Dear Friends,

Do all people have the right of access to the best healthcare? Do all people have the right to obtain healthy food? Do we consider these issues important enough to become personally involved in movements aimed at achieving quality healthcare and nutritious food for all?

In thinking back on the reason many of us chose the holistic health profession as a career path, wasn’t it to get people well—to alleviate suffering? I admire you in your choice of this profession and I know how increasingly difficult it is for health practitioners to move people from chronic dis-ease into the experience of wellness. There are many converging factors in the world today that are causing our species to become increasingly ill.

At BioImmersion Inc., we have chosen to focus on using food therapeutically, chosen to focus on getting our food system corrected, and chosen to focus on the issues of social justice because these form the medium or milieu within which health can be achieved, or not. In this week’s newsletter we will look again at garlic as a therapeutic food, and look again at the issue of social justice, which you will find in the Green Facts below.

Garlic

Last week we talked about the MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) for allicin as compared to other metabolites within crushed garlic. Remember that the MIC value for any substance is its ability to stop the growth of a specific microorganism of interest. It is used to rate the effectiveness of a substance as an antimicrobial.

Allicin is regarded unequivocally as the most potent antimicrobial substance within the Allium family of plants, and garlic is the number one producer of allicin in the genera. What other factors must we consider in order that allicin may fulfill its potential as an effective human antimicrobial?

Number One: Knowing how much to take. Corresponding to this is being able to determine how much allicin you have in a given product. Let’s do the math:

• Our Organic Freeze Dried Garlic assays at 26,800ppm (parts per million) alliin. Alliin is the precursor molecule to allicin. When a clove is crushed or bitten into by a pest, the inner cellular compartments separating the enzyme alliinase from the alliin are breached, thus enabling a reaction to occur, which is the production of the antimicrobial compound allicin, plus other thiosulfinates.
• One of our capsules contains 400mg of freeze dried whole garlic powder (each capsule contains 4 to 5 cloves. The enzyme and precursor can’t react because there is no moisture to enable the reaction).
• Multiply 26,800ppm times 400mg and divide that by one million and you will get 10.72mg of allicin (In sourcing garlic we take great effort, as we do with all of our raw material sourcing, to find cloves with extremely high alliin content. The industry standard for high potency garlic is around 10,000ppm. So you can see how profoundly powerful a clove at 26,800ppm is.)
• Next divide the 10.72mg of allicin by 2.2 because it takes two moles of alliin to make one mole of allicin and you get 4.87mg of allicin.
• Therefore under ideal conditions, to be described in a moment, each capsule produces 4.87mg of allicin.

Number Two: What does it mean to have ideal conditions? Lets take a look.

• The enzyme alliinase is damaged by too acidic conditions. For example, if you take one of our garlic capsules on an empty stomach with a resting pH of 2.5 to 3 there will be a certain amount of damage done to the enzyme alliinase before it can react with the alliin. The way around this is to take the garlic with a meal, as the net pH of a full stomach is around 4 to 4.5, and at that pH level a full conversion to allicin is possible. Allicin itself is not sensitive to acid.
• Another method to achieve a high quantity of allicin is by opening up a capsule into a glass of water and allowing it to react for a few minutes. You will get the full amount of allicin produced. This way also allows you to treat your mouth, sinuses and esophagus on the way down to the stomach and the intestines. Remember garlic is effective against P. gingivalis, P. aeruginosa and H.pylori. In fact, it is very effective, with extremely low MICs —1.7, 15, and 6-30, respectively. Remember the lower the MIC the more potent antimicrobial a substance is. These are very low MICs against the pathogenic bugs, with P. gingivalis being the primary organism associated with periodontal disease, P. aeruginosa being the epitome of an opportunistic pathogen affecting many tissue especially the sinuses, and H. pylori being the organism responsible for most ulcers and gastritis.

Number Three: Making the claim of ajoene in relation to allicin understandable. Lets do the math.

• One of the products in the market place has a label claim of 1% ajoene per gram, which translates to 10mg per gram or 4 mg ajoene per each 400mg capsule. In math terms the amounts are roughly the same: 4.87 mg allicin per capsule in the Freeze Dried Garlic to the 4 mg ajoene (an allicin/oil metabolite) in the other.
• However, we learned in last week’s newsletter that the comparison of the MICs for each of the products proves that allicin is a much stronger antimicrobial because of its lower MIC values.
• Furthermore, even though their major claim is the stability of ajoene, the allicin in garlic, taken properly, is not only stable, but also potent! Ajoene’s MIC value is not low enough to render it an effective antimicrobial agent as whole garlic, which goes to show the fact that the less we process food—the better and more potent it is therapeutically. It is one thing to extract whole ingredients, such as polyphenols, but another to process food out of its own natural form.

To be continued next week.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

My newest discovery as an effective way to consume regularly the Cruciferous Sprout Complex in the powdered form. Take one heaping tablespoon of the Beta Glucan Complex + one rounded tablespoon of the Cruciferous Sprout Complex + your choice of protein power. Mine has been two heaping tablespoon of a good whey protein (lately I have been experimenting with a combination powdered goat milk/whey protein). Add these to a large glass of water (or diluted juice) and drink immediately with your other pills (in my case its 2 Wild Blueberry Daily, 2 Organic Garlic, 2 Fructo Borate and a few other non BioImmersion products). The drink is very palatable! As an added benefit, since the summer is approaching, you can blend it with frozen banana, berries or melons and make it a great breakfast or an afternoon delight. And, most importantly look at the powerfully good stuff that is being put in the body. Really try it—it is that good.

The Last Quiz Answer: This is a Red Fox pup. The red fox is by far the most widespread and abundant species of fox, found in almost every single habitat in the Northern Hemisphere, from the coastal marshes of United States, to the alpine tundras of Tibetan Plateau. It is capable of co-existing with more specialized species of foxes, such as Arctic fox, in the same habitat. It is nowhere near extinction, and its amazing adaptiveness is driving many other less competent species into extinction.

Social Justice I have a real treat for you here. The first of which is to make sure you are aware of Michael Sandel’s book—Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? And, the second is to give you a taste of his work through being able to sit in, via the following link, to Professor Sandel’s extremely popular class Justice at Harvard University. Isn’t this why we go to school?

Dear Friends,

Over the next couple of weeks we will be looking at garlic as a medicinal food and why we have chosen it for our Therapeutic Foods line. It is fascinating to see how smart nature is—so read on to discover how garlic is effective in treating Klebsiella pneumoniae and other pathogens. Learn the simplicity and elegence of natural foods. Nature does not require processing to create beauty and health.

The Allium family is one of the most successful genera is the plant kingdom with 700 different species in the family. One of the major reasons for their success as a genus is that they have developed a very effective means of protecting themselves from pests such as bacteria, protozoa, fungus, molds and larger critters like insects and foraging animals. Instead of thorns, they use secondary metabolites for protection. What are secondary metabolites?

“Secondary metabolites are specialized substances considered to be dispensable, although their influence on the environment of the plant can be profound, allowing the plant to survive and thrive.” (Block, 2010) The Allium genera (garlic, onions, leeks, etc), when damaged or attacked by a pest, produce a group of compounds (secondary metabolites) called thiosulphanates, which have very strong antimicrobial properties.

The predominate thiosulphanate in fresh crushed garlic is allicin—comprising about 70 to 80%. The other thiosulphanates also have antimicrobial properties but we tend to focus on allicin because it is abundant and most importantly the most potent antimicrobial as measure by MICs. But there is some confusion about which of the thiosuphanates is the most potent. In the following calculations I hope to dispel some of that confusion.

There are some in the marketplace that promote ajoene as the most active of the three heavily researched allicin metabolites. What they are in fact saying is that when crushed garlic reacts with oil, the bi-product of the reaction is the production of three metabolites—ajoene, dithiins and allyl sulfides; and of these three metabolites, ajoene, is the most potent. They are not saying, and can’t say, that ajoene is more potent than allicin because it is not. Crushed garlic without the oil does not have ajoene or dithiins present because the allcin would need oil to react with to produce these compounds. If you let crushed garlic sit, the allicin gradually transforms into allyl sulfides, but not to ajoene or dithiins.

Allicin is a much more powerful antimicrobial than ajoene. If we look at the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) for each, it becomes apparent. The MIC is the lowest concetration of an antimicrobial that will inhibit the visible growth of a microoganism. An MIC is generally regarded as the most basic laboratory measurement of the activity of an antimicrobial agent against an organism. The lower the MIC the more powerful the antimicrobial. The MIC for allicin with Staph aureus is 27, and the MIC for ajoene is 55. Allicin is twice as potent. The MIC for allicin with E. coli is also 27, and the MIC for ajoene is 150. Allicin is five times more potent. We normally don’t consider a substance as a serious antimicrobial with an MIC of 50 and above. The reason that garlic does not kill Lactobacillus and Bifido genera is that its MIC is over 200. The genius of Nature!

Next week I will continue our discussion on garlic. Below in the clinical notes I have listed some more of the MIC values for allicin as an antimicrobial. The numbers demonstrate the very powerful antimicrobial effect of whole garlic. Add it to your diet to spice up your food, take extra capsules of the Freeze Dried Organic Garlic to stop a cold, and treat against mold, virus and bacteria. The beauty of garlic is that it is both tasty and therapeutic.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

MICs For Allicin

Bacteria (gram negative)—Helicobacter pylori 6-30, Klebsiella pneumoniae 8, Pophyromonas gingivalis 1.7, Pseudomonas aeruginosa 15, P. nigrescens 0.4.

Bacteria (gram postive)—E. faecalis 28, Proteus mirablis 15, Staph aureus 12-28, pyogenes 3.

Fungi—Aspergillus niger 32, Candida albicans 0.3, C. glabrata 0.3, C. krusei 0.3.

Parasitic protozoa—Entamoeba histolytica 30, Giardia lamblia 30, Leishmanial strains 5-30.

The Last Quiz Answer: In case you have figured this one out this is a girraff kissing a squirel. It is part of a collection that come from National Geographic Best Photos 09. Next week I will show you the whole set. They are wonderful.

I got this book for Dohrea as she is in school combining the disciplines of Social Justice and Literature and analyzing the ongoing conversation among different societies. Check out Isobel Coleman Paradise Beneath Her Feet – How Women are Transforming the Middle East (2010). I have included here the link to an interview with Coleman.

Dear Friends,

The magic of nature is all around us. We need to develop the eyes of a child again so that we can tune in again and bask in her glory.

Planting the garden this weekend (on Mother’s Day) has joyfully brought people together. The community gathered around the new creation, and of course helped with the work, offered ideas, and just hung around.

Life is really about relationship, isn’t it? What else is there? But as we grow out of childhood most of us get focused on ourselves, relating to ourselves—what we want to become, how we want to earn a living, etc. Life isn’t so much fun any more, it’s work. Our relationship to others can become more of a means to satisfying what has become our first love, ourself and its goals and desires. We lose the purity, the lens of a child. We don’t look with amazement at nature any more. What we feel is that we no longer have the luxury of time.

When we talk about nature we often talk about the creation. Life creates more life. When we think of Nature as a creation, we wonder about a creator, which brings us to the religions of the world that address the question—who am I and how did I get here? Christianity, as expressed in the Bible, is a love story between God and His/Her creation. Buddhism is a love story into the self/Self through techniques of calming/quieting the mind. Again, developing the view of a child as expressed in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. Christianity focuses on the Other, Buddhism leads to the Self.

So planting the garden bought out the community in me. Brought me into relationship not only with my neighbors, whom I’m just getting to know, but with nature-the big and magical neighbor all around us. A neighbor who give us the magic of life.

So I present to you our baby garden.

What is a bit hard to see in these pictures is that we have planted within these three beds baby plants from the Genus Allium—some onions within the central herb bed, some chives, shallots and leeks in the two flanking beds of vegetables, to keep the pests away. We didn’t plant any garlic, the most powerful of the Allium family, as its planting cycle is in the Fall.

The use of alliums as repellents has a long history, going back to Egyptians who used onions to repel snakes. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote: Garlic has powerful properties…it keeps off serpents and scorpions by its smell (Block 2010). Fortunately we aren’t warding off snakes and scorpions here in the Northwest, but birds and bugs for sure, and garlic and the alliums apparently work on these as well. We will see.

The Genus Allium is comprised of 600 to 750 species and is one of the largest genera in the plant kingdom. The presence of sulfur containing compounds is a characteristic of this genus and the cause of its smell and pest control properties.

Garlic is the strongest-flavored edible Allium. It is relatively fragile; bruising will trigger the chemical reactions that release allicin, which is the essence of garlic. As a chemical, allicin is both unstable and reactive. These two qualities make it remarkably effective as an antibiotic, antioxidant and anticancer agent. Next week we will go further into this wonderful plant.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

To get the maximum conversion of the precursor molecule alliin into the reactive/antibiotic like molecule allicin, we recommend taking our garlic capsules with food. Allicin is produced when the reactant alliin and alliinase come together with moisture. Stomach acid neutralizes alliinase, therefore the buffering effect of food, which raises the pH, minimizes this. You can also open up a capsule in water, let it react forming allicin and then drink it. Allicin is not sensitive to acid and also kills H. pylori.

The Last Quiz Answer: Meredith Turner from the Farm Sanctuary said, Though our sheep and goats get along fine with each other, we rarely see any particular interest between members of the two species. Dorothy [the sheep] and Chico [the goat] weren’t rescued together, and they live in a herd of more than 100 sheep and goats. People who have not spent time caring for these animals have a hard time telling them apart, especially all the sheep. But Dorothy recognizes Chico from the other end of the barn. They seek each other out, and when they meet, they exchange adoring greetings by rubbing their heads against each other. They spend hours each day grooming, playing and snuggling together. We don’t know how it happened, but these two are obviously smitten. (Daily Green)

One of our guiding principles as expressed on our website’s home page is—Working Together: Environmental protection and economic growth go hand-in-hand with good economic policies and advanced technologies to achieve sustainable economy, environmental quality and social equity. Striving for social equity or social justice is a driving force within us and on Conversations this past week the host, Enrique Come, interviews Cornel West—renowned author, philosopher and Ivy League Professor. He is one of the countries leading advocates for social justice and speaks powerfully to this point here. I think it will inspire all of us to do more for the cause of good in this world. I’ve captured it for you. The interview with Cornel West—Cornel West on Conversations.

Dear Friends,

It’s Spring full bloom and friendship is in the air as you can see in our photo here. But take a very close look—what is different about this photo?

It is vegetable garden planting time here in the Northwest. As you may remember last summer I initiated the planting of our first garden on our property. This year we are making it a communal effort. I sent an email to all the condo owners, asking them to let me know the kind of vegetables they would like to see in our garden. This coming weekend we will start our planting. As you can see, I have gotten the ground prepared with three trellises in the back for peas and beans and other “climbing things”. Our plot is very small—9 by 15 feet, so we are supplementing with potted gardens everywhere in our courtyard and walkways.

We are going to have two planting—one, for spring time, cooler weather plants and the second is in mid June for summer crops. Thus far the consensus is that we want a lot of herbs—basil, tarragon, mint, rosemary, Italian parsley, thyme, green onion, chives, and garlic. I will also plant kale, spinach, and other wounderful greens. Perhaps for this first planting we will do some climbing snap peas for the lattice with beans and climbing cucumber in the second planting. The June planting is very exciting as we plan to do a better placement for our tomatoes (in pots, next to a wall that soaks up the sun’s rays and heats up), zucchini, eggplant, some squashes—we’ll see. Of course, all the seeds and seedlings will be organic.

The question I’m asking myself this week is how to space the plants. Being basically a novice, I am consulting with our local nursery, my relatives and friends who are gardeners and farmers. They are great with all sorts of ideas. I’ve been looking at my vegetable gardening books. In next weeks newsletter you’ll see the results of this planning in pictures from the garden.

Here is an enticing herb garden suggestion for my book, Gardening For The Future of The Earth by Howard-Yana Shapiro, PhD and John Harrisson (2000). In this wonderful book the authors show how the masters of organic gardening do it. As they say, How to create natural bounty in your own backyard and help save the planet one seed at a time. More specifically:

All your main culinary herbs can be planted accessibly in an ascending spiral using an easily constructed mound with a base diameter of 6 feet, rising to 3 to 4 feet in height. Planting can also take into account the edge between the sun and shade preferences of plants; in the case of herbs, the sunny, dry side is suitable for rosemary, thyme, and sage, while the shadier, moister side would be best for cilantro (coriander), mint, parsley and chives.

Do you not have enough space for a garden? Plant in pots and place on your decks, or any free spaces you can find around your home. Planted pots of organic herbs and vegetables will cheer up your home, green the environment, and supply healthy, vital nutrition.

So, this is the beginning for us with our little condo pea patch—baby steps. We taught everyone that organic is the only way to go and everyone seems to be on board. It’s a process and as I look at our property’s potential in the future, for going green and growing food, I see the enormous possibilities like the square footage of flat top roofs with easy access. How amazing it would be to convert that unused space into raised gardens. Stay tuned.

My other personal gardening book that I love is The New Organic Grower—A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener by Eliot Coleman (1995). The author advocates vegetable gardening as a business. His plan is to devote five acres of land as the optimum size because it is about as much land as a couple or small family can manage to create a successful business as a vegetable farmer. By manage, Coleman means both practically and professionally—practically, by using the low-cost equipment and simple techniques that fit the tasks, and professionally, by making sure there are enough people per acre to stay on top of things. Two and a half acres is more than sufficient land to grow a year’s worth of vegetables for 100 people. Small 5 acres farms feed most of South America, Europe and Africa. Family owned five acres organic farms could feed the world.

This brings me to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)—Helsing Farms. They have put out their Spring emailing for membership for the coming growing season—and, I signed us up. We will get our first weekly shipment of organic produce in mid-June. Here’s a sample from their email:

“Despite hail and other questionable conditions the 3 acres of strawberries that we planted in February are looking green and plump. Hopefully there will be lots of strawberries for you this year and then next summer when they begin producing in earnest we’ll also open the field for u-pick.”

“Our two greenhouses are doing well this year. Last year the onions, leeks and shallots we planted germinated rather poorly and we didn’t have as many as we had planed for. This year they look great, we’ll be planting them out in the field in the next few days. Planting onions is tedious work, not to speak of weeding them 3 times as they stay in the ground all the way from April to September, but they sure are worth it!”

“We put our first planting of seeds in the ground on April 19th. The soil seemed warmer and more awake then in years past. We happily planted snow peas, red and golden beets, green onions, fennel bulbs, rainbow chard and some beautiful hardy green butter head lettuce. We are getting excited for the first vegetables and fruits of the season. Usually we have kale and rainbow chard to eat all winter and into spring, but it all froze this winter.”

Your farmers, Annie, Sue, Rosalio, Bonfilio, Tomasa, Adelpho, Victor, Oly and Zac

There is much more in their letter, but they do bring you along in their farming journey—don’t they? They love their gardening, and they provide the best, mouth-watering recipes for hearty home-cooking with the produce they deliver each week. You should check out CSAs in your area.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Garlic has been appreciated since the dawn of civilization. The remarkable properties of garlic can be understood based on the occurrence of a number of relatively simple sulfur containing chemical compounds ingeniously packaged by nature in garlic. Next week’s email will be devoted to taking a look at this. Suffice to say each vegetarian capsule of our Freeze-dried Organic Garlic contains 4 to 5 cloves of exceeding potent garlic—26,000+ ppm alliin and is excipients free.

The Last Quiz Answer: This is a baby spider monkey. They are called spider monkeys because they look like spiders when suspended by their tails. Spider monkeys are usually all black, but some have flesh colored rings around their eyes and white chin whiskers. Their hair is generally coarse and stringy. The male’s body length 38-48cm, tail 63-82cm, 9-10kgs. The female’s body length 42-57cm, tail 75-92cm, 6-8kgs. Males and females look the same.

Spider monkeys are generally found in lowland rain forests from Mexico to South America, along the coasts and the banks of the Amazon, south to Bolivia and the Matto Grosso in Brazil, and the mountain forest slopes of the Andes. They are restricted to arboreal habitats, mainly in the top of the tree canopy.

Do you know who Cesar Chavez is? Probably you do. What about Dolores Huerta, do you know who she is? I didn’t, but last week I had the privilege of hearing her talk on our local PBS affilate on Conversations. The show’s moderator asked Dolores (regarding her co-founding of the Farm Workers Union with Chavez, and the 1965 Grape Boycott, which was the most famous and effective boycott in the US history), if Cesar was the frontline activist and she served more at the administrative level. She gracefully corrected the host informing him that they were both equally out there as activists. She had been jailed over twenty times standing for the rights of farm workers. It was a half-hour interview and I have the link for you. What a beautiful elegant human being! Watch it, you will be blessed—Dolores Huerta on Conversations.