The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

23 Comments

1. Actually female genital mutilation has been illegal in Minnesota since the 1990’s. The new bill was looking at making it a felony with jail term of 5-20 years and loss of custody for the parents. Several lawmakers, including some republicans, want to consider the bill next year since this bill was just written in the last couple of weeks and missed all the committee deadlines. The bill also calls for outreach and educational programs on the issue but no funding. Minnesota’s legislature adjourns on Monday May 22. My guess is this will be addressed next year with a more well written bill instead of this hodgepodge that was slapped together at the last minute.

2. A medicinal garden is more about hobby and superstitious beliefs than about prepping or health. There is nothing that you can get from your medicinal garden that would cure or mitigate any serious illness or trauma. In fact anything that you could use plants to treat would bring the same results as ignoring the problem. It’s like the old joke that if you have a cold and treat it by drinking fluids, getting rest and staying warm it will last only seven days. If you do nothing it will last a week. The same is true for the so-called natural “cures”. They don’t cure anything and quite honestly no one but a complete quack would claim they are even useful for any serious illness or trauma. So why does this mythology continue?

   1. Actually, most modern medicines are derived from natural plants. We may find ways to synthesize the active ingredient after we understand it, but the original ingredient came from nature. Having a medicinal garden is about finding that lost common knowledge of what plants can be used to treat various ailments. There are many serious things that can’t be treated that way, but there are many things that can. It’s about taking ownership of your own health.

      1. “most modern medicines are derived from natural plants”

         Probably not true. Some modern medicines have their root in plants not most. But that begs the question. Show me a single serious illness or trauma that any plant in your garden or the wild can cure or mitigate. What are you going to pull out of your garden to treat the measles or cancer or yellow fever etc. You can treat headaches or upset stomach but probably no more effectively than to wait until it passes. But what can your garden possibly do for gangrene or a serious infection? If you are shot in the abdomen what plant will you pick to save your life? It is all 99% superstition/foolishness and 1% “Actually, most modern medicines are derived from natural plants” or something.

         1. A 20 second web search revealed this independent site: Dugs and Medicine From Plants
            But just in case you want something more scientific, how about The Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology and Research. Excerpt: “According to Newman and Cragg 2012, the utility of natural products as sources of novel structures is still alive and well. Up to 50% the approved drugs during the last 30 years are from either directly or indirectly from natural products and in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to date, of the 175 small molecules 85 actually being either natural products or directly derived there from.” (emphasis added)
            – and –
            “The plant-derived compounds have a long history of clinical use, better patient tolerance and acceptance.”
            – and –
            “Natural products discovered so far have played a vital role in improving the human health and have been the drugs of choice despite facing a tough competition from compounds derived from computational and combinatorial chemistry, due to their safety and efficacy. The most striking feature of natural products in connection to their long lasting importance in drug discovery is their structural diversity that is still largely untapped.“

            1. An excellent example of this is the studies that have shown Elderberry extract to be more effective than Tamiflu at treating influenza.

            2. I will respectfully say you are begging the question. Yes indeed after very complex extractions and purification processes there are some plants that have contributed some medicines. Great! Anything of any medicinal value has been exploited years ago.

               My point is still the same and it does not matter who you cite or what web sites you find. Name a single serious disease or trauma that you are going to cure or significantly mitigate with plants that you can find or grow… I’ll wait while you try to come up with one

               That is my point. I’m not trying to troll you or simply argue with you. I am not unaware of the history of medicine or so-called medicinal plants. The point is that if you are hoping for magic from your garden after SHTF and someone in your party is seriously ill or injured you will be sorely disappointed. There has to be a better plan.

            3. @GoneWithTheWind – those complex extractions and purification processes are about isolating specific ingredients. When using the plant as a whole, you don’t have that option, but that doesn’t negate the benefit of whatever that ingredient is. There is also no question that modern medicine has advanced to the point where many who would have died are now cured. What you seem to be missing is that even with the wonders of modern drugs, surgery and therapies, medicine does not cure disease. No medicine can cure disease. Your body is designed to heal itself and all medicine is about facilitating that process. The medicines either suppress some aspect of the disease to give your body a chance to do its thing or they encourage and emphasize a natural process in your body, but it is still your body that does the healing. I’ll turn this back on you and give you the same challenge. Name one disease that modern medicine cures. All medicine is about quality of life – even the placebo effect. Just last month I watched my wife treat a young mother with apple pie. The mother was having issues producing milk for her new baby and my wife baked her a pie with lots of fennel. In full disclosure, there were a few other things in there too, but the point is that pills simply do what God has provided through nature since the dawn of man. Yes, there are much more potent versions of the drugs after extraction and purification, but the effect were there before that. A pill sure is convenient, but the plants have been used effectively for a looonnnggg time.

         2. Foxglove from which we get Digoxin. As an RN I used to read the PDR as a new nurse and found that yes most medicines were plant derived. Many still are but are modified auspiciously to make them more effective-but more likely so the Pharmaceutical corp. can obtain a patent that is only good for seven years.

   2. You need to do your research sir. Foxglove, aka digitalis has been used for high blood pressure for many years. Garlic for parasite removal, oregano oil for a strong antibiotics. Most modern medications are a synthetic for of the plant medications.

      1. Believe me I have done the research. I got sucked into this stuff before most of the readers of this blog were born. I wish some of these really attractive myths were true but sadly the proof simply isn’t there. Imagine your darling little grandchildren have parasites, are you really going to give then garlic and hope it cures them? I wouldn’t, their lives are too precious to me to fool around with these myths. Ditto for oregano oil. I’m sorry if that seems too harsh but these magic oils and herbs in general are useless or worse. As for foxglove you are correct that it contains digitalis so if you are going to use it how much will you give your patient? Too much and you could cause death. too little and you won’t achieve the desired effect. Is fox glove stronger in the summer or spring? Is it stronger if grown in the shade or direct sunlight? How would you know? Should you know? Again, if it were your children or grandchildren you were treating do you take those chances? I wouldn’t. First, do no harm.

   3. Lest we forget, before there were big pharmaceutical companies that brewed concoctions that mask the symptoms, we used natural remedies to cure ailments. Were there quacks in the system, did some remedies not work, sure. But today we start with one pill, then we need a pill to counter that pills side effects etc… I get asked every year by my doctor “What medications do you take? now being my doctor, shouldn’t he know? I reply “I don’t take and medications. his response is ” Wow at 58 you don’t take any medications. I reply “Yes, but there is a pill for that isn’t there” We have forgotten how to take care of ourselves with food, herbs etc… We rely on big pharma to know all and cure all.

      1. Before those nasty pharmaceutical companies made all those modern medicines we did indeed treat all illnesses with home concoctions and in some cases witch doctors. And about half of the people born would die before age 18 with a good percentage of those dying before age 5. Yeah those were the good old days. Just understand that we treated all illnesses with home remedies but they did not work.

   4. I have stopped the beginning of colds COLD by ingesting a bowl full of specific vitamins and supplements too many times for it to be a coincidence.
      A scratchy throat ALWAYS results in a cold the next day if I don’t jump on it immediately.
      Echicnacea, golden seal, ginger, garlic, tumeric,zinc and Bit C and Vit D.

      1. This is a myth. You cannot stop a cold. A cold shows different symptoms with different people but everyone gets them and when they do they last about a week. It does not matter how many vitamins you take or zinc or spices you will still have the cold and it will still last about a week. There are some things that will temporarily alleviate some of the symptoms; like a nose spray for example. Allows you to sleep for 8 hours and makes the cold more tolerable. But it’s likely you won’t be able to make the nose spray from your garden. What you are experiencing is the classic placebo response.

   5. Well then…Consider me a quack! A Quack with living proof!

3. This exemplifies why Islam has NO place in the US. There is no need for their brand of insanity here. Most of their believers are low IQ, unskilled, and illiterate in their OWN language much less ours.

4. Re:Drag Queen Story Hour

   “What kind of person voluntarily brings their small child to something like this?!”

   Why leftie loons from San Francisco (Sodom on the coast) of course. Thank God there are roads that take one around SF…

5. These are the kind of parents that should have their children taken away from them by CPS.

   I’m often scared by those who would abridge the most fundamental rights of a man’s castle. Who decides? Where does it end?

   CPS has taken children away from parents who didn’tmdo all 28 vaccinations (and had them injected), homeschooled, preferred natural medicine, or taught their Biblical view.

   http://thefreethoughtproject.com/debate-politician-claims-children-belong-to-state/

   It would still be a tyrannical nanny state even if run by the best intentioned Christians.

   Drag queens would be and ought to be ostracized if they go out in public, but I’m not going to send in the SWAT team to check.

   If any privilege is more important than priest – penitent, doctor – patient, or attorney – client, it has to be parent – child.

6. As a physician, I have no problem with using plant derived medicinals when you have nothing else and learning about it would be useful. But when tested meds are available for serious problems that are not likely to resolve on their own I will go for the tested. The problem with most herbal or plant remedies is very few have been tested in truely blinded plecebo controlled studies. The uses of garden medicinals are based mostly on hearsay, history and people’ s personal experience. Since many illnesses will resolve in time, so no matter what you use to “cure” it, it will resolve. It takes large numbers of trials to find out if a substance works and they are expensive. Do pharmaseutical companies mislead? Yes, sometimes they do. They have a dual purpose, research and profit. But for the most part, by the time a drug gets to the point it is available in generics, we know what it can do and what porblems it causes. Not so with unstudied medicinals. So I will learn and grow what I can for when my saved meds are not available.

7. I believe the Eric Ziegler was arrested in 04 for rape 3 and sodomy 3 – both are basically child molestation.
   http://oregon.arrests.org/Arrests/Eric_Ziegler_10927923/
   Not sure what the disposition of those cases were but the idea that a woman who “didn’t know” she was pregnant moving in with a pervert is exactly the kind of case that doesn’t help people looking for cps reform. My mother was a social worker in NYC and frankly (in that area) it’s much more common for the technocrats to leave children in bad situations than “persecute” people.

   Just my two cents but you can’t garner sympathy by saying a woman who can’t figure out she’s going to get pregnant from unprotected sex and her degenerate boyfriend are being treated unfairly. There are better examples of innocent people being unfairly attacked by cps.

8. Hugh, You must have the patience of Job.

9. Yes! I totally agree. I was referring to Gone with the Wind’s refusal to respect other peoples opinions
   and relentless bickering to the point of nausea. And Hugh just shook it off, the Gentleman that he is.

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