Rachel Ramey

The things the inside industry experts know but avoid telling the general public:

Society re: herbs that have thousands of years of history and centuries of folk education: There's no evidence that ______ is safe, so it's probably best to assume it's dangerous. Society re: newfangled technological interventions and/or novel lab-created drugs: We know ______ is totally safe, because there's no evidence that it's unsafe. And funny how you can just keep *not doing studies* on the safety of the thing and you can keep saying there are "no studies to prove" whichever thing you want to prove -- and be telling the truth even though that's completely meaningless, since lack of evidence is not evidence of absence.

“Failure of hemoglobin to fall below 105 g/L was associated with increased risk of poor outcome…” This is what actual evidence shows -- that hemoglobin should DROP in a healthy pregnancy. And that if it's as high as medical providers usually want, that's a RED FLAG. (In the US, we use a different scale, so this would be 10.5.) (Source: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/5/1218S.long)

(If you know what I *have* written about, shhh. 🤫 No spoilers. ;) )

I don't know about you, but we HATE organ meat. I've tried to "hide" liver in our food, and it just doesn't work. But this stuff works. It may not be a LOT at once, but it's some -- and it's GOOD. Use my coupon code, T2HMKR for 20% off your order. (Note that this is an affiliate link.) https://eatpluck.com/?ref=t2hmkr

Sometimes in health groups I hear people tell others that a particular herbal supplement can't possibly work because there are "too many ingredients" in it, so there probably isn't a high enough concentration of any one herb to work. But this demonstrates a lack of understanding of how herbs work and the reasons for blending herbs. There *are* times when a single herb or blend of just two or three is better. If, for instance, you're sensitive to a lot of things, fewer ingredients means fewer opportunities to react and an easier time narrowing down the culprit if you do. But an experienced herbalist may blend a pretty sizeable number of herbs together, and there's a *method* to the madness. Sometimes one herb helps support or complement another. Other times, an herb helps *balance* another. For instance, a laxative containing senna or cascara sagrada might do the job, but these are very *harsh* herbs, that can cause a good deal of discomfort and/or wreak havoc on the system. A skilled herbalist may add something like slippery elm to the blend. This herb is soothing and healing to the GI tract, so it helps mitigate that harshness, allowing the other two herbs to still do their job, but more comfortably and safely. We tend to understand this concept better with cooking, which is more familiar to most people. We don't look at a cake recipe and say it "can't work, because it has too many ingredients." We don't say, "the baking soda can't possibly do anything, because it's such a small percentage of the whole." Each of the ingredients has its own purpose for being there, and they work together well. The flour -- even though it's in a much larger quantity -- doesn't keep the baking soda from doing its job. The baking soda doesn't keep the salt from doing its job. Sometimes the recipe might include lemon juice, to *activate* the baking soda. Sometimes the baking soda might be there to *neutralize* another ingredient. You wouldn't want to bake a recipe that had two cups of baking soda and a teaspoon of flour! Or even a cup of baking soda and a cup of flour. There are definitely "junk" supplements out there, but don't assume that *just* because a blend contains a lot of different herbs, it must be useless. If it was thoughtfully blended by a knowledgeable herbalist, it may contain exactly what it needs to.

Folks, CHECK YOUR SMOKE ALARMS. I've heard a crushing number of house fires reported in the past month with fatalities. I don't know the circumstances, and I am *not* assigning fault to anyone in those events (that is, PLEASE don't read this as "if they'd checked their smoke alarms..."); it's just a good reminder to make sure we've done what we can to prevent what's preventable.

When and how did we collectively decide that it's "impolite" or "poor manners" to sit in a way that accommodates the ergonomics of your body? "Sit on the chair, facing straight forward, with your legs hanging over the front edge. We don't care if the chair is a bad fit and it's cutting off circulation to your legs and throwing your entire body's alignment off. You must not tuck a foot under you, sit cross-legged in the chair, or -- gasp! -- SQUAT in the chair." Completely arbitrary rules based in literally nothing trump real people with real needs. (And in the process, we work really, really hard at *training* children to ignore their bodies' feedback.) This is the kind of nonsense we need to change.

One of the key things you have to understand, in order to understand the skew of the vaccine narrative, is that until very recently, nothing was diagnosed by lab test. They didn't do throat swabs to see "if you have strep," or culture to find out if you have "influenza A," etc. Diagnoses were descriptions of clinical SYMPTOM sets. So when we read about "'polio" or "measles" or "influenza" or any of those types of things in the early- and mid-20th century, they aren't using the terms the same way we use them today. It would be similar to someone telling you they've created a cure for "incontinence," but they've muddled all up whether they mean "incontinence" as in today's "incontinence," or "incontinence" as in the past's more-often-used "incontinence." (https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/incontinence)

There's often a stigma around homemade/homegrown gifts, thrifted gifts, etc. And, for that matter, even around things like eating leftovers and buying your clothes from the secondhand store. People think this means you're poor and they don't want to look poor so they want "good," new stuff. But here's the thing: although poor people might do some of these things out of necessity, doing them by choice can be the kind of wise financial stewardship that makes rich people rich. The rich don't get rich by *wasting* money. More importantly, though, these things are good *environmental* stewardship. Buying still-useful used items keeps them out of the landfill. It minimizes the need for more resource-heavy production. Making things at home saves on all the transportation costs and that sort of thing that big-box buying brings with it. It reduces packaging (especially plastic!). I'm not saying don't ever buy new stuff! But the *most* eco-friendly thing we can do is change our cultural mindset so that reuse and upcycling and similar practices that reduce waste are seen in a *positive* light.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but your hemoglobin is *supposed* to drop in late pregnancy. If it doesn't (and you haven't just *radically* and suddenly improved your diet), it's most likely a red flag that your blood volume is not expanding properly. And you may be on course for pre-eclampsia or other serious problems.

https://naturally-holistically.com/germ-theory-or-terrain-theory-the-body-as-a-garden/

https://www.facebook.com/RichmondBirthandBaby/posts/pfbid026nJvz6KTvQKv5RWcEeBzAHSn26JrmRkEuG4YdHJbvCB6s8fkcA99BR5uBTBuMUsfl

I've seen a recent trend of people wondering why they're so dehydrated/thirsty when they "drink plenty of water." Many of these people are probably drinking *too much* water. I know it's counter-intuitive to think you can be dehydrated because you drink too much water, but if you drink water in excess, you flush out your electrolytes and then you're out of balance and your body can't *hold onto* the water you're drinking. All of these things we've been hearing all our lives about how much water we're "supposed to" drink daily are entirely arbitrary -- made up out of thin air.