Hello G,

thank you for the link and yes these are very helpful ideas.

Enjoy your day

I

Hi again all, I have a question. Does anyone know about silica?

Internal use?

External, with massage?

Just curious...check back later. Peace all and wishing you all good health.

Hello Eve,

Let’s see isn’t horsetail high in silica content? And Horsetail has large amounts of potassium and is used to mend broken bones. Silica will give our cells strength, durability and flexibility. Without Silica our bones would be very brittle and break, our hair would be brittle and break easily, our skin looses elasticity and our nails would split.

And horsetail comes as a tea or capsules and can be used external and internal.

Externally horsetail is used to stop bleeding and accelerates the healing of wounds and broken bones.

Internally horsetail is used as a source of mineral, as a diuretic and astringent in the treatment of inflammation.

Hope that is somewhat helpful in your search for your answer.

Sunshine, thank you so very much, good information and very helpful.

I try to use organic products whenever possible but I try to do my homework. I know that there many organic substances that are not healthy. I think this would include fruit coated with "food grade petroleum wax" sold in an organic store. I've also found that msg is considered natural because the ingredients occur in nature.

Bronner Organic Lawsuit

A long-simmering dispute over the definition of organic personal care products boiled over into court Monday, when Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps filed a lawsuit charging many of its competitors with deceptively marketing their soaps and lotions. The lawsuit - filed in San Francisco Superior Court - targeted many widely known cosmetic manufacturers including Estee Lauder, Kiss My Face, Hain Celestial and Stella McCartney America. It also named smaller firms such as Mill Valley-based Juice Beauty. In the suit, Dr. Bronner’s accused the firms of false advertising by labelling products “organic” that contain relatively little organic material, that contain synthetic chemicals, or that use petrochemicals in processing. “This is the corrosive marketing of the cosmetics industry that hollowed out the meaning of ‘natural’ and now is doing the same with ‘organic’,” said David Bronner, president of the 60-year-old company. The lawsuit is evidence of the growing clout of green consumers, particularly in the arena of personal care products. Sales of natural body care products grew from $499 million in 2004 to $685 million in 2006 - an increase of 37 percent, according to the consumer products research firm Mintel. Chasing consumers Both large and small companies have been wooing eco-minded consumers, with big corporations including Estee Lauder acquiring brands such as Aveda that market themselves as natural or organic. At the same time, though, there are no federal regulations governing either natural or organic personal care products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture sets strict standards for organic food. But it doesn’t have a similar standard for soaps, shampoos and cosmetics. Some firms like Dr. Bronner’s have voluntarily adopted the USDA’s organic food standard for their body care products, which requires that 95 percent of the ingredients be organic if a product is to call itself organic. Some other firms like Juice Beauty adhere to California’s standard for organic body care products, which is less demanding than the USDA food standard. And still other firms simply label their body care products organic without trying to meet any external guidelines. Who decides what’s organic? Among the issues raised in the suit are whether organic personal care products must contain a certain percentage of organic ingredients, whether they may contain petrochemicals and whether they may contain synthetic preservatives. An OASIS spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit because she hadn’t yet seen it, but denied trying to mislead anyone. Meanwhile, some companies questioned Dr. Bronner’s right to define organic.

Shouldn’t GMO Food Be Labeled

Thursday, May 29, 2008

What's a GMO?

A GMO (genetically modified organism), also know as a GE (genetically engineered) or transgenic organism, is created by scientists in a laboratory where they insert genes into an organism to create new traits. In the United States, GMOs are not labeled. They are in over 75% of processed supermarket foods in ingredients like soy lecithin, canola, corn syrup, and cotton seed oil.

Genetic engineering is completely different from traditional breeding. In traditional breeding it is possible to mate a pig with another pig to get a new variety, but is not possible to mate a pig with a potato or a mouse. Even when species that may seem to be closely related do succeed in breeding, the offspring are usually infertile—a horse, for example, can mate with a donkey, but the offspring (a mule) is sterile.

With genetic engineering, scientists can breach species barriers set up by nature. For example, they have spliced fish genes into tomatoes.

Other examples of genetic engineering experiments that have already been done include:

Spider/Goat – taking a gene from a spider that leads to the production of spider web and putting it into goats so the goats can then be milked for the spider web protein.

Fish/Strawberries – taking a gene from an Arctic flounder and putting it into a strawberry to try to make it frost-resistant.

Corn/Human – taking a human gene and putting it into corn so that the corn contains human antibodies that attack sperm. The idea is to develop the corn as a plant-gel contraceptive that kills sperm on contact.

GMOs grown in Hawaii?

Hawaii has more experimental field trials of genetic engineering than any other state in the nation. Just a few of the many examples of permits granted for field trials include:

Corn engineered with human genes (Dow)

Sugarcane engineered with human genes (Hawai'i Agriculture Research Center)

Corn engineered with jellyfish genes (Stanford University)

Tobacco engineered with lettuce genes (University of Hawai'i)

Rice engineered with human genes (Applied Phytologics)

Corn engineered with hepatitis virus genes (Prodigene)1

What is a gene?

Every plant and animal is made of cells, each of which has a center called a nucleus. Inside every nucleus there are strings of DNA, half of which is normally inherited from the mother and half from the father. Short sequences of DNA are called genes. These genes operate in complex networks that are finely regulated to enable the processes of living organisms to happen in the right place and at the right time.

How is genetic engineering done?

Because living organisms have natural barriers to protect themselves against the introduction of DNA from a different species, genetic engineers have to find ways to force the DNA from one organism into another. These methods include:

Using viruses or bacteria to "infect" animal or plant cells with the new DNA.

Using electric shocks to create holes in the membrane covering sperm, and then forcing the new DNA into the sperm through these holes.

Injecting the new DNA into fertilized eggs with a very fine needle.

Coating DNA onto tiny metal pellets, and firing it with a special

Is genetic engineering precise?

The technology of genetic engineering is currently very crude. It is not possible to insert a new gene with any accuracy, and the transfer of new genes can disrupt the finely controlled network of DNA in an organism.

Current understanding of the way in which DNA works is extremely limited, and any change to the DNA of an organism at any point can have side effects that are impossible to predict or control. The new gene could, for example, alter chemical reactions within the cell or disturb cell functions. This could lead to instability, the creation of new toxins or allergens, and changes in nutritional value.

For example, when genetically engineered salmon were compared to normal salmon, it was found that the genetic engineering unexpectedly increased the amount of a protein identified as a major food allergen. In another case, Australian researchers reported in November 2005 that after 10 years spent developing a genetically engineered pea they had to abandon project after they found out that the altered peas caused lung inflammation and other adverse effects in mice. "The reaction of the mice…might reflect something that would happen to humans," said deputy chief of CSIRO plant industry T. J. Higgins.

This last paragraph is the most disturbing in my opinion. This entire process of altering the natural order of something as fundamental as food seems borderline deadly.

Why do genetically engineered foods have antibiotic resistant genes in them?

The techniques used to transfer genes have a very low success rate, so the genetic engineers attach "marker genes" that are resistant to antibiotics to help them to find out which cells have taken up the new DNA. These marker genes are resistant to antibiotics that are commonly used in human and veterinary medicine. Some scientists believe that eating GE food containing these marker genes could encourage gut bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance.