Stay up to date on what I share on my blog, Scripture quotes, news as it pertains to staying healthy, body, soul and spirit, etc.
Additional information has been surfaced around the issue of oxalates in rhubarb:
"Cooking significantly reduced (p < 0.05) the total and soluble oxalate contents compared to those of the raw rhubarb. The mean reduction of total oxalate in the three cooking trials was 49.7 %."
This detail along with a 1919 "letters to the editor" debate, reveal a reason that perhaps, many have never thought of before quipping that rhubarb leaf is toxic or that rhubarb itself could be a danger to kidney stones.
I have updated my rhubarb leaf article with the debate and the unearthed study, and added a three point suggestion for enjoying any high-oxalate food you may desire, particularly if you are prone to kidney stones and want to have the best of both worlds
https://naturalhealthgodsway.c....a/2024/12/29/rhubarb
I'm over a week late with publishing and sharing this, but after you read this latest coffee-break-length article, you may be left wondering if covid was a repackaged, weaponized expression of TB!
Grab your favourite snack and beverage, get comfy, put your feet up, and read:
https://naturalhealthgodsway.c....a/2025/03/25/another
I should probably check in so people don't get worried about me. I haven't been online much the last few days due to working on something that will make teaching both foraging AND wild medicine to the children of Christian home-schooling parents, a fun and hopefully engaging experience. But it's taking up all the time I'm willing to give it, including late nights as I am trying to ensure I can have it in hand before mid-April! If I can accomplish that, I'll be taking it to a one-day crammed-in version of my "Make Your Own Trailkit" workshop for a homeschooling family and maybe some of their friends. Stay tuned!
So . . . my adult daughter is not only a history nut, but has become a history nut with a penchant for historical medical texts. She's found the occasional questionable book, such as "The Farmer's Own", and squirrel's such books away as the kind of thing that gives their times a bad name in modern medicine. We recently heard about what is deemed to be the first-ever medical text covering medicine in the Americas, back during the days of the Aztec's and Spanish conquerors. People were crowing about a translation of this text and how amazing it was that it named herbs, minerals, trees, and more. The version most were crowing over was difficult to find unless you're willing to visit a university or state library around the world. A second version was easier to find, and then the horror hit!
We scanned several of the "treatments" wondering how on earth human feces might solve an eye problem, how a burned frog might be a suitable stand-in for fried blood, etc. While people crowed about how doctors must have been SO precise using tools such as thorns as surgical instruments, the treatments we saw in just a few pages had us cringing! Some of it was highly superstitious to add to the problem. Sure, other books have shared superstition to be fair, and those treatments are generally glossed over in favour of other treatments in the same books that actually work, have no dangerous ingredients, etc. . . but not this book! I deleted my attempts at obtaining parts of the one translation and closed all tabs related to the one we finally looked at in English.
If you ever hear of the Badaino Codex, it is one historical medical text you do NOT want on your shelf! Horrific doesn't capture the sentiment!
The discussion of which is safest to use in the kitchen, be it glass, plastic, silicon, steel, or wood, is apparently a very contested subject. Mainstream anti-bacterial teaching holds that plastic is safer than wood, that steel is safer than plastic, and wood is put at the bottom of the safety pile.
Government foodsafe guidelines have either informed the knowledge of woodworkers out there, or their lack of anti-bacterial knowledge around their favourite crafting material has informed governments.
The currently promoted misinformation around the safety of wood in the kitchen is best shown in the discussion, or should I say conflict, around oak, whether we're talking red or white oak.
"Some wood species like pine and oak showed excellent antibacterial characteristics, efficiently killed applied bacteria, and had clear hygienic advantages compared to other woods and plastics."
"A growing body of the literature points to the hygroscopicity of wood—its ability to draw water and bacteria from its surface, deep into the wood, where the bacteria are trapped and die—as the wood attempts to even out its moisture content."
"Our findings suggest that a minimal coating of wood with oil delays/prevents the absorption of bacteria into the wood grain and/or protects the bacteria from stresses associated with the wood surface (antimicrobial compounds, rapid desiccation due to hygroscopicity)."
Are we trying to protect the human, or the bacteria?!
While many woodworkers out there will tell you pine should not be in the kitchen, it does perform well when killing a wide range of bacteria. Oak is another that kills many of them as well.
For the full article with study links, click here:
https://naturalhealthgodsway.c....a/2025/03/14/address
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Did you know God considers how you look after yourself to be an act of worship toward Him? Do you want to learn how to look after yourself in a God-honouring way? As your Biblical Natural Health Coach, I can help.