Prayer Request: Post-Abortion (Emotional) Trauma

Hey all, I am not one to normally post a prayer request, but this one is somewhat close to me. And its quite unusual.

As we are all aware, abortion is a HUGE industry and its pushed to the masses (and they push amongst themselves) as a simple answer and one that will supposedly “free” you from the “horrors” of having kids. Problem is, society doesn’t much recognize that there are potentially life long physical and emotional problems that stem from an abortion. And in the rare cases that they do, any resources for healing are given to women (isn’t that always the case?)

But what about the guy? After all, it is his child as well and it is a lie that men do not care for their children. Many men WANT to be a father. Sometimes that is taken from him by the mother, or perhaps pushed on them by the family(ies). This is one of those cases and a young man out there needs some healing that cannot come from this world. He needs healing from his Heavenly Father.

Please pray for him.

You can read more on Pickle’s blog.

Gout Cure: Update

UPDATE: For additional info please see this new blog on gout: About Gout: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, Relief

My previous post on gout has been, by far, my most popular post and I feel it is time to update so as to give better information out there to those searching for a remedy to an extremely painful problem.

My previous post talked about how I found some relief using alkaline raising products from plain old baking soda in a solution of water as well as alkaline drops. I did indeed get some relief from that, but it wasn’t ever enough. The attacks were coming even more frequently and I had been on a cane for months. I couldn’t really even walk without that cane, so I eventually bought a second one to ensure that I would never be without it. I would leave one in my car and one in my house so one would always be near. Even still, sometimes I had to resort to using crutches as it was just too painful to put any pressure on my feet. But what is worse, is that gout eventually attacked my knees. I thought I had already experienced the worst that gout could do, but when it hit my knees I was in for a whole new world of hurt. I couldn’t move and just wanted to throw up from the pain. (Do NOT let it get to your knees!!! My recommendations below are nothing compared to that pain, trust me.)

Well, I finally decided to get on gout medication, Allopurinol in my case. I had been putting it off because of the potential for horrendous side effects. I was on it for only three days when I became terribly ill. I wasn’t sure tho if it was the medicine as I worked in a petri dish of an office: overcrowded and with lots of sick people; tho up to that point I had stayed completely healthy (aside from the gout that is.) So I stopped the med immediately and resumed it a week after I was better. Well, I did indeed have a negative reaction to that medicine. I ended up with an itchy rash that stayed with me for almost three weeks after stopping the med. I also learned that a decreased immune system is one of the side effects so I can safely blame the illness on it as well.

Find Gout Relief Products At Amazon

So what is the update? One of the visitors to the previous post pointed me to an article on Wikipedia about Hyperuricemia.

High dietary intake of fructose contributes significantly to hyperuricemia.[11][12][13] In a large study in the United States, consumption of four or more sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day gave an odds ratio of 1.82 for hyperuricemia.[14] Increased production of uric acid is the result of interference, by a product of fructose metabolism, in purine metabolism. This interference has a dual action, both increasing the conversion of ATP to inosine and hence uric acid and increasing the synthesis of purine.[15] Fructose also inhibits the excretion of uric acid, apparently by competing with uric acid for access to the transport protein SLC2A9.[16] The effect of fructose in reducing excretion of uric acid is increased in people with a hereditary (genetic) predisposition toward hyperuricemia and/or gout.

So what I see in this article is that my consumption of fructose is destroying my bodies ability to remove uric acid from my body and at the same time, increasing the production of painful gout crystals which would end up in my joints. As I had mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I already knew that soda and gatorade caused my gout. I was sure of it, despite doctors telling me that there was no chemical transformation that would turn the ingredients in soda into uric acid. Turns out, it doesn’t need to turn to uric acid as it added to it in different ways.

So to answer the question I see all the time: YES, gatorade can cause your gout. Gatorade uses Fructose to sweeten their drinks and so consuming Gatorade (Or Powerade) can indeed cause your gout. Soda’s are probably worse though, as they use High-Fructose corn syrup for a sweetener and they are more calorically dense, meaning even more fructose per ounce consumed. Worse, any sugar can cause this problem as regular sugar (sucrose) contains fructose as well.

The best answer, is to avoid as much sugary foods and drinks as possible. This includes soda, sports drinks and candy. Its not real easy, and I still drink a real Coke from time to time, but I have had to switch to diet sodas and chocolates like a snickers bar instead of my preferred skittles and starbursts. Now, I am still, after three months, not of the opinion that diet sodas taste very good. What I have found to work for me is to have numerous types of diet sodas so that I can have a different type each time I grab a can. Whereas in the past I could have Coke or Dr Pepper in my fridge and for months never think twice about the selection, I now have Sprite Zero, Fresca, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Mug, Diet Cherry Pepsi, and Diet Sierra Mist in my fridge. I also buy Diet Rite as well. None of these will cause gout.

I have been three months gout free except for one weekend where (leading up to it) I had started drinking regular soda again. If you are suffering from gout, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE try this. Dietary changes are NEVER easy, but I have no doubt you have already changed your diet to try to stop the pain. This one should provide results pretty quickly.

Just so I don’t fall afoul of lawyers:
1) Its not Gatorade, Coke, or Pepsi et. al. themselves that cause gout, but the fructose which is used as a sweetener. Choose a diet variety instead.
2) “Real” sugar also contains fructose, but in lesser amounts than a High fructose corn syrup. I suggest avoiding both
3) I’m not a doctor. Duh. You should always discuss changes to your diet (and ESPECIALLY your medicine) with your medical practitioner.

Gout related products on Amazon:

Product: The Ultimate Gout Formula

[Product Description] [Specifications]

In the UK? Click HERE

Odds & Ends

Some thoughts on Casey Anthony.

I saw an article where she is refusing visits from her mother while in the pokey. Seems to me that a person in jail would be happy for the distraction from the monotony of jail but Casey would rather hide from her mother. One has to wonder why? Casey is also talking about either adopting or getting pregnant when she gets out of jail. I should hope that no adoption agency is stupid enough to place a child with her as well that no man would impregnate her. It wouldn’t be a smart move.

Here are some thoughts on the matter by MikeT over at CodeMonkeyRamblings and some additional thoughts by Pickle on the message that society sends to young women about their children. Also, somewhat related, The Damned Olde Man offers up a discussion on the Female Sentencing Discount. This picture sums it up nicely.

Vox Day posts on a mob of blacks attacking innocents, Jamila offers this in response:

The flash mobs that have been attacking innocent people this summer consist of a very specific subsection of the black population: young, unemployed, lower-class black males, with a scant number of young, unemployed, lower-class black girls tagging along with the crowd to support their boyfriends or wanna-be boyfriends.

Professor Hale takes her to task on his blog and does a fair job of destroying her argument such as it was. It was mainly the same tired claim of racism heard over and over, ad nauseum.

Also, there are a few blogs that are back from the dead, maybe.
WonderWoman recently rediscovered her blog, and Difster decided to post something this week as well.

This post has nothing to do with:
Lady Gaga being a man, Jennifer Aniston’s latest boyfriend, or Angelina Jolie’s latest foreign child adoption shopping adventure.

For Prof. Hale

Jenifer Aniston has a new movie coming out today called Horrible Bosses, and well, I figure you’d enjoy her performance in this film.

Food Storage

I guess I am going to start blogging about making preparations for TEOTWAWKI. Its important to me at this point and I now that I am working on this I am truly worried about getting prepped. Living in the northwest there are numerous catastrophes that could befall us here, including floods, snow storms, earthquakes, and lahars or even volcanic eruptions. Not to mention all of the potential human caused problems.

It is my hope that these posts will inspire others to begin storing up food for their own families so as to minimize the effects of any disruption to life from any of the above, or whatever local conditions might throw at you.

Food Storage this week
24 cans veggies
12 small cans of mandarins
5lbs white sugar
4lbs dark brown sugar (LOVE brown sugar, great for lots of things including just plain eating!)
4lbs iodized salt
10 small packs of jello
5lbs peanut butter
1 large box powdered milk

Cost? About $45

This is in addition to approx 13lbs of canned meats (chicken, ham, salmon and tuna), one bottle of oil, and about 20 lbs of various dried beans and peas and 10lbs of rice. I’d say this puts me at about 90lbs of food specifically for storage. Obviously the beans, peas and rice expand tremendously in weight and volume but its not much right now. I have a VERY long way to go. It seems that the more I purchase the more I realize just how far I have to go. That, of course, is not a reason to stall or put it off. I’d say that if I did nothing more but store water I’d easily ride out a couple week long disruption.

And speaking of water, I really need to find a good way to store it. Preferably cheaply. I have found a nearby company called EarthWaveLiving.com that sells storage containers for what are probably a good price? I think though, that it would be best to find someone local to you as the shipping costs are (justifiably) high. Picking it up yourself would save a ton. Of course, always check Craigslist.

On the history of fireworks

Remember Marco Polo? A native of Venice, he is remembered for traveling the Silk Road to China. Marco was a Christian man and his travels have been studied down through the years. Travel was difficult in that era and Marco recorded his travels and difficulties to be passed on in the annals of time.

It is said that Marco Polo was impressed with the fireworks in the country of China while he was there. Especially the rockets. He was told that when shot into the air, they would explode, making noise and creating magnificent colorful patterns.

The problem was that many Chinese people made fireworks, but not many wanted to demonstrate how they worked. Time after time he was told, yes we make fireworks but we will not shoot them in the air here.

Finally he was told of a place where the fireworks were shot in the air every night. The place was an old military stronghold at the community of “Chu Lai”.

When Marco Polo arrived there, he asked the question, Why here?

The simple answer, he was told, is that it is a Chinese tradition to set off fireworks on the “Forts of Chu Lai”

1 Years Food Storage: How To

Of late I have been more and more concerned about having put some food aside for hard times. It seems that those hard times are just about upon us, so instead of just being concerned about it I am actually doing something and putting food aside. In order to assist others, I am posting from an LDS manual on preparedness that I found from Desert Cat. (READ the two pages DC has there) If you ignore the LDS scriptures its a great manual as it covers just about everything you could think of with regards to food storage. You can download the PDF here. I suggest printing it out at your local Kinko’s (or whatever you have near you) because when TSHTF you might not be able to go online to get it.

The guide is intended to get you prepared within 1 year yet only spend $40-$50 a week. Their intention is to have you spread out the purchases so that you have a variety of foods so that if only 2 months in to your preparing TEOTWAWKI occurs, you will have some foods to eat rather than maybe 500 lbs of wheat and nothing else. While it isn’t stated specifically, it appears that the below list would be for two people. Also, from my perspective, it focuses rather heavily on having wheat. I cannot eat gluten so I will obviously be substituting that for other things such as rice, beans and corn. Also, I see no mention of meats in this list. Not sure that I can go without meat, even if it is canned, so I am purchasing a variety of those as well.

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January
Week #1 1 case canned fruit
2 #10 cans instant potatoes
Week #2
3 #10 cans dry milk
Week #3
3 #10 cans dry milk
Week #4
9 pounds yeast
Week #5
Anything you have missed from above

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February
Week #1
Water Storage Containers – buy either 55 gallon drums, 5 gallon water containers (available at all emergency preparedness stores and some super markets) and spigot, or start to save water in pop bottles and plastic juice containers. Also purchase 100 lbs. hard white wheat and three plastic storage buckets with tight fitting lids. Check out the local mills in your area for best prices.
Week #2 25 lbs of sugar or 20 lbs of honey
5 lbs salt per person
bucket opener
Week #3
4 #10 cans shortening or 4 – 48 oz bottles oil
2 #10 cans of dry instant milk
Week #4
2 case canned beans (like re-fried pinto, black, kidney, white, pink etc.) or
25 lbs dry beans (preferable) and bucket to store them in.
50 lbs dried corn or popcorn (about $10.00 from a mill or food storage company) and a bucket to store it in.
(Can be ground into cornmeal as well as for popcorn.)

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March
(please note that many of these items are repeats because we want to be SURE you have enough of the essentials!)
Week #1 Enough water containers for 14 gallons per person in the family.
(This was mentioned last month-but we want to be sure you have this)
(Water is your most important item!<)
If you didn’t get enough containers last month, you can get them this month.
White Rice, at least 15 pounds per person in the family and if possible buckets to store it.
(Brown Rice goes rancid faster.)
Week #2 2 jars mayonnaise
1 gallon oil
2 tubs shortening
Week #3 25 pounds sugar
1- 25 pound bag of legumes (pinto, lentils, white, pink etc.)
Week #4 Salt 5 more lbs
2 bottles of bleach
1 #10 can or 1 box of dry milk.
Week #5 Check your list for the last 8 weeks and purchase any items you fell short on.
These items are essential ones and you will need to be sure you have enough.

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April
Week #1 100 pounds wheat
10 lbs. brown sugar
Week #2 2 #10 size cans dried fruit or 1 case canned fruit
1 pound yeast
Week #3 1 case tuna or salmon
2 #10 cans milk
3 lbs sprouting seeds
1 80 oz can Rumsford baking powder
Week #4 2 large jars peanut butter or
1 #10 can peanut butter powder (last longer)
2 cans dried whole egg (keep in a cool dry place)

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May
Week #1 2 to 3 bottles of multi-vitamins
2 #10 cans of rolled oats
(if #10 cans are not available in your area, buy the largest packages available)
(in your local store, and also purchase a small bucket to store it in.)
Week #2 100 lbs. of wheat
3 buckets
Week #3 #10 can margarine powder – or shortening if marg. powder is unavailable
2 #10 cans rolled oats
(or equivalent, and a storage bucket)
Week #4 4 #10 cans instant potatoes
1 bottle black pepper

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June
Week #1 2 cans dry milk, 2 boxes of Rennet
(used for making cottage cheese and other dairy products from dry milk.)
1 bottle lemon juice,
1 bottle vinegar. (also used in making dairy products from dry milk
Week #2 100 lbs wheat
25 lbs. white fl our
Week #3 Baking soda (try to buy in bulk in places like Sam’s Club or Costco) Buy about 10 lbs.
25 lbs. or legumes (choose those you are willing to eat.
Remember you can sprout legumes and almost quadruple the nutritional value of them.
Buy one large box Knox or other gelatin to be used in place of eggs in baking.
Week #4 Tomato products (try to buy them by the case in normal size cans. Spaghetti sauce, tomato
sauce, and whole and chopped tomatoes. Buy a combination of flavored and not flavored tomatoes.
Buy paste if you can get a good deal on it. It is less expensive to add water to paste to make sauce
than it is just to buy sauce sometimes. Buy three cases if possible.)
Week #5 Be on the look out for garden seeds that are NON- Hybrid.
That way you can use the seeds from the plants you grow to grow a garden the next season.
A good price for them is about $18-20 per can with about 10 varieties per can.

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July
Week #1 200# wheat
(buckets to store it in if needed)
(keep filling pop bottles, Gallon syrup containers, etc. with water – basically no cost to this)
Week #2 20 lbs. Peanut butter
(keep filling those water containers)
Week #3 4 #10 cans shortening
2 # 10 cans dry milk
(keep filling water containers – make this a habit – when you empty something worthy of water storage, wash it and fill it right away)
Week #4 6 #10 cans dry milk
(more water!)

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August
Week #1 25# rice
25# sugar
1 # 10 can instant potatoes
5 lbs. salt
Week #2 1 case tuna or salmon or other meat
2 # 10 cans dry milk
Week #3 2 #10 cans dry milk
2 cans shortening
1 #10 can instant potatoes
Week #4 Note* In late August and early September, many stores have sales on canned fruits and vegetables.
Ask your local store when these sales will be, and switch the weeks of this calendar as needed.
2 cases fruit
5 lbs. salt
Week #5 2 cases canned fruit
1 case misc. vegetables (green beans, peas, carrots, etc.)

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September
Week # 1 5 – 12 cases canned fruit
1 case misc. vegetables
Week # 2 2 cases canned fruit
2 cans shortening
Week #3 2 cases fruit
1 case vegetables
Week #4 2 cans shortening
25# rice
buckets to store rice if it did not come in #10 cans

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October
Week #1 100 lbs. wheat and 3 buckets
Week #2 1 case tuna or other meat
Week #3 25 lbs. Sugar
2 large cans fruit juice powder
Week #4 3 #10 cans dry milk
Week #5 9 #10 cans potato flakes

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November
Week #1 4 large jars peanut butter
Week #2 1 case canned fruit
15 pounds rice
Week #3 7 #10 cans shortening
Week #4 50 pounds rice and buckets to store

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December
Week #1 100 lbs. wheat and 3 buckets
Week #2 1 large can fruit juice powder
3 large jars peanut butter
Week #3 3 #10 cans dry milk
Week #4 50 pounds of rice, oats, or barley
buckets to store