Sex Ed and the digital age

CSHC launches ‘Be a SexPert’ Podcast Series

The Calgary Sexual Health Centre officially launched our ‘Be a SexPert’ podcast series this fall, complementing the already comprehensive sex ed resources available through our website.

In our video podcasts, six young Sexperts take to the streets to ask the public about their sex lives and give no-nonsense advice.  Aimed at a youth audience, the podcasts offer open and honest conversations about sex that they may not hear at home or in school. Through the 12 episodes, viewers can watch our SexPerts get an STI test, talk to their parents about sexuality, and reveal what they've learned in becoming a Sexpert.

Since posting two of our ‘Be a SexPert’ podcasts on our website in October, the episodes have been generating over 300 hits per day.

We're thrilled by this response to our podcasts.  And it indicates a clear need for us to continue to reach out to online communities with sexual health information.

With today’s smart phone technologies, viewers are able to access our podcasts from where ever and whenever they need.  We're excited to be able to support people with their sexual health questions and concerns, with complete privacy and personal convenience.

Two episodes have already been released, with the remaining 10 episodes ready to be released in the weeks ahead.  The next episode will be released on Tuesday, January 18th - and a new episode will be released every 2 weeks after that!   We'll be announcing each new episode on our Facebook and Twitter - so please stay tuned!

Check our website at www.calgarysexualhealth.ca for the new episodes!   They can also be found on our Facebook page, and downloaded on iTunes.

Thanks for joining the Sexual Health dialogue!

Let's talk about sex!
Healthy sexuality is about more than pregnancy and disease - its about awareness, relationships and open dialogue.  Through this blog, we aim to bring you the latest news and interesting conversation starters about sexual and reproductive health.

We are a community-based organization that provides non-judgementatl sexual and reproductive health services to Calgarians of all ages.  We provide accurate, comprehensive support through counselling, education and outreach services.

 How we help

Free & Confidential Support Services
Our services are available in person, by email or by phone.  We offer free and confidential counselling in the following areas:

• pregnancy testing
• pro-choice pregnancy options
• post-abortion counselling
• birth control options
• sexually transmitted infections counselling
• sexual orientation and gender identity resources
• comprehensive professional referrals

Empowering Through Education
We offer education programs to inform, motivate and help people from all walks of life make healthy choices about their sexuality.  We offer workshops to community groups and organizations on a wide variety of sexual health topics.  Workshops can be customized to meet your needs.

• Community Education Programs
• Youth Education Programs
• Professional Education Programs

Check our website for more details about our programs and services.

Touching the Heart of the World Online Intensive

TOUCHING THE HEART OF THE WORLD:

An Online Intensive with Sean Donahue

January 18 - February 22

$100-200

Stephen Harrod Buhner writes that "Members of most ancient and indigenous cultures make an interesting assertion; when asked where in their body they live, they gesture to the region of the chest. Members of our culture, on the other hand, point to the head, generally an inch above the eyes and about two inches into the skull."

What does it mean to live from the heart?

In this six week intensive we will draw on the insights of biology, magic, herbalism, cultural history, and poetry to answer this question. And we will journey inside ourselves to explore new ways of listening to the world around us.

We will explore:

* The role the heart plays in how we experience emotion, respond to stress, and gather information from the world around us.

* How the place where we live in our bodies effects our experience of the world and shapes our culture.

* Techniques for listening to and working to heal wounded parts of ourselves.

* Learning to work with the heart as an organ of perception.

* The connections between personal, cultural, and planetary healing.

This promises to be a powerfully transformational, and at times emotionally intense journey. My goal as a teacher is to provide a safe and supportive space for that work. But I am not in a position to serve as therapist or counselor for students. Please bear this in mind as you consider undertaking this work.

Payment for this class is on a sliding scale from $100-200 The price reflects the work that I put into preparing and teaching this course. The higher end of the sliding scale is intended for people who can regularly afford things like eating out, going to concerts, and attending workshops and retreats. For those who are deeply committed to this work but are not able to afford even the low end of the sliding scale I am willing to discuss payment plans and partial or full barter arrangements. If enough people pay at the higher end of the sliding scale, I may be able to offer a few partial scholarships to students who would not otherwise be able to take this course.

If you are interested in enrolling, please e-mail me at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com.

The Myth of the Herbal Detox

Its the most common question herbalists get, especially in the days between Christmas and New Year's: "What herbs will help my body detox?"

And my answer is always the same:

Drink water. Eat good, healthy, local, food -- organic or wild if possible, mainly meat, fish, and vegetables. Move in ways that feel good to your body. And most of the time your body will take care of itself -- we are designed to clean out whatever doesn't belong inside us and a little holiday indulgence doesn't make you "toxic."

But, you might ask, what's the harm in giving your body a push? Well it turns out you can do a lot of damage.

Forcing your colon to clear itself with stimulating laxatives -- be they herbal or pharmaceutical -- in the best of circumstances will put a lot of stress on your gut lining, and in many cases can create a dangerous dependency. When laxatives are used regularly, the body's ability to set into motion its own process of elimination atrophies, and a person can begin to need higher and higher doses of laxatives to make any bowel movement at all.

Taking in a lot of fiber in a short period of time can damage the lining of the gut. Oh and those "herbal cleanses" that tell you they are clearing out "mucoid plaque"? They are made of Psyllium husks and clay. The strange substance they cause you to excrete is the combination of the two.

If your digestion is a bit sluggish (marked by slow transit time for food, a thick white coating down the middle of the tongue, bloating and constipation) warming herbs like Ginger, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Fennel and Cardamom can help give it a gentle nudge. Best before meals. Add more bitter foods to your diet as well, and consider taking some old fashioned digestive bitters before you eat.

If you are experiencing abdominal bloating, there is a significant chance that the problem is in the lymph that surrounds the gut. Much of the lymph in your body exists there. When the gut lining becomes damaged by inflammation from food allergens, stress, repeated antibiotic use, laxatives, and so on, it can become permeable and food particles can leak from the gut into the lymph. This triggers an immune response. And in many cases this can lead to autoimmune disorders when your body develops a heightened immune response to proteins that resemble those of our own tissues -- ie. Gluten which is structured like our connective tissues and Soy which is structured like our thyroid tissues.

This kind of condition usually requires the help of an herbalist. A combination of demulcent herbs like Marshmallow and Slippery Elm with wound healing herbs like Calendula and Plantain can help heal the gut lining. Gentle lymphatics like Cleavers and Red Clover can get the lymph moving again. Immune modulating mushrooms and herbs can bring the immune system back into balance. Probiotics can restore the gut flora. And dietary and lifestyle changes are necessary to prevent future damage.

If you are experiencing chronic constipation, the problem may be with your liver failing to produce enough bile to stimulate digestion.

The answer here is to support the liver, and possibly gently stimulate it, not to do a "liver flush."

The popular liver and gallbladder flushes involving Lemon juice and Olive oil that cause people to excrete round green objects they think are gallstones are actually just creating balls of soap made in the intestine from the oil and juice with bile. They are causing more stress to the system.

Milk Thistle seeds help to protect and support the liver. They don't in and of themselves "cleanse" the liver but they can increase liver clearance of toxins by improving liver function.

Bitter herbs like Dandelion, Burdock, Turmeric, and Oregon Grape Root do increase liver clearance by stimulating bile production. But they need to be used with some degree of caution. If the liver tissues are already compromised, further stimulation can cause further damage. And if you are going to stimulate the liver the herbs need to be gauged to the person's constitution and condition. If you can't gauge whether your liver function is being compromised by heat and inflammation or cold and stagnation, seek out an herbalist who can.

Some herbs like St. John's Wort directly increase the liver's clearance of toxins. But its important to understand what you are trying to eliminate and make sure it has a clear channel to leave your body. And its also important to pay attention to interactions with pharmaceuticals -- the body treats synthetic chemicals as toxins, and if you are dependent on a particular synthetic compound to maintain your health, increasing your liver's clearance of it can do serious harm.

And its important always to look at what is stressing your liver -- food allergens, excess alcohol, excess fructose, environmental toxins, and viral infection are all possibilities, and any of these need to be addressed thoroughly and carefully.

So my answer in the end is be good to your body. Nourish it and exercise it well. If that's not sufficient, investigate the specific problem. There is no one size fits all "herbal detox." Any product or protocol that makes such a claim is likely to do more harm than good.

Notes on Solomon's Plume

(Photo by Darcey Blue)

I first met Solomon's Plume (Smilacina racemosa) when I found her growing in abundance outside the van where I was living for a summer on a friend's land in central Maine.

That should have been a clue that this would be a powerful medicine for me.

But the first name I knew the plant by was "False Solomon's Seal," and I hadn't yet heard of people working with her medicine, so I dismissed her as "Not Solomon's Seal", not the medicine that had helped my knee to recover from a nasty fall the winter before.

So it caught me by surprise, when at a workshop in Vermont with Stephen Harrod Buhner, Solomon's Plume grabbed my attention and my imagination.

I saw in her form a graceful arc and then a sudden leap, bridging between worlds. I felt my chest relax and open, a cool influx of breath.

When I described what the plant showed me, Buhner told me that he found the medicine of the plant's root to be extremely useful for relaxing the connective tissues around the lungs.

Months later, when I had a chance to dig some of the roots (cutting the root several inches away from the plant to allow it to keep enough to continue growing and thriving) and tincture them, I found that my own experience matched Buhner's. I find this medicine combines particularly nicely with New England Aster (Aster Nova-angliae), a medicine which relaxes the musculature associated with the respiratory tract. The combination is great for asthmatics who are able to recognize the tightening in their chest that precedes an acute attack. (Thanks to Jim McDonald for the New England Aster part of this formula.) Its also great, in combination with breathing exercises and lung and kidney building herbs, for helping people who have developed patterns of shallow breathing from chronic respiratory disease to begin allowing themselves to breathe deeper.

The root is also profoundly cooling and demulcent -- and maintains its demulcent quality in tincture form for reasons that defy my phytochemical understanding -- and so is an excellent medicine for respiratory inflammation.

It makes a decent substitute for Solomon's Seal (Pologonatum spp.) for moistening and restoring pliability to dried out connective tissues throughout the body, particularly where there is also inflammation -- I used it with great success for a minor weight lifting injury in my right shoulder last winter.

Solomon's Plume has a strong affinity for the liver.

Matthew Wood writes that "It is restorative to the [liver's] cells or tissues and functions." And also reports that "William LeSassier said that constipation will always be present in a case requiring False Solomon's Seal. This may indicate that Smilacina improves bile secretion, hence lubrication of the stool." This may also explain its use by the Delaware and the Navajo as an emetic.

Michael Moore notes that "the root tea is also useful in frontal headaches caused by or accompanied by indigestion" -- which suggests to me that it cools liver heat.

I've had great personal success using the root tincture for constipation, indigestion, and headache associated with heat and congestion in the liver following exposure to gluten or casein.

As a liver cooling herb, Solomon's Plume also helps to cool the temper. The root smudge, which smells faintly of burnt gingerbread, was traditionally burned to soothe anger and irritability associated with PMS.

There is also a strong association of the plant with invisibility -- Solomon's Plume tends to make herself known when she wants to be seen but otherwise is often surprisingly inconspicuous for such a distinctively beautiful plant. Legend has it that Geronimo carried the root of Solomon's Plume as an invisibility charm and that it aided him in evading capture.

My own magical experience of the plant suggests an even stranger reality: The deep, cool peace of Solomon's Plume feels like it aids in slipping briefly outside ordinary space and time. Journeying with the plant, I felt myself in the center of a well-shaft that opened to distant stars, apart from a chaotic reality unfolding outside around me. I saw the face of Obatala, the Orisha associated with calm judgment who "cools the head." Perhaps Geronimo never actually became invisible, but slipped into this place instead.

This is a plant of cool, deep waters, that keeps revealing more dimensions of its medicine over time.

Why I eat meat

I was a vegetarian for seventeen years. And in the end, it was reflecting on the same questions that led me to stop eating meat that made me start eating it again.

Throughout my years as a vegetarian, I subscribed to the idea that a plant-based diet required less use of water, fossil fuels, and other "resources" than a diet that included meat.

But that's not necessarily true.

Here in New England, the soils are rocky and the growing season is short. A vegetable-based diet requires the importation of protein and fat from distant places, using tremendous amounts of fossil fuels. But the land here is great for grazing sheep and cattle. Eating the flesh of a grass-fed steer who lived out its life on a farm a few miles down the road costs the life of one animal, eating soy trucked across a continent costs the lives of many.

In many parts of the world, agriculture is a large scale operation that destroys habitat. Here in rural New England, small scale animal-based agriculture is an essential part of preserving land that would otherwise be more intensively developed.

The answers to questions about the most sustainable diet is vary widely from place to place depending on soils, climate, population density, and the history of land use.

Some may argue that its not sustainable or realistic for everyone everywhere to eat a diet that relies on sustainably and humanely raised or hunted meat. But I am not necessarily making the argument that it is. Sustainability is not a simple equation. There is not one diet that is appropriate for everyone everywhere. (Though from a health standpoint there are some pretty good indicators of what our bodies did and didn't evolve to eat -- see http://www.toddcaldecott.com/index.php/food/diet/146-diet-a-short-history.)

Every food choice we make has its costs in plant and animal lives.

For a long time only the animal lives matter to me -- for the same reason that for many people only human lives matter, and for others only the lives of humans of the same ethnic background matter -- because we most easily see ourselves mirrored in the lives of beings who closely resemble us and whose sentience is expressed in ways similar to our own.

But when I came to know plants more intimately I came to realize that they too are sentient beings with a desire to live.

Many vegetarian have misinterpreted this as a mockery of their beliefs. (Which oddly echoes the arguments I heard in my years of advocating for animal rights that talking about animal suffering somehow made a mockery of human suffering.) But the emerging field of plant neurobiology is demonstrating that plants have complex neural networks and recognize the difference between self and other. And as an herbalist when I write about talking about the plants, I am not speaking metaphorically --- I have conversations and relationships with Skunk Cabbage and Ghost Pipe as deep and meaningful as my human and animal relationships.

There is no choice of not killing. Our lives depend on the deaths of others. Just as the lives of cattle and bison and salmon and turnips and kale and redwoods do. To truly follow the philosophy of deep ecology and view ourselves as "plain members of the biological community" we need to recognize that we are as much a part of that web of life and death, eating and being eaten as any other species.

There is a sacredness in that. For me I have found that as an omnivore I am more conscious of the ethical and ecological choices I make about food than I was as a vegetarian. When I look back at myself as a vegetarian I see someone who was concerned primarily about what kind of organisms were represented directly on my plate. (And I know this is not true of all vegetarians.) As an omnivore, I am concerned about the web of relationships represented by the food on my plate, and the questions I ask about my impact on that web don't have simple answers.

Eating for me is a sacred act. And I give thanks for all who died to give me life, and honor them as best I can by living a life of working for love, justice, healing, and holy pleasure.

Green Man's Guide To the Flu: Part 2 -- Dealing with the Flu

So, despite all your best efforts, you get the flu. What should you do?

First and foremost: go to bed. And do not get up for a week. You will feel better on the third day and be tempted to go back to work. Don't. People who don't get enough rest when they have the flu are more prone to secondary respiratory infections that can turn into pneumonia.

Secondly, reach for Elderberries. In most any form -- tincture, elixir, syrup. Tea would be fine but you'll likely have a hard time getting enough of it into your system to have the desired effect if you are feeling nauseated. Take it every hour that you are awake -- at least a teaspoon of syrup or a dropper of tincture or elixir. Elderberries stop viral replication and also modulate your immune response, limiting the inflammatory cytokines that flood your system a few days into an influenza infection. Respiratory inflammation is the second leading cause of death or serious illness associated with flu, after secondary infection. Excessive exertion is usually a contributing factor here.

Keep taking your Vitamin D3. It will modulate the immune response in your respiratory tract as well.

You can address respiratory inflammation directly with cooling herbs that have an affinity for the respiratory system: Elder flower works wonders here. Peach leaf is cooling to the lungs and also calming to the digestive system. Pleurisy Root brings down inflammation in the lungs while also helping to regulate fluid levels. Wild Cherry bark or leaf are ideal for calming racking coughs, cooling inflammation, and helping you get to sleep -- indicated when the cheeks turn cherry red. Marsh Mallow, Slippery Elm, and Siberian Elm will help to moisten the mucus membranes, making coughs more productive.

If you are feeling nauseated, take small sips of Ginger tea. You just need a little bit of Ginger to calm your stomach.

At the outset you will likely feel cold. Wrap yourself in blankets. Take warm baths. Put some Thyme in an old sock and throw it in your bath. Drink Ginger tea.

After a while, your temperature will begin to rise and you will develop a fever. Fever is your friend -- it helps to kill off influenza viruses and any opportunistic pathogens that may follow in their wake. Fevers that develop in response to infection will not rise to dangerous levels. The only reason to treat a fever is to make yourself more comfortable.

Stay hydrated, stay in bed, and do not eat until the fever breaks.

Avoid acetaminophen and NSAID's (ibuprofen, aspirin, etc.) at all costs. They suppress fevers and also suppress immune responses in the respiratory tract. They also damage your gut.

If your fever becomes uncomfortable, use diaphoretic herbs -- herbs that work with your body's natural fever response rather than suppressing it.

Stimulating diaphoretics like Ginger, Osha, Cayenne, and Thyme help the body move heat from the core out to the periphery. They are ideal when you are feeling weak and miserable.

Relaxing diaphoretics like Elder flower, Vervain, and Pleurisy Root help to relax tension at the surface to allow heat to escape. They are ideal when you are feeling tense, especially if you are hot but unable to sweat.

Some plants like Catnip, Yarrow, and Lemonbalm combine these actions.

Boneset is ideal for alternating fever and chills or for a fever accompanied by pain that feels like it goes down to the bone -- it also helps with the general body aches that come with the flu.

Teas are ideal here since they keep the body hydrated, but tinctures will do in a pinch or if nausea makes teas difficult.

Once the fever goes below 99 degrees begin slowly reintroducing food, starting with something easily digested and deeply nourishing like bone broth. Avoid chills. And keep taking it easy.

Trust your body, and give it the time it needs to heal. It may be hard to give yourself a week of rest -- but remember you may be saving yourself a month or more of dealing with bronchitis or pneumonia.