Tilli's Lessons
Otillia M. Richmond, MH
The Human Nature of NEED and FEED - A Modern Treatise
Winter 2025
Nutritional Lessons - Beyond Us
Growing old allows one to experience a number of human marvels and misadventures, expanding exponentially through the years. Myself old, have witnessed many human triumphs and failures, also discovering long ago, how humans place new information in a limited context: Here today ideas gone tomorrow coupled with having been wrong, becoming history not education.
And while enough time has past for most to be educated about the hazards of lead, asbestos, formaldehyde, BPA, PVC, FenFen, hormone replacement therapy, and the litany of substances widely used before proven harmful, many remain uninformed about the growing list of substances recommended and voluntarily consumed or exposed everyday: products of commerce advertised to become positioned in our pursuits of health.
Succinctly, so everyone knows, young or old, since DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, science got it wrong with vitamin A and beta carotene, also tocopherols and vitamin E. We did not see the writing on the wall with calcium, vitamin D, or B12, nor the light with vitamin C, K, folate, and selenium. We missed the boat on protein, sugar, fiber, and sodium, and just like we threw the wine with the cork isolating plant substances, such as berberine, valerenic acid, and artemisinin, we cannot see the gorilla standing center court with our eyes focusing on Omega 3 and suggesting fish oil supplements or fatty fish three times a week, thus equal to harvesting 5 trillion fish from polluted oceans and waterways each year; OR the archaic practice of fluoridating drinking water supplies, focused on setting safe limits for concentrations without considering safe limits for consumption. Nonetheless, this year marks the fifth update of government food standards since its creation fifty years ago. Human history clearly reveals of how scientific attempts to treat the symptoms of our modern pursuits of health fail, killing us and the planet.
I still shelve my grandmother’s book, The New Health Conscience, The Modern Science of Health, 1915, addressing the prevalence of ill health coinciding with growing industry and prosperity a century ago, J.C. Elliot suggesting “[the work of the physician will be the selection of our food supply, rather than the selection of our drug supply”, revealing how long humans have anted up to scientists and industrialists with their lives.
It is beyond science and its one puzzle at a time solving capacity to prove any of life's puzzles without lots of knowledge, time, experience, history, and a bit of luck. Most facts of discovery do not remain facts, given enough time and further discovery.
Humans have long acquired what they need from plants. Need vitamins and minerals-eat plant foods; melatonin-turn off the lights and eat plant foods; CoQ10-quit sugar and eat plant foods; creatine—exercise and eat plant foods; DHA—eat whole plant seeds… In the absence of factories, supermarkets, restaurants, and drug stores, humans once sourced their nutrition consuming food, not nutraceuticals or supplements.
As we wait to get the facts straight, supplements for nutritional health will be marketed before proven harmful, whereas, unlike a rainbow, there is a pot of gold to be found selling the magical ideas of supplements to compensate for modern diets that too are killing us.
Scientific Lessons - A Shot in the Dark
The recent science that humans are hosts to micro organisms would be better conveyed, micro organisms are hosts to humans. All animals are inseparable from their microbiota, dependent on their processes for energy, nutrition, brain function, immunity…life. But the number, variety, and type of microbiota inhabiting the human body depends largely on human behaviors.
Many humans tend to focus on their comforts, choosing food, products, and practices harmful to their microbiota while believing, similar to medicines and supplements, industrial prebiotic fortification and probiotic supplementation will counter their neglect.
But as the study of organisms unfolds, not only do the ideas to modify or influence conflict with baseline theories, so does the long held credence of nutrition manipulation with vitamin supplementation and fortification: Vitamin supplements C,D, E, and B12 have shown to contribute negative consequence on biota numbers and relationships. So, as we have been encouraged to find better health through supplementation, we have destabilized our microbiota, therefore our health, giving industry another goose laying golden eggs.
Human vitality and longevity is found in Earth's environments of life and food, beyond the shot in the dark concepts of science, medicine, and industry. Prebiotic fiber is found in plant food, in the same plants providing probiotics, micro organisms, as well as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and all the other ingredients long utilized to support a community of thriving hosts and human function by design. Food comes first, then the animal it will feed.
MODERNITY, in all its scientific and industrial glory, brought with it the need to know how and where our food is grown, what has been added to it, and what utensils, pots and pans, and other paraphernalia are safe to use to prepare, serve, and store it. In addition, we must monitor the textiles used for clothing, linens, and household furnishings; know the contents of health and beauty aids, cleaning and laundry supplies, which is the right way to filter the chemically laden water found at our taps, and which vessels are safe to drink it from. The inventions of commerce infiltrating our lives into the present are, and have long been, without regard to human wellbeing.
Learn about nutrition, microbiota, the human diet, and more in the concise, easy to understand elementary treatise The Human Nature of Need and Feed.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence."
"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it."
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895-1986
Summer - 2024
Toxicology Lessons - Peeing in the Pool
In 1962, Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, raised an awareness to the catastrophic outcomes of the new use of chemicals and, more than fifty years later, the inventory of chemicals for human use grows, as does the consequence.
We have long believed cancer is linked to carcinogens, hormonal issues to endocrine disrupters, diabetes to simple sugars. We know processed food is unhealthy, all drugs have side effects, and pesticides and herbicides kill insects, plants, and soil. Are we invincible, defiant, or just plain selfish when we willingly use and expose ourselves to the vast number of ever increasing substances known to destroy living creatures, thus ourselves and our home. What is causing the never ending trend of our incoherence to toxicology as the availability and use of dangerous substances expands. Humans simply cannot quit peeing in the pool.
Cognitive reenforcement of human want and feel good defines attitudes and disrupts reasoning: So and So does it or says it is so, I can buy it, so therefore I too, can just do. Humans tend to affirm and choose the practices satisfying and justifying their desires. No one ever sets out in pursuit of an addiction, but we have become addicts of many things, thanks to the modern irrationality of the human brain.
Money, power, and food addictions are more prevalent and doing far more damage to society than recreational drugs. Drug addictions tend to follow the excesses or limits of the other two, giving the newest age of humans newer challenges.
Aside from a now one in two risk of getting cancer, there are hundreds of liver and kidney diseases, numerous autoimmune or thyroid dysfunctions, and dozens of neurologic disorders, some reaching epidemic status, and nobody is aking why. With over 20,000 noninfectious diseases plaguing the human body, and since the days of Silent Spring, industry is still treating symptoms with the same intentions to maintain what began with the industrial revolution: the economic revenue stream flowing from human addictions to money, power, and food.
We do not accept dying animals and birds, fish as flotsam, and nine legged frogs, but we have learned to accept human disease as part of normal living. And, nonetheless the band wagon fills when it comes to selling remedial, not preventive ideas: fortification, supplements, glycemic index, gluten free, keto and carnivore, organic....
In my younger days, noninfectious disease was quite rare, obesity an anomaly. By the time Ms. Carson spoke out, few talked, fewer listened, and industrial and medicinal chemicals continued to flourish. Today, humans accept and expect disease, still only talking or listening about it when it applies to themselves or loved ones. And, when the disease is genderfied or mentalized, no one wants to talk or listen at all, only argue.
Do you know why taking a drink of water, how you are cooking your food and cleaning yourself and your home, and using medications or air fresheners can trigger autoimmune and hormonal responses contributing to disease? Do you know how and why plants foods feed, detoxify, destroy, or aid in the elimination of toxic substances to prevent human disease? You are not alone if you don't, and a time for all of us to know.
Begin by following the author's ideas about chemicals in Food for Thought: do not use them, do not buy them, and certainly do not eat them, for they are destroying the world's ecosystem and the human organism.
Some do use their minds to move toward and beyond the ancient survival measures our brains throw our way, but when we buy into industrial pleasures of want, supplanting all rationality, and at the risk of disease or death, we could easily say many humans have lost their minds searching for peace of mind.
-Tilli
Read more about toxicology in book one, Cat Searching for an Open Window, page 35, of The Human Nature of NEED and FEED.
Autumn - 2024
Educational Lessons - The Pied Piper
Half a century ago, many children were graduating high school with diplomas of illiteracy. Today, nearly one fifth of high school graduates are still unable to read or write. The two basic elements of modern learning fail in the capacity of an age old system.
Modernity brought about renew and redo. Whether in our homes, products, or devices, humans constantly remodel: move out the old and in the new-save education. The national school system is structured on old ideas in new buildings, administrators attuned to butts in seats for budgets, not education, becoming atmospheres of violence and racism, while teaching children to waste food and water, exceed a sustainable footprint, and embrace a world of ease and falsity with AI, developing universal mindsets of misinformation.
As forks are not the cause of obesity, guns are not the cause of the hatred and despair. Some children feel locked down in the prisons of what we call school. To many schools function without morality, breed apathy toward learning, promote sexuality, and erode self esteem. And, when a child becomes a liability to the structure, they are drugged and given an acronym as a label, often making majorities the abnormal.
Today’s generations face issues unheard of or unimagined in my time. Yet, I still carry the effects of the education system so long ago. Schools situate children in classrooms without cohesiveness and playgrounds of adversity trying to fit in: have and have nots, racial and gender biases, and bullying. It is time to pay the piper and rescue our children.
As long as we send our children into this model of academics, not knowledge, the future of a human society will struggle with incompetence, for what is presently in store for the young is beyond the human capacities of endurance and the present education system.
Educated parents, grandparents, friends, and family are the teachers, experiencing life in the world we live-the education. Today, we have the technology to have nearly every question asked-answered in our homes. Let’s seek alternatives to get those butts out of seats and moving toward real learning-making personal choices, expounding on new ideas-exercising the the body and the brain to fit the individual. A change is long overdue.
-Tilli
For further discussion on education, see page 499, chapter 14, book 1, part 2, in The Human Nature of NEED and FEED.
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