turmeric - not just for curries anymore

A brief rundown on this yummy spice...turmeric!

- may pack more healing power than any other spice
- aspirin of Asia, where it has been used for centuries in Ayurvedic medicine to heal wounds and treat inflammatory illnesses like arthritis
- contains curcumin, a compound that is both a powerful anti-inflammatory and an antioxidant. - non-toxic.
- curcumin might help prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Teams at UCLA, Harvard and in Japan subsequently discovered that curcumin might fight Alzheimer's in several ways.
- curcumin may help fight many cancers - 40 animal studies that suggest curcumin may have a strong protective effect against common cancers such as breast, colon, lung, prostate and skin.

about 1/4tsp a day is considered completely safe - to do list for 2009!

interesting read on children and sleeping through the night

it's no secret that we are co-sleepers around here...and sleeping through the night is very hit and miss. during our vacation, c slept through all but 2 nights (a record) but i think it was out of sheer exhaustion from all the time outdoors.

anyhow, a really interesting article...
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detsleepthrough.html

and a few of the highlights from the article...

"Human children are designed (whether you believe by millions of years of evolution, or by God, it doesn't matter) -- to nurse *very* frequently, based on the composition of the milk of the species, the fact that all higher primates (Primates are the zoological Order to which humans belong, higher primates include monkeys and apes) keep their offspring in the mother's arms or on her back for several years, the size of the young child's stomach, the rapidity with which breast milk is digested, the need for an almost constant source of nutrients to grow that huge brain (in humans, especially), and so on."

"Human children are designed to be sleeping with their parents. The sense of touch is the most important sense to primates, along with sight. Young primates are carried on their mother's body and sleep with her for years after birth, often until well after weaning. The expected pattern is for mother and child to sleep together, and for child to be able to nurse whenever they want during the night. Normal, healthy, breastfed and co-sleeping children do not sleep "through the night" (say 7-9 hours at a stretch) until they are 3-4 years old, and no longer need night nursing. I repeat -- this is NORMAL and HEALTHY."

february flies

back from vacation and it is already heading toward the end of february...yikes.

tomorrow is the last day of winterlude and dh and c and i will likely be heading to the kid's park for fun on the ice slides.

pvr here we come

i mean airport code

off to puerto vallarta and am looking forward to it

yay

that's all

am bloody tired after spending an age and a half finding a place

next on my natural to do list

buy a boar bristle brush so that i'll hopefully have some no-poo success this time around

did do baking soda and apple cider vinegar and just looked nasty - and i know things get nasty before better, but it was the summer and it just looked bad. i suppose winter is a good time to try - i can always cover my head...

http://hair-care.suite101.com/article.cfm/using_a_boar_bristle_hairbrush

"Instead, boar bristle brushes are designed to clean, polish and condition hair. The densely-packed, fibrous bristles attract dust and dirt, brushing them out of the hair. For those committed to water-only or natural haircare, the brush becomes a primary method of removing foreign particles from the hair.

Treating Sebum

The bristles also catch hold of sebum, the oily substance produced by the scalp. Left to itself, sebum tends to clump near the roots of hairs, clogging pores and giving hair a greasy, unwashed look. A boar bristle brush spreads the sebum from the root down the length of the hair shaft, allowing it to do its job of coating and protecting the hair. Sebum is the natural hair conditioner, and repeated application helps hair to stay moisturised and shiny."

we shall see

power of punctuation

An English professor wrote these words on a chalk board:

"A woman without her man is nothing"

The students were asked to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:

"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class wrote:

"A woman: without her, man is nothing."