Stay Healthy For Preparedness With Your Weight

It occurred to me that readers might not be aware that calculators are available on the internet to help you know if your weight is right for your height and age. I just checked my own and I liked the one on the Center for Disease Control (CDC). They tell you whether you are in the normal, overweight or obese weight range and what your BMI or Body Mass Index is. Your BMI is an estimate of the ratio of fat to muscle in your body.

You can not be well prepared for a disaster unless you do your best to maintain good health. If you are sick, you will not be able to cope as well with a disaster situation, as you would if you are in good condition.

It is not possible to even know what your physical condition is for weight, unless you know if you are normal or weigh too much. Nice online calculators are a tool to help you figure out how you are doing in the weight area. 

There is a great deal of variation in what online calculators tell you about your weight. Several of them informed me that I am underweight, which is pretty funny, since I just managed to lose enough weight to get to the top of  my normal range, according to the CDC calculator. I think that one seems to be closer to accuracy than most of the others for me. 

Part of the way that you can tell which online calculator to believe is what your eyes tell you when you look in the mirror. Do you have a roll or several of them around your middle? Even if an online calculator tells you that your weight is normal or below, having too much fat around your middle, means that you are at greater risk for having health problems like heart attacks.

The CDC BMI calculator is linked below. It will give you an idea of how you are doing with your weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html


If you put "weight chart age height" into a search engine you should get plenty of other sites to help you check your weight in relation to your age and height. Some of them will probably tell you how to calculate your BMI as well, but I prefer to have the site calculate it for me. 

Other sites wanted me to do arcane math contortions to figure it out myself. The CDC is not only closer to what I think is actually happening with my weight, they are nice enough to set up their site to calculate my BMI for me and for readers who might like to have it do the same for them.

Please check on how you are doing in the weight area so that you will know what to do to keep yourself healthy. If you find that you, like many others around the world, need to lose weight and eat better, then you can use my blog to help you with that. Use Google search engine to look up which of my blog posts are about healthy diets and nutrition. 

I now use allrecipes.com to find healthy recipes. The site will give you recipes for special diets, or to use a certain ingredient, or several ingredients. I like the idea that you can look in your fridge and see what you have, then look at allrecipes, to see what you can make with your fridge contents.

May you stay healthy and happy, and therefore ready for any emergencies that may come into your life.

A Cheap Natural Way To Control Anemia

The problem of anemia for women did not use to be as widespread as it is today. The reason for that is our cookware. Most of us use some sort of non-stick coated pots and pans. It is those pans that we have used to cause the problem with anemia.

The simple solution is to use cast iron cookware. You don't even have to use it for all of your cooking. One pan that you use every day will do the job of getting rid of anemia.

When you cook in cast iron cookware a small amount of iron leaches out of the cast iron pot, pan or skillet into the food being cooked in it. That small amount of iron in your food every day is enough to stop you from becoming anemic most of the time. 

One of the reasons we stopped using cast iron cookware is that we don't want to do any pot scrubbing. Once you season your cast iron cookware, it isn't much more trouble to take care of than non-stick cookware. You do need to wash it right away when you use it and not use soap on it unless you want to season it again. 

It is a lot less trouble to wash out one cast iron pan than it is to be sick and anemic. When you are anemic, your immune system is weak and you seem to catch every stray disease that goes by. 

Feeling tired and listless from being anemic is not fun either. Between having colds and flu all the time and feeling tired even when you don't have a cold or the flu, it is hard to have a life when you are suffering from anemia.

Becoming extremely anemic can be life threatening. Once you are anemic enough, your body stops processing some of the food that you eat and it gets into a cycle that just keeps getting worse. When you are that anemic, it is called pernicious anemia, or Biermer's or Addison's Anemia.

The part of your food that your body stops processing is vitamin B12. This vitamin is necessary to make good red blood cells. If you don't have good red blood cells your body will not get enough oxygen where it needs it. That is why you get tired when you are anemic. You are not getting enough oxygen throughout your body.

Here is a link to an article about pernicious anemia: http://www.medicinenet.com/pernicious_anemia/article.htm

This article talks about doctors giving people with pernicious anemia vitamin B12 shots. 

I have been sseverly anemic several times and my doctor perscribed some pills for it. The pills had horrible side effects. Your solid wastes turn black and you get horribly constipated. I used to bleed when I used the toilet from using that medicine. 

If you get so anemic that your doctor wants you to take vitamin B12 shots or the pills, you had better let him (her), or you can die. That is what used to happen to people who had pernicious anemia in the past.

Once you are better from your anemia, you might like to try the cast iron pan, pot or skillet. Washing out one pot every day is a lot better than getting shots or taking pills that make you constipated, and getting sick and tired all the time.

Keeping Poisons Out Of Your Diet

I believe that staying healthy is important to being prepared for emergencies. You will have greater difficulties coping with emergencies if you are not healthy. During an emergency medical care can be very difficult to get. It is hard to work on preparedness if you are sick. Knowing how to stay well is a very good preparedness skill and knowing how to care for yourself and others with minor illness is another preparedness skill.

I think a lot of your health is affected by your diet. Good health is dependent on good nutrition. Just eating a balanced diet is not enough any more. We have to think about extras like GMOs and pesticides. 

I have already posted about GMOs. There are four GMO foods that are most common. They are: Soy, Corn, Cotton, and Canola. They make oil out of the last three and all four end up in a lot of food that are not necessarily labelled to let you know the GMOs are in them.

I found a list of foods to avoid because of having a lot of pesticides on them. I also found a list of foods that are relatively free from pesticides. I made a small print list of all of these foods, both good and bad ones, to carry in my wallet for shopping. I thought readers might like the list as well:

Wallet-sized list of good and bad foods for GMO's and pesticides.

Here is a link to the article about the dirty foods loaded with pesticides and the relatively clean foods:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat-safe/Dirty-Dozen-Foods

The list of the Dirty Dozen Foods changes from year to year. This is due to different growing conditions that cause growers to use more pesticides or not. If the weather is especially wet, for example, more fungicides will be sprayed. If the crop is hit by a large infestation of a particular insect, the food will be sprayed for that.

There is another site that lists the pesticides that have been tested as being on a particular food. It is more specific than the Dirty Dozen list. This can be helpful if you want to avoid specific types of contaminants on your foods. It also lists the way the type of contaminant affects you. One that I find particularly edifying is neurotoxins. I believe that those would be especially likely to encourage autoimmune diseases and Alzheimers and Dementia.

Here is a quote from the site:

Learn More: ADHD & pesticide residues

"A new study out of Harvard shows that even tiny, allowable amounts of a common pesticide class can have dramatic effects on brain chemistry. Organophosphate insecticides (OP’s) are among the most widely used pesticides in the U.S. & have long been known to be particularly toxic for children. This is the first study to examine their effects across a representative population with average levels of exposure. Finding: Kids with above-average pesticide exposures are 2x as likely to have ADHD."

Here is the link:
http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/index.jsp

You can also search the site by pesticides that you particularly wish to avoid, or the types of by products that the pesticides break down into. These can be very toxic and have different effects than the original pesticides.

I cannot afford to eat only organic foods. This information is especially useful to those of us who are forced to eat non organic foods. We can avoid the worst culprits this way.

I hate to tell you this, if you don't already know, but there is another problem that we are dealing with. Organic foods can be contaminated by pesticides too. Some of this can be airborne or come from dust or water. 

This is one reason why I have ambitions of living out in the Alaskan Bush and growing as much of my own food as possible. I would like to avoid all pesticides. I think I have a better chance of doing it that way.

If you live in or near a large city, even if you grow everything you eat, you are getting pesticides. It is tough to avoid all that nasty stuff. I hope my wallet list will help you to stay healthier.

The Importance Of Spices And Herbs For Preparedness

You can survive indefinitely on nothing but beans and rice. You may not want to, however. I did live for an extended period where my food consisted mostly of beans and rice. I was grateful that I was able to eat as much as I wanted, of beans and rice, but I got very tired of it.


That experience taught me a lot about the importance of spices for giving some variety to a diet. It made a tremendous difference to be able to make the same food taste very different simply by adding some spices. I was also inspired to learn to grow fresh herbs for the same reason. 


I was very sick during the first part of my beans and rice period. It was a relief in many ways when I became well enough to go outside and collect native plants to add even more variety to my diet. 


Variety of taste is not the only reason to vary your diet. When you eat the same food all of the time, you are probably going to get some kind of malnutrition. 


People who study nutrients and nutrition have discovered that different foods contain "phytonutrients". These are very small, or trace amounts of nutrients. Herbs and spices can supply phytonutrients. 


An example of what phytonutrients can do is iodine. It is a small component of table salt. People who do not get enough iodine in their diets get goiters. These are   swellings in the neck. They are caused by swelling of the thyroid gland.


Most people are in absolutely no danger of getting goiters because we eat many times more salt than we need. I don't know the numbers for other countries, but Americans average 30 times more salt per year than is necessary. Eating so much salt is causing other kinds of illness, including heart trouble, so we need to stop that.


I just mentioned iodine and table salt and goiters to give you an idea what a difference something in very small amounts can make to your health and your life. Phytonutrients can have an effect far out of proportion to their quantity.


Spice and herbs often have known medicinal value. They can be used to treat many kinds of illness. It is a good idea to investigate what some of these are when you make your selection of what to put in your preparedness supplies. They can even be part of your first aid kit. 


Garlic is a strong antibiotic in addition to making food taste better. Garlic might be a good dual purpose choice for preparedness supplies. 


Cinnamon is a spice that can reduce inflammation. Since strokes have been discovered to be partly caused by inflammation, use of cinnamon could be prevention for strokes. I like to put it on my breakfast cereal a lot for that reason. The same applies to nutmeg and turmeric. I don't like the taste of turmeric in oats, so I reserve that for main dishes.


Herbs and spices could be a very useful addition to your preparedness supplies, if you take a little time to learn enough to select the ones you need and like.

Tips For Clean Water

I would like to share some information about clean water that I have not seen anywhere else. 


First, I want to tell you why I learned to do these things. One reason is chlorine. The other is fluoride. Both are added to tap water in cities all over the world. When you turn on that tap, you are getting chlorine and fluoride, whether you want it or not. I do not.


Both chlorine and fluoride make me sick and I hate the smell and taste of chlorine. I don't want to drink chlorine and fluoride. I therefore get them out of my water before I drink it. The method I use now does not remove all of the chlorine and fluoride, but it gets most of it out. That helps a lot.


There are lots of sites that explain all about the dangers of fluoride and chlorine. I do not need those sites because my body tells me clearly that chlorine and fluoride are not good for me. I don't intend to go into much about that here.


Fluoride was used in the German concentration camps during WWIII to pacify and control prisoners. There is a lot more than that, but I think that is enough for me. If that doesn't do it for you, I suggest you do some research.


Chlorine can be used in small amounts to kill bacteria. It is fatal to just about everything in larger doses. One drop per ten gallons is considered enough chlorine to sterilize water to bathe burns patients. Burns patients are very vulnerable, so great precautions against infection are used for them. One drop per ten gallons is one of those great precautions.


All of the above paragraph should tell you that we have way too much chlorine in our water to be healthy for us. If you can smell it and taste it in the tap water, there is more than one drop per ten gallons. You are drinking poison, a lot of poison. 


Chlorine is pretty unstable so boiling gets a lot of it out and so do carbon filters. Neither of these does squat for fluoride. I gather that the main ways to get fluoride out of your water are reverse osmosis and distillation.


Reverse osmosis is very expensive, so that leaves distillation. I am fairly chlorine free, but am still drinking much more fluoride than I want. I am working on a reasonably easy and cheap way of distilling my water.


I currently use a Mr. Coffee coffeepot and permanent filter with a carbon filter to go with it. That is supposed to take out 97% of the chlorine from my water. It is enough so that I can really tell the difference between tap water and my purified water. 


I don't like to drink hot water so I cool it before I drink it. I use metal cooling bowls. They are stainless steel. I suppose I will post on not using aluminum in your food preparation stuff. 


I drink too much water to wait for it to cool off in the coffee pot and coffeemaker that I reserve especially for water. I don't like insects doing a kamikaze in my water bowls, so I made covers for them. Even if you are fine with your tap water for regular use, you might want to have cooling bowls for your preparedness water and covers for them.


I guess I am going to have to do a post on how to make the cooling bowl covers for your preparedness water. I feel that other posts are more urgent, however. Besides I am going to have to draw pictures to show you how to make the cooling bowls and that takes a lot more time. You'll have to wait.

Suicide With A Knife And Fork

Refined foods are a fairly recent innovation for humans.  I do not believe they are a good one, either. They are not especially good for anyone, but aboriginal people lack the generations of exposure to them that non-aboriginals have. If you carry aboriginal genes, refined foods can be a slow poison to you. 

One of these deadly refined foods is alcohol. For most aboriginal people, drinking alcohol is like trying to run a Volkswagen bug on jet fuel. It rots out your insides and your brain. You get diabetes and need to have limbs lopped off as you get gangrene. Heart problems and strokes are part of the results of drinking alcohol for most Aboriginal people.

White sugar and white flour are not a lot better for Aboriginal people than alcohol. They may not cause damage as quickly as alcohol, but eating that kind of junk is almost as deadly in the long run. Whole wheat and other whole grains are a more natural aboriginal diet. We have had those as a part of normal diets for many generations, unlike the refined carbohydrates. Potatoes and corn were domesticated by Native Americans and are complex carbohydrates that are much better for aboriginals' health.

Meat that is full of hormones and antibiotics is not good for anyone, but is even worse for aboriginals. It is expensive to eat organic meat that is free of the bad stuff, but medical care is even more costly.

Dairy is not good for a lot of people who are not even aboriginal. Many people are lactose intolerant, but a higher proportion of aboriginals have this problem. There are lactose intolerant remedies to help lactose intolerant people eat dairy without bad effects. Health food and even groceries often carry them. Not everyone is helped by the enzyme drops for lactose intolerance. Low fat powdered milk does not cause me the problems that whole milk does, but I only use it in foods most of the time. Mozzarella is a comparatively low fat cheese and cheese substitutes are available in health food stores.

This blog post is a real bear for me to write because of the emotional issues involved for me. I have told other Native Americans about this before. I expected the answer to, why we have such a problem with alcohol as a group, would be well received. It was by a very few. Most said the idea of a genetic predisposition to problems with alcohol would be used as an excuse for more prejudice. The logic of this escapes me. The Drunken Indian cliche is kinda hard to combat when you see it live and in person so much. The only ones who escape this reality are escaping reality.

Scientists discovered something they call a "thrifty gene" that many aboriginal people have. The good part about it is that people who have it make it through famines more often than those who don't. When a thrifty gene person does not get enough to eat for a while, their body sort of shifts gears and becomes more efficient about burning food/fuel. More work can be done on less food, or even stored body fat. That allows enough work to be done to get more food to survive the famine. Someone without the thrifty gene will simply become too weak from lack of food, to work to get more food to survive, and they die.

The bad part of the thrifty gene is when someone with it eats refined foods, including alcohol, it messes up our insides and we get diabetes, heart trouble, strokes, high blood pressure and alcoholism. People without the thrifty gene can eat all the refined foods, including alcohol, because they have had so many generations of people eating those refined foods that their bodies tolerate them. This does not mean those refined foods are actually good for people without the thrifty gene.

I see no reason to feel inferior to people who can tolerate refined foods, because their ancestors spent so many generations consuming things that were bad for them, that their bodies are not as hurt by the refined foods any more. It does not seem like a good reason for people who do not have the thrifty gene to feel superior to people who have it either. I can see their point about people who have the thrifty gene trying to catch up on exposing their bodies to refined foods, especially alcohol, in one generation.

I figure I have the thrifty gene. I do not consume refined foods much. This is better for anyone, but close to essential for someone who has the thrifty gene. I have come to prefer whole grain flour to bleached and brown rice to white, etc. I don't drink alcohol. I have eaten those things in the past, but it has been a long time since I ate a lot of them. I am not a diabetic, and my blood pressure is low. I am slightly overweight, but will be within my correct range shortly.

There are some tribal groups that are making a great effort to return to their healthy traditions. I feel this is a matter of common sense. This is not a bad idea for anyone, to eat things that are good for them, whether they have the thrifty gene or not.   If you have genes from an aboriginal people, refined foods will make you very sick and probably kill you early. Please take care of yourself and stop consuming the foods and alcohol that will kill you. Think of the seven generations before you and the seven that will come after you. You are not only hurting yourself when you consume things that are bad for you.

I wanted to give you links about the thrifty gene but found that scientists are arguing about it now. The message still applies. We know that refined foods, and alcohol are bad for aboriginal people so we should not consume them. Osiyo.

Write Off The Pounds

It is very difficult to lose weight if you have no idea what it is that causes you to eat, even when your body does not need for you to eat.  A food diary helps clear up some of that mystery.  I was very reluctant to keep one, but the price for my diet counselor made me pay attention to her.  If you decide to use a food diary, it may save you $300.00 to $1000.00 a month. Counseling only can start around $300.00 and go over $1000.00 if diet food delivery is included.


Some of the useful things I have learned from a food diary are that I binge on food sometimes and why I do it.  I can often tell when I am getting ready to binge now and know what I can do to prevent a binge or lessen the damage. I know what foods cause me the worst problems with weight gain and what foods will keep me from feeling deprived of my favorites. An indirect benefit of a food diary for me is that I am able to avoid the urge to binge most of the time now.


There are some excellent sites on the internet to help you with your food diary. Particularly helpful sites are:
This one has the USDA nutrients data base and printable food diaries
This one is by family physicians and has a BMI calculator
http://weightloss.about.com/od/caloriecounting/qt/hiddencaloriesaddup.htm


Experts recommend newbies keep track only of the foods consumed because they are easily confused and overwhelmed.  Keeping a little bit of useful information l is better than nothing.  If that works  it is always ok to get more elaborate, with nutrients and possible emotional and social triggers for binges etc., later.


A good  food diary is useful to give you a record of where, when, what time, who you are eating with, and how you are feeling when you eat.  By looking at your food diary you can see what causes the eating that made you gain weight. You may be eating from habit, boredom, loneliness, or from being upset about something. Looking at the pattern in your food diary will tell you what causes you to eat more food than your body needs to run on. This gives you a chance to plan your eating in the future so not only will you stop gaining weight, but will be able to lose your excess weight.


Even if you do not think that you are ready to make much of a change in your eating habits and behaviors, you can use the information in this series of blog posts to gain less, during the holidays, than you would otherwise.
"A pound of body fat equates to approximately 3500 calories.  So if you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories (meaning that you burn 500 calories more than you eat each day) you would lose approximately one pound per week."  (Nitty gritty site for serious dieting information)  The opposite is also true - if you eat 500 calories more per day than you burn, you will gain about a pound a week.  Every pound you don't gain during the holidays is one less for you to lose later.


I want to write about how to keep the pounds off while you shop, before you even get it home, next.

Your Messy Fridge May Be Fattening

The biggest consideration in organizing your fridge is that it not kill you.  :- ) This can be helped along a lot by not putting meat where it will drip onto other things and make them spoil.  Dairy could also be a problem in this area, but not nearly as bad as thawing meat.  A plate or bin that is a permanent home for thawing meat and will catch potential drips is a solution to this problem.  I like glass better than plastic because plastic can get tiny scratches on it that harbor unhealthy germs.  The experts did not mention metal, but I think it is worth considering a square or rectangular cake pan for meat thawing.  I must say that it is necessary to clean the meat/dairy/whatever drip catcher often enough to avoid killing yourself too.  I believe this is every time you defrost something in there and it drips.


It is hard to eat a healthy diet when your fridge is so gross it sends you fleeing for the junk food every time you open its door.  We can use getting ready for the Holidays for an excuse or motivation.  I doubt that anyone doesn't know that we need to do this the night before garbage pickup day or early enough to beat the garbage truck to the dumpster/garbage can.  Once you have all the bad stuff out in the garbage, you can clean the fridge and see what you are dealing with.   All the food needs to be where you can see it at one time.


There are two main theories of fridge organization.  The most common is by type of food:  all the dairy together, all the condiments, etc.  The other one is my favorite.  You put things together by purpose.  You put all the breakfast things together.  If you eat a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, you put the cream cheese and bagels in a bin together, for example.  You put all the sandwich things in a bin.  This allows one to carry the whole thing to the preparation and/or eating spot, and then dump it all back into the bin to carry it back to the fridge.  Theoretically this encourages other family members to put things back in the right place as well.


There are two main theories of placing tall objects.  One is to put them at the back of the shelf so you can see all the shorter stuff in front of it.  The one I like the best is to put the tall things to the side of a shelf and the short things along the opposite side of  that area.  I hate knocking over the green chili sauce when I drag out the whipping cream.  You can still see the short stuff with this method.  If you have nice big door shelves that you can put all of your tall things like milk or juice jugs on, then you have one less thing to think about when you organize your fridge.


There was a suggestion I read that one use one crisper bin to put veggies and fruit in and the other for meats.  Since most fridges have the crispers located at the bottom, this will help contain meat drips.  Crispers mostly keep produce fresh and crisp longer.  If you don't have a crisper bin,  you can make do with a plastic container lined with paper towels.  The paper towels soak up moisture and slow down rotting.


I will give you links to give you more information if you want it. 

This is a basic fridge orrrganizing blog post. 

This link is how to organize your fridge by a professional organizer

This is by a pro organizer who includes weight loss tips on organizing your fridge

I was going to put in places that sell fridge organizing containers online, but nah.  Once I get ads on here, the organizing items will be here.

 Go forth.  Organize.  Be Healthy and Happy.

I am going to write about good stuff to have handy to eat to keep down the bad stuff binges, next.