Black Salve, Blood Pressure, Supplements, Bones!

Black Salve, Blood Pressure, Supplements & Bones!

In This Issue: 

• • Black Salve Hype!
  • Dr. McDougall on Blood Pressure
  • Do You Need Supplements?
  • Prunes for Your Bones!

Find lots of healthy recipes in my Whole Food Plant-Based, Gluten Free Diet & Recipes Free Facebook Group

Message from Bernadette Wulf

Greetings!

I’m getting back on track now that my broken wrist is almost healed. Still wearing the splint for another week, but I can take it off to type. Yay!

Summertime is in full swing here in Sonoma County, CA. My neighborhood looks pretty much like the photos… a good thing because it is beautiful, but not so good, because of the glyphosate in our well water (I use a Berkey water filter to get it out) and the obvious disadvantages of monoculture. At least we still have some of our old Gravenstein apple orchards around.

I hope you are finding the beauty in your neighborhood too!

Check out this month’s articles on the dangers of Black Salve, how to keep your Blood Pressure under control, the most important Supplements to take (no matter what diet you follow) & how prunes strengthen your Bones!

My Ongoing Events on Zoom

Also, there are a few more spots available in our Magical Manifestation Mastermind Group – https://www.celticmysteryschool.com/magical-manifestation-mastermind/

What’s next?

I don’t know! Is there anything you would like to explore together? Let me know. (I hear Avalon and Arthurian lore calling me… again.)

Have questions or comments? —>>> Email Bernadette <<<— Please use this link and do not hit reply to this post or I may never get your message.

To your health and happiness!

Bernadette Wulf

WulfWorks.com – HealItAll.com – Eat Plants for Life

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Black Salve Hype!

When I was a kid, my Grammy used something she called black salve on just about anything that needed drawing out – splinters, infections, etc., and it worked really well – but that wasn’t the type of black salve we are talking about today. Her black salve was Ichthammol, a safe and effective ointment.

There is another type of black salve that is corrosive enough to eat deep holes in your skin and leave ugly scars. It is made from bloodroot. People use it to remove skin cancers, but it does a lot more than remove the cancer.

Here’s what Dr. Greger says about it from nutritionfacts.org:

• Touted as a selective treatment that kills only cancer cells and abnormal tissue, the “corrosive topical agent [is] capable of indiscriminately damaging healthy and diseased tissue alike.”
• Black salve is so corrosive it can burn through skin down to an artery—indeed, even burning off parts of your face.
• Ironically, users of black salve have reported they were fearful “of pain, scarring, and treatment failure” with conventional treatments for skin cancer, but may have ended up disfigured and deformed by the alternative pseudo-cure.

Fortunately, skin cancer is one thing conventional allopathic medicine has an excellent rate of curing – “conventional skin cancer surgery has up to a 99 percent cure rate for the most common type of skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma), is about 95 percent successful for squamous cell carcinoma, and up to 90 percent effect for the most common type of melanoma.” – Dr. Greger

So, before you mess around with potentially dangerous DIY treatments, please check in with your local MD! Your skin will be glad you did.

Read more about black salve dangers – https://nutritionfacts.org/2022/05/26/black-salve-is-a-dangerous-scam/

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Dr. McDougall on Blood Pressure

You may not choose to follow all of Dr. McDougall’s strict dietary recommendations, but you will do well to at least take them into consideration – especially if you have high blood pressure.

Dr. McDougall is like a walking encyclopedia of nutrition information, plus he has had a few decades of successfully treating patients with diet in his clinical practice.

One thing he explains better than anyone else I’ve heard is blood pressure – what the numbers mean and how to regulate it.

Here’s what Dr. McDougall says about blood pressure: “This is not a disease, it’s a sign of the condition of the arteries.” This stuff is fascinating to a nutrition nerd like me. I hope you like it too.

Listen up and learn how to get your blood pressure under control – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCU9V27UkI

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Do You Need Supplements?

The answer is probably yes!

Here’s why: almost everyone tested (whether omnivore, vegetarian or vegan) tests low for Vitamin B12 – especially as we get into our 50s, 60s and 70s.

This is particularly true for vegans, but even heavy meat eaters often test low. The reason is that our food is now so sanitary that we don’t get the beneficial bacteria from unwashed produce and soil that our ancestors once did. It is those beneficial bacteria that naturally produce vitamin B12 in your gut. Also we are often exposed to antibiotics that kill beneficial gut bacteria.

Adequate B12 is extremely important, because deficiency can lead to permanent nerve damage and pernicious anemia.

So I always recommend supplementing with B12, no matter what your diet. It is water soluble so any excess will simply be washed out of your body.

The best form of B12 to take is methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin (i.e. Vimergy or Global Healing Center brands).

Vitamin D3 (unless you frequently spend time with your skin exposed to the sun in a latitude south of San Francisco) is also low in most people. It is not as important as B12, so if you are on a tight budget you might want to skip it most of the time, but an adequate level will help keep your immune system strong. (Vimergy D3 is excellent.)

Omega-3 fatty acids are quite often low, because most people eat a lot more Omega-6 fatty acids and they need to be kept in balance with each other.

Both types are called essential fatty acids and in fact these are the only types of fat we need to eat – hence the word “essential” in their name.

Omega-6 is widely available in vegetable oils, grains, nuts and seeds. Omega-3 is mostly found in leafy greens, flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts and cold water fish. You can see why most people get a lot more Omega-6!

Even if you do get adequate Omega-3, your body may not transform enough of it into the EPA and DHA forms which are essential for brain health.

Though your body can create EPA & DHA from Omega-3, many people don’t do it very efficiently, so supplementation is recommended if you test low. (Again, I recommend Vimergy for best quality supplements.)

As far as I know, EPA and DHA are only available in ocean algae and the fish that eat the algae. So I advise taking an algae-based EPA & DHA supplement.

NOTE: Fish oil supplements are all contaminated with toxic heavy metals and other ocean pollutants, but you could occasionally eat sardines or wild salmon to supply your EPA & DHA needs.

Vitamin K2 is often recommended for vegans, vegetarians and those who don’t eat grass fed butter. Your body can make K2 from vitamin K1 which is abundant in leafy greens, but apparently some people do not make enough of it.

K2 works with vitamin D to strengthen bones and teeth and send calcium to the right places, rather than calcifying the arteries. If you have bone or teeth problems it is well worth considering. The only vegan food sources I know of are natto and sauerkraut. If you decide to supplement, make sure to choose the natural MK-7 form made from chickpeas.

The last supplement covered in the foodrevolution.org post linked below is Zinc. I take it in the form of Zinc sulfate and I have to say it has made a dramatic positive difference in my immunity.

Where I used to catch 3-5 colds or flu bugs a year, I suddenly went down to 1 bug every 5 years or so – and that includes a case of the C-bug that turned out to be very mild (never even spent a day in bed). I owe it all to my daily dropper-full of Vimergy Zinc (Good State Ionic Zinc is another good one) – and a healthy diet, of course.

If you want to learn more about supplements, I devoted an entire page to them on my website – https://www.plantbasedvegancoach.com/what-vegans-eat/switch-to-whole-plant-foods/vegan-nutritional-supplements/

And here’s the foodrevolution.org article that inspired this post on supplements – https://foodrevolution.org/blog/supplements-vegetarians-vegans-plant-based/

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Prunes for Your Bones!

Speaking of vitamin K and bone health, here’s an interesting article on the benefits of prunes. Yes, prunes (rather than the modern label of “plums” I keep seeing in stores).

Prunes are a specific type of plum – not just any old plum!

They are much sweeter than any other kind of plum, which makes them better for drying. If you ever have a chance to pick them ripe from a tree, you are in for a treat – definitely my favorite fresh fruit!

Prunes apparently have a specific benefit for your bones.

From naturalhealth365.com:

Prunes also contribute bone-building minerals, along with hefty amounts of vitamin K.  Vitamin K, once known primarily for its importance to normal blood clotting, has created a “buzz” in recent research with its ability to escort calcium from the blood and into the bones, where it belongs.  The Penn State team also reported that prunes caused a change in the gut microbiome (the community of bacteria in the intestinal tract), which helped lower pro-inflammatory cytokine levels in the colon.  Finally, prunes decreased levels of malondialdehyde – a marker of oxidative stress – while increasing the expression of important antioxidants such as glutathione and superoxide dismutase.

Of course, most people do not have access to prune trees and even those of us who do only have a short window of time to pick them each year. The rest of the year we have to make do with dried prunes, which are also delicious and sweet.

I like to soak them in a jar of water that I keep in the refrigerator. Try it! Your bones will thank you.

Read more about the benefits of prunes – https://www.naturalhealth365.com/prunes-provide-unexpected-health-benefits-3560.html