Super Search

Water | Swimming Pools

HybridLight

Solar-powered flashlight, headlamps, lanterns and spotlights that “Put the power of the sun in the palm of your hand.” “The HybridLight™ Solar Flashlight with Battery Back Up uses revolutionary energy technology that generates power from any light source indoor or natural sunlight and stores it. When fully charged the HybridLight™ products can hold a charge for years. The HybridLight family of products offer huge cost savings while providing light when and where you need it – every time! ”

Visit Website

Terrahue

Tableware and spice jars. Plates in seven sizes and shapes, made from fallen palm leaves. Colorful spice jars “are handcrafted by artisans according to Terrahue specifications from wood that are harvested in a sustainable manner. The jars are coated with shellac, an organic lac and colored using vegetable dyes.” Also dinnerware made of palm leaves and dinnerware made of sugar cane (bagasse).

Visit Website

YouCaring.com: Financial Help for People with Chemical Injuries

I just want to post this for any of you who are having financial challenges as a result of chemical injuries and need some help…or if you know anyone who needs help.

This is a crowdfunding site that focuses on “compassionate crowdfunding” to support humanitarian causes and bring kindness and community to those in need.

The organization does not charge anything for this service. 100% of the funds received are transferred to the person or organization in need as soon as they are received (the donation processor for funds transfer does take a fee, however).

The categories are: medical expenses, memorials and funerals, emergencies and disasters, adoption, education and schools, team fundraisers, pets and animals, volunteer and service projects, nonprofits, missionary work, and veterans.

Click on “Support a Fundraiser” and choose a subject to see the fundraisers that need support. You can also create a fundraiser on that category page.

www.youcaring.com

Add Comment

Smoke Alarms

Question from Mira

Hi Debra,

I’m wondering what brand of smoke alarms are safest, both wired and not wired. I need some new wired ones for my condo.

In this article I was surprised to see a radiation risk associated with one type of smoke alarm. Evolving Wellness: Alarming Toxic Safety Risks Associated with Your Smoke Alarm

Thank you.

Debra’s Answer

I’ve been writing about this for many years. I just looked it up and I first mentioned this in my book The Nontoxic Home in 1986.

You should definitely get a photoelectric alarm, as the author of your cited article recommends. She did a great job of outlining this whole issue.

In years past these were difficult to find, but now they are common.

Here’s a list of photoelectric smoke detectors you can order from online or find these brands at your local hardware store.

Add Comment

Dust Prevention

Question from Jan Harris

Hi Debra,

We get a LOT of dust coming through our air-co. Is there something we can put over the air vents or any other thing to help have less dust? (Our air-co ducts are metal. Could that be a factor?)

Debra’s Answer

I’m not an air conditioning engineer so I can’t answer your question, but am posting it here so someone else can answer it.

The only solution I know of would be to use a freestanding air purifier to reduce the amount of dust in your home.

You may want to have someone check your unit to see if it is pulling in dust from somewhere other than your home living space.

Add Comment

GMO Soy: More Formaldehyde and Less Glutathione for Cell Detoxification

A new study published July 14, 2015 in the peer-reviewed journal AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES discovered the accumulation of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, in GMO soy, and a dramatic depletion of glutathione, an anti-oxidant necessary for cellular detoxification.

Formaldehyde in soy? Now isn’t this interesting, because there are many soy-based substance such as resins and adhesives that claim to be formaldehyde-free. Now since 93 percent of soy is genetically modified, anything made with soy is probably GMO soy. So does that mean it contains formaldehyde? I don’t have enough information for a definitive statement, but I would say this is another reason to stay away from soy.

Systems Biology Group, International Center for Integrative Systems: GMO Soy Accumulates Formaldehyde & Disrupts Plant Metabolism, Suggests Peer-Reviewed Study, Calling For 21st Century Safety Standards

Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage

Pamela SeefeldMy guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll be talking about basic principles pharmacists use to maximize the effectiveness of drugs in your body and how you can apply those same principles to maximize the effectiveness of supplements and other natural substances you take. Pamela has more than 25 years experience choosing and selling top quality medicinal supplements, so she’s seen it all. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com

read-transcript

 

 

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD

 

transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld

Date of Broadcast: July 15, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.

It’s Wednesday, July 15, 2015, I’m here in Clearwater, Florida and we’re having a little weather pattern here. Usually the rainstorms, the thunderstorms (we have thunderstorms almost every day), usually, they come from the Atlantic Ocean across the state of Florida and hit us on the afternoon. And now, they are starting in the Gulf of Mexico and coming and hitting us around noon time. So, we may be having more thunderstorms this week, but we’re fine right now.

So today, we are going to be talking with my guest, Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist. She’s on every other Wednesday. So, she’ll be on two weeks from now again. And I have her on so often because we’re talking about drugs, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, how they affect your body and what you can do naturally instead of taking pharmaceuticals.

She is a registered pharmacist. She has been a pharmacist over 20 years. She works in a hospital as a pharmacist. And what we are going to talk about today is actually something a little different. What we are going to talk about is how she applies what she knows as a pharmacist and what she knows about the body and how things move with the body and what happens on the body, how she applies her pharmacist’s training to giving people the natural remedies that she gives them. She also has a botanical pharmacy here in Clearwater, Florida where we both live.

So, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. I asked her to do that because she keeps like throwing in these little things every time she’s talking about different natural remedies and the pharmaceuticals. I just wanted her to get all these ideas into one show so that we can learn how we can better take our natural remedies in a way that there has some intelligence and design behind it.

Hi, Pamela.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Hey, it’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Thank you. So first, I want to tell you something and I’ll our listeners too as long as they are listening. No, but this is a personal message to Pamela.

I want to tell you. So, if you’ve been listening, listeners, if you’ve been listening for any period of time or have listened to other shows where Pamela is the guest, you know that she does consultations and anybody can call her. We’ll give her number during the show. But anybody can call her up and for free, she will find out what’s going on with you and help you choose some natural remedies.

So, if you can get them in front of her, she will look at your blood test. And so I took my blood test and I’ve been taking them in to her. A few months ago, I took in a blood test that showed kidney irregularity which indicated to her that I needed to pay attention to my kidneys now and not wait until the future when I have kidney failure. We did a whole show on kidney failure and how to take care of your kidneys naturally.

But I wanted to tell you, Pamela that I got another blood test and my kidneys are absolutely perfect.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s great!

DEBRA: Yes!

PAMELA SEEFELD: Good for you!

DEBRA: So, Pamela gave me, she gave me how many perfect remedy to detox my kidneys and it worked absolutely perfectly.

PAMELA SEEFELD: I can add things to that. Today is a very special day to me because my bichon frise, she’s going to be ten in October. She had a blood test. Her B1 kidney parameter was 40, which was high for her breed. Two months ago (and I told the vet), I said, “I’m going to treat her with some homeopathy and I need to have the blood test repeated. Yesterday, I brought her to the vet and I got the results this morning and she’s at 28. That’s’ only two months. She’s just completely reversed. I’m so happy! So, Vicky and you both have great results.

DEBRA: Yes, we do!

PAMELA SEEFELD: I’m just super thrilled. I’m super thrilled for you and I’m very thrilled for my pet because I love this dog very much. I’m very good with the animals as well. So, for your listeners, if they have their cat or dog has liver or kidney failure, these kind of things that there is really nothing in the veterinary realm, in medicines to take care of this, please call me because I have very good results with my own pets and other people’s pets.

DEBRA: And go ahead and give them your number.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. My number to the pharmacy here is 727-442-4955. I’d be very honored to help you with your family or with your animals with any concerns you might have.

DEBRA: And she’s excellent, she’s excellent. She has a very good reputation in Clearwater, Florida both with people with the community and doctors. I’ve said before that my medical doctor when I told him that Pamela has given me something, he said, “Just do whatever Pamela tells you to do.”

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s great!

DEBRA: Yeah. So, we’ve done so many shows, but I think way back in the beginning when we did the first show, I’d probably asked you this question. But I want to ask you again today because we’re talking about pharmacology. What made you interested in becoming a pharmacist?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, I always was very good in chemistry and I’ve always been interested in the chemical realm of nature and so forth. When I was in high school, I want to be an organic chemist and that’s what I wanted to do when I graduated. In my senior year in high school, my dad was an engineer and he told that I needed to get a real job.

So, the truth of the matter is I really wanted to be a chemist. He told me that’s too hard and being around dangerous chemicals, I’d be in laboratories all my life. That might not be the best suit for me.

So, one day I came home after touring the Pharmacy School of the University of Wisconsin and I came home and I said, “You know, I think I’m going to be a pharmacist because I found that it has lots of chemistry and I can help people.” I came home and my dad was all excited, he goes “You’re going to be a pharmacist?” I said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” And that’s exactly how it happened.

DEBRA: So, once you became a pharmacist, how did you get into your field of pharmacognosy? Details…

PAMELA SEEFELD: I was actually fortunate to study pharmacognosy at the University of Florida. They don’t have that anymore, but they did offer that and I did study that quite extensively as a side major to what I was working on. So, plant medicine is something that really most people probably aren’t paying much attention to.

You have people that do herbalism and they study the plants and how they react in the body, but that’s more wild crafting and I’ve studied a lot of that too. But I’ve been very fortunate. I studied a lot in Europe on homeopathic medicines. My formal training was in the University of Florida.

I’ve really made it my passion. I actually collected all the pharmacognosy books written in English all over the world. I’ve one of every volume. I’ve read them all.

I find plant chemistry very interesting, the primary and secondary metabolites of plants and how they act in the body and the fact that we could realize that the plants produce these for reasons of their own. It’s not just they’re producing them because they want us. A lot of these things were produced because to ward off herbivores and animals from eating them. But as a result, when we take them, they actually have different restorative properties in the body.

Understanding how this chemistry of the plants and the homeopathy work on receptors in the body, really, it is important for me to train the people and to educate them that this isn’t some sticks and twigs and hocus focus. There is actual scientific data that I can prove on the remedies that I am proprieting for patients.

DEBRA: So, now we know about your background. Now, I know that we have several different areas that we want to talk about today. We have just a couple minutes before the break, but let’s get started. What’s the first one you want to talk about in terms of what you can tell us as a pharmacist that will help us understand better how to take natural remedies.

PAMELA SEEFELD: So, what I like to look at is that certain things sequester your supplements when you’re taking them. So, we’re going to start to talk about that, introduce that subject. So, sequestering agents can somebody taking psyllium like Metamucil. A lot of people or a vegan, they’ll use Metamucil as a thickening agent. I know I used to make them like a crust, if you’re making a quiche that is vegan.

Fiber is also very sequestering. So if you have bran, flax, any of these things that have lots of fiber, when you eat them, they can act as a sequestering agent. So, say in the morning I have steel-cut oats and then I put a lot of flax there and then also some psyllium in there. And then I start talking all my supplements. Well, there’s a problem with that because if you don’t separate them by one or two hours, you’re probably not absorbing 90% of what you’re taking.

DEBRA: Well, that’s a very good thing to know because I just started eating a whole lot more flax and…

PAMELA SEEFELD: And the fiber is good, but separating it, it’s important.

DEBRA: Right. So, I see what I need to do because I do take my supplements. I eat my flax and then I take my supplements.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s just that it’s reducing some of the absorption because if you think about it, you’re taking these things and they sequester cholesterol, which we want. They kind of clean the GI tract to some degree. They’re taking things kind of whatever. They’re not supposed to be there and they’re taking it out with it. But at the same same time, when you’re doing this, you’re actually reducing absorption the supplements you’re taking.

DEBRA: That’s really good to know. We need to go to a break now. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. And today, we’re talking about how what’s she’s learned as a pharmacist can help us better take our natural supplements. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist, but in addition to being a pharmacist, she has a natural pharmacy where she practices a field called pharmacognosy. We’ve talked about the meaning of this word before. The root of this, ‘pharma’ is drug, but ‘cognosy’, it means information. So, plants actually have information. You want to explain that, the difference between plants and drugs?

PAMELA SEEFELD: So, actually what’s interesting is that two-thirds of all drugs come from plants. Originally, they’re found in nature. That’s what we have to think when people say, “Oh, you know, but pharmaceuticals, they’re so good.” They came from the plants. They find them in plants. And then, they synthesize them in a lab. That’s how we get medicines.

So, what’s interesting about plants though is that they have activity in the body almost somewhat to what they produce in the plants. So, I’ll give you an example. I think it’s pretty amazing that quercetin is ubiquitous. It’s really in two-thirds of plant. Quercetin works in plants. If quercetin was not in the leaves of the plant, the leaves will basically fall to the ground because quercetin works as a vascular stabilizer of the plant vasculature. It makes the nice and taut and tight and it allows for the nutrients to go to the vessels in the plant.

When we take it orally as people and humans, when we take it, it does the same in our blood vessels. So, I use it for eye problem with the blood, small capillaries. I use for people that are bruising. I use it for hemorrhoids. I use it for leaky gut. I use for a lot of different things where there’s a permeability of the blood vessels.

To me when we think about the wonder of nature that it is pretty intelligent and amazing that the plant, how something works in the plant works exactly the same in people.

DEBRA: That’s so interesting. But I see that in nature (I’ve done a fair amount of study about nature myself), there’s consistency in their order and design and…

PAMELA SEEFELD: And, the cytochrome p450, which are the enzymes in your liver are found in the plant as well. That to me was the craziest thing that I have ever read. The liver enzymes that we have to metabolize medicines and what’s called phenobiotics, which is a terminology for like anything that we consume, maybe a chemical or plant, the metabolism in our liver is inherently related to the metabolism in plants themselves.

DEBRA: Wow! Amazing!

PAMELA SEEFELD: It is. So, we have to have a great appreciation for plants and understand that they provide wonderful things.

And most people, even if they don’t want to believe in alternative medicine (which I would find really hard to not be able to embrace that), everyone’s like, “Eat your fruits and vegetables. Eat plants. Eat salads,” well, what are you doing when you’re eating plants? You’re absorbing these vital nutrients and they’re helping your body.

So, you can help someone’s diet just by how they’re feeling and how they’re doing. I think your 20s and your 30s are very forgiving. People eat a lot of junk and stuff and they can get away with it. When you start you late 40s and your 50s, that’s when you’re not taking care of yourself and you’re not eating salads and trying to do something (it can’t be every day probably for most people, but in general, the trend of what you’re eating isn’t as healthy), that’s when people start having health issues.

That’s typical when I see people come to me because they’ve been able to coast along and now all of a sudden, things have happened. So, eating the plants, consuming specific remedies that I can suggest to you at a very economical cost –

And that’s really important people to know, that this is not very expensive stuff that I’m suggesting. We keep a chart for you, it’s very professional. If you call me and say, “My liver enzyme parameter came high. My kidney parameter came back a little high,” the time it would take you to deal with these issues is when you first find these numbers. When you wait and see what happens and you’re like, “We’ll keep watching it,” well, “watching it” means they hope it doesn’t keep going up. The problem with that is that there are certain things in the herbal medicine realm that can treat very well whereas in regular pharmacy, they have nothing.

DEBRA: Yes, that’s part of the problem. I know, I know. I see the difference. I have to go to a medical doctor because many, many years ago, I started taking thyroid supplement and you can’t just stop taking thyroid supplement although I’m holding out the hope that one day, I’ll figure out how to do that.

So, I have to go to the doctor every three months. I have to get a blood test. I have to get my thyroid prescription, et cetera. I can’t just stop taking it cold turkey because I would go into a coma. I almost did once when I tried that.

But in terms of keeping my body healthy, the doctors, the medical doctors just don’t have anything to give me but a drug. And that doesn’t contribute to health.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, yeah, you’re right. It’s important to realize that we’re not saying everything’s good or everything’s bad. I like to think to myself that I’m very reasonable about straddling the lines. Okay, you’re on thyroid medicine. I have homeopathic T3 T4. Is it going to replace your Synthroid? I don’t think so. For somebody that maybe is a little low on the bell curve and their reading is a little bit lower and for some reason, the doctor doesn’t want to give them thyroid, but there having symptoms of thyroid and they are having symptoms of hypothyroidism and they want to use that, perfect situation.

DEBRA: Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: You maybe don’t want to be on as much medicine or the doctors not willing to accommodate your needs as far as adjusting it a little bit because you feel like you’re just very sluggish. T3 T4 can help a little bit.

But basically, when the TSH just keeps releasing it and it’s elevated and it’s trying to release thyroid and it’s not, that feedback mechanism is gone. And as a result of it, you really need medicine.

I think life is not about good and bad, black or white. It’s really about knowing that there are certain things you can treat well with herbal medicine. Then there are other things that I tell people, “No. This is the medicine that they should have given you.” I’ll write the name of the prescription down and I’ll say, ” Go to the doctor and this is what they should have ordered.”

So, you have to really look at that, that your knowledge, you use it in a very effective manner for your patient. That’s what really comes down to. It’s not about saying, “This is also good or bad.” It’s really about, “Let’s be reasonable and from the chemistry stand point, what you need…”

And many times, I can say, “Look, let’s just try and get rid of it” and it does work. So, really, experience matters a lot.

DEBRA: Well, I think one of the reasons why I like you so much (aside from that I just think you’re a wonderful person), one of the reasons why I like you as someone to have around to advise me on some of these things is that you do have both the drug background and the natural background.

And so many people who have natural background don’t have a drug background. So, you could bring both of those and say, “This is the one that will be most effective thing to do in this particular situation.” You can help people…

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a very true. That’s why I’m very proud of what I do because it’s not about shaming medicines. It’s not about totally saying 100% of the time that herbal medicines are going to work.

I know from the repertoire that I use here what works and what doesn’t. Case in point, your pre-kidney failure for yourself and for my pet, I know that product works. I’ve actually given talks to the doctors on that and they were pretty amazed because I’ve seen some dramatic results.

DEBRA: Yeah. We need to go to break again, but when we come back, we’ll talk more about specific things that knowing will help you take your natural supplements better. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Pamela Seefeld. Her website is BotanicalResource.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who also knows about how natural remedies can work as well if not better than drugs. But she also, as we’ve been talking about, knows when we need to take a drug as opposed to a natural remedy.

So, Pamela, before, you told us that if we eat a lot of fiber, that can interfere with absorption. Is there anything else we need to know about food?

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s good, yeah. Fat and protein, when you take fat and protein in a meal, it delays the emptying, the gastric emptying. And so, it delays the [inaudible 00:27:25] of the blood stream.

Let’s give it two examples. Say you’re having a really bad headache and you want to take a homeopathic remedy, you want to take a vitamin that helps for fighting a headache. If you want a peak in the bloodstream, you want it to be high and immediate and not have a delay of at least 20 minutes to an hour. You would want to take it in an empty stomach or you would want to take it with something fizzy, something that’s carbonated because carbonation pushes it to the bloodstream and you’ll get a peak within three to five minutes.

DEBRA: Oh! I didn’t know that. This is just great. It’s just great to know these things.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That way, it’s absorbed through the stomach. So, even pain relief. Let’s say you sprained something, you hit your hand and you’re taking a homeopathic that maybe has Arnica in it (I like tea relief a lot, which formerly was called Tramil), if you wanted to have a peak in the bloodstream faster, instead of just taking it orally or taking it under your tongue, if you put it in something that’s carbonated like Perrier or some Sprite (of course, I’m not a soda person), something that’s got some carbonation in it, even just seltzer water, your peak in the bloodstream is going to be immediate. That’s a good little trick to get it to absorb to the stomach. Fat and protein delay emptying.

So, if you take something that’s time released or you want this to last over the course of the day, you want to take it with a meal. That’s how food affects absorption with these particular things.

DEBRA: Very interesting! The first time I realized that what I was eating was affecting my medication was I used to take soy protein bars for breakfast. I would take my thyroid pill and I would eat the soy bar only to find out that soy negates thyroid.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yup, you’re absolutely right.

DEBRA: And it just amazes me. I had no idea. I was just eating and taking vitamins. We don’t even think about these things. I was completely negating my entire prescription. So then, when I went back to the doctor, he asked me if I was eating soy. But nobody ever told me at the beginning that soy could do that.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s very important to know, that what you’re eating at the same time as you’re taking supplements, we were talking about fiber sequestering it, so your peak in the bloodstream is low and you might not even absorb the contents because it’s going to be sequestered in the bowel basically inside the fiber.

Also, if you’re taking something that has Vitamin A, D, E and K, which are the fat soluble vitamins, you need to take fat at the same time to have them be absorbed. The reason behind that is that the taste of fat in your mouth (even if it’s just a few almonds), the taste of fat in your mouth releases bile acids in the small intestines. And so when you have a vitamin that has these fat soluble vitamins, say, Vitamin E, you’re not going to absorb it if you’re taking it with pear. So, that’s important to know.

DEBRA: That is important to know. Now, but also, I think it applies to the vitamins in food as well like a supplement. If you’re eating those foods that would have those vitamins in it, then you need to eat some fat with those foods. It’s so interesting how to optimize all these things.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It is.

DEBRA: I think it’s all so new, but once we start understanding it, I think can actually apply this.

PAMELA SEEFELD: I was going to say, another thing to, say you’re taking a homeopathic to block acids, we know stomach acids peak between 10 pm to 2 am. So, that’s why a lot of people have indigestion at night, more heartburns are going to be in the evenings.

So, I used a lot of Reflux Rx because people don’t want to be in a proton pump inhibitor like Protonics and Prilosec and these medicines, we have to remember when you take Protonics, Prilosec, Nexium, any of those medicines that are proton pump inhibitors (and a lot of people are on those), when you take those medicines in a consistent basis, you absorb no calcium and no iron. And that is very important for people to know. You’re going to end up with anemia and you’re going to end up with very frail, brittle bones.

DEBRA: Another important thing to look at. See, this is why I wanted to do this show.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It is important!

DEBRA: You mentioned about time of day. I think there is more about time of day.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! So, some interesting tidbits, the Wallstreet Journal had a really interesting article…

DEBRA: Very good article.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, very good. It’s about your body’s witching hours. It talks about the worst times of day for your health. And I think this is very important for your listeners.

Overnight, you blood pressure and your core body temperature and heart rate are at their lowest, which makes sense. But melatonin, of course, is at its highest. But the liver releases large amount of glucose and blood sugar levels rise between 4am and 6am.

Now, how is this important? It’s important for a person that’s watching their fasting blood sugar when they first get up in the morning if they’re a diabetic. It’s normally going to be elevated because the liver is dumping all this sugar.

So people need to take that into account when they’re checking their fasting blood sugar. They haven’t eaten all night, they take their blood sugar, if it’s high, it might not necessarily be pre-diabetes. It might be the fact that depending on how much glucose the liver has dumped, that might be pre-disposing you to inaccurate readings.

DEBRA: Especially if you get up at five in the morning and take it. That’s just the peak time.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right.

DEBRA: That’s the peak time. That’s an important thing.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Right. So maybe somebody that’s monitoring their sugars, maybe their fasting blood sugar is like in the 90s or close to a hundred. They have a glucose monitor. They’re really on top of things. They’re trying to figure out how to get their sugars down. They keep taking it early in the mornings and it’s registering high. But when they take it in the afternoon, maybe fix or six hours have gone and they haven’t eaten, then all of a sudden, it seems normal. They’re perplexed, they can’t figure out why. It’s important to realize what times of day sugar is being released at a higher amount.

So also, cortisol. Now, cortisol is a stress hormone. That increases in the morning when you first get up. The reason why that your body does that is it’s trying to prepare for the day. Your mind starts racing, “Oh, I’ve got to call this person. I’ve got to go buy groceries. I’ve got to go, do here.” Let’s face it, all of our days are filled with errands and things to do.

So, cortisol goes higher as a stress hormone. That’s why we know more heart attacks and strokes between 6:00 am and noon. Cortisol can be a pre-requisite to heart attacks.

DEBRA: Good, Good. So if anybody wants to look up this article, it’s called Your Body’s Witching Hour. Is that the title?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct.

DEBRA: You can just search for that, but I’ll put a link to it.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s Tuesday, June 2nd of this year, that’s when it came out

DEBRA: That’s a very good article. Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: So knowing what times of day heart attacks are more frequent. If you’re going to taking a baby aspirin or in place of a baby aspirin, if you want to be taking a 800 to 1200 units of vitamin E, you need take it in the day time, not in the afternoon because you’re most at risk for the heart attack in the morning. That’s important to know.

And as I was saying, if you’re going to take something for heart burn, for stomach acid, I used a lot of Reflux RX. It’s medical. It’s very good for people that don’t want to be in the proton pump inhibitors as I was talking about, the acid not being there to absorb those things. You want to take it at night.

DEBRA: Okay, good. And that’s why doctors tell you take this at night or take it with your meals or whatever. When we come from the break, we’ll talk more about when to take you take your supplements and how to determine your dose.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Pamela Seefeld. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Pamela Seefeld. We’re talking about what we can learn from a pharmacist about how we take our natural supplements.

So Pamela, there’s a couple that I can think go together that I’ve noticed and that is about dose and also, about taking your supplements throughout the day. Talk about what you tell about drinking water throughout the day? Knowing you has changed completely how I take things because I have my bottled with my liquid supplements in it. I also spread my solid supplements throughout the day, breakfast, lunch and dinner for the reasons you’re going to tell us.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Right, a very good question. So, a lot of times, when I give somebody homeopathic remedies, we’re putting it in a water bottle and you’re drinking it over the course of six to eight hours a day.

The reason why you want to do is that every time you take a sip, your body is taking a hit of the medication. It’s like getting an IV fluid. We think about the people in critical care at the hospital, you have them on continuous drip. There’s a reason behind that. We want this to be released continuously into the body.

When you take something just for one time, let’s say you take everything in the morning with a swig of water and you walked out the door and you don’t take anything else the rest of the day, depending on what you ate, whatever your breakfast was [inaudible 00:40:02], maybe you add a big bowl of All Bran’s extra fiber and you didn’t absorb any of it or maybe you had some fat and protein if you had some scrambled eggs and then maybe it’s delaying it for another hour, the peaks in the bloodstream are going to be a sudden peak. It’s going to be, in the bloodstream, let’s say, 15 to 20 minutes, maybe less than that. And then after that, there’s no medicine around.

So, if you’re trying to get a therapeutic outcome and you’re looking to have a result, if you’re not just taking them just because you just want to take them (and I respect people’s time and money ), if you’re going to take something and you really want to absorb it and you really want it to be effective for you, then as a result of that, you really need to look and see taking it through the day.

And a lot of people are taking the homeopathic supplements that are liquids because it is easy. Just throw it in your purse or put it on your desk, drink it through the day and you have much more consistent result because of that.

DEBRA: Yes, I just think that’s so important because I used to take everything in the morning. I would say, “I can’t remember this through the day. “ But after listening to your explanation about this it made so much sense to me that I now make sure that I take it all day long.

I actually have three little containers on my desk where I work. One says ‘breakfast’, ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner’. I can see them in front of me all day long. So, there’s no forgetting. I know that I’m just supplementing my body all day long and it does seem to make a difference.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It will. And the thing that’s important too. Like we were talking about the different times of the day, as another aside, I’m talking about this article here. Arthritic joints are stiffest and most painful between 8:00 am and 11:00 am. That’s because when you sleep at night, you have a rise in pro-inflammatory markers.

Now, why is this important? Because these rise and pro-inflammatory markers that takes place while you’re sleeping (it makes you have arthritis and stiffness in your joints when you first wake up in the morning. And of course, part of it is inactivity when you’re lying in bed), but a lot of this is these pro-inflammatory markers, if your c-reactive protein or your SED rate or your estrogen (there’s different things that the doctor can do) or your ANA, all these different tests, these numbers (the c-reactive protein is more associated with heart attacks. If they’re worried about your heart, they’ll do that, so they can be aware of what your number is), if those are mildly elevated, then you need to take some anti-inflammatory at bed time before you go to bed. It -might help the morning stiffness and some of the arthritis that may be associated for some of these individuals.

DEBRA: Good!

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s important to know. Those inflammatory markers, that’s probably part of the explanation we were talking about heart attacks in the mornings. This article doesn’t go into that factor. But heart attacks are more frequent in the morning, we know cortisol rises in the morning, we know that stiffness due to pro-inflammatory factors is from the evening when you sleep is rising, it would make logical sense that the c-reactive protein, these inflammatory markers that are elevated at night not only contributing to arthritis, but they’re also contributing to heart attack prevalence.

DEBRA: Yes, good.

PAMELA SEEFELD: So, taking these things, if you’re going to take an anti-inflammatory, arthritis or not, but maybe you’re worried about heart disease, maybe you have heart disease in your family, maybe your doctors are already giving you something for heart disease prevention, the time to be taking homeopathic or vitamin supplements for inflammation might be at your bed time.

DEBRA: Okay.

PAMELA SEEFELD: So, that’s important to know.

DEBRA: You want to take things at the right time of day, that’s so important. So, we only have few minutes, but I want to make sure that we just talk about dose for a minute.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah.

DEBRA: There’s a big difference between taking six pills or one pill. How do you what the right dose is.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, obviously, we’re talking about the dose. When we dose children, we dose it in so many milligrams per kilogram. So it’s done on weight.

DEBRA: Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: If we’re not talking about [inaudible 00:44:01] and we’re not talking about smalls animals (like we were talking about this earlier in the show), then we are looking at what is the normal therapeutic dose for most individuals.

Most of the time, I’m very conservative. I start with a few things and I start with the lowest dose that I think is going to be successful. If you start on a dose that’s higher, first of all, you might be overmedicating. And secondly, if we do a dose that’s higher, you’re going to be more at risk for side effects. And there can be side effects for anything.

DEBRA: Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: And I have to tell people too that when you’re talking about dose, when you see a product and it’s a vitamin product and it’s got about 20 different things in it and its says it’s herbal pain relief or just some kind of a generic product, when you have lots of different herbal products in one container, one capsule, there’s more chance for side effect than if you use one single agent at a time.

So, a lot of times, I use single remedies. I don’t use a bunch of combination remedies because if someone’s not responding correctly or they’re responding adversely, you don’t know which ingredient is causing the problem.

DEBRA: Exactly! I tried to take just single ones too. Right now, I’m taking an herbal blend because that was what I was given, but I’m actually doing really well on it. But usually, I just try to take single things and I tell people to just take single nutrients or herbs or whatever because that way, you’ll be able to tell what is the problem if there is a problem.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Also, I wanted to caution people. When you’re taking blood pressure, because a lot of people have hypertension, your blood pressure will peak at 9:00 pm at night. So, if you take it in the morning and you take it night and every single time, you take it in the evening and then every time you go back to the doctor, he’s looking at your numbers that you’ve been writing down and he says, “Oh, your blood pressure is going up at night. Let’s add another medicine,” (I’m just bringing blood pressure as an example. I can treat that homeopathically for your clients that are listening), but what I want to tell people is that typically, this is what they’ll do, they start somebody on a beta blocker or something like that at the doctor’s office and then instead of titrating that particular medicine up and bringing it to its maximum or near maximum dosage, just because the dose was too low, they add another drug. And then, they add another drug.

It’s not uncommon that I see someone with mild hypertension on three things, low doses of three different things.

So, you need to question that. If you take your blood pressure at night, it seems like it’s high, but it’s normally what it’s supposed to be. It’s important for you to look at those numbers and not be over-zealous in treating them.

And if their doctors are giving you two or three different things for your blood pressure, maybe it’s something that you can approach – unless you have another existing condition like congested heart failure or something else. But a non-complicated mild hypertension, please question whether you need to be on two or three medicines where they’re using low doses and they never really have used the correct dose of the first drug.

DEBRA: Well, also, I know from watching from other people around me that you can take care of high blood pressure just by taking magnesium.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes.

DEBRA: …that it can be just a nutrient deficiency. Just taking magnesium can take care of that. So, I’ve seen that happen over and over. It’s pretty amazing to me have a lot of people seem to have high blood pressure, but it’s not because they’re sick in some way. It’s just that they are not getting enough nutrition.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. Magnesium makes a big difference in the blood pressure. But also, if someone has a mild hypertension – you know, people are stressed out a lot. Cortisol is a big driver of hypertension. And especially the top number, the systolic blood pressure, if you use 1500 mg vitamin C of time-released vitamin C and you do that twice a day (I use a 12-hour release Vitamin C called C-Max), that would lower it 20 points in four days. And that’s an easy way to get the top number down.

DEBRA: Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: For the bottom number, I use Cartego Complex. It’s homeopathic Hawthorn. That takes that bottom number down nice and easy.

So there are things you can do. Blood pressure, and we were talking about kidney failure and different things, there are things you can do and you need to question whether you need to be on so many medications. Titrating up to the correct dose is really more important than keep adding in another medicine or another homeopathic remedy. We respect people’s time and money. You want to make sure that if you are not maxing out at the right dose of whatever product you are using or whatever vitamin, then you are not really sure what’s working and what isn’t.

DEBRA: How do you know what the right dose is?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Empirically, it will depend on the product that you’re using. But as a pharmacist, I can tell you – I’ll give you an example, Vitamin C. After 5g of vitamin C at any one time, you really don’t absorb it anymore. It basically spills out into the urine. So, if you’re going to give someone high dose of vitamin c, you would want to say, “Okay, maybe I should split that dose up through the day if I really want to absorb it,” so this person gets the full benefit of the C and it’s not necessarily going and being wasted. So, it’s important to know.

And these doses have all been determined by scientific method. So, now we know. And people can look those up. I wouldn’t just search it in Google, but if you look it in the National Library of Medicine, you can find all the medical data that’s been published on things.

Or I would just say to tell them to call me. I’d be glad to answer over the phone if there’s a question about, “Are you taking too much? Are taking too little? And what are you treating?” Sometimes people are just taking thing empirically just for their general health. That’s great. Other times, somebody actually has a real condition and they are trying to treat something. And if they are using sub-therapeutic dose, they are going to see any outcome.

I see this a lot where people say, “I tried that vitamin and it didn’t do like they said.” And then I’m like, “Well, what was the product you were using and what was the dose?” And then, they give me this glassy-eyed look. People don’t realize you just don’t take something randomly off the shelf and take it and think that it’s going to work. There should be…

DEBRA: I have to interrupt you, Pamela just because we only have seconds left. So, why don’t you give your phone number real quick.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, it’s 727-442-4955.

DEBRA: Okay, thank you so much! This has been a great show. You can go to the ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out about all the shows and there are transcripts. So, if you want to read the transcript of this show, it will be available next Tuesday.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!

GMOs in Personal Care Products

Diana KayeToday my guest is Diana Kaye. She and husband James Hahn are co-founders of their USDA certified organic business Terressentials. They’ve been on this show together many times, but today Diana is here to talk about GMOs in personal care products. As an organic body care product formulator for more than 20 years, Diana knows all about what is going on in the industry. Diana and James are the husband-and-wife co-founders of the USDA certified organic business Terressentials. They own a small organic farm in lovely Middletown Valley, Maryland and have operated their organic herbal personal care products business there since 1996. Terressentials was originally started in Virginia in 1992. It grew out of their search for chemical-free products after Diana’s personal experience with cancer and chemotherapy in 1988. Prior to Diana’s cancer, they were involved in commercial architecture in Washington DC. Diana and James are proud to be an authentic USDA certified organic and Fair Made USA business. They are obsessive organic researchers and artisan handcrafters of more than one hundred USDA certified organic gourmet personal care products that they offer through their two organic stores in Frederick County, Maryland, through a network of select retail partners across the US, and to customers around the world via their informative web site. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/terressentials

read-transcript

 

 

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH DIANA KAYE & JAMES HAHN

 

 

transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
GMOs in Personal Care Products

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Diana Kaye

Date of Broadcast: July 14, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.

It’s Tuesday, July 14th, 2015. I am here in beautiful Clearwater, Florida where I think it’s going to start having thunderstorm pretty soon, but I think we should be fine for the show today. We actually have thunderstorms here every day in the summertime. In fact, I’m not too far away from the extreme weather capital of the United States. We have a lot of thunderstorms and hurricane sometimes too, but anyway, thunderstorms are very predictable.

Today, my guest is Diana Kaye. She’s been on the show before. She and her husband are co-founders of their USDA certified organic business Terressentials where they make personal care products, which means that not only are the ingredients are certified organic, but the business itself and all the making of the product is organic as well.

She’s been in the personal care industry for more than 20 years and she knows a lot about what’s going on behind the scenes. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that is not usually discussed about personal care products and that is GMOs. Diana’s going to tell us what’s going on with GMOs in personal care products. Hi, Diana.

DIANA KAYE: Hey, Debra.

DEBRA: How are you doing?

DIANA KAYE: I’m doing fine. I think we’re going to have a thunderstorm here in any minute. So hopefully, we won’t have some kind of an electrical thing going on.

DEBRA: Oh, wait. I think I hear a thunder. I think I hear a thunder. 

DIANA KAYE: You guys have rain every day. It’s coming into a tropical rainforest down here in Maryland because we have had so much rain this summer as well.

DEBRA: Yeah. We have a lot. For those of you who don’t live on the east coast or the south, this is the way it is. This is the way it is all over.

DIANA KAYE: I know I’m laughing about it. There are people that are not having enough rain and I’d love to give it to them.

DEBRA: I know.

DIANA KAYE: We’ve just had so much, but it makes the flowers grow.

DEBRA: It does, it does. And I love it. I love it. This is why I always just wear tank tops and Capri pants because I never know when I’m going to get soaking wet.

DIANA KAYE: That sounds familiar.

DEBRA: I grew up in Northern California and we hardly ever had thunderstorms. So I just love it. I just love it.

Anyway, this is not a show about thunderstorms. We’re going to talk about GMOs in personal care products. But first, would you just explain. I think this is a really important point and I’m seeing slowly. I’m starting to see more of the difference between using organic ingredients versus certified organic as a company.

DIANA KAYE: Debra, thank you for bring that up because that is a very serious issue and a concern of mine and my husband’s for many years. If you’re a business – this could be for anybody. I don’t care what kind of business they are. Maybe right now, I’m telling people how to cheat.

You could call a company that is a certified organic producer of the cocoa butter or vanilla. And you can say, “I’m interesting in buying your ingredients. Can you please prove to me that you’re certified organic?” And that company will hand you a copy of their organic certificate. Voila, you have it. You don’t ever have to buy the ingredient, but you have this company’s certificate in hand. So it’s unfortunate.

DEBRA: Oh, my goodness.

DIANA KAYE: We talked about correction in government a lot, but there is a serious lack of ethics just across the board in the United States for sure and probably this happens in other industrialized countries as well.

That’s very sad because many companies claim that their ingredients are organic and they boldly put organic in their company names. They put it on their website. They even put it on their packages in more than one place. But who’s verifying what these people say?

There are companies that I have seen that claim this and they are claiming they have organic ingredients that do not exist. And they claim that their products are organic and some people say their products are beyond organic. But here’s the fact. If you don’t have anybody, an independent authority verifying that, then, I repeat, you simply cannot trust somebody’s word. You just can’t. There’s a huge difference.

For example, we’re certified organic and every year, we have to submit what’s called an organic plan. For us, it’s a huge four inch binder. So we have to maintain not only organic certificates for everything we buy, but we have to maintain all the invoices, which show the quantities. And then we have to maintain production logs and inventory tracking for every single ingredient.

When they do an audit, which for sure at least definitely annually (and sometimes, they can do surprise audit), they have to track what you say made versus what you bought. It has to match up. And they make us track down to 0.01.

It’s tedious. It’s consuming. It’s highly technical. It takes a lot of effort to maintain this documentation to submit your organic plan every year and then go through this inspection.

That’s the difference. When we say organic, we mean it. And our facility, it’s not just ingredients, but your whole building. We have a crafting studio. It’s inspected and you cannot have chemicals, pesticides on site. They check your cleaning product. They even want to know how you’re trapping your insects and mice. You have to maintain your pest plan, cleaning maintenance schedule. These all have to be in writing, so everything is documented.

DEBRA: I just want people to know that there is a difference between what Diana is talking about being a certified company where she’s putting ingredients together to make her products, but her whole facility is certified organic. We really need to be looking at that now and not just looking at the word “organic” on the label or even asking for the certificate.

This is the new standard. This is the standard – the facility also needs to be organic. I say that because if it’s not, then there’s the opportunity for things that are toxic to get into the product.

DIANA KAYE: For sure.

DEBRA: We’ve actually talked about this on another show.

DIANA KAYE: Yes.

DEBRA: I wanted to bring this up because I have my attention on this right now.

DIANA KAYE: I’m so glad. Certificate isn’t good enough. That’s right. The company will send you a certificate for ingredients. That’s not good enough. You need to have a certificate for the product, their finished product because you can get an organic certificate anywhere. That means nothing without certification of the actual product.

DEBRA: Yes. So anyway, let’s talk about GMO’s because that’s what we’re here to talk about today. So I’m just going to let you take the subject and run with it because I don’t even know what to ask you.

DIANA KAYE: That’s okay because it’s a pretty complex issue. If you’re in the biotech world, it is because there are so many different protocols that are involved.

The thing that’s most important for people to know is in the world of certified organic under the Federal Law, GMOs are prohibited from being in certified organic products. So if people are concerned about these genetically modified organisms, your best bet is to go certified organic, USDA certified organic because it is one standard in the world that explicitly prohibits GMOs from being included in products that are certified organic.

Generally a lot of people today I think are familiar with GMOs. A lot of nonprofit groups have been up in arms in fighting some of the big corporations.

DEBRA: Wait. Let’s not assume that everybody knows what a GMO is because we hear about it a lot. But you know how sometimes you can hear about something and not know what it is and then you don’t ask anybody and you don’t look at it.

We actually are going to need to go to break in a matter of seconds. But when we come back, let’s start with what is a GMO and what kinds of things in terms of personal care products. We hear a lot about GMOs in foods, but we don’t hear about GMOs in personal care products. Of course, they probably would be there.

So we’re going to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Diana Kaye. She’s from Terressentials and they’re at Terressentials.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye from Terressentials.

We’re talking about GMOs in personal care products. Okay, Diana. Let’s start with what is a GMO.

DIANA KAYE: That really is an excellent point. Thank you for backing me up.

GMO actually stands for genetically modified organism or transgenic organism, which means any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. So GMOs are things that are created in a laboratory.

We have a variety of different types of GMOs. GMOs can happen in just simply a plant that might be used for fiber. There have been experiments where they have inserted jellyfish genes into different plant materials. They have played with species like cross-species, plants into animals. So there are genes from glowworm into a monkey. We have got all kinds of mad science going on out there.

The thing about GMOs is that they are all synthetically created. They use a variety of different types of chemicals to culture cells, to manipulate them, to alter them and to create things essentially that have never before existed in nature. So here you have men and women playing creator. The problem with this that a lot of people agree with in terms of people who are more environmentally inclined is that we’re unleashing on the world things that have never existed, that didn’t occur or evolve naturally.

This really has been going on, believe it or not, for about the past 60 years in small instances, mostly with plants by doing manipulation of plant cells from to another to create hybrids, to create plants and some woods for industry. But it’s now expanded beyond just simply hybridizing types of techniques for plants into some rather insidious forms of manipulation.

DEBRA: Yeah. When something is made from a hybridized plant, is that considered to be a GMO?

DIANA KAYE: If it’s performed with GMO techniques, not the centuries old implantation of pollen grains, if it’s done in a lab and in a Petri dish. And they may mutate something or create a mutation by exposing it to radiation. They may mutate something by exposing it to a very toxic petrochemical. These are not natural techniques. It’s not what occurs in nature.

Humans in the past would create hybrids and they might dip a feather in pollen from one flower and move that pollen with the feather to another plant, another flower. That’s how they might have created hybrid in the past. And humans have been doing that for centuries, maybe even thousands of years.

This is very different in the settings and the way that they are manipulating. They’re not just taking those pollen grains. For example, maybe they’re taking pollen or they may take a plan stem cell. We think, “Oh, plant stem cell. That sounds like that’s really beneficial.” Well, hold on. That’s another scary thing.

But they will react, that material, whether it’d be a plant stem cell or a pollen grain and they can react it in any one of hundreds of different ways to alter that genetic material.

DEBRA: But this is very different. I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I just want to keep it simple because there’s probably a lot we have to talk about here.

I think I was asking a question because a lot of times, you go to a nursery or something and you want to buy seeds to plant in your garden. It will say hybrid this or hybrid that. That’s not the same necessarily as GMO corn.

DIANA KAYE: It actually very well maybe.

DEBRA: Okay, that’s the question I’m asking you. If we’re talking about the bigger subject we are discussing here today, which is keeping GMOs out of personal care products, the GMO might be GMO corn for example. But if the ingredient is hybrid lavender, is that a GMO?

DIANA KAYE: There’s no way for you to know unless you specifically request in writing “Is this a GMO-free material?” It’s not scary. That’s how it is in our world today.

DEBRA: There are so many hybrids. I mean you can hardly go – I’m not a prolific gardener, but I’m a gardener enough that I have purchased seeds. And mostly, I like to purchase heirloom seeds and I don’t purchase hybrids. I want the pure strains. They grow differently.

Even when I lived in California, we had plants. I lived in a valley actually where it was enclosed and we had a lot of gardeners and we would all pass our plants back and forth to each other because we actually were creating varieties that were suited to our specific area. But we weren’t doing it in a lab with toxic chemicals and putting in fish genes and stuff like that.

Gardeners have been doing that forever and that’s not what we’re talking about. When I go to the store and I see seeds with big popular brand names on them, it’s all hybrids because that’s something that they can patent as opposed to something that a gardener grows in their backyard.

DIANA KAYE: Exactly. This is happening around the world with giant multinational corporations going to various countries and taking the traditional crops and taking them into their labs altering these traditional crops that people have owned for thousands of years that families and indigenous farmers have used. They have saved their seeds. They pass these seeds and plant them for generation.

And what’s happening in many countries is the corporations are manipulating the plant material inserting genetically modified organisms, changing the plant, patenting it and then excluding farmers from the material that they have owned. It’s their birthright. It’s a crisis in this country.

That’s been going on for more than 20 years and probably some people have heard about that. But now, it’s moved even beyond that. If it could get worse, it’s gotten worse.

DEBRA: We need to go to break, but when we come back. We’re going to talk more about this. This is a whole day subject to think about.

DIANA KAYE: It is.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Diana Kaye from Terressentials. They’re at Terressentials.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Diana Kaye from Terressentials. Okay. Now that we’ve established what a GMO is – did we finish that?

DIANA KAYE: Probably yes.

DEBRA: Now let’s talk about how you find out if there are GMOs in the personal care products or not.

DIANA KAYE: To reiterate from my previous discussion here today, how do you trust people? Today, if you are a personal care products company, many people would not even ask the question of their supplier. If you’re a company producing products, if you want to be ignorant or if you just don’t know enough, you’re not going to ask the right questions about your ingredients. And if you are not certified organic company, you’re at the mercy of whoever you’re buying ingredients from and whatever those ingredients might be.

I’ve seen today, there are always tends in the person care industry and we don’t really follow trends like that. We’re more of a traditionally herbal-based organic company. But there are trends and latest trends that sound really important and exciting, plant stem cell technology. And also we’re hearing a lot about peptides.

People, consumers buy these things and they’ll buy them often from health food because they think that these things are better than what is on the market, the wide open marketplace. However, many of the people again in the stores that brings these products. They have no idea. If it says “all natural,” that’s what they bring in and if it’s on the web, people say whatever they want because we don’t really have heavy oversight from any government agency over what personal care product companies are saying about their ingredients and their products.

I’ve seen a very, very large interest and movement into personal care products with synthetic GMO ingredients and also of course in the food world. But in our world, which is certified organic, a lot of our ingredients come from the food world. So we buy from food manufacturers.

One of the things that I wanted to mention and this is a rather new offshoot of GMOs is that there actually was a protocol, an agreement, an international agreement signed, the Cartagena Protocol back almost 10 years ago where a number of countries got together, the United Nations countries got together and made agreements about what GMO would mean and how we would protect the world and its citizens from economic harm and environmental harm and personal health.

But today, we have now a new twist on this. We have something going on called Synthetic Biology. My belief is that this is created by a lot of international corporations – we can talk about that – to go under the radar of the Cartagena Protocol.

If I can just read this quote from Friends Of The Earth…

DEBRA: Please do because this is a new term for me, Synthetic Biology.

DIANA KAYE: It’s really worth becoming educated about. Debra, it could be a whole other topic for a show, but this is frightening, very frightening.

“Consumers trust that when products are marketed as natural and sustainable, they will not contain ingredients produced via genetic engineering or synthetic biology,” as we already discussed, the certification or USDA organic certification. “However,” listen to this, “synthetic biology also known in the tech world as synbio is an extreme version of genetic engineering.”

Are you getting goosebumps? Instead of swapping genes from one species to another as in conventional genetic engineering – and this is Diana adding as if that wasn’t scary enough – synthetic biologists employ a number of new genetic engineering techniques. And I put emphasis on the word new.

One of the things that they’re doing is using synthetic human-made DNA to create entirely new forms of life or to reprogram existing organisms to produce chemicals that they would not produce naturally.

DEBRA: Why? Why? Why?

DIANA KAYE: So here is all about money. It’s about money. I’m going to give you an example of an ingredient. This has actually crossed our company’s path as a certified organic company.

Vanilla. Everybody knows about vanilla. It’s my favorite flavor. There are 49 flavors of ice cream and I’m going to go for vanilla. I love the flavor.

DEBRA: I love vanilla. I love vanilla.

DIANA KAYE: The thing about vanilla is that it’s a tropical orchid. It’s interdependent upon a forest environment to be able to grow. So you don’t really grow it in rows like you do corn and it’s been a plant that has been harvested for a really, really long time, centuries.

In order to cultivate this plant, which is a forest plant, the people have always maintained the forest. And you have to create a great balance there so that you would always have this beautiful vanilla orchid growing and to be able to sustain a farming community. They would then sustain the forest and then the world would have this delicious wonderful bean, this vanilla bean.

DEBRA: I just think that’s so beautiful, just that description that there needs to be a forest to have a vanilla.

DIANA KAYE: Yeah. Maybe that adds to just aroma and the incredible complexity of the vanilla. And it’s grown in several countries around the world, but it sustains communities and protects our tropical forests.

But it’s also expensive. If anyone has seen an orchid, it’s a very delicate plant. The production volumes are not high. So it requires a lot of labor and a lot of anchorage. In other words, we’re really maintaining a lot of our forests in order to produce vanilla. It’s a really wonderfully human compatible crop in my opinion. However, it’s costly to produce. If you have a problem with thunderstorms, too much rains, not enough rains, it’s such a delicate plant that that really can dramatically affect your harvest and your commodity in citrus markets.

Diet corporations don’t like widely fluctuating prices and they don’t like expensive ingredients because for them, it’s about “How can we bring something to market and make the most money, profits to make our shareholders happy this quarter or next quarter?”

DEBRA: I need to interrupt you right here just because we need to go to break. And then we’ll finish your story when we come back and I can hardly wait to hear what you can say.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Diana Kaye. She and her husband are Co-Founders of their USDA certified organic business Terressentials. When we come back, Diana will tell us more about GMOs in personal care products. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Diana Kaye from the USDA certified organic business Terressentials. Okay, Diana. Finish your story about vanilla. Hello?

DIANA KAYE: Sorry about that. Vanilla, it is. Buttons in our technological world. I wanted to talk about vanilla because I think it’s something that so many people are familiar with and it’s so wonderful and it’s so safe and so beautiful.

One of my problems today, one of my big concerns is that certain companies have taken this incredibly beautiful ingredient, the flavor that so many million, maybe billions of people love and they have transformed it using extreme synthetic biology. The frightening thing is because synthetic biology is not identified in the Cartagena Protocol, these corporations are flying under the radar of an agreed upon set of regulations, international regulations.

For example, the vanilla now, what they are doing is they are – again, I’m just going to read something from Friends Of The Earth because it’s just so clear. “Synthetic biology vanillin is different from the artificial vanillin already on the market.” Of course natural vanilla comes from the vanilla orchid.

For years, we’ve seen artificial vanilla or vanillin, which is reacted with petroleum chemicals of completely synthetic source. But today, artificial vanillin is a mix of chemical components. The new synthetic biology vanillin is synthesized by a genetically engineered organism, which is a GMO yeast engineered using synbio techniques.

So what they are doing is they’re using yeast and bacteria and they are re-engineering them so that the – there’s no delicate way to put this. But the excrements from the yeast and the bacteria are producing, depending upon how they manipulate these bacteria yeast and what they feed them, they are creating flavors that are in food and are being used as aeronautics and personal care products.

The frightening thing is that these synbio people are really clever. They associate with GMO because remember they’re flying under the international regulations. So they’re calling it synthetic biology. So when they re-engineer these yeasts, they’re saying, “Oh, it’s a naturally fermented product.” They’re actually now calling this synthetically engineered vanilla “natural.” That is frightening.

And the industry says, “Oh, it’s so environmentally friendly because we don’t need soil to grow the plant material. We don’t have to depend on rain or use water to irrigate the crop.” They’re completely excluding the fact that they essentially are going to be putting all these families out of business who have farmed this ingredient.

Let’s back up a second. What are they feeding these engineered yeasts, these bio-engineered yeasts and or bacteria? They’re feeding them sugar and sugar is something that is controlled. So they can clear or cut a rainforest to grow sugarcane and use the sugar to feed these yeasts and or bacteria to produce what they want. But the sugarcane can be cultivated like chlorine and rose and you can use machines to harvest and process. I can tell you the sugar is not organic. So is it genetically modified sugar?

But they’re using it to feed these yeasts and bacteria to produce this synbio vanilla. And the frightening thing is…

DEBRA: But it’s not going to say GMO on it.

DIANA KAYE: No. In fact, it is now being called “natural vanilla.” And the frightening is we got a product information sheet in the certificate from a company that sells in the food industry. We submitted it to our organic certifier.

The certifier’s job is to investigate certificates to make sure that they are legitimate. If there’s a question about a product, they communicate with the company because they have confidentiality agreement. So the company would not tell me or you their processing. If they claim to be organic, they’re supposed to reveal this information on a confidential basis under the trade secrets guide to anyone from the USDA and or an accredited USDA certifier.

Here’s what we found out. A vanilla being sold as organic under the USDA [inaudible 00:44:29] was included. It’s part of that component. You would expect a vanilla that’s organic to be vanilla beans steeped in grain alcohol if it’s an extract because that’s your traditional vanilla extract, right?

DEBRA: Right.

DIANA KAYE: Well, this vanilla included vanillin, a naturally fermented natural vanillin that was spiked with that, an organic ingredient. Is this frightening?

DEBRA: It is frightening, but it just reinforces what I’ve been saying for a long time. If you really want to know what’s in your stuff, you need to just start with the natural ingredient and make it yourself. After this story, I’m only buying vanilla beans.

DIANA KAYE: I hate to bring this up, but the fact is this is a company for whatever reason that shows to spike vanilla. And somebody told them, “Oh, use this. It’s naturally fermented.”

There are a lot of issues with that because under the 95 Organic Rules, if something is organic, that means 95% or more of the ingredients are certified organic. And if there’s any percentage like 5% or less, that material that you add to that organic product must be on the USDA National List of Approved Substances.

It gets gray there. Why in the world would you be spiking an organic vanilla with a natural vanilla?

DEBRA: I think they didn’t understand what it was.

DIANA KAYE: We’ll say that, but the thing is this is just one ingredient. In a certifier practice, if the product is not certified, who’s catching these things? That’s because they’re being sold as “natural.”

And the synbio, these GMOs, they’re doing all kinds of things, all different kinds of ingredients that are being used not just in the food world, but in the personal care world or a host of things. Sometimes, people would be so surprised to find out.

But the companies are getting behind this because these ingredients are cheap. They’re inexpensive. They’re synthetically created.

Debra, you may know this from being aware of so many chemically sensitive people that – this has been tested – you can expose people to something like a real plant, a real flower aroma. Actually put this flower under their nose and let them inhale it and they’ll be okay.

You can take that same person – this is almost like the folks who have lost their vision. Their other senses become enhanced. When people have been chemically compromised, some of their other senses and their sense of smell become tremendously enhanced. So a lot of times, people can smell. More sensitive individuals can smell the difference or taste the difference. But that’s not everybody. That’s not the whole population.

We’re more concerned about GMOs. Now we have something completely different that we’re going to have to start focusing on, which is synthetic biology masquerading as natural.

DEBRA: This is just incredible to be. I think there’s so much more we could say about this, but we only got about a minute left.

DIANA KAYE: How did that happen?

DEBRA: I know. I just don’t want to cut you off in the middle of the sentence because the show is ending. But we really got a minute and a half. It’s what we have right now.

This is new and fascinating informative and something that I need to look into because to have something be synthetic biology certainly isn’t natural.

DIANA KAYE: No, it isn’t.

DEBRA: And we need to know this and we need to know more about it. Wow.

DIANA KAYE: I can make a suggestion Debra.

DEBRA: Yeah.

DIANA KAYE: We just tapped into about one-tenth of [inaudible 00:48:59].

DEBRA: I think we need to have another show on this for sure. You and I will talk in the interim and we’ll make sure we [inaudible 00:49:07] all these out and get this information out because this is just…

DIANA KAYE: It’s tremendous, isn’t it?

DEBRA: It is. It is.

DIANA KAYE: It’s mind-blowing. I think people really need to know about this to protect themselves because these are things that have never ever existed on this planet before.

DEBRA: I just want to throw this in, in the last 30 seconds. There’s a lot of action now to get GMO labeling. If I understand correctly, GMO labeling would not cover this.

DIANA KAYE: No, that is a big issue. That’s why I’m talking to you, Debra because we need to get it out there. We need to make everyone aware.

DEBRA: All right. So I’m going to start you right there. Thank you so much for being with us today.

DIANA KAYE: Thank you. Thank you. It’s been wonderful.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.

Translator

Visitor site map

 

“EnviroKlenz"

“Happsy"

ARE TOXIC PRODUCTS HIDDEN IN YOUR HOME?

Toxic Products Don’t Always Have Warning Labels. Find Out About 3 Hidden Toxic Products That You Can Remove From Your Home Right Now.