SBT Seabuckthorn Blog

In November of 2006, the World Trade Organisation ruled in favour of Canada, the United States and Argentina that the European Union was unreasonably delaying approving the sale of genetically modified organisms to the European market. As Canadian author and activist Murray Dobbin says in recent Tyee article Food Fight: Canada vs. Europe, the EU has been reluctant to accept GMOs into Europe due in part to sustained and aggressive public opposition to GMOs, despite a concerted effort on the part of stakeholders to woo public opinion.

This is no minor issue in Europe. The European Commission has been surveying attitudes towards GMOs in all member states for 15 years now, and despite intense marketing efforts by international agribusiness, the opposition to GMOs only seems to be growing. The EU’s pollsters have discovered a “striking” decline in acceptance of GM foods over recent years even though Europeans are expressing support for other uses of biotechnology.

Helen Holder, GMO campaign coordinator at Friends of the Earth Europe, told The Tyee that a triumphalist “We won!” North American attitude over the WTO decision will not wash in Europe. Holder argued the panel’s narrow ruling on technical grounds did not mean Canada and the U.S. could bully Europeans into accepting GM food. She pointed out that the WTO never concluded that GMOs were safe.

The Europeans have until February 11, 2008 to comply with the order, or they will face potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in economic sanctions for their refusal. However, resistance to GMOs is so concrete all over Europe, that even usually pro-US French president Nicolas Sarkozy has stepped into the fray, banning a form of genetically-modified corn that was the only transgenic crop legal for cultivation in France.

Sarkozy’s ban came on the heels of a report by the French government’s scientific authority on GMOs. This report cited new scientific evidence that the GM corn might have a negative impact on insects and its pollen could be dispersed further than previously thought. The report also said new studies suggest it is impossible not to have cross-pollination between GM and non-GM fields.

The scientists advising the French government did not all agree with the conclusions the report drew from the new studies. Sarkozy acknowledged this scientific uncertainty but said “with the principle of precaution at stake, I am making a major political decision to carry our country to the forefront of the debate on the environment.”

Surprisingly, the fact that genetically-modified foods are subject to no sales, marketing or distribution restrictions in Canada is not evidence that we in Canada are any more favourable towards GMOs. In fact, numerous attempts over the years by interested individuals and organisations to compel mandatory labelling of transgenic foods for sale in Canada have been rebuffed.

Despite the relative lack of news coverage of GMOs in Canada, the most recent survey done for the federal government on Canadian attitudes shows they are remarkably similar to those of Europeans. The 2006 Decima survey found: “The main aspect of biotechnology that engenders concern is GM food. Overall attitudes toward GM food tend to be more negative than positive.”

But unlike Europeans, Canadians have not had national governments willing to reflect their views in legislation. In sharp contrast with the EU’s tough regulations, Canada’s labelling standard for GM foods is voluntary, and has proven to be as ineffective as critics warned it would be. This despite the 2003 Decima poll showing 88 per cent of Canadians surveyed wanted mandatory labelling. …

Although it is a tough slog in this country, Canadians concerned about GMOs have found some champions for their cause. Some examples of organizational efforts are: CBAN, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, Greenpeace Canada’s campaign for mandatory labelling, and RightOnCanada’s online campaign for federal legislation to ban terminator seeds.

Via Murray Dobbin’s social activism mailing list.

Resources:
A blog post on the Tyee article – on RightOnCanada.ca’s blog
A damning summary of Canada’s attempts to sabotage Ireland’s anti-GMO stance – on GMFreeIreland.org
FoodSecurity.org - North American food security advocacy organisation – see also Heal the World: FoodSecurity.org

Thanks to web analysis tools at MyBlogLog, we’ve noticed that folks often end up here at the SBT Seabuckthorn Blog after asking google, yahoo, ask.com, AOL, and other search engines ‘intuitive’ questions, like ‘can seabuckthorn help with hair loss’, and ‘does seabuckthorn help regulate blood sugar levels’.

Sometimes these questions are answered with relevant blog posts, but sometimes, regrettably, they aren’t! I’ve often itched to tell folks the answers to their questions, and – realising that perhaps other people are interested in these questions and answers too – I have decided to harvest some of those questions, and answer them here!

So, starting next month, look for at least one question from our ‘search engine archives’ answered. I can’t address individuals, because I have no idea as to the identity of the people who typed the questions into a search engine. But if YOU have a question, please feel free to post it in comments, or email me at my email address, and I or someone else at Seabuckthorn International Inc will answer your question here in the blog!

We will also be addressing some previous blog comment questions in future posts.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Resources:
seabuckthorn Q&A

We already have hand-cranked laptops; now Canadian and US researchers have developed a leg harness that generates electricity from its wearer’s leg movements while walking.

It’s not exactly the Hoover Dam (it generates enough electricity to power a cell phone), but it’s yet another example of technology turning a human being…

Into this:

I’ve long had a fantasy of a stationary bicycle-powered television, so in preparation for this post, I googled ’stationary bicycle powered television’, and lo and behold! The internet is thick with them! This one was even advertised at the Super Bowl! Here’s another, and this one even teaches you how to build your own.

An even better google search is “human powered”, which returns a plethora of interesting sites, including Free Energy News, International Human Powered Vehicle Association, and a human powered vehicle contest on the website for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

I don’t know if I would want to build it myself, but I would definitely use a stationary bicycle that generated power to run my appliances and electronics. It seems particularly appropriate (and I’m sure I’m not the first person to say so) to use exercise to power the device that has turned us into couch potatoes.

By popular demand, we’ve created on our main site, www.seabuckthorn.com, a Rosacea Portal, from where you can access all our rosacea-related information from one location!

Besides a short description of the definition of rosacea, its causes, how seabuckthorn can help and how you can heal your rosacea with our products, we’ll soon be adding rosacea success stories from our customers; check out our rosacea white paper; our page on when and how rosacea sufferers should exfoliate; our cleansing programme; rosacea-related seabuckthorn science; our rosacea-related products; and even check out rosacea-related posts on our blog!

Our hope is that compiling all this information a mouse-click away will not only help visitors decide whether our products are right for them, but will also help educate visitors on rosacea and its associated issues.

Resources:

Rosacea Portal – on Seabuckthorn.com – everything you want to know about rosacea and seabuckthorn

Cleansing programme – on Seabuckthorn.com – how to cleanse your face for beauty, healing and anti-aging

Rosacea packages – on Seabuckthorn.com – our seabuckthorn-based rosacea treatments

Rosacea and exfoliation – on Seabuckthorn.com – how and if rosacea sufferers should exfoliate

Academy Award® winning actress Geena Davis was watching television with her young daughter in 2004, when she noticed that there was a noticeable disparity in the representation of male vs. female characters in children’s programming.

We’ve known for a long time that females in film and TV are often sidekicks, romantic interests or just absent, but it’s been like the elephant in the room – everyone knows it’s there, but nobody says anything about it.

Change begins with recognising and acknowledging where we are right now, and Geena Davis addressed that fact by founding a non-profit organisation, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, to quantify and act upon gender disparity in children’s and family programming.

These days, research is critical to legitimacy – ‘Publish or perish’ – as the saying goes. The Geena Davis Institute started out by sponsoring four studies of media directed at children or families, with striking conclusions.

G-Rated Movies - Dr. Stacy Smith and her team at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California analyzed the portrayals of male and female characters in 101 of the top-grossing G-rated movies from 1990 to 2005. They tracked the gender of 3,039 individual speaking characters, 1,210 characters who spoke in groups, and 47 narrators. The researchers also examined other variables including physical appearance, age group, role within the story, ethnicity or cultural background, and occupations characters held.

TV for Kids 11 and Under - Dr. Smith and her team randomly sampled 1,034 shows from 12 network, public broadcast, and cable outlets between June 12 and August 18, 2005 to assemble a typical week of children’s television programming. The researchers used more than 75 criteria to measure the story centrality, demographics, occupation, body/clothing, appearance, likeability, and personality of speaking characters.

Their upcoming projects, including a Best Practices policy for industry players, sound very exciting and focused. This is clearly an organisation whose goals are to make a difference and change the world! Their mission statement underscores this:

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media focuses first on getting more females and more varied portrayals of both female and male characters into movies, TV, and other media aimed at kids 11 and under.The Institute is a resource for the entertainment industry (media companies, animators, writers, producers, and others), the next generation of content-creators, and the public. We outreach to these individuals and companies towards supporting positive change in media, so young girls and young boys can grow up treating each other as equals.Our approach is collaborative, friendly, and cooperative.
Please join us in this important work!

Jacques Cousteau said, ‘We protect what we love, and we love what we know’. If this is true, then entertaining children with stories where females are largely absent or one-dimensional cannot be healthy or good.

For tackling an issue that has been discussed at length but seldom challenged, GDIGM is doing its part to Heal the World.

Resources:
New study released February 1, 2008 - .PDF format

Dr E.G., at the top of our More Testimonials page, has a very strong opinion of how to treat rosacea, and the role of the Demodex mite!

… For me (my complexion is pretty good, by the way) the oils tone the skin and seem to diminish excess oily secretions.  So if it is true that seabuckthorn oil is effective against the demodex and hence creates a healthier skin, it should prove useful.  The pure oils seem both to tone and condition the skin very nicely.  I am already recommending it to my wife.  Given the high vitamin E and C contents it should be exceptionally salubrious. … As of a few days of the pure oil my skin feels and looks great already …

Dr E.G. in his comments (reproduced fully on our website) supports our assertions, that the pure oil is the best treatment for acne rosacea. We continue to hear from many people who find the soothing, healing oil of the seabuckthorn seed to be the best refuge from the fires of rosacea.

There were two interesting news items relating to alcohol this week.

First, The Vancouver Sun reported that the BC Provincial Government is considering keying the price of alcoholic beverages to their alcohol content. The idea is that higher-alcohol drinks should cost more, to both reflect the social impact of the alcohol, and to deter heavy – or perhaps just oblivious – drinkers. A study quoted by The University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research – the proposal’s advocate – showed that a group of taste testers couldn’t identify beers with higher alcohol content, although the majority of them preferred the taste of the beers that turned out to have the most alcohol.

While that worries the province’s craft brewers, who specialize in strong beer, it seems many drinkers can’t tell the difference between low-alcohol and regular-strength suds.

In a taste test comparing beers at 3.5 per cent alcohol, 4.4 per cent and 5.2 per cent, only one in four of 34 young male participants correctly identified the strongest brew, according to the centre.

However, 45 per cent correctly identified the weakest beer, and 60 per cent liked the strongest beer the best.

Opponents of the proposal include ‘craft’ brewers – microbrewers – who fear that the extra tax will render their higher-alcohol boutique beers unaffordable.

Brewer Rob Monk fears tax and markup changes to promote lower-strength beverages will come at the expense of taste and quality.

His Doc Hadfield’s Pale Ale, a low-alcohol “English session beer,” was the weak beer donated for the study last year at Victoria’s Spinnakers Brewpub. But many of his brews, including an India Pale Ale at 7.1 per cent, are well above the Canadian standard of 5.0 per cent.

“I’m not sure this is the direction we need to be going in Canada. It’s not necessarily going to deter people from drinking more,” Monk said in an interview.

“The only people this is really going to affect are smaller brewers who make premium beers that tend to have a higher alcohol content. This isn’t going to hurt Molson Coors. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be a huge jump for them to get below whatever threshold is set.”

________

In other news, also from The Vancouver Sun, heavy drinking in youth tied to heart risks later. They probably aren’t drinking craft beers, but according to a study of 2800 adults, those who drink heavily in their teens and youth are more likely to face a variety of health risks (labelled ‘metabolic syndrome’) throughout their lives, regardless of their later drinking habits.

Metabolic syndrome refers to a grouping of risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes — including abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, low levels of “good” HDL cholesterol, high blood sugar and high triglycerides, a type of blood fat. People who have three or more of these problems are considered to have metabolic syndrome.

Of the participants studied, the most dramatic comparison was between those who drank heavily in their youth vs. those who drank moderately throughout their lives.

The study included 2,818 adults ages 35 to 80 who were questioned about their lifetime drinking habits and other lifestyle factors, like whether they exercised regularly or smoked.

All of the study participants had consumed alcohol regularly at some point in their lives, but Russell and her colleagues were able to identify two major lifetime “trajectories” of drinking: in one, people started drinking early in life and tended to drink heavily in their teens and young adulthood, then tapered off by middle-age; in the second, “stable” trajectory, people generally drank moderately over the years.

Compared with the stable group, the early drinkers were almost one-third more likely to have metabolic syndrome. In addition, their risk of being abdominally obese was 48 percent higher, while their odds of having low HDL cholesterol were 62 percent higher.

Resources:

Alcohol Consumption in British Columbia and Canada: A Case for Liquor Taxes that Reduce Harm - carbc.ca - .PDF format

Association of Lifetime Alcohol Drinking Trajectories with Cardiometabolic Risk - Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

As a result of an article on seabuckthorn and rosacea in FIRST for Women magazine (see the recent blog post SBT Seabuckthorn International in ‘First for Women’ magazine for more information), there has been a spike in interest in our rosacea treatment packages.

The article mentions Michele Guy, a long-time customer of ours who has had great success using our products, including the SBT Seabuckthorn Berry Cream included in our full rosacea programme.

We’re thrilled that Ms Guy’s rosacea is successfully controlled using our products, and we’re thrilled that she was able to share her story with the world! However the article gave a somewhat inaccurate impression of how we treat rosacea using seabuckthorn-based products.

Our rosacea treatment packages are carefully balanced to treat the unique issues faced by rosacea sufferers from the inside out. In our full rosacea package, we include our berry cream to be used once the rosacea symptoms are under control, but not before!

Rosacea is a symptom in part of an over-active immune system, chronic inflammation, and extreme sensitivity, and in addition to the important internal application of tea and supplements, the topical application of our natural seabuckthorn soap and oils is what we have found to be the best at relieving symptoms without causing further irritation. Complex preparations, including even our simple creams, can further stimulate inflammatory and immune system responses, counteracting the positive effects of the seabuckthorn.

Once the acute rosacea symptoms are under control and the normal immune and inflammatory responses are restored, our berry cream, along with other appropriate skin preparations, can be introduced.

As touched on in my recent post, Seabuckthorn holds back the desert on the windy plains of Asia, desertification is a grave problem throughout the world, from traditionally arid, low-production areas to lush, productive greenbelts. Human activities (including redirection of surface water, siphoning of groundwater, intensive farming practices, clearcutting and many other factors) are implicated in much of this desert encroachment.

There are committed, effective people and organisations working in isolation all over the world to combat this growing threat, but according to Dr Willem VAN COTTHEM, the owner and sole contributor to Desertification: All about desertification and poverty, agriculture and horticulture in the drylands, efforts to act, research and support activists have been hampered by a lack of centralised information.

As he states on the About page of his blog, VAN COTTHEM (Professor Emeritus of Belgium’s Ghent University and current Scientific Consultant for Desertification and Sustainable Development) has been working for years to compile data and resources relating to desertification, low water agriculture, sustainability, poverty and related areas of interest, first via an email network and now through his blog.

The main reason for the establishment of such a network is that I noticed, when speaking with my colleagues of the Committee for Science and Technology (CST) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), that we all spend a lot of time searching the internet for interesting publications concerning our fields of interest. Everyone is looking for the same information, spending considerable time to find mostly the same articles, all of us reading these texts to see if their content is important enough, and if it is, to use that info for our own purposes.

Dr VAN COTTHEM excerpts portions of relevant articles along with links to the full text, supplemental links and occasionally, editorial commentary. The professor’s blog also maintains a selective blogroll, as well as a detailed and relevant categories list.

Again, for me all this is a question of offering time-saving to my readers. This is not MY BLOG, it is OURS for I am only the administrator to easy up the work of many colleagues and friends. My blog visitors seem to be very happy with this system, as I offer them a chance to save plenty of time by aggregating valuable information on all aspects of the topics in a sort of newsletter, in which I (re)publish that what seems to be of some interest to most of us. This way, we all save time for more practical things to do and meanwhile we bring interesting websites and blogs to the attention of many more people worldwide than one single site or blog could do for itself.

The result is a huge compendium of relevant data, articles and research on myriad topics relating to sustainability. For continuing over hundreds of posts to find and make available information to support sustainability efforts all over the world, Dr VAN COTTHEM’s Desertification is helping to Heal the World.

A recent case study describes an example of gastrointestinal treatment inducing full remission of rosacea symptoms. The authors of the paper hypothesise that GI tract bacteria may in some people cause a chronic inflammatory reaction affecting the blood vessels.

The case study doesn’t mention seabuckthorn, but it provides much food for thought regarding the relationship between seabuckthorn, gastrointestinal disorders, inflammatory diseases, and rosacea.

A recent NYTimes article (free registration required) looked at fibromyalgia in light of the recent approval of a non-narcotic pain management drug manufactured by Pfizer for the treatment of the disorder. The article takes a sceptical view, going so far as to quote at length medical professionals who dismiss fibromyalgia as some people’s inability to cope with the aches and pains of living.

We at Seabuckthorn International Inc. have long believed that part of SBT Seabuckthorn’s strength is its ability to counter the cumulative deleterious effects of the modern world on our bodies. A less-than-optimally-functioning gastrointestinal tract is a predictable symptom of such effects. If seabuckthorn heals fibromyalgia and rosacea, and seabuckthorn heals gastrointestinal disorders; and if gastrointestinal disorders cause chronic inflammation, which is culpable in rosacea and fibromyalgia, the cause and effect relationship seems self-evident.

Now science has confirmed what Bill Maher postulated (see my recent post, Television pundit Bill Maher weighs in on big pharma).

According to the CBC, a recent study of 20,000 healthy adult UK residents tracked the effects of four major health practices on longevity.

The study, mounted by The University of Cambridge, showed that the combination of eating at east 5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day (see my post Minimum daily fruits and veggies; how much is enough?), limiting alcohol to 14 units or fewer per week, exercising regularly, and not smoking (see my post Smoking and exercise: not incompatible after all), resulted in the equivalent of a 14 year difference in ‘real’ age compared to subjects who lacked the indicators, upon an 11 year follow-up.

“These results may provide further support for the idea that even small differences in lifestyle may make a big difference to health in the population and encourage behaviour change,” the study said.

Speaking of small differences in lifestyle, see my two-part post Any exercise: Better than none at all?

A few months ago, Bill Maher took big pharma and USian society to task for our (for it’s true of Canada too) co-dependent relationship with drugs (in the sense that we turn to drugs to make up for our lack of initiative in preventative medicine, and they are marketed in a way to make us think we need them.). He suggested that if we ate right and exercised, we wouldn’t need so many of the medications we turn to, for diabetes, acid reflux, depression, and myriad other ailments.

As if we didn’t know, he’s right! Eating right, exercising, and moderating or avoiding the two legal recreational drugs will prolong our lives!