Did Michigan Lose the Right to Farm?

I try to avoid controversial topics on this here grocery store blog. (By "try to avoid," I mean "gravitate toward them like a moth to flame, and try to couch the result in polite and equivocating language.") It so happens that the biggest thing happening in the Michigan natural food scene (of which FFL is clearly a highlight) this last week has been a legislative shakeup surrounding Michigan's "Right to Farm" laws. Let's see what's going on, and I'll try to keep the grandstanding to a minimum.

What is a Right to Farm law?

Right to Farm laws were designed to protect farmers from nuisance complaints and lawsuits related to their farming practices.

Why farming be an issue for neighbors?

Beside obvious factors like the noise and smell of a farm, there other reasons, like seepage or drainage issues.

Don't neighbors have a right to be peeved by those things?

Perhaps, but the Right to Farm laws were created to protect farmers who were "there first." When people who just want to live in the country (but not farm) move into the country (where there are farms), they often don't like the presence of the farms. To support the necessary existence of small farmers, the Right to Farm laws were enacted. This renders the farmers essentially immune to the complaints of people emigrating to the countryside.These laws were not designed to protect people in the city who decides to have a flock of sheep in their yard.

Which states have these laws?

All of them. Massachusetts was first. Don't be jealous. Massachusetts is only the third most financially literate state, the fifth richest, and it doesn't even make the top ten rainiest. So it's not that big a deal.

How old is Michigan's Right to Farm law?

This place seems like it could get loud on a Friday night.

I like to say it's 33 years young. 

What is Michigan's Right to Farm law like?

You know, just your basic set of GAAMPs, nothing major. GAAMPs? That's what my toothless little cousin calls his grandfather. It's also an acronym for Generally Accepted Agricultural and Management Practices, according the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development.

The MDARD website says: "While adherence to the GAAMPs does not act as a complete barrier to complaints or lawsuits, it does provide an umbrella of protection from nuisance litigation. In addition to conformance to the GAAMPs, farmers also need to comply with all state and federal environmental and agricultural laws."

What was changed?

MDARD "added a Category 4 to the Site Selection & Odor Control for New/Expanding Livestock Facilities GAAMP,"  according to MDARD Communications Director, Jennifer Holton.

What?

Places considered generally residential, which do not come with agricultural use by right, are Michigan areas where there are 13 non-farm homes within 1/8 mile of the "livestock facility." (Even if that facility is a chicken coop.) Density isn't the only factor: a non-farm home within 250 feet is also a deal breaker. (Unless zoning dictates the area as an agricultural one.) 

What changed on April 28? What's all this stuff on social media about Michigan disallowing small farms? 

The above Jennifer Holton says that this is just a way of keeping people in compliance with zoning laws. There is nothing preventing communities from allowing backyard farming if it complies with local ordinances. Many municipalities do allow backyard poultry, for instance. Backyard cows are usually off limits. 

The "new" legislation does not prevent people from raising food for themselves, either, as many have been claiming. However, the Right to Farm laws have always pertained to commercial farms only. 

So what's the deal?

Many articles posted on somewhat dubious news sites proclaim no doubt that Michigan residents will have to give up farming, period. Yet, many reliable sources are claiming that not much has changed. In fact, that article is a year old, when the doomsayers were telling us that farming in Michigan was dead the first time. 

Ultimately, the changes simply mean that people have to follow their municipal zoning laws when it comes to farming. That can be a bummer in some communities, but it's not as dire as some have claimed.

Do I have it wrong? Has the legislation affected you or a farm you know? Are the news laws fair or draconian? I'd love to hear from you. This is a complex topic and all voices are welcome.




 

Breaking Down Dairy Intolerance with Enzymes

As a Caucasian, this wasn't supposed to happen to me. (Already the "edgiest" opener on a grocery store blog, ever. I checked.) Most Caucasians digest dairy products like it's going out of style (which may happen if people continue to insist on eating like cavepeople). Meanwhile, about 70% of the world's adult population struggles with digesting dairy products. Despite my census identity, I am one of those in the latter category. Now, before we examine this issue, it's important to keep a few things in mind:

1. Dairy intolerance and lactose intolerance are not the same thing, exactly.
2. "Race" is a social construction. Really. That's barely relevant, but I like saying it.
3. That said, genetic predispositions still mean that people of Northern European descent generally tolerate dairy products well into adulthood, while people of other genetic origins tend to experience a range of digestive problems with the same foods. 

The pain and bloating many people experience when drinking milk or eating cheese is often caused by the poor digestion of lactose— milk sugar—found in those foods. Most people know this. Most people, however, avoid these foods, knowingly endure the symptoms of lactose intolerance, or suffer in ignorance. I'd like this to stop.

That's why I want to talk about digestive enzymes. Working at FFL, I was always surprised to find how few of my customers had investigated digestive enzymes. Digestive enzymes have been a reliable friend to me since I discovered them. I'm afraid I've become a bit of an enzyme evangelist, so take this information with a grain of propagandasidase.

Let's start with the basics: the term "enzyme" is general. Enzymes are catalysts—they speed up the chemical processes going on in your cells so that you remain alive. Without them, you would die.

Digestive enzymes act as tiny chemical scissors, breaking down the molecules of what you eat so that you can digest your food. They are secreted by organs, such as the pancreas and small intestine. There are many different digestive enzymes, and they have different jobs. Some were named intuitively, such as lactase, which breaks down lactose. Others were named by drawing letters from a hat, such as alpha-galactosidase. (Which breaks down beans, broccoli, and other plant stuff, obviously.)

Taking an over-the-counter digestive enzyme capsule with the first bite of your meal can assist in digestion by filling in the gaps in your natural enzymatic production. If you're suffering after eating cheese, try taking a powerful lactase product right before your meal. I'll come out and say that Enzymedica's "Lacto" product is my favorite, but there are plenty of good options out there.

Comparative shopping for enzymes is difficult, however. Lacto boasts 9,500 ALU. The "ALU" stands for Acid Lactase Units. This is a unit based on the hydrolysis of carbohydrates in specific laboratory conditions. ALUs are are one example of a unit used by the FCC, or Foods Chemical Codex to measure enzymatic action. So... what?

The ingredients list of an enzyme is likely to use some nomenclature (like the above) that many people are unlikely to recognize. Just remember: when you're comparing potency, make sure the products you're comparing use the same units. In the case of lactase products, ALU and FCC are used interchangeably, or even together.

The reason that dairy intolerance isn't lactose intolerance, per se,  is that dairy products contain other elements that some people don't tolerate. The main culprit among those is casein.

Casein is milk protein. (Technically, it comprises about 80% of the various proteins in milk). People who cannot drink milk without symptoms may be intolerant of casein, lactose, or both. But taking an enzymatic supplement which only breaks down lactose will not address a casein intolerance problem. That's why higher-grade enzymes, like Enzymedica's Lacto, attack a spectrum of dairy components, casein included. Standard lactase products often focus exclusively on lactose, and may not provide relief.

Your local Foods For Living Staff will be happy to walk you through your enzyme options, should you be interested. There's no need to suffer in silence, or unnecessarily limit your diet. Unlike most health concerns, simply popping a magic pill is a viable option when it comes to dairy intolerance. That doesn't mean you should go milk-wild. There's only so much enzyme supplements can do. But they can improve your life, as they have mine.

People Can't Believe What FFL Staff is Using to Clean Their Floors (Hint: It's Lightning)

FFL Janitor-In-Chief Andy Dryer

About a month ago, Foods For Living started using bottled lightning to clean its floors.
"They've been using it at Hogwarts, of course, and a lot of the other Sorcerers' Colleges for awhile now, and it's in keeping with our goal to run the greenest operation possible," says FFL General Manager and presiding Archmage Kirk Marrison. "What's greener than magic? We've got a lot of very pleased apprentices."

OK, none of that happened, exactly, but the core of the truth is there. Foods For Living is cleaning its floors with something that smells like the lightning. This is not my attempt at poetry. That specific scent that accompanies charged, pre-storm air and yellow skies—that's what Tersano Products' lotus PRO Stabilized Aqueous Ozone cleaner smells like.

Yes, this is a blog entry about a cleaning product, and it's not an advertisement, and I'm going to ask that you're just a bit patient, because I'm basically letting you peer into the future of cleaning.

As I was saying, that storm harbinger scent, crisp and sweet, is ozone. Ozone—whose name comes from the Greek, literally meaning "to smell,"—is formed when electricity splits nitrogen and oxygen into nitric oxide and ozone. Lightning causes such a split, beefing up the oxygen molecules there with an extra oxygen atom, and voila, we have ozone, drifting down and presaging the storm.

But we don't need storm power to create ozone here on earth's surface. Tersano Products' lotus PRO product/technology uses a sci-fi-looking machine to create Stabilized Aqueous Ozone. The lotus PRO machine takes regular tap water and converts it into ozone-infused water. Ozone is a natural disinfectant, boasting lethal effect when applied to E.Coli, Salmonella, C-Diff, and other common germs.  It oxidizes bacteria and deodorizes surfaces. I feel like an infomercial host, but I don't mind, because this is no Pocket Fisherman. This technology may revolutionize how the average person is cleaning things over the next decade.

You can also bust ghosts with it.

This ozone-infused water is not entirely stable, meaning that it will revert back to its harmless constituent parts in a few hours. The end product of this process is a totally non-toxic, environmentally friendly, super-effective cleaner that is harmless to humans and infinitely renewable, with no waste component. It's like magic.

Because it's so safe, the cleaning solution doesn't require protective equipment. There's no bleach-burn, sprints to the chemical shower, or watching your cat keel over after it licks the countertop.

Again, this is not an advertisement.

The 2nd most sophisticated cleaner on earth.

To prove that I'm an enthusiast for this new tech, and Foods For Living's choice to embrace it on my recommendation*, I called up Matt Grimwood with Tersano Products to ask him how it feels to almost literally trap lightning in a bottle.

It's best to imagine us talking to holographic projections of each other. I didn't record our phone call, so I'll clue you in on some specifics with a dubiously journalistic Q+A format full of my paraphrases of his answers.

Tersano Products lotus PRO FAQ (Again, these are not direct quotes from the company or Mr. Grimwood, but rather my interpretations of what Mr. Grimwood told me.)

Q: Is this the world's most comprehensive cleaner?
A: Probably. It's more effective than bleach, and you can use it almost anywhere safely.

Q: How can we be sure it's actually cleaning anything? Do we have to take your word for it?
A: You don't have to take our word for it. The government issues certifications for cleaning products. The ratings involve funky units like ORP (Oxygen Reduction Potential). Our product is rated at 650 ORP.

Q: How long can I use a single batch of this stuff and know it's actually cleaning?
A: Right now, we're certified for 24 hours at full strength. Our scientists, who I imagine working in a building like the police HQ in Minority Report, are developing a product that will remain full strength for 8 days.
Q:Wow.
A: Yeah.

Q: How much does a unit cost? Say, a unit big enough to clean a middle school? Those things are filthy.
A: $3000 USD.

Q: That sounds expensive, but I imagine large institutions see the potential for passing the break-even point pretty quickly.
A: Absolutely. The University of Michigan—
Q: Boo.
A: —just purchased 100 of our units. A lot of universities and companies interested in going greener love our product, and it makes business sense for them.

Q: It sounds like you're selling something with no downside. Is this going to turn out like an auto industry scenario, where companies with big money and vested interest will try and suppress your distribution so they can continue to sell their less-efficient products?**
A: Perhaps. We are already running into that sort of thing. There are companies offering other sorts of "empowered water" cleaning products, but none of them are using our tech. Ours is better, from a scientific standpoint. It's cleaner and more effective. Their approaches are very different, and involve things like salt.

Q: Are you flattered by the imitators, or worried, or both?
A: More flattered than worried. Our founder/president actually created the process we use for the lotus PRO. Before that, stabilizing aqueous ozone was impractical. It only retained its efficacy for 5-15 minutes, so people couldn't get the mop bucket into the hallway in time to clean anything.
Q: Because janitors tend to be sluggish, or at least move at their own pace.
A: Uh, no...

Q: Do you think this has the potential to change the societal landscape? Like the Precrime Unit in Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report"?
A: Did you just watch Minority Report or something?
Q: Yes.
A: Our product is definitely a game-changer. We sell the module, and then we're done doing business, aside from support and customer service. Until recently, cleaning products were like any other diminishing product—every customer was a repeat customer, and they needed to restock regularly. Obviously, there are lots of big businesses that would not like to see this dynamic disrupted.

Q: What's been your biggest obstacle? The ignorance of the hoi polloi concerning the intersection of science and sanitation?
A: ...no. The main obstacles are marketplace-related. Department stores want to dictate the price of our product, and we can't always come to an agreement.
Q: So there's a conspiracy.
A: That's not what I said.

I'd like to thank Matt Grimwood for talking to me at length, and especially for allowing me to liberally reconstruct our conversation.

If you'd like to learn more about Tersano and its products, here are some links:

http://hospitalnews.com/going-better-than-green-for-cleaning/

http://www.tersano.com/portfolio/going-green-lotus-pro-cleaning-system/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4cTJscm9Bg

Next time you're in Foods For Living, make sure you put your nose to the floor. That's the smell of the future, and that smell is magic. And science.






*not true
** You'll see that I'm joking if you follow the links. 

The Internet—the Worst Doctor in the World

Nate A___, a perpetually ruddy-faced guy with a "rat tail" and a propensity for amazing hole shots (rubber-burning peel-outs with his truck, performed primarily in the high school parking lot), once remarked that your dear author was "smart, but he don't have no common sense. I bet he don't even know how to change a carburetor."  Nate A___ was pretty astute, in his way.

I'm smart. I think most people I know think I'm really smart. A few people think I'm "too smart for my own good," and most certainly think I'm a smart aleck. The people going the right way down the one way streets I've gone down the wrong way probably don't have a very multidimensional view of my intelligence. I'm not in a position to comment on any of this, but I'd like to offer an object lesson on how whatever agreed-upon intelligence I may have recently failed me. The failure is part of a cautionary tale.

I'd like to talk about WebMD and other "search-by-symptom" websites, and I'd like to begin by deploying a timeline.

1996: What we know as "WebMD" deploys as Healthscape. 
1997-Present:  People the world over, on the order of 86.4 million visitors per quarter, search the website for their symptoms, make slapdash diagnoses, become convinced they have terrible terminal illnesses, and freak out. 

The above dynamic has passed from "emerging" to "standard practice." The News warns you against this paranoia. My doctor friends tell me it's beyond common--we live in a world where every generation is Internet-savvy now, and the default move in any situation, from installing a garbage disposal to diagnosing that pain in your abdomen, is to consult the WWW.

But, see, I already know this. I should have been immune. Instead, I played directly into the hands of fear and quick-draw diagnosis, because the vortex of WebMD paranoia is so great that it can pull in even one of my titanic intelligence.

Long and harrowing saga short, I thought I had a life-ruining, ultra-debilitating condition. I can bail out Past Me a bit and say that 100% of the symptoms matched, that the people on the forums (oh, the forums) corroborated my diagnosis. But ultimately, I was wrong. The wrongness in this case was important, because the thing I thought I had (that I didn't have) was indeed so terrible that it made me anxious beyond description, and my life became a waking nightmare. When it comes to health and well-being, avoiding "waking nightmares" is a priority.

The problem with WebMD (and other sites like it) is twofold, as I see it:

First, the symptoms you're looking up are often false positives for other, worse maladies. Without a (brief, expensive, impersonal) visit to a doctor, you can't be sure that the tingling means anything at all. At the same time, relying on websites for diagnosis means you could be missing serious conditions which are asymptomatic.

Second, WebMD mainly subsists on advertising dollars, like most of the Internet. Who primarily advertises on WebMD? Pharmaceutical companies, of course. So there are ads on all sides, trawling for someone with "shortness of breath," "unexplained fatigue," and "frequent heartburn." Since the people visiting these sites are already looking for something to explain and/or fix their symptoms, these ads can be especially inviting. Not only that, but the ads often contain such ambiguous and common symptoms that most people could make a case for having them.

I already knew all this, but I was sucked into the vortex anyway. I found people describing symptoms similar to mine, and the fear took over. As soon as I talked to a real health professional, they made a different diagnosis, and my anxiety creeped back into the orange zone, where it usually resides.

This isn't very novel advice, but it's sound: if you have a physical problem, consult a doctor. The more Internet-literate you are, the worse the chance you'll descend through a portal of misinformation.

You don't have to take it from me.  Here's an article on "cyberchondria" published on...WebMD. 

Or, if you're avoiding that website altogether, here's a New York Times article on the phenomenon, instead. 

Kentucky Hype Stout?

I'm drinking a Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Boom! That means I'm winning at life. I think. It means, at least, that "I know a guy." Or that I don't work during the day, in the traditional sense. For those of you seeking context:

Remember when you almost ran over that family of four to score Meijer's last Beanie Baby? Or that fateful Christmas Eve when you and three friends piled your money together for a Teddy Ruxpin? Or that time that I waited outside, all night, in the rain, to get opening night tickets for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? It's easy to laugh, but I bet you voted for someone who turned out to be a lemon, so take it easy.

If you've never boarded the hype train, Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) is a hard thing to understand. KBS is a beer, manufactured by Michigan darling Founders Brewery. It's a chocolatey stout, "cave-aged in oak bourbon barrels for over an entire year." It weights in at a deceptive 11.2% ABV. That said, it's a just a beer, in the same way that The Beatles were just a band for those screaming black and white girls in the front row. 

As a retailer, I have had grown men--big men--stare at me with barely suppressed homicidal intent because I didn't have their KBS. At Foods For Living, people still tell the story of how sweet Susie once tried a coveted bottle of the stuff and promptly said "Ick," before pouring it down the drain. What's notable is not that she did that--it's that people still tell the story, years later.

www.beeradvocate.com, one of the world's leading beer-ratings websites, gives KBS a 100%. (100% is the highest rating possible outside the realm of corporate goal-setting and high school sports, where giving 110% is not uncommon.) This rating is democratic: the 100% is a result of 9,395 separate votes, as of presstime. It's hard to think of anything more universally supported by such a volatile demographic. This puts KBS in a very elite category, in which the late Saddam Hussein may be the only other contender.

"KBS finds a way."

It's difficult to overstate KBS hype. Anywhere craft beer is sold, you're likely to see a handwritten list of thirty or so names dangling from some beleaguered manager's desk. One, or two, or perhaps three of these names will be savoring a KBS come launch week. How much KBS is allotted to a certain retail outlet is the result of a complex equation involving Michigan's three-tier distribution system, vendor-retailer relationships, and probably something involving chaos theory.

The KBS allotment for a particular store (or bar) is a function of how much business that store (or bar) does with the distributor in question generally, or of how much the distributor's rep plays golf with that store's beer buyer, or both. Foods For Living, and other such outlets, would simply skirt this bizarre byzantine system by going directly to the brewery, if that hadn't been declared explicitly illegal after Prohibition. If all this is making your head spin, you're not alone, although--to be honest--I assumed it was just the KBS, in my case.

People I know have followed the relevant delivery truck from store to store, hoping to capitalize on the few designated "first-come, first-served" KBS bottles available. This sort of behavior all but guarantees that those only casually interested in trying KBS will simply not be able to do so. This is a reasonable barrier for entry for the Shaolin temple, or the navy SEALS, but for a beer?

Maybe you'd rather just go straight to the source, skipping the labyrinth of middlemen. Downtown Grand Rapids is a place of wonder, so why not stop by Founders and grab a pint right out of the barrel?

Well, you might want to book a reservation, or get a ticket. See, Founders tries to offer a little hometown wink wink nudge nudge to the locals, culminating in KBS Week (Match 9-14). The beer doesn't officially release to the public until Match 30th. Unless you live in Michigan! Oh my gosh, KBS is available right now, throughout Michigan! (I just flipped my coffee table over. Not really).

Now, I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to gastronomical hype. When a restaurant has a two month reservation wait, I usually end up opting for the local Thai option instead. But KBS exists in a sort of gray area between true Epicureanism and...Armchair Epicureanism. Beer consumption shares this sort of opportunity with poker, PC gaming, and air hockey. If you're a tennis fan, there's zero chance you'll be able to book a match against Vanessa Williams. But if you're an air hockey enthusiast (like me), playing in the US Open is a very real option, to which I can attest. A best-of-the-best wine is out of the average Jane's price range, if you can even find it. But a best-of-the-best beer is being aged in bourbon barrels in some secret catacombs beneath Grand Rapids, and it's only $9.00 for a snifter. As long as you know a guy. So perhaps KBS is a way for Joe Six-pack to indulge in beverage elitism, without trips to Napa Valley. (As long as Joe Six-pack doesn't expect a literal six-pack of KBS, which is not a thing.)

Hype or not, KBS is delicious, and it's something to do in March in Michigan besides be cold and not care about basketball at all (if you're me). But beware, Epicurean adventurers: when your entire to-do list for the day is a craft beer, an emptiness of spirit may accompany an emptiness of glass. I'm uniquely qualified to say so, having reached the bottom of my KBS and the bottom of these reflections in perfect synchronicity. 

6 Things You Should Know About Essential Oils

WILX—you know, the breaking news and weather authority—did a two-part report on essential oils last week, titled Essential Oils: Hype or Help? I can compress Part One into a brief summary for you: essential oils are very popular right now, and many people will testify to their efficacy. Part Two features some lightly cautionary missives about liver damage from some doctors, and a couple more testimonials. In the meantime, I thought I'd take a break from my crusade to master the mind to splash about in some plant extracts. I thought the best approach would be presenting bite-sized chunks of related information, because readers and writers are finally in agreement that transitional sentences and linked paragraphs are a waste of time. So...(trumpets)

Things to Know About Essential Oils

There isn't much research on the efficacy of essential oils.

I don't mean to imply anything about their efficacy. Many people clearly love essential oils, and what is worthwhile, my friend, if not love? And they smell good. Whole businesses have been founded on the premise of good smells. There's simply not much clinical evidence about essential oils and their effects. What data does exist is largely subjective, or reliant on patient/user reporting. Patient reporting might be as good an indicator as any when it comes to mood enhancement, but less so when it comes to, say, combating ear infection. In other words, learning about essential oils (EO) is not like learning about aspirin. Everything is frustratingly vague. That said...

The premise for aromatherapy isn't as silly as (some people think) it sounds.

You have a brain. You have a nose, and some olfactory receptors connected to it. If you were to catch a whiff of the shoe-spray-and stale-cigarette-smoke melange from the bowling alley in which you spent your salad days, you may (briefly) experience a feeling of youthful exuberance. The brain's limbic system processes both memory and emotion, meaning that smells can create big feels. This doesn't seem entirely reliant on connotation and nostalgia, either. Some smells excite this physiological pathway almost universally. (As a rule, people like flowers and food, and tend to avoid raw sewage.) Is it possible that lavender, aside from smelling "nice," possesses a unique combination of terpenes, esters, oxides, phenols, alcohols, ketones, and aldehydes that has a calming effect on the mind? That seems entirely possible, but more research has to be done. What is firmly established, however, is that the placebo effect is powerful enough to conquer anxiety on its own. Moreover, the memory of feeling calm can itself generate more of the same. As far as aromatherapy is concerned, the risks are almost nonexistent. At worst, you're purchasing a nice scent, at best, soothing your core being.

No such thing as "certification" exists in the world of essential oil manufacture. Terms like "therapeutic grade" are arbitrary.

No regulatory body issues any sort of approval or rating regarding "purity" for an essential oil manufacturer. Many brands claim to be certified or therapeutic grade, but these distinctions are entirely at the discretion of the brand's marketing team. Like supplements, essential oils do not require any sort of FDA or other oversight. As a result, manufacturers' claims lay in the gray area of implying benefits without explicitly promising them. This is common to the entire supplement world, and shouldn't be considered an indictment of any sort. A bottle of calcium cannot promise to prevent osteopenia, either. 

Essential Oils and multilevel marketing are sometimes big buddies. 

Sometimes. Part of the reason for the recent visibility of EO is the tireless marketing efforts of multilevel marketing companies like doTERRA and Young Living. ("Multilevel marketing," or MLM, is the euphemistic term for those things that are not pyramid schemes, legally speaking, but seem exactly like pyramid schemes when your friends you haven't seen since high school call you up for "coffee" so they can try and sell you premium cutlery, or essential oils.) 

In order for MLM to work, the MLM company must convey the central idea that their product is the absolute cream of the crop. MLM requires an incredible amount of overhead to pay the pyramid network of people involved and market the product, so the price of said product is usually far greater than a store-bought counterpart. That's not to say these products are not top notch. Only that these companies must convince their customers—who are also vendors—that they are top notch. This creates a sense of fierce, unnuanced loyalty around said essential oils. It's why you often can't even suggest that any other brand might be comparable to a devotee of the MLM EO brands. 

There is a hot debate about whether to ingest essential oils, especially in the EO community.

It shouldn't be that confusing—do you drink 'em, or not? 

In an amazingly in-depth series of articles on EO, Tauna Meyer asks Paul Dean—owner of Native American Nutritionals—this very thing.  His answer: you can ingest them if you want, but there's no need, because smelling them is more potent. 

I'll be frank—I find this answer lacking. 

His main point, later in the interview, is that ingestion safety is largely a matter of adulteration. How common is "adulteration?" He says somewhere about around 95% of EO are adulterated. Did he discern this in his lab, or with a scrying glass? It turns out that... you can just tell, after accumulating enough experience. Hmmm. 

There is no straight answer about the ingestion issue. But most doctors and aromatherapists agree: just don't ingest them unless you know what you're doing. This implies that it is possible to know what you're doing in regard to EO. Is it?

You can become an "expert" without expertise, and develop expertise without becoming an "expert."

You can become a "certified" aromatherapist with many different organizations, including some that sell EO. This is much like how you could become an ordained minister online within the hour. Again, that's not to say that some of these sources aren't experts, but it's hard to separate the helpful from the...hype-full. 

The most common aromatherapy certification is issued by the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy. This organization is large and generally respected, but it's important to understand just how little applied science is involved in the process of certification. 

The Bottom Line

• Aromatherapy is great, but it's more art than science at this point. 
• Becoming serious about aromatherapy means wading through a lot of conjecture.
• You should buy all your essential oils at Foods For Living. FFL offers many brands, expert staff, and food-grade oils from Lansing's own LorAnn Oils, if you're into ingestion. 

 

Who is Thinking Your Thoughts?

This is the second entry in an admittedly idiosyncratic miniseries about the intersection of health, anxiety, and the mind. Here's the first.

To paraphrase one of my favorite neuroscientists, our thoughts chase us out of bed. They are our constant companions through the day. It can feel like our thoughts are bludgeoning us to sleep. When you stop and think about it, which you are cognitively obligated to do as you read this sentence, you probably feel more like an audience than an actor inside your own mind, more or less forced to watch helplessly as your mind's eye throws an array of images on the inside of your skull. When you consider the thoughts you have in a typical five minutes, an overwhelming percentage are probably not things you feel like you're actively "thinking," so much as commercials for various plans and anxieties. (Here's an article from PsychCentral about this.)

It's somehow trite and profound to stop and realize that you are the only one inside your head, and the seemingly random broadcast of mental events you experience in a day is, well, you, and not the equivalent of pharmaceutical commercials you sit through until the real program returns.

Is this important? If you care about your health and well-being, it is important. That's because, much like ads on TV, your mental adverts have an agenda. They are trying to hook you with a clever tactic—usually some form of fear—and make you do their bidding. The intentions of your thoughts can be pure—anxiety about an unlocked door, for instance, can come from a natural impulse to protect your family and possessions. But there is a threshold where this sort of anxiety ceases to be productive, and indeed can begin to subtly warp your relationship with consciousness in an unhealthy way. This can have a direct impact on your health. 

Learned helplessness a psychological phenomenon that goes a little something like this:

In Scenario Number 1, I give you electric shocks until you pull a lever in your immediate vicinity. When you pull the lever, I stop. You walk away from this experience less-than-happy with me. Next time we play "this game," you pull the lever immediately, and I stop immediately, and all is well. (Sort of.) Your feathers are ruffled, but you're prepared for the next time we play, because you've figured out the system.

In Scenario Number 2, I shock you, and you pull the lever, and I keep shocking you. You are unhappy, and hate me, but that's beside the point. The next time we play the game, I've arranged for the lever to end the shocking, but you assume that the lever will perform identically to your previous experience —that it won't do anything. So you don't pull it, even though it would stop the shocking.

Sorry I had to walk you through that. I thought it would less disturbing than explaining the original 1960s experiment, which involved shocking a lot of dogs.

Consider this study, published in 2012 in Chest Journal, the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians. (Don't act like you don't read every issue.) The study found that the friends and family of people admitted to intensive care units demonstrated significant learned helplessness, and this consequently affected their decision-making ability in regard to their loved ones' health. An overwhelming feeling of futility often breeds decisions that will birth more futility. This is common in the face of severe medical trauma. It's also common outside the medical sphere, as anyone who has hibernated in front of Netflix for 3 days with a cache of dark chocolate can tell you.

Conclusion: if you falsely determine that something is true about your health or well-being, your brain's predilection for pattern recognition will likely carry it too far. This is one way the brain magnifies feelings of doubt and failure until they metastasize into Depression and Anxiety and Frustration. (Luckily, the opposite is also probably true.)

To combat making unhealthy choices, in any context, it's important to realize something that sounds dimwitted at first blush:

YOU ARE THE ONE THINKING YOUR THOUGHTS.

This is a crucial realization if you are to become the master of your mental environment, and your health, and your well-being. This, though, is only one half of the equation, and the other half sounds almost like a contradiction, but it isn't:

Figure 4: a human brain (male).

IT IS NOT THE DEFAULT SETTING FOR HUMAN BEINGS TO HAVE MUCH CONTROL OVER THEIR THOUGHTS.

(I'm sorry. If you're an avid reader, you'll know I do not rely on capital letters for extra gusto. This questionable choice bespeaks my conviction in these ideas.) If you're interested in an extensive and fascinating object lesson on the distance between who we are and what we think, I highly recommend this episode of the NPR program Invisibilia, entitled The Secret History of Thoughts. 

The word "thoughts" implies a lot of personal agency, but I think thoughts are better conceptualized as "mental events." When you realize that you are thinking your thoughts, but they're not, by default, going to generally be thoughts that are in the interest of your self-esteem/health/well-being, you have the blueprint for a new personal directive: take control of your thoughts, before they take control of you.

Like hula hooping, it seems easy, and it's not. But simply being aware of your mental passenger status is the first step to becoming the pilot.

Researching this sort of thing will send you directly into the arms of sages of very disparate quality, obviously. But if you can stomach the cheesiness inherent in fostering a positive mindset, there are some great specific suggestions tucked into these articles:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-master-your-mind-part-one-whos-running-your-thoughts.html

http://mountainmovingmindset.com/blog/?p=1173