Chlorella – My Miracle Supplement

When I did my candida cleanse Dr. D prescribed chlorella supplements and said it would curb any cravings, would help detoxify my body, and would start rebuilding my digestive enzymes. I started out taking 6 grams twice a day.

And she was right! No cravings at all. Now that may not seem all that miraculous to you, but I have tried every diet under the sun my entire adult life and could never last more than a few weeks due to intense cravings. To have the ability to complete a 3 month stringent diet without a single cheat was like a miracle. After my cleanse was completed I stopped taking it, and the cravings haven’t come back. Yes, I want comfort food, but I’m not driven to eat sweets or fatty foods like I used to be.

So what IS chlorella? I did some snooping around online and here’s what I found…

Chlorella detoxifies the body by removing mercury and other heavy metals

Finlandia – Canadian online source of Chlorella

Updated info added August 21, 2010:

I take Chlor-Essence brand, and their website has some great info about it. http://chloressence.com/ You can order on their website, but my local health food store carries it, so I just buy it there. I take anywhere from 6 to 12 grams a day in pill form, depending on how bad my carb/sugar cravings are. Each pill is 500 mg, so that’s 12 to 24 pills, but they are REALLY small and I can swallow 6 at a time. A bottle of 300 costs me about $45 and will last me 15-30 days depending on how much I’m taking.

I’ve been taking Chlorella off and on for a year now, combined with a rice protein shake in the morning. I initially started taking it when I did a candida cleanse with our Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor, and then continued taking it cause I loved the side effects. I rarely have blood sugar fluctuations any longer. I used to have BAD blood sugar highs and lows and intense sugar/carb cravings, but those have pretty much completely resolved now even though I’m not on the restrictive cleanse/treatment diet any longer. Plus I have PCOS and there’s that whole insulin connection there, so it’s quite amazing that I no longer experience those crashes even when I’m not sugar free. Oh, and added bonus? My menses went from being once every 3-6 months, to every 35 days like clockwork. It hasn’t been regular since I went off the pill in 2001!!!! I know it’s likely the entire cleanse/treatment plan, not just the chlorella, but it definitely played a part.

How an anally organized person packs to move…

First of all, stop being all eco-friendly and stuff, and embrace your inner-anal. Buy all your boxes brand new and from the same storage facility (budget, in my case) because they stack better, and look neat and tidy. Purchase two sizes. One large size for lighter things that take up more space (clothes, blankets, linens, etc) and one medium size for heavier things that take up less space (dishes, books, toys, etc). We are guesstimating we will need 25 of each. They will refund us for any we don’t use as long as we don’t break the tabs. Be sure to ask if they will do this before you make the purchase.

Purchase the largest possible permanent black marker that your local stationary store (Staples) sells. Actually, two. Just in case “you” (read: other family members) misplace the first one. Don’t forget packing tape with a dispenser, and a good pair of utility scissors.

Designate zones for packed boxes. My system is Zone 1: boxes to go into storage facility. Zone 2: boxes to go the new hair salon. Zone 3: boxes to go to recycling depot. Zone 4: boxes to go to our temporary home. Zone 5: stuff going to the trash.

Deliberately sort and purge as you go. If the items don’t actually belong to you – in my case my husband’s or son’s stuff – be sure to consult with them as you pack and purge or you will have a very tense month ahead of you. Prepare two boxes and a garbage bag.  One box is for keeping, one is for donating, and the garbage bag is for, well, garbage. Make it simple. Ask them is this keep, donate, or discard? Move quickly and don’t let them think too long or you’ll lose your packing/purging rhythm. Upbeat music can help the process move along…

Pack like items in each box and mark the contents specifically. For instance, if you are packing your child’s room, don’t just mark “toys” or “kid’s room” on the boxes or you’ll find yourself digging through 15 boxes marked “toys” or “kid’s room” for that special Buzz Lightyear action figure that they can NOT go to bed without the first night in a new home. We have a box for puzzles and games, another for super hero/action hero/transformer toys. Another for books. You get the idea…

As each box is filled, move it to the correct zone, tape it shut, and label it. Label includes contents (again, be specific) and where it’s being moved to.

Coordinating moving day:

• Book a moving truck/company as soon as you know you’re going to be moving. Do the move as early in the morning as possible to leave time for repairs and cleaning in the afternoon/evening. If you hire a moving company, be present to direct traffic and witness any mishaps.
• Do handyman jobs such as patching walls, paint touch-ups, and swapping out personal fixtures after you move everything out. We are moving everything out almost a week before the end of the month, so we have the luxury of doing this the day after our big move.
• Move-out cleaning – make a check list of everything that needs to be done and work the list. I always pay someone to do it for me so I can focus on getting my new location unpacked and organized.
• Carpet cleaning (if necessary) – at the same time you’re booking your moving truck/company, call and schedule a professional carpet cleaner as they get particularly busy at month-end when everyone is moving. They should come after the move-out cleaning is done.

Moving makes me nuts, I loathe it, but at the same time I shamefacedly admit it also feeds some rarely indulged deep-seated need to control, organize, and be exceedingly anal. I’m sure my family will breathe a sigh of relief when crazy-anal-moving-April has receded back into her cave.

PS: The new boxes thing only applies to when you’re putting almost your entire house into storage for up to a year or more (like us), and you don’t want your belongings smelling like bananas or rotten cauliflower. If we were just moving things from one location to another and unpacking again right away we would TOTALLY (and have done in the past) re-use boxes from the local liquor/grocery store, and kind people on freecycle.org.

A New Garden is Being Birthed

So, with the move, one of the saddest parts for me was having to let my sweet sunny garden go. I’ve stopped trimming the grass, and it’s already taking over my garden beds where I planted garlic last fall.

We purchased deer fencing and put it up last year, and we had such hopes and dreams for our garden this year. We had a load of organic soil and a load of fish compost delivered literally a week before we got our eviction notice. Talk about bad timing!

We have decided we are going to be staying in a little studio at my parent’s house for the summer, and they have very generously donated their sunny veggie garden beds to us for our use. We will do the gardening and share the produce in exchange for the use of the space.

Last weekend we loaded up the soil we had delivered to our old garden and started new lasagna garden beds in our new garden. Layers are in order from bottom to top: cardboard, manure, organic soil, leaves, and fish compost. They are the juiciest most yummy looking garden beds EVER.

We also took down our deer fencing and metal poles, and will be taking it with us for my parents to use… or we’ll use it at whatever home we end up moving to more long term if they don’t use it.

Over the next week or two we will be taking down our gate (standing lonely in the pic above after we took down the fencing), moving the rest of the fish compost pile (under the black tarp) from old garden to new garden, and transplanting a number of our plants we were establishing. I also have a bunch of seeds ready to plant as soon as the beds are prepped: beets, kale, carrots, beans, peas, sunflowers… and we had a bag of seed potatoes and 6 tomato plants given to us by friends/neighbors. If anyone local has organic spaghetti squash, pumpkin, or cucumber starts they’d like to donate to our garden we’d be most grateful.

We weren’t allowed to pick apples from the apple trees at the end of our driveway, so maybe our next home will have apple trees, or even better, cherry trees, and we’ll be able to pick fruit to our heart’s content…

So, with new garden prospects ahead of us, we are not quite so sad to say goodbye to our old garden and are truly ready to move on now and embrace The Great Summer Adventure of 2010… 

Nettle Workshop Part 1 – Tea, Identification, and Harvesting

Heather the herbalist welcomes us to her Nettle Workshop with a hot mug of nettle tea and some handouts:

We located some nettles growing wild close to Heather’s home:

Heather demonstrates the best way to cut nettles when harvesting (don’t forget the gloves – they sting!):

A basket of fresh nettles that we harvested: