Letters, Winter 2024

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THE MIRACLE OF RAW MILK KEFIR

I would like to share my experi­ence. I am a seventy-three-year-old woman who has struggled with two autoimmune conditions. I lost my thyroid to Hashimoto’s via conven­tional medicine. Also, my gut has been constipated, and I struggled with H. Pylori blocking my nutrition. I learned through functional medicine that health begins in the gut, so I did the H. pylori protocol, and that got fixed, but I was still struggling with various problems.

However, at the end of the H. pylori treatment, I tried some raw milk kefir. Oh my goodness, my entire microbiome changed! I no longer struggle with these problems. Cultured raw milk did it! I am so surprised. . . and pleased.

Ellen Smith-Tchakirides
Sheperdstown, West Virginia

STRUGGLE WITH TOOTH DECAY

I wanted to once again thank the Weston A. Price Foundation for keeping the wisdom and knowledge alive that Weston Price gathered.

I have been dedicating myself to the Wise Traditions diet for the last fifteen years or so, but it has taken me until recently to integrate certain aspects with full dedication.

I struggled for years with tooth decay and had all but given up hope in stopping its progress. Each time that I visited the dentist I had eight more cavities. This was very discouraging considering how well I was eating and how seriously I was taking my health.

After a few blood tests indicating I was still low in fat-soluble vitamins despite my efforts, I put my shoulder to the plow and deeply increased the amount of organ meats, cod liver oil and other sources of vitamins A, D and K2. Finally, I went to my dentist and got an unexpected report that all of my decay spots were hardened and no longer decaying! They did not even need to be filled.

In learning about multi-generation depletion, I realize that each of us has a different threshold of how much of nu­trients and fat-soluble vitamins we need to rebuild our health. Looking back at my history, I can see that I come from a lineage of people depleted in these nutrients for many generations, and it has taken much more for me to reclaim my health than it might for other people.

I wanted to share this experience because I think many of us may need far more nutrients than we think. And I would like to offer this as encourage­ment for those who have not been get­ting the results they want from eating a Wise Traditions diet—they may just need to incorporate even more nutrient density to be successful.

I did not take organ meats very seriously for the first decade of eating a Wise Traditions diet, mostly because they are very strong tasting and I did not grow up with these sorts of flavors. Now I see, based on my recent results, just how incredibly important organ meats are. They should not be underestimated as a cornerstone of nutrition.

My husband and I teach animal processing classes on the sheep ranch that we help tend. We have been learn­ing recipes that use all of the different organs and body parts. Eating nose to tail is truly a healing tradition.

See the below protocol I used to heal my enamel. Please note that this does not mean that I have no holes in my teeth. It means that in the places where there were holes, the secondary dentin is hardened, is no longer decaying and that the immune system of my mouth is now strong and stable.

Nastasha McGuirk
Bodega Pasture, California

MICROCHIPPING PETS

Great job on the recent podcast with John Moody about the proposed suite of changes to the beef industry, namely the Radio Frequency Identi­fication (RFID) program. I want to draw your attention to the other issue at play here. Electronic tagging, which includes microchipping, is harmful to the animals. Animals are extremely sensitive to electromagnetic frequen­cies and subjecting them to devices that can receive and emit a signal causes harm and suffering to them.

Arthur Firstenberg has document­ed this on his website, cellphonetask­force.org, with examples of racehorses, dogs and cats.

I should also point out that the United States’ recent requirement that all pets entering the U.S. have a micro­chip is problematic for the same reason. It also may give rise to microchipping becoming more commonplace and ac­cepted, not only for animals but also for humans.

S. Buckley
Colorado Springs, Colorado

DOMESTIC D

A few years ago I sent you an old article from Popular Mechanics about the high level of vitamin D in the liv­ers of Great Lakes burbot (a freshwater cod). Vitamin D in burbot liver oil exceeds that of cod liver oil, and is available in the U.S. easily, at least if you live near the Great Lakes.

The article seems to be based on a thesis from 1944 which contains ref­erences for the claim of finding eight times more vitamin D in burbot liver oil than in cod liver oil, and high amounts in sucker fish and carp waste. It also discusses oil in lake herring, plentiful in Michigan. Sucker fish are also in huge numbers in Michigan.

There are a lot of options for real vitamin D here in the U.S. without hav­ing to be held hostage by the Norwegian companies and worries about the gov­ernment interfering with the availabil­ity because of import controls or tariffs. Also the quality of most brands of cod liver oil has gone so far down in recent years, becoming overpriced and value­less. Carlson’s is mostly just synthetic vitamins. Lake fishing is much easier and accessible to anyone, even small fish companies or even individuals with their own boats. Who needs Norway?

Lastly, many years ago my sister went to visit a friend in Naples, Italy. While she was visiting, he got a cold. He immediately started eating nothing but fresh cooked sardines (sardines are immature herring). He said that everybody there does this—they eat only sardines when they get sick and the cold quickly goes away.

When she told me that, I started looking for fresh, not canned, sardines. I soon realized there were none any­where. I asked the seafood department at Whole Foods about fresh sardines, and the worker said they had to stop carrying them because they were rated “red,” meaning unsustainably over­fished. I knew that wasn’t true. I had seen tons of them before in the canned tuna aisle, I just didn’t want canned ones. I thought maybe that had changed recently so I went to the tuna aisle and there were hundreds of cans of sardines. I went back to the seafood guy and ask him why sardines could be so plentiful when canned, but unsustainably over­fished when fresh. He tried to think up an answer but couldn’t.

Eventually I found one small lo­cal family fish market in Philadelphia that had them regularly, but they were over eight dollars a pound, compared to a quarter-pound can of sardines at Walmart for eighty-eight cents, which is about three and one-half dollars a pound, with all the cleaning, processing and canning thrown in for free. I still have not found fresh sardines regularly available anywhere else. One Asian market had them for about four dollars a pound, and while they were whole, they were packaged in a bag which means they must have been cleaned or sanitized during the packaging process (like organic Romaine hearts are). Who knows what they’re sanitized with, and if it can be removed by rinsing.

So apparently sardines are unsus­tainably overfished unless, after you overfish them, you put them in toxic metal BPX-lined cans and heat them until they are dead. Then they’re sus­tainable.

Rob Bonadeo

Editor’s Note: Most commercial cod liver oil is “mo­lecularly distilled,” a process that heats the oil to very high temperatures, which destroys the naturally occurring vita­mins. Sometimes synthetic vitamins A and D are added back. The Weston A. Price Foundation recommends only cod liver oil that has been extracted without heat and contains only the original natural vitamins. It would be great to install small fermentation plants along the Great Lakes where fishermen could bring in their burbot and be paid for them. Then the fermentation plant owners could process, package and sell the oil.

NO GLASS BOTTLES

I had to stop eating anything, and especially drinking beer, out of cans about six months ago. They were caus­ing symptoms even after having just a few canned items. Beer is one of the worst, I assume because of the acid­ity and solvent (alcohol). Beer is now almost all in cans. As soon as you can buy beer of good quality, they force it to be put in cans which ruins it, just for a different reason.

It’s also not a coincidence that government sites like parks and so forth are requiring cans and banning bottles. That’s the government’s contribution, which I call passive force. Disney has the same policy.

It all started about fifteen years ago; just as craft brewing was making beer better, along came cans to make it worse. When micro-brewing started, one of the main reasons was to stop putting beer in cans because cans ruin beer. Now micro-brewing has come full circle to cans again and no one remembers the anti-can sentiment that started with micro-brewing.

Supposedly the switch to cans is for safety or whatever. That’s just an excuse. Bottles were fine for the last two hundred years, then all of a sudden they are dangerous? Nonsense. Brewers are going to cans solely because it’s cheaper to ship, store and transport them. The parks’ ban on bottles is just an encour­agement so that the coincidental nexus of needs of all parties just happens to match the elite’s desire to make sure all food is as poisonous as possible, especially medicinal alcohol. I’ve even seen vodka and organic olive oil in tin. Gross!

I was always curious as to what replaced the infamous BPA in canned food linings, since they made a big deal about replacing it in 2012, so I looked it up. It turns out that BPA has mostly been replaced with BPF and BPS, which according to Wikipedia, are “structurally almost identical to BPA” and “BPS shows almost identical ef­fects on the placenta as BPA, with both BPA and BPS altering almost identical sets of genes” and “BPF demonstrates similar endocrine and physiological disruptions as BPA, both in vitro and in vivo primary organoid cell cultures, especially demonstrating its estrogenic and anti-androgenic actions.”

Furthermore, “BPS and BPF are present in relatively high concentrations in different products, such as food prod­ucts” and it also is reported to cause obesity and diabetes. See the article “Exposure to Bisphenol A Substitutes, Bisphenol S and Bisphenol F, and Its Association with Developing Obesity and Diabetes Mellitus” at PubMed.

So, nothing’s changed; in fact, things have even gotten worse. “BPAF, BPB, BPF, and BPS have been shown to exhibit estrogenic and/or antiandrogen­ic activities similar to or even greater than that of BPA.” This, of course, is exactly what I assumed would be the case when I first heard about the BPA controversy, so no surprises here.

It seems obvious that a factor causing the gender dysphoria kids are having now is the cans. “Gender Dysphoria” is apparently just another phrase for “environmental estrogen poisoning.”

Rob Delamere
Santa Fe, New Mexico

HOMEOPATHY

I came back to homeopathy through the Weston A. Price Foundation jour­nals, with their persistently wonderful articles, which stimulated me finally to pick it up after my work life had become a little less strenuous. I have never looked back.

Everything that the Foundation said, I did—starting with raw milk— from which my family and I have reaped rich rewards. The act of actively hunting for nutrient-dense food does something to your mindset and psyche that leads to making other life changes—food being the lead seducer. And the results are quick.

And then the web sort of spreads. My grandson is a Weston A. Price baby (now a boy of five) and the vitality that exudes from his being is just incredible when I compare it to the many damaged children whose moms have followed pediatricians’ edicts. (The whoppers we’re being told and sold in the outside world sometimes make me lose faith in humanity. There are two boys deep on the spectrum among my daughter’s friends, that’s two out of four kids born so far, an unacceptably high damage rate.)

But I reckon, in the crucible of life the right eventually floats to the top by virtue of their high survival rate, so perhaps all is not lost.

I think many people came to WAPF from a place of very bad health, and are only now, in this generation, recover­ing. Like Pottenger’s cats, however, it takes several generations to make it all right.

I think our efforts need to be fo­cused on intergenerational education that sticks, not just doing the right thing for us and our children. My next-door neighbor never vaccinated her son, but did not educate him. He is now fully vaccinating his newborn child, and he thinks his mum was a kook. So, one step backwards. It would be marvelous if we could add a WAPF course to home and charter school curricula.

I think teaching people to fish— that is, education—is a first step to­wards health. And this can begin with simple things like gathering the right foods, which then send you down the rabbit hole of light, water, spirit, EMF, poisons and, in my case, homeopathy.

Sushima Gokhale, Chapter Leader
Sonoma, California

THE CURSE OF COTTONSEED

I found your article on gossypol, the toxin in cottonseed (Summer 2024), interesting and wide ranging. Whilst I have been aware of the problems due to the overuse of cottonseed oil, since my travels onto farms in the drier parts of Australia, I have noted two associated facts:

1. Animals in sparse dry paddocks have little grass to graze on but have their feed “supplemented” with ei­ther spent cottonseed or cottonseed-plus pellets.

2. Animals fed in this manner may still be “marketed” as grass-fed and grass-finished as opposed to feed lot-fed.

This link will take you to the Australian government website spew­ing out mis- or disinformation on the matter: business.qld.gov.au/industries/ farms-fishing-forestry/agriculture/ animal/industries/sheep/feed/health/ supplementary/cottonseed

I had already taken myself off lamb unless obtained from the better grass­lands of Tasmania or Eastern Victoria.

“The Oiling of America” was my introduction to the dangers of seed oils. Now I have been looking around for more information on gossypol and came across this interesting YouTube video which you may want to share: youtu.be/0Imlp722I5Y?si=FT-iLSpfe­FgM2SaV

Thanks for the Wise Traditions journal and the great work you continue to do.

Norman Appleton
Sunnybank, QLD, Australia

SIDEBAR

MY TEETH-HEALING REGIMEN
1 teaspoon Rosita, Droppi or Vassaburg cod liver oil or 6 capsules, half in morning, half in afternoon
6 capsules grassfed beef liver or 1 ounce beef or lamb liver daily
4-6 capsules oyster zinc (Smidge brand) or fresh oysters daily
1-2 tablespoons grassfed ghee or butter per meal
Premier Research Lab mineral drops in all my water
2-4 cups raw goat milk kefir
Seaweed extract capsules (for iodine), daily
2-4 grassfed eggs daily
Limit fruit to one piece per day
Plenty of raw cheese as a snack

Brushing with Shine tooth powder from OraWellness twice daily, and flossing; rinse teeth with water between meals All with a foundational Wise Traditions diet, all grains sprouted or fermented, plenty of bone broth, local vegetables, grassfed meat and raw dairy. Once my teeth stabilized, I dropped the oyster and seaweed as they were expensive, but have been using grassfed kidney capsules.

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