Got the Implant

but I don't believe I will fill it. I also was given a script for some sort of antibiotic that has the side effect of deadly Got the implant and I am feeling pretty much no pain. This is good. Of course I took 2 Advil when I got home and I think that is helping a lot. I was given a script for Vicoden for the pain but I doubt I will fill it. I was also given an antibiotic whose worst side effect is deadly diarrhea. That drug is making me a bit light headed but that is one of the side effects. I know this will do a number on my digestive tract but I will be replacing the flora with doses of raw milk and yogurt. And the course lasts only 4 days, not the usual 10 days.

It took Dr Silvers about an hour to drill a hole in my jaw due to extreme bone density (this is very good). I'm in the top 5% as far as dense bones go. he got the hole drilled put in the implant and than found a pocket of infection in the tooth next to the implant and scraped that out while he had the gum open and the root exposed. than he packed it with bone powder in hopes of regrowing the bone that had eroded by the tooth allowing crud to creep in and cause a small abscess.

I gotta say this is the best my mouth has felt in about 7 years. There is almost no pain and for the first time in years I believe there is no infection present in my mouth.

What's in Your (not organic) Milk?

This is what you should expect from any milk that is conventionally raised (plus a bunch of antibiotics and cows being fed GMO grains). Organic milk from industrial organic sources may not have hormones in them but the milk is ultra-pasteurized which is also not good as pasteurization changes the chemistry of the milk profoundly. This is a huge reason I drink raw milk from cows raised on pastured who do not do drugs.

• Injected into dairy cattle, the product can increase milk production from 10% up to 40%.
• In November 1993, the product was approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA, and its use began in February 1994.
• The product is now sold in all 50 states. According to Monsanto, approximately one third of dairy cattle in the U.S. are injected with Posilac [the brand name of rBGH]; approximately 13,000 dairy producers use the product.
• It is now the top selling dairy cattle pharmaceutical product in the U.S.
• The FDA does not require special labels for products produced from cows given rbST.
• Use of rBGH in cows also increases insulin growth factor (IGF-1) in milk.

Meanwhile, the European Commission had commissioned two independent committees of internationally recognized experts to undertake a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on both the veterinary and public health effects of rBGH. The veterinary committee fully confirmed and extended the Canadian warnings and conclusions. The public health committee confirmed earlier reports of excess levels of the naturally occurring Insulin-like-Growth Factor One (IGF-1), including its highly potent variants, in rBGH milk and concluded that these posed major risks of cancer, particularly of the breast and prostate, besides promoting the growth and invasiveness of cancer cells by inhibiting their programmed self-destruction (apoptosis). Faced with this latest well documented scientific evidence from both Canada and Europe, the U.S. bowed to the inevitable and failed to challenge the Codex ruling in support of the European moratorium. [emphasis mine]

In short, rBGH causes increased levels of IGF-1 in milk. IGF-1 (in high levels) causes breast and prostate cancer. Non-rBGH milk normally contains IGF-1 too - just in lower levels:

Milk contains IGF-1 for good reason: milk is designed for babies, and IGF-1 helps us grow. IGF-1 affects growth, as well as other functions, and is normally found in our blood. Higher levels of IGF-1, however, appear to stimulate cancer cells.

Of Doctors, Archaeologists, Lettuce and Asparagus Trenches

It's been an interesting past 24 hours. Yesterday I went to a doctor (nurse practitioner actually) because I have an ear infection that in a normal person would be so painful they would be hitting the lortabs hard. But since I have this incredibly high pain threshold when it comes to my head (I have had cavities filled with no Novocain, painful but not too bad) I have felt very little pain. At any rate, I went to see a medical professional, she looked at my ear and sinuses and declared me clogged up and sent me away with a prescription for Keflex, a penicillin drug, which is making my ear feel A LOT better (I can hear out of it for the first time in days) but the drug is making the rest of me feel not so great. You see I am very allergic to Amoxocillin which is a close relative to penicillin (which I am not allergic to) and most doctors when they hear I am allergic to amoxocillin than refuse to give me any other meds in that class and than I am forced to go out and buy incredibly expensive meds. Not this time. This time the medical professional actually listened to me and when I said I can take penicillin she said okay try this antibiotic (Keflex) and call her if I get any adverse reaction to it. Other than feeling a bit depressed physically (like I have a cold) no reactions to it so far.

After the doctor visit we came back home and got beds ready for strawberries which meant burning holes every foot into the middle of the mulch before putting it down. So eugene and me did that for a while than it was time to put down the irrigation tapes (they go under the mulch) and finally we dragged the mulch over to the beds where it is going and put it down. This was supposed to be an easy task but one bed was too wide and the soil to wet to work with so Eugene ended up tacking down the fabric and hoped for a windless night (which we had) so the fabric would not be picked up by the wind and moved. The other two beds were drier and narrower so they were no problem. And now we have our strawberry beds ready to receive the strawberry plants that are in the barn in a box with the asparagus roots.

For dinner I picked some lettuce we had been growing on pots since November and at one point decided for some reason the stuff was too bitter to eat. But because the conventional lettuce at Kroger's is expensive, small and in bad shape I decided to see if the lettuce we had was really inedible. It was not, as a matter of fact it was the best salad I have had in months. Can't go wrong with rouge d'hiver and a some young dandelion greens.

Today we had an appointment for an archaeologist to come out and look at our place and he arrived around 3pm and liked what he saw, took a few chert samples with him and suggested we might have a paleo site (the land has a terminal moraine going through the middle and that means that yes, there probably were hunters around here 20,000PB). I wish we were independently wealthy and could take the time to do a complete dig to phase 4 but we have to farm to make a living...

Before he arrived I spent the morning making soil and soil blocks so the lettuces seeds that had germinated in small blocks could be transplanted into larger blocks. that took a couple of hours mainly because I could not find a bucket of premade soil and ended up having to make an entire batch of soil. About 3 minutes after I finished making the soil I found the bucket of premade soil mix (figures).

While I was farting around with soil mix and lettuce Eugene was screening compost and preparing the asparagus beds which need to be trenched about 18" deep. He stopped the trenching because of the archaeology visit and we all walked around the land for an hour or so. But after the visit was over he went back to work and about 5 minutes after that it started to hail and continued to do so for about 15 minutes.

Now it is dinner time and time for me to make some chili using tomato sauce I canned up last fall using our fantastic Opalka tomatoes, onions and garlic we grew as well as some frozen peppers from last season and hot peppers we grew too. I will also make a pan or corn bread and I think I will pick some more yummy lettuce for a salad.

Organic Standards Weakend by Congress

Okay it's official, the organic standards are meaningless. But we can still buy from local and sustainable farms that do this for more than $$$

Lucy

From the SANET listserv:

Despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members and the organic community, Republican leaders in Congress October 27 attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to weaken the nation's organic food standards in response to pressure from large-scale food manufacturers. "Congress voted last night to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years. As passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows: Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the public based on "emergency decrees."

Under pressure from big agribusiness, the USDA is deliberately refusing to take action against factory farm dairy feedlots who are unethically selling their products as "organic." This blatant labeling fraud is compounded by a loophole in federal organic regulations that is allowing unscrupulous organic dairy farms to import young calves from non-organic conventional farms (where the animals have been weaned on cow blood, injected or medicated with antibiotics, and fed genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton seeds, laced with slaughterhouse waste and tainted animal fats). These confinement and feeding practices are inhumane, unhealthy, environmentally unsustainable, and unfair to the majority of organic dairy farmers, who follow strict organic principles on pasture access and animal feed, and do not import animals into their herds from conventional farms.

See from OCA these related stories;

Organic Farmers & Consumers Protest Sneak Attack on Organic Standards by Congress

Exposing the Organic Trade Association's Fallacies and Deception on the Sneak Attack on Organic Standards