After almost 10 straight years on a keto diet, I had my first (and only, I hope) kidney stone.

The main culprit, in my opinion, is one of the highest oxalate-forming foods there is, namely, almonds in the form of almond flour. Almost every single keto baked goods recipe uses almond flour in place of regular flour. The reason being simple – almond flour is low-carb and wheat flour is high-carb. What people fail to research is the effects of prolonged use of almond flour on the body.

Here’s a shocking bit of info: one single cup of almond flour contains about 90 almonds! And only one ounce of WHOLE almonds contain 122 mg of oxalates. Compare that to pecans at 10 mg per ounce.

And here’s the icing on this crazy cake – almonds contain a particularly larger amount of cyanogenic glycosides than other plants which also contain them. This means they can be highly toxic: hydrogen cyanide is actually released from cyanogenic glycosides when plants that contain them are eaten.

My advice to you is to greatly limit, if not completely remove, these poison pellets from your diet. I will be writing an article soon on natural ways to prevent and/or remove existing kidney stones. Stay tuned!

I will always remember one moment when I wanted to stop time.

The beauty of the day- I could see for miles and the most glorious vibrant rainbow stretched from one side of the sky to the other. I was overwhelmed with tears of thankfulness that I was allowed to see such a sight. I will never find words to thank heaven, or God, or my mother for the fact that I came into this beautiful world.

This isn’t a picture of the same rainbow, but mine was just as breathtaking! (We had no cell phones in the early 90s to take pictures spur of the moment)

Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated. The earliest clear evidence of the grain is found in Pre-Pottery Neolithic archaeological sites in southern Turkey. Remnants of einkorn were also found with the iceman mummy Ötzi, dated to 3100 BC.

Einkorn wheat is hardy, drought tolerant, and naturally resistant to pests, making it a naturally sustainable food source, unlike modern wheat that requires vast amounts of chemicals. Einkorn almost went extinct since it only yields one fifth of what modern wheats produce. It grows very tall, as wheat did long ago; although each einkorn kernel is a third of the size of today’s wheat. 

The vast majority of the wheat we consume today has been drastically altered from its original form. Modern wheat has been altered through intensive conventional breeding. The cheap wheat most often consumed today is stripped of much of its nutrients and removes many of the benefits that can be found in ancient grains. All of this is done to lower costs. Research shows that it is how we have altered modern wheat that is resulting in so many health complications linked to wheat.

Ötzi the Iceman is Europe’s oldest mummy, dating back to 3,300 B.C.  Ötzi managed to eat a meal of meat, an herb, and bread made from einkorn wheat sometime shortly before his death.   The samples that were pulled showed einkorn wheat finely ground, that would have come from einkorn grain ground down to flour and baked into bread.

Einkorn has always remained the purest form of wheat. Like einkorn, most plants are diploids, which mean they have one set of chromosomes from a male parent and one from the female parent. Since einkorn is the only diploid species of wheat with two sets of chromosomes, it has remained as pure as it was thousands of years ago. So the benefits of eating baked goods and other foods made of einkorn wheat are enormous!

Here are 25 reasons Einkorn is a superfood: it improves digestion, aids in weight loss, promotes superior nutrient absorption, it’s anti-inflammatory, aids in cancer prevention, strengthens the immune system, supports healthier skin, hair, and nails, eye health, increased energy, improves vision, improves brain function, promotes heart, hormone and reproductive health, improves enzyme function, aids metabolism, aids in bone, muscle and nerve health, improves the health of cells and tissues, improves kidney health, promotes circulation and blood health, arthritis pain relief, improved memory, and improved sleep. Whew! There is no bloating or drowsiness like you get after eating regular wheat products. AND- it doesn’t impact glycemic levels like regular wheat, so it’s actually good for diabetics!

sources: einkorn.com – wholegrainscouncil.org – greenamerica.org

Scientists find about a quarter million invisible nanoplastic particles in a liter of bottled water

A new study has found that the average bottle of water contains nearly a quarter million fragments of “nanoplastics” — plastic particles so small they can potentially gum up the machinery of human cells. 

The study team was concerned by nanoplastics, which are particles thousands of times smaller — measurable in billionths of a meter. These smaller sizes can translate to greater danger because the smaller the particle size, the easier they can get into the human bodies and then cross different barriers.

The tiny compounds can cross into the blood, and then can cross the different barriers to get into the cells, interfering with the organelles — cellular organs — and causing them to malfunction.

That survey of recent research found that tiny plastics can interfere with the chemistry of the human body — causing impacts both on and from the communities of microbes in our gut that help us digest food. 

Micro- and nanoplastics can lead to oxidative stress, inflammation, immune dysfunction, altered biochemical and energy metabolism, impaired cell proliferation, disrupted microbial metabolic pathways, abnormal organ development, and carcinogenicity.

And studies in mice have found that micro- and nanoplastics lead to cell death in the lining of the intestine and increase inflammation in the gut. 

If nanoplastics are able to get from the digestive system into the blood stream, impacts could be much further reaching — beginning with heart disease. 

***We still use a Big Berkey to purify our water, but we no longer place that purified water into 5 gallon plastic jugs, which then went on our water cooler. Playin’ it safe!!!