Archive for category Health

Farmers Go Wild

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Nature, Social movements on February 10, 2012

Winter Green Farm

My article “Farmers Go Wild” about conservation-based agriculture is in the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. You can read it here.

It begins:

“Frogs are an indicator species,” Jack Gray explains, leaning over a small, muddy pond to look for tadpoles.

Here on the 170-acre Winter Green Farm, 20 miles west of Eugene, Ore., Gray has raised cattle and grown vegetables and berries for 30 years.

It’s a sunny April day, but water pools in the pastures, evidence of the rains this part of Oregon is known for.

Gray is in his mid-50s and agile from decades of working outside. He built this pond to provide habitat for native amphibians, because bass in another pond were eating the red-legged frogs and Western pond turtles.

Cows graze in a field behind him; wind whispers through a stand of cattails, and two mallards lift off. Gray points out the calls of killdeer, flycatchers, and blackbirds. Up the hill a flock of sheep chomp on long grass. “They’re part of a controlled grazing to try to control reed canary grass, which is an invasive species,” Gray explains. “It tends to smother areas. It makes deserts almost.”

Gray, his wife, Mary Jo, and two other families co-own Winter Green Farm. They are committed to something Jo Ann Baumgartner, director of the Wild Farm Alliance, calls “farming with the wild.”

Winter Green Farm

Winter Green Farm

A2R Farm

A2R Farm

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Rethinking Sunscreen

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, New Urban Habitat on June 27, 2011

Last summer, I published a post Is Sunscreen Dangerous? summarizing the Environmental Working Group’s concerns about the majority of sunscreens on the market.

The EWG advises that consumers avoid sunscreens with the ingredients retinyl palmitate and oxybenzone and be suspicious of SPF claims exceeding 50. They also warn that many sunscreens only protect against the UVB rays that cause sunburn, not the UVA rays that cause skin cancer, raising the possibility that sunscreen may actually be dangerous, since people are inclined to spend longer in the sun when they’re not burning, thus exposing themselves to more cancer-causing radiation. The EWG has been especially critical of the Food and Drug Administration for failing to finalize sunscreen regulations for three decades.

Well, last week the FDA finally finalized those regulations, announcing that by the summer of 2012, consumers will be able to look for the words “broad spectrum” to determine which sunscreens protect equally against both UVA and UVB rays. In addition, manufacturers will no longer be able to use the misleading terms “waterproof” or “sweat proof”.

However, the EWG is unimpressed by the new rules. “It is clear that FDA caved to industry,” David Andrews, Ph.D, a senior scientist with EWG, announced in a press release on June 14. “FDA’s rule will allow most products on the U.S. market to use the label ‘broad spectrum sunscreen,’ even though some will not offer enough protection to assure Americans they can stay in the sun without suffering skin damage from invisible UVA radiation.”

I have fair skin and I grew up at 7,000 feet elevation in a state that boasts 300 days of sunshine a year. In other words, sunscreen has been my ally over the years. So finding out that all the expensive white goop I slathered on my skin for three decades contained questionable ingredients and may have made me more vulnerable to skin cancer feels a little like discovering a close friend is a pathological liar. It’s a powerful lesson in the importance of skepticism when it comes to health claims, advertising, and medical advice.

“Wear sunscreen,” is perhaps the health mantra my generation has heard the most often (and we’ve heard a lot of them). “The best piece of advice I can give you is to put on sunscreen and wear a hat.” Ted Turner, facing a skin cancer operation, famously told the class of 1994 Georgia State University students.

Three years later, Mary Schmich’s offered similar wisdom to graduates in her Chicago Tribune column: “If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.” The column went viral and was later released as a spoken-word single.

Dermatologists have been universally recommending large quantities of sunscreen applied 20 minutes before any sun exposure, citing a dramatic increase in skin cancer rates in recent years. The majority of them recommend zero unprotected sun exposure. “Ideally if you had no sun exposure, sure that would be the best way to live your life.” dermatologist Jennifer Lucas opined last week on NPR’s On Point With Tom Ashbrook.

If you’re wondering why a dramatic increase of skin cancer would coincide with the explosion of sunscreen use, you’re not alone. Dermatologists speculate about possible reasons, like tanning beds or the hole in the ozone layer.

However, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal, something else may be to blame for the increase in skin cancer rates: dermatologists. The authors of the study point out that while the incidence rate of melanoma is increasing, the death rate has stayed the same. This phenomenon is almost always a sign of over-diagnosis. In other words, screening programs, which test healthy people for cancer, mean that doctors detect and treat more cancer, but it’s often not the kind of cancer that would be dangerous or deadly.

So how can we sort through all the marketing claims, propaganda, gaps in regulation, and conflicting studies (many of them funded by the industries that stand to benefit from them) when it comes to our health?

I’m increasingly convinced that we must be skeptical of all claims (especially those intended to invoke fear), relentlessly seek out independent information and conflicting views, and never discount simple common sense.

Jennifer Lucas’s assertion that in a perfect world we’d never let our skin see the sun seems just as extreme to me as sunbathing or lying in a tanning booth, especially when we keep hearing about widespread vitamin D deficiency, a resurgence of rickets amongst kids in Great Britain, and evidence suggesting that sun exposure may be preventative against breast and colon cancers, childhood asthma, and multiple sclerosis.

As for me, I certainly don’t slather on sunscreen in the cloudy winter months like I used to. I’m a big fan of hats, protective clothing, and shade in the summer. And for those times that I need sunblock, I’m thankful for the EWG’s advocacy and for their rating guide for sunscreens, which lists ingredients and possible hazards associated with them.

Want to read more about this topic?

What do you think? Has the EWG or the FDA’s new rules changed the way you think about sunscreen? How do you sort through conflicting health claims and medical advice?

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7 Ways to Bounce Back From Burnout

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health on May 31, 2011

Photo credit: JVan Sweden

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” – Jack Kerouac

I have a great life. I get to spend lots of time with my son and watch him learn and grow, and at the same time, I’m building a writing career. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. And yet sometimes, I feel stuck, tired, frustrated, and overwhelmed. Sometimes I get burnt out … and that’s okay.

I used to imagine that I could always be on top, that I could be one of those people who “burn, burn, burn” as Jack Kerouac wrote. But as the years pass, I’m more accepting of life’s seasons, of natural cycles of dormancy and energy, of the inevitability of falling into ruts.

For me the key is not avoiding burnout (or any other emotion), but learning from it, developing resiliency – bouncing back. That’s why I’ve been accumulating these strategies for inevitable bouts of burnout:

1. Plan a vacation

We can learn something from Europeans when it comes to holiday. They take eight weeks off a year on average and work shorter work weeks than we do, but they keep pace with us when it comes to productivity. This year Switzerland and Sweden ranked first and second in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness rankings, even though both countries require workers to take at least a month of paid leave each year. In fact, the United States is the only developed country that hasn’t realized the value of mandatory paid leave for workers.

In studies vacations have been shown to boost productivity, improve health, brighten the mood, invigorate, and induce feelings of happiness – especially when you are anticipating time off. So next time you’re feeling burnt out, consider arranging a getaway. (Hint: leave your laptop at home.)

2. Power down 

Maybe you’ve seen terms like “secular sabbath”, “digital sabbatical”, and “day of unplugging” bandied about the blogosphere. All basically mean the same thing – taking at least a day off each week, not just from work, but from email, Facebook, twitter, YouTube, etc. I’m an information junky, and I love the Internet as much as anyone I know. But I love my day off from it more. I can’t believe it took me so long to tap into the restorative value of powering down.

Even with a day off each week, when I start feeling burnt out, I usually realize I’m spending too much time online. My antidote? Discipline. I only let myself check email twice a day. I make myself write down everything I want to Google and do it all at once. I establish an electronic sunset, where the computer and gadgets get turned off everyday at six p.m.

It can be a little scary to disconnect, especially when you work at home. But I like what writer Shannon Hayes has to say about it:

“My computer is turned off every morning, once my work day is complete, usually around 9am. At that point, I tune out the rest of the world and tune into my family, home, and farm. Very often the telephone gets turned off, too. So does the radio. … I didn’t always live this way. It was a choice I eventually made about using my time. Voices talking on the radio generated mental interference when trying to interact with people in the room where I was standing. Worse than that, I observed that email correspondence throughout the day, habitual Googling, and a steady-stream of web-updates were having a negative impact on my soul. Fixating on the computer made me an intolerant mother to my kids, had me doing stupid things like boiling over my soup pots, and—even if I was reading great news on the screen—it left me crabby.”

3. Clean and organize

I know, this one’s not as fun as taking a day off or embarking on a getaway, but I swear it works. It’s not just that a clean office and organized files make working easier. When I’m cleaning and organizing, I inevitably find old notes, article and story ideas, plot outlines, etc. that can kick start creativity. Don’t forget to organize and back up computer files too.

4. Turn off the noise

I love podcasts, and I’m a huge fan of public radio – To the Best of Our Knowledge, RadioLab, and This American Life to name a few. I also love listening to music. But when I’m starting to feel burnt out, I turn it all off. I listen to my thoughts. I listen to my husband and my son. I listen to the sounds of the wind and trees. I try to listen to the sounds behind the sounds, “the ragged edge of silence” as John Francis calls it:

In studies noise stress has been linked to impaired cognitive function, the release of stress hormones, and depression. Studies indicate that chronic low-level noise in an office environment impacts workers negatively even when we’re not aware of it. So if you’re suffering from burn out, take an inventory of the volume around you and consider dialing it down.

5. Attend a conference or take a class

I try to attend one workshop, class, or lecture a month, and I always walk away inspired. Last summer I took a class on writing essays, learned a ton, and met a great group of writers, whom I still meet with. This summer I’m planning to attend a three-day conference. For freelance writers and bloggers, excellent classes and conferences abound, many of them flexible and online. They may seem expensive, but in my experience, they pay off many times over.

6. Interview someone

I’ve never interviewed anyone who didn’t inspire me. I feel fortunate that I get to talk to interesting people for my job, but you don’t have to write articles to interview people. You just have to get to know someone and focus on actively listening instead of talking. Most people are eager to talk about themselves and their projects – even to a journalist. It’s a great way to get inspired and meet interesting people … and if you’re so inclined, you can turn it into a published profile or blog post. If you’re in a field unrelated to writing, you might consider interviewing someone whose career inspires you.

7. Connect with nature

Nature gave us a great burnout cure … it’s called nature. Just looking out a window at trees makes workers feel more satisfied with their jobs, helps surgical patients heal faster, and reduces anxiety in highly-stressed kids. Imagine what a walk in a park, mountains, or woods can do for us.

I’d love to hear your ideas. How do you prevent or bounce back from burnout?

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Becoming Carcinogen Abolitionists

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on May 16, 2011

Photo Credit: Angelo González

“I look back on the life of Abraham Lincoln, whose portrait hangs in every schoolroom in Illinois, and marvel that our economy was once dependent on slave labor. Unthinkable. I believe our grandchildren will look back on us and marvel that our economy was once dependent on chemicals that were killing the planet and killing ourselves.” – Sandra Steingraber

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Living Downstream, a documentary based on the life and research of Sandra Steingraber. Steingraber, a biologist and author, was diagnosed with bladder cancer at 20 and believes she is part of a cancer cluster in her hometown in Tazewell County, Illinois, where “three dozen different industries line the river valley and farmers practice chemically intensive agriculture along its floodplains.”

After Steingraber was diagnosed with cancer, her doctors told her it was a fluke. But when she consulted the scientific literature, she discovered that bladder cancer is “considered a quintessential environmental cancer, meaning that we have more evidence for a link between toxic chemical exposures and bladder cancer risk than for almost any other kind of cancer.” For instance scientists had known for decades that certain textile dyes cause bladder cancer in humans. Not only are these dyes still in use, they are present in the groundwater of Steingraber’s hometown.”The disconnect between what we in the scientific community know about carcinogens and what cancer patients are told is huge,” Steingraber says.

In the next thirty years, Steingraber went on to become a cancer survivor, receive her PhD, write several popular books and dozens of articles, and speak all over the world. She became a passionate “carcinogen abolitionist.”

I’ve long admired Steingraber’s writing in Orion, and her message is resonating with me more than ever right now for a variety of reasons. Despite Richard Nixon famously declaring war on cancer in 1971, cancer is on the rise. Recently my sister-in-law and several friends have been diagnosed with cancer in their early forties.

Where I live in Eugene, researchers have identified two cancer clusters – an elevated rate of leukemia around the Baxter creosote factory and elevated numbers of lung cancer cases near the Union Pacific railroad yards. These two neighborhoods have something in common with the Illinois county where Steingraber grew up: they’re populated by low-income people. I’ve known two families who lived near the Baxter plant. Both complained about fumes that kept them awake at night. The Oregon Toxics Alliance was started, because children at a school in the Baxter neighborhood were crying and begging to come inside from recess because of plumes of noxious gases in the air.  I’m convinced that no one, regardless of income, should be forced to breathe toxic chemicals.

Moreover, over the last two years, I’ve embarked on a personal project that’s made me reflect on our society’s reliance on synthetic chemicals. I replaced shampoo, conditioner, cosmetics, bug sprays, and cleaning products with simple, cheap, nontoxic ingredients (baking soda and vinegar, in most cases), eliminating the majority of toxic chemicals from my home. What surprised me the most about the process? The simple ingredients work better.

That’s right, those products I once used, which are loaded with questionable ingredients, are unnecessary. Yet the majority of people continue to use them. The average home contains 62 toxic chemicals. Why? Advertising? Lobbying? They don’t know about the alternatives? Could those things also partly explain the reliance on chemicals by industrial agriculture, forestry, landscape management, etc.? Maybe. For instance we often hear that chemical-intensive farming methods are a necessary evil if we want to feed the ballooning world population. But on the contrary, a U.N. report released in March reveals that by switching to small-scale, sustainable agriculture, we could not only feed the world, we could double food production.

The widespread commercial use of numerous synthetic chemicals is a recent phenomenon culminating after World War II. Babies born in the 1950s were the first generation of newborns exposed to multiple synthetic chemicals in the womb. In other words, it is a grand experiment, one that I’m increasingly convinced is failing.

Steingraber is a powerful advocate for eliminating the chemicals linked to cancer, early puberty, miscarriages, and birth defects. She’s a talented writer and one of the most moving speakers I’ve ever heard. Yet, I’ve noticed that many people have a hard time embracing her message.

When I excitedly told a friend about the showing of Living Downstream and showed him the above trailer, he reacted the way I think many people do. He said, “You’re going to watch that? It looks really depressing.”

Then I posted the movie trailer on Facebook, and someone wrote. “Great, now I have to stop drinking water and breathing.”

I can relate to these sentiments. My generation has been bombarded with environmental fears since we were born. Every nature video and discussion in grade school invariably ended with human-wrought devastation – the diminishing ozone layer, acid rain, rapidly-growing endangered species and extinction lists. By the time I was in high school, the word carcinogen meant little to me. When our teachers and parents lectured us that cigarettes were carcinogens, my friends and I shrugged. What wasn’t a carcinogen – from the water we drank to the sun we depended on for life?

So I understand why many of us might feel environmentally-fatigued and why Steingraber’s call for us to become carcinogen abolitionists could be falling on deaf ears. We tend to want a checklist of things we can do to protect ourselves and our kids from disease – eat organic, exercise, replace our household cleaners, avoid tobacco, breastfeed, eat less animal fat. Steingraber advocates all of the above, but she also makes it clear that we can not do this on our own.

“I am a conscientious parent. I am not a HEPA filter. If organophosphate pesticides are damaging children’s brains at background levels of exposure and above, they should be abolished,” she writes.

She is convinced that we have to join together, we have to speak out, we have to contact our representatives, we have to support organizations like the Oregon Toxics Alliance. We have to unify against some of the most powerful industries in the country and rebuild our society and economy. That’s not an easy message.

Yet I find it hopeful. Remember the eco-problems we kids were bombarded with in the eighties – acid rain, the ozone layer, lead poisoning? We tackled those. The EPA’s Acid Rain Program forced factories and automobiles to reduce emissions, helping to improve the pH of precipitation. Developed countries phased out ozone-depleting substances, and evidence suggests the ozone layer is regenerating. Laws banning the use of lead in house paint and gasoline mean that kids have six times less lead in their bodies than they did 30 years ago. How did we accomplish these environmental successes? By addressing the problems and working together to solve them. I hope Steingraber is right and we can also become carcinogen abolitionists.

I am betting that my children—and the generation of children they are a part of—will, by the time they are my age, consider it unthinkable to allow cancer-causing chemicals, reproductive toxicants, and brain-destroying poisons to freely circulate in our economy. They will find it unthinkable to assume an attitude of silence and willful ignorance about our ecology.

Wishful or not, I am determined to win this bet because my children’s lives are inextricably bound to the abiding ecology of this planet, which is worth everything I could possibly wager. An environmental human rights movement is the vision under which I labor, from which I am not free to desist, and which may, if we all work together, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Want to learn more about Sandra Steingraber and her work? Check out her website or the following:

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Dandelion Season

Posted by Abby Quillen in Gardening, Health, Herbs, Nature on April 27, 2011

It’s spring again … the perfect time to rerun this post from last March…

It’s spring, which means some people are stocking up on Round Up and Weed-B-Gon to prepare themselves for battle against my favorite flower – the humble dandelion. If you’re not as big a fan as I am of these yellow-headed “weeds”, which grow in lawns and sunny open spaces throughout the world, I know of a great way to get rid of them. Eat them.

Every part of the dandelion is edible – leaves, roots, and flowers. And they are nutritional power-houses. They’re rich in beta-carotene, fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, B vitamins, and protein.

Over the years, dandelions have been used as cures for countless conditions including:

  • kidney stones
  • acne
  • high blood pressure
  • obesity
  • diarrhea
  • high cholesterol
  • anemia
  • cancer
  • diabetes
  • stomach pain
  • hepatitis

“There is probably no existing condition that would not benefit from regularly consuming dandelions,” Joyce A Wardwell writes in The Herbal Home Remedy Book.

She also says that dandelion is “one herb to allow yourself the full range of freedom to explore,” because it has “no known cautionary drug interactions, cumulative toxic effects, or contraindications for use.”

So why not harvest the dandelions in your yard this spring? And I’m sure your neighbors wouldn’t mind if you uprooted some of theirs too. (But you probably want to avoid harvesting near streets or from lawns where herbicides or fertilizers are used.)

The leaves

Dandelion leaves have more beta-carotene than carrots and more iron and calcium than spinach. The best time to harvest them is early spring, before the flowers appear, because that’s when they’re the least bitter.

How can you eat dandelion leaves?

  • Toss them in salads
  • Steam them
  • Saute them with garlic, onions, and olive oil
  • Infuse them with boiling water to make a tea
  • Dry them to use for tea

The flowers

Dandelion flowers are a rich source of the nutrient lecithin. The best time to harvest them is mid-spring, when they’re usually the most abundant. If you cut off the green base, the flowers aren’t bitter.

How can you eat dandelion flowers?

The roots

Dandelion roots are full of vitamins and minerals. They are also in rich in a substance called inulin, which may help diabetics to regulate blood sugar. Dandelion roots are often used to treat liver disorders. They’re also a safe natural diuretic, because they’re rich in potassium. The best time to harvest dandelion roots is early spring and late fall.

How can you eat dandelion roots?

  • Boil them for 20 minutes to make a tea
  • Chop, dry, and roast them to make a tasty coffee substitute.
  • Add them to soup stock or miso
  • Steam them with other vegetables

As most gardeners know, dandelions are virile (some say pernicious) plants. Why not treat them as allies, rather than enemies, this spring?

Interested in reading more about herbs or home remedies? Check out these posts:

Do you eat dandelions? Do you have a favorite dandelion recipe?

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From Farm to Table

Posted by Abby Quillen in Gardening, Health, Social movements on April 11, 2011

“Where do you get your wheat?” I was about to ask.

My husband and I were out for a rare dinner alone at a nice restaurant, which advertises itself as exclusively local and organic. Next to us, a floor-to-ceiling board announced the night’s specials next to a list of farms where the food was grown.

I had just interviewed a local wheat farmer for an article and heard about a number of farmers in the Valley, who are switching from growing conventional grass seed, long the main crop in this part of the world, to growing organic grains for local markets. I was curious if this restaurant bought its wheat from one of the farmers I’d heard about.

But just as the waiter leaned in, and the question was about to leave my lips, I thought of this spoof of Portland, Oregon from the new show Portlandia, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

It’s true – Oregon is in the midst of a farm-to-table restaurant boom. I’ve been to three restaurants in the last few months with boards listing local farms. One is decorated with a mural of the rolling hills where the restaurant’s produce is grown, and the menu includes photos of the smiling farmers who grow the food.

Of course, farm-to-table restaurants are not new. Alice Waters has been serving up local, organic fare at Chez Pannise in San Francisco for decades. What is new about the locavore restaurants opening in this area is that more and more of them are affordable. One of the restaurants I ate in is a brew-pub and another serves “healthy fast food”, with all dishes under $10.

Moreover, just as the clip of Portlandia suggests, local restaurateurs (as well as grocers and bakers) seem to be forging closer relationships than ever with local farmers – and all parties are coming out ahead.

“It became a heck of a lot more fun to farm,” the wheat farmer I interviewed told me about his farm’s switch to growing food for local markets. “It’s infinitely more rewarding than just growing a product for a guy that you never know.”

We consumers might be the biggest winners. I’m a huge advocate of growing a garden, shopping at farmers’ markets, and cooking from scratch, but the reality is, Americans eat out a lot. In a 2006 survey, the average American family spent 42 percent of their food budget in restaurants.

When restaurants buy from local farms, our meals are more nutritious and taste better, since the food hasn’t made the 1500-mile road trip most produce takes before consumption in the U.S. And just think about all of the pollution and carbon not spewing into our air, and all of the money staying within our communities.

Besides, as a consumer, you can always put down the menu, ask the waiter to save your seats, and go meet the farmer who grew your wheat.

Are farm-to-table restaurants cropping up in your area? What do you think of the trend? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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The Cocoa Cure?

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health on February 7, 2011

Photo Credit: Stephen Depolo

Are you sniffling and sneezing? If so, you’re not alone. It seems like our entire city has a cold right now. At our house, we’ve been resting,  drinking lots of hot lemon and ginger drinks and broths, getting out in the sunshine,  and trying to remember all of those other time-tested cold remedies.

Then, I remembered some research I read sometime ago about a substance that beats codeine when it comes to knocking out a cough – cocoa. That’s right, I recalled an urgent reason to consume chocolate. I felt better just thinking about it.

Then my skepticism kicked in. Didn’t it sound just a little too good to be true? Could the confections manufacturing industry be conducting research into these miraculous health benefits of cocoa, by any chance?

So I decided to dig up the research again. It’s the theobromine in cocoa that researchers pegged as more effective at keeping hacking at bay than codeine. “Theobromine works by suppressing vagus nerve activity, which is responsible for causing coughing,” a Science Daily article about the 2004 study explained. The researchers isolated the theobromine from cacao beans for the study and used it in doses much higher than I would get in, say, a velvety cup of hot cocoa. But still, a large mug could only help.

I was on my way to prepare one, when I glimpsed another Science Daily article, this one from 2006. “Scientists at the University of Manchester’s North West Lung Centre have found that codeine – a standard ingredient in cough remedies — could be no more effective than an inactive placebo compound at treating cough,” it read.

Wait a minute, so codeine – the gold standard of cough suppressants that all other cough suppressants are judged against – may not actually, um, suppress coughs? Where does that leave theobromine?

In general, I’ve been feeling discouraged about medical studies these days. I love to read them, especially when they reveal reasons I should eat chocolate or go for walks or garden, or do any of the other things I enjoy doing. But I’ve started wondering if reading nutrition and medical research might actually be harmful to our health.

Remember when we were all supposed to be loading up on antioxidants? Well, according to new research, those oxidants we were fending off with high doses of beta carotene and vitamins C and E actually serve necessary functions in our bodies like fighting toxins and battling cancer.

And remember how we were supposed to be loading up on Vitamin D, because all of us were hopelessly deficient? Well, now according to a study commissioned by the U.S. and Canadian governments, “Vitamin D and calcium supplements are unnecessary for most people and may be harmful to some.”

If these findings are troublesome, Sharon Begley’s January 24 piece in Newsweek “Why Almost Everything You Know About Medicine is Wrong” is downright disturbing. She writes:

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you.

Of course, I couldn’t stop myself from reading the rest of the research on cocoa. It turns out that “the health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health … ” Chocolate consumption may also lower blood pressure, prevent heart failure, lower stroke risk, and boost brain power.

Or, hey, maybe not. But I decided to stew over it while making some hot cocoa, not so much because of its purported health benefits, but because I remembered something from my childhood. When my sister or I got a sore throat, sometimes my parents would get us a little ice cream treat to soothe it. I’m fairly certain ice cream does not cure a sore throat. I’ d guess that quite a few health gurus would argue that sugar and dairy only worsen a cold. But those little ice cream treats made being sick feel not quite as bad. And maybe that’s the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves when we’re sick.

I whipped up the healthiest hot cocoa I could manage, and it was a huge hit with my son. I think there’s something to the cocoa cure.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re feeling a cough coming on:

  • 2 cups milk (whatever kind you drink – cow, goat, soy, almond, rice, hemp, coconut… )
  • 4 teaspoons cocoa (Rapunzel and Dagoba both make delicious,organic, fair trade 100% pure cocoa)
  • 4 teaspoons sucanat (or agave syrup, honey, sugar, or your sweetener of choice)
  • Splash of vanilla (optional)
  • Pinch of cinnamon (optional)
  • Pinch of cayenne (optional)

What’s your favorite cold remedy? Are you a believer in the cocoa cure? I’d love to hear from you.

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A Year of Dressing Locally

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on January 24, 2011

Plant Dyed Wool, Photo by Anna Kika

“My one year challenge is to live in clothes that are solely farmed, created, treated, and colored all within 150 miles of my front door,” Rebecca Burgess said in an interview last April.

Burgess is a textile artist living in Fairfax, California, a small town just north of San Francisco. Like most of the United States, her region has no textile industry. To meet her challenge, Burgess would need to find local cotton growers and sheep, goat, and alpaca farmers. She’d need to track down a local mill, something that used to be commonplace across the United States, but is now nearly extinct. And she’d need to design, knit, sew, and dye her own wares by hand or pay local artisans to do it for her.

Why would one woman undertake such a Herculean challenge?

Locavore was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2007. Across the country, people are challenging themselves to eat 100-mile diets, eschewing the tempting strawberries and tomatoes on supermarket shelves in January, and patronizing local farmers’ markets. The local foods movement is even transforming the mountains of Colorado where I grew up, a region where elevations reach 10,000 feet and the growing season is as short as 40 days.

But the sad reality is that most of us are shopping at those farmers’ markets or toiling in our backyard gardens wearing clothes that are anything but local. In 1965, 95% of our clothes were made in America. Today 97% are made overseas, often by garment workers laboring long hours in terrible conditions for little pay.

The textile industry is an environmental nightmare. Most of the clothes we wear are made from synthetic fibers, which are made from petrochemicals. They require massive amounts of energy to create and have huge carbon footprints. The chemicals used in their manufacturing pollute the air, soil and water. Even the natural fibers we don, like conventionally-grown cotton, require pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and huge amounts of water. And the vast majority of our clothes are colored with synthetic dyes made of highly toxic, often carcinogenic chemicals.

Burgess is half-way through her year-long project, which she calls the Fibershed Challenge. She’s been wearing locally-made clothes since June. Her wardrobe started with just a shirt and a pair of pants. “There were some interesting sensory moments when the clothes were being washed– realizing that without those garments– there was just me and my skin. I didn’t think of the necessity of my clothes, until I didn’t have them,” she wrote on her blog. By September, Burgess had eight garments, which you can see here:

Burgess estimates that her wardrobe for the year will cost $2,000. Of course, most of us don’t spend anywhere near that much on clothes in a year, nor could we afford to. However, Burgess hopes her project will inspire people to think more about the ecological and human costs of inexpensive clothes. Moreover she wants to inspire new business models that could eventually bring down the price of locally-sourced, sustainably-produced clothing.

Organic Non-Dyed Cotton, Photo by Squirrel Cottage

She hopes people will start asking, “Hey, we don’t have a cotton mill? This is awful. What’s happening? Why can’t our small farmers grow cotton and have it milled? … Or, we have all these mulberry trees. we could feed silkworms like crazy. Why aren’t we producing our own silk? … Or, there’s no naturally produced color in this country?” she told Jill Cloutier of Sustainable World Radio. Burgess points out that in her county, ranchers raising sheep for meat compost or throw away up to 20,000 pounds of wool fleeces each year, because nobody is currently processing the material in the region.

“My prayer is that people will see this as a way to give people real jobs again, and to clothe us in a way that’s non-toxic, and that we don’t keep off-shoring misery to people trying to keep up with our consumption. The transition could be beautiful.”

You can keep up with Burgess’ year of dressing locally on the Fibershed Challenge blog. If you start at the beginning, you can take a tour (beautifully documented with photographs by Paige Green) of an organic cotton farm, a small mill, and a suburban homestead sheep farm. You can discover the community of designers, farmers, ranchers, natural dyers, and ethnobotanists that Burgess found just outside her front door, and follow them as they plant indigo, knit and sew clothes, tan skins using Native American techniques, design a wardrobe, felt wool, and dye fabric with plants and seawater.

Natural Dyes, Photo by luckywhitegirl

And if you’re inspired by Burgess to change the way you dress, she pointed out in an interview that we can all do some small things to make our wardrobe more sustainable. She suggests starting with the following:

  1. Recycle textiles through your community. Stop thinking of clothes as something you constantly consume. Buy durable, well-made garments, and join a clothing swap to trade with others.
  2. Re-skill yourself. Take a knitting, sewing, weaving, or natural dyes class. Burgess insists you’ll never look at clothes the same way.
  3. Support a local fiber producer. Buy yarn from a provider at your local farmer’s market, if available. If you can’t knit, stop into a local knitting store and ask if someone would be willing to knit you a piece. Burgess bets you’ll find dozens of local knitters eager to be of service.

What do you think of Rebecca Burgess’s Fibershed Challenge? Do you own any locally-made clothes? Do you knit, sew, weave, or dye? I’d love to hear about it.

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There Must Be Something in the Water

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on January 12, 2011

 

Photo Credit: Darwin Bell

Last week a couple of news stories made me look at my drinking water a little differently:

  • The U.S. Department of Health and Public Services proposed that utilities sharply reduce the amount of fluoride being added to municipal water supplies, because many children are being exposed to levels that exceed recommendations. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the risks of ingesting excess fluoride include dental fluorosis (pitted and mottled teeth), bone fractures and skeletal fluorosis, and possibly osteosarcoma (bone cancer), neurotoxicity, and disruption of thyroid function. Seventy-two percent of Americans currently drink fluoridated water.
  • The EWG conducted a sample of hexavalent chromium – the carcinogenic chemical Erin Brockovich made famous – in 35 different community water supplies. They found the chemical in levels higher than California has declared “safe” in 25 of the communities. The National Institute of Health deems hexavalent chromium a “probable carcinogen”, because it causes cancer in laboratory animals. The chemical seeps into our water supply from steel and pulp mills and metal-plating and leather-tanning facilities, and through erosion of soil and rock.

Should we worry?

Are excess fluoride, hexavalent chromium, or the multiple other contaminants the EWG warns are in our water, including petroleum distillates, pharmaceuticals, and perchlorate a health threat worth worrying about?

“The United States enjoys one of the cleanest and safest supplies of drinking water in the world. Municipal utilities provide water that comply with existing state and federal standards in more than 92% of cases,” the EWG states. “At the same time, we also know that there are many unregulated contaminants in our nation’s drinking water.”

Many Americans are concerned. In a 2009 Gallup poll, 84% of people said they worry a “great deal” or a “fair amount’ about pollutants in their drinking water.

Can we protect ourselves?

The EWG recommends taking the following steps if you’re concerned:

  • Learn about your water. You can find out what’s in your drinking water at the EWG’s tap water database, or by contacting your water company.
  • Avoid bottled water. Bottled water often comes from municipal water supplies, and the glut of plastic bottles – we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour in the U.S. — further pollutes the environment.
  • Buy a filter. The EWG recommends that Americans (especially pregnant women or parents mixing infant formula with tap water) consider buying a water filter. They give a rundown of different filters here. An inexpensive carbon filter will reduce many water contaminants, including lead and byproducts of the disinfection process, but it does not filter out fluoride or hexavalent chromium. A more expensive reverse osmosis filtration system reduces levels of most water contaminants. The EWG warns that we also absorb water into our bodies through bathing and showering, so you may want to consider filtering your bath water.
  • Contact your public utility. If you’re concerned about contaminants or excess fluoride in your water, speak up.

If you want to limit the amount of fluoride you or your young children ingest, you can also:

  • Reduce other sources of fluoride. Tap water is the largest, but not the only source of fluoride many of us ingest. You can reduce your children’s intake of fluoride in toothpaste, supplements, rinses, and food sources.

We don’t have fluoridated water in Eugene, or in most of Oregon, so I’m not worried about that. But the news about hexavalent chromium has made me wonder about the other untested and unregulated chemicals that could be in our drinking water. We don’t filter our water, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s a good idea. Of course, the real solution is for us to put pressure industries to find greener ways to do business and keep toxic chemicals out of our environment.

More information about chemicals and tap water:

What do you think? Do you worry about the safety of your tap water? Have you installed a water filter or a filtration system? I’d love to hear about it.

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Do Real Men Knit?

Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Simple Living on November 17, 2010

I’ve written about the mental health benefits of knitting a few times, and I just saw this CBS Early Show report listing even more reasons to knit or crochet – including a 30 to 50 percent decrease in memory loss for aging people, stress relief, pain reduction, lower blood pressure, and a boost in immune function.

The report got me thinking, why don’t more men knit? After all, knitting was once a male-dominated occupation. During the Renaissance, only men were allowed to join knitting guilds. Later Scottish sailors and sheepherders used downtime to knit sweaters. And even after women took over the craft, during the World Wars, injured soldiers were encouraged to knit as therapy, and American schoolboys were taught to knit squares to be sewn into blankets for troops.

I don’t know a lot of male knitters, but I was excited to find that there are still some dedicated ones out there. At an online forum called Men Who Knit, male needle-clickers with aliases like Kilthoser and Spicemanknit share Medieval cap patterns and pictures of afghans. And a few years ago, some male knitters announced their favorite hobby to the world in a documentary called Real Men Knit:

As it turns out, even Mo Rocca’s hooked on knitting…

I asked my husband if he would consider taking up a yarn craft. He disappeared into the office and called me in a few minutes later to see the knitted beards I linked to last Friday. “I might think about making one of these,” he said, as he searched for a free pattern.

[Image: Cover of eight-page booklet, published by Wm. Briggs & Co Ltd of Manchester during World War II to encourage injured soldiers to take up knitting as therapy. Page two says, "Thousands of our men who are convalescing and very many who feel the strain of these trying days, are being advised by their doctors that knitting is the perfect tonic for steadying the nerves."]

More on male knitters in history:

Why do you think more men don’t knit or crochet? Are you a male knitter, or do you know one? I’d love to hear from you.

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