Tag Archives: Cattle

Exorcising the Ghost…..

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…..of Christmas Past!

Last Christmas, ate lots of bad stuff
And the very next day, felt pretty rough
This year, I didn’t eat crap….

And, amazingly, I feel great.  Well, when I say great, my arthritis feels great – in that, for a moment, it felt like it had gone away completely.

Of course, I don’t believe that it has gone away, but stuff has happened in the last few weeks that has started me thinking.  Never a good move, I know, but just bear with me.

I had the flu.  Not just a heavy cold and a sore throat, this was full-on, in bed for days, shivering, hot, cold, sweaty, hallucinating, aching neck, persistent sore head, nasty cough (which, three weeks on, still hasn’t gone away), streaming nose and just generally being a zombie.  I can’t remember a time when I produced SO much rancid goo.  I now know what it feels like to be the walking dead and it’s not nice at all.

All of this in the two weeks over Christmas and New Year – brilliant!

Well, actually, yes, brilliant.  Two things happened.

1.  In week 1, I stopped eating.  I had no appetite for anything so I drank lots of fluid and fasted.  Intermittent fasting is supposed to be pretty good for you – after all, our Paleolithic ancestors would have fasted on and off when they couldn’t find or catch anything to eat.

Remember, the Paleolithic era ‘fixed’ the human genome – genetically, humans haven’t caught up with our rank modern diet.  Fasting, now there’s a concept I might explore.

Anyway, for me, not eating meant no temptation to eat loads of inappropriate food – not that I would eat loads, but I do have willpower issues now and then.  So, nothing to upset the gut and fuel my rubbish immune system.

2.  Any immune system I had left was completely distracted trying to sort out my throat, head, shivers, cough, cold sweats and saving me from being a zombie (didn’t quite work).

The result?  My arthritis left me.  My little patches of psoriasis cleared up.  I had no pain (well, no joint or muscular pain).  The joints in my fingers stopped being crunchy.  My right elbow (the barometer) was like new.  My feet felt small in my shoes and the dislocated toes on my left foot gave me no trouble at all.  Apart from the flu, my body felt amazing – really amazing!

I though this was very interesting.  Very interesting indeed!

What if you could bottle the effect of a distracted immune system?  Oh, hang on, Scott, isn’t that what the drug companies have already tried to do?  Haven’t they produced lots of toxic drugs that doctors are happy to push on their behalf?  Now, you want to get off this stuff – eejit.

And what about the doctors, their relationship with drug companies and how this mighty, powerful drug industry feeds money to governments and conspires to keep us unhealthy and make billions of pounds?  Sound mad?  I could go on forever, so I’ll save that for another time.  I’m seeing my rheumatologist later this morning and I have some very interesting things to say to her – I’ll be in ‘rant mode’ next week, I can tell already.

Anyway, back to food.  During the holidays, I took my kids to spend some time with my sister’s kids and we had a bit of a blether.  Inevitably, we got round to talking about food and my sister asked, “So, what do you eat?”

Well, I eat food.  Good, natural food.  Tasty food.  Home cooked lovely stuff made with good ingredients – just like our Christmas dinner.  Last year (OK, Christmas 2011) I had a momentary lapse of reason.  Wheat, processed sugar and dairy fuelled by quite a bit of alcohol.  It took me three weeks to recover.

I had spent the previous three months fitting a bespoke kitchen in our house – with some help from family and friends – and I was able to do it because I was paleo.  I couldn’t have tackled the mammoth task unless I had spent 4 months eating the food we’re supposed to eat, which left me feeling fit, well and strong.  I finished the job on Christmas Eve (late) and I had put just about everything I had into it.  Working 14 hour days at weekends and putting in 3 or 4 hours every day after (and sometimes before) work.

I was shattered.  My guard dropped.  Everything went to Hell on Christmas Day and, boy, did I suffer for it.  That wasn’t going to happen this Christmas – oh no!  This year, we were paleotriffic!

Posh BirdHere is the bird.  Sourced from a good farm and fed good stuff.  Not quite fully paleo but we went to our usual butcher and it was as close as we could get!  I have investigated and sourced a real paleo bird for next year – rock on!

Then there’s the gravy!  Oooh, I make amazing paleo gravy with a little olive oil, shallots, the juice from a chicken or two, homemade stock, a bit of pepper and NO FLOUR.  There’s no need, it is reduced over time and I always keep a wee bit to start off the next batch.

Paleo Gravy

Here it is bubbling away.

Then there’s the stuff we roast our vegetables in.  I render my own chicken fat each time we have a roast – which is pretty much every Sunday.  It produces the most clean, pure and delicious fat, which freezes easily and melts beautifully at room temperature.

Fat

Oooh, it is lovely.  Here it is melting away with a wee touch of extra virgin olive oil for good measure.  Our roast veg was superb!

What about the wee sausages with bacon on them – pigs in blankets, you say?  Ye cannae have Christmas dinner without them.  Well, ours were made from gluten-free chipolatas and wrapped in the butchers own cure bacon from pastured pigs – very paleo indeed.  They were the best I have ever tasted and the few that were left over didn’t last long!!

Paleo PigsMy plate was filled with marvellous, tasty, gorgeous food.  We were all (and I include my wife’s parents and her brother) paleo for a day!

It was a smashing dinner and, even in my bunged up, sandpaper throated and slightly hot and shivery state, I had an excellent time.  What’s not to like about this……

Plate

What about the pudding, though?  Well, normally, we have a shop bought, reasonably good quality pudding.  Add to that cream, custard and ice cream and you have a caveman’s nightmare.  Well, last year, I had it all – and the results weren’t pretty.

So, this year, I made my own paleo pudding and it was a triumph!Paleo Pud  It took a while but it was full of naturally good stuff, made with almond flour, carrots, sweet potato (no really, it was blooming excellent), dates and lots and lots of dried fruit.

It went up in flames at the table and was served with whipped coconut cream (which didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I know where I went wrong).

So, our first real paleo Christmas and I felt no after effects at all.  Nothing to recover from.

Nothing like last year.

It just proves that good health and feeling great starts with – and is all about – food.

And maybe fasting, which I am now quite interested in.  I’ll let you know!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19112549

http://robbwolf.com/30-day-total-transformation/

Spectacularly Missing The Point, Twice!

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Oh for the love of goodness!  I just read this article on the BBC News website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19785006

In it, James Gallagher, the BBC’s Health and Science Reporter, says that scientists have genetically modified a cow so it produces milk that reduces allergic reactions. Flamin’ Eck!  He goes on to say that the poor thing was born without a tail. Really!  Then, as the beast hadn’t yet became pregnant, they pumped it full of hormones to kick-start milk production. Eeeeh Gads!

At this point, I was disgusted and interested all at once.

Now, I’m no fan of dairy.  I stopped eating/drinking dairy products a year ago.  Since then, I have dabbled and experimented with bringing dairy back into my diet.  If I do have any, it gives me a sore head and I break out in various itchy rashes.  I am now even less of a fan.

Cows make milk for the same reason as humans make milk – to feed their babies.  As a race, we understand that human breast milk is absolutely the best thing for our children and we have Government sponsored and charitable/voluntary organisations to help, encourage and support new Mums in doing the right thing.  Respek!  We do, however, treat new Mum cows with no respect at all.

Calves are taken away from their Mums after about 3 days, they’re fed milk substitutes and are either slaughtered for veal or allowed to develop into adults.  Mum cows are then milked intensively for about 10 months and then inseminated all over again (they have 2 months off to let their udders recover).  Sounds nice, eh?  This is highly unpleasant, especially when the bond between a cow and her calf is very strong and will last until the calf reaches adulthood.  A bit like us, then.

This intensive milking has some nasty side effects too, other than making the poor cow go a bit mad! Lameness, mastitis among other horrible things.  While we treat mastitis in humans, we just kill the cows.  Nice human people!

Right. I’m in danger of ranting, back to the BBC.  They go on to say………..

Cows milk contains beta-lactoglobulin.  Human milk doesn’t.  Beta-lactoblobulin causes an allergic reaction ergo Lactose Intolerance.  Hmmm, doesn’t that tell us something?  The researchers have said, “It’s not surprising that it constitutes a major milk allergen.”

Now, isn’t this just missing the point?  It’s only an allergen because it’s not designed for humans, it’s for cows.  Would we feel just as comfy drinking a hippo’s milk, a domestic cat’s milk, a dog’s milk?  Of course not!  Those animals make milk for their own babies, don’t they and, anyway, that would be disgusting!

We have already genetically modified our bovine friends to produce LOADS AND LOADS of milk satisfying our voracious need for sustenance.  So, we’ve done it once, we can do it again, tail or no tail!  That’s humanity for you – superior, arrogant and doing stuff just because we can and missing the point to boot.

Missing the Point 2.  I’ve had a busy week.  Well, the truth is, I gave myself a busy week!

My band were playing at a wedding on Saturday.  Weddings are hard work.  At a party, club or pub, we’d normally start at about 9/9:30, play for 1hr 15mins, have a break, play for another 1hr 15mins.  At a wedding, start times are typically earlier, clients want certain songs learned and played, bands have to mindful of the demographic and build the set around that.  The reality is, you have to play for longer, need more songs up your sleeve and you need to pay attention to the crowd and change the set list on the fly.

That meant dusting off quite a few songs we haven’t performed in a long time and adding a few more that we hadn’t done at all.  So, we rehearsed a bit more than we would normally in the week leading up to it.  I also made a new riser deck.

What’s a riser?  It’s a wee platform that gets the drums off the floor so I’m at eye level with my muso chums.  It also makes the band look much more professional.  It has nothing at all to do with being a show-off and being seen, you understand.  Nothing!

I have a riser deck already, but it was too big for this gig so I needed one that was small, fitted around a smaller kit and could be set up in a corner.  Now, as my wife pointed out, I didn’t really NEED to build one, especially as the bath panel is still at the top of the stairs and there’s other shit to do in the house.  She’s right, of course!  But it is BRILLIANT being on a riser (thanks Ringo) and I really WANTED one for this gig.  I had from the Monday to the Thursday to make it – pressure was on!

I did myself in.  What with work, cooking, ferrying the kids to various places, 2 band rehearsals and just getting through life, I really didn’t have time to do this.  By Wednesday, I had sore hands, my right elbow was playing up, my knees and feet were sore, getting through a 3 hour gig on Saturday was looking shaky and, worst of all, I had pissed off my wife!  Thoughts of injecting myself with my drugs crossed my mind – and not just for the arthritis!

I reminded myself that I was missing the point of what I’m trying to do.  I want to be drug free and prove that you really are what you eat!  So I didn’t.  By Friday (gig setup day) I was feeling OK.  By Saturday evening, I still had a sore elbow but nothing nearly as bad as Wednesday and I was feeling good.

We played, in total, for 3 hours and 20 minutes on Saturday night.  I have never played for so long – this is Bruce Springsteen territory – or been so bloody knackered!

Did I last the pace?  Absolutely!  AND I had more to spare.

Did I suffer the following day?  Not at all, I felt brand new.  Nothing hurt and I was up early and back at the hotel to tear down the gear.  I have chronic rheumatoid arthritis, I’m thinking this isn’t too shabby.

I have been feeling a bit off colour since, though, but I think it’s just because I’ve not caught up with my sleep.  I still haven’t resorted to injections and I’m determined not to miss the point again!

Nuff said.