Celilo Natural Health Center, LLC, Portland, Oregon

The news today is full of concerns about the estrogen-mimicking chemical bisphenol A (BPA). It's been linked to various cancers, diabetes and heart disease. And Consumer Reports, among others, has found it leaching into commercially canned foods. (It's in the lining.) So what's a health-conscious person to do? Eat more fresh food, of course. Or, you could preserve your own in old-fashioned glass. Here are links to some books that will teach you to safely and easily preserve the summer's bounty from your garden, your farmer's market or your local store. It's not rocket science. It can be fun for the whole family. And it's certainly the healthy choice!

Originally published in Indian Country Today:

By Terri Hansen

Environment, Science & Health Writer

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Portland, Ore.—When naturopathic physician Dr. Orna Izakson looks at a plant she sees more than its stem, leaves or vibrant flower – she sees medicine. And naturally, she takes a natural approach to flu prevention and hastening a healthy recovery.

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“Our bodies are trying to bring us toward health,” she says. “The responses we experience to outside stressors are our body’s intelligent response to that stressor. A fever is an intelligent response: It makes the body more responsive to invaders… and it makes us feel lousy so we slow down and go to bed so that our bodies can heal.”

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So what can you do to stay well this flu season? “Keep things moving,” says Dr. O, as her patients call her. That means drinking clear fluids — especially water — and eating foods that are close to nature. You can get most of the pieces you need in your diet for good health from colorful vegetables, including fiber.

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Avoid simple sugars they best as you can; they stun the immune system. “Each handful of berries you give your children is one less Twinkie, it’s a positive step.”

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Cigarette smoking depletes vitamins and decreases natural immunity. “You need to cut back, smoke less and what you do smoke should be natural, or if packaged smoke American Spirits,” Dr. O says. “Make up for the extra cost by smoking less.”

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Vitamin D, produced naturally in the skin by sun exposure, is critical to your immune system. Deficiencies are epidemic and darker-skinned people are more likely to have low levels. Depending on her patient’s lab assessments of their blood levels, she generally recommends 2,000 to 4,000 iu daily of D-3.

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Probiotics support healthy gut bacteria, a barrier between you and the outside world. One 2009 study found regular use of probiotics reduced children’s cold and flu symptoms. Another found probiotics helped elders get more immunity from flu vaccines. Buy probiotics as supplements – acidophilus is one, and find them in traditionally fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchee and uncooked miso.

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Herbal steams are an old and effective tradition for any respiratory infection: Mix herbs with boiling water in a bowl and cover for a minute with a towel. Drape the towel over your head and the bowl, close your eyes and breathe the steam through nose and mouth into your nasal passages, throat and lungs to loosen mucous, strengthens mucus membranes, and disinfects your passages. Repeat as needed.

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“You can use thyme, pine needles, cedars, eucalyptus, and chaparral. Orange peels can be effective too, but wash them well before using,” Dr. O says. “Talk to the Elders, they often know what’s best to use in your location. It could be herbs from the place your grandparents called home, or you may have a grandma in your head; listen to whose voice is louder.”

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Lomatium and osha root are best taken as tea, tincture or by chewing on the root directly. “When you take it internally, you’re taking in the volatile oils. They want to volatize, spread out. They go into the bloodstream, their aromatics bubble out into and through your lungs and mucus, disinfecting.” Think of the flu as leaving junk stuck in your lungs, a perfect spot for breeding bacteria. Herbs move it out, disinfecting from underneath.

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Garlic helps to fight many bugs that can make you sick, making it one of Dr. O’s favorites. Raw is best if your stomach tolerates it. Add a chopped clove or two, if you can, to any hot or cold food.

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If you get sick in spite of these positive steps call your medical provider.

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Home remedies Dr. O suggests for her patients include mustard plasters; to make your own grind yellow (or any) mustard seed and mix with water. Place a brown paper bag on your chest as a barrier, then smooth the mustard plaster on top. Use the plaster two to three times a day. How long you keep it on depends on your comfort level, but check frequently; if the skin starts turning red it’s time to take it off.

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The next treatment, like the mustard plaster, moves blood and helps immune cells get to where they’re needed most. Wet a pair of cotton socks with cold water; wring them out thoroughly. Put on well-warmed feet, cover with a pair of dry wool socks and get into a warm bed for the night. You can also do this with a cotton t-shirt and wool sweater.

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Bottom line, Dr. O says, is it’s the simplest things that help the most: Eat simply. Exercise moderately. Get plenty of rest. Drink water. Cover your cough. Wash your hands. Get outside and breathe clean air. And find some way to cultivate joy in your life every day. “This is traditional medicine, the best memory of the traditional medicine. It’s practical, it empowers people.”

Gardening is the world’s most popular and enduring recreational activity, feeding the spirit and the body, reducing dependence on the florist and the supermarket, and, when done organically, curtailing the use of toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Gardening feeds the senses with scent and color, and feeds the body with exercise, fresh air and the freshest—and therefore more vitamin-packed—foods.

But gardens can also feed your health in other ways: By growing your own medicine, you can reduce your trips to the doctor and pharmacist. Garden plants can help with everything from infections or insomnia to healing wounds and broken hearts. Best of all, you can grow these gems in a floriferous landscape that keeps the neighbors happy and boosts your property values.

Here is a small sample of the many flowers that do double duty in a vase and in your medicine cabinet:

Calendula (Calendula officinalis): These indefatigably cheery bright orange flowers are good for both the garden and the gardener. Like their marigold cousins, the plant deters pest insects.

Calendula’s sticky resin is superlative for healing wounds. Make a flower tea and use as a skin wash, or steep flowers in olive oil for two weeks and apply topically. Used internally, calendula combines well with drying herbs for respiratory infections. The dried flowers make a bright addition to wintertime teas—you can eat the whole flower as it floats around in your cup.

Even two or three plants will give more flowers than you can keep up with, self seeding prolifically to ensure your garden will always have their blooms. This annual plant is hardy to Zone 6, but may over-winter in warmer climates. Easy-going calendula tolerates many soil and sun conditions, but thrives in full sunlight.

Lavender (Lavandula spp.): Best known for its perfume, lavender is also a remarkably versatile medicine.

The chemicals that make lavender so wonderfully aromatic also make it a potent pathogen fighter. The name comes from the French word for washing; the earliest antimicrobial soaps were made with lavender. The flowers fight bacteria, viruses and fungi, and the essential oil helps heal wounds and burns.

Lavender is also deeply cheering in cases of sadness or mild depression. A hot cup of lavender tea, brought to you by a friend, is wonderful for alleviating a broken heart.

Cultivars of this mounding, Mediterranean perennial can grow larger than four feet high and wide. These sun lovers are hardy to Zone 5.

Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata, P. edulis, P. caerulea.): Fast-growing, vining passionflower is one of the best herbal
medicines for promoting sleep without making you feel drugged. It also has been used for the pain of shingles.

The flowers of these prolific climbers look almost extraterrestrial. Depending on the species, passionflowers can be hardy to Zone 6, evergreen unless knocked back by a cold snap. The sprawling vines require support, growing as much as 18 feet in a year. Warm-climate gardeners may even get some of the delicious tropical fruit.

Roses (Rosa spp.): Roses raise the spirits, both for their beauty and their medicine. Possibly the world’s most famous garden flower, roses come in every imaginable form, from groundcovers less than a foot tall to ramblers that clamber up trees or power poles. So many cultivars means there’s a rose for almost every situation, whether you live in chilly Zone 2, have a fully shaded yard, or garden within spitting distance of saltwater.

The most famous rose medicine comes from the fruit, known as hips, which are high in cold-fighting and antioxidant vitamin C. Picked after they soften in the year’s first frost, fresh hips are dried for tea or used fresh in jams.

Rose leaves, flowers and buds also make excellent medicine, calming the nerves, easing indigestion, and acting as a mild astringent for skin wounds or sore throats.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea spp.): This native of the North American prairies is not only striking, but one of the best known medicinal plants—Echinacea. This sun-loving, hardy perennial grows from Manitoba to Texas, thriving down to Zone 3 and growing grander each year. The medicinal species (Echinacea purpurea, E. angustifolia and E. pallida) are covered with two-inch to three-inch flowers, each with a corona of pink or purple petals surrounding a prominent, spiky seed cone.

From root to flower, all parts of this plant are medicinal. In summer, one way to get coneflower’s medicine is by cutting the central cone in quarters and biting the soft inner part like an orange slice. Be careful at first: The medicinal constituents will zing your tongue like pins and needles.

Echinacea is thought to be an immunity booster, best taken as early as possible in the case of infection. Ideally, begin taking the tea or tincture when you think you might get sick.

 

Want to learn more? See GardenMedicine.com.

What is radon?

Radon is an odorless, colorless, tasteless gas formed from the natural breakdown of uranium. The gas is found naturally in certain soils around Oregon and the United States.

Radon can enter buildings through cracks in concrete floors and walls, and especially pools in basements.

Decaying radon produces radioactive particles that can enter the lungs and cause damage, including cancer, over time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls radon the second-leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. The risk is greater in smokers and people with higher long-term exposures.

Do I have a radon problem?
Radon occurs everywhere, but some areas have soil types with higher levels. Do you live in a potentially high-radon area? The EPA has a national map of radon zones, as does the U.S. Geological Survey. Oregon’s Department of Health Services lists statistical radon levels by county and by zip code. These numbers don’t answer the question about your home, but can give you an idea of what’s going on around you.

Okay, but how do I know about radon in my house?
Home tests are easy and inexpensive. On-line coupons from the National Safety Council help defray costs, and detailed instructions are included in the test kits.

The first recommended test cost s about $10. You place it in the living area of the lowest level of your house (usually the basement), leave it there for two to three days, and then send the kit into a lab for analysis. The more intensive, long-term test — only recommended if the shorter-term test comes up high — is $20 and stays in place for 90 days.

Radon levels are measured in picocuries per liter (pCi/L) of air. Outdoor air radon levels are usually 0.4 pCi/L, and indoor air in the United States averages about 1.3 pCi/L.

The EPA recommends action if your home test shows an average above 4 pCi/L. If short-term results are 4-10 pCi/L, a long-term test is recommended. If the average is higher, the EPA recommends a second short-term test to verify results. If the second test is still higher than 4 pCi/L, it’s time to find how radon’s entering your home and take steps to keep it out.

Should I be afraid?
Knowledge conquers fear and action conquers despair. So test your home and take action if necessary. Radon’s effects are cumulative, meaning the risks increase the longer and higher the exposure. The sooner you get your home tested and fixed, if necessary, the lower your risks will be.

Everyone in the United States is exposed to some level of radon every day. In fact, radon exposure is the biggest source of radiation exposure in the country, according to the EPA, five times greater than medical x-rays, for example. Radon is not benign, but it can be mitigated.

Okay, so I’m not afraid. What do I do if my house tests high?
Radon enters your home through cracks and joints in your foundation nearest the soil. The gas gets sucked in when, as is usually the case, air pressure inside the house is lower than air pressure outside. All radon mitigation systems involve increasing pressure inside the house so that radon stays out. Some methods involve sucking the radon out through a sump pump or under-slab pump. Others use fans to pull radon up through a pipe and release it outside. Installing these systems varies depending on the type of structure. Online cost estimates range from $800 to $2,500.

So now my house is fine. What about my body?
Naturopathic philosophy holds that the body is wise in its responses to stressors, and that our bodies naturally want to move toward health. Naturopathic therapies promote optimal health by providing specific nutritional support, encouraging elimination of toxins on the organismal and cellular levels, and supporting healthy lung tissue.

Want more information?
Oregon’s Department of Health Services has a special section devoted to radon, the Oregon Radiation Protection Services. Their site offers detailed information about the gas and its health risks, lists companies that measure and mitigate it, and offers test-kit coupons from that National Safety Council.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has “A Citizen’s Guide to Radon,” available in printed or on-line form, explaining what the gas does, how to test for it, what to do about it, and contacts for further information. See also EPA’s “Consumer’s Guide to Radon Reduction.”

Want to get geeky? Check out geological information on radon from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The National Safety Council also has a radon information page.

The EPA has a national map of radon zones, as does the U.S. Geological Survey. State health departments (find yours here) offer more detailed information about your area.

To talk to a real person about your issues, try these numbers:
• National Hispanic Indoor Air Quality Hotline: (866) 528-3187
• National Radon Hotline: (800) 767-7236
• National Radon Helpline:(800) 557-2366
• National Radon Fix-It Line: (800) 644-6999

Tired of feeling like assembly-line widgets when they go to the doctor's office, many North Americans are turning to a form of health care that relies on natural medicines that have been healing humans for centuries.

 

Known as naturopathic medicine or naturopathy, the field was born some 100 years ago, though many of its practices can be traced back to the dawn of both Eastern and Western medicine. Naturopaths rely on an amalgam of herbs, nutritional supplements, dietary advice, physical manipulation, counseling, and homeopathy (the use of extremely diluted solutions to cure what the same substances in concentrated form would cause). Their philosophy holds that 'nature cures,' and that addressing the underlying causes of a disease -- not just its symptoms -- allows the body to heal itself.

 

'Naturopathic philosophy [recognizes] that before treating a disease you have to establish the basis for health,' explains Pamela Snider, a naturopathic doctor (N.D.) and co-investigator on the North American Naturopathic Medical Research Agenda, funded by the National Institutes of Health. 'That's what allows the self-healing process to work. You establish healthy habits and provide the body what it needs naturally, and many conditions resolve themselves.'

 

A typical first visit can take an hour or longer as the doctor gathers health information and performs a thorough physical examination. Those details help the naturopath form a clear picture of the patient and get ideas for treatment. For instance, many doctors will question patients extensively about their diet, on the theory that the body can't fight (or prevent) disease without the right biochemical tools.

 

In the United States and Canada, a licensed naturopathic doctor must complete both a bachelor's degree and a four-year training program at an accredited naturopathic college. Students take many of the same core science classes offered at allopathic medical schools, including microbiology, anatomy, and physiology. Depending on state laws governing the scope of their practices, some naturopaths can prescribe medications such as antibiotics, order and read blood tests, perform minor surgery, take x-rays, and do gynecological exams. Though naturopathy prefers medicines more directly from nature, practitioners differ in how strictly they draw the line on pharmaceuticals.

 

An N.D. does the job of a primary-care physician. But unlike M.D. family practitioners, who often refer patients with intractable or chronic conditions to specialists, naturopaths routinely treat such cases. For instance, a naturopath might help asthmatics reduce their reliance on inhalers or other drugs, and some cancer patients look to naturopathy as an adjunct to the harmful radiation or chemotherapy they may need to stay alive. Similarly, people turn to naturopaths for help with pain and other problems that mainstream medicine fails to diagnose or relieve.

 

In the 1920s, more than 10,000 naturopathic physicians attended professional conventions, more than 20 medical colleges trained them, and most U.S. states granted them licenses. Those numbers plummeted in the 1940s and 1950s as pharmaceutical drugs and surgery rose in public favor -- and as the medical establishment tried to brand other approaches as quackery. Between 1956 and 1979, the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon, was the lone training ground for the profession, graduating only 70 doctors in its first two decades.

 

Critics say there's little scientific evidence that naturopathy works, despite a long -- if undocumented -- history of clinical success. In fact, until recently, there's been little effort to test naturopathic therapies in a rigorous scientific way. With the new interest in exploring complementary and alternative medicine at the National Institutes of Health, that seems to be changing. The next big challenge to naturopathic schools may be from allopathic medical schools potentially siphoning off students and support for N.D. programs.

 

One thing is certain: With managed care limiting medical visits, consumers are looking for alternatives.

'In this day and age, with insurance requirements, an M.D. doesn't have more than five minutes to stay with you,' says Kathleen Warren, media director at Bastyr University north of Seattle. 'That's the way of the world.'

 

Today, there are four fully accredited naturopathic colleges in the United States and Canada: Bastyr, Portland's NCNM, Southwest College in Tempe, Arizona, and the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto. According to Snider, the number of people studying to join the profession jumped 500 percent between 1990 and 2001, when 1,523 were enrolled in U.S. schools. Thirteen states, five Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands now license naturopaths; they work without licenses in many other places.

 

Naturopathy isn't for everyone. Although some cures can be quick and dramatic, natural healing methods generally work slowly and subtly. Serious or emergency conditions may require drugs or invasive procedures such as surgery or chemotherapy. And with naturopathy, healing ultimately depends on the patient, not the doctor.

 

'Natural medicine requires more of you,' Warren explains. 'It says to you, 'You have to eat right, you have to exercise, you have to have a lifestyle that is more conducive to helping your health.' You can't just eat crap and take something for your heartburn. You can't just lie on a couch and ignore your body's need to move.'