Tag Archives: Hellip


Laying a Foundation for Vegetarian Diet Nutrition

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Following a plan of vegetarian diet nutrition, are you getting it all? First we have to shatter the myth that eating a Standard American Diet (SAD) provides you what your body actually needs.

If you’ve been studying at the Hippocrates Health Institute any amount of time , you now know that the food pyramid’s purpose is to serve the lobyists and not your health . Most people on the SAD are starving their body of vitamins and minerals, enzymes and phytochemicals.

Phytochemicals are the electricity inside the body. If your energy and reactions in your body are weak, this is the bottom line even more than vitamins and minerals.

You may be taking many vitamin supplements, but for the most part the body cannot digest and metabolize them because they are artificial. Only when we get back to our purpose and eat fresh organic plant-based food do we find the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and phytochemicals the body can readily use.

You get all these directly from the food you eat when you eat growing sprouts: sunflower seed sprouts, pea green sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts…

…The growing sprouts and wheatgrass have literally 30 times the phytochemicals you find even in other organic vegetables.

Plant-based food in its raw unaltered state contains about half the enzymes you need to digest it. So you can imagine the onus you are placing on your body if you regularly consume food that does not come with its own digestive enzymes and is also not easily digestible.

The digestive system is the most energy intensive of all the body’s systems anyway. If you over-burden it with heavily processed, cooked foods and meat, there is barely any energy left to perform cleansing and repair functions.

Do you ever feel really tired after a meal? I know I have and I always thought it was normal. But you’ll find eating an 80% raw vegetarian diet, you will get the nutrition you need and have a lot more energy.

Batteries and Solar Energy Systems: Battery Care

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The Lead-Acid battery is the most common in solar energy systems because, while it is the oldest (100+ years), it is still the cheapest and most reliable for the purpose of saving solar-generated electricity.

When these batteries fail, usually one of two things has happened:

A. Lead sulfate has built up on the plates inside the battery. In 80% of all cases of lead-acid battery failures, this is the cause.

B. You have run them down too low too many times.

Sulfation

The biggest cause for failure is the buildup of lead sulfate, called “sulfation”. There are five main reasons why sulfation occurs:

1. You have not been recharging the battery after use

2. The battery charge stays below 75% for an extended period of time

3. When you recharge the battery, you are not fully charging it

4. Your battery is overheating (usually over 100 degrees F) for too long

5. The liquid inside the battery (electrolyte – a combination of sulfuric acid and water) becomes low because of evaporation. This exposes the lead plates to the air and the sulfate crystals start to build up.

Fortunately, there are ways you can fix this. 

The first approach is the easiest … if you have a high-quality 4-state battery charger. The first three stages or sections of the battery charger have to do with normal charging situations. The so-called fourth stage is specifically to help with the problem of sulfation by using something called “battery equalization”.

Equalization is a means of overcharging a battery in a highly controlled way to dissolve the lead sulfate crystals. Since sulfation is the main reason why big storage batteries die, it makes sense to get a charger (or charge controller) that can do this.

The second way is essentially a manual way to do the same thing and would be used if you don’t have one of these sophisticated four-stage charge controllers. You apply an exact charging voltage for certain period of time while watching the temperature of the battery fluid. The process is detailed in an article entitled: Care and Feeding of Your Solar Power Batteries This article gives an even more aggressive procedure if these methods fail. 

Unless sulfation becomes very severe, it is usually fixable. 

Too Many Deep Cycles

The second main reason for battery failure is becoming too discharged too many times. 

For the most part, the less a battery’s reserves are used, the longer it will last. The warning on this is that if you don’t occasionally “deep cycle” it (discharge it enough), it will build up sulfate deposits. However, assuming you are using it down to about 40 or 50% of its total capacity roughly once per month, this shouldn’t be a problem.

The more you deeply drain the battery, the shorter its life. Most lead-acid batteries only want to be drained by 40 or 50%. If you drain it down to, say 20% or less of its total reserve, you may be seriously shortening the battery life. 

So the solution is: DON’T DO IT. 

The article on Solar Power System Battery Basics gives some good guidelines on this subject.

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For anyone building their own home solar power system, this is important information since the storage batteries are the most delicate part of the entire system. There is also good, beginner information on this topic in this Basics of Solar Energy Systems.

Lithium Producers In The Global X Lithium ETF

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Not a rare earth metal but certainly one to watch, the lithium market gets its day in the limelight as Global X Lithium an ETF will launch later this week. Global X Lithium will track lithium producers and battery makers. The idea for the fund came from R. Marcelo Claure, a Bolivian businessman and founder of Brightstar Corp a $3b distributor of hand-held devices, according to the WSJ. Bolivia contains the largest deposits of lithium so it’s no surprise that the idea for the fund came from that country. Claure, an investor in MC Capital Advisors, a hedge fund, approached Global X Management to start the ETF.

Back in May, Lithium-Stocks.net reported on the first rare earth metal ETF fund that makes actual investments in firms that produce REEs. The Global X Lithium fund works more like a traditional ETF fund – in that the fund will track an index comprised of key lithium producers and battery makers (and their stock prices). The WSJ suggests other rare earth metal ETFs are on the way including two, one for gallium and the other for selenium.

What we find particularly interesting while watching the development of these funds, involves the rationale behind the funds. We understand those rationales to include:

  1. General demand for ETFs – according to the Wall Street Journal, “there were 914 listed ETF’s at the end of June up 21% from a year ago….Since 2007, ETF’s have raked in $480 b in net cash inflows, bringing total assets to $780b.
  2. Trend in partnering amongst companies interested in creating markets for “obscure” materials for which there is rising demand
  3. Creating physical inventories via financially traded products to supply a growing market
  4. And as a result of three above, the creation of the unintended (or intended) consequence of seeing the price for some of these rare earth metals increase (which will result in more attractive mining economics) – which is a good thing if you believe the demand for these metals will increase over time

That fourth point is something my colleague wrote about earlier this morning. And as a result of all four trends listed above, we suspect the number of ETF’s in the rare earth metals, minor and related metals markets will continue to grow. What we will monitor from the sidelines, however, like other ETFs, include the number of new funds set up as an index to track underlying producers vs. ETFs that actually invest in physical inventories. Not to minimize the former but they merely require capital. The later actually move markets and that’s why any watcher of rare earth metals might wish to play close attention to what has happened with the PGM group of ETFs (which do invest in the underlying metal) and the previously announced aluminum ETF (which will take on physical inventory of that underlying metal) set to become operational later this year.

Motorists Fit Into Two Categories As Far As Oil Changes Go

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There are folks who care about their engine maintenance and oil changes and there are people who don’t have the first clue or concern about their engine maintenance.

I have a problem with this second group and here’s why…

Years ago I decided to be debt free.  It took about a decade to achieve but now myself and my family do not owe one penny to anyone… and yes the house is paid off too.  I am relatively young to have achieved this and it did mean sacrifice when you compare me to my peers.

One of the main things I did to achieve my goal was to refrain from purchasing a brand new car or truck, as appealing as it seemed at times.   Automobiles are depreciating assets.   Some things do go up in value as time goes by and others go down.  Cars go down in value and have expenses to boot. 

My preference is to buy a car at about half of its new car price.  At this point the major loss of its value has already happened and the vehicle still has everything I need and want in a car.   Naturally, I’ll be apprehensive about its previous maintenance.  Was it a lease?  Was it a rental?  The one thing I might lose some sleep over is whether or not the engine was properly cared for…did the oil get changed regularly?

It’s great to encounter those people who are of the mindset  that whether or not they plan on keeping their vehicle, they’re going to take good care of it, change the oil on time and check the fluids regularly. The opposite end of the spectrum has folks with the mentality that they are trading it in anyway… no need for an oil change period “I’m not keeping it so who cares”.

The latter group is the one the world of used cars can do without.  Yeah, all I need to do is ask to see the maintenance records, but what if the deal of the century is sitting there and there are no maintenance records?  That purchase could be a liability.  This is when frustration takes over and you want to wake everyone up and tell them to change their motor oil when they’re supposed to!

Which oil is right for you?  Find out with the best motor oil review. .