Where are my Young Living friends?
Right about now, we need happy things… and the smell of lemon🍋 does indeed give nearly everyone an additional pep in their step! Could it be the limonene and its scientifically proven beneficial effects on serotonin and dopamine levels in key regions of the brain that are associated with anxiety and depression?…. or maybe it will just make it a little more fun to wash your hands for the gazzillionth time during #alonetogether2020.
Either way, I’m a sucker for quality tea, and am super excited by these new additions to our Young Living family!
Cuppa tea anyone?☕
xoxo~liz
#bettertogether
#YLSpringlaunch2020
#ThanksYL
Abundance
Black Box Warning
t’s certainly an upside down world we live in………
Today, I read yet another article about yet another 💊medication that is getting its very own black box warning.
Montelukast (Brand name: Singulair)….. a medication used for seasonal allergies and asthma. Given to big people and to little people 👶👧….. as young as 2 yrs old (although I’ve seen prescriptions for even younger).
The warning labels for the prescription bottle have included a statement about change in mood or behavior in tiny print for years…. so really, this is nothing new to the FDA.
In the retail pharmacy world, montelukast is considered a “fast mover”…. meaning LOTS of people are on this medication for allergies and asthma.
Today…. the FDA announced it was finally acknowledging that this medication needed stronger wording and would get its black box. ….. a medication that has been around 22 years.
I have quite a few questions swirling in my head:
After 22 years. Why did it take so long for the FDA to come to this conclusion, especially given the millions of people that have taken it?
The children…. how do they even know how to verbalize how they might be feeling while on this medication? #blesstheirhearts
Why did it take public outcry in the form of a petition to get this warning updated?
Why is it still ok to prescribe to little people who can’t even verbalize how they might be feeling in their little heads?
Did you know that homes using standard commercial cleaners, air fresheners, glass cleaners etc that are toxin based have a 30-50% greater risk of having an asthma or allergy sufferer living under the same roof?
OR…. that the risk increases as the chemical soup thickens if you use multiple products?
I’m wondering how many prescribers ask this simple question before writing the prescription:
“What have you done in the way of removing respiratory irritants from your home?”
Presently, 1 in 10 children in the USA has asthma. (It was 3.6% in 1980). There are many reasons for this tremendous increase…. but the quality of our home/indoor air is one thing that we can ALL control. #dothethingsthatmatter
Have you ever heard of Thieves Household Cleaner?
👉NonToxic
👉Non Irritating to the Lungs
👉Plant Based
👉Immune supportive instead of harmful
👉Ultra concentrated / economical
👉Effective… heck, we even use it to clean our cows udders around here, and we drink our milk raw. THAT ought to tell ya my confidence level 😉
We mostly use Thieves simply… a capful or two in a standard spray bottle. That’s it. Easy peasy.
If you are a DIY’er or a healthy minimalist, there are lots of ways to clean with this one simple product:
Thieves Household Cleaner…. it actually does a body good.
Hugs and love friends, liz
#ThanksYL
#YLisahealthylifestylecompany
#andtheFDAthinksLavenderisdangerous #SMH
Winter Rest – part 2
(Apologies for taking so long to get part II of my adrenal reset post out…. I’ve been taking my own advice and have been in Hawaii on a much needed business / vacation / relaxation time! 😉) #ThanksYL
I wrapped up talking about living a fear based lifestyle and how hard that is on the kidneys and adrenals. Fear can creep in to our life in insidious ways….. ways that we typically don’t even recognize as a fear. What may that look like in any of our lives?…. and how can we learn to eliminate it?
🔥Trauma: In my own educational and healing journey, I’ve learned a great deal about the damaging effects of trauma based emotions. #yowza! It’s a fascinating topic and frankly, if more people actually understood it, it would change the trajectory of both their life and their health. Trauma goes beyond the brain teaches our body (at a cellular level) that it must constantly be on guard and vigilant. This keeps us in a constant state of low grade “fight or flight” which I promise will not end well if not addressed. We MUST learn to slowly unwind, release your fear, find balance, and begin to heal.
👉 (If you’d like detailed help, please book a private session)
🔥Expectations: Do you feel like the earth may cease to spin on its axis if you don’t meet your own personal expectations or other’s expectations of you?
I exaggerated that slightly 😉, but truly…. a lot of stress comes from believing that everyone depends on you. It’s lovely to feel needed…. but often, these are personal beliefs we heap onto our own shoulders, and not reality. At least for these winter months….. give it a trial run and step back a little from your own expectations and see if the world doesn’t keep on spinning😘. #sayingthisinlovefriends
🔥With expectations comes Responsibility…. Lord have mercy, who doesn’t have this?…. fianancial burdens, high stress work environments (don’t get me started on that! Pharmacists were #3 in the suicide category for many years😳), family stressors…. the “sandwich generation” who takes care of both their kids AND their parents are particularly vulnerable.
Honestly, there’s not always a great way to get out from under true responsibilities, but hopefully the tips below 👇will help decrease the stress / fear load on your adrenals.
Winter Rest is important….. vital really… to health. That said, the following tips can and should be used year round to maintain optimal health:
🌸 Sleep! If your body is calling for it….. do it! During the winter, make an effort to get an extra hour of sleep each night. (If sleep evades you, again…. feel free to private message me for some non drug tips and tricks). Our body does its greatest healing during deep sleep.
🌸Unplug. Next to sleep, I think this is perhaps the most important and simplest way to rest. If you were born before 1990 (just typing this makes me feel kinda old😂), you’ll remember that there WAS life without cell phones and internet and we actually survived quite well. In fact…. we were a far healthier bunch of people than we are now as we are literally triggered each time our device dings or vibrates!
🌸 Stay in and don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the rat race. Read a book, nap, or allow yourself time outside in nature to get grounded and recharged. Grounding is vital to our balance and well being.
🌸Say No. For some of us, this is a word that is underused to our own detriment. Once I learned to do this…. saying no gracefully, I realized how freeing it was. Life is too short to say yes to everything everyone asks of you. It is a learned skill….. but one you’ll find of great value! #metoo
🌸Take a spa day or at least a “spa hour”…. even if it’s at home. Epsom salt baths with some calming therapeutic grade oils (like they do at the fancy places!) can be easily done at home at a fraction of the price. It will go a long way towards resetting your adrenals and cortisol levels. This isn’t selfish time… it’s called self care. You can’t care for others well if you yourself are not well😘.
🌸Yoga, gentle stretching, and acupuncture or acupressure are all excellent aids for adrenal resets.
🌸Foods that help with adrenal resets: walnuts, cashews, clove, ginger, fish, shellfish, eggs (organic free range is best!), cranberries, blueberries, apples, spinach, cauliflower, cabbage, and asparagus
🌸Adaptogenic herbs (plants that support the body’s ability to accomodate varying physical and emotional stresses):
🌿Ashwagandha- this is an incredible herb for a variety of reasons, but for the topic at hand… it is very helpful in supporting healthy cortisol levels. Do a little Google search to learn more about this oddly named herb. My two favorite supplements that contain Ashwagandha are called Endogize (typically for women) and Powergize (typically for men).
🌿Siberian Ginseng
🌿Rhodiola
🌿Curcumin
Not herbal, but Vitamin D3☀️ (levels can drop significantly in the winter… get bloodwork to confirm. If you do not have insurance or a doctor, I can help you get inexpensive labwork done).
Omega 3 Fish oil🐟 … but be warned…. much of what is available for sale is actually rancid and will only make the situation worse…. so best advice I would give you is to really know your supplement company well.😉
I hope this helps. I believe strongly that God gives us our experiences in life, good and bad, so that we can learn from them in order that we may use our life as a testimony and a map to help others. #payitforward
Looking back, I can see several points in my life where, by pushing myself beyond what the body is able to handle on a chronic stress daily basis , I could have very easily ended up a hot mess healthwise. I hear this phrase all the time…. “I’m not sure what happened. I was fine, and then all of a sudden I had all these health problems”. See, here’s the deal. The body is masterful at “running from the lion “…. but we can’t run forever. And when “the lion” finally catches you….it doesn’t just take a nibble.
Hugs and love, Liz
(I’m gonna go have a day on the beach now and continue my reset!☀️)
#ThanksYL
#knowbetterdobetter
Oasis in the Desert: Choosing a Reputable Supplement Company
The uniqueness of the world I’ve chosen to live in is not lost on me. On one foot, I’ve got my mud encrusted muck boot as I wade thru one of the wettest fall/winter cow pastures in North Texas history. On the other foot…. my trusty Dansko’s: the only footwear I’ve found that are comfortable for a 10-11 hour shift at the pharmacy. I spend most of my days using my pharmacy knowledge to teach people how to avoid a long term relationship with a pharmacy. Other days, I put my white coat on and fill prescriptions…. some for those who have no choice, and others….because they continue to make life choices that come with a prescription price tag….. and still others, who simply don’t know any better. #knowbetterdobetter …… that’s why I feel so called to be here.
With the New Year comes a slew of questions regarding supplements at the pharmacy. Resolution toting customers looking for an easy way to lose weight, minimize fresh workout pain, or simply just trying to get healthy in baby steps.
The supplement industry is a tricky business, and deciphering the options can be overwhelming to anyone that hasn’t done a great deal of research…. doctors included. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a patient tell me incorrect information given to them by their doctor regarding supplements. The rare doctor has done his/her research it seems (Not much is taught in medical, nursing, or even pharmacy school regarding supplements. It’s up to the practitioner to crack the code and educate themselves), and the patient is pretty much left to their own devices to find the best product for themselves. My team is spending the next few months educating our ‘family’ on types of supplements, and this topic is so very important that I thought I’d include some of that education here.
Why do we need supplements anyway? There are several reasons:
- Farming practices since the 1970’s have stripped our soils of valuable nutrients. The only way we can receive minerals in our diet is thru nutrient dense soil. Plants soak up that nutrition and then pass it along to the herbivore (or omnivore) that eats it. Somewhere up the line, a carnivore may get involved and the nutrients are passed (or not passed) along to them.
- Genetic modification of our veggies, fruits, and grains have continued the depletion process. Nutrition has been sold out to prettier “eye candy” produce that ships well, stores well, and looks like something out of a glossy magazine. Fresh produce today is an estimated 50-70% less nutritious than its counterparts 50 years ago.
- Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fluoride, and chlorine contamination all have played their part in binding nutrients and making them unavailable for our body’s use.
- Existing health challenges, a regular diet of fast/processed foods, use of acid blockers/reducers regularly, and/or reoccurring GI issues? If you answered “yes” to any of these, odds are high that you have a crippled system preventing efficient production or use of nutrients. (This means you likely need more supplementation than the average bear.)
- And finally…. medications. Who’d have thought this was even a problem? Next to nutrient deplete food itself, it’s one of the biggest problems of all. More than half of Americans take medication regularly, and those that do (on average) take four or more on a daily basis. FACT: Hundreds of medications suppress or rob your body’s ability to produce or utilize vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and co-factors necessary for a healthy life.
How DO you find a good supplement company? The answer >>>> very carefully!
While the FDA does quite a bit of governing in the supplement world when it comes to wording (no diagnosing,treating,curing etc… or you might have some ‘splaining to do to the FDA), the reality is that the supplement industry lacks rigid standards that ensure product integrity and quality. If you sift thru articles, you’ll find dismal stories of adulterated products (especially in the weight loss, antioxidant, sexual performance and workout booster categories). The problem doesn’t just lie in possible contaminants tho… it also encompasses cheap and/or ineffective ingredients.
What this means is that company integrity should mean absolutely everything to you. Do you really know the company you’ve chosen to buy product from? In most cases, you can tell a lot about a company’s product line based on company standards, policy, history, and mission statement:
- Are the employees well treated and paid fairly?
- What was the motivation of the company to build a particular supplement? Usually, the best companies are the ones founded by people who had health problems themselves, and found a solution thru proper nutrition. (A great example of this is Kate Farms for their quality nutrition drink for those with strict dietary and medical needs.)
- Does the company put the purpose of the product above the profit? ie: This doesn’t mean the product will be inexpensive. On the contrary…. a well made product will usually come with a higher price tag (more on that later).
- Do you know their value system? Are the ingredients fairly and sustainably sourced?Are the ingredients without compromise?
- Does the company leave a positive impact on the communities they work with?
- Does the company have transparency? Are you able to visit them? Do they have 2nd and 3rd party testing?
If you cannot easily find answers to these questions, odds are high that you may be duped by your current company. Back away from your supplements, and listen up…….
The Care and Feeding of your Body: Supplements 101
Vitamins, minerals, and other micro-nutrients are absolutely essential for all body processes to function in a healthy manner. Energy must be produced, the immune system supported…..vision, brain function, attention span, digestion, skin, repair and recovery processes, structural integrity and thousands of other little nuanced jobs must happen for optimal health.
Our body is no dummy. It does it’s best to prep for us… stashing extra vitamins and minerals as it is able, in anticipation of a sabotage event. There’s a little bit of ‘prepper’ in all of us! If we’ve not allowed our body the resources to stash those excess nutrients, when the moments of stress, lack, or ‘robbery’ happens….. suddenly, there is no backup plan, and one or more systems begin to give warning signs of impending failure. Long term lack allows for dis-ease and dysfunction to set up housekeeping. This is one of the reasons our country is overflowing with auto-immune disease.
If it’s THIS important to keep adequate supplies of these nutritional building blocks on hand, it makes no sense to rely on less than ideal sources. Supplement companies can be tricky little suckers and it pays to be savvy and knowledgeable so you don’t get duped into thinking you got ‘something’ for next to nothing.
Price: There is no such thing as a high quality inexpensive supplement. Common sense should tell you that between bottling, labeling, shipping, marketing, distribution, and profit, a $10-$15 bottle of vitamins leaves precious little $$ left over to invest in quality ingredients. How much is your life worth after all? If you are willing to spend $5 per day on a cup of designer coffee (which is likely loaded with some of the very things depleting your body), you should have no qualms with spending the same amount (per day) on quality supplements your body desperately needs.
Throw out the ‘all in one pill’ mindset: It just can’t happen. There’s no way to cram everything into one pill and end up with a reasonably sized product that only an elephant could swallow. Size does matter, but it’s even more complicated than that. Not every nutrient is compatible with each other, and some nutrients need to be be brought in to the body multiple times a day because storage is just not possible (ex: digestive enzymes). If you’re really serious about protecting, fortifying, and prepping your body for health, expect to take 3-6+ capsules/supplements per day depending on the health challenges you may have been toting around for awhile.
The Junk: Quality and sourcing….. if you are trying to get healthy, the last think you want is unclean ingredients, and yet that happens all too frequently. If your body is having to filter unclean ingredients from your supplement regimen, you’ve lost sight of one of the main reasons you want to take supplements in the first place!
- Fish oil coming in from waters contaminated with PCB’s, heavy metals, toxins, and radioactive waste. Rancid fish oil that actually causes what it should be preventing. Other ingredients that are sourced from questionable, impure, or unclean environments……A recent study found over 800 supplements containing prescription medications (unlabeled).
- Fillers that are also allergens: byproducts of wheat, yeast, soy dairy, gluten, corn, or that are low grade and possibly irritating to GI tissue. Additives that are used to stretch the bottom dollar, but at best, do nothing for your health. SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate)… a chemical sometimes used as a disintegrator in tablets. This is a topical no-no in skincare but imagine the implications when consumed. Studies show it has a “degenerative effect on cell membranes…”. Ummm, no thank you. I’ll keep my cell membranes intact for as long as possible thank you very much.
- Cheaper forms of ingredients that are less biologically active (ex: using cyanocobalamin instead of the more bioavailable [and pricier] methylcobalamin.)
- Artificial colors, flavors , and sweeteners (Ahem, God provides awesome natural flavors and sweeteners! Why not use them?)
- Coatings- how well does your vitamin or supplement dissolve? Ideally, most need to be in capsule form for ease of dissolution. If you’ve ever seen your vitamins in your poop (a common thing), this should be your aha moment.
Ultimately, the question comes down to this: Do you trust the brand you buy, or are you relying on blind faith? If you are relying on the latter, it might be time for a do over. Just because the product(s) may be found in well known stores doesn’t mean it’s a reputable brand. The bottom line matters to a store, and buyers aren’t generally schooled in supplements (frequently it’s a 19 year old kid who is doing the ordering!)…. they are schooled to find the largest profit margin for their employer. Just as they are looking out for their employer’s best interest, YOU are the CEO of you, and you need to look out for the best interests of your ‘corporation’ too.
Be kind to yourself. Research before you buy…. and for goodness sake, find a company worthy of your trust. Your health depends on it!
Hugs and Love, Liz
#knowbetterdobetter
#thisiswhyIdowhatIdo
Darlin’ Clementine
One of the darlings on our farm is sweet Clementine. This old girl is, well, just that…. the granny on our farm. You’ve got to start somewhere when you embark on any journey in life, and she pretty much represents when our raw milk story took the ginormous step from simple consumption to full throttle buy in.
Clementine was my birthday present more than 10 years ago, and our second milk cow. We were still ‘young’ in the learning about all things cow, handmilking, etc. Dairy cow husbandry is equal parts skill, art, instinct, commitment and passion. If you find you lack in any of these areas (as many do), your stint as a dairy cow guardian will likely be short lived. Mistakes, ignorance, or lack of commitment can easily cost a cow her life…. or at the very least, permanent damage to her udder.
In the beginning, I read books, watched videos, talked to everyone who knew anything about handmilking dairy cows. We ‘hired’ a teenage homeschooled young man to teach us hands on rudimentary skills and very basic knowledge of dairy cow care when we bought our first handmilked Jersey from his family. Bonnie (short for Mooey Bonita) was a pretty girl and, by cow standards, pretty patient with our ignorance. We learned much from her. (She was with us for several years before unexpectedly passing away in the middle of the night.)
Owning one dairy cow does not make you an expert. Heck, honestly, it was a few years before I felt like we had ranked up from beginner to novice. It was about that time that we decided to expand our herd of one. This time, we felt like we ‘knew what we were doing’ when we drove 4 hours south to buy a cow which was part of a herd of culled commercial dairy cows. The owner of this herd was a woman who likely recognized that we were blissfully ignorant when it comes to cow shopping (much like a used car salesman probably perceives a first time car buyer…. with a mixture of glee and predatory guile).
Clementine was huge! She is a big Jersey….. but I’m talking about her udder in this case. Not just large… but massive. We commented on how big her udder was, and our cow salesperson told us that the reason for that was because she was still in milk production.
“Notice the large and long teats (a good thing), and the placement of them (also a good thing)….. and only ‘probably’ 5 years old. ” ….. all important amenities of a handmilked cow.
We were told she would be an excellent source of bountiful and copious amounts of milk. Just look at her udder size. Clearly. The poor girl looked like a bovine version of Dolly Parton. Thinking we had just hit the white gold jackpot, we wrote our check, loaded her up, and headed home, really having no idea what we had just bought.
Despite our ignorance, Clementine turned out to be an enormous blessing, and our experience with her has allowed us to rank up from novice to advanced proficiency in all things ‘dairy cow’. An animal raised in a commercial farming industry (as she had been), does not usually receive daily rations of kindness and compassion. They are viewed as a commodity and either an asset or liability. If they fall below the line distinguishing those two, then they are typically sold or destroyed. There is no room for ‘slackers’ in the the factory farming business.
Clementine’s udder was her downfall, AND her saving grace. We found out much later that her enormous udder was a physical defect caused by laxity of the suspensory ligaments. What we thought was a goldmine (her udder) was, in actuality, the reason she was culled from the commercial dairy herd. It was actually a time bomb. The lower an udder hangs, the greater the odds of mastitis due to injury (kicking herself as she walks), and the harder it is for a calf to nurse. Had we not purchased her, she likely would have been sent to the processor.
Like bygone versions of Miss America pagents, dairy cows are given scores on their udders…. only the opposite is true. Bigger is not better, and will, in fact, get you culled. In her case, Clementine had maxed out the scale (a 5 is rated as the worst).
When we bought her (and her defective udder), we only saw a sweet faced cow that looked our way when the other cows in the herd wanted nothing to do with us. We saw a cow that was willing to learn to be handmilked if we were willing to give her a chance. True, we also thought we had a pretty darn special udder attached to that cow….. not knowing that it was ‘special’ in a totally different way.
I’m not even sure when I realized we had been duped, but it was probably a couple of years into our life with her. Just like women have different bra sizes, cow udders are…. well, ‘udderly’ different from one another. Bonnie was an average ‘B’ cup when not in milk, but Clementine…… her udder just seemed to stay ‘DDD’ regardless of the season. The internet is a wonderful thing, and sometimes you just don’t know what to look for until you start looking. Curiosity got the best of me on this topic, and that’s when I found out (and narrowly avoiding a few rounds of mastitis in the process) what her problem was. Secondly, she was also at least a few years older than we had been told at the time of sale.
And yet. Thank God we picked Clementine and her defective udder. She has been the advanced training guide we needed …. life isn’t simple or easy when it comes to cows, and Bonnie had been both of those. We had no issues, and didn’t really have any concept of what warning signs, symptoms, and dysfunction might look like. Experience is a powerful educator. I’ve honed my holistic animal husbandry skills considerably in the last decade (thank goodness for Young Living oils and Animal Scents Ointment!). But in addition to the considerable education that sharing our lives with Clementine has granted us, she has proven to be a remarkable ‘spokescow’ for the family milk cow world. She is beautiful, photogenic, paintably cute, Miss Congeniality, and…. above all else….. kind. She has been a tremendous mother and auntie to calves, and is quite the greeter on our farm.
Last year, it became obvious that her udder simply could not take another pregnancy. One the scale of 1-5, her udder was a 9. By our calculations, her estimated age is around 18 (the average lifespan of a commercial dairy cow is 5-7yrs.)
I’ve posted about the realities of farm life on my blog, but there are times when emotions defy logic and financial prudence. No worries ya’ll…… Clementine is here to stay. She is one of our mascots……. Still ‘aunt-ing’ calves, still greeting, and ready to photobomb whenever she can. We are making her retirement as comfortable as possible for her. A discussion with a vet at Texas A&M rejected the possibility of an ‘udder reduction’ surgery (way too risky). Her udder is pendulous,perilous, and ultimately, it probably will cost her her life someday.
Awhile back, one of our friends jokingly sent me an article on ‘cow cuddling‘, apparently the newest thing in psychotherapy. Believe me, I think there’s merit to it. Clementine, among others, are probably what keep me sane some days! Heck, at an average going rate of $300/ 90minute session (according to the article), maybe she’d be interested in a late in life career change?!?!? It’s never too late to teach an old cow new tricks!
Hugs and Love, Liz (and Clementine)
*Kudos to Kim Guthrie Art for our artwork. (Doesn’t she do amazing custom work?)