"We're all exposed to heavy metals and are all toxic enough to glow in the dark! Some of the chemicals that we're exposed to include lithium, barium, copper carbonate/sulfate, cobalt carbonate/sulfate, iron oxide, titanium oxide (EGAD), etc. Most all of these chemicals and compounds are used in glazes which, after they're fired, are neutralized (I guess!)."
A very good way to clear out heavy metals (and other toxins) is to eat raw garlic. It has been found to do this in experiments in the UK. There are all sorts of ways you can ingest it. Crush it good, and wash it down with water. Or chew it and wash it down with water. (That guarantees you to get a good spot in the check out line.) I'd suggest starting out with one clove a day and work up to as many as you can handle until symptoms of a healing crisis are finished. At times when I haven't had my raw garlic for a few weeks, I'll get a rash on my face when I start in again. It's the toxins coming out.
Garlic "pills" aren't nearly as effective but if you swear that's the only route you can go, get the cold processed kind.
I generally eat my garlic in the evening, pre-meal, (putting food on top of it seems to hide it), or at bed time. I will also sometimes eat a clove before my hour long walk out in the open air. The only complaint I've ever had is from an ex who prided herself in being au natural in many different ways. She ate basic and healthy, used nothing but natural products, but didn't like my garlic ingestion. I've mentioned it many times before on CZ, but raw garlic kills prostate cancer in the Petri dish. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 years ago, cancelled my surgery date after after intense prostate cancer investigation (and learned things my surgeon didn't even know), went McDougalling, and ate lots of raw garlic. They've never been able to find cancer since then.
People who do some healthy things like your mother-in-law and have health problems only leads me to wonder what would have happened to them had they not followed their healthy lifestyle. I had an aunt who from at least her mid-thirties was always overweight, significantly. She drank coffee, buttered and oleoed toast every morning along with bacon. Her husband who followed a similar path but wasn't particularly heavy, died at age 99. She waited until age 100.
It is important to choose the proper parents for your life's journey.
"I don't mean to be argumentative, I just offer this one story. And I guess my question to you is do you really know if the people around you are offended and not telling you?"
Well, I don't really think so. I've been retired for 20 years, and like I said, I am careful not to eat it prior to "social" encounters, though I violate that if I feel a cold coming on. (I went for 5 years without a cold up until four months ago when I got the worst one I've had in years. Garlic didn't do a thing for it. But before my garlic days I averaged three colds a year.) One time I was trying to see how much garlic I could get down and I did 8 to 10 cloves before bed time, and my brother caught onto it the next day.
My ex works in the world of outdoor biology and worked with a guy who ate garlic constantly and never had a cold nor was he ever sick, and his office workers complained so he decided to stop. On his field trips he always drank from streams (our Cascades and Olympics can have some nice clear streams) and he never had a problem, but when he quit the garlic he got very sick after drinking out of a stream. Animals can contaminate the streams more than humans.
I was raised by a mother who abhorred onions and laughed at Eastern Europeans who not only ate garlic, but put it on their feet when they became ill or caught cold. (I use chopped garlic in socks on the bottom of my feet when I get a cold and I can taste it within 60 seconds of putting them on.) So, when I went to Korea for an all expense paid visit thanks to Uncle Sam, I found that every Korean I ever talked to always had garlic on their breath. I never ever found it the least bit offensive. I enjoyed the aroma. So while some people find it offensive, it is strictly a cultural thing and people find it offensive only because they've been programmed to be offended, - it's all in their head. I just don't worry about it.
As I mentioned before, if you are really worried about the aroma, then there are cold processed garlic pills. I always have GarliMax on hand if I don't feel I've had enough of the raw. There is a garlic pill from Japan where the government has invested heavily in garlic and aged garlic research, called Kyolic. Kyolic has been shown to be as good as regular garlic but it is horribly expensive.
"I am going to try the soles-of-feet thing."
For that, I chop my garlic into small chunks. I do that to get it good and open. I use a full globe of cloves, and that does me for two socks. Then I divide the chopped garlic between the two socks, drop it in, and put on the socks making sure they are fairly evenly distributed on the sole, particularly from the arch forward. It will get a little warm, but I put it directly against the skin and I've never had a problem. I've had this keep my nasal passages clear during the night which gives me a good night's sleep. By morning, the garlic has gelled and it sticks both to the feet and the socks, but it comes off. Try to get as much as you can out of the socks prior to laundry because when they go into the washing machine they will be all through the wash if you don't. :-)
You can find the story on the Internet, and it's true. During the 19th Century there was a boy found living wild with animals, somewhere in either Europe or Africa. They estimated his age at 14. He couldn't speak anything, so had obviously not had human intervention for many years. A French physician adopted him and performed experiments on him. One of the things the doctor found is that the boy had no "good" or "bad" reactions to odors. He could have him smell putrid things or perfumes, and the boy reacted the same to all of them. What we think of as good and bad, odors and otherwise, is all programming. It's all in our head. In reality it has no good or bad meaning.
During my tour in Korea the very first thing that struck me when I got there, was the aroma of the cities. It's just different. As I said before, everyone had the aroma of garlic on them. The homes also all had attached outhouses (there were no flush toilets), not separate like here in the old days. And honey carts laden with large wooden barrels loaded with the outhouse product were in the streets on their way to the farmers who spread it as fertilizer for their crops - that's why we were not allowed to eat anything from local markets. But all of that created an aroma. Within two months of my arrival there I never smelled a thing, except the garlic when I talked to a local.
"Farmers in Asia have composted human manure for centuries, They've maintained the vitality of the soil that way:)"
Yes. By farming that way, China had created 8 feet of topsoil over the centuries by using human waste. With the advent of chemical fertilizers that they now use, they have destroyed that topsoil and now have to use chemicals in order to produce a crop!
I used to watch in amazement (astonishment, or whatever) as I would see a Korean farmer with a bag of human fertilizer over his shoulder, grabbing a handful with his bare hand, then throw it on the ground and push it into the ground with his bare foot! They built up an immunity to the diseases that is in the stuff, and quite frankly, I believe that garlic helped in their protection. Harvard University has contracts with several different provinces in China and are doing research on eating habits in relation to illness. China is unique in that one city may eat lots of garlic and onions while in a neighboring city those things are rejected as strange. This is a long-term study and so far they have found that diets high in onions and garlic result in a significantly lower incidence of prostate cancer. I remember that one, and think there were other advantages too.
"Hey sounds like you need a "special pair of socks" for that one! LOL My girlfriend has her "castor oil socks" and they are used for no other purpose."
I've thought of that many times. Only problem I see is I would need plastic booties to go over them. I stir a lot at night. How does she solve that?