The EssentiaList

by Catherine Haug

Dr. Mercola offered a provocative article in his July 8, 2009 newsletter: Changing Your Beliefs About Health and Illness.

For those not familiar with Dr. Mercola, he’s an osteopathic physician in the Chicago area, who started his website in the late 1990s, focusing on natural healing.  This particular article comes with a 5 minute video video by Dr. James Chestnut, a chiropractic physician honored in 2007 as Chiropractic Educator of the Year.

As our government leaders grapple with legislation to provide health care coverage for all, I think it is pertinent to look more deeply into what is meant by health and illness. I fear that our leaders are still living in the old, wrong-headed paradigm, and we will ultimately suffer because of this.

In fact, I believe this wrong-headed paradigm is precisely why our health care system has failed us. (more…)

by Catherine Haug

Jean H. and I attended the Crop Circle presentation on herbology yesterday evening, in the basement of the Kalispell Public Library. What follows are my notes from this 2-hour presentation.

Presenter:  Sheryl Eaglewoman

Sheryl is a health consultant in the Wise Woman tradition.  She has over 20 years experience in midwifery, healing, wellness, nutrition, and energy work as a medical intuitive. Her website is LivingResponsibly.com; check out her articles (“Columns“), via a link on the left-hand side of her website.

Her teacher and mentor is Susun Weed (www.susunweed.com). In addition, she worked for many years in the supplements aisle of Whole Foods.

Next month, Sheryl will discuss homeopathy (July 29, 2009). See also her article on the subject: Living Responsibly-Homeopathy (also saved: Health-Nutrition / Podcasts-Articles / SherylEaglewoman > LivingResponsibly_Homeopathy_SEaglewoman.pdf

See also Cat’s article (July 2009): Introduction to Homeopathy [Cat’s Note: Here’s an updated October 2022 version: Introduction to Homeopathy (from Cat’s Kitchen)] (more…)

by Catherine Haug, May 21, 2009; updated December 15, 2012

As I wrote in 2009: The Diet of Traditional Peoples: the Work of Weston Price & Frances Pottenger:

Dr. Frances Pottenger Jr. is famous for his 1930s studies with cats.  He fed some a raw food diet, and the others a cooked and processed food diet, then studied their health through the generations, for 10 years. This was a well-controlled study, that compared a control group with the experimental groups. More detailed results are given below.

In summary, he found that by the third generation, the cats on the cooked or processed food diet were so changed they were no longer fertile, and had similar problems with their skeletal and other systems, as observed in humans by Dr. Weston Price.  On the other hand, the cats on the raw diet were healthy and fertile in all generations. (more detail on this, below).  Of course, human dietary needs are different from that of cats, but certain parallels are still valid.

His research is not without critics.  But after 3 or more generations of humans regularly consuming highly processed foods, the truth of their theories is becoming evident. See my article: The Third Generation & Health for more about this, and for a similar, more contemporary study on hamsters. (more…)