So you fly a lot, as I do, and you have successfully navigated eleven countries, all fifty states and the realization that “just because it’s free does not mean I’m hungry,” saving your already time-zone interrupted,altitudinally exposed and frequent-flier seat-restricted digestive tract from thousands of roasted peanuts, cheesy goldfish and unidentifiable thrice-heated meals. Then you are off to a good start as far as staying healthy as you trot around the globe.
But let’s say that your mission—now evolved past “how to maintain a vegetarian/vegan diet outside of the utopia of your kitchen pantry” or, better still, “how to view a four-hour hiatus from food less like a death sentence and more like a life-insurance policy”—has extended outward from just your personal health to the community’s as well. And, it seems, most everyone who nurses himself or herself to health via raw foods progresses into environmentalism eventually. After all, environmentalism—exemplified by the simple acts of refusing single-serving pretzels, Styrofoam-contained coffee and creamers each in their own miniature peel-away plastic packaging—is the next obvious outlet for the expression of compassion.
When we consider the cost to our health and our planet’s future, “free” becomes a less appetizing value.
Although environmentalists, health advocates and pure renegades would likely agree that refusing cola is unanimously beneficent, they might think it unwise for the business commuter, family vacationer or globetrotter to abstain from water, that elixir of life itself, especially in the dehydrating confines of the economy-class cabin.
For short-duration liftoffs, a reusable water bottle (or two) works wonders. So long as, when you proceed through airport security, it is as empty of liquid as your backpack is empty of lighters, jackknives and still-illegal medicinal herbs.
Once safely past the metal detectors and sniffer dogs, you can immediately fill the reusable—preferably glass—container at the nearest fountain and save yourself a travel-store five-spot with this and each subsequent foresight.
If hydrating the 1/2 hour before boarding and packing in two additional fountain-filled containers still does not satisfy the fluid-ravenous flyer or 12-hour transatlantic traveler, there is yet one more weapon the intelligent transient will pack. For while flight attendants are trained to offer multitudes of two-swig bottles when additional drinking water is requested, they have an invaluable and apparently inexhaustible artillery of piped hot water available to the coffee-drinking, movie-viewing counterculture of the alcohol-consuming, sleep-seeking mainstream. And with one reusable insulated tea mug, the real system breakers and relentless idealists can refill en route as many times as desired, asking for a tea bag or ice as preferred, remaining hydrated and, all the while, garbage-free.
Don’t let the deep love of your environment prevent you from exploring your environment. Nor should you permit your powerful ideals, which should be shared with the world, to waver when exploring the world. Even as an eco-conscious traveler, you can utilize your passion for adventure to navigate both seat 26A and exotic lands.
It’s true. With a little thoughtful planning, you can foster a curious mind, have a cleaner conscience and keep your spirit free—the way it is meant to be.
I’ve been listening to Joe Walsh and he sings “I can’t complain (but sometimes I still do)”.
I feel that trite when I give a sob story. I don’t talk about it, or I do talk but don’t let on how deeply something affects me. Especially right now – I’ve been on a wild ride recently facing the stuff that makes grown ups grow up even more. And I’ve had to be there emotionally for loved ones. My feelings have been up, down, selectively held back, aggressively released and eventually – finally: I’m done. I can’t feel anymore. I’m flatlined. I’m exhausted and as Trent Reznor sings, “Now I’m down in it”.
Everything is great! I can’t complain. But sometimes I still do. Gotta make it through.
I don’t have the answers to waking up tomorrow and feeling back to normal and right now I’m not sure I’m going ‘back’ to any way of being. I’m giving myself a lot of permission to go where I’ve never been before so I can become the next me. I don’t know how to get there, but I know I can make it easier on myself by uncomplicating my physical being. I grabbed a raw cane juice cleanse from Sugar Cane Juice. You know, some people use the raw food diet or packaged cleanses as a way to thin out or clean out their digestion. But over the eleven years I’ve been raw vegan, I’ve learned that cleansing can detox the emotions powerfully, too. Get it out. Finish it off. Center the emotional being. Adjust perspective.
My dear vegetarian friend, Joanna Steven, is doing a juice cleanse too. She just sent me the words I will use as a mantra over the next six days, “I hope the fast gives you all the healing you need, and that it gives you more than you even expected”. There is always support when I need it. I know I am loved. I’ll start from there.
Growing up, every year for Mother’s Day my father would take our whole family to the local greenhouse, where my mom would pick out an array of vegetables, flowers and ornamentals to decorate our home garden that summer. No matter when the spring equinox fell, Michiganders know—considering their state’s sneak-attack frosts and late-season freezes—that Mother’s Day marks the official “safe zone” for outdoor planting. Mother’s Day is, in that region, recognized as the onset of spring.
These days, I live in Hollywood while my parents hold down the familial fort in the Midwest. Since I couldn’t make it back to the greenhouse to help mom pick out her garden this year, for Mother’s Day I instead planted four trees in her name via the Tree People Organization—imagining someday an entire forest dedicated to my mother, four trees at a time.
A Kitchen Garden Still, I am taken by the urge to personally put my hands in the soil as each Mother’s Day, and therefore spring, rolls around. Even though Hollywood has an earlier spring and more year-round foliage than any other metropolis I’ve lived in, I like having a garden myself. So like many city dwellers, I’ve gotten creative. Whether one lives in Hollyweird or a farm town, engineering a small-space kitchen garden can provide a sense of connection with the soiland provide the freshest, most local food available. Why not sprout alfalfa, dehydrate flax crackers, ferment raw vegan cheeses and vermicompost food scraps in your own home? It’s far too easy and much too satisfying to not.
My favorite springtime kitchen-garden crop has to be growing wheatgrass from seed. As opposed to sprouting clover or germinating legumes, wheatgrass requires soil and that’s just plain fun. A new crop matures in just ten to 12 days, deepening my enthusiasm further. And everyone has heard about the spectacular health benefits of consuming this plant thanks to its high chlorophyll content (chlorophyll’s been touted for lowering colon-cancer rates), heavy-metal detoxification, concentrated vitamin and mineral content (compared to other vegetables on a pound-per-pound basis), ability to increase blood flow and aid digestion, etc. It’s for these reasons and others that the famed natural healing center, The Ann Wigmore Instituteuses raw foods and wheatgrass as its fundamental method of healing—everything. Considering all that—along with how absolutely easy it is to grow wheatgrass—and I just can’t stop myself!
Wheatgrass Directions Here’s how to grow wheatgrass in your own indoor kitchen garden:
Hold the Mold Obviously, the biggest risk with wheatgrass is dehydration or mold during germination. I don’t get mold any more by following these steps, but when I did, I just allowed the wheatgrass to grow anyway and cut above the mold line. It really didn’t affect the juice or bother me.
My favorite thing about growing wheatgrass is not just the way the bright green color beautifies my kitchen, but the chance to be a part of the complete natural life process of a plant: from seed through germination, sprouting, juicing, scrap composting and turning that back to soil—and then growing my next batch of seeds in that very dirt.
Sure, wheatgrass is supposed to be one of the healthiest green plants to consume on the planet. But what is truly magical for me is drinking the juice from a plant of which I’ve participated in the entire lifecycle—the way my mother must feel having created and participated in my lifecycle. Let us all mother each other and ourselves with the same attentive care.
I don’t burn petroleum in my car for fuel, so why would I burn it in my home for light?
After extensive research into the benefits and environmental impact of my non-petroleum candle enthusiasm, and after some actual natural-wax burn comparisons, I personally switched to a combination of local farmers market beeswax candles and palm-wax candles from Strega Moon, who actually upped their company’s integrity with me tenfold by enthusiastically agreeing to ship my palm candles in all-paper/non-petro packaging (sometimes you just have to ask and hope that when enough people do, your special request will become the standard).
Over the last year and a half or so of burning these clean-wax candles, I haven’t wanted to throw the unburnt, leftover wax into the landfill, when it’s perfectly good candle-making material. So I contacted Strega Moon again just to ask if Lois had any advice for a novice candle maker. Can you believe that the company owner actually mailed me wick and wick tabs to start me off? Now that’s the true freedom of information.
Initially, I had the equivalent of one plastic grocery bag full of saved wax. It made 36 votives and two pillars, was a ton of fun to make and saved me a load of cash (about $75). I have poured candles from saved wax several times since and let me tell you: the light given off by a candle you poured yourself is a very magical light indeed.
How to Make Veg Wax Candles at Home
Or is that solidarity?
All candles are one candle. All light is one light. When you use one candle to light another, does the first flame diminish in any way? All light is one light. And so it is with love, as well.
Allow your candles to cool/harden for at least 24 hours. They may seem ready early. Resist the urge. And then share your light.
In parts one and two of this series on candles, we compared the production methods and safety of non-petroleum candle waxes andcontrasted their quality and price in real-time burn tests. Here I would like to offer you some vital criteria that you can judge your candles against in order to assure you are enjoying the healthiest and most eco-friendly burn available.
Ever notice a soot ring around the lip of your candle container? This is an indication of chemical fragrances, toxic wax, metal core wicks or a combination of all three. In any case, soot is not good. Metal-core wicks were once widely used in candles because cotton wicks can fall over into the wax during the burn. Unfortunately, “burning four metal-wick candles for only two hours can result in airborne lead concentrations that pose a threat to human health,” according to Jerome O. Nriagu, Ph.D., environmental chemistry professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Lead poisoning can cause internal organ damage, behavioral changes and, in extreme cases, coma and death. Children are especially susceptible to lead poisoning.
Many domestic candle manufacturers have transitioned to cotton wicks, but I still recommend asking your candle pourer what type of wick they use. The only acceptable answers are 100% cotton or 100% hemp. If your candle manufacturer is too big to get an answer from, they should no longer be your source for candles.
Purchasing unscented and un-dyed candles will help you avoid soot and toxins caused by additives. Some candle pourers use exclusively organic essential oils to scent their candles. “Fragrance oils” are not the same as essential oils, so make sure to ask. Should you prefer unscented and un-dyed candles, you can still customize your scent experience with every burn at home by adding five drops of your desired essential oil into the melted wax every two hours.
The final vital concern I have when purchasing candles is the environmental impact of how they get to me. Locally poured and sold candles, such as those at my farmers market, are ideal. No shipping, no packaging and a bright smile between two very real people during every candle exchange—it doesn’t get much better than that!
There are small businesses out there, however, that behave as if they were at your local farmers market, like Strega Moon. I have found them available to answer questions, share their wealth of information and even listen to packaging requests. Several years ago I contacted Lois of Strega Moon asking if my petroleum-free candles could be shipped in petroleum-free packaging. She not only went out of her way to wrap each candle in paper, but over the years, she has even fulfilled my request for reused newsprint as the wrapping (I reuse the packing newsprint in my kitchen vermicompost bin). A business relationship like this leaves a warm place in both the customer’s hearth and heart.
Candles not only save electricity, but they warm and beautify the home. It seems ironic to me that we’ve gotten ourselves into a world where we have to weed through so much misinformation to make sure something as simple as the candles we burn are not harming our children or the rain forest. The good news is, the information is out there—and I’m here to summarize and make it easy for you, the reader, to make an educated consumer choice. Heck, someday you might just feel like taking control and pouring some candles with your own two hands. (Next blog entry, I’ll teach you how to do exactly that.) Developing a relationship intellectually as well as physically with anything in your life can only make the emotional impact of its actual experience fuller.
I’m a thorough investigator. I understand that although animal ethics, environmental awareness and health consciousness influence my consumer decisions, so do quality and price. Many people will still see that paraffin candle at the 99-cent store and think it’s a deal too good to pass up. After performing a side-by-side votive-candle burn test myself, however, I’m not convinced that paraffin’s low price tag makes it the best value after all.
Burn, Baby, Burn I compared five votive candles in a side-by-side burn test from start to finish. Each votive was housed in an identical glass votive cup. I was baffled at the variance in burn times.
Strega Moon’s palm-wax votive candle burned an outstanding 20 hours! At $1.50 each, that means each burn hour costs less than seven cents. The hand-poured, local farmers market beeswax candle burned an impressive 15 hours (10 cents per hour). Whole Foods’ beeswax votive burned 13.5 hours (22 cents per hour). The farmers market soy votive burned a mere 11 hours (14 cents per hour). Walgreen’s paraffin candle burned a disappointing five hours (12 cents per hour).
The best values according to this burn test are the palm and beeswax candles. Of course, candle making is an art and high-quality manufacturers will indeed produce a longer-lived flame. The burn duration affected the final cost per hour of the votive, but of course so did the initial price. To keep the cost of your non-petroleum candles low, purchase beeswax or palm wax in bulk from a high-quality manufacturer and cut out as many middlemen as possible by buying direct from the candle pourer or local farmers market.
Learn, Baby, Learn Why waste your time purchasing eco-friendly candles if you are going to waste their time? I’ve learned that proper burning can extend burn times by as much as three, ten or even 15 hours for the same candle.
The wax of a well-made and properly burned candle should uniformly melt all the way to the perimeter of the candle until the flame goes out, with very little residual or no wax to save—no drips, no leftovers. Here’s how:
Trim candle wick to 1/4.” Not 1/2″, not 1/8″—1/4.”
On the first and every lighting, allow the candle to burn long enough to melt the wax all the way to the perimeter of the candle. If, after three hours, the wax does not melt to the perimeter, it was a poorly made candle—purchase future candles from a different maker.
Don’t blow out your candles; use a candle extinguisher to put them out. This will instantly suffocate the candle, keeping the wax drawn up through the wick, rather than allowing it to smolder and burn. It is the wick’s wax that is burning off; we want that for the next light. If the wick is waxless, it has to draw up wax from the candle first and saturate the wick once again—that’s a lot of wasted wax. Requiring wax in the wick means less to burn on the candle, resulting in a smaller melt diameter and therefore a candle that is burning wax from inside its circumference. This leaves oodles of unmelted wax at the end of the burn and greatly reduces your candle’s potential burn time.
For safety, extinguish your candle its final time (when it’s about to be spent) when there is 1/8″ of wax left. This is for the sake of safety, ritual and taste. Final extinguishing with just a bit of wax left keeps the candle container heat from charring whatever table, shelf, scarf or doily upon which it is placed. Early final extinguishing also keeps the metal wick tab from getting too hot and catching the paper sticker on the bottom of store-purchased candles from igniting. We’ve all seen it. Tacky and a little dangerous. Solution: early final extinguishing.
A deep respect for my health led me on this quest for the cleanest candle. But cleanliness does not stop at my personal air quality. I’ve learned that farming and manufacture methods affect my candle karma, as do the efficiency and quality of the candle itself. Next week I’ll share some other vital ways you can keep the non-electric lighting of your home eco-conscious and healthy.
We all know petro-plastic has toxic implications, which is precisely why I first reduce, and then recycle all of the plastic with which I come into contact. I drink all of my water from glass bottles. Heck, I even drive my car on vegetable oil instead of petroleum fuel. If I am willing to go this far to become a conscious petroleum consumer, then why would I still be burning petroleum-based candles right in my own living room at home?
Paraffin is a byproduct of the petroleum refining process. This dark-gray sludge is further treated with toxic chemicals to bleach, color and scent it. Then it is sent off to well-intentioned consumers wanting to light their homes “naturally.” And don’t we all just love the cozy smell of vanilla candles? Well, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air-chamber analysis has revealed “these neurotoxins and carcinogenic compounds in significant quantity in a random group of over 30 candles tested: acetone, benzene, butane, ethylbenzene, styrene, phenol and lead,” to name a few. That vanilla pillar doesn’t smell so good any more, does it?
The good news is, there are many alternative wax candles out there—including palm, soy and beeswax—that when burned will not release carcinogens into the air. Let me give you the lowdown on these non-petroleum waxes so you can make an educated decision for your electricity-free home lighting. Not all non-petroleum waxes are created equal:
Soy Wax Soy wax comes from a notorious, genetically modified crop saturated with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. The soy bean does not want to become wax too easily, so the oil is processed with hydrogen and nickel to hydrogenate the oil and turn it into a solid. The wax is still quite soft after all this processing and will not form pillar candles easily. If you own a soy pillar, it might have been combined with another wax—most likely paraffin. Also, soy wax candle products tend to be heavily colored and fragranced; it is hard to find a scent-free, unbleached soy candle. Although I consider soy wax a vegetable wax, I personally do not consider it natural.
Palm Oil Wax Palm oil is not genetically modified, is carcinogen-free and is far easier to liberate into a waxy substance than soy. Palm oil wax is produced like most essential oils: the fruit berries are pressed for oil, which is then distilled. Unfortunately, between the health-and-beauty and health-food industries, palm oil has become in such high demand that Sinar Mas and United Plantations (suppliers to Nestlé and Unilever) are clearing Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s rain forests at a rate that has reduced the populations of endangered wildlife, such as the Indonesian orangutan, by as much as 50% in recent years—all so they can plant more commercial palm fields.
The palm tree grows native in western Africa and mostly on small, family farms. It is currently more sustainable to source palm wax from western African locations; however with enough interest, I personally suspect that the same environmental catastrophe is likely to happen in Africa as it has in Southeast Asia. Palm wax is often bleached and deodorized before reaching a candle pourer, who may or may not use synthetic fragrances and dyes.
Beeswax Beeswax is a no-brainer. It is the original wax. It looks like wax when it is formed and requires next-to-no processing to place a wick in the center of it for burning. I questioned a beeswax candlemaker about what processing is done to the wax. Her response: “We heat the capping so the honey and wax separate (the wax floats to the top). We drain the honey and then drain the wax. It hardens as usable wax. Later I put it in my wax melter. When liquid, I pour it into dipping pots and start dipping candles. The answer is nothing is done to the wax but heat.”
The production of beeswax does not harm the environment and happens locally almost anywhere in the United States. Although beekeeping is normally a careful and sustainable art, some vegans feel it is unnatural to interfere with bees’ lives and choose to exclude bee products from their lifestyle. Beeswax candles are most often unscented (because beeswax smells so luscious as is!) and are rarely dyed.
These are the ethical, environmental and health impacts of the production and use of non-petroleum candle waxes. These criteria have become the basis of my consumer purchase decisions recently. But they aren’t everything. Next week I will discuss the other factors that make one candle a cleaner burn on the consciousness.
“The first time I saw Tonya is when I watched Bold Native at one of the premieres in LA. It is an incredible movie, if you haven’t seen it definitely check it out. Tonya was brilliant and funny and I liked her even before I met her many months later. She is even more brilliant and funny in person! She is one of those people that is herself, no matter what and I have a lot of respect for people like her. She brought tons of creative ideas for the shoot and was excited to shoot sexy looks – her confidence and independence are truly inspiring. She is a strong woman; proud of her femininity, sexuality and body and she let’s nothing hold her back from being a good person, following her dreams and having fun. She has links to much of her work below, please check out some of what she has done! Another thing I wanted to mention because it made such an impression on me during our shoot, is her dedication to leaving a small footprint on the earth. She wastes nothing, reuses, buys food from local farmer’s markets to support small humane business and her local economy, buys awesome fashion forward clothes from thrift shops to reduce her consumer impact and of course she eats the best possible way for the environment! Vegan! And I knew it before – but shooting her really drove it home for me: if one wants to look young over the years, eating raw (and keeping your skin safe from the sun) is instrumental. She looks amazing, is totally energetic, athletic and toned – there is no way anyone can argue that vegans are not healthy when Tonya Kay is an example of what veganism can do for a human’s health.” – Melissa Schwartz
It is my honor to be included in photographer, Melissa Schwartz, vGirls/vGuys series, a multimedia project promoting veganism by featuring prominent vegan’s beauty, strength and diversity. You will find the full photo series here accompanied by our lifestyle interview. Again, it is my honor to shoot with Melissa’s extraordinary talent and connect with her compassionate activist heart.
SS: What made you go vegan and why?
TK: At this point in my life, I have been vegetarian and vegan for many decades and raw vegan for the past 11. I transitioned each shift for a different reason. Specifically, though, I went VEGAN when I was on tour with Kenny Rogers. I was a bit of an insomniac back then and was the only one awake on our tour bus when the driver pulled off to a truck stop for refueling. I was hungry and stretched my legs while wandering inside to look for food. However when I got in there, all I could find was neon colored packages and cartoon character marketing on products that I was supposed to consider food. Suddenly, I wasn’t fooled. I was outraged! Perhaps I was just tired enough and just loopy enough, but in that moment I went vegan out of the pure renegade desire for real food.
SS: Has it been difficult for you?
TK: Regarding going RAW vegan, which people sometimes perceive as more difficult than cooked vegan, I have to say this: eating cooked, animal-based or junk foods is like hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer. Once you find out what’s causing the pain, it’s pretty easy to not hit yourself with the hammer again. Eating raw vegan is easy because the rewards are so tangible.
SS: Do you have any memories that stand out in your mind of someone helping an animal?
TK: I grew up in a farm town in Southern Michigan with lots of country roads winding around lots of lakes and swamps. Invariably, the lake turtles would try to cross those country roads to the other pond, and if a car roared by, they’d just pull into their shells and hide there as if they were protected. My mom and dad would pull over to the side of the road, stop the car and pick up any living turtle (snappers included) and place them on the other side. What a great feeling. I still save turtles if I see one in the road and just returned from volunteer travel to Costa Rica protecting endangered sea turtles down there through PRETOMA and Sea Turtle Restoration Network. I’m still saving turtles.
SS: What are some of the animal rights related things you participate in?
TK: I produce media, I am a conscious business owner, I donate to organizations and I’ve been known to rally and speak at city hall when moved. I always try to keep it positive, not only because I find people naturally gravitate towards what’s working but also because I insist on my lifestyle being easy going/no problem, so keeping it positive is just as much for the public as it is for me.
You can read my award-winning column, Clean and Green Everyday in EcoHearth Magazine. New episodes of my Eco Tourist web series feature wildlife conservation-based volunteer travel with Asian elephants and sea turtles in upcoming episodes. And I hope my free raw vegan lifestyle videos help those already on the path. You can enjoy my performances in health, fitness and compassion promoting-projects like Bold Native, Rawman and Green Girl and Vegan Fitness dvd. I enjoy doing vegetarian-based press and I am also a conscious business owner and my companies Happy Mandible and Solid Hollywood are doing amazing work bringing organic, raw, vegan and natural products to major motion picture and television sets.
SS: What are your favorite animal rights organizations?
TK: I donate to and/or support http://elephantnaturepark.org/,http://seregetifoundation.org/, http://seaturtles.org/, http://pawsweb.org/,http://centerforbiologicaldiversity.org/, http://treepeople.org/,http://carbonfund.org/, http://norml.org/, http://www.idausa.org/ andhttp://www.ad-international.org/adi_world/.
SS: What would you say to someone considering going vegan?
TK: If you want average results, do what average people do. If you want extraordinary results …
This is my one last chance to reiterate how jarringly different a raw-vegan diet is from a cooked-vegan one. The latter avoids death karma and the former seeks life karma. Perspective and application mean everything in actualization.
Don’t get me wrong! Do not, do not get, do not get me wrong; I have been a vegan for almost two decades now and I am devoted to the vegan lifestyle’s monumental effects on the political, ethical and spiritual aspects of my life. I waver not from my position of animal compassion and how deeply that benefits my life every day. But now that you are vegan… give raw a try. It’s insane. It’s in-sane. I literally became sane when I transitioned from cooked vegan to raw vegan.
Can I say that? I just did. I don’t want to go into what poetic concepts I hold around the word insane, or if it is or isn’t desirable to be considered outside the social norm. Rather, I just want to impress upon you how truly miraculous this next health miracle, which I am about to share with you, has been in my life. It’s truly a f*ckin’ miracle. And I do not use that word lightly.
If you read my last piece, you’ll remember that my first health miracle was the development of glowing skin, when previously I had self-image-injuring acne. Well, consider that I had also been on medications for manic-depression (they called it that back then) for seven years of my life—with all sorts of worrisome symptoms, including the inability to commit to my own existence. I didn’t go raw to get off meds, but I knew the entire time I was a (cooked) vegan that I didn’t want to be on them. I tried all sorts of natural medications for insomnia, depression and nervous-system stress, but roots, oils and meditation were flip-flops when I needed a snowmobile—they did nothing to aid my plight.
So after a few pivotal realizations, I considered that I had never been an adult without drugs controlling my brain chemistry—I didn’t even know what my own baseline was! So I decided to find out. I was going to go off the meds for the third (and hopefully final) time, not to fix my problems, but to find out how bad my problems really were. I didn’t want to further complicate my problems through diet, so I decided to be as healthy as possible. That is why I went raw. And, in so doing, guess what happened? [Please note: This column tells the story of one person’s experience. It is not meant to offer medical advice. Please talk with your doctor before starting or stopping any medication. —Ed.]
I got healthy. On every level, I got healthy. And now, eight raw, medication-free years later, I want to give this gift to all the idealistic, passionate and troubled vegans out there who, like me, wish to live a healthy, natural life—unmedicated by prescription drugs, natural remedies and food, all of which are medications. Instead of finding the better medication, let’s aim for being healthy. Healthy people don’t need medication.
That’s my ideal anyway. And now I believe it is possible. Now I live its possibility. My health-ideal actualization is nurtured by perspective. I’ve fallen in love with life karma, rather than spend my time avoiding death karma. And it has turned me into a raw fooder with health-miracle stories. Just ask any of us—we all have a health miracle. What might yours be? Comment below, then tune in next week for the biggest of my raw-vegan health miracles.
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, that is the question. Parents raising their indigo children and travelers visiting third-world countries are posing the question that just 25-odd years ago never even came up.
My parents vaccinated me and I’m normal (mostly), so I’m not mad at them. Plus, my mother points out that she herself saw crippling cases of polio as a child that just plain don’t exist now. It is possible that natural parents today are afforded the option to not vaccinate their children because all of us got our shots. While getting mad at the system, we should also be thankful that vaccinations worked so well. German measles, mumps, polio—we are blessed to not know what these diseases even entail.
As children, you and I did not get to choose if we wanted to be vaccinated. With a dripping, three-inch needle aimed at our buttocks, which of us would have decided in the affirmative?! So as an adult, I’m taking satisfaction in knowing that this time, I get to choose. And for that reason alone, darn it, I’m going to.
I checked out what these vaccines really are. In my perspective, they are comparable to homeopathic medicine in concept: “Like cures like.” A sample of the virus (live or dead) is weakened or diluted, then injected into the body so that it builds its own antibodies and immunity to the virus. In homeopathy, however, the weakening and dilution is accomplished in water, while in traditional vaccines, the weakening is done by repeatedly passing the virus through monkey tissue, chicken embryos or (cover your eyes, sensitive ones) the aborted remains of human fetuses. Traditional vaccines are then stabilized with ingredients such as formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, aluminum and thimerosal, a mercury derivative. That three-inch needle suddenly seems like the least of my concerns.
The credible and educational Travelers’ Health section of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website recommends that travelers to Thailand vaccinate for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, typhoid and Japanese encephalitis. As an avid eco-traveler, doing volunteer work in rural areas with endangered Asian elephants in the jungles of this developing country, I take health warnings very seriously. I know first-hand how easy it is to be bedridden from drinking water parasites in a foreign country (oh, how I know), and it scares me to think it might be that easy to walk away with typhoid as well. At the same time, my vegan lifestyle does not savor the vaccine machine’s animal-cruelty practices, nor do I consider embalming fluid a part of a living foodist’s (or living person’s) healthy menu.
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? While there are no guarantees either way, the good news is that my destination, in this case Thailand, allows travelers to make these decisions for themselves. I have not yet been to Africa to volunteer with the wild elephants there—even though I desperately want to—because vaccination is required for a visa. And I am not ready to make that decision yet. I personally have survived though two volunteer trips to Thailand, exploring rural Brazil and numerous undeveloped South Caribbean islands and remain vaccine-free. Which is a big response-ability—one I have chosen to educate myself about and activate my behavior to reflect. I am grateful for the option of vaccine-free travel.