Blog #89 What
Eating Organically Can Do
Adhering to an organic,
whole food diet can help not only the planet, but individual health.
Organically grown produce means little or no pesticides, and the pesticides
used, if any, are not toxic to humans.
Additionally, raising organic crops a fertilizers results in soil that
is more alive, healthy, and richer in nutrients. These nutrients are absorbed by vegetation
which in turn are eaten by animals higher on the food chain. Because these crops are low in toxins and high
in nutrients, they will help contribute to the growth of healthier animals,
including humans. At this time, many
pesticides are found in mother’s milk.
Fish and other seafood contain pesticides as well. The higher on the chain an organism feeds,
the more pesticides it will have in its body.
I’m going to relate two
personal experiences in this blog today.
I’ll start with my puzzlement at my own transient feelings of depression
un-based in any life experiences. The
one correlation I could find was that each time, I had just eaten Mahi-mahi, a
medium to large sized dolphinfish that swims close to shore, in areas that tend
to have a lot of debris. They especially
are found tropical and sub-tropical gulf coasts. Since there is a positive correlation between
depression and mercury poisoning, and since I have had a lot of mercury
exposure in the past, from many mercury fillings, and since Mahi-mahi are the
most mercury toxic fish I have eaten, I think there likely is a correlation between
my brief feelings of depression (lasting less than 24 hours) and consumption of
that type of fish. Additionally, since Mahi-mahi
tend to swim in waters that are cluttered with debris, this would make them likely
to absorb more than their share of some environmental pollutants. These pollutants would then be transferred to
the animals higher on the food chain.
Farmers, who work with
pesticides regularly and at higher levels than the general population, have an
above average rate of depression.
According to a study published in The Annals of Epidemiology, year of
publication 2002, Aug 12 (6) p. 389 – 94, farm workers exposed to pesticides
had an almost six fold increase in depression compared with the average
population. Organophosphates are
especially widespread and toxic and have been documented to be correlated with
depression. One organophosphate is
Round-up.
I will relate one more
incident that demonstrated to me and also to one of my friends how important it
can be to eat organically. One of my
friends, an MD and biochemist, called me several years after she had moved to
New Jersey and told me that she had become very ill and no one could discover
why. After several years of housebound
existence, one perceptive physician tested her for Lyme’s disease. She came up positive. Several courses of antibiotics and other
treatments started my friend on the path to recovery. After a couple of years, she recovered most
of her energy and was able to work outside her home part-time. The diabetes that developed with the onset of Lyme’s cleared
up. Finally, she just had one notable
remaining symptom, which would not budge, no matter what she tried. My friend is very knowledgeable about Chinese
herbal medicine and acupuncture, but she did not respond to these
treatments. After working in vain on
this problem for about a year, she remembered that I always tried to eat organically. She had thought this was kind of silly, but
had indulged me. Now, she decided to try
eating 100 % organic to see if this would help her skin. Three weeks on an 100 % organic diet and her
skin cleared up completely. She called
me with the news.
Although it amazed her, it
was no surprise to me. The body is
always being exposed to, creating and eliminating toxins via the urine, feces,
and sweat. Other paths of elimination
are through phlegm, sputum and respiration (carbon-dioxide and other substances
are expelled with each exhale).
Sometimes, however, the body is so overwhelmed with toxins that they overtax
the blood and lymphatic systems, and consequently must find their way out of
the body via the skin in the forms of pimples, boils, rashes, cysts, and
more. This is what happened to my friend. Then,
when her toxic load was reduced, her kidneys and liver could handle the toxic
load by themselves. To this day, she
eats totally organic and continues to be in good health, with clear skin.
This blog’s offer: feel free to contact me with questions about
dependable sources of organically, biodynamically and otherwise responsibly
raised foods. If you are willing to keep
a food diary for a week, then for a small charge, I will give you some
suggestions based on your history and food diary.
