itself.

If you are unable to take vitamin C, MSM will still work for you.
No Overdose With MSM.

The body will use what it needs, and after twelve hours, will flush any excess amounts out of the body.

If you want to maintain good healthy cells 24 hours a day, it is suggested you take MSM in the morning and evening.

The MSM will flush what the body doesn't retain semi-permanently every twelve hours, and because it is a free radical and foreign protein scavenger.

MSM cleans the blood stream, so allergies to food and pollens go away in about 3 or 4 days.

No Known Side Effects

MSM is odorless and does not produce intestinal gas or body odor which may occur with some other forms of sulfur.
HairTopia & MSM

The only side effects of taking MSM alone, or with other supplements like HairTopia, are stronger nails, softer skin and faster growing hair. This is because with MSM you have access to more sulfur.

The sulfur normally provided to the body by MSM is required for healthy collagen and keratin which are essential for healthy hair, skin and nails. Healthy hair is stronger hair and hair that can achieve its natural genetic growth patterns.

The body knows what it needs better than any doctor. It will use MSM where it is needed. Even if your body is experiencing more than one problem... give it a little extra MSM so it can provide more nutrition and heal itself.

Kefir
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The other link below is about Kefir, me and my mom make it all the time, and it makes me feel great. I sometimes use it as a face mask. Or a lotion. It can be used as a bath wash and a hair moisturizer/shaving cream. And you can use it on sun burns also.

There's a nice plus about kefir, because you don't have to refrigerant it. It's a great digest aid and helps get rid of bad bacteria.

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Copy and paste the links below.

Info on most interesting health wise stuffs.

http://cosmeticsdatabase.com/special/whatnottobuy/index.php?...

The first web-site is really helpful, it helps you figure out just how toxic certain brands of make up/shampoos are)

http://antiagingchoices.com/harmful_ingredients/toxic_ingred...

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/fashion-beauty/toxic-cosmet...
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These sites tells about the health benefits of MSM.

http://www.loweringcholesterol.net/herbal-remedies/msm/msm-b...
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The web site below tells about the health benefits of drinking Kefer. Kefir is a cultured, enzyme-rich food filled with friendly micro-organisms that help balance your "inner ecosystem." More nutritious and therapeutic than yogurt, it supplies complete protein, essential minerals, and valuable B vitamins.

* Kefir is simple and inexpensive to make at home.
* Kefir is used to restore the inner eco-system after antibiotic therapy.
* Kefir can be made into a delicious smoothie that kids love.
* Kefir is excellent nourishment for pregnant and nursing women, the elderly, and those with compromised immunity.

What if I'm lactose intolerant, don't do dairy
or don't digest milk products well -
is kefir right for me?
The beneficial yeast and friendly bacteria in the kefir culture consume most of the lactose (or milk sugar). Eat kefir on an empty stomach first thing in the morning before (or for) breakfast and you'll be delighted to find it can be easily digested -- as numerous people who have been lactose intolerant for years have discovered.

Copy and paste to learn more about Kefir

http://shop.bodyecology.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BE010

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NEEM

Neem Powder: Why This is a TOP Recommendation for Acne, Psoriasis, Dandruff, and Other Skin Disorders

Copy and past to learn more about NEEM

This stuff is like anti-bacterial juice.

http://bodyecology.com/07/10/04/neem_powder_acne_psoriasis_d...

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest."

Someone in the comments below was asking about UHT milk.

I'd never heard of it until alaskaron mentioned it the other day (thanks, alaskaron!!). I did some research, and found some good links for y'all! And you'll be happy to learn that both Borden and Hershey (yes, of Hershey chocolate fame) offer UHT milk with no rBST! Whoo hoo! Here are the links:

Shelf-stable Milk FAQ from Borden: http://www.diversifiedfoods.com/ShelfStableMilk.htm
(a good introduction, if you know nothing about UHT milk)

Borden's Shelf Stable Milk main page: http://www.bordenshelfstablemilk.com/borden/borden.htm

Diversified Foods, Inc: http://www.diversifiedfoods.com/
(Click on "products" and search for UHT or Shelf Stable milk)

Diversified Foods' line of Hershey products:
http://www.diversifiedfoods.com/DFI_HersheyAsepticUHTMilk_Fr...

Diversified Foods U.S. availability of Hershey products:
http://www.diversifiedfoods.com/retail/hershey/HersheyRetail...
(Don't stress if your state doesn't carry the product; you can still order by phone)

Information on Borden's 2% UHT milk:
http://www.diversifiedfoods.com/BordenUHT2%25WhiteMilk32oz.htm

According to Diversified Foods, UHT milk is available at Costco and Food4Less (sorry, I don't recall whether that's for Hershey or Borden).

The Hershey product is available in (of course) chocolate, as well as strawberry and -- get this! -- plain ol' milk.

Someone said they found a 32oz container of Borden's UHT milk at Big Lots for one dollar -- such a deal! No such luck at my local Big Lots!

You don't need fancy wine kit. Just juice, a glass gallon jug, some yeast, sugar and a condom or big balloon. Can make a fine wine similar to Mogan David grape wine.

I've been salvaging good, metal window screens from windows that are being replaced. If they are stacked with spacers between them, they represent several square yards of surface area for food drying. If the stack is covered with thin fabric and has a box fan blowing through it, the food can be dried in a couple of days and be free of flies and dust kittens that might otherwise be get in. A heat source would speed up the process. I also bought bulk salt and black pepper for making jerky and 360 canning jar lids that can be useful during hard times.

Today I cleaned out a local coin store of junk silver coins, his last two gold eagles, and one two-peso gold piece. He had no bullion. The owner says few people are bringing stuff in. He's never seen it this tight. In a minute here I will also purchase online some good, heavy, long-lasting boots and a pressure canner for meats. (I have a non-pressure canner that's fine for fruits.) I may pick up more socks and jeans too.

for the great info.
Recently there was another post on the DP that listed other things to stock up on. One was a type of milk. UHT perhaps?