Raw Milk, Happy Baby
This is a short description of my experience with raw milk, which began over five years ago when I was diagnosed with systemic candidiasis. I hope that I am able to convey the extreme importance of raw milk’s positive effect on my health and the health of my children.
After consuming large, daily amounts of raw goat’s milk during my first pregnancy (totally free of complications), my first son was born easily and quickly with no drugs at all. He began eating kefir made with raw cow’s milk in his first year and later also drank plain, raw cow’s milk. You have never seen a healthier child! He is almost four now and I can count the number of illnesses he has had (all very mild) on one hand. He continues to enjoy clean, pure raw cow’s milk from pastured cows, and I am convinced that this is the main reason he stays so healthy when all the other children we know are constantly sick. As a side note, he is also extremely well-behaved and intelligent; he could read 20 of the 26 letters of the alphabet before his 2nd birthday!
When my second pregnancy occurred, I was unfortunately unable to find a source of raw milk for the first couple of months, having just relocated. During those weeks, my fetus’s palate failed to come together and little did I know that my second son would be born with a significant cleft lip and palate. Also, I was not taking cod liver oil at the time, so this condition cannot be blamed on vitamin A.
Fortunately, I was able to find a good, clean source of raw milk later in my pregnancy and practically lived on it. Again, I had a beautiful, drug-free birth. And despite the cleft, I was soon delighted to find that I had given birth to a very happy baby who was also extremely healthy, strong, and hardy, according to the doctor’s midwife. Because of the cleft, my son could not nurse. I pumped for him, but fearing that I was not producing enough milk, I began to supplement with raw milk formula that I made according to the recipe provided by the Weston A. Price Foundation. To my surprise (and maternal disappointment), my son seemed to prefer the formula, and to digest it with much less difficulty than my breast milk. So I began to rely more heavily on the formula, and finally I switched to using the formula exclusively. Before my son was one month old, he was laughing long, deep laughs and he smiled all day, especially in response to another person’s smile. Today, as my son approaches six months of age, I am constantly told that he is the “happiest baby” anyone has ever seen, and that his dexterity is out-of-this-world, that he is incredibly alert (from day one), and that he is exceptionally strong.
The raw cow’s milk formula also helped my son reach the mandatory weight for his cleft-repair surgery, which was set for three and a half months of age. The doctors were worried that he would not reach the 10-pound minimum by the surgery date, as he was born two weeks early at 6 1/2 pounds, and cleft babies are notorious for having trouble gaining weight due to difficulty eating. Not only did my son meet that weight, but exceeded it by four whole pounds! We were also warned that cleft babies suffer many ear infections, but my son has not had one! He has never been sick at all. He came through surgery with flying colors. Even the nurses commented that he did “much better” than most cleft babies after their first surgery. Not only that, but the nurses had prepared us for how the lip would look after the stitches were removed. They told us the scar would remain red for about eight months. Twenty-four hours after my son’s stitches were removed, there was no redness at all, except for a tiny area under the nostril. One could hardly tell that he had been sewn up only five days earlier. He truly seemed to be an exception to all the rules in the “cleft” world.
It horrifies me to think what the state of my son’s health would be if I had given him formula from a can. I now see that raw milk is a prime contributor to the happy, healthy lives we were all meant to lead. It is more than a shame that producers and consumers of raw milk are facing legal difficulties regarding this perfect food–it is a crime of heinous proportion. But I am confident that as more people’s lives are transformed by the nourishing, life-giving properties of raw milk, these difficulties will diminish, and all of our children will once again drink raw milk and be healthy and happy!
Michelle Eschbaugh-Soha
Denton, Texas
Not Supposed to Happen
Two years ago I was diagnosed with primary severe established osteoporosis (two back breaks). I’m 28 now and the doctors could find no cause for my condition. I got my bone density test results back last week and my doctor was surprised! I have had a significant increase in bone mass!
According to medical science, this is not supposed to happen. Here’s the real kicker, I haven’t even been taking calcium supplements; my treatment includes just prayer and whole foods, including raw milk from Organic Pastures Dairy. I had eaten an all-raw diet for six months prior to adopting the WAPF principles and actually had a slight decrease in bone mass last April. Now, I no longer have osteoporosis but osteopenia, and according to my calculations, I will have no signs of either in three years. That’s a modern-day miracle!
By the way, I grew up drinking tons of pasteurized milk and eating white flour, sugar and margarine.
Joan Rogers
Springfield, Illinois
Pony Milk
I have greatly enjoyed your website in general and am particularly interested in the discussions of raw milk. Unfortunately, I live in a little country subdivision and while it is okay to have horses and chickens, it’s not okay to have cloven hoofed animals. I did find a lady who sold raw goat milk but it was a 20-mile drive which made the cost rather prohibitive.
I glanced out into my small pasture one morning and noticed my Shetland pony foal eagerly guzzling down mom’s milk, at which point I started to research on Google the nutritional qualities of mare’s milk. I was really surprised to discover that nutritionally speaking mare’s milk was supposed to be the closest to human breast milk.
I have been milking my little mare now for two weeks and am obtaining approximately 1 quart a day which is more than adequate for my small household. Through much research I discovered that the optimum way to milk a mare is to separate her from her foal first thing in the morning and then go out and milk at 2 1/2-hour intervals. Now that I have had a little bit of practice, I can easily acquire half a quart at each milking.
Commercial horse dairies in Belgium milk five times a day, but as this would result in more than I need, I simply put the mare and the foal back together at noon each day. It is necessary to keep the foal on the mare in order for her to continue producing milk.
There are many people who have horses for recreational purposes who could easily also use them to generate a milk supply for their own household. And if your needs are small, I recommend buying a Shetland pony. The modern Shetland is extremely docile, stays fat and sassy on the most modest of grass pastures, is well-known for its longevityp–30 years is not uncommon–and the milk has a very sweet taste. My son prefers his with a dash of pure vanilla and a sprinkling of cinnamon!
Stacy Hofman
Colville, Washington
A Bad Virus
We have had a very bad virus rampaging this area for the last few months and various members of my family came down with it, some of them quite sick. I had been consuming my coconut oil but after it cleared up my sinus infection, I cut back on the dosage due to my reflux. However, when I started to succumb to the flu, I increased my consumption and the flu cleared up in a couple of days.
Regretfully I did not put my mother, who is 88 years old, on coconut oil as a precaution. She ended up in the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors were at one stage discussing which antibiotic they could give her as the ones they had her on weren’t working. Whilst they were discussing it at one stage I was standing by and inwardly screaming,”Give her coconut oil!” but knew I didn’t dare speak out.
Yesterday when I visited her I took in a jar of coconut oil as I was to have seen her doctor and as I thought “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I would ask him. She was not eating or drinking which is concerning them greatly. Her complaint was that she felt nauseous every time she tried to eat or drink. Mind you, one look at the hospital food and I felt nauseous myself!
When I arrived to see mum she showed me a bottle of a so-called nutrition supplement she was supposed to drink. She asked me to have a look at it before she would attempt it. Well, one just about needed a magnifying glass to read the ingredients, but I managed it. Amongst all the laboratory produced ingredients were vegetable oils (probably canola and soy) plus soy lecithin. If mum has bread with soy flour she develops asthmatic symptoms and gets quite breathless, so consuming soy with the way her lungs still were gave me the excuse to tell her doctors not to give it to her. I only needed to tell her there was soy in the drink and she knew immediately that she should not touch it.
The consultant then suggested a protein milkshake instead. I shuddered to think what could be in it also! He was discussing just how they could get her to drink fluids when I asked him whether there was anything I could bring to her from home. He said that anything that I could think of that she would drink would be good. I mentioned a couple of things which he gave me the nod for, and then I thought “OK, here goes.”
I told him that I drank coconut oil for my health and would he agree to her drinking some, taking it out of my bag at the same time. Well, his eyes lit up like light bulbs. “Marvelous,” was his response. I nearly collapsed on the spot! The look on the faces of the junior doctor and the nurse were a picture. Complete shock!
The consultant then explained that he had worked in Manila for several years and coconut oil was the best thing one could either use externally or internally, or better still both at the same time, for cuts and burns. He then went on to explain that the Islanders use nothing else.
On his departure from mum’s bed he said to me, “By the way make sure your doctor keeps a close eye on your thyroid gland with regular blood tests whilst you are consuming coconut oil.” So he understood about coconut oil’s thyroid-supporting benefits as well.
Needless to say it took me a while to calm down from discovering that mum actually had a consultant who not only knew about the benefits of coconut oil, but fully agreed to mum being given it whilst in hospital.
Jenny Smith
Mosgiel, New Zealand
Suppressing Fever
My 19-month-old daughter Sarah, under the temporary custody and care of her grandparents, was administered prescription liquid Tylenol around the clock for any “fever” just 99 degrees F or above. This effectively suppressed her body’s natural fever response, all in the name of her “comfort,” in response to a localized infection she was attempting to fight off, which started in her chest after life-saving heart defect surgery.
This benign strep and staph infection spread from that chest wound area to her heart and then to her whole body. Very harsh, strong and very specific synthetic antibiotics (which had no measurable effect on the infection because the pathogens were embedded in thrombocytes), along with a diet of high-sugar Pediasure for approximately six months prior, eventually killed Sarah, whose heart muscle, brain, lungs and other areas became systemically infected and damaged.
The doctors admit that pathogens such as benign strep and staph metabolize and feed on glucose, but they claim that medical studies show that a high-sugar diet leads to more pediatric recoveries than a low-sugar hospital stay.
Her primary doctor continues to insist that fever is just a by-product of an inflammatory response and has absolutely no effect on helping the human body fight off any pathogenic infection. I asked him why the human body produces fever in response to infection, isn’t this God’s design? And he replied, “Just what God’s design is subject to interpretation and opinion,” or something like that, and kept side-stepping the issue with talk about how fever response is just a by-product of the inflammatory response, as if it were more important to suppress inflammation then to allow fever. He said my idea that elevated bodily core temperature assisting the human body in fighting localized infection was just one of the many common “medical misconceptions” out there.
David Jones
Orange Park, Florida
Soaked Grains and Ginger
Just had a call from a farmer who wanted to pass on this information. Obviously grass is the best option for cattle, however here in southeast Queensland we’re having a bad drought with very strict water restrictions–we can only water by hand with a bucket on certain days during certain hours. Some areas aren’t even allowed to water with a bucket.
Anyway, there’s not much grass about. So with grain as one of the few options, this farmer is finding that if he soaks the grain for twelve hours with grated ginger before feeding the cattle, the addition of the grated ginger seems to assist its digestibility. Also, he’s finding it seems to reduce the amount of food required. We thought your farmers in the US would be interested!
Julie Phillips
Brisbane, Australia
Statin Payments
You may have read that doctors receive payment or bonuses for prescribing statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs. I’m a chapter leader in Kauai, and a family physician, so I’m in a good position to fill in some details about how doctors actually get paid more for writing more statin prescriptions. The mechanism is a little cumbersome to describe clearly, but I’ll take a stab at it.
We have a series of “quality measures” that are tracked by the insurance company. One quality measure is the number of mammograms we do on our patients between ages 40 and 69, another is that we send our diabetic patients to the eye doctor once a year for retinal exams. For our patients who carry a diagnosis of “coronary artery disease,” we have to write them a prescription for a cholesterol-lowering drug. If any one doctor doesn’t follow any one of these imperatives, he loses points toward a cash bonus, and the entire group is similarly penalized. As you can imagine, there is lots of peer pressure to prescribe!
Actually, we don’t get our bonus unless the patient goes and buys the drug or gets the test or sees the eye doctor and so on, so it’s not enough just to write the prescription, we have to talk up the drug enough to get them to go out and buy it. Currently, there are only a few means by which a person can be labeled as a patient with coronary artery disease. Having a heart attack is one, and having abnormal results on heart tests (like angiograms) is another. Diabetes is now considered a “coronary artery disease equivalent” and so, in the near future, doctors may be required to get all our patients who have type one or type two diabetes to take their statins, or lose more money.
These HMOs are insurance companies like Blue Cross, which offer their clients (employers and patients) HMO programs. The HMO plan we have is offered by HMSA (Hawaii Medical Something Something). For whatever reason, HMSA wants to offer an HMO program for people, and doctors who participate as providers must comply with the rules of the program and accept payments according to the rules. There are clear benefits to pharmaceutical companies in this structure but no obvious reason why HMSA would want to encourage people to buy expensive drugs that HMSA must pay for. One might speculate that there are some quid-pro-quo relationships between the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, but I have no idea what they are. However the ties are structured, I feel, as do many other scientists, that these kinds of business relationships lead to behaviors that pose real threats to patient care, and to human health in general. Because industrial connections like this fund most research, they distort the scientific process and are far more insidious, invisible, and totalitarianistic than expensive dinners and trips to Hawaii, which are what the media would have us believe is the sum total of the problem.
By the way, the bonus is actually not a bonus at all. This is where it gets Orwellian. We give up a certain percentage of the payment for accepting HMO patients, and we get it all back, in theory, if we meet all of our quality measures. We never do because of computer glitches which continually fail to track our prescribing, testing, and referring patterns accurately. Nobody can explain why we’ve agreed to accept HMO insurance plans, but we seem to feel we have no choice. And we will have less choice before long; Medicare is planning to begin similar programs. Each of these programs takes more money away from the doctors and gives it to middle managers, ensures that drug companies get more money, and that expensive tests of limited value are done more often.
These are some reasons why savvy business people are going into “alternative” medicine where they benefit from cash payments and total autonomy. Several here on Kauai are making millions.
Catherine Shanahan MD
Kalaheo, Hawaii
Made With Love
Thank you for all your good information on your website. I particularly like your emphasis on spiritual food preparation–food made with love. It touched on the process I recently went through in what I termed My Family Experiment at the beginning of the year.
One of the big drivers of “the experiment” came during a time when I was reflecting on my time working in the corporate world. I felt that while women thought they had won independence and freedom, they lost connection to their important role in the ecosystem we call family and one big area was in relation to food preparation. I pondered on my own feelings on the state of my family at that time, my own state and feelings as I went about preparing the evening meal. Mothers, wives or even men who take on that role are part of “the glue” in the family. Just because it can’t be measured in dollars and cents doesn’t mean that it lacks measurable value.
One reason we are experiencing so much family pain today is because that “food preparation” glue is missing. I am not saying this is women’s fault–absolutely not. It’s just that we, as a “modern” culture, have changed something in the family ecosystem without really understanding the full ramifications of that change and without making other complementary changes to compensate.
This year change came into my life which afforded me more flexibility with my time (and not without making sacrifices). I made a conscious effort to buy organic food from ethical suppliers and commenced preparing the food with love and joy. I dedicated time each week to finding produce that made me excited just by looking at it, then I would plan for the type of meal that would suit the weather conditions. For instance, as we headed into winter, I made pies, stews and soups with homemade stock. Each evening as my family came home, I would watch them shift and change as the aromatherapy from my kitchen would permeate their bodies and transform their thoughts from the woes of the day to the wonder at the quintessential “What’s for dinner, Mum?” I truly understood the premise that “There are more ways than one of allowing the Spirit of God to enter the flesh of man.”
Each evening we dine by candlelight and we have started saying grace. What a wonderful word–as U2 say in the song, “… it’s the name of a girl. It’s also a thought that changed the world.” With that line ringing in my head, I pondered how could I bring more grace into my life? The most graceful thing I could do was to stop expecting anything from anyone else. To stop thinking that the change was “out there” when the change starts “in here.” So we start each meal thinking and paying homage and giving thanks to the human energy, plants and animals that are sacrificing their time or life so that we may sustain ours.
Then once I knew my family was hooked into the energetics of this wondrous food, I slowly encouraged them to put the fork and knife down in between mouthfuls. To acknowledge that they were hungry, and that the meal was wonderful, but that it wasn’t going anywhere and was meant to be savored. I also started to involve my step-daughter in the preparation process. Baked chicken schnitzel has become her signature dish, where she only requires me to trim the chicken thighs and she takes care of the rest. Dinner may still take an hour to prepare and only 20 minutes to consume, but I am convinced that these small steps, led by me taking responsibility for my part to play (regardless of whether I thought that others should be helping), have made a drastic difference. Meal times are a real joy, and they have allowed me to guide my family to greater health, peace and loving togetherness.
Rossana Lowgren
Sydney, Australia
His Face Lit Up
I enjoyed helping out at the Foundation table at the recent Green Conference in Washington, DC. It was one of the most rewarding opportunities that I have gotten to do in a long time! There is a genuine interest out there and to see the looks on people’s faces when they realized that they, too, could have such a wonderful “way of life” was so exciting.
The most interesting person I talked to was a guy who was probably in his late twenties. He asked for some raw milk information, which I gave him. He mentioned that when he lived in Poland, all he drank was raw milk. As we were talking, he asked whether I had ever heard of kefir. I told him that I make it and that it is very easy to make. He told me that he really misses homemade kefir. He had found it in the stores but, it just wasn’t the same–made with pasteurized milk and loaded with sugar. He also mentioned rye kvass and several other fermented drinks. Every time he mentioned them, his face lit up.
I talked about Dr. Price and his travels and what he discovered. I also mentioned that he could have all of these wonderful benefits that he had in Poland right her in the US thanks to the work of our local chapters. It was so refreshing, after lots of vegans and their we-love-soy-no-matter-what messages, to meet someone who really knows what needs to happen. He just needed a push in the right direction.
About those die-hard vegans: I mentioned that the soy crops are genetically modified. A lot of them doubted the health risks of soy so I tried a different angle. It really worked well. As I pointed out, they obviously want to take really good care of their bodies so, why would they want to put something in their systems that was not 100 percent natural? That hit home–they had not thought of the soy issue that way.
Taaron Meikle
Reston, Virginia
Misguided Education
As an undergraduate Nutrition major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I am shocked and disgusted at the content of our nutrition classes. At the same time, I am amazed at the poor health of the entire department. My professors, who have PhD’s in nutrition are either obese or noticeably underweight. The information they teach is just plain wrong. We spent half a class period bashing coconut oil and hearing about how bad saturated fats are for your heart. However, the professors find no problem in ultra-pasteurized milk, diet sodas (which most nutrition majors are addicted to), and phytate-filled dry cereals. My biggest problem is that all of the students believe what is taught. I mean, why wouldn’t they? It is a university program so of course the information is trustworthy!
The best example of a misguided nutrition professor is my writing professor. She is a vegan advocate and a writer for many vegetarian groups. She is extremely thin, has very wrinkly and mottled skin, and thin gray hair. And she’s only in her 40s! She always appears very nervous and gets tremors in front of the class, even though she’s been teaching for years. I do not understand how she thinks she is healthy. I’m not the only one who notices just how bad she looks. I was skimming over one of her articles about “healthy” vegan pregnancy where she explains the need to supplement with vitamin D and B12. She explains how opponents of a vegan diet during pregnancy are wrong. I can’t help but think that an ideal diet should be able to provide all the necessary nutrients without supplementation. Certainly, a traditional diet during pregnancy would be rich in animal foods that naturally provide everything the mother and growing fetus needs.
This same professor instructed us on which websites are acceptable to use in our research papers. Among the credible websites are those funded by the FDA, USDA, and ADA. If these are credible sources of health information, why are so many Americans so unhealthy? Why should we be limited to information approved as “valid” and ignore information not yet backed by the government. I’m sure she would take one look at the WAPF website and give a huge thumbs down. I think it is the responsibility of young, eager nutritionists to learn as much as they can in all areas, whether it agrees or disagrees with the currently accepted view.
Take trans fats, for example. Research was manipulated to make them appear healthier than saturated fat and no one wanted to consider any alternative point of view. Now, the issue of trans fats is popular. The “discovery” that they are bad for us isn’t a recent one. The facts were there all along, but no one would listen. This is what is happening to all the useful information that your website provides. To ignore this information is to be ignorant.
I feel that I have no voice in the program, because I cannot compete with what the textbook says. I am afraid to speak my mind, because every time I voice my opinion, it is ignored. It is ironic that people comment all the time about how healthy and thin I am. Little do they know I slather on the butter, make crispy cashews and seek out raw milk. I actually avoid grocery shopping with nutrition majors because they might comment on the full-fat plain yogurt and real butter that I buy. If only they would put the pieces together
Yvonne Brown
Amherst, Massachusetts
Circus of Synergy
In the Fall 2006 edition of Wise Traditions, there is a paragraph in Caustic Commentary relating GM’s financial loss to its health care costs. The paragraph states, “GM’s health- care costs are $4 billion more than Toyota’s because all health care in Japan is provided by government rather than employers.” It’s not so simple. Most Toyotas sold in the United States are built in the United States by American workers who have less health coverage than GM workers. While investing in worker health care should not be an inherently bad business decision, American medicine tends to make it so. As has been well described in Wise Traditions, workers with generous health plans regularly get their blood pressure and blood cholesterol measured, and are then prescribed drugs that are really toxic for diseases that are largely imaginary. Toyota has an edge over GM not only because its health-care cost per American worker is less, but also because its workforce is less poisoned with pharmaceuticals.
Another paragraph of the same Caustic Commentary concludes, facetiously, with the statement, “Perhaps ‘complete decline in the power of reason’ should be added to the list of side effects from cholesterol-lowering drugs.” There is reason to suspect, seriously, that GM executives suffer from pharmaceutically impaired judgment. In his excellent book, Generation Rx, Greg Crister has some interesting things to say about Medco, a company that has GM as a client. Medco began as a pharmaceutical benefit manager, a company that helps large health plans to extract better pill prices from pharmaceutical companies. After being purchased by Merck, Medco’s role expanded to include keeping health plans abreast of the latest guidelines in pharmaceutical overuse and providing patient/consumers with an interactive website. The Merck sales force uses the Medco database to help identify physicians who write off-label prescriptions, and then encourages such physicians to write even more off-label prescriptions. Medco has helped keep GM and Ford, another Medco client, in the vanguard of pharmaceutical overconsumption. Is it any wonder that both GM and Ford are on the ropes financially?
In light of the “circus of synergy” described above, it seems likely that many GM executives suffer from statin-induced poor concentration and depression. Big Pharma has a remedy for the depression. Antidepressants, in turn, open up new avenues for pharmaceutically impaired judgment. Might there not be a connection between drugs that tend to make people obsessed with violence and GM’s decision to market urban assault vehicles in an era of declining oil reserves? Isn’t there a lot of projection going on when GM management blames the company’s financial woes on the workers’ health-care plan?
Einar Dale
San Rafael, California
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