DAY TWO Sept. 28, 2009 6 AM Orcas ferry landing
Usually when we go to the mainland we pick up a cuppa while waiting for the boat. Most often, that is accompanied by a bran muffin. Jack can't eat or drink anyway due to his pending surgery. That helps me stick to this alkaline-year resolve too; so eating is sociable.
Eating alkaline varies somewhat for individuals and groups that adopt it. For me, it means eating primarily vegetables, some fruits, grains, seeds, nuts, with no meats or fish, processed foods, sugar (except in fruits), coffee, or dairy products (we use rice milk), and drinking at least a liter of water daily (I add with green powder to my trusty stainless-steel water bottle). This vision/outlook is heart-healthy and has many other benefits that I'll explain below.
It's true that eating alkaline seriously restricts choices of road food. So I brought along a bag of almonds. Today, while waiting for Jack to come out of the surgery, I'll go to the farmer's co-op in Bellingham, pick up avocados and grapefruit to eat in the motel, and some good alkaline water. At home we have water with a good pH, although I'd to buy a water filter to bring it up to 7.3 or 4. (Not this year, my dear! until the economy improves)
Good hydration is difficult on the road. I'd like my drinking water to have a pH of at least 7.4 and occasionally if I've eaten or drunk badly, up into the 9s. For long trips, I usually carry pH drops, available in health-food stores, to increase the potency of bottled water.
As long as I can foresee events, I can plan my nutrition around them. Today, for instance, I anticipate a certain amount of anxiety while waiting for Jack's recovery, probably a few new concerns as we return home. Comfort food is OK as long as, for this one year, it's primarily alkaline.
So much of my nutrition devolves onto choice. I am choosing alkaline foods this year for the purposes of 1) understanding optimal balance for my body; 2) educating others through this blog; and 3) enjoying improved health, without rashes, headaches, colds, flu or any major illnesses.
During the past year, eating alkaline less than optimally (60 % of the time), I've only had one bout of flu. That one, which forced me to hand over honchoing a church breakfast, came after I'd eaten and drunk a lot of SAM (Standard American Meals) for several days on a trip across country. An outside "bug" may have infiltrated my thus-compromised blood during the flight home; the woman next to me sneezed a lot. But the precipitating factor, in my view, was that I'd created an internal climate that was friendly to the outside germ.
This concept comes from Professor Antoine Bechamp, a scientist who during his lifetime published many more scientific papers than his contemporary, Louis Pasteur. Bechamp's greatest contribution, which went virtually overlooked due to Pasteur's distortions, was his discovery of what he called microzymas, small cellular components that, when activated, started from within the breakdowns that result n various diseases depending on where the cells were beginning to change.
Generations later, scientists are still probing the question of what activates cellular breakdown. Bechamp hinted, in his book The Blood and its Third Element, that blood quality is the instigator. Claude Bernard came up with the concept milieu interne. Walter Cannon, early in the last century, referred to the maintenance of constant conditions of bodily fluids as homeostasis. Later in the last century, Robert O. Young came up with the concept of pleomorphism, defined as the process of cellular breakdown. He showed, via microscope, the process as it relates to specific illnesses. Where the cells break down relates to what the illness is called: atherosclerosis if near the heart, diabetes if in the pancreas, and so on.
Crucial to Young's hypothesis is that what keeps us healthy is the pH of the blood that bathes all our cells. The way pH intake affects our blood is easily demonstrated, as I've done several times. Using pH paper, available in most pharmacies and health-food stores, test the alkalinity of your urine. Dissolve a teaspoon of baking soda into comfortably-warm water and drink it. Ten minutes later, check again with the pH paper and note the difference.
It seems as though scientists are subject to the same emotional fits and vagaries as anybody else, which in my opinion accounts for the intemperate comments on this alkaline hypothesis. "Hogwash!" and "Crank," are but a few of the epithets applied to alkaline theory, phrases that reflect more upon their drug-company-dependent authors than upon scientific truth. After all, if cancer, heart disease, diabetes and their many variants, all can be understood as stemming from blood quality, which in turn is dependent by what--and how much--we habitually eat and drink, who needs to raise money for breast-cancer research? Why not, instead, turn efforts toward educating the public about optimal nutrition? Surely people who invest now in drug companies could make money out of backing optimally-produced foods.
Well, that's what I'm trying to do, educate by example, this year. In many past years, I wasn't sure enough of what optimal nutrition was, to write anything such as this. Now, I am. Another important influence on my own nutritional choices has been Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Gosh, after reading his descriptions of cattle feedlots, and recalling that when Jack and I drove up from Arizona last winter we endured horrible odors for 10 miles before and after a feedlot where beef cattle were standing in manure while eating steadily, I don't have any trouble giving up meat.
10 AM Left Jack in his room in the hospital, to return about 1:45 when he should be out of surgery, walked Binka the dog in a wonderful cedar park, disposed of her poop, then to the bookstore to find another copy of a book that rates most foods from "most alkaline" to "most acidic." On to the food co-op to buy emmer, the tasty grain that has the best amino-acid content of any grain going, and a few other groceries. Around noon, checked into the motel, devoured an avocado and a grapefruit, both organic. Brief rest, then back to the hospital, where Jack was out of surgery, color good, asking for a Reuben sandwich. ARRGGHH! It's his body and his habits, and I love him anyway. Also, at home, he's appreciative of veggies and able to stay off red meats and sugars most of the time.
6 PM, BACK AT THE MOTEL: One of the books I found earlier today was God's Nutritionist, a collection of observations by Ellen G. White, a founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists, for whom I have a lot of respect. When I worked in Honolulu, I always stopped by their hospital for lunch and was never disappointed. Mrs. White (1827-1915) advised: "Physicians who use flesh meat and prescribe it to their patients, should not be employed in our institutions, because they fail decidedly in educating patients to discard that which makes them sick." Ms. White's 20th-century editor had added a contemporary quotation from American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (9/99): "Populations of vegetarians living in affluent countries appear to enjoy unusually good health, characterized by low rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and infant mortality."
I know there’s a big difference between correlation and causation. However, Robert Young has made tens of thousands of photographs that show cellular breakdown in as many individuals; these cellular breakdowns have well-defined patterns corresponding to diagnosed disease states. That’s enough to cause me to eat alkaline.
DAY THREE September 29, 2009
Breakfast at the motel today was a grapefruit and an avocado, washed down with a bottle of pH 9.5 water that I found at the co-op. I wish that bottled-water companies were required to label the pH of their product; apparently they are required to do that in parts of Europe but not in the U.S. Total cost for my three meals (lunch and supper yesterday, breakfast today): $13.16.
Horrible headache last night, probably left over from that chocolate mousse cake, wine and crabcakes and coffee with refills of two nights ago. I've often noticed that intemperate eating does not directly (within a few hours) affect my physical symptoms. I think that eating unhealthily blunts the sensibilities so that you may not feel sick until the dis-ease breaks out. Anyway, thank God I lived through this one; I expect such headaches to decrease markedly during this coming year. Good to look forward to that!
Brought Jack home in general good spirits although very tired. Not in any pain, though he'd refused painkillers. The doctor had performed an angioplasty, according to his assistant who came by to check this AM.
DAY FOUR September 30, 2009 Choices, choices! Wonderful night's sleep, no headache, old friends from here & Hawaii coming for dinner tonight. Jack happy to be home, playing with Binka, good game of cribbage with breakfast. My choices for today include A) cutting more lavender downtown at Enzo's, where the owner gave me permission to do that; B) a 12 Noon lunch birthday at Chimayo's for Sue Lamb (I can eat a small salad); C) coming home and preparing dinner afterward; D) taking Binka for a walk around the lake (2.7 miles); E) Richard Fadem's class on James Joyce's Ulysses.
Because of needing to tend to Jack earlier, it's already too late for Professor Fadem's class, so I'll have to scrub that one for this year, it being three weeks into the course. I never have liked James Joyce but figured the class would be good for me because the teacher is widely admired. O well, maybe next year! Likewise, there's no way I can spend a couple of hours cutting lavender and also make the luncheon and walk Binka and prepare dinner. So I'll choose B, C, and D.
A good reason for walking Binka is that these walks are when I habitually drink my first (sometimes only!) liter of water with green powder.
3:30 PM: So much for choices! After walking Binka, who at 11 months of age thinks she's a mountain lion and often walks in a crouching position to stalk squirrels and birds, I had 20 minutes to get to the birthday party. Undid her leash, reached back into the car to pick up my water bottle, and she was gone! Heard an ominous surprised "YIP!" from the road. Went out to look for her, called and called. No Binka!
Walked back into the house, where Jack, recovering from his angioplasty, was concerned. "I don't care if she is gone, I can't spend any more time looking for her," I told him. "Sue's party is more important. Can you make your own grilled-cheese sandwich for your lunch?"
Upon hearing his affirmative, I dabbed on lipstick, grabbed Sue's present, & took off. Halfway to the party, that ominous YIP! shot up from my unconscious. Was that Binka being hit by a car? Could she be disabled, lying in a ditch? Or worse?
Rushing into the restaurant, I explained to the birthday girl and to the other guests that our dog had vanished, might have been hit by a car. Jack couldn't drive (for 48 hours after the surgery), so I needed to return home & look for her. Handed Sue our gift & left.
Parking the car far enough away from the house so that Jack couldn't see me and worry more, I searched the roadsides north and south, then the nearest crossroad east and west. Then I went inside to see Jack. "Left the party early, needed to search for Binka, but didn't find her."
He said: "Somebody must have picked her up. Better call the Animal Rescue League and the Sheriff."
The League's answering machine said they opened at 2 PM. It was now 1 PM.
Settled in to make a salad for supper, from previously-cooked young beets, now sliced and with a diced apple. Easy prep. Ellen G. White, I'd read last night, wrote: "Those who entertain visitors, should have wholesome nutritious food, from fruits, grains, and vegetables, prepared in a simple, tasteful manner. Such cooking will require but little extra labor or expense, and, partaken of in moderate quantities, will not injure any one."
I saved the beet juice to cook other veggies nearer to mealtime. There was a mango dressing in the door of the fridge; that would work despite whatever pH content it bore. That, of course is what you have to determine by the contents on the label, figuring out whether it contains any or all of the five alkaline minerals: calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron and manganese, and in what order. From my previous writing experience, I have on my bookshelf numerous references to help me analyze that, but lacking the time do do it, it's easier to avoid all processed foods. Normally that would include processed salad dressings--my standard dressing is lemon juice with olive oil, the former having an alkalizing effect inside the body, but today was not a normal day. O well, I didn't promise to be perfect!
Finally, at 2:15 PM, the phone rang. It was Ron, who lives about three miles away. He and his wife , Kathy, had picked Binka up on the road about two blocks from our home. "She was running right down the middle of the road," he reported. "She got right in the car with us, loved being patted. I had her number from her license, but had to wait until the League opened to find out who the number was registered to."
What a relief! We retrieved Binka with many thanks to this kind couple.
Our old friend arrived at 5;30, and we had the simple dinner that Ellen G. White would have approved: the beet-apple salad as first course, then a gemische (unsure of spelling but it sounds like what it is) of cooked (20 minutes boiling time) buckwheat groats, mixed with sliced orange pepper, chopped rainbow chard stems, tomatoes, tiny eggplant, zucchini, shallots, all sauteed in the beet juice, then topped with chopped chard leaves and simmered, adding a little more vegetable broth if needed, along with turmeric, garam masala, sea salt and grated fresh peppercorns. Ann had brought a small seedless watermelon and organic strawberries for dessert. Perfect!
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