I was totally going to post this happy full of pic­tures entry with bath tub endeav­ors of the kids, until…Until I stum­bled upon this video.

I think its impor­tant to be seen by any par­ent who is con­sid­er­ing this com­pletely bar­baric pro­ce­dure. If you dont agree with the adjec­tive, think its a bit over the top, do watch this. I dare you to watch it with the sound on. I couldnt. I tried, but I couldnt, it made me want to cry.

After the jump…

(more…)

The other day we were at the library drop­ping books off and the girls went to look through for some new ones. I like brows­ing the mag­a­zine sec­tion, as we dont buy those any­more (fru­gal deci­sion that saves us a bunch). I picked up Choice mag­a­zine, which is a con­sumer infor­ma­tion type of a pub­li­ca­tion, mak­ing tests and review­ing prod­ucts and rat­ing them. There was an arti­cle on milk. I dont drink the stuff, but it looked inter­est­ing so I read it.

Now, one would (quite rea­son­ably, I would say) assume that cows some­where get pumped, a big truck takes the milk to the fac­tory, where its heated as required and then pack­aged into what­ev­ers and deliv­ered to a shop near you, where you buy it and drink its „whole­some good­ness”. Its not just a blind assump­tion, mind you. Recently we vis­ited the local pro­cess­ing fac­tory and we were given a sim­i­lar expla­na­tion. There was even a cutesy video of a happy cow and the milk get­ting to them and then they pas­teur­ize it and send it off to us, the customers.

It turns out, this is all bull­shit, excuse the lan­guage, but its fitting.

Milk gets to the fac­tory and basi­cally gets processed into cream and the rest. Most of the cream goes to fur­ther work– but­ter, cream and so on. The „rest” gets rebuilt to resem­ble milk, but only enough to pass the gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. The gov­ern­ment says how much fat it needs to have to be con­sid­ered ‘full cream’ and skim and the rest. So the fac­tory puts just enough fat back in to sat­isfy those guide­lines. Milk from our cows is about 4% fat (jer­sey cows are much higher). The min­i­mum it needs to be to be full cream is 3.2%,  they add back to about 3.4% and the rest is kept. It makes sense, really, the cream is the expen­sive won­der­ful part, why give us more than they have to.

So now they have enough fat in the „rest”, they try to extend it even fur­ther. They grab a left over watery sug­ary by prod­uct from cheese mak­ing — per­me­ate — and they mix that in as well. That surely extends the prod­uct even more. Why throw the stuff to the pigs, as used to be the norm, just give it to the con­sumers, they at least pay for it. Apparently some milks have around 10% of the stuff.

Now they have built up the mix­ture to some­thing that can be called milk offi­cially. Now it needs to be heated up to kill poten­tial bugs. Since they also homog­e­nize it — or break up the fat mol­e­cules into smaller ones to make the cream not rise to the top and look nice and save us the shak­ing part — a process that can cause issues with the enzymes nat­u­rally in the milk, the heat­ing up is done very soon after, to kill the bug­gers. Enzymes are actu­ally won­der­ful lit­tle things, but oh, well.

Natural? Milk?

If you want min­i­mally processed milk, find an organic unho­mog­e­nized one from a small local pro­ducer (raw is prob­a­bly best, but good luck with that one).

______________

Further reading:

The Choice Article  

Article about farmers' objection to use of permeate

Homogenization explained 

Dear Minister,

I am writ­ing to voice my objec­tion to the pro­posed changes and their un/intended con­se­quences insti­tut­ing a med­ical model monop­oly over the birthing options of Australian women.

Background

You may not be aware, but at the moment women can choose to give birth in a hos­pi­tal, in a birth cen­tre or at home. The lat­ter being a less known option and thus used by very few women, as it is never given as one by med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. It is avail­able never the less for those that actively search it out. In most states the woman has the option to hire, at her own expense, a fully qual­i­fied inde­pen­dent mid­wife to attend her birth and pro­vide the sup­port she may need.

From a woman’s per­spec­tive the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is not per­fect as it essen­tially reserves the option of an inde­pen­dent mid­wife for a cer­tain class of women who can afford the $4000-$5000 cost of this per­son­al­ized ser­vice. And it is just that, high qual­ity, one on one care – appoint­ments at the expec­tant mother’s house through­out the preg­nancy, mon­i­tor­ing progress and health not only with scales and machines, but through extended con­ver­sa­tions and dis­cus­sions, which reveal more than any quick check up can. The woman is then sup­ported through­out her labour in the com­fort of her own home by the same per­son she has built a trust­ing rela­tion­ship with in the past sev­eral months. The sup­port is con­tin­u­ous and there is no change of shift that can dis­turb this com­fort and famil­iar­ity. After the birth, the mid­wife can assess both the mother’s and the new­born con­di­tion in her posi­tion of a qual­i­fied med­ical pro­fes­sional and ensure their health and well being is not in any dan­ger and if needed can make the call with the woman for any needed trans­fer to a hos­pi­tal. The care doesn’t stop here, as she con­tin­ues with the home vis­its past the birth of the child to ensure the safe tran­si­tion for both mother and child. This is a ser­vice that can­not be given by any other form of med­ical care. That is why when the Maternity Services Review asked for sug­ges­tions from us as to how things can be improved in the area, many responded and more than half of the sub­mis­sions (53%) ask­ing for more sup­port and recog­ni­tion of homebirth.

We were not heard.

Proposed Changes

Not only were we not heard, the result­ing changes to the law will have the effect of mak­ing inde­pen­dent mid­wives and their ser­vices ille­gal.

Clauses from the draft leg­is­la­tion Health Practitioner Regulation Law 2009:

The gov­ern­ment steps in and ensures indem­nity insur­ance for all other med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, but it will not extend the same cur­tesy to inde­pen­dent mid­wives, which will leave them unable to ful­fil the require­ments for reg­is­tra­tion and thus become unable to prac­tice, despite being fully qual­i­fied and trained to do the job.

After the ini­tial shock, women from all over Australia fol­lowed up and made close to 2000 sub­mis­sions to the sen­ate enquiry.

We were not heard.

This issue is not about whether home­birth is safe. There are enough stud­ies to show that whether slightly safer or slightly riskier, the choice to birth at home is not a reck­less one. Certainly no more than get­ting in our cars every day.

The issue is free­dom for women to choose how and with whom to give birth. Who can have access to our bod­ies in this quite vul­ner­a­ble process. We already accept that no woman should be made to birth if she doesn’t want to and sup­port the elec­tive surgery of cesarean sec­tion as a viable option of deliv­ery. The gov­ern­ment funds it, even though it car­ries more risks to the mother and baby and despite being a lot more expen­sive than nor­mal birth.

And yet, if these changes are passed, if a woman doesn’t want to give birth in a insti­tu­tion­alised med­ical envi­ron­ment, but still wants to be sup­ported by a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sional in the face of an inde­pen­dent mid­wife, she will be denied her choice.

I am quite gut­ted by this prospect, even more so that this dra­con­ian, anti-women law is being pushed by a gov­ern­ment I have voted for; a gov­ern­ment that prides itself on defend­ing the rights of the vul­ner­a­ble, the rights of the minori­ties in our com­mu­nity. But then Minister Roxon light-heartedly dis­misses our con­cerns as we are such a “tiny group” and its too hard to fig­ure out how to fit us and our choice in with the pro­posed changes.

I am off to Canberra with women from across Australia and will be out­side Parliament house fight­ing for our rights. I hope some­one inside will actu­ally finally hear us.

And since you, Minister, are my rep­re­sen­ta­tive in there, I am let­ting you know and hope you will do that — rep­re­sent me and give voice to my very real con­cerns and oppo­si­tion to the pro­posed changes.

Regards,

S.B.
Hoping to never give birth in a hos­pi­tal again

______________________________

Its the time of the year when all kinds of flu and cold ‘reme­dies’ have a promi­nent place on the TV ad slots. It doesnt seem to end really — take this for snif­fles, this for fever, this for coughs and if you feel crap as a whole, this will do you won­ders. There are mul­ti­tude of amaz­ing pills that can fix you and bring you to your shiny sunny self before you can say sss..s..sick! And yet, peo­ple still walk around with runny noses, mis­er­able looks and colds that last for­ever. Something aint right, some­thing doesnt add up. Its sim­ple, those things just dont work. No pill will fix the pesky cold or flu. It may drug you enough, so you believe you are bet­ter, but your body still needs to actu­ally fight off the infection.

Being sick sucks. It feels hor­rid and it is def­i­nitely no fun, there is no argu­ing about it. And it should feel like that. Our whole body is at war, all the defenses and army is up and fight­ing with the invader, using all the pos­si­ble ammu­ni­tion. The desire to escape the sit­u­a­tion is quite under­stand­able. Early physi­cians knew that and used it for their ben­e­fit. They kept on exper­i­ment­ing with new ‘dis­cov­er­ies’ in order to make an impres­sion on the patients and to keep on jus­ti­fy­ing their pro­fes­sion — ‘harm­ful drugs made the pres­ence of the physi­cian a dubi­ous advan­tage in much med­ical care. Wellington state in 1870 that „over med­ica­tion has been the beset­ting sin of the  med­ical pro­fes­sion„‘ ¹. This is 1870, long before the bloom of phar­ma­col­ogy and Big Pharma.

One of the ene­mies back then and now is fever. They were deter­mined to bring it down „at all haz­zards” and used vari­ety of ways to do so — blood let­ting and aconite amongst them. Today antipyret­ics (fever reduc­ers)  are some of the most used drugs out there — who hasnt popped a Panadol/Paracetamol/Motrin/Tylenol/Aspirin etc. etc. recently? Its almost a given to do so at the first sign of the raise in tem­per­a­ture. Is the fear of fevers actu­ally jus­ti­fied or is it an irra­tional one?

Fevers are not spe­cific to us humans. Just about every ver­te­brates and inver­te­brates respond with it when faced with tox­ins or dan­gers to the crea­ture. This abil­ity has been kept and devel­oped through­out evo­lu­tion, despite the expense it costs us in regards to energy use. Its not easy to raise our tem­per­a­ture and its not cheap. We use ten per­cent more energy for every 1 degree raise we achieve. This would not have con­tin­ued to be so if there was no ben­e­fit to be gained. The crea­tures that did this for no good rea­son would have sim­ply not sur­vived and after a few thou­sand or mil­lions of years, the fea­ture would have been lost. ²

And yet here we are each of us run­ning a fever when needed with­out a fail. So what is the ben­e­fit?  It enhances the immune response.  It helps the mobil­ity and activ­ity of white cells. In patients with sep­sis, fever has been shown to reduce mor­tal­ity ³. Higher tem­per­a­ture is thought to make the per­son less hos­pitable for the growth of bac­te­ria ⁴ and a few more com­pli­cated ben­e­fi­cial effects.

„Although treat­ment of fever may improve patient com­fort and reduce meta­bolic demand, fever is a nor­mal adap­tive response to infec­tion and its sup­pres­sion is poten­tially harm­ful.” ⁵

And we come back to the com­fort. Yeah, fever may be help­ful, but if we can save our­selves the unpleas­ant feel­ings, why not do it? No par­tic­u­lar rea­son other than sav­ing our liv­ers and sys­tem from unnec­es­sary drugs. There are none of them that dont come along with a price. Paracetamol (Tylenol, Panadol, Efferalgan) for exam­ple, is derived from coal  and tox­i­c­ity from it is the biggest cause of liver fail­ure and drug over­doses in the Western World ⁶ . Popping a pill to supress the work of our bod­ies may seem like an easy way out, but in effect it makes more work for the already taxed sys­tem, now it needs to clean up the chem­i­cals on top of deal­ing with the infec­tion. The Australian Prescriber in short advises that:

„there is lit­tle evi­dence to sup­port the use of parac­eta­mol to treat fever in patients with­out heart or lung dis­ease, or to pre­vent febrile con­vul­sions. Paracetamol may pro­long infec­tion and reduce the anti­body response in mild dis­ease, and increase mor­bid­ity and mor­tal­ity in severe infec­tion.”

The fever is not the enemy. The issue still needs to be dealt with and the issue is not the fever, con­trary to the numer­ous ads that make it seem so. The fever is not an ugly mon­ster that is attack­ing our child and by drug­ging it we are not heros.

Here are some more fever myths and facts from the Motts Children’s Hospital . Really, the evi­dence against antipyretic use is quite plen­ti­ful, but in the end I think this quote from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization sum­marises well the reality:

„Fever rep­re­sents a uni­ver­sal, ancient, and usu­ally ben­e­fi­cial response to infec­tion, and its sup­pres­sion under most cir­cum­stances has few, if any, demon­stra­ble ben­e­fits. On the other hand, some harm­ful effects have been shown to occur as a result of sup­press­ing fever: in most indi­vid­u­als, these are slight, but when trans­lated to mil­lions of peo­ple, they may result in an increase in mor­bid­ity and per­haps the occur­rence of occa­sional mor­tal­ity. It is clear, there­fore, that wide­spread use of antipyret­ics should not be encour­aged either in devel­op­ing coun­tries or in indus­trial soci­eties. Unfortunately though, just as fever rep­re­sents an ancient bio­log­i­cal response, an emo­tional effect is embed­ded deeply. Through the ages, par­ents have seen that when fever begins to dimin­ish and dis­ap­pears, the child feels bet­ter and recov­ers from the ill­ness — what­ever it was. Thus, the fever has become syn­ony­mous with the ill­ness. This flaw in logic has per­sisted in par­ents’ and physi­cians’ minds, and they are seduced by the thought that if they „make the fever go away, the patient will be well.” No amount of sci­en­tific dis­course will change this atti­tude, and antipyre­sis will con­tinue to be used in chil­dren with low-grade fevers, or even no fevers, in the home as well as the hospital.”

…no amount of evi­dence will change atti­tudes. How true, not just in this par­tic­u­lar case.

Its not just a pill. And now you know.

.

We take it for granted. Our health that is. We do.

I was at the mall today, as I had to buy some things. Dont get all scared on me, I will not take it out on you. This has noth­ing to do with my love for the mall.
So, I am there in the queue wait­ing for my turn to fork out the money and I engage in trol­ley watch. Its a fun game and makes the time pass much quicker. Plus, who doesnt like to peak into other people’s stuff? Where else can you find out what tam­pons that woman is using? Or that the hunky dude has a tod­dler AND a baby at home? Fungal issues? Touch of the dan­druff? There are no secrets at the queue with your life all hang­ing on the criss crossed metal of the trol­ley ahead of you.

People are idiots ¹.

A few min­utes ear­lier I was get­ting a bot­tle of water from one of those fast foodie places and a woman arrives push­ing a trol­ley. She had what looked like a big doona on her leg. It looked all soft and fluffy. So she walked all funny. She also had a catheter on her arm all taped up and there were tubes com­ing out of it. One of those was attached to some kind of equip­ment box that was hang­ing from her neck. The tapes that were hold­ing the line were pulling her old wrinkly skin, her face was tired, but devout of emo­tion, as though she is just so used to it all. She stood next to me and paid for her coke (but diet!) and a sausage roll to „nour­ish” her poor body. Then slowly pushed her trol­ley, limp­ing on that big soft foot.

Back to my queue.

When I see one of those trol­leys filled with chips, chips, cere­als, cor­dials, juices, chips, frozen meals, processed hope­fully used to be meats, chips and a juice for a good mea­sure I judge. I will not pre­tend I am oh, so mighty free of prej­u­dices per­son. I am not. At the sight of that trol­ley, which is in most cases pushed by a fat owner, I judge. Out of all the food and choice in those mall gro­ceries, you chose THAT? That is what you came up with?

People are shmucks ² .

All that crap goes in the body. That is what it is expected to use in order to sus­tain a sys­tem so com­plex we still havent fig­ured out?
Ok, my dear body, here is some juice (water, color and fake fla­vor), some chips (used to be potato, salt, old cheap oil, fake fla­vor and some color maybe), some processed thing that is sup­posed to be meat (who the hell knows whats in that).. now go ahead and feed my brain, renew all the cells in my body, fight the con­stant assault of bac­te­ria and viruses, make sure all those organs work prop­erly and are fed the way they need to, k! Deal! Now fuck off.

People are fools ³.

When we are sick, noth­ing else mat­ters. If that pesky body of ours is not right, all else falls to the side and we real­ize how essen­tial our health is. No amount of money, hol­i­days, fancy houses, designer clothes could even come close to the impor­tance of our health for our hap­pi­ness. We would give it all up in a sec­ond for a work­ing body.

90% of all ills can be avoided with reg­u­lar exer­cise, healthy diet and reg­u­lar expo­sure to sun­light. Thats it. Our bod­ies have gone through thou­sands of years of evo­lu­tion. They are made to work. And they do amaz­ingly well under the lack of nutri­tion and care they are given in our ‘devel­oped’ soci­eties. Imagine if one actu­ally both­ers with them and pro­vides them with what they actu­ally need.

This may seem like a vent, but its a moti­va­tional inter­nal speech I have been lec­tur­ing myself for the last few months. I have slacked and feel not up to par with my self. Feel guilt in my own body, which seems in need of some one on one time.  My hair is a bit funny. My skin slightly drier. Energy is not that good. Not much, you will say, but its enough of a sign for me. I dont want to wait for the big stuff.

This is my own kick in the butt. I need it.

Do you?