Dear Subscribers,

By now, dozens of emails about the rare and dangerous fungus in the Pacific Northwest have reached me. The reality is that the odds of succumbing to this are probably less than being hit by lightning but since the powers that be thrive on fear triggered by the hysteria they promote, let's have a look at the facts. First, however, reread "rare but dangerous" and take note of whether you actually heard "rare" or only "dangerous."

My father had a weird sense of humor and used to tell jokes. One was that "Statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is obvious, what they conceal is vital." I'm sure there is a more polished version of this around, but that's what I heard in my innocent young ears more than half a century ago.

Okay, so since 1999, it seems that 19 people in Canada and the U.S. have died of this "rare fungus." Gosh, that is really an epidemic, isn't it, but, of course, it could get worse so you should stay indoors and take take vitamin D in pill form or you should live life as normal, get your garden going, and wait for Destiny to claim you at your appointed rendezvous moment. Personally, I am opting for the latter, but while we are on this topic, Earth Day was a very unhappy event for me because a landscaping service sprayed mega amounts of toxins on my neighbor's property. Later in the day, I picked some kale for my dinner. My throat swelled up on the first bite, my stomach went into convulsions, and I ran a fever. I was quite sick, lost my equilibrium and when placing a call to the yard service, they informed my assistant that Round Up is an enzyme and is absolutely harmless. Add that to the list of lies by one of the most dangerous companies on the Planet.

The truth is that this danger is something over which we have the potential for absolute control. I am not suggesting it will be any easier to put the shackles on Monsanto than it was with the tobacco companies, but others have rights also so unless we take a strong position, we are doomed to the consequences: soil that is increasingly toxic, growth stimulants that cause what looks like food to grow big but to lack nutrients, and bizarre diseases in Nature while it tries to correct all the human errors. Fungi are basically toxic in direct proportion to the meals they eat so if we use horrible chemicals to make our homes termite resistant, the mold that eventually grows will be infinitely more toxic than the mold that occurs in other places. This is more or less true and it makes perfect sense.

This said, Cryptococcus gattii is a yeast. When the pundits write nonsense about how strange it is that people who are not immune-compromised are succumbing to the disease, five in the United States out of 21 known to be infected, they are just regurgitating the errors in their textbooks which are written by people who toe the line. The medical industry and insurance industry want to insist that in order to be vulnerable to fungi, one must already be in a weakened condition. They would also like us to believe that a hemolysin only affects the 25% who are smart enough to be allergic to fungi and not the 100% who are clearly and definitely equally trashed by hemolysins.

So, let me try to be a little less hot-headed and state the facts as we know them. Roughly 25% of the population exhibits definite allergic reactions to fungi. These people have been given the incentive to look for a cause for their misery and eliminate risk. The other 75% are blind to hazard and could be massively infected but not exhibiting allergic reactions. There are a lot of possible explanations for this, one being they are really not allergic but the other is that they can't generate the warning signs because they are fundamentally compromised and do not know it.

While allergies are a nuisance, they are only symptoms of a problem and the bigger problem with fungi is not that people might be allergic but rather that fungi colonize and consume. They can completely compromise and overwhelm a lung or brain or practically any other place they happen to inhabit. They do not have wings or legs so they depend on assistance for transport, and this is readily provided by creatures who move about as well as wind. Fungi infiltrate by plunging hyphae into their food sources. These hyphae are full of nasty acids needed for the breakdown of the meals. Since fungi do not have stomachs, the hyphae acids serve similar functions as the gastric secretions normal to the animal kingdom. Fungi have metabolic functions as well. They can secrete mycotoxins to tenderize their meals and they emit noxious gases after eating. It's all pretty disgusting when occurring inside a body, but it is how Nature reduces rubbish and dead (or dying) organic material to dust.

The normal mode of infection is inhalation so the most vulnerable organ is the lungs, but ingestion is another possibility. Moreover, since there is circulation within the body, any fungus can basically relocate by hitching a ride in circulating fluids. They are pretty good surfers.

Under a microscope, I have been able to observe that certain herbs break the hyphae and then white blood cells will attack at the exact places that are broken. This is obviously fascinating to watch. There are at least two benefits to this disruption of the feeding system. First, the fungus is deprived food. It did not appear to me that breaking the hyphae destroyed the fungus, merely that this would give the body the opportunity to dislodge the hyphae that are jabbed into the linings of the organs under siege. So, the second benefit is the temporary reprieve from colonization and the chance to heal. There are other herbs that mitigate the harm of hemolysins, but I have yet to have a lucky moment when I could see how this is achieved. If the fungi cease to secrete toxins, that would be different from some chemical action that neutralizes the toxins. I have simply seen that the both red and white blood cells cease to die at the devastating rate that was happening prior to use of these herbs.

For me this pandemonium is even less worrying than the flu hoax because the likelihood of a pandemic is ridiculously low unless the mode of dissemination is not natural. Being ghastly allergic to all fungi and having nearly separated from my body when moving to the NW, I have to say that, at the moment, I am not panicked. I have complete faith in my herbs and I intend to keep trying to keep my garden alive despite the hazards posed by my neighbor, something that is much more vexing than the rare yeast that has managed to infect a dolphin, a llama, a dog, and some unfortunate humans causing a grand total of one and half deaths per year. In mocking the hysteria, I am not suggesting that the yeast is not real, but the cell phone is going to get more people than this yeast.

Well, this completes one of the backlog of emails I had yet to post! I do appreciate that so many of you are worried for my safety but for me, this is just one more scare and if we allow ourselves to become disturbed by every other email to reach the inbox, not to mention what is aired on television, we will wear out our adrenals! I need mine and you need yours.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Sources:
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/15/8/pdfs/08-1384.pdf

Cryptococcus gattii: Pacific Northwest || Flowers and Fungi || Indoor Air Quality
Fusarium, Contact Lens, and the Drug War || Radiation Eating Fungi
Fungi, Antibiotics, and the Immune System || Mold Control

Guduchi || Mold Chikitsa

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