Posted on 19 Jan, 2012 -
All good things come in threes
How the silver lining in my mother’s illness could mean a bionic immunity against illness for you
Has humanity moved from pride in its achievements to shame?
And… the opening date for the Life is a Bag of Revels shop
Dear Reader,
All good things come in threes they say and I’ve certainly got three things to tell you about this week. But as with most things in life, they’re partly bad and partly good!
1. First of all, how two cloves of raw garlic a day could make your immune system bionic!
My mother, unfortunately, got very sick over the Christmas holiday and was hospitalised with pneumonia following a whole year of non-stop coughing. The pneumonia has now been cured but she has been left with an underlying condition called Bronchiectasis which means she will continue coughing and be susceptible to further repeat infections on a continual basis.
“You will probably need to take antibiotics quite often throughout the year.” said one doctor, which I didn’t like the sound of. When I consulted a friend who is a herbalist he said that the best thing she could do was to try and eat two cloves of raw garlic a day to kill off infections before they can settle in her lungs.
There are several properties that are present in raw garlic only (they go if you cook it!) that act as highly effective antibiotics that can even work better than antibiotics, especially on drug-resistant strains. Allicin, ajoenes and dithiins are three of the key ones.
Why garlic can work BETTER than antibiotics
One weakness of conventional antibiotics is that they are not effective against viral infections. Garlic or its constituents, however, will directly kill bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, yeasts, and moulds - including influenza, herpes, cowpox and the virus that leads to cold sores.
The drugs companies have been doing everything they can to get these magical properties of garlic into a pill form but good old garlic has resisted every attempt they’ve made!
To get the full effect, chop or crush the garlic and steep it in oil for at least three hours to draw out the essential components. Then add it to salads or stir it into warm soup. As long as you don’t cook it you can add it to anything you like.
I also like this recipe that appeared in Medical Herbalism, Journal for the Clinical Practitioner from author of The Healing Power of Garlic, Paul Bergner:
A connoisseur’s garlic cocktail
Different solvents extract and promote specific chemical reactions between the constituents of garlic. Water, vinegar, alcohol, and oil each draw specific constituents out. Alcohol and water, for instance, is the best solvent to extract allicin. Soaking crushed garlic in oil promotes the production of ajoenes and dithiins, important antibiotic and blood-thinning constituents of garlic. My garlic “cocktail,” then, is as follows.
Three cloves of garlic
1 Tbls of red wine
1 Tbls of vinegar
1 Tbls of olive oil
Blend well in a blender.
Add 1/4 cup hot water.
Let stand for 3 hours. Do not strain. Add one-third of this to a cup of hot water. Take another dose every 3-6 hours until it is all gone.
On paper this sounds a little like drinking salad dressing, but I find this to be a pleasant stimulating tonic with a sharp taste. Raw garlic cloves upset my intestines, but this does not.
3. Has humanity moved from pride in its achievements to shame?
The next thing that I have to share with you this week is this wonderful quotation that I discovered from the well-known intellectual Jacob Bronowski. (You may remember the series he did on the BBC in the 70s called The Ascent of Man.)
”The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end, the man they commemorate is the builder.”
The first thing that struck me about this is how important it is on a personal level. It is so important for each individual to have something that they feel they do well - even if it is something as work-a-day as their ability to fit a toilet as a plumber… their ability to entertain their friends… or pride in the clever way they construct a text message or an email.
My second thought, however was whether, on a larger scale, there is an extent to which mankind has lost this pride in itself?
Are there, perhaps, too many reasons for shame these days? Rather than face that shame and do something about it we plough on in a state of guilt or even self-disgust, trying to blank out the shame with the comfort of our lives… with television… and with luxuries and gadgets?
Is this a particularly British thing? Western? Or global?
Now the Chinese are sharing in our mania for luxury and gadgets
Rather spookily, as I was contemplating this question, my husband sent me an email with the subject line of ‘End of the World Comes to China’.
Inside he had copied and pasted a quotation from an article that read:
“We’re suffering from cold and hunger,” a man in his 20s shouted to Reuters Television. “They said they’re not going to sell to us. Why? Why?”
I opened the link expecting to read an article about how the farmers in China are still starving.
But oh no. The people who were complaining about being cold and hungry were cold and hungry because they had been camped out overnight outside the Apple store in Beijing - in the hope of being able to buy the latest new iPhone.
The reason the shop weren’t selling to them was because they’d already completely sold out.
As one blogger commented, this rush at the Apple store was just like the annual rush at the train station to buy train tickets home for the Spring Festival.
”If people had to make a choice, I think iPhone fans would rather buy an iPhone 4S than go home,”
said the blogger, using the online name Zhang Xinchun Daqi.
Shame? I guess there’s still more of it to come…
3. And last but not least, my Life is a Bag Of Revels shop will be opening next week!
You’ll be able to pay your first visit to my brand new online shop next week! With peace of mind and security, I believe this will be a great new way for you to purchase the hard-to-find alternative remedies and products that I love and recommend. There’s also a whole section on toxin-free cleaning and toxin-free beauty products and a whole lot more for you to browse.
I’ll give you the link once it’s open next week!
Best wishes
