"We've reached the end of antibiotics"

[GoldenBrain]

That sounds like good oatmeal, old fashioned oatmeal or steel cut? I agree with you both. I read up on Dr. Fuhrmans books and I recommend those. I'm looking into getting a nutribullet, relatively cheap and I can use it for all sorts of things. I will let you know about the tea. I've tried it before in some nettle and red clover tea I made for my girlfriend I believe it was that anyway, it tastes pretty good on its own and has good stuff in it for you and it basically tastes like black tea which we are used to having in the house. I just need to start making smoothies because I really don't have that much vegetable intake at home we have plenty of fruit at home but not much for vegetables, just the basic stuff lettuce, celery etc. I like this thread, it amuses me

I like both steel cut and old fashioned oatmeal. Not the precooked old fashioned either. I just don't see the point in precooked which saves one minute of cooking and it doesn't taste as good. Mr. Brown, the king of jesters gave me a good recipe where he adds eggs to his oatmeal. It's good as a mutha, so I'll post it below. Just don't overcook it because it gets kind of pasty and does something wrong to the taste. Play around with it and you'll get it.

I like that nutribullet. We got the Ninja for larger volume stuff like soups, making our own nut butters, almond milk…etc and it comes with two single serve cups. It was expensive though, but not as much as the Blendtek or Vitamix. With 1500 watts and 24,000 rpm it works just as well. I think a blender needs to be at least 1000 watts to be able to handle the leafy greens and nuts well.

Lettuce and celery are good but not much nutrition in them. If you haven't looked into it I'd recommend trying kale and spinach in your green smoothies since they have tons of nutrients. They also sell green powder at health food shops. We use one called Perfect Food Raw from Garden of Life. It's a powder mix of green sprouts, veggies and whole leaf grass powders. We grow our own sprouts but I haven't gotten into growing wheat grass and other types yet so this is our attempt to add these nutrients to our diet.

Originally Posted by Scott R. Brown
My oatmeal breakfast consists of:

1/2 cup whole oats
2 eggs cooked in with the oats
raisins cooked in with the oats
peanut butter added after cooked
apple sauce added after cooked
for added taste at times, cinnamon, or real vanilla, or rarely honey.

[Raipizo]

I don't do smoothies yet but definitely will be adding kale and items of the like. Yeah they are not high in nutrients really, celery leaves have most of the nutrition of the vegetable. I plan on using kale and other greens, some berries and flax seeds nuts or chia seeds. I'm just starting out making smoothies so I'm going to start small, Vitamixs' are friggin expensive.

Sounds pretty good there chef brown, not sure about the egg lol. I eat Wheatena in the morning usually or just cereal and white tea along with my vitamins.

[Syn7]

I buy fruit for about 4 days, chop it up, freeze it. Buy this freakin awesome local homemade small batch yogurt from this lady down the street from my dads. Get some sort of milk, not always dairy. Depends on what's available. Assorted greens depending on the time of year, drop in a lil flax oil and blend that up. Soooo good. I freeze the fruit so that the smoothie is cold and slushy. I don't like it when people add ice. There are so many directions you can take with smoothies.


It never occurred to me to put an egg in oatmeal.

[GoldenBrain]

I buy fruit for about 4 days, chop it up, freeze it. Buy this freakin awesome local homemade small batch yogurt from this lady down the street from my dads. Get some sort of milk, not always dairy. Depends on what's available. Assorted greens depending on the time of year, drop in a lil flax oil and blend that up. Soooo good. I freeze the fruit so that the smoothie is cold and slushy. I don't like it when people add ice. There are so many directions you can take with smoothies.


It never occurred to me to put an egg in oatmeal.

Smoothies are just awesome!!! We do the exact same thing with our fruit only we grow a lot of it ourselves. We also grow the kale and other veggies. Anything else we buy local organic. Our bananas won't bear fruit until next year so unfortunately we have to buy that from the store. We never use ice in our smoothies either because frozen fruit is so much better. We also add hemp seed to just about every smoothie.

We don't drink regular milk anymore. Instead we use almond and coconut milk. Almond for the protein and coconut for the calcium. Both have half the sugars of store bought milk. I wish we had a place to buy locally made yogurt but for now we buy a good greek yogurt from our local organic foods store.

The egg in oatmeal thing never occurred to me either before Scott mentioned it. The first time I made it I cooked it way too long so it really tasted rank. The second time was excellent but it has some heft to it and will weigh you down so plan accordingly. I don't make it very often because it's just easier to make oatmeal my way and wolf down a couple of hard boiled eggs.

[Raipizo]

I've grown wheat and barley grass, I just saw you mentioned that earlier. It's easy to grow but it doesn't taste all that well you could probably add the juice to your smoothies or try to add the grass in, heard the grass fiber is indigestible so experiment a little. Got my seeds from http://www.wheatgrasskits.com/ and I need to get back into growing it I just can't stand the taste on its own really.

[GoldenBrain]

I've grown wheat and barley grass, I just saw you mentioned that earlier. It's easy to grow but it doesn't taste all that well you could probably add the juice to your smoothies or try to add the grass in, heard the grass fiber is indigestible so experiment a little. Got my seeds from http://www.wheatgrasskits.com/ and I need to get back into growing it I just can't stand the taste on its own really.

Cool, thanks! I may try wheat grass juice one day in our smoothies. I need to get a juicer made just for the grass though because as you said the grass fiber is indigestible. For now we'll just stick to the green powder.

Do you grow sprouts? We grow alfalfa and mung bean sprouts mostly but sometimes radish, clover and broccoli. I like the alfalfa best and add them to all sorts of things including the smoothies. I also make a killer turkey sandwich with them. Turkey, cream cheese, avocado, and sprouts on a really fresh croissant or potato bread. Of course I make all kinds of sandwiches but this one is a standout and probably my favorite.

[Raipizo]

Cool, thanks! I may try wheat grass juice one day in our smoothies. I need to get a juicer made just for the grass though because as you said the grass fiber is indigestible. For now we'll just stick to the green powder.

Do you grow sprouts? We grow alfalfa and mung bean sprouts mostly but sometimes radish, clover and broccoli. I like the alfalfa best and add them to all sorts of things including the smoothies. I also make a killer turkey sandwich with them. Turkey, cream cheese, avocado, and sprouts on a really fresh croissant or potato bread. Of course I make all kinds of sandwiches but this one is a standout and probably my favorite.

Yeah I do, I use a sprout sack (hemp like bag) but I always grow too much and never end up eating it all before it goes bad. I use a sprout mix and it has radish alfalfa and I believe buckwheat. It's pretty good.

[GoldenBrain]

Yeah I do, I use a sprout sack (hemp like bag) but I always grow too much and never end up eating it all before it goes bad. I use a sprout mix and it has radish alfalfa and I believe buckwheat. It's pretty good.

Excellent! I use a 4 round tray system. We are usually finishing up the last of the sprouts buy the time the next batch is ready.

For the survivalists out there… I can't say enough about sprouting. Alfalfa is the best bang for the buck since it contains all the veggie nutrition you need, and the seeds are tiny meaning you can store a whole bunch of them in a very small space. It requires only a small amount of water, no sunlight and you can harvest every 4 or 5 days.

[Raipizo]

Excellent! I use a 4 round tray system. We are usually finishing up the last of the sprouts buy the time the next batch is ready.

For the survivalists out there… I can't say enough about sprouting. Alfalfa is the best bang for the buck since it contains all the veggie nutrition you need, and the seeds are tiny meaning you can store a whole bunch of them in a very small space. It requires only a small amount of water, no sunlight and you can harvest every 4 or 5 days.

On the topic of survival http://www.youtube.com/watch?app=des...&v=g8ctrcpQhTY and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oa7ifmHm4U

Sprouts are also really good for you and very easy to grow.

[GoldenBrain]

On the topic of survival http://www.youtube.com/watch?app=des...&v=g8ctrcpQhTY and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oa7ifmHm4U

Sprouts are also really good for you and very easy to grow.

Heck yeah! That's a pretty easy design right there. When I backpack I go ultralight so I usually take a couple of pepsi can stoves with me. They weigh next to nothing. Take a small bottle of alcohol and your set for several days. I have friends who use MSR type stoves and their setup is not only a pain in the arse but also takes up room in the pack and sounds like a jet engine. I've converted several buddies to alcohol stoves.

Here's a tip to save fuel if you're in an area where campfires are no problem. Dig a little post hole about 5" wide by 5" deep. Set a few small rocks on either side to put your pot on and to allow the hole to breath. Fill the hole up with red hot coals from the fire and get to cooking. Of course you can always cook right on the fire but that can get hot so I like to set back a little bit and not fight the smoke.

I'm sure there's a survival thread somewhere on these forums but this one will do for these off topic diversions, at least until somebody can answer my original question.

Speaking of the original question. I have searched online for hours/days and am now of the opinion that Traditional Chinese Medicine is better for easing symptoms and improving general health than it is for curing major issues. I can't find anything that will treat serious internal infections such as MRSA. There are cancer treatments such as eating sea cucumber and shark fin soup and stuff like that but I can't find one completed peer reviewed study to back up the claims. I'm tempted to file TCM under nutrition rather than medicine but I'll remain open minded for now.

[Raipizo]

Heck yeah! That's a pretty easy design right there. When I backpack I go ultralight so I usually take a couple of pepsi can stoves with me. They weigh next to nothing. Take a small bottle of alcohol and your set for several days. I have friends who use MSR type stoves and their setup is not only a pain in the arse but also takes up room in the pack and sounds like a jet engine. I've converted several buddies to alcohol stoves.

Here's a tip to save fuel if you're in an area where campfires are no problem. Dig a little post hole about 5" wide by 5" deep. Set a few small rocks on either side to put your pot on and to allow the hole to breath. Fill the hole up with red hot coals from the fire and get to cooking. Of course you can always cook right on the fire but that can get hot so I like to set back a little bit and not fight the smoke.

I'm sure there's a survival thread somewhere on these forums but this one will do for these off topic diversions, at least until somebody can answer my original question.

Speaking of the original question. I have searched online for hours/days and am now of the opinion that Traditional Chinese Medicine is better for easing symptoms and improving general health than it is for curing major issues. I can't find anything that will treat serious internal infections such as MRSA. There are cancer treatments such as eating sea cucumber and shark fin soup and stuff like that but I can't find one completed peer reviewed study to back up the claims. I'm tempted to file TCM under nutrition rather than medicine but I'll remain open minded for now.

A lot of tcm is eating stuff lol. They may not have anything suited for MRSA I don't think it's been around that long unless I'm wrong.

[SoCo KungFu]

I'm tempted to file TCM under nutrition rather than medicine but I'll remain open minded for now.

Here's the thing about TCM. Or rather, all medicine. Or if you really wanted to get to it, all thinking in general. Its just a conceptual model. This is the problem for so many people, including many here. They don't understand how the brain actually works, how information is actually processed. Any time you engage in logical thought, you are invoking a conceptual model. This is what we do. When you decide to unpack your winter clothes in November, you do so because you have reasonable experience (data) to make a prediction that its going to be cold. Not only that, but for an appreciable span of time. That's a model. You have a response variable (clothing choice) as a function of predictors (temperature and season) and you have potential variability (temps won't be constant every day, but there is a general trend of cold).

So what does this mean? TCM, Western medicine, etc. are all nothing more than elaborate models. They are based on some observation, attempt to make some explanation for the observation and attempt to make a prediction based on that information. So this tells you a lot about TCM when you look at it in this way, as a model. It tells you why something can make a correct prediction, but still be wrong. That's the big thing right? People here defend some of the claims of TCM based on it correctness in certain situations. They defend certain claims based on the mechanism of "chi" and the like. And when you attempt to criticize the claim, they defend the model (chi, etc.) based on its correct prediction elsewhere. Which not coincidentally, sounds like any model, western med included.

So what's the issue? Well, not all observations are equal. Some observations are less revealing, some less accurate, some simply wrong. This is the flaw of TCM, the method of observation is entirely insufficient. Its simply external observation, there's no real empiricism. Nor is there any attempt to address physiology as we now know it. This, is also why chi and such concepts are not real. People try to dismiss the criticism saying we've simply misinterpreted chi. "It's not energy." Yeah, its not, energy is measurable. Chi is also not any of the other things that people claim it is. It doesn't exist, period. Why? Its very appropriate when some say that there isn't an appropriate word in English. Because its simply a product of a conceptual model. A model that is entirely without context in western thought. Its an attempt to explain observations, but it itself doesn't exist outside of that model (which is why the model is flawed). Where as, blood chemistry exists regardless. Anatomy and physiology are concrete, tangible, quantifiable. Any explanations based off such concrete observations are already so much further along than one with is based on something which is unverifiable. Now that doesn't mean that western med is always right. Nor does it mean that TCM can't be right where western med is wrong. But it means that one prediction set is based off verifiable data, while the other is not. So TCM can make proper predictions while still being completely incorrect in its construct. The danger is that it will (and does) make many many more incorrect predictions than a model that is firmly based in the concrete empirical evidence.

The problem here, is that people think that these systems are concrete things. They are all nothing more than mental exercises. But the anatomy, the physiology, the chemistry underlying the western model is firmly concrete. That's the difference, that's why one has more power. This is basic stats yes? No model is right. But some models have a better fit than others.

[GoldenBrain]

Well said SoCo. Thank you!

[GoldenBrain]

A lot of tcm is eating stuff lol.

Indeed. I doubt injecting shark fin soup would do the body any good.

[Raipizo]

I say both have their advantages, western medicine relies heavily on prescriptions and surgeries both of which have a tendency to fail and be very costly. Tcm doesn't use these but relies on old style medicines and bodywork. Now I would probably use western medicine for diabetes or something serious but for say a sprain, I would try to avoid using pills etc. I don't like taking toxic prescriptions but that's just me. You can always use both in conjunction most usually anyway also.