How To Make Ghee

Making Ghee

You need to learn How to Make Ghee if you want your Indian curries, and other Indian dishes to have that authentic ethnic flavour.

Medicinal Properties of Ghee:

Ghee is also commonly used as a medicinal agent in Ayurvedic medicine.  Ghee has healing properties  of its own which we will discuss here briefly, and it is also of great value in the making of medicated ghee oils, and in acting as a carrying agent in the body  for the  transporting of  specific therapeutics in herbal remedies.

It Is Easy To Make Ghee

The Method:

All you need is a quantity of unsalted butter.  It must be real butter,  and it must be unsalted.  Softened types of butter are no good, and nor is margerine.

  • Take a nice heavy saucepan and place your  unsalted butter into it. 
  • On a medium heat, melt the butter.  Take care not to burn it.   Keep that heat moderate, and watch it while it melts.
  • Once the butter has melted, turn up the heat a little,  briefly,  so that the butter just comes to the boil.
  • Turn down the heat immediately to the lowest point where the butter will just simmer gently.
  • About 15 minutes to 20 minutes of cooking is enough. You can tell when the ghee is done, as the ghee  will smell nice and roasty, like popcorn.  At this point, all the liquid in the butter will have evaporated, and so you must take the ghee off immediately so that it does not burn.
  • Let the ghee cool a little, then strain the liquid ghee off from the remaining curds at the bottom of the saucepan.
  • Store the ghee in a bottle with a fitting lid.  Make sure the ghee has cooled to room temperature completely before putting on the lid.

Ghee will keep indefinately if it has been made properly, and it is stored in dry conditions with its lid on.  Its medicinal properties are supposed to improve with age, so you don’t need to be in a hurry to use it up.

Make sure you tip out the required amount of ghee, rather than dip spoons into the ghee, as this will contaminate it, and it may not keep if you do that.  Never tip any unused ghee, or ghee off your measuring spoon, back into the bottle.  If your ghee has solidified, due to cold temperatures, then use a dry, clean spoon in the ghee jar.

Health Benefits of Ghee:

  • Ghee oil is nourishing to the body and helps keep the bones and ligaments well lubricated.
  • Ghee included in a healthy vegetarian  diet is good for the skin, and the hair.
  • Generally speaking, ghee oil is a very healthy oil to use for cooking.
  • Ghee oil should be used in moderation if you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure.  Get some professional advice to see if ghee is ok for you to use in moderation if you have either of these ailments.
  • Ghee oil has an effect  a little like castor oil.
  • A drop of ghee oil, or castor oil, can be put into each eye at night to help reduce irritation, and help prevent cataracts.  Cataracts which have only just begun to form can sometimes be treated successfully with ghee or castor oil treatment.
  • Ghee oil can be used in some cases to help people lose weight.
  • An Ayurvedic recipe to avert hunger pains consists of:   one mashed banana with a teaspoon of ghee and a 1/4 teaspoon of cardamom  stirred into it.  Eat this when hungry instead of going for a slice of bread or a cookie.

Hawthorn Berries

The Hawthorn Tree, a Rosaceae.

Crataegus Monogyna and Crataegus Oxycanthoides are two common types of Hawthorn which grow in many parts of the Middle East, Europe, India, Africa and Asia. Its Chinese pharmaceutical name is fructus crataegi, commonly called shan zha in Chinese medicine.

The Hawthorn tree has special significance  as a healing herb in the West, because, in the Christian tradition,  it was supposed to have formed the Crown of Christ. It is known as ‘the Mother of the heart’ , perhaps with reference to the Virgin Mary, in traditional Western  herbal medicine.

Hawthorn trees can be anything from the size of a bush to the size of a large tree, depending on where they are grown, and what the genus is.

Hawthorn berries, with their  hard texture, and attractive,  rich,  robust, cherry-like appearance,  are great to use  for decorative purposes.  However,  all the parts of the plant can be used medicinally,  the flowers, leaves and the berries. Note:  Hawthorn should be used  as an  herbal medicine only under the guidance of a professional herbalist, or other health practitioner, especially if you are already taking other medications.

Valuable Nutrients in Hawthorn: Hawthorn berries are rich in sugar and Vitamin C.  They also contain malic acid, citric acid, iron, calcium, carotene, riboflavin and traces of niacin.

Are Hawthorn berries poisonous? Apparently not, if you can believe that  Hawthorn berries were ground and added to British bread in the first world war, which had the effect of ‘keeping down the blood pressure of the population as a whole’, according to Jade Britton, Tamara Kircher, and Edward Linkner M.D., who co-wrote ‘The Complete Book of Home Herbal Remedies’ published by Universal International Pty. Ltd, NSW, Australia, 1998.

These authors also state that ‘there are no adverse effects from long-term use’. Even if you should stop taking hawthorn, after having used it for a while,  there are no side effects according to these experts.

Hawthorn berries, and other parts of the plant have been widely used for their therapeutic action on the cardiovascular system.  It has the effect of normalizing blood pressure, whether it be too low or too high. It is a good medicine to take to help treat varicose veins because it improves the circulation, whilst having a normalizing effect on the blood pressure.

In Chinese medicine, Hawthorn is sometimes used to aid the digestive system, especially where digestion of meats and fats is poor.

Hawthorn is slow in its therapeutic and tonic effect, and generally, it is taken over a period of time to help the cardiovascular system and things like varicose veins and poor circulation.

According to The Complete Book of Home Herbal Remedies, it can be used as a heart medicine for angina, irregular heartbeat, congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy. But of course, under expert supervision, especially if you are already taking other medications.

Alternative Therapies for Cancer

Natural Therapies versus Chemotherapy and Radiation:

Are there any  Alternative Therapies for Cancer that really work?

I think that Dr Max Gerson’s book  is still one of the best books around on the subject of healing cancer naturally. In this book, he gives the results of 50 cases which he treated using his methods of detoxifying the body whilst providing maximum nourishment, mainly in the way of raw food and juices.

I have personally found the Gerson therapy to be of great value over the years in treating instances of severe ill health:  I used a combination of treatments which I took from the work of Gerson, Dr Ann Wigmore, Walter Last, Dr Eva Hill and others.  I was never diagnosed as having a definite cancer growth in the breast:  the doctor who wanted to get a biopsy done, more or less on the spot, frightened me into taking charge, finding all these wonderful books, and getting on with detoxification. Actually, this was my only option at the time- Walter Last, who could have helped me, had moved to Australia, and there was nobody to compare with Walter in Auckland.  All the naturopaths that I went to in Auckland were terrified of treating me in case I died, and they got sued.  This is a terrible situation, really – people die all the time under the supervision of doctors, but somehow things are made worse for the naturopath should this happen.

I certainly didn’t want to die of cancer.  I had young children to rear.  I thought that it  was possible that the lump was cancer, as I had been exposed to 245T and other chemicals within four or five years prior to getting sick  this time round.  If it wasn’t cancer, then it wouldn’t matter, as it should heal anyway,  if I followed the ideas in these books.

All these books were written so convincingly, and with such authority, that there was no doubt in my mind that the methods  would work if I persevered.

About five years  after my  miraculous recovery, on Waiheke Island, New Zealand, there was a spate of breast cancer and ovarian cancer which struck at least six women which I knew.  Most of these women were in their 40’s, and one of these women, alas, was only in her 30’s, with two very young children to care for.

There was quite a bit of herbicide spraying going on at the time, and the vineyards, which had suddenly arrived on the scene, were spraying about chemicals quite close to where people were living. You could smell it on the wind most days in the early spring, at the house where I was living in Shelley Beach.

These cancers happened all within a couple of years.  Except for one cancer ‘victim’, they all underwent orthodox chemotherapy and radiation, and except for the one who rejected any medical intervention, they all died within about six months of undergoing treatment.

My friend who opted for a natural death survived for five years after the last of our other friends had died.

She decided to follow what she thought was a ‘natural’ cure, with the addition of a salad with raw carrot added to her midday meal each day.  She was adamant that no castor oil, or enemas, were needed.

I am quite sure that if she had done the whole thing properly, in the way that Dr Gerson would have prescribed, and that of many another healer, I think she may have been alive today.

Still – there is a Divine Plan for all of us, I’m sure, and sometimes even the best of treatments, followed to the letter, have no impact.

It was the same thing with the son of another friend:  Only so much of a ‘natural’ cure were adopted.  All the hard bits, like taking castor oil, and enemas, were left off the list.  Castor oil and enemas were undertaken only during the last few months of life, when it was obvious, after a whole year of  eating extra salad material with no real change to the diet, that eating a bit more salad in the diet was not going to be the cure.  Mind you, this poor lad had an extremely virulent type of cancer which did not have a great prognosis, even by orthodox standards, so it is possible that even the most strict dietary and detoxification regime may not have helped in the long run.  It is also possible that by rejecting the amputation of the affected limb, that he avoided the stress of amputation and actually prolonged his life anyway.

Not everybody who undertakes natural treatment, which generally means raw food, detoxification with enemas and colonics,  or  other alternative therapies for cancer will necessarily survive.

The most important thing  is that you have to really want the cure to work.  You have to want to live.  Some people only do a  ;cure’   half heartedly, I am sure, becuase they are not a hundred per cent sure that they want to live.  Emotional causes get the better of them, and they never really put their heart and soul into it.

Many people have given up, or give up when they hear that they have cancer.  The emotional shock of hearing that you have cancer is just about enough to finish most people off, let alone going in for the arduous, strength sapping,  soul-destroying and demoralizing  sessions of chemotherapy and radiation.  And there again – if you have had chemotherapy and radiation, then your chances of recovering on a natural, alternative therapy are reduced dramatically.  But some people HAVE managed to do this, Jacqui Davison being one of them.

To beat cancer, you have to be very determined and courageous, no matter what treatment you use.

Some people actually do recover from  cancer using orthodox chemotherapy and radiation treatments, of course, although the cases I know of are few and far between.  Three relatives of mine who suffered breast cancer, who all come from agricultural communities, have all undergone orthodox treatment and are still alive five years later to tell the tale.  Another relative has had leukemia and survived because his dear brother donated bone marrow so that he could live.  That was ten years ago.  Recently, he has had colon cancer which he has had operated on.  These are the successes, the people  amongst my family who have survived with orthodox treatments for cancer.  It is not very many.

But the amount of people I know who have accepted orthodox treatment for cancer and have died?  Uncountable.  Some of these people have been elderly, but it makes one wonder – was the whole onslaught of bizarre and distressing treatments justified in being  given  to these elderly people, when they obviously did not have the strength to withstand such violation to the body?

This is not to dissuade you from taking the orthodox approach, though. You just never know what may really be the best thing to work.  One should get the opinions of several different specialists, in different fields of health before making a decision.

One dear cousin who refused orthodox treatment died after a couple of years, from breast and ovarian cancer.  She, like my friend from Waiheke, and others, believed that she was eating a healthy diet, and did not follow any definite plan to recover health, such as the use of enemas and castor oil to detoxify quickly.  She  had the idea that eating salads with her regular meals would do it, with the aid of prayer, of course. This dear cousin, though, had lost her husband two years beforehand.  He had died at round the age of 40 of a heart attack.  She was left on her own, a young woman, utterly grieved, and having to fight the insurance company for the life insurance which her husband had paid into.  The two years of legal battle, I think, was too much, on top of the untimely death and devastating death of her husband:  I don’t think that she really had her heart into recovery.  Incidentally, her husband was driving trucks for a carrying firm in a rural area, and had just finished loading up his truck at the time of death.  The chances are high that he would have been carting agricultural chemicals for part of the week. which would have caused damage to his heart, apart from that caused by lugging the weight of heavy sacks about.

The most important ingredient for recovering from cancer through doing the hard work on an alternative therapy is emotional support.  It is imperative that you have someone close who will encourage you and keep you motivated.  The other essential is that you need a  period of time spent entirely on your own recovery, without having to work.  This means that you need money, or someone who will support you through the healing process.

So – there is no guarantee that you will recover if you follow a ‘natural’ cure. Some people, I believe, just do not understand what is required to prompt the body into reversing the process of cancer.  It takes an enormous amount of effort, in most cases, with special detoxification methods.  But even then, it is not necessarily a given that you will recover and beat the cancer.

However, many, many people HAVE recovered from the disease using alternative therapies for cancer. You really need to think carefully before deciding on what course of action you are going to take, and whether it will be orthodox, or alternative.

Some books to read which can inform you better about different methods  for treating cancer and other degenerative disease are the books  by Dr Max Gerson, Dr Ann Wigmore, Dr Eva Hill, and Jacqui Davison.

More to follow this up later today or tomorrow.

How to Stop Overeating

Compulsive overeating:

This  is a problem for many of us at some time during our lives.   What are some of the things which can cause us to be compulsive eaters? Emotional causes,  depression,  stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, toxins held in the body, feelings of self doubt, boredom,  and/or  nutritional deficiences  can  fuel our cravings for more and more food.

One very nice remedy for obsessive overeating, which you might add to your well rounded programme to lose weight,  is given by  Dr Vasant Lad in his Ayurvedic Medicine book, see details below.  His Ayurvedic suggestion is to eat bananas. Here is  a version of   Dr Vasant Lad’s simple suggestion on  how to stop overeating:

  • Take one banana .  Mash it up.
  • Add one teaspoon of ghee to the banana.
  • Add between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom powder to the banana.
  • Mix ingredients together and eat when you are hungry.

Acupuncture and counselling are recommended to all those who have an obsessive eating disorder of any kind,  whether it be undereating or overeating.  Acupuncture can take care of the physical yearnings and help to increase the energy in the right places.  And counselling can help greatly to establish feelings of self worth and release negative emotions.

Look at merrilyn’s post on Qi Gong for Weight Loss for an exercise which will help to build courage and emotional strength, as well as increase qi energy in the physical body.

Alternate Nostril Breathing is a useful exercise which will help relax the body and  calm the emotions and the brain.  It is a good exercise to do prior to meditating.  See merrilyn’s post entitled ‘Yoga Breath and Sleeping Well‘  for instructions on how to perform Alternate Nostril Breathing.  See also the post entitled ‘Yoga Nidra’ for a deep relaxation exercise which will aid your ‘How to Stop Eating’ programme.

For more advice on Ayurvedic Remedies, consult Vasant Lad’s book entitled Ayurvedic Home Remedies:  A Comprehensive Guide to the Ancient Healing of India. This is published in the U.K., 1999,  by Judy Piatkus (Publishers Limited), 5 Windmill St, London W1T. 2JA.   Reprinted 2002.

Does the Olive Oil Treatment Work for Lice

Olive Oil Treatment for Head Lice.

‘Does the Olive Oil Treatment Work for Head Lice?’  you may ask, and with good reason.

Head lice are certainly difficult to eradicate:  even with the use of harmful commercial insecticide preparations, head lice can be pesky, determined little creatures.

Olive Oil Treatment for Head Lice is a perfectly natural way in which you can get rid of head lice.  It takes a little more effort than using a commercial poison, but the effort in protecting your child from harmful potentially carcenogenic poisons is certainly well worth it.

There are, of  course, some commercially made herbal or homeopathic preparations which are safe to use, but many of the standard hair lice treatments contain very harmful toxic substances which get absorbed into the scalp, then into the blood stream, then into the liver, where they get stored and wreak their damage to the immune system.

Olive oil is actually very beneficial to the skin, and to the hair and scalp, so by using the olive oil treatment for head lice, you get to condition your hair too, and encourage hair regrowth.

The best procedure for using the olive oil treatment for head lice is:

  • Wash the hair in the evening with a good plain soap.  Try to avoid shampoo, unless it is one which does not have any petrochemicals in it, or other harmful substances.
  • After rubbing the hair dry with a towel, massage about a half a cup of olive oil straight into the hair, a tablespoon or so at a time.  Rub it well in.  You may need more, or less, oil, depending on the length and the thickness of the hair.  The scalp, and all the hair should have a covering of olive oil now.
  • The next step is to wrap it up in a towel, or a cap which will protect your pillow slip and your sheets while you sleep with the left on overnight.
  • In the morning, wash out the oil with plenty of soap and warm water.  Make sure all the soap is washed out thoroughly.
  • Comb out with a fine toothed comb.
  • Put two or three dabs only of liquid iodine onto the scalp and massage it in.  The children won’t mind this, as it does not smell:  Tea tree oil is great too, but children really hate to go to school with this on their scalp, as it is a tell-tale sign of head lice.
  • Send the children off to school, and get ready for the next thing:
  • You must now wash all the bedding and towels in hot water.  Sheets and pillow cases for all the beds in the house must be ironed before use.  If you can’t get to wash the linen that day, then do iron the sheets and pillow cases on the beds.  This is important.  Ironing the sheets must be done each day until you have eradicated the lice, as the eggs are continually hatching out.  The idea is to destroy the eggs before they hatch into lice.
  • As well, all clothing, especially shirts  and collars where the eggs might lie, must be ironed before wear.
  • Avoiding recontamination is the important thing.  Ironing is the way to avoid recontamination.

This olive oil treatment must be continued each night for a week.  After that, you can reduce the applications to twice a week for several weeks. After that, you can use the olive oil treatment once a week, just to make sure, and to keep the hair in good condition.

Ironing is an integral part of this procedure for eradicating head lice.  The lice get the message, actually.  Very soon they get the idea that all their efforts are being thwarted, and that their eggs are perishing.  They just hate that heat.

You do not need to apply the iodine every single day.  Put a dab or two of iodine onto the scalp about twice a week until the lice have gone, then apply iodine to the scalp once a week as a deterrent to the lice.

So – Does the olive oil treatment work for lice?  The answer is yes, but there is a method to it, which requires persistence.