Everything I Learned in Art School is True: Zinc and Titanium Dioxide Poisoning

On my last case of vomiting today after having taken a 50mg zinc supplement I had this revelation.*

The side effects of Zinc is vomiting and diarrhea which explains my turn for the worse when I got sick a week ago and in deciding to "kick" my cold I'd bought zinc supplements instead of Airborn and Zicam which tend to make me vomit.

My logic being that Airborn contained other ingredients that were the problem and I knew zinc was the main cold fighting ingredient in Zicam and Airborn so I bought zinc supplements. As I know now by all my uncontrollable vomiting I am highly allergic to zinc. Because I'd taken 150mgs my illness took a huge turn for the worse.

Zinc is also found in meat and fish and dental filers by the way. It's time for a serious sit down with my dentist, just when I finally got rid of mercury fillings.

Thinking back to my days in art school zinc was known to be highly toxic in the metal foundry and we were forbidden to use it. My boyfriend at the time found a sheet or two and decided to use it to weld a "jet pack" (I told you this was art school). He got really sick besides being reprimanded and banned from the welding facilities and had to sneak in to do his work at odd hours from then on.

I also recall all the toxic ingredients we were warned about in oil painting such as titanium dioxide used to make white in white paint, one of the most toxic colors. Back then I took it all with a grain of salt because I well I was a painting major and there was no way around getting paint on your skin, and kinda like condoms, it wasn't the same experience using latex gloves. After that I had to switch mediums as I developed more and more rashes and allergies and it was a reasonable explanation for my cat's total kidney failure.

If titanium dioxide is so toxic (see study http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427406013798) why then is it the main ingredient in vitamins such as the L-carnitine I almost bought from Target yesterday? I realized that's why that brand is two bucks cheaper than one that contains beta carotene as a colorant. And it's in women's make up and most other pills simply for coloring.

There's no getting around Titanium dioxide in oil paint in order to use white, and in acrylics for that matter, but it doesn't have to be in vitamins and kinda defeats the purpose of getting healthy through supplements. Where is the FDA in this matter? Apparently out to lunch as there is zero regulation on supplements or anything else used as a colorant on everything from cold medicine to salmon, cheese and butter (all dyed for consumer preferred colors.) And the problem is no consumer group is asked which product they prefer if they knew the colors created to make products more aesthetically pleasing were highly toxic. (See my other posting on food coloring) I'm sure we'd all be OK with brown vitamins and only slightly pink fish and sorta yellow butter. In DayQuil they could so easily have a bright yellow label and a clear product.
I think about this constantly. We would still think as consumers that DayQuil = yellow liquid = good. My dad used to make the best brown cough syrup when I was a kid, no red or cherry flavor, I think it was just brandy and actual maple syrup.

Anyway, art school is beginning to look more and more like the crucial education it was, even as a chemical laboratory since apparently they don't teach this at ITT Tech.
The average person has no idea what they are putting on their face and ingesting into their bodies, doesn't even read ingredients labels and then years later they suddenly are a sitting duck with cancer wondering how it could have happened. It's seriously something to think about especially since other generations didn't have as much cancer and down syndrome, etc and weren't ingesting as much laboratory modified crap.
It's time to insist we keep the color in our art work and not in our food!

*(Note: the levels of Zinc taken here and reaction to contradict these findings: http://www.ajcn.org/content/51/2/225.short ...but are in agreement with this study: http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/8683339)



And if you still aren't convinced here's some related articles on vitamin toxicity:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/258180.stm

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525644,00.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Technology/story?id=118252&page=1#.T2d7ccz9cho

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Health/alternative-health-guru-sues-company-product-claiming-killed/story?id=10499409#.T2d7p8z9cho

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlternativeMedicineSupplements/consumer-reports-dirty-dozen-12-risky-supplements/story?id=11309450#.T2d8QMz9cho

Cleanse footnote on avoiding Alzheime'rs disease and other cancers (Addendum to last post)

I forgot to mention the importance of getting rid of aluminum in your diet.
This is the main ingredient in most deodorants and is the major leading cause of Alzheimer's. So go to Whole Foods and get a liquid crystal stick deodorant. You can use the solid crystal but personally I think they are as effective as the sole of your shoe. (When you are eating less bad crap you will stop smelling and sweating anyway-- I went from needing prescription strength antiperspirant to liquid crystal with no problems after doing the cleanse in my previous post.)

Also stop cooking with aluminum pans if you still do that. And the non-stick kind are bad too just in case you were wondering. Go for the iron or stainless steel and if you cook with enough olive oil you won't have a cleaning mess (except for iron.) Anyway, just do it.

All this is related to avoiding Alzheimer's which of course runs in my family -yay!

Sunset Yellow AKA Yellow #6 will increase the absorption of aluminum in your body times 100+ which is why when I used my emergency deodorant I keep in my car (full of aluminum) and took DayQuil (full of yellow #6 as the second ingredient) when I was sick I immediately lost my phone and my memory of where it could possibly be (in my car)....Being sick on other cold meds or none clearly makes a difference.

Start reading labels.

So avoid food coloring as well. In Europe it apparently got phased out of most foods in 2009 but we still have zero regulation by the FDA in the USA --yay!

This is lovely on Skittles:
http://thesmilingman.hubpages.com/hub/WhatsInMyFoodSkittlesIngredientsExplained

And stop eating anything fried or processed.

To prevent Alzheimer's they recommend fish (Omega oils -duh!... helps with the brain), curry, boiled potatoes (Dr. Oz says "baked" but he clearly is forgetting baked potatoes cause that carcinogen reaction.)...fried is obviously no good here. Possibly coffee but it's an acid in your body so you really want to avoid that shit.

Also do crossword puzzles and other brain games for brain function. Yet another excuse to play Words With Friends! Paint, write and do basic math (try to work all areas of that brain of yours.)

If you are having liver issues caused by drugs and or alcohol look at the prescriptions you are taking, by all means do the cleanse, especially the lemon water and Omega 6 and 3's and take tons of Milk Thistle (found in the vitamin isle.)

Rashes, again look at your entire diet. If you are having any issue in one part of your body at a critical level your entire body is also out of whack and needs attention. (Treat the source vs. the symptom.) Do your own research and get a second opinion.

Also... Here's a good article on the oils. But just use raw coconut oil instead of butter (if lactose intolerant) and instead of cooking oil:
http://wellnessmama.com/2193/why-you-should-never-eat-vegetable-oil-or-margarine/

Also for an extreme detox or to whiten teeth, try this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041ESF94/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=herbkati-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0041ESF94 I haven't used it yet but it looks great.

Cheers.

How I lost 6 sizes in 10 days!...And not even trying!

Yes I was a size 10, but no more! How I got to be a size 10? read my post, "How to gain 6 sizes in 6 months doing 6 things."

So, I did this cleanse and was about to throw out all my old clothes and then suddenly my size 4's were fitting! Yes, holy crap! And now even my size 4's are too big.

If you do this cleanse you will feel great and have more energy and be way less fatigued. Losing weight is just a minor side effect. Losing weight was never my goal.
I just did it to clean my system out.

The world has so much more to offer than it did when I was a vegan in the early 1990's in Chicago. So you can easily have fun eating healthy these days and "everyone is doing it," not like it was back in the day where I was a lonely soul attacked by everyone's mom for not believing the French fry counted as a vegetable and not touching the rump roast. You can do this! And you can even eat fish!


So here's the plan:

1. Walk 30-60 minutes a day. Not hard or fast walking but do walk a dog and sing if you can. Sing to the dog while you walk and it will make the whole walking process more enjoyable for everyone involved.

2. Dance for 5-20 minutes a day

3. Do lymphatic self massages (look these up on youtube.com... there are about 5 or 6 different ones for each part of your lymph system) or (easier) get a trampoline now called a rebounder and jump for 20-30 minutes once every day or two. (I didn't have a rebounder until after I did the cleanse but it's a lot more fun that way.)

4. No caffeine, soda, tea, vinegar, vegetable oil or salt (for reasons of creating acid in your body and they are bad for you.)

5. Eat 1-4 teaspoons of raw coconut oil per day; the more the better; this will help your sugar levels and get the acid out of your body

6. Drink water with lemon juice, try to drink a gallon a day or your weight in water; this will clean the toxins out of your body and make you feel full.

7. Take Omega 3 and 6 supplements and multivitamins; the Omegas help your brain happiness levels and sugar levels among other things, you can't really take too much here; at least 2 a day of the non-odorless kind (trust me!)...also good for Diabetics

8. Eat raw almonds (when you are hungry these start tasting great as your taste buds will change. Wholefoods has some Italian ones that are pretty good; raw means unsalted and uncooked!

9. No meat or dairy! Only almond based or soy based products like milk, tofu, cheese (all non-dairy). You can have fish but not chicken! If you are going to break these rules make sure it is Kosher and organic. (But since Kosher chicken tastes like rubber, really why bother!)

10. Eat lots of greens, try to OD on your greens and eat organic whenever ever you can afford it. If you can afford to you have no excuse not to.

11. Make a salad dressing out of avocado oil, virgin olive oil, lemon juice and raspberries or other berries.

12. Eat lots of avocado and other natural fats (this gets the acid out of the body)

13. Avoid the gym. Yes I said it. Weights are good but avoid hard exercise (where you can't easily hold a conversation; this is anerobic which creates the build up of lactic acid in your body and what you want is aerobic activity which requires breathing)

14. Eat less but start eating nuts in the AM to get your metabolism going.

15. Put coconut oil or other natural high quality lotion on your body daily ie. no stretch marks from rapid weight loss

16. Don't eat any bad shit, nothing fried, processed and no junk food or drive though.
Besides being a known carcinogen, (fried shit in vegetable oil...) well the oil that looks crystal clear is bathed in bleach, Drano and other bad crap. If you eat potatoes make sure they are boiled and not baked or fried. Sweet potatoes are great, but not fried!

17. Eat whole grains here and there when you do eat starches and eat lots of fruit like grapefruit and bananas; avoid oranges because of the huge sugar content.

18. Do breathing exercises and focus on breathing into your abdomen (lower lung area).
Try the breath in for 8 sec count, hold for 10 and breath out for 20 or whatever combination you can muster. The point is to breath a whole lot and deeply.

19. Focus on being happy about your life and seeing yourself in a positive light as a thin beautiful person. I find I look great when I am feeling great and when I feel crappy I suddenly look in the mirror and see fat that wasn't there before. So, the secret is to control your mind!

20. Find ways to play and have fun and be joyful and literally focus on allowing love into your heart and think about all your are grateful for. Somehow this really helps the happiness levels and in controlling your state.

21. Don't drink alcohol at least go off alcohol for 10 days.

22. Avoid eating proteins with your carbs when possible; with sushi this isn't really possible. As a sushi addict I sympathize here. You can do sashimi though.

23. Don't drink any liquids while you are eating. Just pretend you are in India, you will get used to it. The saliva breaks down your food better and somehow causes better absorption.

24. Don't eat sugar. Or fake sugars. Sugar naturally occurring in fruit is OK but lay off sugar. I had two bags of candy I stared at the entire time but do your self a favor and get rid of all the shit that temps you in your fridge and all around your house. (No stashing candy!) Eventually you won't ever crave it an can replace it with Agave nectar.

25. I almost forgot. So important, get off any prescription drug you are on! This will affect your mood and toxins in your body as well as your size. Of course do it gradually (although I resorted to cold-turkey) and this isn't a weight loss plan, this is a cleanse plan that works as a diet by default by simply not eating bad crap and cleaning out the crap in your body. If you seriously are a chronic dieter or have life threatening issues of course consult your doc.

I already thought I ate healthy but cutting out all vinegar was a big change and no occasional eating of fried chicken and fries. I don't eat it or crave it at all now.
I also had to learn to love vegetables and cut out potato chips (carcinogen and vegetable oil thing.) It's really a lot easier than you think. I keep a gallon of lemon water near my bed and nuts in my purse. Yes it seems nuts... but it works!
I'm back to being a vegan besides the fish thing; fish because of the omegas are great.
Also you can make kale chips if you are craving potato chips- just bake the kale in sprinkled olive oil on a pan that you've oiled at say, 350 degrees for 10-20 minutes.

Good luck!

How to gain 6 sizes in 6 months doing 6 things

1. Eat pizza everyday
2. Repeat that for as many meals as possible
3. Never exercise and be lazy
4. Start hating vegetables
5. Drink soda
6. Avoid having sex

Doctors: Hurry up with the practice!

So I go to Urgent Care since my doc can't fit me in and the Urgent Care doc says I need to see my doc or a specialist. Why did they send me to Urgent Care then? What if I was dying? They would send me to the E.R. So what is Urgent Care for? Just to give out temporary prescriptions based on guess work? They don't do any lab work there or is it just because they wanted to go home?

She said she really had no idea but it wasn't fungal, either I have an underlying disease or allergy or it could be viral.

So I spend all day reading up on every skin disease on the New Zealand Dermalogical database and cross checked it with the CDC and WebMD; bacterial, viral and fungal, contact allergies, etc. and none of them resemble the rash on my feet.

The on call doc said I was allergic to my shoes and that seems to be the most likely at this point but if I am allergic to leather there goes all shoes. And it itches like crazy. Can't tell if my chills are related or if it's just winter. Mono? EBV? hepetitus? CFS? seborrhoeic dermatitis, pityriasis versicolor or atopic dermatitis?

The same look comes from bee stings, poison oak, band-aid adhesive, or chlorine in the pool. She said I could have a gluten disease. I looked up that allergy and it says to avoid fish, corn, all grain, nuts, and some fruits, but basically I can't eat anything.

I could have about 5 diseases or cancer but probably none of them. WTF!
I just hate that my co-pay is the same and then I have to go to the doc for another co-pay who will send me to a specialist for a 3rd co-pay and if I'm lucky they will figure it out by then. I end up paying the same as if I had a PPO. They get paid a lot to call it a practice! And how many years of practice to they get? Get it right already! It seems medicine, law, psychiatry and auto shops are the only industries that get to keep charging ridiculous sums without actually solving the problem you came in for.

I've probably done more studying of skin diseases than my doctors combined.
I can tell you if you have Herpes Zoster, Scarlet Fever, Polio, TB, or African HIV, Lupus, Hyperthyroidism, or liver cancer but I can't diagnose my own damn feet.
At least I know now why she prescribed me a steroid cream and said I need a specialist.

And my dog has a paw the size of a balloon now which makes me wonder why either of us went to the doctor this week. I might be better off concocting my own potion in my kitchen. At least I have oatmeal and collodial silver in there. I can make my own damn spray; I told the vent I wasn't going to buy the $20 spray of oatmeal and collodial silver unless I could also use it on myself. He said no. So tonight I sprayed athlete's foot spray on my dog's balloon-sized paw and she smiled real big and fell asleep. I guess this means I should probably go get the over-priced dog spray and use it on my feet.

Vets n docs

So I took my dog to the vet yesterday for her paw and shots. Actually it's her arm that she's been licking. The term is Gaucineroma or something like that which translates to "licks paw too much." He told me to use hydrocortisone cream and then prescribed me a $20 bottle spray of organic oatmeal and colodial silver something or other. I said, "Hold the horse!" and pulled out my prescriptions of Nystatin and generic hydrocortisone cream which by the way are much cheaper than dog prescriptions! He said Nystatin was even better which is what I had put on per paw this morning and did notice a difference. I decided to wait on the $10 head cone as well. My bill was $55 for all her shots including the visit (which I wasn't charged for but is normally $10) and a $5 nail trim; very worth it.

So I have to say I love my vet. NFAH for you LA locals. He only gives you the shots you need, not everything ever available. When I've had to have my dog's pad sewn back on his paw (twice!) because he literally licked it off (Yes, that black cushion thing) it was $106 for over the overnight surgery. And when my old dog got attacked by another dog and needed facial reconstruction, OK stitches in his face, all over his head and inside his mouth it was again only $300 and that was the entire bill, not just the surgery. If you are lucky you have a vet like this who will tell you when it is time to put your dog down, that he has lived a great life and not push expensive tests and procedures. Luckily I have always had a vet like this. Docs should do the same. (Even luckier for me my last dog took the decision out of the equation by getting my other dog to distract me and take me for a walk when he decided drop to drop dead.)

But my point is this, I was at a family dinner and they mentioned their tiny little dog being prescribed Tramadol as a pain killer at 50mg. I went home and realized I had a prescription for the same dose of Tramadol for my back pain! So I gave some to my dog for pain and well, she was freaked out pacing at being drugged out so maybe she didn't need it. The point is we can mostly take the same stuff. (Though don't give your dog antibiotics for humans. I did that once by accident and he really puffed up.)

So now my dog and I both have feet infections and I really wish I could pull out my foot at the vet and lay it on the table. Let's have a one-stop shop.

Student Loans... what you need to know

If you hold a Perkins Loan and you read that loan agreement (and you did because they forced you to read the fine print in an exit interview before they would let you graduate) you would know that in periods of financial hardship the government pays the interest for you. All you have to do is apply for it. Same goes with Federal Subsidized Stafford Loans. But these loans then get bought and sold to third parties who will try to make up their own rules so know your rights and call the Ombudsman if you need help. Did I say Rosebud? No, the Ombudsman. Just go here: www.ombudsman.ed.gov/

No company is consolidating or refinancing loans since there is no profit to be made with such low interest rates since late 2008. Therefore the government has stepped in and anyone can consolidate a loan even if you only have one loan with the reason being "these terms are not suitable for me." You may be able to get your interest rate lowered this way. Of course you have to be in repayment and no longer in school on those loans for this to work. Exception: "Borrowers whose consolidation applications are received on or after July 1, 2010 and before July 1, 2011 may qualify to consolidate loans that are in an in-school status into a Direct Consolidation Loan."
If your loan is in default you can still consolidate under the Income Contingent Option which is the best option anyway (OK, second best, really.)

Go to: http://www.direct.ed.gov/student.html which links you to here: https://www.dl.ed.gov/borrower/BorrowerWelcomePage.jsp

Repayment Options:

Standard Repayment

Cheapest over time but may be impossible in that time frame unless you make a massive income or have a trust fund.

Extended Repayment

This is a new one. According to the Direct Loan site:

To be eligible for the extended plan, you must have more than $30,000 in Direct Loan debt and you must not have an outstanding balance on a Direct Loan as of October 7, 1998. Under the extended plan you have 25 years for repayment and two payment options: fixed or graduated. Fixed payments are the same amount each month, as with the standard plan, while graduated payments start low and increase every two years, as with the graduated plan below.

Graduated Plan

Smaller payments that increase every 2 years. You will pay more in interest this way.
It will take you more time to repay. No payment can exceed three times the first payment.

Income Contingent

Uses your income to calculate your payment based on federal income guidelines based on your AGI, family size, spouse, discretionary income, etc. and *. The goal is to not cause you financial hardship by such large loan payments you may have in the previous options. After 25 years of payments the government writes off your loans but you will pay the taxes on this as if it is income in that year. They have their own calculation for this that really makes no sense. Interest will accumulated on your loans, and will be added to the loan balance (capitalized) each year. "However, capitalization will not exceed 10 percent of the original amount you owed when you entered repayment. Interest will continue to accumulate but will no longer be capitalized." This means the interest you pay on your interest can only get so big, then you will stop paying interest on your interest.

Income-based Repayment

This is a new plan started by the Obama administration during the recent bank crisis when he realized the student loan crisis was larger than the mortgage crisis but to admit this would cause a national meltdown or err, cost the government more money in bailouts. The Administration also realized that all the options available were starving out the population or causing massive defaults and that the only way out was to add the 25 year clause to the last two options. Note this also allows you to go back to school!

Your payment will most likely be the lowest under this plan because A) you have to have at least a partial financial hardship and it is based on your income during this period and B) it is based on state income guidlines rather than federal.

Example A) in California the poverty line is under $34,000 and but under Federal the poverty line is is say under $18,000. The minimum wage is higher in CA than the Federal because it costs much more to survive there then say Texas or Washington where they don't have state taxes and outrageous rent.

Example B) under income contingent even though you have financial hardship and are unemployed your payment may be calculated and come up with the same figure as you were paying before you did all that paperwork and were under the graduated plan. This makes no point really, but that is how outdated the federal AGI standards are.

So go with the income-based plan if you can because in 25 years your loans are also forgiven with the same clause saying the balance will be added to your taxes as income on which you will be taxed in that year. (Of course they haven't really come out and said this because they don't want everyone to chose this option.) They use the term "may" in case we no longer tax our people at that time. Highly unlikely! If you carry a large loan balance this plan will allow you to eat, even if you have a job because remember, in California or or New York what is considered poverty is of course much higher.... Yay!



Per DL site: *Monthly discretionary income equals your AGI minus the poverty level for your state of residence and family size, divided by 12. For the current poverty level, see the Poverty Guidelines Chart, which is issued annually by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.


If you hold a PLUS loan that means your parents love you and took out the loan for you so technically they have to pay it back if you don't so you have less options. You have parents that love and support you so get over it! (For your options go to the DL site. You may be spoiled rotten but you still have options.)


If you insist on staying with Sallie Mae or some other multi-million loan sucking machine you should know that they can't force you to pay more than you can afford to pay under something called Title IV. Mention this and they will start stammering and act confused.


Well, I hope this helps!