R.M. Ridley's Blog, page 44

New Study is Good News

I am an avid user of my e-cig. I quit smoking cold turkey all on my own and was nicotine free for two years.

Two Years of HELL!

As a sufferer of mental health disorders, I didn’t know the effect nicotine has on mental health. Go Google it – nicotine and mental health. It even helps with medication uptake.

When I went cold turkey I essentially damaged my brain and the way it functioned which is why those two years were hell on me and my wife. I had to add a second regime of medication to re-stabilize myself after quitting.

Now I am not saying SMOKE UP BENDER! That is your decision but for me I didn’t want to go back to smoking I had quit and I had quit for my reasons. Those reasons hadn’t changed but neither had my need for nicotine. My solution and a happy one was using an e-cig.

There has been a lot of flack about e-cigs and a lot of organizations (mostly ones that count on money from sources e-cigs wouldn’t supply) try to down play their good qualities, label them as dangerous, unknown qualities, a gateway to smoking for the young, and want to slap restrictions on the products that would essentially force anyone using them to pay big money to pharma companies or- more likely – go back to smoking,

That is way this study is such a good thing. It confirms that the dangers from e-cigs are so low as to be negligible.

This is the article – electronic cigarettes pose minimal health risk

Filed under: Mental Health, MIscellaneous Tagged: e-cigarette, health study, Mental Health, vaping

Update on the War

Well, after three days of following my regiment of garlic, plantain, vitamin C, and mullen – I am happy to say all traces of infection appear to be gone. I am coughing up some small lumps of phlegm – which are also not infected – but not much. I am not short of breath or light headed, nor do I ‘feel sick’.

I will of course keep an eye on my health over the next few days, in case not all traces of the infection were eradicated, but I suspect that I will find I am cured.

So look back a few posts if you missed my attack strategy on the infection, and always remember to know exactly what it is your putting in your body and how it will affect it.

 

Filed under: MIscellaneous Tagged: cured, infection, natural remedies

Damn You Editors! Damn You All To Hell!

So I have been away from my latest novel, the third instalment of my paranormal P. I. Jonathan Alvey, for a number of months now. Things crept into my life and forced the novel onto the sidelines. It happens. But I want to get back to it, submerse myself into it, and get back to writing it.

So I have a printed out, hard copy, version of what I did write_ the first third I estimate of the novel. I find it easier to read that way, less prone to distract myself editing and changing and rewriting. There is a time for that and for me, that time comes a few months after I have finished writing it. Now is the time to soak up the words and dive back in.

It has been slow – my muse hasn’t really unpacked from her vacation and so hasn’t fallen into stride yet ( stride = whipping me until I write the visions she shares) – and thus I am almost forcing myself to read these pages. I have swore to myself I will do one chapter a day minimum. Today I did two chapters but I am having a problem.

My problem is that, even though it is on paper, I can’t seem to quell the internal editor.

I blame all the editors in my life.

I’m seeing the awkward phrasing, the boring ‘tells’ instead of ‘shows’, I am constantly thinking ‘there’s a ‘was‘ – gotta cut that. Oh there’s another of the little bastards’, and also the newest issue – brought about through my edits for the short story coming out this October – the large breaks in the middle of a dialogue scene.

So here I am, trying to just read the story and I can’t stop my brain from correcting it. Who shall I lay the blame on? That is correct – those dastardly fiends, The Editors!

 

Filed under: Writing Tagged: editor, Jonathan Alvey, novel, short story, work in progress

Take That Infection!

So I began my assault on the foreign body attacking me. I used a four prong manoeuvre to entrench my health and crush the invaders.

First, I made a big pot of soup.

Garlic Soup!!!

That’s right I filled that pot with garlic! Garlic, and curry, and some hot sauce ( bring a light sweat to the brow, hot) then made an egg-drop soup out of the whole thing. Making it a protein packed, infection fighting, sinus clearing, power house of a meal.

Next I brewed up some tea.

Yup, plantain and chocolate mint tea. I like to use the chocolate tea because it is a less sharp a mint flavour and blends well with the earthy flavour of green leaves.

This immediately began to relieve my airways. My breathing was less laboured, my sinuses less congested, and that tight feeling around my chest eased off.

(for more uses for plantain check out Wellness Mama)

Then, after ingesting that, my next batch of tea had steeped long enough.

Mullen. Avoid the seeds!! The real strength of this plant comes from its roots, which are woody so need more time to steep.

Again, I mixed it with some chocolate mint, and it came out tasting remarkably like Earl Grey tea.

This didn’t have any immediate effect but, after I drank it, I went to bed. When I woke up, I felt like a sponge left out in the desert. My sinuses were dry, my lungs were dry, my mouth was dry. It felt great after too many days of damp. When I started re-hydrating my body, admittedly it was with coffee but still, the dried up mucus seemed to get just enough freedom to launch itself out of my body.

The fourth thing I added to my diet – the old stand by, Vitamin C.

If I’m not doing better today, I know for a fact I am not doing worse and that in itself is a big first step to a lung infection – stopping its spread.

Now, I am NOT a doctor, pharmacist, nurse, or any other certified health profession. Which means that this post is NOT advice. It is sharing what is working for me, and what might work for you – BUT one should ALWAYS check with a health professional when adding ‘natural remedies’ because their can be side effects and drug reactions.

ALWAYS research the hell out of these sorts of remedies before harvesting, ingesting, and treating with them. Many people even forget the simple things like ‘Was this ‘weed’ treated with a poison?’ or ‘Has it been sprayed with a chemical?’ So please think before using a plant from nature. There are many natural remedies out there but nothing can cure stupid.

Don’t be stupid.

Filed under: Homesteading, MIscellaneous Tagged: curry, drug interactions, garlic, health proffesional, infection, mullen, natural remedies, plantian, respiratory, sinuses, vitamain C