Notes from Social Justice Saturday:
Accessible Community Health Care
11/22/2008 Noon-4pm
AS220, Providence, RI
Go-around: experiences with health care.
Amber demonstrates how to make sauerkraut.Big thanks to Alex for putting the event together, and to all the presenters. I learned a lot, and have been thinking a lot more about natural medicine and healthy diet since the event.
-luke
Sign up for email event announcements:
http://lists.danky.com/listinfo.cgi/ppp-danky.com
Send additions or corrections to luke@danky.com
-
Presenters can be reached for more info (and/or professional consultation):
Sakinah:
sakinah.1 at cox.net
Mary:
mblue at riseup.net
Alex:
wakeup_alex at hotmail.com
Kim:
lullbye13 at hotmail.com
Amber:
schmidt_animalpack at yahoo.com
Announcements:
December 7th is the next Rad-Herb meet up, including further discussion of creating an emergency response network. Contact Mary.
Many folks were interested in doing a detox together in December. Get in touch with Alex if you are interested.
Notes:
Great relaxed, positive, healthy, energy from the crowd. Lot's of good questions. Good food. Very informative.
Initial go-around, People's experience with health care. People dealing with a whole range of health issues, a lot of horror stories from conventional medicine, few people with health insurance.
Cuba- housing, health care, education, all provided; but no pencils or toilet paper versus the USA: lots of pencils, poor social services.. What's going on with that?
(this event stemmed from the) Rad(ical) Herb Conference.
-2 years running
-large gathering of regional herbalists that felt things were missing from existing herbalism world:
-Health is political.
-Other conferences cost $300-400 for a weekend.
-Not addressing needs of various communities.
-Not addressing difficult or sensitive topics:
-Transitioning off of psych meds.
-Trans(sexual) health.
-Anti-classism training.
-Herbs for children.
-Often an exclusive group of middle-age white women.
Sakinah, long time professional herbalist, runs a shop out of her house, "We Heal"(?). Talked about problems with existing community health care, and went into an open question and answer session, mostly focused on alternative, natural, and herbal dentistry:
-Takes a long time to get access to existing clinics. Sakinah tried to get an appointment when she had strep throat and earliest available time was in 2 months.
-Any lab work is billed separately and can be very expensive.
-Kim will email out the list of RI community health centers.
-People's Acupuncture on the east side is a good resource, $20-40 sliding scale charge per visit.
-Some discussion of Vaccinations, and how to refuse them for your kids: RI schools have religious and medical exemption forms that you have to ask for.
-Much conflicting information about vaccines. Many definitely contain mercury, formaldehyde, and many other carcinogens/poisons. Several studies linking various vaccines to recent surge in autism rates.
-It is safe to stop a series of vaccines (if you haven't gotten all of the shots) such as HPV or Hepatitis.
-Issue of minors (such as 17 year old high school students) not having the final say over their bodies. Advice to find good articles, studies, to convince parents.
Most important thing to learn about in taking care of your own teeth is phosphorous and calcium levels in your diet. In the right proportions and forms, these minerals repair and strengthen your teeth, but unbalanced or missing can be destructive.
Excess phosphorus leaches calcium from your body. Coca-cola and other drinks with large amounts of phosphoric acid are exceptionally bad.
Plain sea salt makes an excellent toothpaste. Mild abrasive cleanser, and anti-biotic.
Successful treatment of abscesses: No solid or difficult to chew foods (primarily yogurt), natural bristle toothbrush, to prevent stress on the tooth. Mixture of goldenseal, myrrh, sea salt, and propolis (brushing with, but mainly applying in a ball or paste). Myrrh in particular draws out the infection. Reportedly has saved many teeth, (possibly useful for other ailments?)
-large list of foods (vegan and non) that have calcium and other essential fatty acids necessary for health.
-Vegan diet can cause problems if you aren't careful, easy to not get enough calcium. Can be expensive to be a healthy vegan, which is prohibitive to a lot of people.
-Losing teeth means you are also losing bone in the rest of your body, often from lack of calcium, missing teeth and osteoporosis are common together.
-Rotting food in your body is a precursor to cancer: chew your food well, especially meet. Different teeth meant for different foods.
-Mercury amalgam fillings are bad, can cause a whole list of chronic health problems. Many people have improved their health by having them removed.
-Often pharmaceutical drugs are derived from herbs. The herbal form can often be better. Clove oil is an example, the pharmaceutical version is euthanol(sp?), used as an anesthetic.
Fluoridation, Fluoride:
Fluorine is better, the form that's found naturally in various foods. Black mission figs in particular have the best balance of phosphorous, fluorine, and calcium.
-Fluoride discolors and softens teeth (Causes fluoridosis in extreme cases/sensitive people).
-Conspiracies:
-One reason that fluoride is still so prevalent may be because of a large financial incentive for the aluminum industry. All of the fluoride we use (in municipalities tap water, and various dental products) originates as a by-product of smelting aluminum. If the industry weren't able to sell it, it would have to be disposed of as hazardous waste.
-Experiments done on prison populations in the 70's(?) found that groups that consumed fluoride were markedly more apathetic and docile.
Alex and Mary led a discussion on detox(ifciation) diets (Mary has been practicing herbalism for 8 years and runs Farmacy Herbs on Cemetery St):
Many folks were interested in doing a detox together in December, get in touch with Alex if you are interested. (Can be easier and more fun to do with others)
-Master cleanse: fads vs. legit?
-Fasting/detox, terminology distinction: Detoxing does not necessarily involve fasting. Fasting does not necessarily mean eating nothing...
-People with various health conditions, diabetics in particular, need to be very careful about detoxing, avoiding the more extreme options, starting with being more careful about diet.
-Many people discover mild food allergies when they start reintroducing foods.
-People often find during a detox (partly since there isn't energy for strenuous activity) a strong inclination towards meditation, cleaning, and getting organized. One of the common benefits of a detox is increased mental clarity.
-Enemas are very beneficial at particular times during a detox. Most effective way to remove toxins and trapped material from the colon.
-Colonic irrigation: somewhat of a fad, expensive, and pretty extreme..
Amber gave a presentation about fermented foods, which included a demonstration on how to make sauerkraut. Contact Amber for extensive info/possibly a copy of the handout she made up):
-Many common foods are fermented (big list).
-Useful preservation method for extra produce.
-Easier to digest, changes nutritional make-up.
-Helps healthy bacteria in digestive system.
-Anti-biotic and anti-carcinogenic properties.
Mary and Alex led a discussion about starting an emergency response network:
-Preparing to deal with various emergencies: hurricanes, police raids, immigration raids, martial law, extended utility outages, other?
-Creating response plans.
-Pre-determined meeting places, probably neighborhood based.
-Project has immediate benefits of building community and offering each other resources.
-Monthly neighborhood gatherings, community meet-ups. Various approaches, types of events.
-Working with groups that have been involved in Social Justice Nights could be a good place to start. Many have established neighborhood gathering spots already.
-Example from Cuba: Communities In Defense of the Revolution.
-Oak and Troy example from warehouse art community: 60 people evicted in middle of winter, only a couple days to move out, poor communication with city surrounding eviction process. Large and lasting blow to that community.
-Could have been handled better.
(If people had been better organized they could have demanded and received more time to move out. Or in a real dream world, could have stayed, under conditions of bringing the spaces up to code. removing the biggest hazards quickly etc.)
-Could have been a more serious emergency.
(City wide, Hurricane Katrina style)
Major point being: We'll figure things out either way, but being a little more prepared could make a big difference.
People shared various partially imagined visions of what the network might look like, functions it would serve, etc. but still very nebulous.
-luke
Sign up for email event announcements:
http://lists.danky.com/listinfo.cgi/ppp-danky.com
Send additions or corrections to luke@danky.com
-
Presenters can be reached for more info (and/or professional consultation):
Sakinah:
sakinah.1 at cox.net
Mary:
mblue at riseup.net
Alex:
wakeup_alex at hotmail.com
Kim:
lullbye13 at hotmail.com
Amber:
schmidt_animalpack at yahoo.com
Announcements:
December 7th is the next Rad-Herb meet up, including further discussion of creating an emergency response network. Contact Mary.
Many folks were interested in doing a detox together in December. Get in touch with Alex if you are interested.
Notes:
Great relaxed, positive, healthy, energy from the crowd. Lot's of good questions. Good food. Very informative.
Initial go-around, People's experience with health care. People dealing with a whole range of health issues, a lot of horror stories from conventional medicine, few people with health insurance.
Cuba- housing, health care, education, all provided; but no pencils or toilet paper versus the USA: lots of pencils, poor social services.. What's going on with that?
(this event stemmed from the) Rad(ical) Herb Conference.
-2 years running
-large gathering of regional herbalists that felt things were missing from existing herbalism world:
-Health is political.
-Other conferences cost $300-400 for a weekend.
-Not addressing needs of various communities.
-Not addressing difficult or sensitive topics:
-Transitioning off of psych meds.
-Trans(sexual) health.
-Anti-classism training.
-Herbs for children.
-Often an exclusive group of middle-age white women.
Sakinah, long time professional herbalist, runs a shop out of her house, "We Heal"(?). Talked about problems with existing community health care, and went into an open question and answer session, mostly focused on alternative, natural, and herbal dentistry:
-Takes a long time to get access to existing clinics. Sakinah tried to get an appointment when she had strep throat and earliest available time was in 2 months.
-Any lab work is billed separately and can be very expensive.
-Kim will email out the list of RI community health centers.
-People's Acupuncture on the east side is a good resource, $20-40 sliding scale charge per visit.
-Some discussion of Vaccinations, and how to refuse them for your kids: RI schools have religious and medical exemption forms that you have to ask for.
-Much conflicting information about vaccines. Many definitely contain mercury, formaldehyde, and many other carcinogens/poisons. Several studies linking various vaccines to recent surge in autism rates.
-It is safe to stop a series of vaccines (if you haven't gotten all of the shots) such as HPV or Hepatitis.
-Issue of minors (such as 17 year old high school students) not having the final say over their bodies. Advice to find good articles, studies, to convince parents.
Most important thing to learn about in taking care of your own teeth is phosphorous and calcium levels in your diet. In the right proportions and forms, these minerals repair and strengthen your teeth, but unbalanced or missing can be destructive.
Excess phosphorus leaches calcium from your body. Coca-cola and other drinks with large amounts of phosphoric acid are exceptionally bad.
Plain sea salt makes an excellent toothpaste. Mild abrasive cleanser, and anti-biotic.
Successful treatment of abscesses: No solid or difficult to chew foods (primarily yogurt), natural bristle toothbrush, to prevent stress on the tooth. Mixture of goldenseal, myrrh, sea salt, and propolis (brushing with, but mainly applying in a ball or paste). Myrrh in particular draws out the infection. Reportedly has saved many teeth, (possibly useful for other ailments?)
-large list of foods (vegan and non) that have calcium and other essential fatty acids necessary for health.
-Vegan diet can cause problems if you aren't careful, easy to not get enough calcium. Can be expensive to be a healthy vegan, which is prohibitive to a lot of people.
-Losing teeth means you are also losing bone in the rest of your body, often from lack of calcium, missing teeth and osteoporosis are common together.
-Rotting food in your body is a precursor to cancer: chew your food well, especially meet. Different teeth meant for different foods.
-Mercury amalgam fillings are bad, can cause a whole list of chronic health problems. Many people have improved their health by having them removed.
-Often pharmaceutical drugs are derived from herbs. The herbal form can often be better. Clove oil is an example, the pharmaceutical version is euthanol(sp?), used as an anesthetic.
Fluoridation, Fluoride:
Fluorine is better, the form that's found naturally in various foods. Black mission figs in particular have the best balance of phosphorous, fluorine, and calcium.
-Fluoride discolors and softens teeth (Causes fluoridosis in extreme cases/sensitive people).
-Conspiracies:
-One reason that fluoride is still so prevalent may be because of a large financial incentive for the aluminum industry. All of the fluoride we use (in municipalities tap water, and various dental products) originates as a by-product of smelting aluminum. If the industry weren't able to sell it, it would have to be disposed of as hazardous waste.
-Experiments done on prison populations in the 70's(?) found that groups that consumed fluoride were markedly more apathetic and docile.
Alex and Mary led a discussion on detox(ifciation) diets (Mary has been practicing herbalism for 8 years and runs Farmacy Herbs on Cemetery St):
Many folks were interested in doing a detox together in December, get in touch with Alex if you are interested. (Can be easier and more fun to do with others)
-Master cleanse: fads vs. legit?
-Fasting/detox, terminology distinction: Detoxing does not necessarily involve fasting. Fasting does not necessarily mean eating nothing...
-People with various health conditions, diabetics in particular, need to be very careful about detoxing, avoiding the more extreme options, starting with being more careful about diet.
-Many people discover mild food allergies when they start reintroducing foods.
-People often find during a detox (partly since there isn't energy for strenuous activity) a strong inclination towards meditation, cleaning, and getting organized. One of the common benefits of a detox is increased mental clarity.
-Enemas are very beneficial at particular times during a detox. Most effective way to remove toxins and trapped material from the colon.
-Colonic irrigation: somewhat of a fad, expensive, and pretty extreme..
Amber gave a presentation about fermented foods, which included a demonstration on how to make sauerkraut. Contact Amber for extensive info/possibly a copy of the handout she made up):
-Many common foods are fermented (big list).
-Useful preservation method for extra produce.
-Easier to digest, changes nutritional make-up.
-Helps healthy bacteria in digestive system.
-Anti-biotic and anti-carcinogenic properties.
Mary and Alex led a discussion about starting an emergency response network:
-Preparing to deal with various emergencies: hurricanes, police raids, immigration raids, martial law, extended utility outages, other?
-Creating response plans.
-Pre-determined meeting places, probably neighborhood based.
-Project has immediate benefits of building community and offering each other resources.
-Monthly neighborhood gatherings, community meet-ups. Various approaches, types of events.
-Working with groups that have been involved in Social Justice Nights could be a good place to start. Many have established neighborhood gathering spots already.
-Example from Cuba: Communities In Defense of the Revolution.
-Oak and Troy example from warehouse art community: 60 people evicted in middle of winter, only a couple days to move out, poor communication with city surrounding eviction process. Large and lasting blow to that community.
-Could have been handled better.
(If people had been better organized they could have demanded and received more time to move out. Or in a real dream world, could have stayed, under conditions of bringing the spaces up to code. removing the biggest hazards quickly etc.)
-Could have been a more serious emergency.
(City wide, Hurricane Katrina style)
Major point being: We'll figure things out either way, but being a little more prepared could make a big difference.
People shared various partially imagined visions of what the network might look like, functions it would serve, etc. but still very nebulous.
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