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The Omega-3 and Omega-6 Debate - Plus 100 Ways to Take Your Omega-3's

Here's what I've learned since I taught the omega-6 story the way most of us learned it. I have changed my mind about part of it, and the part I changed my mind about is the part that makes this easier to live with. The version I taught went like this. Omega-6 fats are inflammatory. Our diets are flooded with them. So the work is to bring omega-6 down, cancel it out with omega-3, and restore the balance. I have kept studying, and I want to hand you a better version. The advice at the end barely changes. The reasoning behind it changes quite a bit, and I think the reasoning matters, because it is what you will still have when the next headline comes along. The trouble is not that omega-6 rose. It is that omega-3 fell away. Beginning with what omega-6 actually is Linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid. We cannot synthesize it, so we have to eat it. Deficiency is a real thing, with real effects on the skin barrier and on growth. It belongs in the diet. It is a...
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Aceites esenciales: dilucion segura (first Spanish post)

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Learn the Plant Before You Buy the Bottle

Welcome Learn the plant before you buy the bottle. That is the whole idea, and I am going to spend a while explaining why it matters more than it sounds like it does. Here is a thing that happens constantly. Someone tells me they are having trouble sleeping. Before I can ask a single question, they show me their phone. On it is a list of nine products, screenshotted from somewhere, that they are planning to buy. They want to know which one to start with. And I always want to ask the same thing back. What is the plant in number four? Not what is it FOR. What IS it. What part of it are you swallowing. Where did it grow. What does it do to a person who takes blood thinners. Almost nobody knows, and that is not their fault. Nobody told them. Every place they went to learn was actually a place selling something, and the selling was doing a very good impression of teaching. Why this order matters When you learn the plant first, three things happen. You stop buying things you...
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Where Gluten Hides in Your Herbal Cabinet

Gluten free beyond food You read every food label in the grocery store. You have a dedicated toaster. You still get glutened, and you cannot figure out why. Let me show you the cabinet nobody checks. I have been gluten free since 2008. For the first several years of that I was careful about food and completely careless about everything else, because it never once occurred to me that my supplements were a problem. They were. Here is where gluten hides in an herbal and supplement cabinet, roughly in order of how often it catches people. 1. Capsule fillers and excipients This is the biggest one and the least visible. Capsules need something to hold the powder together and keep it flowing through the machinery. That something is frequently starch, and cheaper supplement lines still use wheat starch or list an unspecified "starch" with no source. Look for: wheat starch, modified food starch with no source named, dextrin, maltodextrin from an unnamed source, and the ...
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The Six Essential Oils That Burn

Essential oil safety Six bottles in a standard collection will burn skin at ordinary dilutions. I want you to know which six, and I want to be honest that I taught one of them badly for a while. Let me get the confession out of the way first. Years ago I taught oregano oil the way most people in this community taught it. A drop here, a drop there, applied close to neat because it was strong and strong seemed like the point. I watched someone develop a chemical burn on the bottom of her foot from doing exactly what I described, and I have taught it differently ever since. So. The six. The hot oils Oil Maximum dilution Cassia 0.05% Cinnamon Bark 0.07% Clove 0.5% Thyme (thymol type) 0.5% Oregano 1% Wintergreen 2.4%, and lower is wiser Look at cassia again. Zero point zero five percent. That is not a typo and it is not me being precious. That is roughly one drop in a full ounce of carrier oil. What "hot" actually means These oils are dominated by const...
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