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Sheep…Er, Sleep 101

Liz James · May 23, 2017 ·

As much as this oily farmgirl loves her animals, counting sheep as I lay in bed is NOT my favorite thing to do. In fact, it’s downright annoying and, over time, it can actually become destructive to the body. Usually, I have no trouble falling asleep, but there are times when I wake up with some thought that is front and center in my brain and refuses to leave. That’s a problem. Thankfully, it isn’t a chronic issue for me, but when it does happen, it sure makes the following day a little more challenging.

If you do suffer from chronic sleep dysfunction, ultimately your health will be affected. Heart disease, cancer, mood disorders, immune system function, the healing process, memory loss, diabetes, and increased speed of aging….. all of these (and more!) become more likely to occur with chronic insufficient sleep.

Sleep issues are incredibly diverse, and this post will certainly not do the topic justice. Some of the most common reasons for not falling asleep, not achieving deep sleep, or nocturnal awakenings (my occasional complaint) can be blamed on everything from health conditions to bad sleep habits.

vitamin (D) or mineral (magnesium or potassium) deficiency
decreased melatonin production
hormone imbalances (especially common in menopause and ‘man’opause)
thyroid or adrenal imbalances
pain
diabetes
cardiovascular disease
heartburn and reflux (GERD)
kidney disease and/or bladder dysfunction
respiratory disorders (including sleep apnea)
poor gut health (our gut bacteria is largely responsible for neurotransmitter production that facilitate sleep)
a bad mattress or pillow (or one that doesn’t suit your body’s needs)
stress, depression, and/or anxiety
the result (a side effect) of many many medication’s side effects
caffeine (especially in the afternoon/evenings)
not enough exercise during the day (preferably early in the day)
money! (this is actually THE #1 reason people lose sleep)
poor sleep hygiene habits:
- not dark enough in the bedroom
- temperature of the bedroom is not cool enough
- light emitting technology (TV’s, ipads, phones) in the bedroom
- heavy meal at dinner time
- not enough ‘downtime’ (including technology) before bed

Recognizing that one or more of these factors may be affecting your sleep quality is the first step to achieving a better night’s sleep. Many of these factors are physiological dysfunctions and the ’cause and effect’ can become cyclical very quickly. For example, pain can prevent sound sleep. Conversely, lack of sleep can magnify pain and lower the pain threshold. It is situations like these that can easily develop into chronic sleep pattern disruptions.

Lest you think “My doctor can give me a pill for that, right?”, let me lay out some facts. I see far too many people at the pharmacy assume that taking a pill is an easy fix for a sleep disorder, and this group of medications is a classic example of cause and effect.

Prescription sleeping pills are designed for short term use only. None of the narcotic sleeping aids are approved by the FDA for daily longterm use (Ambien, Lunesta, etc).
Narcotic sleeping pills increase the risk of:
- developing a rapid tolerance to the prescribed strength and bear the risk of addiction (if you have been using them regularly, tapered discontinuation is generally recommended because of this)
- falls
- drowsy driving
- erratic behavior/ memory issues
- DEPRESSION (can cause and actually make existing depression worse)
- increasing the risk of infection

I am all about sustainable living in all aspects of life. Long term nightly use of prescription sleep aids is not sustainable, safe, or approved by the FDA….. and yet nearly 9 million Americans take prescription sleep aids on any given night.

By far, the majority of sleep dysfunction can be corrected by simply improving sleep hygiene habits, improving diet ( and adding a probiotic like Young Living’s Life 9), adding activity and exercise to a life schedule, and most importantly managing stress in a holistic manner. The limbic system within our brain is a powerful tool we can utilize to help us fall and stay asleep. If you have been around oils for any length of time, you understand the important role that the limbic system also plays in memory and in our body’s physiologic response to odors…… odors including those of our beloved Young Living oils. There has been a tremendous amount of research on this topic, especially regarding fragrances with very specific constituents that have therapeutic properties. Fascinating stuff. So, in addition to modifying your sleep habits, it may behoove you to experiment with a few of the Young Living oils or oil blends known for their sleep support:

Any or all of the above may support your sleep in ways you never imagined possible. Tranquil and Rutavala are designed to be used topically, and come in a roller bottle ready for use. I use Tranquil nightly at the bottom base of my big toes (vitaflex points) to help me sleep at night. All of the other oils can either be applied topically (same location) or on the wrist or neck, diluted and spritzed on a pillow, or diffused.

Two other products, Sleep Essence and Immupro are Young Living sleep support supplements that may also keep you from having to count sheep. Both are oil infused and contain melatonin, a key hormone needed for healthy sleep patterns. Additionally, 1-3 drops of Lavender Vitality oil under the tongue may also prove to be your best nighttime friend.

As mentioned previously, there is a tremendous amount of information on sleep, and I always feel like understanding a body process (or dysfunction) is key to finding a solution that affects the root of the problem…. not a band-aid to simply address the superficial symptoms. Moving forward, I will be offering an online class on Sleep at least every 6 weeks if you’d like to learn more. You can watch for class dates (as well as other classes) here on my blog, where upcoming classes are posted regularly.

I hope that this post has encouraged and inspired you to give your sleep a little support. So put that flock of sheep away, and work towards getting at least 7 hours of quality ZZZZZZ a night!

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Brushstrokes

Liz James · May 12, 2017 ·

I’m never ceased to be amazed by God’s hand in creating natural beauty. Coming home from work last night I snapped these two pictures. The interesting thing is that the first pic is a sunset, BUT it is a reflection of the sun… and it is on the east horizon. I drove further up the driveway, and then took a pic of the west…. the actual sunset itself. I don’t think you see this kind of thing very often…. at least I don’t.

Yesterday, it was everywhere! ….. just beautiful. These pictures don’t even do the brushstrokes justice.

Y’all have a grand and glorious weekend,
Liz

Garden Warfare

Liz James · May 7, 2017 ·

I’m not gonna lie. Gardening can be an exercise in exasperation. I think that’s probably why God put certain strains of bacteria in the soil that actually boost our serotonin levels and decrease our anxiety (ie: mycobacterium vaccae)….. otherwise, we’d probably have thrown in the trowel and starved to death long ago!

In years past, my gardening nemesis (aside from too little or too much rain) has nearly always been squash bugs . They are pervasive and will ultimately kill or severely cripple anything that resembles a squash plant. They also stink to high heaven when you squish them (the only way I know to kill them organically). My proboscis so sensitive that I can smell them (dead or alive) before I see them.

I’ve been gardening for about 10 years…. honing my skills every year. Successful gardening is definitely an acquired skill….and you can’t quit learning or something will eat your lunch. Literally! Prior to this year, I didn’t think I could hate a garden pest more than squash bugs, but clearly I’d never met the cucumber beetle. I’m glad I know Jesus, because if I didn’t, I’m fairly certain that my personal h*ll would include these garden pests.

I planted in early April. This last North Texas winter was a mild one, and all the signs indicated that the last frost was behind us. I watched my rows carefully, waiting for the little seedlings to pop up out of the soil. I always get a little extra heart pitter patter when I see them emerge. This year, each morning when I went out to do a quick check and spot weed, my seedlings started completely disappearing nearly as fast as they came out of the ground. What the what??? It took me several days to identify the culprit. While we do have a few of the spotted variety (see above left), the majority of these evil suckers look like the ones on the right. Striped destruction. Right there. They have eaten every single plant in the cucumber, melon & watermelon family, and THEN they started on my squash. Are you kidding me?? Even the squash bugs have their gustatory boundaries.

If you’ve stuck around here for any length of time, you know that we go as organic as possible on the farm. In the garden, we are 100% organic all the way down to our heirloom seeds and homegrown cow manure compost. Unfortunately, all of the resources I found on organically managing cucumber beetles required some serious forethought and planning….. the kind of planning that you do in the fall and winter. Helpful information, but too late in the game.

Organic gardening isn’t so much about destroying the enemy as it is repelling and reducing the numbers of ‘feet on the ground’. In my search, I found a few different general gardening ‘bug be gone’ recipes, but I didn’t have all of the ingredients on hand for any single recipe. Time was short. The cucumber beetles had systematically moved on to my young squash plants, and there were beetles everywhere. Complete and utter destruction of all things cucurbit was eminent.

I decided to take the ingredients listed in a few recipes, and combine them for my recipe:

“Bug Be Gone” Brew

1 big deep bucket or ‘under the sink’ style trash can
1 old fashioned flour sifter
about 3 gallons of food grade Diatomaceous Earth (DE)
about 1 cup of premade minced garlic (I will make my own in the future, but urgency required the premade stuff)
about 2-3 mls each of the following oils. I use Young Living Oils because I know they are potent, pure, and full of health benefits! …. and once again, we are striving to be 100% toxin free, especially in the garden.

I added the oils to the garlic and then added that mixture to the bucketful of DE. Make sure you have enough room in the bucket to mix thoroughly without spillage. It is some pretty potent smelling stuff!

I then began sifting the mixture over the plants, making sure to get the ground around the plant well covered too. Honestly, that part went way faster than I anticipated. I did notice that the beetles seemed to scurry when I started applying the dust, but I decided to withhold my assessment for a few days.

I also went back and replanted seeds on the same day that I spread the initial application. I put some of the DE mixture in each little hole I made for the seeds, and then put some on the top of the rows for good measure.

It’s now 6 days later, and I’m happy to report that the cuke beetle population has definitely made a dramatic turn. While I still find an occasional straggler, for the most part, it appears there has been a retreat by the enemy. My new seeds are coming up, and I am being vigilant about dusting them once they pop thru the upper crust of the soil, and re-dusting them after watering. So far so good….. but for now, I’d call this battle a victory.

My garlic is nearly ready to harvest and I will be making more of my Bug Be Gone with my own cloves in the future. The sifter is a key piece of equipment for this endeavor. Mine came from my kitchen, but you can find ones like it in junk stores, or just buy a new one on line for about 10$.

Enjoy your day!…. and I hope you win whatever battle you’re currently fighting.

Sunday Squirrel

Liz James · April 23, 2017 ·

Good Sunday morning!

If you have been hanging around my blog for awhile, you might recall that we share our lives with a squirrel named Henri. This little girl came to us last fall as an orphan, and was hand raised. It’s not my first rodeo in squirrel rearing, but it is my first with a female squirrel. Because she is a wild animal, our intention was always to raise her and then return her to a somewhat protected environment where she can ‘be a squirrel’ as God meant her to be.

Her release was gradual when the time came…. first letting her spend time outdoors and getting her acquainted with the area (in her case, our wraparound porch). We went from supervised playtime outdoors to semi-unsupervised playtime outdoors, and from nights spent indoors to nights spent outdoors. We bought her an enormous parrot cage that has a top that can be left open, and she began sleeping outdoors in that protected environment. I left the top open, and she would play all day out of her cage, and then return to the cage on her own free will to sleep there at night. One night several months ago, she didn’t come ‘home’ for the night, and I tried my best to hold down the panic of her absence. She was a teenager after all…. and we all know what kind of trouble teens can get themselves into after dark, especially given the predators that come out once the sun goes down. Thankfully, she was ok, and showed up the next morning for breakfast. She did however find a new home…. kind of. She had started her own apartment in the sub-ceiling of part of our barn/stall area that is attached to our home (yes, I know it sounds weird, but we are very animal friendly around here!).

The months have gone by, and Henri has turned into an independent adult squirrel. She still lives 100% with us, but is free to do whatever it is that squirrels do during the day.

I’ve been biting my nails as spring has approached. We live on the tree lined edge of pastured land, so Henri would actually have to make a bit of a run to the trees to find a community of her own kind. Surprisingly, as communicatively extroverted as they are, squirrels do not tend to be ‘pack animals’ (a group of squirrels is actually called a ‘scurry’)…. preferring to live life on their own terms. They will come together a few times a year (usually spring and fall) to mate and have babies. THIS is what I’ve been biting my nails over! While we love Henri, and she’s found a good safe place in the auspices of our care to live out her life (under our roof), I’m more than a little concerned about what might happen if she finds a cute little male squirrel to make babies with. Doing the math, it appears that in just a few short years, we’d have 262,144 squirrels living with us (provided that they all survived of course). I hope you are now biting your nails too… because that prospect is a little daunting. So far, Henri, has shown zero destructive tendencies in her living arrangements, but squirrels can be fairly destructive to a home if left to their own devices, and we’d be a little outnumbered rather quickly.

Henri is an Eastern Fox Squirrel, and I just did a little more digging on their mating habits. I’ve been watching her like a hawk this spring… looking for evidence that she’s had a tryst with some little guy who caught her eye, but other than getting a little chunky, she’s shown no signs of impending motherhood. Technically, and according to literature, spring litters should have already sprung. I worried then, that something had happened to the babies (I know, I’m bipolar on my stance on this… but what’s a mama to do?). This morning I found the following: “Females become sexually mature at 10 to 11 months of age and usually produce their first litter when they are a year old.”

Gahhhhh! Given this information, I can relax for just a wee bit longer…. Henri’s only 7 months old. I can breathe a little more freely until late summer and early fall, and we can worry about this all over again :).

So this morning, I bring you a little sunshine from my little girl, Henri. Enjoy your day!

Say What? The Role The FDA & FTC Play

Liz James · April 17, 2017 ·

You may have seen by now that I have a passion for sharing and educating. I can’t help it… and at times I am unapologetic about my passion. I love sustainable wellness and sustainable living… the methods, the practice, the fact that it is available to everyone who is willing to work for it. I don’t think I would be this way if I hadn’t spent 25+ years in the trenches of the pharmaceutical industry, and seen the carnage that results from loosely prescribing ‘bandaid medication’ instead of getting to the root of what is actually malfunctioning and working to correct what has gone awry holistically. Don’t get me wrong (I feel like a broken record player saying this), there is a time and a place for medications, but why is the consumption of 80% of ALL medications worldwide occurring in the United States by Americans? We’ve been suckered into thinking that a little pill will solve everything.

I post occasionally about Young Living products because it is a company I believe in as a sustainable wellness tool……. they provide me, my family, and my farm-ily with what we need to support our various body systems (in addition to eating properly, exercising daily, nurturing our faith and deep friendships & maintaining emotional life-work-stress balance) so that we can function optimally, despite the abuse our bodies have taken over the years. YL is one of the most ethically sound companies I have ever come across…..far more so than any drug company I’ve found in my pharmacy career, or any traditional mega-corporate food company where profit is king.

As I dive deeper into supplements and all things Young Living on occasional posts, you might think I am speaking a little vaguely on some topics. In fact, you might wonder why I say something like “please Google Frankincense or one of its constituents, alpha-pinene using https://scholar.google.com/ for more specific information”. It’s not because I don’t know. Frankly, it’s the opposite…. it’s because I DO know but cannot legally relay ALL of the information to you.

There are two organizations that will prevent me from providing you with concise and precise information for the following reasons:

The FDA: You can read about the scope of the FDA here . Per FDA guidelines, “we” cannot make definitive health claims on products that are deemed supplements and that haven’t gone thru the vetting process that is dictated by the FDA (this is both good and bad)….despite the fact that there are literally thousands upon thousands of studies on essential oils and their role and place in healthcare. I invite you to begin your personal research on both pubmed.gov and on Google Scholar . Both of these resources are a wealth of information, so bookmark this page. You may want to come back to both links later after we’ve talked more.

A couple of years ago, the FDA & FTC really cracked down on supplement and nutritional companies, and so it became a bit more tricky to share valuable information. Please take some time to read this article from Health Impact News for details.

The FTC: You can read about the FTC here . The long and the short of it is this: While I work independently, I am representing products that I use from Young Living. Having done the research, from a pharmacists perspective, I believe you would not find a more superior health/wellness product line anywhere. However, I cannot make claims to diagnose, treat, or attempt to cure…. I can only lead you as much as possible down the information path so that you can reach your own educated conclusions.

So, sometimes, my words may seem a little vague or “fluffy”. You likely want hard cold facts. I understand that, and I want to help you navigate “what to do when, where, why, and how” with ease so that you too can have optimal wellness. Young Living has created a document called ” Sharing Young Living the Right Way” and in order to remain compliant and in the good graces of the FDA and FTC, I do my best to abide by that document. Please feel free to refer to that link when needed in our discussions. That way, we will speak the same language and you will better understand the path I am trying to guide you down.

Education is important, and so is learning to navigate information. Learning to be the CEO of your own health is a skill that requires honing and development, and too many people assume it’s somebody else’s job to do it for them. That’s a risky proposition if you ask me….. the business of letting someone else (who may have more interest in your ill health than they do in keeping you well) be the manager of you. Everyone has choices. Do not be afraid to take the plunge and do a little research yourself….. and if you have questions along the way….. GREAT! That’s what I’m here for. I’m happy to be your bloodhound, tour guide, and navigator here to help!