Dear Friends,

We are beginning to wake up.  We desperately need fresh air!

We are awakening to the understanding that life on earth has the power, in the way that it behaves, to alter the very composition of the gasses that make up the troposphere (the troposphere being the blanket of air covering the earth where all the weather takes place).

Furthermore, being the self-conscious, reflective animals that we are, we’ve come to understand that the way in which we have conducted ourselves on earth since the industrial revolution, has brought us into a crisis point that in all likelyhood, unless we get a hold of ourselves, will lead us to our very extinction, along with that of most other higher, high oxygen requiring creatures—the Sixth Mass Extintion.

When comparing the atmospheres of our closest neighboors in our solar system, Mars and Venus, to the earth’s atmosphere, Dr. James Lovelock (founder of the Gaia Hypothesis)  contends that, the Venusian atmosphere yielded figures of 95-96% carbon dioxide, 3-4% nitrogen, with traces of oxygen, argon and methane. The same analysis for Mars returns 95.3% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, only 0.15% oxygen and only 0.03% water. In comparison the Earth’s atmosphere at present is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen with traces of carbon dioxide, methane and argon.

Chemically speaking, life enables the atmosphere to exists in a state far from equilibrium.  Conversely, if there was no life on earth its atmosphere would resemble that of Mars and Venus with levels of CO2 well over 90%, and oxygen being negligible.  Basically, reaching a state of equilibrium.  Life exists far from equilibrium.

So, the rising CO2 levels are very alarming, especially since they haven’t been at 380 ppm since 2 million years ago.  The more they rise the hotter the planet gets, the hotter the planet gets, the more the ice caps melts, the oceans rise, and the higher species die.  We’ve been here before, five times. This time, extinction, will be of our own doing.

Fortunately, we see help coming from all corners of the earth.  It is literally happening all around us, and the goal with our Forward Thinking is to help connecting the dots of positive movements so we can be encouraged and motivated to participate in quickening the change.  The following are a couple more points of light for us to know about:

Number One:  It’s happening in our very own neighborhoods.

On Tuesday afternoon Dohrea and I drove to Seattle to one of our new favorite food coops, the Madison Market.  As we arrived to our destination I noticed right across the street the most gorgeous wooden office building going up. I had to take a picture, so I took out my trusty cell phone and took these two shots. As you can see in the second picture it says the Bullitt Center.  Would you like to know what the Bullitt Center is up to?  It’s very exciting!

Their goal is to be the greenest commercial building in the world. They have entered into the Living Building Challenge.  To be certified as a Living Building a structure is required to be self-sufficient for energy and water for a least 12 continuous months and to meet rigorous standards for green materials and for quality of its indolor environment.  The Living Building Challenge requires a project to meet 20 specific imperatives within seven performance areas.

For the Bullitt Center, meeting the imperatives will include the following:

• Site:  The location will support a pedestrian, bicycle, and  transit-friendly lifestyle.
• Water:  Rainwater will be collected on the roof, stored in an underground cistern and used throughtout the building.
• Energy:  A solar array will generate as much electricity as the building uses.
• Health:  The building will promote health for its occupants with inviting stairways, operable windows and features to promote walking and resource sharing.
• Materials:  The building will not contain any “Red List” hazardous materials, including PVC, cadmium, lead, mercury and hormone-mimicking substances, all of which are commlonly found in building components.>
• Equity:  Unlike many office buildings, large operable windows will offer fresh air and daylight to all the people who work in the Bullitt Center.  The goals of Seattle’s Community High Road Agreement will guide selection of the construction team.

Their website is trendously informative, an important resource.  It will take you into a whole new world of enlightened building design.  Click here or above at the Bullitt Center.

Number Two:  It is happening all over the world.

350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis.  They have a fabulous educational site, that will arm you with all the information you needs to grasp and to speak on behalf of the issues regarding global warming.

They just completed an online project called Climatedots.org where people from all over the world took videos and photos of climate changes occuring in their part of the world.  Check out the link.  Communities gathering from all over the world—Brazil, London, Florida, Afghanistan, Egypt, Kenya, Micronesia, etc—it’s grassroots and people are getting involved.  I will let these links do the talking.

The coral reefs of our Maldivian island is bleaching and breaking apart because of climate change, threatening our community, country, and culture. Photo By: Mohamed Fahumee.  These islanders are standing on the dead coral at low tide.  Very sad.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Energy Sustain:  organic quinoa, amaranth, chia, buckwheat and millet, all especially milled to make their nutrients available.  There is no gluten, yeast, wheat, corn, soy, or excipients and additives of any kind.  They are clean and pure. They are kosher. Cruciferous Sprouts:  broccoli, daikon radish, red radish, watercress, kale, mustard, cabbage.  All freeze dried sprouts harvested on the third day when their glucosinolates are at their heights.  Phyto Power:  whole and very potent multi-species of wildcrafted Blueberry, Dandelion and Rosehips—just think of the red, blue and green power.  Ultra Minerals:  72 nano sized, negatively charged plant derived minerals from Deep Time—predating humans destructive involvement with the land.  Original Synbiotic Formula:  good lactic acid bacteria and organic inulin from chicory root.

The Last Quiz Answer:

Lynx are masters of deep snow and cold winters. In Washington, they are at home among the boreal habitats in Okanogan County, where winter persists for much of the year.

Their down-like fur protects them from the cold, and their large paws (the size of a cougar’s foot) and small weight (similar to a 25-pound bobcat) enable lynx to float on the deep fluffy snows of the high elevations of northern Washington. These large feet act as snowshoes for lynx to pursue their primary prey, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus).

Excessive numbers of fires in the past decade may be a threat to the species’ survival in Washington … In the past decade, more than 50 percent of these spruce and subalpine fir forests along the northeastern Cascades have been burned. (from a talk by Gary Koehler, wildlife research scientist, Washington Deparment of Fish and Wildlife).

I just picked up a book, that just came out, at our new food coop in Bellevue called Local Dollars, Local Sense:  How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity.  It has received some very high endorsements from authors I respect.  For example John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman (a must read) said, This long awaited book is a masterpiece and a field guide to a much needed journey into creating the kind of economy our children will be happy to inherit.  Future generations will praise Local Dollars, Local Sense as one of those seminal works that helped transform human societies.

Dear Friends,

To your right, the Spirit of the Northwoods greets you. Its home, the great Boreal Forest encircling the Artic.

In total, the boreal forest covers 6.41 million square miles. Also called the Taiga, it is found throughout the high latitudes between the tundra and the temperate forest,from about 50 degrees to 70 degrees North. In North America it covers most of inland Canada and Alaska as well as parts of the extreme northern continental US.  It also covers most of Sweden, Finland, much of Russia, Northern Kazakhstan, northern Mongolia and northern Japan. A little over 30% of the world’s forests are in the far North.

The boreal forests cover 17% of the Earth’s land surface area, and as such are a big storage area for carbon—a carbon sink.  In this picture the boreal forests are dark green areas, the tundra and barren land are tan, while crops and grasslands are yellow.

The Last Quiz Answer:

Research concerning the chemical analysis of the composition of the Venusian atmosphere has yielded figures of 95-96% carbon dioxide, 3-4% nitrogen, with traces of oxygen, argon and methane. The same analysis for Mars returns 95.3% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, only 0.15% oxygen and only 0.03% water. In comparison the Earth’s atmosphere at present is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen with traces of carbon dioxide, methane and argon.

The earth’s atmosphere exist in a state far from equilibrium because of life, the biosphere—Gaia.

350.org is building a global movement to solve the climate crisis.  Their online campaigns, grass roots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by people in 188 countries.  They are connecting the dots all around the world.  They are the life force of the biosphere and their pulse is strong.  This is good news my friends, let’s reverse the de-evolutionary path.

Dear Friends,

At this very moment I’m 30,000 feet over gorgeous northern California on my way to LA, thinking of all those people down there. What an awesome experience it must be to view mother earth from space. Astronauts have characterized it as a transcendental experience, giving them pause to think differently about their own lives and their relationships to the rest of life. Perhaps it leads one to reflect on the big questions like: Who am I? What’s my purpose? How can I fulfill that purpose? Certainly a trip, figuratively speaking, we all need to take.

This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It’s lovely. It’s small. It’s isolated and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country or our own religion or our own hometown or even ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man [human], and number one, the planet [mother earth] at large. This is our home, and this is all we’ve got.

(Scott Carpenter, Mercury 7 astronaut)

A Chinese tale talks of some men sent to harm a young girl who upon seeing her beauty, became her protectors rather than her violators. That’s how I felt seeing the earth for the first time, I could not help but love and cherish her.

(Taylor Wang, astronaut)

As we got farther and farther away, it [the earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrunk to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. The beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.

(James Irwin, astronaut)

We each have our own personal narrative, our story about how we relate to the rest of life around us. The blessing for all of us is that the way in which we interact with the rest of life can change as we grow in experience, and evolve into new ways of understanding ourselves—where we fit in life. As Americans, we have viewed ourselves as separate from nature as though we can do what ever we please to her without paying the piper. How shamefully childish and unenlightened we have been. But, this is changing…there is reason for hope.

I propose a new narrative (as Dohrea says), one that deeply connects us to the biosphere. As we look at earth from space, thinking about it from a biospheric perspective, we know a few things: One, is that earth’s blue/green color comes from its covering of life (take a look at the picture above!). Life that is, in essence, one vast food chain that consumes, cycles and recycles both living and non-living matter. Secondly, that this process creates the rich soil, an oxygen filled atmosphere, pure water and weather suitable for the emergence of increasing biodiversity. Thirdly, we now conceive of life not so much of a process of the survival of the fittest, but as a process of symbiosis—life forms helping other live forms symbiotically to survive through forming complex networks of communication and support at all levels of existence, from our cells and bodies to ecosystems and the whole earth herself as one vast ecosystem—named Gaia.

Let’s examine the biosphere. From deep space, into the troposphere (look up this word!) we drop, finding ourself by chance descending into one of the wild places on earth—the middle of the great Ituri rainforest in the heart of the Congo. The jungles of central Africa and the jungles of the Amazon are the lungs of the earth, pulling CO2 from the air and putting oxygen back for us all to breathe.

This special place was filmed by the Planet Earth team. As in any ecosystem, each of its creatures play a special part in keeping it healthy. The elephants drink very rich mineral water, while their waste contributes nutrients and organic matter back into the soil. A critical watering hole for these forest dwellers. As we zoom in closer we see these three together, perhaps they are a family. Elephants mate for life. Family members, bonded together, protecting and supporting each other for their mutual survival.

Taking a closer look still, at the largest of the three, not sure if it’s the poppa or momma, we know that this beautiful creature is a collection of both elephant cells and microbial cells, not unlike us and our human microbiome. If you recall, our human microbiome in our gut is composed of 100 trillion bugs, that’s tens times more than our total human cell mass—yet when were healthy they work together as one collaborative system. It is the same for our elephant friend, whose physiology relies on healthy elephant and symbiotic microbial cells within its gut, and its other orafices, and on its skin—all working together for the survival of this intelligent pachyderm. What’s the microbiome count for an elephant gut?

So what are we? An individual self trying to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, or an intimate part of a collective whole called Gaia—or somewhere in between? The bottomline is, at every level, we are an intimate part of the natural world where even our individual human cells have evolved as an intermingling of human DNA and microbial DNA. As we’ve closely looked at the power house organelle within each of our cells, the mitochondria, we’ve come to realize that these membrane bound entities contain their own DNA, unique to that of our cells’-most likely derived from ancient bacterial origin. At our cellular core we are symbiotically connected to the microbial world. From a purely Gaiac perspective, James Lovelock with help from Lynn Margulis in his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look at Life On Earth, proposes:

All organisms and their inorganic surroundings on earth are closely integrated to form a single and self regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet …. The troposphere, the blanket of air covering the earth where all the weather takes place, is the circulatory system, produced and sustained by life …. Humans may be the emerging brains of Gaia. We are the micro-beings and Gaia is the macro-being.

In conclusion, life is a vast network of relationships to which we are deeply connected. A lifeless Earth would have a surface atmosphere somewhere between Mars and Venus, which is mostly made up of CO2 and methane. It would be much hotter, much more acidic, the clouds on Venus are mostly composed of a sulfuric acid atmosphere. Fortunately, we are becoming aware that by our actions we are affecting the whole biosphere, and that how it all turns out for us is very much in our hands. Knowing this is the good news. Now it is time to smell the roses and get to work.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Isn’t it time for a Spring cleaning of our body? Many of you have your detox programs
for your patients in the Spring. Our new product fit right in. Here they are: Energy Sustain, Cruciferous Sprouts Complex, Chlorella, Phyto Power, Ultra Minerals and Original Synbiotic Formula.

Let’s look at them from right to left: Energy Sustain: organic quinoa, amaranth, chia, buckwheat and millet, all especially milled to make their nutrients available. There is no gluten, yeast, wheat, corn, soy, or excipients and additives of any kind. They are clean and pure. They are kosher. Cruciferous Sprouts: broccoli, daikon radish, red radish, watercress, kale, mustard, cabbage. All freeze dried sprouts harvested on the third day when their glucosinolates are at their heights. Phyto Power: whole and very potent multi-species of wildcrafted Blueberry, Dandelion and Rosehips-just think of the red, blue and green power. Ultra Minerals: 72 nano sized, negatively charged plant derived minerals from Deep Time-predating humans destructive involvement with the land. Original Synbiotic Formula: good bacteria and good fiber. Mix with a little dilute organic pear or apple juice-a good breakfast.

The Last Quiz Answer:

A new study has found that forest elephants may be responsible for spreading and planting more seeds in the Congo than any other species. Dr. Stephen Blake’s, of the Max Planck Institute in Ornithology, research shows that elephants consume more than 96 species of plant seeds and can carry them as far as 35 miles from the point of origin. The study did not take into account seeds smaller than a centimter, even though seeds of this size were estimated to number in the hundreds and thousands in the dung piles studied. The forest elephants are under the threat of extinction due to poaching for their ivory for the Chinese market. There numbers have been reduced by 80% in the last 50 years. We are witnessing their annihilation.

A Farm For the Future by Rebecca Hosking Rebecca Hosking is a wildlife film maker, who has made to spectacular documentary of her journey back to her aging parents farm to becoming a farmer herself and save the farm. It is a documentary divided into five chewable parts that will totally delight you and masterfully inform you. It is every bit as important as Food Inc. Just watch the first segment and you will be delightfully hooked.

Dear Friends,

It’s spring.  It’s time to check out the soil, plant the garden, watch life sprout and grow.  Watch the biosphere do its thing.

Two questions for you: What is your definition of the biosphere?  How can a proper understanding of what the biosphere is, save us from extinction?

Here’s mine:  The biosphere is the biofilm of life on the rock we call earth. (Bardell. S., 4/11/2012)

Here’s another, expanded a bit more for further clarification: The biosphere is the totality of life living and dead plus its interactions with rocks, water, and air.  It is diverse and complex. (Donovan, P., Carbon Cycle video, Soil Carbon Coalition, 2010)

So, the biosphere is the zone of the earth where the complex interweaving of living and nonliving systems occurs.  Fritjof Capra (1996) in his book, The Web of Life, takes us into the workings of the biosphere through explaining its carbon cycle/.  Let’s look at the carbon cycle from two vantage points as he provides us with foundational and transformative ideas.

By blending water and minerals from below with sunlight and CO2 from above, green plants grow out of the soil, but in fact most of their substance comes from the air.  The bulk of the cellulose and the other organic compounds produced through photosynthesis consists of heavy carbon and oxygen atoms, which plants take directly from the air in the form of CO2.  Thus the weight of a wooden log comes almost entirely from the air.  When we burn a log in a fireplace, oxygen and carbon combine once more into CO2, and in the light and heat of the fire we recover part of the solar energy that went into making the wood.

We have this great plant next to our kitchen sink.  It’s been with us for years and all I’ve ever done to keep it happy is water it.  No plant foods given, no changing of its soils, nothing but supplying water—and still it’s alive, healthy and busting with life.  This wonderful plant supplies us with beauty, fills our room with oxygen, and takes the CO2 out of the air.  Isn’t it amazing to realize that most of its material for existance and growth comes from the air?

Another example of how carbon cycles through the biosphere is called The weathering effect.

Rain (containing CO2) falls to the earth and mixes with the rocks (containing calcium), which is catalyzed by soil bacteria to form calcium carbonate (CaCO3).  The soluble CaCO3 washes into the ocean where it is absorbed by microscopic algae to form their tiny microscopic shells.  When they die, they fall to the bottom of the sea to form limestone.  As the weight of the limestone builds it eventually finds its way through the ocean floor’s earth crust, falling into the mantle of hot molten rock underneath.  This is then, through volcanic action, spewed back into the atmosphere as CO2, to be recycled once again by plants and rainfall.

The only waste generated by the ecosystem as a whole is the heat energy of respiration, which is radiated into the atmosphere and is replenished continually by the sun through photosynthesis. Eugene Odum’s dictum, “Matter circulates, energy dissipates.” (Capra, 1996)

Knowing the path carbon takes during its cycling, gives us the power to control our fate when it comes to the escalating atmospheric green house gasses that are catapulting us into extinction.

The slide, on the right,  comes from the excellent Carbon Cycle powerpoint on the home page of the Soil Carbon Coalition.  As you can see from this slide, there is more carbon trapped in the soil in organic matter (humus) than in the atmosphere and plants combined.  The humus holds carbon and reduces CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  The humus plays a leading part in the storage of energy of solar origin in the surface of the earth.  As Donovan says in his carbon cycle video, “When there is more carbon in plants and soils there is more water in the soil, more photosynthesis, more work ,more food and more of what we need and the rest of life needs.  If is a reinforcing or positive feedback loop.”

So, what is the biosphere?  The biosphere is the totality of life on earth that captures the energy of the sun to continuously cycle matter.  The pattern of this work can becomes clear as we come to understand the carbon cycle—a circular never ending flow of matter that flows through and connects all life.  It is the cycle of birth, growth, death and decay. (Donovan)

How does this understanding help us save ourselves?  By understanding the carbon cycle we also realize the key factor in whether or not we will be able to stop the escalating rise in greenhouse CO2 levels, which threatens us with the next mass extinction. How well we manage the soil of the earth has the potential of saving our world but if we continue with our present mismanagement of our farming practices we will reap the grim consequences.  So roll your sleeves, plant your organic gardens, water your plants indoor with love, and pass on the urgent message that change is good.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Isn’t it time for a Spring cleaning of our body.  Many of you have your detox programs

for your patients in the Spring.  Our new product fit right in.  Here they are:  Energy Sustain, Cruciferous Sprouts Complex, Chlorella, Phyto Power, Ultra Minerals and Original Synbiotic Formula.

Let’s look at them from right to left:  Energy Sustain:  organic quinoa, amaranth, chia, buckwheat and millet, all especially milled to make their nutrients available.  There is no gluten, yeast, wheat, corn, soy, or excipients and additives of any kind.  They are clean and pure. They are kosher. Cruciferous Sprouts:  broccoli, daikon radish, red radish, watercress, kale, mustard, cabbage.  All freeze dried sprouts harvested on the third day when their glucosinolates are at their heights.  Phyto Power:  whole and very potent multi-species of wildcrafted Blueberry, Dandelion and Rosehips—just think of the red, blue and green power.  Ultra Minerals:  72 nano sized, negatively charged plant derived minerals from Deep Time—predating humans destructive involvement with the land.  Original Synbiotic Formula:  good bacteria and good fiber.  Mix with a little dilute organic pear or apple juice—a good breakfast.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This gorgeous frog comes from the jungles of Central America, where it was filmed by the Planet Earth team.  Their experience as they traveled around the earth to wilderness places was that the amphibian populations are in collapse.  Of the 6000 species of frogs worldwide one-third are endangered.  Why?

They are like the carnary in the mine—sensitive to unhealthy atmospheric conditions.  The frogs are the canary of our world.  Their skin is very vulnerable to the rising tide of pollutions and pathogens.  One of the lead scientists in the Planet Earth Video said that frogs are becoming extinct throughout Central America.

Climate Impact Day on May 5th, 2012 is coming! From early morning on May 5th when the sun first rises in the Central Pacific and our colleagues in the Marshall Islands do a daybreak dive on their damaged coral reef, we’ll be following the day around the globe, providing an endless stream of pictures and images.  People around the world will upload a group photo from their local event that captures their big climate dot.  We’ll help you figure out what makes sense, and how to pull together the logistics, but we need you spirit of solidarity to get it going. Imagine one of the largest banners the world has ever seen, staked down on a California glacier with a simple message:  I’m melting!  Now imagine, at the same moment, activists in Ho Chi Minh City gathering along the Saigon River to mark the ever higher tides that are swamping homes and neighborhoods.   Now imagine our friends in Hobart, Tasmania gathering along the beach to mark severe erosion from a recent series of freak storms.  Start or join an event near you for Climate Impacts Day on 5/5/12.  Click on the above link.

Dear Friends,

This gorgeous creature on the right is perhaps the most endangered mammal on the planet.  There are just a few left in the wilds.  This female and her cub were filmed by the Planet Earth documentary team—an extremely rare sighting.  Do you know the name of our beautiful animal?

Does it really matter if we loose to extinction an animal such as this?  What is it contributing to our lives?  Does it really matter that we are cutting down all the forests that make up its habitat?  We have been answering these questions for years, but let’s revisit, because it is important .  I’ll come back to our gorgeous creature, but meanwhile…

Hey, it’s Spring here, and hope springs eternally…right?  Mother Nature is sprouting, new buds are popping, chlorophyll is making its appearance once again.  What a gift we’ve been given, what a responsibility we have, regarding our relationship with Mother Nature.

Let’s talk about how and where we are getting this relationship right, and shine the light on the reason for our hope in the face of our self-made, but not inevitable, doom.

More of you have weighed in regarding my comments, in our March 14th Forward Thinking newsletter, on the recently published article, Red Meat Consumption and Mortality, and also to the supportive commentary offered by Dean Ornish in his article, Holy Cow! What’s Good for You is Good for our Planet—both basically promoting a vegetarian solution to the de-evolution world problem.

Adding to the point of view that all red meat is not bad and that there is a world of difference between a factory farmed animal and an organically pastured-only criter, was Karen Wennlund, Dispensary Manager and Clinical Herbalist for the Mederi Centre For Natural Healing. I will share some of the points she made in her email and her invaluble links to the major architechs of the solutions she is proposing.

Direct quotes from Karen’s email:

• The difference between conventional, factory farming, where probably 90% of the US [population] get their beef, and cows raised on perennial grasslands in the appropriate way (mimicking the way wild herbivores have co-evolved with predators and grass for thousands of years) is Light Years; and in terms of the health of people and health of the planet are not comparable, as they are two different animals, two distinctly different things!
• As far as people’s health, big differences in the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio of the purely grass fed variety to that of the CAFO variety.
• But really what I know more about is the carbon sequestration that happens when cows and other herbivores are grazed correctly on perennial pastures.  Fact is, in our temperate climate, it is the cheapest, most efficient way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
• There are different estimates out there, here’s one from PA Yeoman’s son…”With just a 1.6% increase in the organic matter of the wolrds already farmed soils, atmospheric levels of carbon would be returned to pre-industrial levels in 10 years.” (Alan Yeoman)
• Another from Peter Bane, a leading permaculturalist and publisher of Permaculture Activist, talking about Polyface Farm… “If US agriculture lands currently receiving 30 inches or more of rain yearly (basically the eastern US- about 800 million acres) were farmed like Polyface, 2.2 billion tons of carbon per year would be sequestered, which was equal (in 2007) to the total US atmospheric release of carbon.”
• This is about using what we already have (established pastures) to make a difference now.  Its an issue of management, not about vilifying cows or the flesh.
• Lots of resources out there.  One of the farmers mentioned is Abe Collins, a dairy farmer in Vermont, who incorporates Holistic Management, Broadacre Permaculture, and Keyline Principles.  He runs 70 mature/40 young; moves them from paddock to paddock four to ten times daily (top grazing).  This has an equivalency of 400 to 800 animals per acre.  Calves stay with mothers, one time daily milking, sells them directly to restaurants, and the kicker makes 8 inches of topsoil per year!

Here are some very important links that Karen has given us:  Down and Dirty—How carbon farming, the practice of putting CO2 back into the soil, can help fight global warming; Scientists Help Ranchers Wrangle Carbon Emissions—Soon ranchers might be able to use their land to offset carbon emissions; Holistic Management International—Help to improve your land and  your life; and Abe Collin’s, Co-founder of Carbon Farmers of America, talk:  The Carbon Ranch- Using Food and Stewardship to Build Soil and Fight Climate Change.

So, thank you Karen.  These are fantastic and important ideas and links (above) for us to dive into.

Now, how does all this relate to my opening paragraph’s question, why save the beautiful creature above from extinction?  The answer in a nut shell is, that if we look carefully at her ways and how she fits into the ecosystem, we can learn how to keep that ecosystem healthy.  A good example is what we talked about above.  When we acknowledge the reality that our present farming methods (factory farms, and monoculture plantation) are destroying the soils all around the earth and polluting the air we breathe, and furthermore that even the fruits of these farming methods, whether plant or animal, are vastly inferior to organically grown vegetables and fruits, and livestock that are raised and fed by migratory grazing strategies through variety of organic pastures, similiar to how the zebras, wildebeest (let’s not forget the lions) do it—grazing the top of the plants and fertilizing and building the soil along the way.  When we learn from nature and duplicate her ways, we not only have better meats and vegetables but we have a healthy ecosystem worldwide.  This is all something to get our energies into.  This is something we can do now.  If we get the farming right, we get the soil right, we get the air right, we get a bounty of real food right that can therapeutically nourish our bodies.  Nature knows, we need to work with her not trample her creatures.  Then we can all flourish.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Isn’t it time for a Spring cleaning of our body.  Many of you have your detox programs

for your patients in the Spring.  Our new product fit right in.  Here they are:  Energy Sustain, Cruciferous Sprouts Complex, Chlorella, Phyto Power, Ultra Minerals and Original Synbiotic Formula.

Dose:  Energy Sustain- one scoop (included in container), Cruciferous Sprouts Complex- 2 capsules, Chlorella- 4 tablets, Phyto Power- 2 capsules, Ultra Minerals- 2 capsules, and the Original Synbiotic Formula- 1 tsp.

Benefits:  Energy Sustain- The power of organically grown millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and chia, all especially processed to liberate their vital nutrients- high in protein, amino acids, complex carbs, fibers, vitamins and minerals.  Cruciferous Sprouts Complex- the power of greens, cruciferous greens for getting the liver efficiently functioning, antioxidant, anti-cancer power.  Organic Chlorella- helps clean the blood, the liver and kidney, a chelator of heavy metals.  The green of all greens.  Phyto Power- giving you intesive phytochemicals derived from wildcrafted4 species of blueberry, 3 species of rosehips, and 4 species of dandelion including the roots and flower.  The magnified power of flavonoids from blues, reds, yellows, and greens—polyphenol/phytochemical power.  Ultra Minerals- providing 72 minerals (negatively charged, nano sized, elements) derived from organic plant vegetate of the Mesozoic Era (that is really Deep Time my friends—65 million years ago).  Opening up metabolic pathways to function more fully towards the maximizing of our genetic potential.  The Original Synbiotic Formula provides lactic acid bacteria for our gut health and prebiotic fiber for their growth and our gut health.

The Last Quiz Answer:

The Great Migration is a site I think we all must see in our life time. The annual movement of zebras, wildebeest, eland, giraffe and other herbivores, of course, along with their shepards—the great preditors of Africa. Click on the above link. It shows you via an interactive map the route that these animals must take—1.5 million wildebeest, 500,000 Thompon’s gazelle, 200,000 zebra and 18,000 eland. Would that not be so awe inspiring to see?

Our local food co-op’s newsletter this week had an article entitled “Sustainable Stars,” and within this group they highlighted R.W. Knudsen Family and Santa Cruz Organic.  They both hail from a distribution facility in California that earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council in 2010. The 157,000 square-foot warehouse generates more than 90 percent of its energy needs via solar arrays, methane turbines and natural gas microturbines.  They have a solar water heater that provides more than half of the building’s hot water needs, skylights and translucent wall panels that reduce lighting and energy needs, and innovative water management.  More that 90 percent (283,000 pounds) of construction waste materials were recycled during construction, and materials used were made from recycled content.  Beyond production, the juice makers are committed to sustainable agriculture and juice free of added sugar, artificial colors and preservatives. I’ve always liked these two companies products.  Isn’t it nice to know that they truly walk the talk!

Dear Friends,

As we gander out onto the savannahs of Africa, to the migrating herds of zebras, contemplating on the question—What makes food therapeutic?—we know the answer for the zebra’s food comes from high quality and high quantity grasslands.  Unfortunately, for ruminants, one-half of planet earth’s grasslands have disappeared in the last 100 years.  Habitats are vanishing, ecosystems collapsing—leaving 1/4 of the world’s mammals on the threatened list for extinction.

It’s a bit more complex when considering what makes our food therapeutic because we are omnivores—more choices and more possible confusion.  For example, last week I mentioned the brand new study, just published, by a high profile team of Harvard scientists entitled, Red Meat Consumption and Mortility. The study concludes that eating red meat of any kind increases one’s mortality.  And, it was endorsed by Dean Ornish MD in his comments regarding this research, Holy Cow!  What’s Good for You is Good for our Planet.

Not everyone agrees with the conclusion drawn or the methodology used by the Harvard team.  One such individual is Deborah Gordon MD, who emailed me after reading last week’s Forward Thinking, stating that many of the science writers that she follows criticize the science behind the conclusions.  Dr. Gordon makes some important points in her blog article, Harvard Missed a Big Point about Meat.

Whether you subscribe to a pure paleo diet or something more vegetarian, both sides in this discussion agree that ORGANIC is a must when talking about food.  Dr. Ornish really brings it home in his article, Holy Cow, where he makes the following points:

• Animal agribusiness generates more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined.
• It is also responsible for 37% of all the human-induced methane, which is 23 times more toxic to the ozone layer than carbon dioxide.
• As well as generating 65% of the human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
• Livestock use 30% of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly for permanent pasture but also including 33% of global arable land to produce feed for them.
• The clearing of forests to create new pasture is a major driver of deforestation.  70% of forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.
• More than half of US grain and almost 40% of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans.
• Producing 1kg of fresh beef requires about 13 kg of grain and 30 kg of forage.  This much grain and forage requires a total of 43,000 L of water.
• A quarter-pound burger with cheese takes 26 oz. of petroleum and leaves a 13 lb. carbon footprint.  This is equivalent to buring 7 lb. of goal.

I think we can agree that this is not a pretty picture.  But it’s even worse.  Here are some slides from my talk and upcoming book, the De-Evolution. Lets look at what is occurring on our planet.

De-forestation:  Above we talked about the fact that one-half of the grasslands are gone. But that’s just part of the vanishing ecosystem.  One-half of the earth’s wetlands have gone.  One-half of the tropical rain forests are gone—the very lungs of our earth.  One-third of the coral reefs have died—the rainforests of the oceans.  With such habitat destruction, so goes the loss of species, particularly the higher ones. One-quarter of mammals are on the threatened list, one-third of the amphibians are on the threatened list, most all of the mammals and large fish in the oceans will be gone within  50years.

CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations):  CAFOs are cauldrons of blood, antibiotics (70% of antibiotics produced in the US are used in the livestock industry) and grain (60% of US is fed to animals.  Feedlots produce 300 million tons of manure a year, and animal run off has caused a dead zone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico.  A modest CAFO with 5,000 swine will deal with as much feces as a city of 20,000 people.  Except that it doesn’t have a sewage system.  The waste produced by CAFOs is solid, liquid and gas and it damages the land, water and perhaps most of all the atmosphere.  The livestock industry produces 18% of all CO2 equivalent emissions on the planet and contributes more to climate change than driving cars.

The mighty Mississippi River:  The Mississippi drains 40% of the United States. 40% of the continental US’s run-off comes down the mighty Mississippi and is dumped into the Gulf.  Millions of tons of fertilizer, human and animal waste, pesticides, herbicides, drugs and industrial chemicals spew constantly into the Gulf.  The second largest dead zone in the world is at the mouth of the Mississippi, expanding out into the Gulf.  As I said, it is the size of the State of New Jersey.  Fish, coral, crustaceans and marine mammals are dying while a blanket of algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked.  Jellies are creatures with a 500 million year history and they survive well in a low oxygen milieu and their preferred foods is plankton (bacteria and algae).  We have altered the basic chemistry of the sea, life is moving back in the direction of a world that existed at the dawn of creation.

Dead Zones:  Oceanographers have sounded the alarm!  There are now over 405 Dead Zones in the oceans, and they are growing in size and numbers annually.  A few decades ago, its estuaries, sounds, bays inlets, coastal shores, kelp forests and thousands of cora reefs were teaming with a rich biodiversity of over 2 million species whose interwoven life benefited the global ecosystem.  We have thought our oceans to have an endless capacity to overcome our polluting ways.
Jellyfish: Jellyfish populations are growing because they can  The fish that used to compete with them for food have become scarce because of over fishing.  And the plankton they love to eat are growing explosively.  Fishermen around the world now haul in 450,000 tons of jellyfish per year.  It is called “fishing down the food web”.  We are now eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton.  In California water three of the top five commercial catches are not even fish.  They are squid, crabs and sea urchins.  The population of the big fish has declined by 90% over the last 50 years.  The jellyfish are so thick off the Alaskan Peninsula that fishermen nicknamed it the Slime Bank.  Also proliferating is the giant nomurai found off Japan, a jelly fish the size of a washing machine.  A recent assessment by a Scripps Institute Oceanographer predicted that over fishing, acidification, habitat destruction, global warming and nutrient runoff from farming would conspire to drive oceans back toward a primordial state, dominated by the likes of algae and jellyfish.

We must globally face the truth—the mess of the earth’s ecosystems.  The starvation, sickness, pollution, ecosystem destruction, chronic sickness are all human caused.  We are the problem.  Going organic in our farming practices and eating patterns globally would set our world right.  There is really no other acceptable choice, and the consequences of not going for it are most likely the Sixth Mass Extinction.  We all, especially us in the holistic medical community, need to seriously get involved in being—can I say it— activists for what I term in my book “globally-local” organic farming. But more on that next week.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Consider the following as a regular part of your diet:

Energy Sustain, Ultra Minerals, Phyto Power and Number 7 Systemic Booster

Dose:  Energy Sustain- one scoop (included in container), Ultra Minerals- 2-4 capsules,  Phyto Power- 1-2 capsules, and Number 7 Systemic Booster- 1 tsp.

Benefits:  Energy Sustain- The power of organically grown millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and chia, all especially processed to liberate their vital nutrients- high in protein, amino acids, complex carbs, fibers, vitamins and minerals.  Ultra Minerals- providing 72 minerals (negatively charged, nano sized, elements) derived from organic plant vegetate of the Mesozoic Era (that is really Deep Time my friends—65 million years ago).  Phyto Power- giving you intensive phytochemicals derived from wildcrafted 4 species blueberry, 3 species of rosehips and 4 species of dandelion including the roots and flower.  The magnified power of flavonoids from blues, reds, yellows and greens—polyphenol/phytochemical power.  And last, but definately not least, No. 7 Systemic Booster provides additional phyto power with organic pineapple, tart cherry, pomegranate and cranberry, not to mention five of our pedigreed Bulgarian probiotic strains and supernatant, carnitine, carnisine, fructo-borate, vitamin D, folate, inulin, and nucleic acid derived from barley sprout that lower high blood suger levels.

Significant amounts of high amount foods turn our body’s genetic potential on.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This intelligent creature is the Wild Dog of Africa.  They live in packs of 6 to 20.  They are very sociable and there is little intimidation amongst the social hierachy. The entire pack is involved in the welfare of the pups – both males and females babysit the young and provide food for them.

They are truly a military operation when on a hunting mission.  If you’ve never seen a documentary of the wild dogs hunting, the Planet Earth Video has captured one of their hunts—it’s amazing.  They are a will oiled machine.

Tragically their numbers are dwindeling and they are down to about 5,000—another mammal biting the dust.

Today, President Obama takes his “all of the above” energy tour to Cushing, Oklahoma – the “pipeline crossroads of the world.” Standing in front of piles of TransCanada’s pipeline waiting to be put in the ground, he will issue a specific memorandum to federal agencies, not just to build, but to “expedite” the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the refineries and shipping ports in the Gulf Coast. Even as he rejected the full Keystone XL pipeline saying he had insufficient time to evaluate it, the President has always pushed for the southern portion to be completed. But now in issuing a memorandum to speed up that process, he’s signaling a willingness to backtrack on his initial (and minimal) condition of a full review for Keystone XL. Such a public appearance in Cushing to promote Keystone XL is a slap in the face to those of us who worked so hard to convince President Obama to reject Keystone XL in January. And it gives fuel to the cynics who said that that rejection was just an attempt to temporarily placate the environmental and young voters who believed Obama’s campaign rhetoric about the need for real action on climate and our fossil fuel dependence. If there was ever a clear moment to register our disappointment, this is it. Click here to register your disappointment

Dear Friends,

What makes food therapeutic?

I guess that depends on where you reside in the food chain.  This amazing creature on the right is definately the consumate carnivore; and you wouldn’t want to be on its shopping list, for they seldom miss getting their prey. Their menu varies from gazelles to other antelopes, from warthogs to wildebeast calves and from rats to birds.

When it comes to us human beings, where do we reside in the food chain.  Are we herbivores, carnivores or omnivores?  There certainly are a lot of dietary choices for us to choose from.  What do you abide?

I tend to fall on the side of an amalgum diet combining elements of both the paleothic and neolithic diets, eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, seeds and grains, some fermented dairy (goat), some fish and chicken, but with little or no red meat.

In a most recent study that came out March 12, 2012 in the online issue of Archives of Internal Medicine entitled, Red Meat Consumption and Mortility, Harvard based author An Pan et al, maintain that eating red meat of any kind increases one’s mortality.

The study is creating quite a stir.  The LA Times immediately came out with this piece in its March 13th newspaper, All Red Meat is Bad for You, New Study Says, by Eryn Brown, LA Times science writer:

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one’s daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

“Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk,” said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published onlineMonday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren’t sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that’s good for you.  ”If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week,” he said. “That would have a huge impact on public health.”

A majority of people in the study reported that they ate an average of at least one serving of meat per day.  Pan said that he eats one or two servings of red meat per week, and that he doesn’t eat bacon or other processed meats.

Cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland said that groups putting together dietary guidelines were likely to pay attention to the findings in the study.  ”There’s a pretty strong supposition that eating red meat is important — that it should be part of a healthful diet,” said Kushi, who was not involved in the study. “These data basically demonstrate that the less you eat, the better.”

UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish said he gleaned a hopeful message from the study.  ”Something as simple as a meatless Monday can help,” he said. “Even small changes can make a difference.”

Additionally, Ornish said, “What’s good for you is also good for the planet.”

In an editorial that accompanied the study, Ornish wrote that a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, he wrote.

Next week I want to continue on with this very important discussion.  In particular, with the points alluded to in the above two paragraphs regarding Dr. Dean Ornish and his accompanying editorial; for in his editorial, key points are made regarding how to slow down the de-evolutionary process—a process that must be halted if we are to survive.

So my friends, till then.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Consider the following as a regular part of your diet:

Energy Sustain, Ultra Minerals, Phyto Power and Number 7 Systemic Booster

Dose:  Energy Sustain- one scoop (included in container), Ultra Minerals- 2-4 capsules,  Phyto Power- 1-2 capsules, and Number 7 Systemic Booster- 1 tsp.

Benefits:  Energy Sustain- The power of organically grown millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and chia, all especially processed to liberate their vital nutrients- high in protein, amino acids, complex carbs, fibers, vitamins and minerals.  Ultra Minerals- providing 72 minerals (negatively charged, nano sized, elements) derived from organic plant vegetate of the Mesozoic Era (that is really Deep Time my friends—65 million years ago).  Phyto Power- giving you intensive phytochemicals derived from wildcrafted 4 species blueberry, 3 species of rosehips and 4 species of dandelion including the roots and flower.  The magnified power of flavonoids from blues, reds, yellows and greens—polyphenol/phytochemical power.  And last, but definately not least, No. 7 Systemic Booster provides additional phyto power with organic pineapple, tart cherry, pomegranate and cranberry, not to mention five of our pedigreed Bulgarian probiotic strains and supernatant, carnitine, carnisine, fructo-borate, vitamin D, folate, inulin, and nucleic acid derived from barley sprout that lower high blood suger levels.

Significant amounts of high amount foods turn our body’s genetic potential on.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This beautiful parrot is a Amazona festiva bodinis—a species of Amazon parrots, of which there are many. Of course we are all very familiar with parrots, and how intelligent they are.  Check out this YouTube video on the amazing talking parrot.  You’ll be astonished!

The Amazon is a loving and sociable parrot originating from South America. The affectionate and loyal nature of the Amazon make this bird a wonderful pet for those experienced with companion parrots. Amazons are highly intelligent and require a devoted owner who is willing to provide significant and meaningful attention, as well as stimulus such as chewing toys to keep them happy and healthy (Dr. Bob Marshall, parrot expert).

It is easy to become an activist today. We have the power of the internet and social media. Here are three groups that allow your voice and vote to be heard and counted: CREDO Action- more than a network, a movement; Environmental Working Group- the power of information; and Earth Day Network.

Dear Friends,

What makes food therapeutic?

This is such an important question for us to focus on for a correct answer. For this knowledge can, if fully acted upon, solve many of our world most pressing problem— including that of our globe’s deteriorating health.

What’s your answer to this question, and how would it solve the worlds most urgent problems?  Here’s mine:

It is important to start with the food cycle.Every living thing is food for some other living thing.  Green plants and green members of the microbial world are ground zero for the food chain as they take inorganic minerals and the sun’s energy, and through photosynthesis, convert these minerals into organic molecule—carbon based molecules, the molecules of life.  Then, the cycle flows from green plants to herbivores to carnivores to detritivores and back to the earth—dust to life to dust.

Our genes are very old.  The blueprint for humans dates back at least 1.6 million years.  That is deep time, paleolithic time.  Our early diet was obtained through hunting and gathering, wildcrafted mostly plant based.  Horticulture came into the picture about 8000 to 10,000 years ago where grain crops (millet, wheat, oats) and seed crops (quinoa, chia, amaranth, buckwheat) came into the picture.  All of it organic.

Fast forward to about 300 years ago and the industrial revolution. We’ve exponentially increased our ability take all we want out of nature and to throw back into it, thoughtlessly, all that we don’t want.  A perfect formula for destroying habitats and ecosystems, our very communities.  As our man-made world of pollution and toxins mount as a rising tide around us, the question must be asked:  Have we reached the tipping point, the point of no return, where the forces of de-evolution take over and return us once more to a primeval world of slime, mold, bacteria and jellyfish?  CO2 levels are rapidly rising in the atmosphere, have now reached a level of 350ppm.  This is a very dangerous harbinger to our vary survival.

How can food help?

So to answer the question, how can food help, I’ll use primarily Phyto Power as my evidence for how can food help.  Additionally, I will incorporate some thoughts regarding the Ultra Minerals and the Energy Sustain towards this issue.

The diseases that are killing us today in the modern world are the chronic degenerative diseases—cancer, CVD, diabetes, obesity, the diseases of aging (now affecting younger and younger ages of our population).  Taking heart disease alone, the CVD epidemic now threatens 1 in 2 Americans and is predicted to be the number one global disease burden by 2020.  Our present cardiology budget exceeds 1/4 of a trillion dollars per year.

The fact is cornoary artery disease is rare in cultures that eat plant-based diets. Take The Okinawa Diet (June 23rd Forward Thinking), an organic, grain and vegetables based diet, with some fish. We need more vegetables and fruits in our diets, organic of course. But we know that! If everyone knew that, and we changed the typical farming into organic farming, how will that effect the earth? Bringing products that are primarily a part of the diet that keeps us healthy is our mission. The Ultra Minerals have many minerals that used to to be found naturally in the soil and therefore plants. We need minerals in our diets and hardly get it in our foods. Energy Sustain has four organic seeds (amaranth, chia, buckwheat and quinoa) and one grain (millet) to add energy and fiber from the foods that give life—seeds!  We have forgotten how to eat seeds.  The Energy Sustain will add fiber, B vitamins, minerals, proteins, and omega oils.  Phyto Power brings in the power of phyto chemicals, specifically anthocyanadins via the blue berries, the catechins via the rosehips and the luteolins via the dandelions.  All of these are very powerful families of flavonoids.  Because of the nature of the environment where these are grown (Alaska) the phytochemical amounts within these plant are off the chart and if I might use the colloquialism, just what the doctor ordered.  These flavonoids reduce inflammation, protect us from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, the diseases of aging.

Food is important. NYC has an amazing system for feeding its many citizens. Each day the loacal farmers bring in the food to the island. I am amazed at how many vegetables New Yorkers eat every day. Most restaurants have beautiful salads and many side vegetable dishes. Remember, the food pyramid has changed format. It is now a plate and half of the foods on that plate are vegetables and fruits. Is our diet comprised of 50% organic vegetables and fruits? Do we have in our diets the power of foods?

Until next week!

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Phyto Power: the ingredients and the benefits

The ingredients: As you can see from the label there are three species of rose hips, four species of dandelions and 4 species of blueberry.  More specifically regarding the rose hips they are Rosa acicularis, Rosa nutkana and Rosa woodsii.  This includes the fruit pulp and the seeds.  With the dandelion the species are Taraxacum offincinale, Taraxacum ceratophorum, Taraxacum lyratum and Taraxacum phymatocarpum.  This includes 90% aerial parts, 10% roots and the flower.  And, with the blueberry Vaccinium ovalifolium, Vaccinium alaskensis, Vaccinium uliginosum alpinum and Vaccinium uliginosum mycrophyllum.  This includes > 95% fruit w/w and < 5% leaves and stems w/w.

The benefits: Phyto Power is loaded with phytochemicals.  From the bioflavonoids alone there is so much to say.  In the preceeding six newsletters, since January 11th’s, we have focused on the features and benefits of the flavonoids.  Robust consumption of the flavonoids reduces the risks of CVD, arthritis, diabetes and cancer.  They are antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.  They work epigenetically.  They protect cognitive functioning, protecting us against dementia and Alzheimeres.  They protect against the diseases of aging.  Cultures that consume robust amounts of flavonoids and phytochemicals in the diet are cultures with robust longevity for its citizens as witnessed in the Blue Zones.  Next week we will dig deeper into the features and benefits of Phyto Power.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This primate is one of the smallest. It’s about the size of a squirrel.It’s called a bush baby, probably because its cry sounds like that of a baby.  They are nocturnal in their habits.  Can you imagine the sounds of the African night, with bush babies in the trees and lions and hyenas on the ground.  Bush babies are great jumpers, twenty feet is nothing for them to cover.  They are usually found in small groups with the mother and babies.

Where’s the region in our world, that has been torn by war since 1996, and has lost the lives of 6 million of its citizens—6 million?  The answer is the Congo—the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lyn Lusi is the co-founder and director of Heal Africa in the Democractic Republic of the Congo.  An organization dedicated to transforming individuals and communities shattered by atrocities and gender violence from war.  Lusi and her team have trained hundreds of thousands in HIV prevention and awareness raising activities. Providing primary care and post-rape counseling to nearly 40,000 women.  Training 315 sexual violence counsellors.  Click above to see her and her teams angelic work.

Dear Friends,

Last week I lectured in Connecticut and Washington DC; in Bridgeport Naturopathic Medical School and George Washington University, for their fourth year premed students. We had a blast!  Last week I promised we will look further at Phyto Power, but lets look first at why we need it, which was what the lectures were all about.  Here are a few points I would like to share with you.

In our lecture, we posited and then discussed two main ideas.  One is that we are headed toward the next mass extinction within the biosphere.  As many of you know, I call this phenomenon the de-evolution of the planet.  And the second is, if we can collectivity, on a global-local level, focus on gettig our global-local food system right—we not only can avert this pending doom, but create a world of abundance.

Important resources for you and your patients to read are The Sixth Extinction by Richard Leakey (1995); The Flooded Earth by Peter Ward (2010); Sustaining Life by Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein (2008); Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel (2009); and Hungry City:  How Food Shapes Our Lives by Carolyn Steele (2008).  Choose one or two books, have them in your waiting room.  They are worth the investement of resources and time.

The facts are right before us.  In today’s world there are now over one billion people who are starving, and at the same time over one billion people who are overweight or obese.  We have a pandemic of chronic degenerative illnesses on a worldwide scale increasing affecting all ages—as a species Homo sapiens are in trouble.  Chronic illness is a hallmark of a species in decline.  Of course, as doctors, you do know this fact. So lets look further:

We are not alone.  One quarter of amphibian, reptiles and mammals must now be put on the endangered list.  Richard Leakey, the world famous Paleoanthropologist, says that between 17,000 and 100,000 animals disappear from the face of the earth every year!  If this rate continues within the next 100 years we will have one-half the diversity of life on planet earth left.  He maintains we are headed for the sixth mass extinction on our planet and this one is caused by us.

Peter Ward, Astrobiologist and Paleontologist, tells us that in all previous mass extinctions in deep time, the last one being the K-T Extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other creatures 65 million years ago, there were high levels of green house gasses (particularly CO2) and an accelerating loss in biodiversity—the very conditions we are seeing now.

NASA’s own measurement of atmospheric CO2 shows it to be at 350 ppm.  It is accumulating at an exponential rate and if this continues within the next 100 to 300 years we will reach levels of 1000 ppm—all the polar ice caps will have melted and water levels of the oceans will have risen by 250 feet.

There are now over 450 dead zones in the ocean.  In our own Gulf of Mexico there is a dead zone the size of the State of New Jersey where only jelly fish, algae, bacteria and slime can grow.  As I have said many times before, ½ of the grasslands, wetlands, tropical forests, and 1/3 of the coral reefs (the rain forests of the ocean) are gone—habitats are vanishing, ecosystems are collapsing.

The lungs of the earth—our green forests—are daily being decimated.  Most of the cellulose in trees and green plants comes from heavy carbon and oxygen molecules taken out of the air during their photosynthesis and deposited into their body mass, in exchange they exhale pure oxygen back into the atmosphere for us to breathe.  When we burn a log, the carbon and oxygen go back to the air as CO2 and we get the heat of the fire, which was the original captured energy from the Sun.  Life is amazing isn’t it?

So this is the problem before us. Next week, we will get into the solution—the changing our food system, which our new product Phyto Power is a part of that solution. Our company believes that activism is not a separate part of daily life, quite the opposite, it is embedded (to use Dohrea’s words) in the very nature of what we do and offer.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Phyto Power: the ingredients and the benefits

The ingredients: As you can see from the label there are three species of rose hips, four species of dandelions and 4 species of blueberry.  More specifically regarding the rose hips they are Rosa acicularis, Rosa nutkana and Rosa woodsii.  This includes the fruit pulp and the seeds.  With the dandelion the species are Taraxacum offincinale, Taraxacum ceratophorum, Taraxacum lyratum and Taraxacum phymatocarpum.  This includes 90% aerial parts, 10% roots and the flower.  And, with the blueberry Vaccinium ovalifolium, Vaccinium alaskensis, Vaccinium uliginosum alpinum and Vaccinium uliginosum mycrophyllum.  This includes > 95% fruit w/w and < 5% leaves and stems w/w.

The benefits: Phyto Power is loaded with phytochemicals.  From the bioflavonoids alone there is so much to say.  In the preceeding six newsletters, since January 11th’s, we have focused on the features and benefits of the flavonoids.  Robust consumption of the flavonoids reduces the risks of CVD, arthritis, diabetes and cancer.  They are antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.  They work epigenetically.  They protect cognitive functioning, protecting us against dementia and Alzheimeres.  They protect against the diseases of aging.  Cultures that consume robust amounts of flavonoids and phytochemicals in the diet are cultures with robust longevity for its citizens as witnessed in the Blue Zones.  Next week we will dig deeper into the features and benefits of Phyto Power.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This beautiful green lizard I think is of the family Lacerta viridis.  Although I am not totally sure.  Always open for your corrections.

These are a medium sized lacertid typically around 30 cms long although some individuals will reach 400 cms. As adults the vast majority have a base colour, as their name suggests, of green! Most males look much the same, generally being covered with fine black speckles although some can show almost no black at all. The head is sometimes plain green and sometimes the top is speckled with yellow. During the breeding season the males often (but not invariably) display prominent blue cheeks and throats. Occasionally this appears throughout the year albeit to a lesser extent. Females can also range from plain green to green with a range of patterns and markings in black. They are seldom speckled, the marking when present being more likely to be pronounced blotches, sometimes so extensive as to form complex reticulation. Some animals retain two, or even four white lines into adulthood. Some females also have a blue throat and cheeks although this is not as pronounced as in the males. As hatchlings there is little or no green present and two or four pale lines might be present.

Carolynn Steele is one of the most important food scientists and strategists of our time.  Here in her 2009 TED talk she enlightens us through introducing us to the ideas in her new book:  Hungry City—How Food Shapes Our lives.