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.

Crock Pot Dangers

Readers who are familiar with this blog know that I think preparedness is not very useful, unless you do your best to be healthy enough to survive, before any particular disaster strikes.

This post is part of my ongoing effort to help readers stay healthy enough to survive disasters. The specific subject is dangers to your health from crock pots.

Some crock pots contain lead in their glazes and it leaches out into the food that you cook in your crock pot. Eating lead is definitely bad for your health. Even very small doses of lead is bad for your health, because it builds up in your body over time and it is very hard to get out.

I became aware of this problem from reading a review on crock pots on the Amazon site. I like to use this site to do research even on things I don't want to buy from them, because the reviews and comments are so often very helpful.

The reviewer that I read, on Amazon, is a chemical engineer and he tested his own crock pot and threw it out after he got the dreadful results. I am very glad I read his helpful review before I bought a crock pot. 

I hope you will be able to use the information I got from him and others to help you make a choice of crock pot that will help you and your family stay healthy.

Some crock pots cite FDA guidelines as to safe amounts of lead to have leaching out of their crock pots into your food. I don't think ANY lead amount is safe to have leaching into my food. I have therefore decided to include crock pots here that are not supposed to have lead in their glazes, in their liners, or the crock pots without liners.

Bear in mind that no matter how lead-free the glaze on your liner is, it can still leach lead into your food if it becomes damaged. You need to get rid of your crock pot or liner, if you see chips, tiny cracks, or a hazy look to the glaze that probably indicates that the glaze has become dangerously thin for some reason. The hazy look may mean that your crock pot is now leaching lead into your food, even without any cracks.

Essenergy (VitaClay) brand does not leach any lead, but comments made me fear that it is a fire risk, so I don't want one of those.
Procter Silex does not have lead in their glaze.
Kitchen Aid does not have lead in their crock pot glazes.
Miriams Earthen Cookware (liners and cookware only) is lead free.
West Bend has lead free glazes on their crock pots.
Hamilton Beach also does not have lead in their crock pot or liner glazes. 
Cuisine Art was also mentioned as safe and one or more of their pots even has a probe that can be placed in meat to maintain or reach a specific temperature. This sounds extra safe for meat eaters, to me.

There may be other brands that are safe. I don't care to list the ones that are definitely not safe. The above were good enough for me to do further looking. 

Before you rush out and buy one of the aforementioned brands of cookware, I think you might want to go to the company site and look at their materials and the mandatory statements they have about them. Things can change very fast and you need to keep checking to stay safe.

I wish to make my own herbal supplements, etc. in a crock pot, so I not only want a lead-free crock pot, I need one that will not scorch precious herbs with long cooking times at low temperatures. That was what I was looking for when I found the alarming news that many crock pots are leaching lead into our food that we cook in them. 

I am off to find the elusive safe crock pot that will not burn the herbal stuff I want to cook in it. Best wishes for your own good health.

Preparedness Through Good Health - Juicing

I have only been juicing for 2-3 months, but the results have been amazing. This decided me to share the health benefits with my readers.

You may already know that I believe that one of the basics of emergency preparedness is staying in good health. This is because medical providers are usually overwhelmed during an emergency. This is the last time you want to have a non-emergency health problem. 

The line at the emergency room door will probably go around the block at least once, and you will have a long wait behind the people who are bleeding a lot and screaming in pain.

You may also be aware that I think staying healthy through good nutrition is the best way. One of the ways to do this is through making and drinking your own fresh juice.

If you get your juice from a bottle in the store it will not be very fresh. After the juice in your bottle left the farm it went through an assembly line full of people. You have no way of knowing whether each one of those people washed up after using the toilet or how many scratched themselves, etc.

If you make your own juice you know exactly what happened to that juice after you washed the fruits and veggies that made it. It is also very fresh.

Fresh is good. According to experts on juicing, you will get the most benefit from juice if you drink it within 30 minutes of when it is squeezed. Part of the reason for this is that the natural enzymes in the juice start to become inactive after 30 minutes. 

Other people tell me that they do not get as much of a boost in energy from juicing as I do, but I drink juice almost every day. Most of them do not drink fresh juice that often.

I have health problems that make me tired a lot. Drinking fresh juice has made me so much more energetic that I am now able to get a lot more done each day. It is possible that you can have this happen to you also.

Naturally, I put a lot of my extra energy into working on emergency preparedness. You could do the same if you get more energy from juicing.

I have found two juicing experts that I like quite a bit. One of them sells juicers, the other one does not, but she has ads for them. 

I bought my first juicer from Wal Mart. It was on sale. It has a wide mouth so you are not supposed to have to cut up your produce as much before you put it in the juicer. Hah! Sure my carrots will go into the juicer in big pieces, but that doesn't mean they won't get stuck in there. 

That means that the juicer makes a horrible noise and no juice comes out. I shut it down and take it apart and put the veggie back in the juicer and try again. 

I am working out the optimum size for getting everything to go through the juicer without jamming and still big enough to get ground up before getting shot into the pulp catcher. 

The Hamilton Beach Wide Mouth is the brand I have been talking about. I can't say I really recommend it. I think I will get my next juicer from the juice expert that I mentioned before. His name is John Kohler. He sells juicers on the internet and his online store is Discount Juicers. Here is a link to his site:
http://www.discountjuicers.com/bestjuicer.html
He is pretty up front about his products and makes nice comparisons between different juicers. He has lots of videos explaining the differences between juicers and how to use them.

He also makes hundreds of videos about how to grow your own food to put in those juicers. It is a wonderful public service. 

I am busy now working on making a hydroponics set-up to grow my own food and herbs. I plan to share information on how that goes, when I get that far. 

Here is a link to Food Babe:
http://foodbabe.com/

She has some especially good posts about why juicing is good for you and recipes to get you started. 

Most people do better when they start juicing by having mostly fruit in their juice. It is better for you to have mostly vegetables in your juice, though. I find the vegetables give me more steady energy for a longer time than when I have more fruit in my juice. Beets and ginger roots seem to give me the best energy boost when I include them in my juice. 

If you decide to use beets in your juice you might want to start out with only 1/4 of a beet, or less, for a glass of juice. It may take a bit to get used to the taste and get to like it. I am happy to put a whole beet in my juice now. Yum.

I gather that greens like chard and kale give you the most benefit when you juice them. They are pretty expensive and you can go through a lot of greens very fast when you juice. That is one of the reasons why I am getting ready to grow stuff with hydroponics. I want more greens to make my juice with.

I wish lots of readers will start juicing and get healthy and ready for whatever emergencies come your way.

Taking Care Of Yourself First Helps Everyone

I have a story that I often tell people. I do it so much that they get tired of hearing it. Now you get it.

If you have ever flown on a plane, you have experienced the obligatory safety lecture. The part that we need here is where they tell you about the oxygen masks.

During an emergency oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling above each seat. The steward or stewardess giving the safety lecture will tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first, even if your child is sitting next to you gasping.

The reason they give for this is that if you are not breathing well, you can't help anyone else. 

You put your own oxygen mask on first, so that you will be healthy enough to help put someone else's oxygen mask on them. Even if they lose consciousness, you will still be able to get their oxygen mask on them. 

If you lose consciousness because you put their oxygen mask on first, they may not be able to help you. You may not even finish putting their oxygen mask on before you pass out, if you try to put their oxygen mask on first.

This lesson is very applicable to many emergency situations. You can not help anyone else unless you are okay. 

It applies even to daily life. Taking care of your personal health is very important at any time, but even more so when medical help is scarce during an emergency. 

The above is what I have been doing lately. I have been working on taking care of myself. I have had some serious health problems that have required a lot of my attention and energy. That didn't leave me much to keep writing on this blog. 

I think I can rest on my laurels a bit here since I have over 500 posts on this blog now. I think there is enough to help anyone who is interested in basic information on emergency preparedness to get a good start on finding out what they need to know.

I apologize for not having this blog better organized, but you can use Google searches to find subjects that interest you on this blog. I use tags for each post and that makes searches more efficient on many subjects. I expect I will write a post that goes into more detail on how to do this.

With climate change happening so fast, we all face many more and much more serious emergencies than have occurred in human history. It only makes good sense to be prepared for emergencies.

Learn How To Stop Climate Change

There are realistic things that you can do about climate change. You do not need to try to hide from it. 

Climate change can be overwhelming because it is such a big problem. It is a vast relief to find things that give one hope about fixing the problem of climate change. We do not need to give in to despair over the size of the problem compared to our abilities.

I treasure any glimmer of light in our polluted darkness. One of these is a free online class. The awesome respectability of the class and its teachers is in itself a little overwhelming to me. 

The class is given at Harvard University, one of the finest colleges in the world. They have other classes available on many other subjects, of course. Some of the other classes are interesting, but none has the importance of this one. It is, "Human Health and Global Environmental Change". It starts today. It is not too late to be included in this ray of light.

If you want to consider taking this class, you can look it over here: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/PH278x/2013_Spring/about

One of the professors of the class is an MD, a pediatrician at a famous hospital. The other professor has been studying the "quality" of our air for many years. 

A book by one of the professors of the course, "Sustaining Life, How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity", is optional reading for students taking the course. The book is offered on Amazon, in both a hard copy and a digital, Kindle version. You can read these without even taking the course.

There are plenty of links to strong, useful information. There are lots of graphs and charts to make this information easier to understand and be able to explain to others.

The lectures are broken down into short video segments. You can use the materials at your own speed with a few exceptions. The course is broken down into sections and access is restricted to the current and past sections covered, to keep the eager beavers with the rest of the class. 

There is a lot of information to be covered in the course. I am definitely glad that I refrained from taking other courses simultaneously. This is all information that I want to understand very well, and it is clear that this will require a lot of time.

I hope that some of my readers will join this class, now or later on, as it is repeated. The Earth and the people and the rest of the life on the Earth, need your attention, interest and actions. 

We can not continue to exist in the face of indifference to climate change, and we need everyone who is willing, to get busy learning and acting to stop climate change.

Medical Alert Cats

I have mentioned in earlier posts that I have been plagued with a lot of mini-strokes, or TIAs. I am still having that problem, but I am getting some help with it from my cats. 

I can not always tell when I am having a stroke for a while. My older cat seems to be able to tell when I am having a stroke long before I know. He has started letting me know. He may have been doing it longer than I knew about. I only realized what was going on very recently.

I have read about cats and dogs alerting people to someone having seizures, but this is the first I have known about any animals alerting to strokes.

Since my older cat is very old for a cat, 23 years old, I was thinking that it would be good if the younger cat would learn this also. 

Today, the younger cat demonstrated that he can already alert to strokes and he even had to do even better at it than the older cat.

I have had at least four TIAs today. It can be hard to keep count with so many because it is difficult to separate when one ends and the next one starts. I think I got overlap today.

The older cat was alerting a lot of the day today. Since cats have to sleep most of the time, he had to take breaks. 

During one of the older cat's breaks today, the younger one took over. I guess they decided to do shifts, or something.

The younger kept standing a little ways off from me and yelling at me. I got up to see what his problem was and he led me to a bag of aspirin that I had not put away after getting some out to put in my daily medicine boxes. 

One of the things my doctor told me to do for my health is take aspirin when I think I am having problems. I had already taken my evening dose of low-dose aspirin, so I wasn't planning to take any more. My cat thought otherwise. lol.

That really weirded me out. I did not realize that the younger cat knew what goes on around here that well. I also had no idea that he knew about strokes, or could communicate so clearly. I am still having a hard time believing that he even knows what aspirins are and when it might be a good idea for me to take some.

I am fairly used to the idea that animals know a lot more and can learn much more than most people expect. This incident has even managed to shock me. I am still trying to adjust to this new knowledge of what my two cats are able to do. 

Staying Alive Through Strokes

One of the problems that I have been dealing with lately is strokes. TIAs, to be more specific. "A transient ischemic attack (TIA) is when blood flow to a part of the brain stops for a brief period of time. A person will have stroke-like symptoms for up to 24 hours, but in most cases for 1 - 2 hours.

A TIA is felt to be a warning sign that a true stroke may happen in the future if something is not done to prevent it."

This quote came from the following link at the USA's Public Library of Medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001743/

I have already had one regular stroke that I am sure of, so that probably increases my chances of having a regular stroke as well as the TIAs.

I have not just had a few TIAs, I have had swarms of them. There have been more than one a day at times. During such times I have had one or more strokes as day for as long as a week straight, as well.

I am not going to the hospital when I have a TIA because I can't afford to. I know a lot of other people are in the same situation. I am going to share what I do that I believe has kept me functioning in spite of the mini-strokes and is warding off another major stroke.
If you have any choice and can go to the hospital, I think you should do so.

I am posting about what I do that I believe is helping me survive strokes and prevent a major stroke because you can use it during a medical emergency when you can not get medical care.

The first thing to do it to learn the signs that mean you are having a stroke. 

"The symptoms of TIA are the same as the symptoms of a stroke, and include sudden:

    Abnormal feeling of movement (vertigo) or dizziness

    Change in alertness (sleepiness, less responsive, unconscious, or in a coma)

    Changes in feeling, including touch, pain, temperature, pressure, hearing, and taste

    Confusion or loss of memory

    Difficulty swallowing

    Difficulty writing or reading

    Drooping of the face

    Inability to recognize objects or people

    Lack of control over the bladder or bowels

    Lack of coordination and balance, clumsiness, or trouble walking

    Loss of vision in one or both eyes

    Numbness or tingling on one side of the body

    Personality, mood, or emotional changes

    Trouble saying or understanding words

    Weakness on one side of the body"

This quote came from the same site. 

The time that I had the regular stroke, I first became aware of it when I drank water. The water did not stay in my mouth. It ran out of one side. As soon as I realized that meant I was having a stroke, I went to the bathroom to do the smile test. The ways of telling that you may be having a stroke follow:

n the event of a possible stroke, use FAST to help remember warning signs.

    Face. Does the face droop on one side trying to smile?
    Arms. Is one arm lower when trying to raise both arms?
    Speech. Can a simple sentence be repeated? Is speech slurred or strange?
    Time. During a stroke every minute counts. If you observe any of these signs, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately

The above came from the Mayo Clinic site. It beats me why they left out something that seems important to me. It is on the last one, Time. Emergency personnel also need to know the time that symptoms started. You need to write down the time as soon as any symptoms are noticed and give that time to the emergency hospital staff. There is a medicine that can be given to stop strokes from doing permanent damage. The medicine can only be given within a time limit, so the emergency staff need to know how long ago the stroke started.

You need to learn the whole list of stroke symptoms, because some people don't have the more common ones. Numbness in my lips is the first thing that tells me I might be having a stroke. As soon as I feel anything like numbness in my lips, I immediately go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and smile. If I am having a stroke, the left side of my face does not work as well for smiling.

I also do the arm test. You raise both arms slowly in front of you and see if they rise evenly. Raising your arms from the sides also is a good idea.It is easier to do this if you use a mirror, since you can see both arms at the same time this way.

If I flunk the smile test or arm test, I get out a can of pineappe and a mug. I get pop-top cans of pineapple, so don't need a can opener.

I chew and swallow two baby aspirins with a lot of water before I open the pineapple. Once the pineapple is open, I pour off the juice into the mug and drink it. I use sliced pineapple because it is easier for me to eat fast, especially without a spoon handy.

 

The reasons for the above are that my doctor has me taking 4 chewable baby aspirins a day, two in the morning and two in the evening. They are chewable because chewable ones get into your system much faster than swallowing a regular aspirin whole.

The extra water is because the blood thinner, aspirin, needs something to thin my blood with. 

The pineapple is because pineapple stops brain inflammation. My particular problem with TIAs most likely comes from having small hemorrhages in my brain, so I think the pineapple can stop the hemorrhage and the inflammation that goes with it.

I hope that you will get medical attention if you are able to do so. If you cannot, then my stroke alert regimen may help you also. I am the only one I know of who does this so far, so we don't know if it will work for you also.

I have already taken care of any risk factors for cholesterol and stroke that are possible to change. If you have risk factors for stroke, you would do well to change those you can.

The link below is to a video on strokes.                                 

http://watchlearnlive.heart.org/CVML_Player.php?moduleSelect=tisatk

I think that anyone who is at risk for stroke or heart attack should drink extra water daily to help keep your blood moving along through your body. The rule of thumb I like for calculating how much water to drink, is to figure your weight in pounds and then take half of that number, and drink that many ounces of water daily. I already posted on this and the post has links to convert metrics to ounces, in case you need it.

I already mentioned the online brain training classes available and that I use one of them. I do the brain exercises almost daily. I believe that has kept my brain working in spite of this onslaught of swarms of strokes. If you had a stroke or have one, you might want to consider using one of the brain training sites also.

An additional advantage of using the brain training sites is that they can give you a normal baseline to make it easier to tell how a stroke has affected you. That makes it easier to know what areas of your brain need a workout.

I hope that this information will give you something to help yourself if you have a stroke during an emergency when you can not get medical care and even better, prevent a stroke from happening.

Window Covers For Disaster Protection

For those who are very new to disaster preparedness, it is all a matter of getting and storing things for a disaster and when a disaster hits, you use them.

Unfortunately it is not as nice and simple as that. Most of your neighbors are not going to be prepared at all for a disaster. They will get to the grocery to find all the shelves empty and crowds of people fighting over a few packages of food at the cash registers. They probably won't even have any lights except for birthday candles that will be gone shortly.

If your hungry neighbors get home and smell cooking food odors coming out of your home and see lights in your windows, they will want light and food too. If your whole neighborhood is in the same boat except your home, guess what? You could be in deep doo doo. 

You may have enough food to last you for a month. How far would that last for your whole neighborhood? Some people do invite everyone in and share what they have until it runs out and then they all starve together.

Maybe you want to do that. If you don't, you might want to plan for being able to hold onto what you have stored. If you want 30 days of light for your home instead of 1 day for the whole neighborhood, you will probably need to hide your light under a bushel.

You will need to cover your windows and you will need to do it very well. One little beam of light could do you in. Pick whatever way you want to black out your windows for a disaster, but make sure it is thorough and won't leak light.

Blackout curtains are an option, but can be pricey. If you want to make your own window blackout covers, you would probably do well to do it ahead of time, and have them ready for when they are needed.

Make something that looks somewhat normal. This could be fabric coverings, reflective ones, paint or plain or colored paper. You can use cardboard or plywood and paint or cover it. 

If your windows are small enough you can store them against the wall in the back of your closet. If your windows are too big to do that with your window covers, you may have to make them so they will fold up for storage or you can assemble them quickly when needed. If you are an Alaskan, this is all easy. Just about everybody needs light blockers when the stops setting for most of the day and night. You can just leave your light blockers up all the time.

It is safer to check for light leaks ahead of time. The best is when they are in place on your windows. That way you can be certain they will work. 

Even better is having neighbors who are prepared for disasters so it does not matter whether they see your lights or not. There is only so much you can do that way though. 

I have already posted about deciding to share your preparedness items or not, and if so, with whom, and how much. You do need to think about this.

Mental Self Defense

When you are under physical attack you usually do not have time to stop and think. The way that self defense training works overcomes this problem is through relentless and endless drills. You do so many drills that when you are attacked from a certain angle, you automatically counter the attack with a defensive move, without needing to think about it.

The same sort of thing can give you automatic defenses for fending off mental attacks.

Most of us have people in our lives who do things that make us feel bad. Some of these people may be people you don't have to option of staying away from all of the time. 

This can be a problem when the person who makes us feel bad does it a lot. Some people try to make themselves feel better by making other people feed bad. It can be harmful to you if you have one of these in your life and are constantly having to deal with feeling bad because of their mental attacks on you.

It is possible to work out mental forms of self defense, that are much like the physical self defense techniques used in self defense and martial arts.

I post about staying healthy as an important part of emergency preparedness. I concentrate on physical health most of the time, but mental health is as important, if not more important.

The most useful of these techniques is what I call, "the broken record". Current usage should probably be more like, "the broken CD, or other media storage". When one of these things has a scratch in it, it can get stuck and keep repeating the same thing over and over. This is the effect we want for this mental self defense technique.

When you sense a mental blow coming at you, your broken record can automatically ward off the damage without you having to stop and think about it.

Here is a fictitious attack and defense to give you the idea of how it works:

Attacker: "You sure are ugly. You are about the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Your Mama must have scared by a train wreck when she was carrying you."
You: "That's okay. At least MY Mama loves me." Or: "I'm sorry that bothers you, would you like a blindfold?"  Or: "I could go to a  plastic surgeon and fix that, but what are you going to do about being ugly inside?"

Every person and every situation is different, so you will need to figure out your own broken record to use. You have to figure out exactly what to say ahead of time and practice it and get it in your head so that it will come out automatically when the next attack comes. 

I expect this is obvious to most people, but I don't want to get anyone beaten to a pulp. You need to make your broken record something that will let you survive. If you attacker is very large or can fire you, your broken record needs to be more tactful. 

The biggest advantage about a broken record is that it allows you to avoid much thought about being attacked and the attack itself. Since it comes out automatically, it stops you from having to be upset over the attack. 

Your broken record pops out at the right time and you don't even have to think about the mental attack. You can just go on with your life in spite of the attack and not waste your mental and emotional energy on it. This is much healthier than spending time and energy brooding over what is happening.

This will keep you healthy before a disaster hits your area and leave you better able to cope with it. This is a way of doing mental self defense to protect yourself. Mental self defense can be a part of your every day life that you can use to make yourself better prepared for emergencies.

How The Water You Drink Now Can Affect Your Preparedness

If you have been reading my blog posts for a while you already know that I don't consider emergency preparedness to be something that is outside daily life. 

I believe that in order for preparedness to really be useful, it must be integrated into your daily living. I mentioned a little about this on yesterday's post. I use one of my favorite preparedness phrases, "Store what you eat and eat what you store". If you do that your food storage will always be fresh during an emergency and you will save money on your food budget. That makes daily life better by making your preparedness a part of your daily life.

Water is even more important as a part of daily life than your food is. This applies to storage water as well, of course.

A great many health problems can be made worse by not drinking enough water every day. A surprising range of health problems are likely to be caused by dehydration as well. 

Here is a definition of the word, "dehydration", for readers who need it:

"Definition of DEHYDRATION

: the process of dehydrating; especially : an abnormal depletion of body fluids".

It comes from here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dehydration

I have done a post entirely on the subject of health problems caused by dehydration and the need to drink more water. You can read it if you want to know more on the subject. This blog post is not intended to repeat that. 

If you do not take care of your health by drinking adequate amounts of water on a regular basis, you will not enjoy good health during an emergency. You probably already know from previous posts that health care is difficult or impossible to get during an emergency, because medical people will be very busy, their facilities will be damaged, and even getting to undamaged medical facilities will be difficult or impossible.

Your chances of making it through an emergency go up a lot if you are healthy when the emergency starts.

Once an emergency happens in your area, you will most likely be very busy. Even if you and your loved ones are not immediately affected by an emergency, you will probably need to help neighbors. 

You won't be much help to yourself and your loved ones during an emergency if you are in such bad physical condition that ordinary daily activities are a chore for you. It will be even worse if you have to do things like evacuate rapidly.

One of my favorite books says something about, "they shall run and not get tired". That would be very handy if you were trying to outrun a fire or tsunami, for example. You need to keep up with your water drinking as a part of your all-around health maintenance routine, so you can run and not get tired when it is necessary.

Part of the benefits of staying hydrated  is that it will maintain your health by cleaning out your system. If you don't flush your drains in your home once in a while you will get them clogged and need a plumber. The same is true of getting clogs in the systems of your body. Part of what helps to keep your "drains" clear in your body is drinking adequate water.

I hate counting stuff, keeping numbers in my head or writing them on paper. The way that I keep track of my daily water intake is by putting it into containers and separating those containers so that when the containers are empty, I know I have had a reasonable amount of water for the day.

I read about an easy method of calculation how much water to drink daily. You weigh yourself,  halve the amount on the scales and drink that amount of ounces each day to achieve a target water drinking goal. This is based on the  assumption that you are weighing yourself in American pounds of weight, and then can convert those into American ounces.

I don't know whether the same process will work for other weight and liquid measurement systems or not. You could check it by converting it online here: http://www.onlineconversion.com/

I hope this information helps you to become more prepared for emergencies and to stay that way as much as possible.

Naturopaths For Preparedness Health

Staying as healthy as possible is an important part of emergency preparedness. During a disaster medical care can be very difficult to find. If you do find uninjured medical personnel with operational facilities, they will be very, very busy. You will be in a very long line waiting for help.

The last thing you need in such a situation, is ordinary health problems that are not connected with the disaster. 
If you are in good health when disaster strikes, you will be much better off than someone who ordinarily has an assortment of common ailments.

A naturopathic doctor can be part of your plan to stay healthy all the time. 

One big advantage of naturopaths is that they have a very strong emphasis on preventing health problems.  Allopathic, or regular medical doctors are doing much better than they used to at emphasizing prevention in their health care, but this is still a little sickly compared to naturopaths.

Naturopaths have a thorough understanding of what your body needs to run efficiently and stay healthy. Allopathic doctors have to learn this stuff on their own. They only get a couple of hours of nutrition training in their whole time in medical school.

I am not advocating that you forget about your allopathic doctor, but your health will be much better if you can also see a naturopathic doctor. When enough people insist on it, our allopathic doctors will coordinate their care with that given by naturopathic doctors. 

Just insisting that your allopathic doctor work in conjunction with naturopaths is not enough, to get the change we desire. It is also necessary to get changes made by our government and our insurance companies.

The biggest obstacle that we face in getting naturopathic medical care is the big drug companies. The legal pharmaceutical industry is the largest money maker in the world. That gives them enough clout to run our lives much more than is healthy for us.

The pharmaceutical industry has too much of a stranglehold on allopathic medicine for the well-being of either our doctors or us. I know that many readers are probably unaware of this situation, so I will give you one example about this problem that is easier to understand.

That is the choices our allopathic doctors make for our medications. I will give you some links about a little of this.

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/morreim/prescribing.html
Thorough.

http://getbetterhealth.com/the-ban-on-drug-company-gifts-to-physicians-captured-in-a-photograph/2009.10.12This one is funny.

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/04/accepting-drug-perks-or-hiding-fact.html
This is short and pithy.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51351
This one gets into it well.

Pina Colada Milkshake - Can Be Used For Diatomaceous Earth

One time when I was doing a lot of air travel I found myself with a horrible ten hour layover in Atlanta. That is not long enough to want to get a hotel room, but you can really get tired of that huge airport in that amount of time. Fortunately, I discovered a juice bar. They made milkshakes and smoothies there. One of their best was a sober pina colada milkshake. 

They made the best one I have ever tasted. They made their own coconut ice cream from fresh coconuts and put fresh pineapple in it.

I don't usually do all of that however. I do it the easy, fast, and cheap way. Mine is not as good, but it is still pretty good.
I also leave out the ice cream. You can put some in if you like, however. I use ice cubes, instead. That is lower calories and cholesterol.

I use coconut cream or coconut milk to make it. Coconut cream tastes better, but it is more oily and not as healthy.

I also use canned pineapple most of the time. I don't have precise proportions of the coconut or pineapple that I use. I normally go light on the coconut milk and more pineapple. I will usually have a much smaller can of coconut milk than of pineapple, and sometimes only use half a can of the coconut milk to make it and a whole can of pineapple. If I do that, I usually make another batch the next day and use another can of pineapple.

I go by taste on how much to put in. You have probably already figured that I put all of this into a blender. I also put in a banana. I mostly go by what will fit into the blender and how it tastes. A big banana will not fit in, so I cut it in half and put that in. 

Protein powder, flax seed powder, diatomaceous earth, and things like that are good additions to this recipe, and I usually put those in as well.

Now you can end up with a not very serious dilemma as far as leftovers for this recipe. If you are left with half a can of coconut milk and half a banana after you make this up and drink it, you will either be forced to find another use for them or make more pina colada shake.
I generally opt for another batch of pina colada shake.

Dietary Changes For Stroke Prevention

Yesterday I posted a bit about ways to protect your brain for health preparedness. I wrote mostly about online programs that give your brain a workout to keep it fit.

The majority of other things that I do to take care of my brain are dietary. I have extremely high cholesterol in spite of being a vegetarian. I believe that I would be dead now if I hadn't become a vegetarian many years ago. My body makes a lot of cholesterol, so I certainly don't need to eat things that have a lot of it in them as well.

Cholesterol is a major culprit for causing strokes. I do a lot of dietary things to help with this problem.

I have mentioned some of the virtues of oats in your diet before. Oats are very helpful to lower your cholesterol. I read that when you eat oats, they attach to cholesterol in you and escort it out. According to something else I read, extra virgin olive oil does the same sort of thing. Regular olive oil does not work this way, so you have to make sure it is extra virgin olive oil.

Olive oil can actually become bad for you once it is heated to high temperatures. This means it is not a good idea to fry things in olive oil. Oils that work better at high temperatures like sunflower oil or coconut oil are better for frying or saute cooking. I have also almost given up frying things. I lightly saute them in a small amount of high temperature safe oil, instead.

If you are going to eat any flesh, it should be fish. Salmon is one of the safest fish to eat as far as heavy metal contamination goes. Fish oil can actually help bring down your cholesterol and does lots of other good things for your body. Some vegetarians make and exception and take fish oil capsules.

I won't do that, but you can get some of the same effects if you eat nuts, walnuts are the best, apparently. Flax seed and flax seed oil are also good that way.

If you don't want to or can't grind your own flax seed and don't feel up to chewing them whole, you can get ground ones at health food stores. 

I put flax seeds into some of my blender recipes. I guess I will give you my sober pina colada recipe in a few days. That would work well with a dose of diatomaceous earth, also. Again, diatomaceous earth will righteously constipate you unless you take serious preventive measures. Since I am veggie, my diet is especially high in fiber, so I don't have much worry in that department.

I have added a grated apple to my breakfast cereal every morning lately. White flesh fruits like apples and pears do something that prevents strokes. They do not know exactly how it works yet, but it sounded good enough for me to try it. I am a great guinea pig in that department since I have been having a lot of TIAs. 

Once I started the apple-in-the-cereal addition to my diet, the TIAs dropped off. I highly recommend the apple/pear adjustment to your diet if you are a stroke risk. This is not medical, advice, however. Humor your MD. My doctor is patient and long suffering and puts up with me very well. You are fortunate indeed if you find one like her.

In case you are not up on stroke terminology, TIAs are little mini strokes. They only last a short time and are not supposed to cause lasting damage. They can do cumulative damage, however. 

Enough stroke stuff for now. I have found more stuff for strokes, that I do as well as what I have already mentioned. I will write about it later. I will probably post about the pina colada milkshake tomorrow. It is really good and easy to make. 

Protect Your Brain - Preparedness Health

A lot of people take care of their health by good diet and exercise. This is a perfectly good starting place, but it does absolutely no good to have a fit body if your mind is out to lunch.

Watching people I know try to cope with the ravages of Dementia and Alzheimers does nothing to set one's mind at ease about retaining good use of one's own mind. We do not have to "go gentle into that dark night", we can "rage, rage against the dying of the light". 

There are things we can do to help give some protection against the loss of our own mental faculties. None of these things is foolproof, but it can help. I am collecting information of this sort for my personal use and adding all of it to my activities and diet, etc.

It is just not pleasant to face the idea that we may lose our minds at some point. Hiding it from ourselves will not help. We must look at this fear directly and do the best we can to fight it.

It has preoccupied me for a while to find materials and methods to fight the ravages of health and age on my own mind, so I expect others who share this fear will like to know what I have found as well. Here goes:

Ginkgo Biloba is an herb that has the reputation of improving the function of your mind, especially memory. Ginkgo trees don't grow everywhere, so most of us have to get it from a store or online. If you do that you have to choose between whether you want some that is processed to have an even and predictable amount of the good stuff in it. If you take some ginkgo biloba relatively straight from the tree, the effectiveness varies a great deal from one batch to another, even from the same tree.

I picked the standardized herbal supplement. It is more processed, but I get the same amount of effectiveness all the time.

Apparently the brain benefits from a workout as much, if not more than, the rest of your body does. They now offer fitness for your brain online. I am coming up on four weeks on one of those. I believe that I am experiencing benefits from even such a short time spent on giving my brain a workout.

The site that I use for my brain fitness exercises, includes exercises  to make your brain work harder in specific areas. The company that I use gives you charts and graphs so that you can keep track of your progress and understand it more easily. Their computer plans sets of daily exercises that you may use to get a good brain workout.

The company that I use for my brain fitness offers an extensive explanation of the theory and research behind their programs. Professionals involved in many aspects of physical and psychological well-being from all over the world, are cooperating with volunteers in ongoing research to improve the understanding and effectiveness of brain fitness programs. 

Users of the site have the option of volunteering to participate in these projects if they like. 

The cost for the particular site that I use for my brain fitness training is about $15.00 US a month at the monthly rate. Discounts are available.

I believe it is worth your while to consider doing something to keep your brain as fit as the rest of you.

Little Known But Common Health Problem

I am posting about a serious health problem that is not very well known even though it is common. This problem is calcification of the pineal gland. Fluoride intake is one of the worst causes of calcified pineal glands.

My first awareness of this problem was recent. A video on the internet informed be about it and started me looking to learn more about it. One of the more noticeable effects of having a calcified pineal gland is difficulties with sleep.

If you have problems with your sleep, it may be a good idea to find out more about calcification of pineal glands. It is possible this is part of your difficulties with your sleep.

There is another major problem caused by calcification of your pineal gland. I believe it is even worse than sleep problems. 

Many spiritual traditions identify the pineal gland as your "third eye" and say that your pineal gland affects your spirituality. 

A calcified pineal gland can leave you feeling spiritually numb and cut off. It can stifle and even stop you from having spiritual experiences. One of these kinds of spiritual experiences that you may be missing or limited in is your dreams.

One of the experts wrote that if your pineal gland is calcified you may stop dreaming in color or even remembering, or having spiritual dreams.

If you have looked at my blog much you already know that spirituality is important to me. That is why the information above was alarming to me.

None of us need to panic, however. The experts were kind enough to share with us some ways to decalcify our pineal glands. 

There are three parts to this process. The first one is to take a look at what we are doing to cause calcified pineal glands and stop it. Most of the stuff that we already know is bad for us causes calcified pineal glands.

Now you have even more reason to stop smoking, drinking alcohol, drinking caffeine, and eating sugar. Just what you wanted to hear, I know. 

Most of the bad habits I just mentioned didn't bother me that much because I already gave most of them up a while back. Now sugar, is a different matter. I still eat some. I don't eat much of it or very often, but it is there.

Once you find the culprits that are calcifying your pineal gland, and get rid of them so you don't keep getting worse, you are ready for the next part. That is doing things to decalcify your pineal gland and undo the damage.

Two different experts mentioned Organic Blue Ice Skate Fish Oil. I am veggie, so am not going to use it, but if you eat fish, then you might want to find out more about it. I am just giving the basics here, but some links I will give you will help you learn more.

One of the remedies you may like is Raw Chocolate. It also stimulates the pineal gland. Some other items mentioned that detoxify your pineal gland are: MSM, citric acid, garlic, raw apple cider vinegar, oregano oil, Neem extract, boron, Melatonin, Iodine, Tamarind, and distilled water (careful with this, it can be bad long term.

The last part of detoxifying your pineal gland is exercise. Yoga and certain specific exercises made just for detox of your pineal gland are emphasized.

Here is a link that seems to explain what the problem is about calcified pineal glands and how to fix it. I like this site and how it deals with the problem the best of the print sites: http://decalcifypinealgland.com/what-is-the-pineal-gland/

Youtube has videos about calcified pineal glands if you prefer that to reading. You can look around and see which one appeals to you. There are quite a few.

Drug Alert For Anaphylactic Shock

Here is an update from the United States Food and Drug Administration about a drug for immunization shots:

Affymax, Inc. (Nasdaq: AFFY) and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) today have decided to voluntarily recall all lots of OMONTYS® (peginesatide) Injection to the user level as a result of new postmarketing reports regarding serious hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening or fatal. The companies have been working actively with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which has indicated its agreement with this decision.

Anaphylaxis, the word in bold and darker red, means that it can make you stop breathing. This is a pretty serious recall. You need to know about it and pay attention, since it could kill you.

The following quote is from Wikipedia:
It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of anemia associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in adult patients on dialysis.[3][4] On February 23, 2013, Affymax and Takeda issued a press release indicating that they were recalling all batches of peginesatide from the market.

I do not know for certain, but am guessing that the above medication is used mostly for people who are getting dialysis. I have known quite a few people who were receiving dialysis for extended periods, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Their health is usually fragile and they certainly don't need a medication causing their health to become worse.

I subscribed some time ago to alerts by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Most of them are not very urgent recalls for food items. They are more important for people who store food for emergency preparedness than the general unprepared average person.

Most of the time I do not pass along the alerts from the Food and Drug Administration because they are not usually that important to very many people and there can be a huge number of them daily. 

I made an exception to this habit of not posting many alerts for this one about OMONTYS® (peginesatide) because of the life threatening effects to the people who are likely to receive it.

If you are interested in storing some extra food for emergency preparedness, you might do well to subscribe yourself to the FDA's alerts. There can easily be a hundred or more alerts about food recalls, mostly voluntary by the manufacturers, a month. 

It is a tedious chore checking all of them when shopping, but it is better than finding out the hard way when you really need that food. One shortcut that helps reduce your work, is to use as much organic and natural foods as possible. 

There are occasional alerts for recalls even among organic and natural foods, but they are much less frequent and usually come because of a common basic ingredient like the peanuts that prompted me to sign up for the alerts. You will not encounter even the peanuts if you eat less prepared foods, most of the time.

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.

Child Molesters' Harm To Our Future 2

This post is continued from yesterday.

I was able to get a tiny bit more information about her from him in spite of his caution. I was already good enough at internet research to be able to use that bit of information to find the town she lived in and her mother's address. 

That was the easy part. The hard part was finding a way to get anyone to do anything to help the little cutter girl.

I emailed the police in the town the girl lived in. They were not interested. They said since I was not in their jurisdiction when I told them about it, the case was not theirs. They said I needed to tell the police where I lived. I lived in California at the time. The girl lived clear across the country in another state.

I called my local police department. They said since the girl was not in their jurisdiction, they could not do anything. 

I called the FBI. They said no crime had been committed at that point, so they could not do anything. They suggested I call the local police in the town where the girl lived.

The only thing that came to mind was a local policeman that I had a slight acquaintance with. He had spoken at a meeting I attended and had liked one of my questions. This policeman had since been featured in a local news story.

The story was somewhat related to the situation I was dealing with. The local policeman had caught an attempted international child molester, by using the internet.

The intermational wannabe child molester was attempting to get a 13 or 14-year-old boy to steal his mother's credit card and use it to take a plane and fly from his country to California to meet him. The policeman tricked the international wannabe child molester into thinking he was a child to be preyed on and set a successful trap for him.

I emailed the policeman and asked for his help. He did help. 

It took a while to get through all of this stuff before the local policeman came through. It was Christmas Day before the police in the girl's town entered her home and stopped her in the act of killing herself.

That was way too close for comfort. I was really glad they stopped her, but still angry that it got that close and it took so much work to get anything done. 

I raised as much he-- as I could manage to get people to do something about the perverts lurking online for innocent children. Police departments opened up departments for online crime and the FBI did too. 

I am glad when I see they catch some of the illegitimate perverts before they do any more harm to children, who are our future. It is hard to think about the ones who still get away with it.

Child Molesters' Harm To Our Future

I just skimmed an article that sends steam out my ears. It is about a sting by police of wannabe child molesters. The wannabes thought they were talking online with children they went to meet. 

I had an awful experience online with a child molester. I am going to go a bit afield from my normal posting area, sorta. I think protecting our children is important to the future of the human race. I regard it as preparedness.

This particular wannabe child molester was in a chat room that I was in online. I suppose he thought I might be a child because I am weird. I didn't know some chat slang and asked about it. He zeroed in on me right away after that. He told me stuff so that I thought he was some kind of wonderful kind knight in shining armor. 

He was "counseling" a lot of young teens and preteen girls. He was chatting to a lot of them at the same time. He told me how many chats he had open at the same time. He often had 6 to 10 girls chatting with him at once, and me.

After a fairly short time, his emails and chats seemed to be a little off from what he claimed to be. I began to encourage him to tell me more about the girls. He opened up about his intentions. 

I was aghast at what I was finding out from him about his plans for the girls. There was one in particular he wanted to meet. He told me she was a "cutter". I had not known what that meant until he mentioned it. 

A "cutter" is a person who cuts their own body out of some kind of sick compulsion. 

The wannabe child molester told me that she had told him that she intended to kill herself on Christmas Day. When he told me this, it was around Thanksgiving. That is about a month before Christmas Day in the USA, for non-US readers.

I assumed that he was trying to prevent her from killing herself, since he told me that he was trying very hard to find out where she was.

Boy was I wrong! He told me that he wanted to meet her and have sex with her before she killed herself. I let slip that this shocked me and I didn't like the idea. He clammed up and stopped letting me know more about her, for fear that I might ruin his plans.

I am splitting this post here and will publish the other half tomorrow due to length.

Happiness Is Preparedness

You are the only person in the world that can make you happy the rest of your life. No matter what happens to you, you can choose to be happy. This is on beyond the glass that is half full or half empty idea. 

Your happiness is not dependent on anything outside of yourself. You can decide to be happy, no matter what is going on. I am not talking about a state of pink cloud bliss every moment. This is the idea that the way you generally feel about yourself is that you are happy.

A friend of mine was pretty hard core about this idea of happiness regardless of your circumstances. He told me that he had a miserable cold one time. He annoyed me by telling me that he was happy regardless of his cold and that he was actually enjoying having a cold.

I expressed my doubt about him enjoying having a cold. He told me more about it. He said that he was enjoying all of the interesting things that a cold caused to happen to his body. He liked the way his nose was dripping and he said he particularly liked it when he sneezed. 

The nose dripping gave me a lot of trouble about enjoying it. I could understand the sneeze enjoyment more easily.There is a pleasant sense of relief when you sneeze.

I still can't emulate my friend with his enjoyment of colds. You don't have to be happy about the same things that someone else is happy about. I may not enjoy a cold, but I do like the nice warm feeling of being snuggled into blankets and waking up feeling better. Those are things I can choose to be happy about. You can pick your own.

No matter what happens to you, it is possible to find something to feel happy about. You can concentrate on the happy parts and ignore the rest.

If you read the Celestine Prophecies, you already know that you can look at something you like and get energy from appreciating it and drawing that pleasure up into yourself. You can do the same with anything you enjoy.

You can store that energy/happiness and run on it in the times where it is more scarce for you. The more you do this, the better you will become at doing it. 

Keep looking for things that give you energy/happiness. The more you look for them, the more you will find. The more it you find the more you can store away inside you. All of this will result in you being happy more often. 

I have not reached the exalted state where I am happy all of the time, but I suspect it is quite possible. I am happy most of the time. I think it is possible to manage to become happy all of the time. That is what I am going for - being happy all of the time. I think you can do this also, dear reader. I hope you will start working on that. I would like for you to be happy all of the time.