Day One

I woke up to see that UPS had left a large box just inside my fence - where anybody could have reached over the fence and grabbed it! I quickly took the long walk down my driveway to carry the box with the 10lb bag of Diatomaceous Earth back to the house.

I opened the box, and right away I had a problem - how to store the Diatomaceous Earth so that I could easily use it without making a mess. After finding a few continers - including a large plastic shaker container that had once held garlic salt, I began to fill the containers with the dusty white powder.

I read the instructions, which listed all the various ways DE could be used, and all of the ways it could benefit a person when used as a nutritional supplement, before taking a large tablespoon full and mixing it with a small amount of cherry Kool-Aid in a cup. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was no odd taste to the DE, but it did give the Kool-Aid an interesting texture - sort of thick and slightly gritty.

I don't know if it was all in my mind or not, but I right away I noticed a feeling that I can only describe as being similar to when a thirsty person gets a glass of water. It was as if my body was soaking up something it desperately needed. Though the instructions said to take one tablespoon full per day, I decided to take a second one, then I continued to fill more containers to store the DE.

Later that day, I decided to take my blood pressure to get a measurement when I first started taking DE. The reading was what some would consider shocking, but what I have learned to live with - 165/111. With numbers like these, some may wonder why I don't take medicine to lower my blood pressure. There are several reasons. First, the doctor I had been seeing was one I did not trust, and with no medical insurance, I don't have the money to see a different doctor. Second, the side effects I had been dealing with while on blood pressure medicine were enough to make me want to deal with the high blood pressure rather than taking those pills - irregular heartbeat, lack of energy, difficulty staying awake, thinning hair, and a few others. After dealing with these side effects for over a year, I decided to find natural remedies to control my blood pressure. Unfortunately, the natural remedies only brought it down so far (without taking the other supplements my blood pressure can actually go up to 170/118).

After taking my blood pressure, and writing down the reading in my notebook, I went outside to use the DE on my animals to treat for fleas. Unfortunately, my poor dog only seemed to itch worse with the treatment, but that could have been because she needed a bath. My cat, who has super thick fur, seemed to be much more comfortable after being powdered with the DE, and after a couple of hours, she was actually able to sleep without constantly waking up scratching.