Many readers have asked why I have shifted my focus from international investing to shamanic health secrets.
You can learn why with my Book Shamanic health Secrets which is available free at Amazon.com.
There are three main reasons why good health is so important to financial safety.
First poor health is the quickest way to ruin your finances. No other problem has the potential to cost you such a huge expense. Few have the potential to completely turn your budget into ruins and to shatter all you plans for the future.
Second poor health robs of the energy and clear thinking we need to adapt to changing times.
Third, most of all, what’s money worth if you cannot enjoy it due to poor health.
Rising temperatures.
One of the adaptations we need is to adjust our lives to a hotter world.
Britain just had its highest temperature in recorded history.
Last year my hometown of Portland saw a sweltering 116F degree day, unheard of during my life there.
This year the figs on my fig tree came a month early.
Heat can have a dramatic impact on our wealth in so many ways. Our health is impacted by heat as well so here’s a health tip that defeats the summer heat.
It’s time for my annual blackberry reminder as as they are beginning to ripen along the creek at our North Carolina farm.
I love picking blackberries at the farm and I eat then raw, make blackberry juice and low sugar, wild mountain blackberry pie.
This is really tasty and there is a health benefit too.
Blackberries are especially healthy now while they are in season because nature provides us with what we need to eat at exactly the correct time.
John Douillard’s book, “Three Season Diet” shows how to lose weight, increase health and vitality by eating different foods at different times of the year. The concept is based partly on Ayurved, the Indian science of life and well being, which views the body as having three essences; vata (air, the essence of motion), pitta (fire, the essence of transformation-digestion) and kapha (water, the essence of solidity).
Keeping these three essences in balance is a key to good health.
Ayurved also recognizes differences in seasons, spring, being a moist, fertile time of growth of course is a water period. Summer, naturally is a time of heat or fire when the seeds transform into food. Finally, autumn and winter turn windy and cold. Things become brittle and dried, the time of air. So the tendency in summer is for the fire in us (pitta) to grow excessively, spring brings kapha problems and winter hosts vata imbalances.
He wrote this about blackberries: Native to Europe, these berries are harvested in late spring and early summer, from April through July, but are out of season in the winter and are too cool for most winter climates. They are sweet, sour and astringent and help cool the body down and to treat diarrhoea, a classic summer condition in which the stool is liquefied by excess heat.
Blackberries are also very alkaline, high in iron and are the best blood builders although they have a constipating quality.
We found that Andean shamans use blackberries (they grow year round in Ecuador) as part of their nutritional discipline.
We had blackberry juice almost every day when we lived and worked with the shamans.
So blackberries are a good food for us in summer!
One reason for blackberries is they help balance alkalinity, another key factor in maintaining health. Alkalinity is linked to the immune and blood sugar system, so maintaining the correct balance helps avoid disease and illness such as diabetes.
Natural health tips here come from recent messages have been looking at health benefits in summer berries.
These natural health tips come from some great reader comments and further thought.
One reader wrote this health tip about reducing and preventing diarrhoea:
“Hello Gary, I really enjoyed the article about Blackberries. I love them so much. I have a lot of them on my place too. But, the best thing about them, they saved my little brother’s life. He had some sort of flu. Could not keep anything down or it went straight through him. The doctors could not help him. But, my Seminole Great Grandmother told my mother to give him blackberry juice. We started this, an almost instantly, he started getting better. And it wasn’t long before he was strong again. I have to laugh at my purple fingers during blackberry season, but there is nothing better. It is one of my nature connections. Even my dog picks berries with me. But the thorns give her a hard time. Because they get her on the nose. Thanks for the Blackberry article, and all that you do.”
Another reader wrote:
“Blackberries freeze well too so you can have them all year. Our labrador loves them as well. I’m currently reading James Howard Kunstler’s ‘Geography of Nowhere’. His ideas go well with yours about living within your means, seasonality, human sized / oriented projects. You can pick up used copies in the US very cheaply. He too sees the future by examining what has come before.”
Merri and I always picked and froze enough blackberries so we could have pies and juice year round.
Here is what a reader wrote a health tip about Blackberry acid.
“Hello again. My grandmother used to serve blackberry juice when I was a little child. She called it ‘blackberry acid’. It’s the only time I have ever seen it served in this country.”
Acid fruits such as berries (other than OJ) create alkalinity in the body. Keeping the body pH balanced may be one of the biggest health tips there is in this fast paced over acid world.
Here is another reader comment:
“I once had the opportunity to read an unpublished civil war journal kept by the lady of a plantation in eastern NC, while all her men were away in the war. The entry one day was ‘Put up fifty gallons of blackberry wine’. That’s a lot of production from wild blackberries! The berries are indeed really good here this year, as is almost all the other fruit wild or domestic. Enjoy.”
One additional health tip is that Blackberry wine may be good for you.
The life extension website (lef.org) says in its article Very Berry – and Grape too!:
“My grandmother was a folk healer. She knew a lot about herbs. But her favorite medicinal potions were home-made wines, which she prepared herself. She favored black currant, elderberry and blackberry wine. Tart cherries and small, dark navy-blue grapes were also acceptable, but black currants and elderberry were credited with greater preventive and healing power. ‘For a strong heart and long life,’ my grandmother explained.
“Modern science has confirmed that dark-colored berries and red, purple and dark-blue grapes are a treasure house of health-giving and possibly even life-extending phenolic compounds, including proanthocyanidins, anthocyanins and quercetin. And while the days of home-made wine may be over, we now have excellent extracts that provide standardized doses of the active polyphenols in berries and grapes. Bilberry extract and grape seed extract are the best known; cranberry extract and elderberry extract are also available for special therapeutic uses.”
Here is one final health tip from a reader comment.
“Your article on blackberries/blueberries is good. However, you would have to consume a HUGE amt of berries to get the daily req. of ORAC of 10,000-15,000 and would be really expensive.”
I questioned this and asked our health care giver, Dr Joe Spano, who replied:
“Dear Gary, To begin with, the FDA recommended daily ORAC intake is 3000-5000. the remarks assume that the only anti-oxidants that you will take in would be blackberry/blueberry.
“The ORAC has become a marketing tool, but it has its foibles. It is not the final word on anti-oxidant value. It is a useful guideline only. See ORAC definition
in Wikipedia.
“I think that there would be additional anti-oxidant power by adding a berry with high ORAC value. It would not be superior to a fresh fruit but an extract of the berry would still have value and it is a nice marketing gimmick. Why not dip your fresh fruit in liquid dark chocolate?
“There already exists chocolates with berry etc. added. Bottom line is that the product is probably good (wonder how it tastes?). Fresh is always better to my mind. You lose some anti-oxidant strength with processing. You do keep the color chemical component (anthrocyanidins).”
Normally being black and blue means you have been hurt. Yet in summer days “turning black and blue” can be a berry good natural health tip.
Disease management has become enormously complicated, commercial, political and expensive. I hope this tip helps bring you better health and avaoids disease.
Finding simple steps to reduce our exposure to the distorted medical system saves time, money and increases our energy and well being.
Be cool… eat blackberries. They are delicious and can help you create and maintain good natural health.
Gary
