Archive for September, 2007

A friend called me and said, “Great site—but are you nuts, about the immunizations?”  He pointed out that he grew up in the polio age—he’s committed to the idea that vaccines are a good thing.

The FIRST thing I want to say is that I acknowledge the complexity of this issue, the difficulty of the decision, and never HAVE, never WILL, tell someone not to immunize her children.   What I will do is advise any parent to study the issue out thoroughly, doing more than asking the pediatrician, who MUST follow the APA’s current (and ever-changing) recommendations or risk career suicide.

And I will advise any parent to carefully consider whether to “Immunize By Two,” the Utah government’s current marketing slogan for the vaccine industry.  Ask a pediatrician why more and more vaccines are being pushed for younger and younger babies.  The answer is simple, and it has nothing to do with what’s best for your child.  The answer is that’s when they have ACCESS to children, and they must leverage that opportunity—at well-baby checkups.   People come to well-baby checkups, but they don’t show up after the baby is older.

I read hundreds of pages on the topic before saying no thanks to the rest of the vaccine protocol for my oldest two kids—and never giving a single shot to the youngest two.  I’m going to summarize WHY, in the briefest way possible.

The World Health Organization (WHO) takes credit for eliminating smallpox from the planet as its major coup in the fight against disease.  Yet smallpox disappeared in non-immunizing countries faster than in immunizing countries.  Some link the eradication of smallpox, instead, to improved sanitation and education in hygiene.  This is an example of what you can read about the “other side of the story” with regard to WHO’s claims about the necessity of vaccines.

The U.S. is the only first-world country to attempt to fully immunize children in infancy.  When Japan quit immunizing children under the age of 2, the national SIDS rate plummeted 80%.  You would think this would be compelling to our own Vaccine Administration, but you would think wrong.  Each member of the V.A. receives six figures from the very pharmaceutical companies it is supposed to be the watchdog over.  This is an egregious breach of the V.A.’s charge to guard the public health.  (Ditto the Food and Drug Administration.)  The V.A. is responsible for protecting the health of our little children, and the conflict of interest simply can’t be overstated.

 Just to give you an idea of ONE way this conflict of interest manifests itself, the Vaccine Administration considers claims of babies who die or are injured within 48 hours of being vaccinated.  If your baby dies of SIDS 49 hours after she is immunized (this happened to my neighbor), her death can’t possibly be linked to the shot, according to the V.A.  Their rules are arbitrary, illogical, not grounded in science, and designed to protect the pharmaceutical industry.  Parents should trust their instincts and their research, not the U.S. Vaccine Administration.

I studied each vaccine individually.  The only one I would agree to give my kids, based on its low risk and high efficacy, is the tetanus shot.  However, only 50 people per year die of tetanus, and ALL of them are older than 50 yrs. old.  The risks of the pertussis vaccine, on the other hand, are simply too high to tolerate, IMO, especially for my children who were all born immune-compromised (with the autoimmune disease athsma, which makes their risks of being vaccinated higher).

And keep in mind that the published risks don’t include people like my neighbor, whose daughter died on Sunday evening after being immunized Friday morning—no one even brought up the possible link.   I personally know of other SIDS cases not counted by the V.A., and several serious side-effect stories (seizures, a month of diarrhea and screaming, etc.) that were never investigated by a medical professional or reported to the V.A.  This leads me to question the accuracy of the V.A.’s statistics on death/damage by vaccines, although the reported/published data will give any parent pause.

Some researchers theorize that many reported problems (too numerous and complex to digest here) are a result of immunizing babies with very immature immune systems.  I would worry less about an immunization for an older child or adult, especially if you could ensure that the vaccine did not contain thimerosol (mercury cannot be eliminated from the body and is severely dangerous).  The vaccine industry has been trying to eliminate thimerosol as a preservative because of massive links to health problems in children.  Of course, other vaccine additives like formaldehyde are deeply troubling as well and shouldn’t be injected into the human body.

 As for the autism link, millions of dollars were spent to study the problem, and at the end of the study, the researchers said they can neither confirm nor deny that vaccines have caused the meteoric (400% in 10 years) rise in autism.  Ask Hollywood mothers Holly Robinson Peete or Jenny McCarthy, though, among others: they say they first noticed the autistic behaviors in their formerly developmentally normal children, shortly after a vaccine.

The new Hepatitis B vaccine is a no-brainer: why would anyone vaccinate their newborn daughter against a disease that she will be at risk for ONLY if she shoots up drugs or is sexually promiscuous?  God forbid that ever be the case, but if it is, it will take place at about age 15 or older—about the time the vaccine wears off.

This policy of injecting newborn girls must be driven by a profit motive rather than common sense.  Billion-dollar Big Pharma companies are in a constant race to develop new vaccines, because the target market is any company’s dream with unlimited profit potential:  it includes every human being on the planet, and the most educated among us (doctors) are a ready-made army in place to sell the product.  They’re so rabid about the product that they’ll kick you out of their practice if you don’t follow their mandates to follow the prescribed immunization schedule (this happened to me in Dr. David Johnson’s American Fork, Utah practice several years ago).  This sales force also lobbies for laws to take decision-making power away from parents and have stated in their publications that parents should be forced to immunize their children.

The risk of disease from pertussis, diptheria, chicken pox . . . scary!  The risk of damage from vaccines . . . to me, more scary, and less within my control!  My own personal decision has been to strengthen my children’s immune system with clean and alkaline water, raw plant foods, knowledge about how to use colloidal silver and herbs/remedies known to work WITH instead of fight against the immune system—as well as avoiding the processed American diet that leads to weak immunity and disease.

Best wishes with your own decisions.  Trust yourself, because no one has your child’s interests at heart more than you do.  Check out my favorite vaccine research book by Neustadter in my Book Reviews. 

Questions I have been asked:

1. What constitutes RAW—does that mean that everything is not cooked?Uncooked plant food (vegs, fruit, seeds, nuts, grains) have excellent vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.  The minute you cook it, you alter it molecularly, destroy all the enzymes and some of the vitamins and minerals.  The only way to eat better than raw plant food is to eat SPROUTED plant food.  Always try to soak your grains, seeds, and nuts, and eat sprouted food every day so as to provide enzymes so your body isn’t taxed to manufacture them—just soak them for a few hours, drain, and refrigerate.  The worst way to cook your food is microwaving.  The best is lightly steaming.2. What vegetables cannot be eaten RAW?

I just pushed a 475-bottle order of a whole food green drink group buy up my long driveway and tried my first glass—a local group buy I’m doing.  It tastes great!  I’m so excited about using this and putting it in my food storage, because the ingredient list is unbelievable!

Not only does it have lots of sprouted greens like kamut, barley, alfalfa, and wheat grass juices—but it has kale, spinach, broccoli, and parsley juices, all dehydrated at low temp to preserve enzymes, vitamins, and minerals.  It has the power foods spirulina and blue-green algae (the widely studied reasons sea creatures ever get cancer).  VM Green has all the probiotics to protect your gut through the winter against bad bacteria.

And what I’m most excited about (I know of no other similar product with these), it has kelp and dulse, the two sea plant foods I have been TRYING to get into my diet to address my hypothyroidism.

 One in four women (and many men as well) in the U.S. have thyroid issues, and most are undiagnosed.  That T-3 test your OB/GYN may have given you does NOT tell the whole story—I test in the huge “normal” range for that test, but a full blood panel tells another story.

Nourish your thyroid with kelp and dulse in the VitaMineral Green, using at LEAST a tsp. in each of three quarts of water you drink daily (work up to a Tbsp.), and you should see your blood sugar stabilize, sugar cravings decrease, and weight drop off.  If you need to GAIN weight, that’s the flip side of the same coin: you aren’t using nutrition well, so the prescription is the same—greens, for alkalinity and minerals!

Every other whole food green drink I’ve looked at (pretty much everything out there, I think) has fillers in it like flax, apple pectin, and lecithin, making it cheap to manufacture.  This product has NO fillers.

I highly recommend this whole food green drink that also contains all the enzymes you need to supply your body with food (you can let your body manufacture enzymes to digest cooked food, but it can’t do that for a lifetime).  You’ve got about 30 years’ worth of ability to do that, if you’re lucky, and then your tissues and organs burn out and degenerative disease results.  I’m so excited to not have to find ways to eat nori, dulse, and kelp every day now that I have VitaMineral Green.

You can get VitaMineral Green at on this site shortly.  I’d been paying $96/bottle for another product with only a few of these ingredients, so I’m excited to get this product out there for half that price!

This whole food green drink is great for food storage—can you believe five-year shelf life?  Amber glass bottles keep the light from oxidizing the deep-green nutrition.  I feel so much better about my food storage now.

I have found the best organic, cold-pressed coconut oil for the best price anywhere on the internet.  Check it out on greensmoothiegirl.com.  The coconut oil diet eaten by Pacific Islanders is the reason that despite eating up to 60% fat from a diet rich in coconut, they have ideal body weight/mass ratios, as well as virtually no heart disease or cancer, and beautiful hair, skin, and teeth.  You can read Bruce Fife’s Coconut Oil Miracle to discover how researchers have eliminated other factors and zeroed in on the secret to these indigenous peoples’ impressive disease resistance: the coconut oil diet.

No pantry or food storage should be without coconut oil, and here’s why:

It’s 64% medium-chain fatty acids, which burn as energy quickly rather than getting stored as fat like the long-chains.  It’s very stable and doesn’t go rancid for over two years.  Refined oils are rancid when you buy them, heated above 400 degrees and often bombarded with hydrogen atoms to make them fake foods, trans fatty acids, that destroy every cell they touch. 

Coconut oil is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and prevents heart disease (recent research shows heart disease to be linked to lingering infections in the blood and tissues).   It’s anti-tumor, and anti-free radical (full of antioxidants).  I put it around my eyes to avoid wrinkles and my hair to make it shiny and silky.

It’s well documented to nourish the thyroid, promote metabolism, and cause weight loss.  It boosts metabolism for up to 24 hours after eating it, and it causes up to 100 percent better utilization of the essential fatty acids (EFAs).

It’s the only fat that doesn’t create trans fats even when heated to high temps, as in sauteing—so it’s perfect for cooking and even better raw.  It tastes SO good—my kids eat it plain by the spoonful.

My recipes have uses for coconut oil—use it in baking, frying, granolas, salads—you can pour it in your green smoothie gradually at the very end of blending (it becomes solid below 76 degrees).

Check out pages on my site dedicated to the coconut oil diet and the link to the best source and price I’ve found anywhere.

I’m planning a retreat for moms (and those rare dads who cook and don’t mind being with lots of women!) in Salt Lake City next summer.  You’ll learn a ton, leave with lots of recipes and information, and OF COURSE be well fed.  You’ll leave armed and ready to feed and teach your children about whole food eating for life.

 I’m thinking high-energy, information-packed, interactive workshops with lots of demos, interesting digests of dozens of nutrition books you don’t have time to read (but I’ve done it for you), guest stars from the raw and alkaline food world, fabulous meals with the recipes provided to you (all easy and fast, all highly nutritious).

I’ll share a 12-step program on how to “eat the elephant” one step at a time: adding one new good habit to your family’s nutrition each month for a year.  I’ll teach you how to get your kids to not only eat what you make, but CARE enough to make good choices on their own and even convert their friends.  At the end of the 12-step year, you can teach your OWN nutrition classes if you want.

We’ll have inspiring stories by my friends who’ve beat everything from athsma to cancer with nutrition, you’ll make new contacts and friends, we’ll run a 5K to give you good motivation to train before the retreat, and we’ll have a discount if you bring your girlfriends!  You’ll have a blast and leave a better mom.

 So, email and tell me if you want an email when I have it all nailed down?  And, what do you want to learn about whole food eating?

-Robyn 

If I go to a restaurant and eat something with a lot of sodium, I can barely make a fist when I wake up the next day.  My fingers are like pudgy sausages.  My body hates salt—or so I thought.

 We all know that too much sodium is linked to heart disease.  Yet I recommend drinking “sole” every morning:  it consists of 1 tsp. of a solution of Original Himalayan Crystal Salt dissolve in water, first thing every morning.  Why?  The combination of water and salt has a higher energetic vibration than either the water or salt alone.

I have zero water retention using this salt, even using up to 2 tsp. in the morning (the best time to take it for best absorption).  One tsp. every morning is only 411 mg of sodium, and the USDA recommends no more than 2,500 mg.  The average American gets 5,000 mg.

Table salt is cooked, refined, and doesn’t contain the 84 trace minerals needed for digestion, electrolyte production, and other bodily functions.  Natural Himalayan salt does.  People who are salt deprived have aches (especially headaches), and muscle cramping, especially at night, among other symptoms. 

A double-blind study done in Austria in 2003 examined the effects of drinking a minimum of 1.5 liters of water with table salt, versus 1.5 liters of water with Original Himalayan Crystal Salt (OHCS).  Those who drank water with OHCS saw improvements in respiratory, circulatory, connective tissue, nervous system, and organ functions.  They reported improved sleep, energy, and concentration, as well as weight loss, noticeable hair and nail growth, and heightened brain activity and consciousness.

Drinking a teaspoon of sole (maximum OHCS dissolved in water, made by covering the salt stones in a jar of water) added to a glass of water every morning restores the body’s acid-alkaline balance, normalizes blood pressure, dissolves and releases cryallized deposits, cleanses the intestines, improves skin condition, and has even been found to weaken addictions.  Electrolytes are created that improve the body’s conductivity and stimulate circulation. 

Taking a 30-minute bath in OHCS is supposed to be the equivalent of a three-day cleanse or fast: minerals are absorbed through the skin, and the “sole” maintains the natural protective film on the skin so it does not dry out.

Some have asked me if Real Salt (mined in Utah) works.  The answer is that it’s much better than refined salt, but it claims to have only 50 minerals and is still somewhat refined–OHCS has all 84 trace minerals. 

See my store for a link to get OCHS from the only importer I trust–others are not reputable and may be importing another product entirely (like road salt from India, according to some sources I read).

Here’s the uncensored written opinion of my kids—let your kids read this if you’re thinking of converting them to GREEN eating!

Tennyson, age 7:

I like green smoothies with berries in them.  And pears.  And apples.  And bananas.  And collards.  Sometimes I don’t like when my mom puts TOO much green stuff.  I look forward to getting my green smoothie out of the frig when I get home from school.  I use a red straw to drink it.

Mary Elizabeth (Libby), age 10–my family’s pickiest eater:

I feel good when I eat green smoothies, and I MOST of the time like them, especially when they’re pretty fruity.  Most of my friends look at them and think they’re gross, but they haven’t tasted them, and I like them.  I like how my mom feeds us healthy stuff.  Once we didn’t have green smoothies for a week because my mom wasn’t there.  The lady who was taking care of us fed us nothing but junk and I puked.  My favorite healthy thing is zucchini bread and zucchini fritters even though I don’t like zucchini.  I’m sure my mom can tell you how to make them.

Emma, age 12:

I really like green smoothies because I like how I feel after I drink them.   Sometimes when people see me drinking them, they give me faces and think it’s gross, but that’s dumb, because the kind of stuff they eat, like Cheetohs and hot dogs and stuff are a lot grosser than green smoothies.   They just don’t know what they’re eating!

My mom teaches me how to eat healthy so I won’t have problems when I get older.  This lady took care of us for a week, and it was fun and tasted good for the two seconds we ate the junk food, but as soon as it was down the hatch, I felt HORRIBLE.

Kincade, age 14:

The green smoothie’s pretty good!  Sometimes it’s like way good, and sometimes it’s not that good—depends on how much fruit you put in it.  I like dandelion greens and mustard greens because it has a “kick.”  When other kids see me drinking it, they think it’s weird.  I couldn’t care less—it’s just how we are.  It’s good when my mom brings me a pint of it to my baseball games.  Kids think I’m weird and watch me drink it and go, “WHOOOAAAH!”  This kid on my team tried it one time and said, “That’s not bad!”  I’m glad my mom makes them because we hardly ever get sick.

Dennis (age 42–my oldest child, just kidding):

I think green smoothies are great.  I look forward to drinking them on the weekends.  I would drink them during the week, but by the time I get home the kids have finished them off.  Green smoothies are a great way to get a lot of raw greens and they taste great.  Many times after Robyn has been explaining green smoothies to a friend or family member, he or she will pull me aside and ask, “Dennis, what do YOU think of the smoothies; do you really like that stuff?”   My answer is always an enthusiastic YES!  I will admit, I am not a big fan of mustard greens in the smoothies, and a few times Robyn made them with cantaloupe (a fruit I do not enjoy), which I did not like either.  Other than those two exceptions, I love them. 

The medical industry has us thinking “cures” are in pills and surgeries.  My studies lead me to believe, however, that cancer, for instance, will NEVER be cured (and certainly never prevented) with a chemical.

 I should post the standard disclaimer that I am not a medical professional and what follows is not advice—you should see your health care professional about your health challenges.

 But I believe through my own personal experience and my studies that excellent, raw- and whole-food nutrition can reverse many conditions that the medical community cannot help you with or that will require very invasive procedures.

An example is my eyesight: I wore glasses for nearsightedness starting at the age of 20.  I now have 20/20 vision, have no need of glasses, and have done no exercises and had no surgery.  I chalk it up to lots of antioxidants (lycopene, lutein, beta carotene) every day in the form of carrots, beets, leafy greens, and tomatoes during the past 12 years.

 My optomotrist is at the end of his career and says he has seen this only one other time—a return to perfect eyesight.  I went for an eye exam 7 years ago because my glasses didn’t seem right.  I was given new glasses with a milder prescription, because my eyes were better at the age of 33 than they were at 25.  The same thing happened this year, and I went at the age of 40 to find that the glasses weren’t quite right because I DIDN’T NEED GLASSES.

 I’m sure the doc would’ve been happy to sell me some glasses.  Good thing he’s so honest.

 My friend Tryn reminded me to write about my infertility challenges: My oldest son was conceived with the fourth try at artificial insemination—he was a twin, and I lost his twin in the first trimester.  Then I had an ectopic pregnancy in which my ovary, rather than the fallopian tube, ruptured and was unsalvageable (surgery was required, as I was hemorrhaging internally and would have bled out in a very short time).  So it took me five years and drugs/inseminations to get the ONE child, and now my limited fertility was damaged, possibly cut in half.

 Then I changed our diet and began eating whole foods.  My next three children came naturally, without intervention, and very quickly when we planned for them (the last two were conceived the FIRST month we tried).  Can I prove scientifically that nutrition made the difference?  Nope.  But that’s the only thing I changed.