Don’t Sacrifice Natural Healing to Benefit Big Pharma.

This is a historical article by Rosemary Gladstar. Her words resonate with our efforts in restoring awareness, knowledge, and confidence in natural remedies and increasing your ability to take control of the health of your body. I don’t know exactly when it was written, but I do know that I posted it (with author credit) on my first free blog site back in 2010.

This article exceeds the read time of our “5 minute chat” pledge, but it is posted as written, so I made it an exemption because it is well worth the time to read. For those not familiar with the author by name, Rosemary Gladstar is well known as a professional herbalist and author of many books, who frequently wrote for classic publications like The Herb Companion and Mother Earth News.

The Comfrey Controversy by Rosemary Gladstar

Over the past several years I’ve been increasingly aware of the controversy
surrounding the use of comfrey. At first, I simply ignored it, but recent
articles and current information have prompted me to write a response. I’ve
witnessed so much controversy over favorite herbs. Usually facts are
misleading and after several years of ‘black listing’ evidence creeps up
that redeems the deposed herb.

Sassafras, one of my favorite tea drinking herbs, was removed from the
market because of the potential toxic effects of the chemical safrole,
(though it’s estimated that modern beer is 10 times more carcinogenic than
old fashion sassafras root beers banned by the FDA for the purported
carcinogen, safrole). After thirty years on the herbal black list,
sassafras is in favor again and is showing up in tea blends and formulas.

Pennyroyal has received deplorable press ever since two young women each
drank an ounce of the oil in the 70’s and killed themselves.

Cautious use of licorice is recommended because of potential problems with elevated blood pressure, though most studies indicate that licorice induced blood pressure is due to concentrated licorice extracts, candy, and syrup, not
the whole root.

Even slippery elm is listed as potentially toxic and is not recommended for internal use. It seems that native women used the soft inner bark of the elm tree vaginally to induce abortions.

With all this controversy it doesn’t surprise me to see comfrey come to ‘trial’. But
what does surprise me is the neurosis that herbalists are acquiring over this comfrey cast. It’s enough to give one an ulcer!

Are we getting lost in the backwash of current trends of herbalism that lean towards science, scientific testing, and professionalism? Are we forgetting the value of centuries of recorded use? Is human testing conducted over thousands of years no longer equal to laboratory scientific testing? Shouldn’t ‘empirical evidence’ at least be considered, and not forgotten in the rush of scientific studies and latest ‘findings’? Perhaps it would be good to recall the rich historical documentation of comfrey, which seems largely neglected in the rush to classify it as toxic.

Comfrey’s been a favorite herb of most early herbalists and has been written about for centuries in the famed old herbals. Hildegard of Bingen, famous visionary, saint and herbalist of the Benedictines, recommended it for wounds in the 11th century. Paracelsus, Pliny, Gerard, Dioscoriedes, and Culpepper were all fans of the herb and recommended it highly. If current information is correct, these famous healers were killing, not healing, their patients.

It’s no wonder comfrey’s been extolled as one of the renowned healing Herbs
of all times. Its very name, Symphytum, means ‘to heal’. Rich concentrations of Allantoin. a cell proliferant that stimulates the growth of connective tissue and cartilage make comfrey a specific for broken bones, torn cartilage, swellings, and bruises.

It contains tannin as well as high concentrations of mucilage in its chemical make-up so is not only soothing but constrictive and healing for wounds, cuts. and tears.

It also contains steroidal saponins making it particularly beneficial for reproductive and hormonal imbalances.

Along with all its specific healing properties, comfrey is also a delicious and nourishing food herb.

It: contains high amounts of plant digestible calcium, iron. protein (up to 35%, seven times more protein than soybeans), B vitamins and vitamin A, among other things.

Down through the ages in many parts of the world comfrey has been recognized
as one of the great healing herbs and has maintained its scrupulous reputation....right up to the present day.

In 1968 an independent Japanese scientist first reported finding pyrrolizidine alkaloids, substances that are regarded as potentially hepatoxic and carcinogenic, in the young leaves and roots of comfrey. Austrian studies confirmed the Japanese reports. The news spread through the scientific community and filtered into the herbal community like wild fire. What a furor those reports caused. A recent headline in one newspaper states “Warning! Comfrey Tea can Kill You!” Once considered one of the great all time healing herbs, comfrey now sits on trial as a possible carcinogen and as a cause of hepatic veno-occlusive disease.

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA’s), a broad based chemical group including more than 200 different alkaloids, are found in a widespread variety of flowering plants throughout the world. They seem to be most concentrated in members of the Borage family, the Pea family, and some members of the Aster family. PA’s first became a health concern in the mid 70’s when, during a severe drought several thousand Afghani villagers developed severe liver impairment, many of whom died. The source of the problem was traced to PA infected wheat (from a Heliotrope species).

There have been a couple of other epidemics of veno-occlusive disease occurring in third world countries as a result of accidental and long term ingestion of PA infected grain (traced to Crotalaria species). These cases prompted an investigation of plants containing PA’s.

In the process, comfrey, the most popular and widely used member of the Borage family, was analyzed. It is difficult to draw any conclusive information, however, from the tests given the various results reported. As is so often the case with studies, there are enough discrepancies and various “scientific findings” to satisfy whatever we’d like to believe.

Though it is important to be open to the possible dangers of comfrey, it Is
as important to sift through the information and misinformation and to form
opinions based on fact, rather than hysteria.

The truth of the matter is that most plants reveal within their chemical blue print a wide variety of constituents, many of them potentially harmful. These chemicals form a synergistic relationship with one another, often nullifying and or strengthening certain aspects of one another. Michael Tierra states in The
Way of Herbs, “Plants have a dynamically complex biochemistry. In many instances, this allows for small amounts of substances, which when isolated and concentrated might otherwise be poisonous, to be quite safe and harmless.” The sum total of these hundreds of chemicals determine the personality, or action of the plant. Judging a plant’s action based on one chemical is like judging a person by the fact that their hair is brown.

Studies conducted in Washington found very minute amounts of Pyrrolizidine
alkaloids in comfrey. Some plants tested had none at all. An independent researcher in the U.S. found that of three samples tested for pyrrolizidine alkaloids, one was negative, the second contained only trace amounts, and the third contained one part per million, equaling a sum total of an infinitesimal amount of this alleged toxic substance.

In Steven Foster’s article in the February issue of Herb Companion he cites that 8 PA’s have been identified, though different varieties of Comfrey have various amounts and only two of the most abundant PA’s, according to him, are under
scrutiny. It brings to mind the words of the highly respected Dr. Rudolp Weiss “Modern methods of chemical analysis are now so sophisticated, working in nano units (l0 to the 9th power), that harmful substances will be found almost anywhere, with the result that we feel constantly threatened.” Dr. Weiss, by the way, seemed cautious about accepting current research on comfrey toxicity.

It might be discerning while reviewing the PA containing factor of Comfrey to consider the rest of this plant’s biochemical characteristics. Comfrey is rich in allantoin, a cell proliferant, calcium salts, and mucopolysaccharides, all of which are very nutritious to the cell and may serve to neutralize the cell inhibiting action of the pyrrolizidine alkaloids. It is also important to note that the pyrrolizidine alkaloids found in comfrey are in a “N-oxide”, or organic state, unlike those used in laboratory studies. These organic compounds are more likely to be degraded when digested in the human body.

Another important issue to consider is the nature of the tests used to determine the toxicity factor of comfrey. Once identified, the alkaloids were isolated and injected into laboratory animals in rather massive amounts, far more than would normally be ingested. Richard De Sylva states in The Canadian Journal of Herbalism: “The original research (on the presence of pyrrolizidine alkaloids in comfrey) was seriously flawed. The laboratory rats that developed tumors on the liver were only six weeks old. At this age, quite a number of substances would be inappropriate for them to ingest. As well, the total amount of comfrey ingested formed 30-50% of their basic diet. This could be compared to human consumption of several platefuls of comfrey daily.

This daily regimen did eventually cause tumors to grow on their livers and proved only one of the standing laws of science: that every substance or chemical is a poison if we consume enough of it.” Or as Paracelsus said several hundred years ago, “All things are poison and nothing is without poison. It is the dosage that makes a thing poisonous or not.” It might be wise to note when observing animal studies that comfrey is used extensively as a fodder for dairy and beef cattle throughout the Pacific Northwest with no problems. In fact, farmers are growing fields of comfrey because of the outstanding results in milk production and the health of the herds.

Because of these laboratory findings, an attempt was made to collect case histories of individuals who used comfrey and later developed liver toxicity. However, of the thousands of people who use comfrey worldwide, only three somewhat questionable cases have been identified, none of which conclusively point to comfrey as the culprit. In 1984 there was a case of veno-occlusive liver disease in a 49 year old woman who had been taking Comfrey- Pepsin tablets for four months. The American Journal of Medicine reported a case of a woman who reportedly drank as many as I0 cups of Comfrey tea a day and handfuls of tablets and developed veno-occlusive liver disease. The third reported case of veno-occlusive liver disease was that of a 23 year old New Zealand man who died of liver failure reportedly due to veno-occlusive liver disease. He was said to have eaten four or five steamed comfrey leaves every day for one to two weeks before he died.

This appears to constitute the complete ‘hard evidence’ for condemning
comfrey. Not having access to the complete case histories on these
patients I can make no statement of whether, in fact, comfrey is the only
possible etiologic factor for the liver pathology. Even if it is, three
cases out of tens of thousands, perhaps millions of people who use comfrey
is not statistically significant enough to ban its use. If our
pharmaceutical industry were subject to such standards, we would have no
drugs on the market at all. And very few herbs.

No matter what your position on this matter, this toxicity information
should be put in perspective. Mark Blumenthal states, “The comfrey
incident might have looked different if it had been put into context of a
toxicity scale. One such scale is the HERP index, which classifies the
cancer-causing potentials of various substances. Extrapolating from the
HERP index, former U.S. Department of Agriculture botanist James Duke,
Ph.D., calculates that less than one-fifth an ounce of brown mustard is
twice as cancer causing as comfrey tea, which has roughly the same
cancer-causing potential as a peanut butter sandwich. Wine is 144 times
more cancer causing than an equal amount of comfrey tea.”

It is essential to always recall, when reading test results, that the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. As more and more tests are being conducted on herbs, and the chemicals isolated, it is important to be open minded about the results, and open minded to the fact that science is fallible.

If a plant has been found safe and effective for a thousand years of human use, it may be wise to question the validity and applicability of the tests being used. There is generally some unidentified part of the plant in the form of another chemical or an innate natural wisdom that allows the medicine, when taken as a whole, to function in a safe and beneficial manner.

The comfrey controversy continues to rage. Banned in Canada, comfrey awaits its fate in the U.S. Some herbalists continue to use comfrey, basing their faith on ‘the empirical evidence of the ages’ and ignoring current data. Most herbalists are taking a more conservative, discerning stand, recommending small amounts of comfrey for internal purposes (awaiting pending information), and continuing to use it externally. Some herbalists, caught up in the fervor of the tests, have discontinued its use altogether and advocate others do so also.

As for me, until the evidence and ‘hard facts’ are much more compelling, I will continue to use comfrey judiciously for myself and my clients.

Meanwhile, the Austrian company that conducted the original tests verified that the tests were inconclusive. And in Japan, where the alkaloids were first discovered, doctors still continue to recommend comfrey for cirrhosis of the liver.

Through its whole “trial”, comfrey seems unabashed. It continues to dauntlessly grow. A large luxurious plant, its carefree attitude seems to say, “if you doubt my safety, don’t use me! I’ve been around a long long time. I’ll outlast the controversy.” Rosemary Gladstar

Find more articles about Comfrey and other Herbs Here

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Snakes have gotten a bad rap for no good reason.

Agree? Disagree? Let’s Chat.

Do you love them?

Are you curious about them?

Did someone in your past scare you about them?

Does the thought of them make you want to run and scream?

Have you ever thought about WHY we react the way we do over things we have minimal experience with?

Snakes are often in that category.

When I post anything about a snake on social media, it's common for people to react dramatically with negative words. That’s why I try to share positive aspects about “scary” snakes. (and fun snake pics like these below)

We've been taught to be fearful of them.

We've been taught to kill them.

We've been taught they are evil.

And some religions have taught that snakes embody evil.

BUT snakes are really our FRIENDS!

Casting out superstitions, myths, and fearful stories, let’s share truth!

Most snakes are good.

(Remember Luke Bryan’s song “Most People Are Good”)

Most snakes are good, well-meaning, helpful, useful, and safe.

They eat garden pests and house pests, like insects, grasshoppers, slugs, moles, and field mice.

(somewhere I have a photo I took on the farm, of a garter snake wrapped around a mouse, and eating it…that’s not in the stack below, it’s for another day)

If you leave them alone, they’ll mind their own business of helping you.

If you choose to catch them (to move them to safety) please do so carefully so you don’t get bitten and you don’t hurt the snake.

These snake pics were taken on the farm, of snakes that were caught and moved to safer areas, still on the farm, away from mowers, cats, and unsafety. We often give them a photo opp when they are caught.

Yes, a couple of us have been bitten by a garter who was feeling too handled. But garter teeth are small, with no poison, and are less bothersome than many insects and less health scary than a cat bite.

YES, I know dangerous snakes do exist, (rare in Michigan), but awareness of how they look and act will help a lot. Garter snakes are the most common in our area, with their very obvious yellow stripes, it’s easy to know they are safe snakes. The other snake in the pictures in this post are less commonly seen on the farm, and harder to identify with an untrained eye, but knowing the tell-tale sign of a pointy tail for safe snakes quickly helps. This Eastern Milk Snake tries to look scary with his tail shaking defense, but he’s safe too.

The video below is definitely fun to watch. His tail dance is fun to see when you are not scared of a venom bite. (he’s safe)

It’s highly recommended to know the look of any poisonous snakes in your area, (google will be happy to help) but PLEASE respect the good snakes!

Your lawn and garden really does benefit from them.

Let me share some fun in pictures…..

Well that’s a short farm chat for today. (read rating: 3M 15s)

If you have a few more minutes, go check out those other links.

Here’s a quick link for the front porch at: Chat With Suzy.

Thank you for enjoying our farm photos today! Be sure you leave me your email, and select the Farm News box, so you can get the next round of cute animal pics and farm chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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These pics were taken early spring in March of 2026 as the new lambs are being born. These are some birthday pics! (birth - day)

IF YOU are interested in some lamb or sheep meat that’s been raised like I described above, we are taking deposit reservations RIGHT NOW for a limited amount of animals that will be harvested this fall. Lamb is under a year old, and Sheep is over a year old in the definitions. Some people prefer the smaller sized tender meat of the lambs. There is less meat and the bone to meat ratio is higher and the fat content is lower. The sheep meat is still quite tender, with more meat and more fat. Some people prefer the fat for flavor or for use as tallow to make additional products.

If you want to make a deposit in March for a lamb or sheep to be received in the fall, DON’T WAIT ~ Do It NOW

please contact me directly at: ChatWithSuzy@gmail.com

Make a Deposit ASAP contact me directly at ChatWithSuzy@gmail.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Well that’s a short chat for today, if you have a few minutes more, go check out those other links.

Here’s a quick link for them both again Health Chats and Book Chats.

Thank you for enjoying our farm photos today! Be sure you leave me your email, and select the Farm News box, so you can get the next round of cute animal pics and farm chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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If you don’t want included, all you have to do is hit the substack unsubscribe button.

Thanks for staying!

We Would Genuinely Appreciate Your Continued Support!

It’s been a dramatic winter with extra costs and lower sales.

Let’s Chat about Big Updates to some of our current projects in rapid succession..

You can choose to get more details on any of them via the links.

If you are reading the email version of this article, click HERE to go to my website for more articles about these topics:

UPDATES LIST

• PMN Studio on Main had a Dramatic Change!

• Skin Salve New Details and a Quick Sale.

• Is Your Laundry Clean? Talc & Fels Naptha.

• Castor Oil and Facial Solutions.

• Essential Oils in DIY Health Collections.

• Weed Identification Walks and Plant Photo Book.

• Pastured Poultry Pens Book Details.

• New Retail Partner Locations.

• Be Our Affiliate.

• Sheep & Lamb Meat ~ grassfed and more

• Herb Plants for your Garden

• PMN Crew Intros Page (you’ll enjoy this)

• THIS Chat With Suzy Substack Site!

PMN Studio on Main Street

We abruptly moved out of our rented studio space last October (Oct 20th, 2025 approx), due to landlord maintenance vs city code issues, and a desire to not be forced to move quickly in the depths of winter. Before thanksgiving the building was labeled with a “failure to comply” notice by the city and the landlord posted a for sale sign instead of making repairs. A sale was completed, the 3 other tenants were evicted, and the new owner has demolished the building as of March 10th, 2026.

We enjoyed our time on Main Street, but for now, we are online, doing hosted classes, and supporting our retail and affiliate partners.

We are happy to do meet-ups with you at convenient locations across MI (ask), and we will see what summer brings.

Skin Salve New Details and a March “We Appreciate You” Sale.

Skin Salve - If you have experienced this amazing product that’s been so well-loved for over 25 years, we would VERY MUCH LOVE to hear your story of using it!

We have created a detailed page about Skin Salve and it’s ingredients and how they work. We think you would enjoy the read. Go to PamperMeNaturally.com and click on the Skin Solutions menu tab or just click:

HERE

You know, our economy has basically inflated on almost everything and many of the Skin Salve ingredients have also significantly increased. PMN simply has to raise the price as ingredients are restocked. It’s still the best salve we have seen on the market and as such, it’s still a great value!

BUT WE WANT TO SHOW OUR APPRECIATION for your support by offering YOU a super excellent price on Skin Salve to Stock Up for the Season. We have temporarily added 4 “Kits” on the skin salve page with a 20+% savings vs separate buys. And If you follow the directions on the page, you can also get an additional 10% off you entire pmn products order coupon and an offer for a free gift with purchase.

Check it out at: Skin Solutions

Clean Laundry? Soap Shreds vs Fels Naptha and Talc.

Have you read my chat about the billion dollar cancer lawsuit over TALC and how it is slowly and partially being removed from skincare products? For a long time, Fels Naptha bar soap, (the most common ingredient in online DIY laundry recipes), has had talc as an ingredient, now the label is suddenly more vague and has a new distributor. Reports say some of the defendants in the talc lawsuit are shuffling products and making bankruptcy claims to avoid paying the injured. Fels naptha seems to be in that shuffle. If you are using Fels Naptha, PLEASE STOP.

PLEASE read your cosmetic labels carefully. If you need a fels naptha replacement, I have an excellent suggestion that’s similar in price, easier to use, and BETTER!

Plus it suppports a small family run business instead of a big corp that legally puts profits above customers.

Go Get It HERE:

Read more details HERE

Castor Oil and Facial Serum.

Castor oil and Castor mixed with Jojoba, Frankincense and other beneficials is a current popular item for healing skin irritations, for detox purposes, and more.

If you are looking for some great quality castor and/or a blend, let me help! Get it:

HERE

New Essential Oil Collections to Help Your Health.

The PMN Crew has been working on an improved system for the Naturally Amazing Essential Oil Blends to help you know which oils to use, in what order, and why, to make your process of Taking Your Health Back easier.

More details are being posted online on our other websites

NaturallyAmazing.info HERE and

PamperMeNaturally.site HERE

Pre-order the books HERE

Weed Identification Walks and Photo Book.

If you are interested at all in herbs, wild herbs, foraging, gardening, or natural health, you’ll want to read the article posted

HERE

And if you follow CHAT WITH SUZY on Facebook, there are some pics posted there.

Pastured Poultry Pen Details.

If you enjoyed the pastured poultry we raised for decades, you might appreciate this! We have written a book on tips for raising grass fed poultry and how to build those super cool pens that protected the birds from predators, gave them access to grass, bugs, air, sunshine, and were so easy to move to new grass, that 2 kids could do it…..

Click HERE

New Retail Partner Locations.

We are always looking for new locations to partner with retail stores and crafters who resell.

We have a couple of new locations posted HERE.

If you have suggestions please tell us! Send New location suggestions via email using the link on

this page HERE

Be Our Affiliate.

Interested in earning via a side hustle? Love sharing our products?

Check out this offer HERE

Sheep & Lamb Meat.

The Farm has BABIES! Check out the pics! If you like knowing your farmer…..

Read this article HERE

Herb Plants.

Like growing and harvesting? You’ll probably enjoy the offer on

this page HERE

PMN Crew Intros (you’ll enjoy this)

Don’t Miss These Pics!!!! HERE

THIS Chat With Suzy Substack Site!

This site has big plans. PLEASE CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING

Learn more about the big plans …start HERE

And don’t miss what’s also being created HERE

WHEW!

I try very intentionally to keep these “Chats” articles to under 6 minutes for a “5 minute chat” to make it easy to fit into your day . But there’s a LOT of links on this page! It’s definitely the “rapid succession” list I promised!

As I said at the top, Thanks for staying! It’s been a dramatic winter with extra costs and lower sales, and…

We Would Genuinely Appreciate Your Continued Support!

(Ways to Support Us: Place a PMN product order, order or pre-order a book, buy a subscription to this website, support the farm, share our sites & products with your friends and social media followers, follow us in facebook, recommend us to your local retailers, or simply donate to help the mission grow) THANK YOU!

And that my friend, is a few words more than our “5 minute chat time”.

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to,

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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Views expressed are opinions of the author and are not to be considered as legal or medical advice.

When I was a young wife and mother, I wanted to make good, healthy, natural choices for my family and my home. The more I searched, the more I became aware that the laws for “wash-off products” like soap, were not even close to what I thought they were! I bet they are not what you think they are either.

Shall We Do Some MYTH BUSTING?

The customer is NOT always a priority. The soap industry is stockholder profit based, and it has a strong ability to influence politics and lawmakers. The soap and skincare product laws have been written primarily to accommodate their lobbying and their marketing style for the benefit of profits, shareholders, and boardrooms. Protection of your health concerns is secondary at best! Class action style lawsuits have repeatedly proven that. If the laws were primarily written to protect your interests - class action lawsuits would be unusual, but instead, we have social media filled with lawyer commercials looking for the injured by the latest class action lawsuit defendent. ( it’s talc currently)

The FDA does not require ingredient labeling for soap. If your favorite smelling, clean sounding, skincare products meet the FDA's definition of “wash-off”, it is exempt from the provisions of the FD&C Act, making any ingredient disclosure totally voluntary. That also means that partial disclosure is also legally valid so long as they say it “right” legally. The profit-motivated, big corporation dominated, soap industry has lobbied to convince lawmakers that since soap is going to be washed off, it has genuinely no impact on your skin or your health, and passing laws to make ingredient disclosure and ingredient regulation unnecessary. They say your skin won’t absorb any toxicity from a wash-off product. That’s the official position.

How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s true in the real world of greasy hands and dirty children? I don’t. And I am not alone. I have talked to many people and heard many stories in the past 30 years of my awareness of this law style, and most people I have talked to with sensitivities say their allergies are indeed impacted by wash-off product ingredients.

Are you feeling confused? What’s wash-off soap got to do with the laundry heading we started with? Does it seem like we changed topics? Well, not really. You needed a brief peek into the laws of this industry called soap.

Those soap rules apply in your washing machine too. You see, that bottle of laundry detergent is under that same law and exempt from ingredient disclosure too. Yeah, it doesn’t directly go on your skin like a liquid hand soap, but does it impact your skin? Why do they sell “baby safe” and “sensitive skin” laundry soaps if it doesn’t matter? (because consumers said it matters)

Go read your favorite big name liquid laundry detergent brand’s ingredient label. Most read something like this: “water, ionic and non-ionic surfactants, color and fragrance”. They might add a vague bleaching or deodorizing agent type word too. What’s actually in it? Did you read the list and actually know? What exactly is an ionic and non-ionic surfactant? Well, a surfactant is something that releases dirt-like substances from your clothes. Ionic and non-ionic are describing the type, but the origin and type of chemical used is not typically disclosed (there are a lot of them that are known skin irritants and worse).

What about that lingering scent? Remember that “fresh up to 12 weeks” slogan, a name brand used on a set of commercials where the actors sniffed stored clothes and bragged about how “fresh” they still smelled weeks later? Trouble is, their definition of fresh is not fresh, but strongly fragranced. (some called it allergenic not fresh)

There’s a growing segment of the population with skin conditions that are persistently painful, yet unconquered with topical or oral drugs (with side effects that require another drug).

Could it be that the chemicals retained in the fabric to make it “brighter and fresher” are also being regularly rubbed onto the skin of the wearer, causing irritations? Evidence says a resounding YES! Yet it is still being defined as “freshness”. It’s not fresh!!! (It’s fragranced and chemicalized and creating a drug customer)

HOW CAN YOU MAKE A HEALTHIER CHOICE FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY?

HERE’S TWO OPTIONS - buy something truly natural OR make it yourself.

1. If you are a DIY kind of person:

there is a good variety of easy to make, washer safe, DIY recipes available online explaining a few different methods of hand crafted laundry cleaners. They use a variety of ingredients, but most have 1 main ingredient in common: grated up bar soap.

BE AWARE: Almost always, the recommended brand of bar soap a DIY recipe uses is the standard bar soap brand, “Fels Naptha”. It’s considered an old fashioned stain remover by many, and the label claims it’s “Grandma’s answer to laundry stains”. Trouble is, this is not your grandmother’s Fels Naptha soap! IF your grandma bought Fels Naptha, hers was not made by a profit motivated large corporation, and the bar in the store today does not have the same ingredients or the same process, and if you want truly natural you don’t want Fels Naptha.

READ MY OTHER LAUNDRY POST ON FELS NAPTHA’s LABEL

Instead of Fels Naptha’s questionable ingredients, please buy a truly natural bar soap made with natural healthy ingredients. Personally, I prefer to not have to grind that bar up with a difficult hand grater because I know that Pamper Me Naturally sells quality soap made from natural ingredients, ALREADY GROUND UP IN FINE BITS for a similar price to Fels Naptha and I am not voting for the big corp with my market dollars. (link below)

2. Buy A Truly Natural Laundry Cleaner

Support a brand who makes a product with the quality ingredients you want and without the greenwashing or skin irritations you don’t want.

You can find my favorite brand of Pamper Me Naturally Soap Shreds OR Ready To Use Pamper Me Naturally Laundry Powder: HERE

All natural items should have simple, easy to read ingredients.

What’s actually in it? Can you read the list and actually know? Do fall into the greenwashing trap.

All natural soap shreds available for a price that’s very comparable to buying Fels Naptha and there’s no talc, no preservatives, no animal fat, and no nonsense in it. Check out Pamper Me Naturally and read the PMN Promise, it’s a long list of ingredient NOs. And you don’t have to grate it up either!

Save time, save the stress of concern of ingredients, and for a similar cost!

You can find my favorite brand of Pamper Me Naturally Soap Shreds OR Ready To Use Pamper Me Naturally Laundry Powder: HERE

Whatever you do, PLEASE read the labels! And avoid the stuff you can’t read!

Thank you for coming to my chat!

And that my friend, is a few words more than our “5 minute chat time”.

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to,

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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“How Can I Help?” “How Can I Help?” “How Can I Help?” “How Can I Serve?” Is a prayer for every morning, every task, and every encounter involving people that can change your life in amazing ways you never dreamed possible!

Ready to Try It? Let’s Chat!

“How Can I Help?” “How Can I Serve?” It’s a motto promoted by teachers in leadership books and seminars and in the most effective trauma recovery rooms. If it were a standard motto taught in classrooms of learning, I believe our culture would be more emotionally and culturally advanced.

Life is a learning experience for the soul is a phrase I have often repeated while raising my kids. It encourages learning and acceptance of the difficulties in the learning process. In the past several years as I have worked at putting the phrase “purposeful living” into practice and started truly evaluating my actions to be in acceptance of life on life’s terms, I have found that the more I apply those 4 phrases, I have more peace in the journey.

1. “How Can I Help?”

2. Life is a learning experience for the soul

3. “purposeful living”

4. life on life’s terms

Life’s journey is always unpredictable and even carefully made plans don’t always turn out as expected. However, it is a joy to watch “peace” and it’s counterpart “freedom” walk together on the journey, when the acceptance of “life as it is, not as we expected it to be” becomes a real and daily “life on life’s terms” motto.

Just like “love isn’t love til you give it away”, so also happiness and peace are not truly present until life has purpose beyond oneself, and service becomes joy instead of effort, and acceptance of “what is” becomes peace instead of grief for “what was expected” to be.

They say change starts with just one soul dancing alone (as the viral challenge so vividly displayed). Since the “tipping point” of crowd acceptance is considered to be a percentage of only 5% to 15%, your voice and your actions really can make a significant difference if it only takes 5 people out af a crowd of 100 to get a crowd to change! Something to remember!

In my own life, the “How Can I Help” motto has taken my life journey into many interesting, inspirational, and learning experiences.

As I continue in my journey of recovery from the trauma, and more importantly the the grief of having expectations of life, of people, and of circumstances, that turned out to be not as expected and not as intended, but definitely learning experiences for the soul, I find that choosing those opportunities for the purposeful living creates the healthy, happy, and free life we started the tagline of this chat with.

HOW CAN I HELP?

Let’s make this personal and into an opportunity for a win/win situation.

Because that’s exactly what those teachers in leadership and recovery tell us is where peace lives - in the win/win encounters.

What’s win/win? It’s any type of exchange or communication or encounter where everyone involved feels like they benefitted the most from their participation. It’s a “red paperclip deal” and a “TEAM” effort (Together Everyone Acheives More).

Maybe YOU are one of those people who can participate with me today.

I started this blog with intent to share knowledge of

1. wild and cultivated herbs/weeds

2. natural and alternative wellness

3. my aromatherapy passion/training/experiences

4. natural farming adventures

5. experiences/training in trauma recovery & life coaching

6. perspectives from leadership and motivational training

7. details about favorite books on these topics, and the

8. morals and values found along the way of discovering God thru my own understandings instead of thru the lense of hurts from religious doctrine.

If you enjoy any of these topics and would like to learn more and chat more….please do me the favor of creating yourself a free email subscription and choosing the topics/newsletters you have interest in so we can communicate via your email instead of that hope of our paths crossing via algorithms on a social media platform.

In my quest for finding purposeful service and a purposeful life well lived with the irreplaceable time I am alotted on this spinning rock we call Earth,

I am also intentionally asking for you to vote with your wallet to show me if this is an effort that I should devote more time towards.

I can use it simply as a free occasional communication to email, and I do indeed intend to do that,

but IF it’s WORTH YOU VOTE OF SUPPORT … I would like to be able to spend time to convert my large stockpile of notes, articles, class books, and other educational information on the above mentioned topics into articles posted on this website for subscribers to benefit from.

In keeping with the Chat With Suzy promise, this chat post is rated for a less then 5 minute read. So ….

Thank you for enjoying our chat today! Be sure you leave me your email, and select the newsletters boxes you prefer, so you can get the next round of chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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You can pre-order your copy and get an extra bonus reward gift for your enthusiasm!

Pre-order HERE

Get that Skin Salve HERE

Well in keeping with our 5 Minute Chat Promise,

that’s a wrap for our chat for today, if you have a few minutes more, go check out our other chats and topics.

Here’s a quick link for them both again Health Chats and Book Chats.

Be sure you leave me your email, and select the Plant News box, so you can get the next round of herb chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

Chat With Suzy is reader-supported

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• Keep me in your inbox! Make Chat With Suzy a priority sender. Hit the star on the email. Move the email to your inbox if it’s not there. Hit reply and send us a greeting it will help your server know value my emails!

Many people I have talked with don’t know the plant names, or they only know a nickname, but they know it’s a weed because it’s not what they planted!

What if were given those plants as a GIFT from God, the Earth or Mother Nature (however you prefer to describe who/how/why). What if those plants you are frustrated with and working up a sweat to remove - are actually a BLESSED GIFT and you are busy throwing it away?

Let Me Help You! Let’s Chat about it for 5 minutes!

Plants that herbalists have written about in books thru history calling them “treasured remedies”, have become weeds to today’s gen who are totally unaware that these plants are beneficial or even a hidden miracle that’s “better than a drug” and instead they are getting called a “despised weed” and yanked from the earth!

We have lost our connection with the earth and the natural remedies we were created to have around us. As wonderful as science and chemistry and advanced medicine can be at times of trauma and crisis, we want to add it to our knowledge, not trade it for what we have already learned thru the ages of time and history and blessed discoveries. Let Me Show You….

This is the cover of my soon to be released book. Coming in 2026 You can pre-order your copy and get a bonus reward gift for your enthusiasm. Pre-order below.

My Kid Crew and I, (they are actually not minors anymore, but they’re still my kids and they did help with this project as kids), we have been working on formatting the hundreds (OK I’ll admit, it’s thousands) of pictures we have taken over the years of common plants growing in the “wild places” and the yards and gardens too. Plants that many call “weeds” or “just flowers” that actually have edible and/or medicinal value.

We have taught many “eat the weeds” classes in the past 25+ years (starting before 2000). They originally were walks thru fields and yards with a small group to ID common edible plants and medicinal plants pre-Y2K. Back then, we just printed simple handouts of names to help with remembering.

In 2010 the first blog was started to go with a large homeschool group event. And since then, we have tried to help you meet the herbs regularly, especially in the spring, and taken loads of pictures along the way.

NOW ~ with a very large amount of pics, we have sorted the files, tagged pics, and tried to narrow the plant list down to 50 and 30 to keep it easy to learn, easy to find, and the most wanted.

This photo sorting project started as a response to repeating questions about plant id apps. “which one should I use?” and “which one is accurate?”. So we started testing them on walks. And well, some of you guessed it, AI and even apps with computer generated and search engine generated answers, were “sometimes correct” or even “often correct” but never totally correct. And since we want these herbs for edible or medicinal uses and to teach our kids….. “mostly” just isn’t quite what we had in mind. It only takes ONE trip to the ER to pay for a whole bookshelf of vetted accurate book information. But in our photo heavy tech world, many books still have only 1 or 2 pics or drawings or not enough detail or not all of the stages of the plant….

SO we decided to take our photo stash and create a 3 option solution for you!

#1 INFO Turning Weeds Into Herbs Mini Book for the Walk.

If you just want a short list of the common weeds and a few pics is enough, we have a class handout that has our top 30 hidden herbs with at least 4 pictures of each herb, plant details, and the basic harvesting practices you need to know. With 30 herbs, it’s not exactly short, but it’s short enough to typically get thru the list during a walk and talk class. And it’s cheap enough to be an easy choice to JUST GRAB IT.

#2 BOOK Turning Weeds Into Herbs the Big Book of Pictures

If you want a more comprehensive list of the top 50 most common plants we’ve seen in the fields, yards, and gardens. This book has double the number of pictures per plant and almost double the number of plants, and a more comprehensive list of plant details and harvesting practices vs “#1 INFO for the Walk” described above. This is the typical “I WANT THAT” when shown off at a class.

#3 SET Are These Herbs in My Yard?

If you want a serious info dump level of information, this is it!!

This is a Digital Set of our 5 associated books about herbs including:

• BOOK Turning Weeds Into Herbs the Big Book of Pictures (#2 above)

• BOOK Herbs for Healing at Home

• BOOK The Salve Maker’s Guide

• INFO Harvesting & Medicinal Preparation of Wild Herbs Mini Book

• INFO Why You Want These Herbs in Your Kitchen

• PLUS ……

• THE BIG MOTHER LODE of PHOTOS Access Link. You get access to a massive folder of our herb photos taken in the past 20+ years. This is NOT resell or MRR or publication rights to them, it is digital viewing rights. On your computer or your phone, on your walks, in your garden, wherever you are you can look at a stackof photos for our list of herbs that grow wild. This will help you positively identify the plants you are looking at with multiple versions of a plant in a variety of locations and ages and stages. We have not seen this available anywhere! We do not claim to have pics of all the common edible or medicinal herbs you’ll see in the wild, we simply claim to have a lot of pictures of various stages of many of the commonly misunderstood plants that grow wild just waiting for you to find them volunteering to feed or heal you.

• AND A Coupon for a FREE with Order, Standard Size Jar of our favorite Skin Solutions Skin Salve that we harvest for and is made by Pamper Me Naturally.

You can pre-order your copy and get an extra bonus reward gift for your enthusiasm!

Pre-order HERE

Get that Skin Salve HERE

Well in keeping with our 5 Minute Chat Promise,

that’s a wrap for our chat for today, if you have a few minutes more, go check out our other chats and topics.

Here’s a quick link for them both again Health Chats and Book Chats.

Be sure you leave me your email, and select the Plant News box, so you can get the next round of herb chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

Chat With Suzy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Please remember these important buttons!

1. Hit this Share button to share this post with a friend.

   Share

1. Please get your free subscription so you will get an email of the next chat, and while you are there, please consider supporting my writing habit with a paid subscription.

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• Keep me in your inbox! Make Chat With Suzy a priority sender. Hit the star on the email. Move the email to your inbox if it’s not there. Hit reply and send us a greeting it will help your server know value my emails!

In our 2026 American culture where “the store” is the common answer to the question of where your food comes from…..what if we start asking different questions?

I like to promote, encourage, and help empower you to take back your health.

Part of that means a change in the way we think and the questions we ask.

It means being responsible for our own health choices.

Part of that is knowing where your food comes from and how it’s raised.

Taking back your health is a lost art in my generation, but it’s coming back. If you’d like to know more about how to do that and what questions to ask …..join me for today’s chat on the Health tab over HERE.

Back to the pasture!

Why should you want to know? Because there are significant benefits to eating food with more nutrition than the average factory raised American food.

Yes, there has been a LOT of research done on that and the evidence is astounding on the levels of disease prevention that can happen simply by eating nutrient-dense real food.

What’s “real food” and how’s it “nutrient dense”? It’s when you raise plants, herbs, vegetables, fruits, and animal feeds in composted soil, that’s been organically tended, chemical free, and grown in a multi-variety vegetation farming style like the permaculture and sustainability practice promoters have proven makes nutrient density products. It’s animal farming using practices that promote stress-free living for animals who can eat that nutrient-dense pasture filled with a variety of plants and herbs that keep them healthier and more productive.

If you’d like to know more about that research and how to make healthier plants and animals …..join me on the PLANTS tab and the BOOKS tab of this website.

Again, Back to the pasture.

Todays pictures are of sheep on the hillside. The lead pic is late fall when the grass is low and the trees are in full autumn color and it’s time to breed or harvest meat.

The pics below are taken early spring in March of 2026 as the new lambs are being born. These are some birthday pics! (birth - day)

IF YOU are interested in some lamb or sheep meat that’s been raised like I described above, we are taking deposit reservations RIGHT NOW for a limited amount of animals that will be harvested this fall. Lamb is under a year old, and Sheep is over a year old in the definitions. Some people prefer the smaller sized tender meat of the lambs. There is less meat and the bone to meat ratio is higher and the fat content is lower. The sheep meat is still quite tender, with more meat and more fat. Some people prefer the fat for flavor or for use as tallow to make additional products.

If you want to make a deposit in March for a lamb or sheep to be received in the fall,

please contact me directly at: ChatWithSuzy@gmail.com

Make a Deposit ASAP contact me directly at ChatWithSuzy@gmail.com

Well that’s a short chat for today, if you have a few minutes more, go check out those other links.

Here’s a quick link for them both again Health Chats and Book Chats.

Thank you for enjoying our farm photos today! Be sure you leave me your email, and select the Farm News box, so you can get the next round of cute animal pics and farm chats!

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to…

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

Share

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There is chatter going around again on some social media apps about lavender essential oil being bad for boys and/or men in general and/or being a hormone disruptor or making boys/men feminine.

Please let me give you a little bit of insight before you go avoiding lavender for healing that rash.

This type of negative publicity, bolstered by vague claims or poorly done science, is the way that herbs/plants which were previously well-loved and historically highly acclaimed with loads of empirical records, have been discredited or gone out of favor by those who don't have extensive understanding of plants and instead choose to rely on profit motivated “science” funded by drug companies .

There are people in this world who would rather use synthetic chemicals and profit-making drugs than natural plants that anyone can grow. When you remember this it will cause you to pause and look for real facts stated by people without money manipulators controlling them.

This particular piece of urban legend has been around for nearly 20 years and is still spreading. Pasted below is a well-documented 2013 article by Robert Tisserand, a highly esteemed author of aromatherapy and essential oil books and textbooks including safety reviews.

Please remember that plants are typically going to be safer for you than man-made chemicals and synthetic drugs and synthetic fragrances. When you find articles that are being promoted by government agencies or drug sponsored organizations, please remember that it's these same agencies that gave us Roundup and approved nicotine for pregnancy and approved DDT, Talc, and Agent Orange, and a long list of drugs that have since been recalled after and only after many many people died.

Here’s the article in italics:

Lavender oil is not estrogenic

by Robert Tisserand | Feb 7, 2013 | Myth-busting, Safety | 15 comments

Lavender oil does not mimic estrogen nor does it enhance the body’s own estrogens. It is therefore not a ‘hormone disruptor’, cannot cause breast growth in young boys (or girls of any age), and is safe to use by anyone at risk for estrogen-dependent cancer. The lack of estrogenic action is the conclusion of a new report, which used a novel form of ‘uterotrophic’ assay.

This measures the effect of a test substance on the uterus of immature or estrogen-deprived female rats over three days. Any estrogenic action causes a rapid and measurable increase in uterine weight. The assay has been in use since the 1930s, was adopted by the OECD in 2007, and is now regarded as the “benchmark animal assay for estrogenic effects” (Politano 2013).

A 2007 report by Henley et al found that both lavender and tea tree oils had a weak in vitro estrogenic action. Lavender was suggested as the cause of three cases of prepubertal gynecomastia (breast growth) in boys, and tea tree was suggested in one case. The report was subsequently criticized on a number of grounds. For example it was pointed out that there was no evidence of either essential oil causing the gynecomastia in any of the four cases, and that in vitro estrogenic findings frequently do not extrapolate to a similar action in warm bodies (see Rebuttals, below).

Since 2007 there have been many warnings about lavender and tea tree oils that relate back to this study. Others, including myself, have suggested that such cautions are unnecessary and premature. The new research, in which considerable quantities of lavender oil were used, found that there was no increase in uterine weight, and so no estrogenic action.

The novel aspect of the uterotrophic assay was that the test substance – lavender oil – was applied to the skin, while the most common method is subcutaneous injection. This was changed in order to mimic the circumstances of the Henley et al 2007 case reports, and it also mimics the use of lavender oil in fragrances and personal care products. Lavender oil was used in two concentrations, 4% and 20% in corn oil. According to Politano et al 2013, these concentrations are respectively more than 6,000 and 30,000 times greater than a conservative estimate of human skin exposure from multiple cosmetic products containing lavender oil. They are also 5,000 and 1,000,000 times greater than the estimated exposure to lavender oil experienced by the Henley et al boys.

These calculations may seem exaggerated, but the massive differences are because in the uterotrophic assay, the lavender oil was applied in Hilltop Chambers patches, which do not allow any evaporation, or loss of essential oil by means other than dermal absorption. Examples of the quantities of fragrant substance absorbed from personal care products are shown below. The amount of fragrance absorbed from a shampoo, for instance, is 200 times less than the amount applied to the head. If amounts of dermally-absorbed lavender oil that are at least 5,000 times greater than any normal human exposure are not estrogenic, then we can be confident that this particular safety issue is not a concern.

Data from Cadby et al 2002

Safety in pregnancy is a broader question than hormonal action alone, since affects on the fetus, or even miscarriage, are theoretically possible with any substance. The question of uterine stimulation and miscarriage was thoroughly investigated here, and there is clearly no risk. As for fetal effects we know that linalool, a major constituent of lavender oil, is not fetotoxic to pregnant rats at an oral dose 1 g/kg/day for 16 days (equivalent to a human oral dose of 60 g, or 2 oz per day, and a total dose of 32 oz). The chances of lavender oil being fetotoxic in the amounts used in personal care products are negligible, considering the small amounts both applied to, and subsequently absorbed by human skin (Cadby et al 2002).

The new research findings represent a major development in our knowledge of lavender oil safety, since the possibility of estrogenic action now looks remote. While no single test should be taken as absolutely conclusive, we can expect the volume of noise about lavender being estrogenic to diminish considerably.

Rebuttals
Dean CJ 2007 Prepubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils. New England Journal of Medicine 356:2543-2544

Kalyan S 2007 Prepubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils. New England Journal of Medicine 356:2542-2544

Kemper KJ, Romm AJ, Gardiner P 2007 Prepubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils. New England Journal of Medicine 356:2541-2542

Kurtz JL 2007 Prepubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils. New England Journal of Medicine 356:2542-2543

Lawrence BM 2007 Estrogenic activity in lavender and tea tree oils: Part I. Perfumer & Flavorist 32:20-25

Lawrence BM 2007 Estrogenic activity in lavender and tea tree oils: Part II. Perfumer Flavorist 32:14-20

Tisserand R Tea tree and lavender not linked to gynecomastia

Other references
Cadby P A, Troy W R, Vey M G 2002 Consumer exposure to fragrance ingredients: providing estimates for safety evaluation. Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology 36: 246-252

Henley DV, Lipson N, Korach KS, Bloch CA 2007 Prebubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils. New England Journal of Medicine 365(5): 479-485

Politano VT, Lewis EM, Hoberman AM et al 2008 Evaluation of the developmental toxicity of linalool in rats. International Journal of Toxicology 27:183-188

Politano VT, McGinty D, Lewis EM et al 2013 Uterotrophic assay of percutaneous lavender oil in immature female rats. International Journal of Toxicology

https://roberttisserand.com/2013/02/lavender-oil-is-not-estrogenic/

Thank Robert Tisserand!

Want more info? Try this article too:

https://salvatorebattaglia.com.au/blog/10-lavender-and-tea-tree-oils-are-not-oestrogenic

Please go forth and Boldly Enjoy the multitude of healthy benefits that truly natural Lavender plants provide to the human race.

There is another list on my Link Tree Page Find it at ChatWithSuzyBookList

https://amzn.to/4aAfkvL 

Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It

M.D. David Brownstein 

https://amzn.to/3RInzx0 

The Prostate Cancer Miracle

Ewan M Cameron

https://amzn.to/3S0vtDE 

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Revised and Expanded): The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems

Daniel G. Amen M.D.

https://amzn.to/48ffUxx 

Healing with DMSO: The Complete Guide to Safe and Natural Treatments for Managing Pain, Inflammation, and Other Chronic Ailments with Dimethyl Sulfoxide

Amandha Dawn Vollmer

https://amzn.to/3NJeOBK 

The Iodine Crisis: What You Don't Know About Iodine Can Wreck Your Life

Lynne Farrow 

https://amzn.to/3RGy3wV 

Nature's Mold Rx, the Non-Toxic Solution to Toxic Mold

Edward R Close, PhD

and Jacquelyn Close, RA

Chicory (Cichorium intybus)

Type: Perennial
Parts: Leaves and Roots are both considered edible and medicinal

Thank You for stopping by Chat With Suzy! This is a reader-supported publication. This article is prepared for our valued supporters who make this site possible. Membership allows us to more freely share our opinions with our readers.

This site offers public posts and member educational information. To read complete articles, receive new post alerts to your email, and to support this work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Read more

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Type: Annual

Parts: Leaves, stems, flowers are considered edible and medicinal

FOR ALL THE DETAILS - Please Subscribe so we can openly chat!

Thank You for stopping by Chat With Suzy! This is a reader-supported publication. This article is prepared for our valued supporters who make this site possible. Membership allows us to more freely share our opinions with our readers.

This site offers public posts and member educational information. To read complete articles, receive new post alerts to your email, and to support this work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also find us on social media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Linktree.

Our Herb Series - “Turning Cursed Weeds into Treasured Herbs” is a work in progress. We have over 50 plants in our study and will be posting, updating, expanding, and sharing more photos of our Treasured Herbs in the coming days. Please come back for another Chat with Suzy soon!

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Jewelweed
Impatiens capensis
Parts: Stem, leaves, seeds
A virtual panacea for skin irritation. Jewelweed contains an anti-inflammatory and fungicide that’s an active ingredient of “Preparation H”. It works to prevent poison ivy rash if applied right away. It relieves bee and wasp stings as well as stinging nettle stings. Good for warts, bruises, and fungal skin infections such as athlete’s foot and ringworm. Helpful for minor burns, cuts, eczema, acne, sores and any skin irritations.
When working outside, this is the first herb I look for after accidentally touching a stinging nettle or other similarly irritating plant. It also works well on insect bites too. You can make a jewelweed remedy for poison ivy or insect stings by following the salve directions below or make a tea by harvesting the plant from the ground up. Chop up the whole plant including the stem at the base of the plant that may have a reddish tint. Put your chopped plant into boiling water (roughly 1pint water per oz of plant) and boil until the water is reduced by half. Strain the plant parts out of the tea water. Squeezing them tightly to remove all of the tea. Then use the water as your remedy. This can be stored if frozen. Try using ice cube trays for a nice pre-measured amount.

Very young Jewelweed.  Early May in Michigan

Jewelweed in bloom

Dried Jewelweed that was harvest in bloom

Jewelweed leaves

Jewelweed in Bloom

Jewelweed in bloom

Jewelweed

Horsetail Grass
Shave Grass
Equisetum arvense
Type: Perennial
Part: Whole plant

Horsetail has several stages in it's growth cycle.  It starts as a brown stalk and grows "hair-like" leaves that are segmented.  when the leaves are long enough to become heavy, the segments separate and fall and the plant becomes difficult for the novice forager to locate.  Best picked when the leaves are 1 to 3 inches long, before they start to separate by segments.

Use: Horsetail, also known as Shavegrass, is commonly thought of as the "hair, skin & nails herb".

It is mild in flavor, but somewhat fibrous. This makes it a bit tougher to chew for a salad green. It's a little softer than rosemary herb.  It makes a fair pick for those who want to chew on a plant instead of a toothpick while on a walk.

Horsetail makes an excellent tea herb.  It tastes best when paired with a more flavorful companion like mint or stinging nettle.  

Horsetail is strongly astringent and is therefore used for both internal and external wounds. 

It kills eggs of parasites and dissolves tumors. Studies have shown that fractured bones will heal much faster when horsetail is taken. 

Silica, found in horsetail is helpful in aiding circulation and assimilation of calcium in the body. It is commonly sold in health food stores for strengthening and improving fingernails, skin and hair.

When I was a young wife and mother, I wanted to make good, healthy, natural choices for my family and my home. The more I searched, the more I became aware that the laws for “wash-off products” like soap, were not even close to what I thought they were! I bet they are not what you think they are either.

Shall We Do Some MYTH BUSTING?

The customer is NOT always a priority. The soap industry is stockholder profit based, and it has a strong ability to influence politics and lawmakers. The soap and skincare product laws have been written primarily to accommodate their lobbying and their marketing style for the benefit of profits, shareholders, and boardrooms. Protection of your health concerns is secondary at best! Class action style lawsuits have repeatedly proven that. If the laws were primarily written to protect your interests - class action lawsuits would be unusual, but instead, we have social media filled with lawyer commercials looking for the injured by the latest class action lawsuit defendent. ( it’s talc currently)

The FDA does not require ingredient labeling for soap. If your favorite smelling, clean sounding, skincare products meet the FDA's definition of “wash-off”, it is exempt from the provisions of the FD&C Act, making any ingredient disclosure totally voluntary. That also means that partial disclosure is also legally valid so long as they say it “right” legally. The profit-motivated, big corporation dominated, soap industry has lobbied to convince lawmakers that since soap is going to be washed off, it has genuinely no impact on your skin or your health, and passing laws to make ingredient disclosure and ingredient regulation unnecessary. They say your skin won’t absorb any toxicity from a wash-off product. That’s the official position.

How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s true in the real world of greasy hands and dirty children? I don’t. And I am not alone. I have talked to many people and heard many stories in the past 30 years of my awareness of this law style, and most people I have talked to with sensitivities say their allergies are indeed impacted by wash-off product ingredients.

Are you feeling confused? What’s wash-off soap got to do with the laundry heading we started with? Does it seem like we changed topics? Well, not really. You needed a brief peek into the laws of this industry called soap.

Those soap rules apply in your washing machine too. You see, that bottle of laundry detergent is under that same law and exempt from ingredient disclosure too. Yeah, it doesn’t directly go on your skin like a liquid hand soap, but does it impact your skin? Why do they sell “baby safe” and “sensitive skin” laundry soaps if it doesn’t matter? (because consumers said it matters)

Go read your favorite big name liquid laundry detergent brand’s ingredient label. Most read something like this: “water, ionic and non-ionic surfactants, color and fragrance”. They might add a vague bleaching or deodorizing agent type word too. What’s actually in it? Did you read the list and actually know? What exactly is an ionic and non-ionic surfactant? Well, a surfactant is something that releases dirt-like substances from your clothes. Ionic and non-ionic are describing the type, but the origin and type of chemical used is not typically disclosed (there are a lot of them that are known skin irritants and worse).

What about that lingering scent? Remember that “fresh up to 12 weeks” slogan, a name brand used on a set of commercials where the actors sniffed stored clothes and bragged about how “fresh” they still smelled weeks later? Trouble is, their definition of fresh is not fresh, but strongly fragranced. (some called it allergenic not fresh)

There’s a growing segment of the population with skin conditions that are persistently painful, yet unconquered with topical or oral drugs (with side effects that require another drug).

Could it be that the chemicals retained in the fabric to make it “brighter and fresher” are also being regularly rubbed onto the skin of the wearer, causing irritations? Evidence says a resounding YES! Yet it is still being defined as “freshness”. It’s not fresh!!! (It’s fragranced and chemicalized and creating a drug customer)

HOW CAN YOU MAKE A HEALTHIER CHOICE FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY?

HERE’S TWO OPTIONS - buy something truly natural OR make it yourself.

1. If you are a DIY kind of person:

there is a good variety of easy to make, washer safe, DIY recipes available online explaining a few different methods of hand crafted laundry cleaners. They use a variety of ingredients, but most have 1 main ingredient in common: grated up bar soap.

BE AWARE: Almost always, the recommended brand of bar soap a DIY recipe uses is the standard bar soap brand, “Fels Naptha”. It’s considered an old fashioned stain remover by many, and the label claims it’s “Grandma’s answer to laundry stains”. Trouble is, this is not your grandmother’s Fels Naptha soap! IF your grandma bought Fels Naptha, hers was not made by a profit motivated large corporation, and the bar in the store today does not have the same ingredients or the same process, and if you want truly natural you don’t want Fels Naptha.

READ MY OTHER LAUNDRY POST ON FELS NAPTHA’s LABEL

Instead of Fels Naptha’s questionable ingredients, please buy a truly natural bar soap made with natural healthy ingredients. Personally, I prefer to not have to grind that bar up with a difficult hand grater because I know that Pamper Me Naturally sells quality soap made from natural ingredients, ALREADY GROUND UP IN FINE BITS for a similar price to Fels Naptha and I am not voting for the big corp with my market dollars. (link below)

2. Buy A Truly Natural Laundry Cleaner

Support a brand who makes a product with the quality ingredients you want and without the greenwashing or skin irritations you don’t want.

You can find my favorite brand of Pamper Me Naturally Soap Shreds OR Ready To Use Pamper Me Naturally Laundry Powder: HERE

All natural items should have simple, easy to read ingredients.

What’s actually in it? Can you read the list and actually know? Do fall into the greenwashing trap.

All natural soap shreds available for a price that’s very comparable to buying Fels Naptha and there’s no talc, no preservatives, no animal fat, and no nonsense in it. Check out Pamper Me Naturally and read the PMN Promise, it’s a long list of ingredient NOs. And you don’t have to grate it up either!

Save time, save the stress of concern of ingredients, and for a similar cost!

You can find my favorite brand of Pamper Me Naturally Soap Shreds OR Ready To Use Pamper Me Naturally Laundry Powder: HERE

Whatever you do, PLEASE read the labels! And avoid the stuff you can’t read!

Thank you for coming to my chat!

And that my friend, is a few words more than our “5 minute chat time”.

So I will bid you adieu for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to,

Come Back Soon!

As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Suzy

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Views expressed are those of the author and not legal or medical advice.

These are two common ways I tend to greet friends old and new. I hope you will identify as one or the other! There are many things I passionately love to talk about. I have tried to separate them on this blog into tabbed categories to help you easily navigate my chats and find the ones that interest or help you the most.

Anyone who knows very much at all about me knows I have a long standing passion for aromatherapy, natural skin care, herbs, natural medicine, natural health and general chemical-free living and I enjoy encouraging you to DIY projects on these subjects. Those topics are super easy for me to chat enthusiastically about, anytime, anywhere, for as long as you are interested.

Ask my kids and they’ll quickly tell you that I can easily and completely get caught up talking with any adult into what when they were little they called a “talk-trap”. The other tabs here (aka categories or newsletters on this blog) are intended to become filled with posts generally dedicated to those topics.

This tab is intended to be a place to share my thoughts in a more general and candid way. My life has so far, contained a large variety of experiences on a wide range of topics. I will try to share a window into some of those areas and add in here the stuff that doesn’t fit in the other tabs.

For those who don’t yet know me well, let me introduce myself a bit.

I was born in a good sized mid-west city as the firstborn to my mom (a public school teacher) and the second born to my dad (a journeyman carpenter). His firstborn didn’t live with us and so I was raised as a firstborn in most respects (for those who follow traits of birth-order). We lived in a lower middle class inner-city house until I was 5 years old, when they decided they didn’t want to raise children in the city. They bought a rundown, non-functioning, 36 acre farmstead that was rural enough to farm, but close enough to continue to commute to his work in the city for awhile yet. It was all they could afford and they worked hard to finance it. They had big dreams of restoring it, and turning it into a thriving, functioning dairy farm full of children both biological and foster/adopted. But dreams don’t always come true the way we expect.

Back up a 4 years….. I was 11 months old, my mom was 5 months pregnant for her second child, and only 2 weeks away from her 2nd wedding anniversary, when their world of dreams had it’s first big fork in the road. My dad frequently rode a motorcycle as his work transportation. On his way home, one Tuesday afternoon, he was going full speed thru an intersection under a green light when a car driver, not noticing the motorcycle, turned left in front of him. His motorcycle collided with the car and he flew 30 feet thru the air and landed on his helmet. The helmet was severely cracked, but my dad’s head was not. Had it not been for that helmet, he would have been doa on the pavement. He was ambulanced off to the hospital in a coma and it took over a week before he was alert and longer before he could remember anything.

It took the next several years and several surgeries for him to recover almost full function in his arms and legs from that accident. However, the brain trauma would change his life and last a lifetime. Brain injuries in the 70s were not well understood and his went mostly ignored once the initial swelling was gone. Now it’s called Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and the lasting impacts and character changes are better known but still not fully understood. The impacts to his character and psyche were rarely discussed. Having no memory of him before the accident, I only knew the man who coped with an undiagnosed, untreated, unmedicated TBI. The term manic depression was not in my childhood vocabulary, but looking back now, I believe that definition fits well.

The trauma incurred when a spouse has a severe and life threatening injury is quite significant and should be more acknowledged and assisted as it’s own level of injury. In the 70s, it was ignored. Remember those were the years when a woman had to have a man’s co-signature to even open a bank account. Women were still considered “the Mrs” to the Mr and not so much an individual on her own. Consider the significant emotional difficulty in coping with a 1 year old, while 5 to 6 months pregnant, and holding down a full time public middle school teaching position, with a husband in a coma and unknown future function abilities, a mortgaged house and car, and in an era when single parenting was far from an accepted norm. Her plate was full. She ended up quitting her teaching position after the baby was born, and they lived on a tightly budgeted disability income while he recovered from arm and leg surgeries.

Now go back forward 4 years to buying that farm with those big dreams of leaving the city and becoming farming foster parents. The rundown farm was chosen because it fit the budget and allowed them to move. He was a carpenter and had hopes of living soon with less work hours and more farming hours to do all the restoration it needed. The next 5 years were spent doing the most basic restorations of the house to living status, including a full kitchen tear-out and redo, all floors tear-out and redo, and some structural shoring and beam restoration. Plus a pole barn shell. Along the way, they acquired several head of cattle, a few goats, a couple dogs, and a variety of rabbits, chickens, and cats. There are many entertaining stories that can be told of how the city raised dreamers navigated the run down farm and acquired a hodge-podged barn of critters. But the dreamers felt like their dream was being restored and reframed!

Until one day, the doctor called back with test results. My mom had had a mammogram. She had a breast spot she thought felt different. A mammogram was supposed to bring peace of mind. Instead it brought a phone call with a request for a biopsy. An outpatient biopsy became an inpatient surgery. And in the space of less than a month, she went from thinking “this spot might feel a little odd” to a complete mastectomy and a terminal stage 4 diagnosis with immediate chemotherapy. Again, life would never be the same. There are many stories that can be told here about how life with cancer changed us all. The retired public school teacher who was dreaming of helping struggling foster kids, now had to teach her own children to be able to be adults before chronology said they were. The Dr. told dad she had 3 months maybe. Her goal said there was 9 years to go before her youngest would be 18, and she wanted to be there or make sure we were at least prepared! And that is when our home education journey started. At a time when most people had no idea what the word homeschool meant and they thought it weird or bad and were negative instead of the positive responses our culture and even the colleges have now. Another story topic.

Oh God! Forgive me when I whine, I am blessed indeed, the world is mine. With feet to take me where I’d go, with eyes to see the sunset’s glow, with ears to hear what I should know. Oh, God, forgive me when I whine, I’m blessed indeed, the world is mine. That’s the repeated moral refrain from a longer story poem that I memorized and recited as a participant on the Children’s Bible Hour (a radio program for kids that ran from the 40’s to the 90s I believe). Yes, that’s another part of my story. An about 12 year service time in a traveling performing children’s group with a weekly broadcast on several hundred radio stations in the USA and translated into several languages for world wide distribution via missionary ministries. My mom believed that poem’s message and she lived it daily. She defeated that Dr’s sentence and accomplished her 9 year goal. Although it was a difficult road especially the last year. In that 9 years she endured several major surgeries, 3 rounds of difficult chemotherapy, some painful radiation, and an assortment of drugs to help quell the toxic effects of it all. She used as much natural health options as she could find (which was far less than we have now with the www at our fingertips), and her stubbornly optimistic goals.

Today I know that stress and illness go hand in hand and that illness often follows emotional traumas. I also know that mental attitude is way more important than we are typically taught. Oh, there are many other stories I could tell about how things work together to create the path we travel. And how the choices our ancestors made shape our paths more often than we realize. I’ve learned to seek answers. My shelves are full of books on many subjects related to the things mentioned here. I’ll share some with you as the posts here unfold.

I went on as an adult, to create my own life full of it’s own challenges and stories that have shaped me into the passionately chatting person I am today. I will attempt to relay many more life lessons wrapped in stories here, because as the header for this tab describes:

“Life is a learning experience. Sadly, we don't have enough time to learn it all first hand. It's better to collect and contemplate as much info as we can to make the most of the time we have! After all, time IS your most valuable and only irreplaceable asset. Come sit, chat, share, collect, & enjoy!”

And that my friend, is a few words more than our “5 minute chat time”.

So I will bid you ado for this round of tea, with a virtual hug, I will ask you to,

Come Back Soon! As Always, Thanks for taking the time to read!

Suzy

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Click here to buy this book in Hardcover

Buy this book in Paperback Edition

When The Body Says No

Available in Paperback, Hardcover, Kindle & Audible

I will start with a quote from the publisher, taken from an amazon listing:

• In this accessible and groundbreaking book - filled with the moving stories of real people medical doctor and best-selling author Gabor Maté shows that emotion and psychological stress play a powerful role in the onset of chronic illness, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis and many others, even Alzheimer's disease.

• When the Body Says No is an impressive contribution to research on the physiological connection between life's stresses and emotions and the body systems governing nerves, immune apparatus, and hormones. With great compassion and erudition, Gabor Maté demystifies medical science and, as he did in Scattered Minds, invites us all to be our own health advocates.

I found this book to be an encouraging and insightful read! It combines research reports, patient testimonials and the author’s experiences into an explanation of how the emotional and relationship experiences in our lives create causative connections to many diseases, especially those that are typically considered genetic, hard to diagnose, or auto-immune.

I have pondered for a long time the interesting connections that difficult situations appear to have in the lives of those with such disease diagnoses. I have seen it in my life, my relatives, and in many people I have counseled with over the years. This book validates with research studies, those connections as not mere coincidences or simple correlations, but real contributors to causations.

If you struggle with stress.

If there’s any type of major illness in your family history.

If you wish you understood aches, pains, headaches, erratic symptoms, and chronic illness better, especially when doctors are telling you there’s no connection or “it’s all in your head”, Please READ THIS BOOK.

There are 2 versions available a hardcover version and a paperback version. Each has a different cover but the contents seem to be exactly the same. The kindle and audible versions show the newer cover design. I listened to the audible version first. After a first time thru, I knew that I needed to listen to it again to catch more of the deeper meanings. And then I wanted a printed copy for a visual read and some note taking. Then is when I wondered about the cover designs. I wanted a printed copy that would match up to the audible version exactly, so I could listen and note take simultaneously. But I also had a hard cover preference especially since the price was similar. And that is how I learned that the cover design changes did not impact the ability to compare audio and print versions.

If you have struggles with people in your family or important adult relationships, (and almost everyone does) PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

And I would loooove to hear your experiences with it! Please.

*FYI - most book links posted on this blog contain affiliate links. That means the cost to you is the same, but I might get a small cut of the advertising budget built into the price. Thanks for letting me refer you to your next awesome read!

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Top 7 Tips & Tricks. Here’s some favorite ways to combat those achy days!

1. Peppermint: Peppermint essential oil is a common first reach for a headache. When applied at the first sign of pain, it typically works great.  Peppermint is best rubbed neat (no carrier oil added) on the forehead, temples and often most effectively, the back of neck, base of the head, and shoulders. (buy peppermint here)

2. Lavender: Some people prefer lavender essential oil used in the same way that you would use peppermint for headaches. This is most popular for allergy-triggered headaches. (buy lavender here)

3. Muscle Ease: This blend of essential oils includes Lavender, peppermint, sweet birch, wintergreen, and clove. It’s an amazing combination for reducing swelling and easing pain, so it works great for headaches, too. (buy muscle ease here)

4. Migraine B Gone: My all-time favorite for migraines is the Migraine B Gone essential oil blend. I absolutely love this blend. It comes in a straight oil for making your own dilution or neat application, and a ready to use skin rub that is diluted with carrier oils infused with 9 healing herbs. For migraines I can rub this stuff on neat on temples, forehead, back of neck and around eyes (not too close!) to stop the migraine dead before it starts. It is absolutely amazing if I get to it in time. The essential oil ingredients of this wonder blend are basil, peppermint and menthol. The nine healing herbs in the skin rub are arnica, comfrey, chamomile, chickweed, calendula, jewelweed, mullein, plantain, red clover. (massage oils are here) (Migraine essential oil is here)

5. Conquer: This is an awesome blend of anti-inflammatory pain kicking essential oils. Frankincense, Balsam Fir, Copaiba and Marjoram essential oils make a blend that smells good (not like medicine or overpowering) and kicks pain away quickly. This too is available ina skin rub blend with those super blessed 9 healing herbs. (massage oils are here) (Conquer essential oils are here)

6. Total Conquer: This is Conquer blend plus the migraine kicking basil from Migraine B Gone and a bit of Valerian, the herb that valium originated from. If this doesn’t totally conquer what ails you, you should go to bed (the valerian could make you sleepy). (massage oils are here) (Conquer essential oils are here)

7. Excalibur: “conquer’s sword” the ultimate in pain relief with a dose of mobility and flexibility restoration added in. This is Conquer’s 4 ingredients plus Lavender, Helichrysum, Geranium, and Cypress. It’s a huge favorite for ultimate relief. Add in those blessed 9 healing herbs and you’ve got bliss in a bottle! (massage oils are here) (Conquer essential oils are here)

Aromatherapy and essential oils have been recognized for centuries as medicines for treating ailments of various kinds including reducing headache pain. Tinctures and ointments were recognized by the British Pharmacopoeia for more than 200 years and used by physicians until the 1940s, when due to the war efforts, herbs and aroma preparations fell out of favor and were replaced by chemical drugs.

Another way to reduce muscle tension and migraines and headache symptoms is to apply a cold compress on the back of the neck at the base of the head, and the area of muscle pain. Of course, always wrap that cold pack in a thin towel.

Another migraine trick is a hot bath including mineral rich salts. (click HERE) Mineral rich spa salts allow the mineral (including magnesium) to soak into the skin, a lack of proper minerals in the muscles can be a trigger for migraines.

Grab your favs and stock your cabinet!

So when those stressy days hit and you need an answer quick, your cabinet is ready!

Be well. Be blessed. Be a Blessing.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for your support!

If you've ever wondered if you are low in iodine, try the iodine patch test.

It's a simple and easy way to find out.

Lugol’s Iodine is an orange colored solution, if you don’t have Lugol’s type iodine liquid on hand, it’s available online Click HERE and use the search bar for Iodine to buy some.

The Iodine Patch Test

The Iodine Skin Patch Test is the layman’s way to self monitor your iodine intake and your body’s ability to use iodine.

Simply put a drop or two of Lugol’s iodine onto clean dry skin. This should be either on your stomach, under your forearm or inner thigh where water washing or material won't rub on it to impact the test. Rub the drop into a quarter sized stain on your skin.

You will notice the color has changed. Make a mental note about how dark it is.

Wait for 24 hours. If the color has completely disappeared, you are iodine deficient.

The body's deficiency is proportionate - the faster the iodine is absorbed by your body, the more deficient you are.

If the stain disappears in less than four hours. This is considered a severe iodine deficiency. If the stain is gone sometime between 4 hours and 24 hours, you need to keep reading!

Treatment

If the color disappears in less than 24 hours, you may begin using the iodine as a supplement for your iodine deficiency. Please note consuming iodine in a form not approved for oral consumption is not recommended! Lugol’s iodine is the standard for oral use.

Iodine should be used on a daily basis until the body no longer absorbs the skin patch iodine quickly.

After that, you may then test at intervals to see if you have become deficient again and treat accordingly.

Always start slow and increase 1 drop at a time no faster than every 3 days. Pay attention to how you feel and adjust accordingly.

Please Read these books!

Dr David Brownstein has authored several books on the subject of iodine and glandular health. you can find them on Amazon or DrBrownstein.com

We have occasionally done bulk orders of Lugol’s and these books.

If you are interested in participating, click this link to go to Pamper Me Naturally and search Lugol's Iodine.

TO BUY Iodine Why You Need It Click Here

TO BUY Overcoming Thyroid Disorders Click Here

TO BUY Miracle of Natural Hormones Click Here

TO BUY Salt Your Way to Health Click Here

This is an excellent book! I highly recommend it! It’s available in paperback, and also as an easy listen while you do other things via Audible. Please check it out!

Buy the book: The Iodine Crisis HERE

*FYI - most book links posted on this blog contain affiliate links. That means the cost to you is the same, but I might get a small cut of the advertising budget built into the price. Thanks for letting me refer you to your next awesome read!

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1. Hit this Share button to share this post with a friend.

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