In its natural state, the evening primrose is a wild flower. But it is only in the last decade or so that agronomists have turned this wild, untamed flower into a crop.
Most crops have been in existence for centuries. Farmers have had plenty of time to learn about their cultivation. The evening primrose, however, is a brand new crop and has presented an enormous challenge to agronomists who are trying to master its cultivation in a fraction of the time devoted to other crops.
Grown from seed, the evening primrose plant produces a rosette of leaves close to the ground in the first year. The following season the plant shoots up to produce a main stem that can be 5 or 6ft tall (almost 2m) bearing the attractive yellow flowers, and then the seed pods in late summer and early autumn.
Botanists first became interested in the evening primrose plant at the beginning of the century when it was thought it was breaking the laws of inheritance discovered a few years earlier by Mendel.
In ordinary species, if two plants are cross-pollinated, the first generation of offspring is identical to one another. But in the second generation they form a mixture of two types intermediate between the two parents. In further generations new variants continue to be produced.
The evening primrose, however, does something very different. If two plants are crossed, the first generation usually turns up as a mixture of two types which don’t resemble either of the two parents or each other. In the next generation, the two groups do not split up into a mixture. Instead, the plants breed true. This is because the plants have an unusual chromosome which can repeat itself for many generations without any variation.
From a distance, a cluster of plants might look the same. But at a closer look one sees there are some subtle variations between one type and another. The size of the flowers can vary from Vain to 5in (1 to 13cm), and the pigment may differ in each plant. Although most evening primroses are yellow, some have a mauve hue, and there are many variations in colour in each part of the plant. There are huge differences in plant size, too. Some grow no higher than dandelions, while others can shoot up to more than 8ft (2.4m) high.
Some evening primrose plants need bees or moths for pollination; others are self-pollinating. The variations provide great challenges for plant breeders aiming to breed the evening primrose for its oil yield.
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If you watch a dog asleep on the floor after an exciting chase, you can often see his legs twitching and hear him making strange noises. The dog is dreaming and the chase or something similar is still going on in his subconscious mind.
After telling a child a story about the wolf who wants to devour it, or some other exciting story, do not be surprised if the child wakes up screaming from a nightmare and runs to his mother or father because he is frightened. Modern teachers avoid exciting childrens’ minds unnecessarily, but what about some of the television programmes children watch that are really inappropriate for them and can lead to real addiction?
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Correct breathing exercises, always breathing through the nose, will help to relieve certain types of headaches. If, in spite of having had a good night’s rest, you are still tired in the morning, or if you wake up with cartarrh in the throat, then you must pay particular attention to breathing through the nose. You can tie a handkerchief around your mouth, or put a piece of adhesive tape over it at night, until such a time as breathing through the nose comes easily and naturally. Once you establish the habit of breathing with your mouth closed you will no longer catch cold even in an unheated bedroom and will wake up refreshed for the day ahead. Also, if you snore, you will soon overcome this tendency through nasal breathing.
There is no doubt that correct breathing has a salutary effect on the brain, since the air passes beneath the bony roof of the postnasal cavity over which the important brain cells lie.
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It is not unreasonable to suggest that a modern health diet should be accompanied by a good coffee substitute, one that is pleasant to the taste and has none of the side effects of regular coffee -important factors when choosing any food product. A confirmed coffee drinker might think that it would be impossible to get used to a substitute, no matter how badly regular coffee affected his health. Fortunately, it is possible to train our palate and even use a trick to help us change its likes and dislikes. Those who feel that making such a changeover might be difficult should at first try drinking their coffee with only a slight addition of the cereal and fruit mixture, then gradually increase the quantity of the substitute and decrease that of the regular coffee until eventually they are drinking only the cereal and fruit coffee. A coffee addict who suffers from insomnia because of drinking too much will gradually effect a change in taste and then really enjoy his cereal and fruit drink. The health benefits will be obvious, especially for those who are accustomed to drinking their coffee with milk. By drinking a good cereal and fruit coffee substitute rather than regular bean coffee, the heart and nerves will benefit tremendously.
These substitute coffees are usually available at health food stores and delicatessens and, interestingly, the modern substitute is often similar in taste to regular coffee. Moreover, the availability of instant cereal and fruit coffee, such as Bambu Coffee Substitute, makes its preparation an easy matter: simply put a teaspoon of Bambu in a cup, pour hot water or milk over it, and serve a fine and aromatic beverage to your family and friends.
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More than ever before, we read and hear about the dangers of eating too much sugar. Are these warnings justified? Why are we nowadays told that sugar and sweets are harmful, especially to our teeth and bones? Is the appalling condition of our children’s teeth really the result of their eating too much sugar and sweet things? Again, is the assertion true that even unrefined cane sugar is not the healthy natural product it is made out to be?
Being good observers and knowing how to use practical experience, we can draw the following conclusions. We must look for the problem’s solution in what our sweets consist of, what goes into their making. The Indian children probably indulge as much in sugar and sweet products as do our young ones, yet 90 per cent of our children have bad teeth in spite of good oral hygiene, using a toothbrush and toothpaste, while the Indians lack these modern implements and have good teeth. However, the sweet things the young Indians enjoy are not refined products, but still contain all their natural substances, a combination of minerals such as calcium, fluoride, magnesium, manganese, iron, silica and phosphorus. And that is the crux of the matter, because what our children eat is refined sugar without the minerals, which is bound to disturb the whole mineral metabolism and result in a mineral and vitamin deficiency. This serious state of affairs is made even worse by our eating other denatured products, for example white flour and white rice. The resulting deficiencies then lead to bad teeth and other damage to our health.
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Of course, sea salt should not be used indiscriminately either, only in small quantities. Those who suffer from diseases that require an absolutely salt-free diet, for example, nephritis and cardiac oedema, should not even use sea salt. Seasoning has to be done sensibly and always restricted to a minimum. This does not mean that food should be bland. Far from it. If vegetables are steamed instead of boiled, they will retain all their own rich flavour and by making use of the many kitchen herbs that are at our disposal the palate will have no reason to find fault with any dish.
That salads should not be salted almost goes without saying. And as a dressing, use lemon juice or Molkosan whey concentrate, not vinegar.
By adhering to a correct diet we can do much to help achieve success with whatever natural remedy or treatment we may be taking. There is little point in swallowing medicines or taking water treatments if, at the same time, we pay no attention to the food we are eating. Actually, our diet should be the first thing to come under scrutiny since it is useless to take remedies to cure, for example, the accumulation of uric acid, if at the same time we encourage its formation by eating eggs and other concentrated protein foods. It is senseless to take kidney and blood-purifying teas and steam baths to eliminate metabolic wastes from the system if we continue on the diet that is responsible for our problem in the first place.
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The neutral flavour of sesame seeds makes them useful for fruit salads, if sprinkled over the salad or mixed in with it, or they can be used in a similar way for vegetable salads and vegetables in general. These varied uses increase our opportunities to benefit from their goodness.
Cracked sesame seeds can also be added to wholefood muesli. And if you suffer from some kind of internal inflammation, you can still benefit from the seeds by taking them finely ground and made into an emulsion. This preparation will cause you no trouble whatsoever, however sensitive your system may be.
The sesame plant grows in subtropical soil and contains the region’s abundant energy from the sun. In temperate zones you can usually buy the seeds from healthfood stores. Once you have come to appreciate their excellent effect on the bowel movement, you will never want to do without them. Unfortunately, the benefits of sesame seeds are still not as widely known as they should be. So do not only use them yourself, but recommend them to your friends, especially to those who suffer from some type of liver disorder.
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If we want to understand why these aboriginal peoples have a better digestive system than we do, we must not overlook the fact that they still live close to, and in harmony with, nature and enjoy a relaxed pace of life. We, however, who live in an ‘advanced’ society have come to accept a way of life where speed and bustle are the norm. We have come to feel that this is appropriate for our modern times. How wrong we are! Restlessness, anxiety, vexation and constant hurrying affect the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in spasmodic constipation. If we then take strong laxatives we only make the problem worse. It is much wiser to change our pace, try to find peace of mind and calmness, refuse to accept more tasks than we can deal with and rather than pursuing every so-called pleasure keep a proper balance in our lives. We will then have enough time to get the necessary rest and relaxation. Furthermore, we will use our legs much more, walking instead of sitting around. Remember, walking helps to stimulate the bowels. Early morning exercise, massaging the stomach and brush massages, if done daily, will be of particular help to those in sedentary occupations.
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When young couples decide to get married they rarely stop to think about their health and what they may pass on to their children. It is understandable’that their happiness in having found each other is based on emotion rather than reason. True, they may talk about certain things before marriage, but these are usually more of a material rather than a spiritual nature. However, even though the emotions may be ruling, it is still of paramount importance to take stock of the make-up of the two individuals involved, because this factor will have strong implications for the health of their future children.
None of us is perfect and few feel so strong and healthy as not to be aware of some weakness of a physical or mental nature. If any unfavourable hereditary factor should exist, it would be better if one partner did not possess the identical genetic weakness, but instead had a positive predisposition to offset the severity of the defect in the other. For example, if the parents of both partners have poor nerves and experience great difficulty in maintaining a healthy balanced life, it often needs only minor emotional stress for their children to suffer an emotional defect for the rest of their lives. Let us take another example. If there is a history of diabetes in both families, some basic mistake in the diet of the young couple will be enough to double the inherited predisposition in one or the other of their children and insulin treatment may become necessary. For it is the case that susceptibility to tuberculosis, ulcers, cancer, arthritis, rheumatism and many other diseases may be transmitted genetically.
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The structure of the kidneys is truly marvellous. All design problems have been solved with such perfection that the ancient anatomists called the kidney a ‘viscus elegantissimum’, meaning ‘most elegant organ’. The kidney is really a complicated filtration plant consisting of about a million cup-shaped individual filters. Each of these filters is surrounded by a two-walled capsule and is separated by small conducting tubes which supply blood and filter out the urine simultaneously. Every day about 1.7 litres (about 3 pints) of
this diluted filtrate are transported to the bladder by way of the ureter and then expelled. The remainder is reabsorbed by the bloodstream so that the entire activity takes care of about 175 litres (about 38.5 gallons) of filtrate in one day.
The human kidney is bean-shaped. The filtering units are located in the outermost layer, the cortex. The inner structures form the medulla, consisting of the collecting tubules. The size of the tubules increases towards the inside; the large vessels and the beginning of the ureter are inside the pelvis of the kidney which, by the way, has nothing to do with the basin-shaped cavity formed by the bones in the hip region.
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