THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

Cappella

Pineapple said:

But that's not to say we shouldn't try to stack the odds in our favour by making healthier choices and influencing the things we can influence - including trying to minimise our exposure to toxins in our environment. But personally I would never say never. I'm getting on a bit and so view each new day as a gift. The fact that I am still here may be in part down to me - but only in part. I have known too many people succumb to conditions which were a huge shock both to them and everyone around them, to be complacent.

I agree 100% with this. I have continued to eat well, and sensibly, exercise and avoid toxins in the environment where ever possible. I am trying to minimise the damage already done to my heart as far as I can.
My point however was that I was already making good lifestyle choices. Brown rice, wholegrains, little meat, our own organic fruit and veg, low dairy consumption, little sugar and yet I still succumbed to a genetic heart condition.
So I am afraid that I do get very angry with what I seemed to be seeing here as the smug assertions that people who are afflicted with certain diseases in some measure “ deserve them” because they don’t know how to eat the right things or to treat their bodies properly.
If this was not the case then I apologise.
But I still say if in doubt about symptoms have them checked out.
And please, please, please understand that should (heaven forbid) you ever have the misfortune to have a positive test result it is NOT necessarily because of something you did wrong. It’s bad enough having a degenerative or life threatening disease without people guilt tripping you into thinking that if you’d only been more careful with your diet it wouldn’t have happened.

Cappella

Daz378 - sorry, we cross posted. Glad you are having it checked out. Do hope the biopsy is clear. Best wishes to you.

mardatha

The RV was angry because he got type 2 diabetes and people associate that with eating too much and drinking a lot - he's slightly underweight and always ate healthy food (unlike me). He stopped drinking in his 30s. I think some is heredity some is lifestyle and a lot is luck. Or the lack of it. I always ate too much sugar and I'm not diabetic. Yet...

fuddle

I think that some of us are passionate about learning about health. I have a long way to go before I know how to properly feed my body for health. My health is pretty dire and I don't think it's my fault but there has been a lot I have done these past 6 months and I will continue to improve and educate myself on eating for health.

Please allow me to say that any perceived smugness, and I don't feel that but I understand we're walking a sensitive line here, isn't at all my reality. I have had the benefit of having some really good advice on how to not exacerbate my condition while facilitating healing.

[Deleted User]

No one is immune, you get what life deals you and that's a fact. You can do your best to eat healthily, live a sensible lifestyle, exercise, anything you like but if you do find yourself with problems it's no ones 'fault', it just happens. Common sense says live a lifestyle that hopefully will lessen your chances of developing anything untreatable but it's a lottery no matter what you do. What is controllable is how you cope with life after diagnosis and treatment and most people are total heroes in that area on this thread. Stuff happens randomly, you can't apportion blame!

Witless

... and continuing the theme of trying to stay healthy; cleaning your teeth regularly etc ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/fQz5fzDFvsSVzNDBRptv5P/seven-weird-things-you-re-eating-without-realising-and-why?intc_type=promo&intc_location=sport&intc_campaign=unexpected&intc_linkname=radio4_ent_article1

You’ll be pleased to know it’s mainly confined to the perfume industry now as the source of Castoreum is the beaver's castor sacs, located near the anus.

:eek:

There's really no answer to those.
(I remember reading / hearing somewhere that gravy granules were almost entirely pine bark)

[Deleted User]

Prepping matters again, He Who Knows has just today harvested the very last of our leek crop from the allotment and I shall be using them for soup tomorrow. The hawthorn hedge at the front has sprouted lovely tuftlets of fresh green leaves which could be used for salads, there are some magnificent specimens of hairy bitter cress growing along the garden walls in the road, the hedge garlic has begun to sprout and is dense little clusters of horseshoe shaped leaves, the nettles are beginning to waken from winter sleep too. It's HUNGRY GAP time preppers, what is there to eat that could be harvested NOW in your areas?

Forgot to throw in violet flowers and leaves and also primrose flowers and leaves both of which are here and blooming now and both of which are edible as is gorse, the flowers of which can make a tisane.

GreyQueen

Evening all.

In less scientific and more superstitious ages, when something happened, people could console themselves that it was 'god's will' or that 'these things are sent to try us' or enjoy the smugness of assuming that a congentital disability or illness was the sins of the fathers visited on the children etc etc.

We mostly don't believe such things now, for which I am thankful.

But science is a religion of sorts. We think that event D can always be attributed to Causes A, B or C, and that as long as one avoids whatever are the current bugbears, one is on the side of righteousness, and will be spared.

Life isn't as simple as that. Some of us have frailties wired into our very genes. Sometimes, those genes are expressed, and sometimes they are not. We are also the sum total of the nutrition and hazardous exposures of our forebears, going back generations. Their choices were often shaped by harsh poverty and, let it be said, pig ignorance in some cases, when better choices were available, and were not taken.

My mother was a neglected East End slum child in WW2. Malnutrition sores which took 18 months to heal after she was taken into care. We have the same bone structure, but I am 5 inches taller, all of that leg length. I expect her leg bones would show the stress lines caused by chronic malnutrition in the first seven years of her life.

She had lived life-long with the consquences of her early years. Are some of my health problems attributable to poor nutrition a generation back? I certainly was well-fed throughout my life. And gawd knows what Mum could have ingested as a starving waif scavenging under stones for insects to eat on the bombsites.

Could some of mine and my brother's health problems have their roots in that early hardship? Who can know? There's no point on dwelling on it, my selfish and horrible bio gran died alone and is buried in a pauper's grave and that's plenty good enough for her. The misery she caused has affected many dozens of blood relations and in-laws, the rubble hasn't stopped bouncing to this day, and she's been dead since before the millennium.

The consultant who confirmed the diagnoses of my rare and life-threatening disorder told me frankly; We don't know what causes it and we probably never will.

My experience is, the higher you get up the medical hieracrchy, the more inclined the pratictioners are to admit ignorance.

S**t happens. We have to play the hand we're dealt.

Cappella

MrsLurcherwalker said:

The hawthorn hedge at the front has sprouted lovely tuftlets of fresh green leaves which could be used for salads, there are some magnificent specimens of hairy bitter cress growing along the garden walls in the road, the hedge garlic has begun to sprout and is dense little clusters of horseshoe shaped leaves, the nettles are beginning to waken from winter sleep too. It's HUNGRY GAP time preppers, what is there to eat that could be harvested NOW in your areas?

The first chives are up in the cold greenhouse, and we have sprouting broccoli and forced rhubarb on the allotment. MrC has also brought up three seed trays of Japanese microngreens which have been delicious. There is not a lot else at the moment, it makes me appreciate how hard the next two months must have been in Medieval times. Stored food would be running very low and people really would have been hungry BUT sheep are lambing, and you can milk ewes so that must have helped as must chickens coming into lay. No handy tins of beans or packs of frozen veg either but pickles, salted and dried veg would surely have been a godsend? This really is a hungry gap in the garden. MrC says we will be looking at a greater variety of hardy Japanese and Chinese greens next winter, but so much depends on the weather.

[Deleted User]

I have just worked out how to block websites, including mse, from tracking me. A small icon appeared in the address bar for mse after I did it, the first page I have looked at since switching tracking off, why should I be shocked at mse, it is a business, forums are only a bi-product. I have firefox, top right hand side options and privacy. I am completely fed up with personalised adverts