Eat Dance Live

First off, many of you have been very supportive of the studying/work/exam craziness that has been my life recently. I really appreciate it, so thanks for all your comments and emails over the last little while. To all you faithful blog followers, thanks for being understanding and patient towards my recent scattered posting habits. Secondly, as some of you may know, the Canadian August long weekend is one of my favourite times of the year. Why? Because that means it's camping time! Every year, Andrew and I head to an awesome camping festival that often ends up being an annual highlight. While river dips, drum circles, and fire pit dancing could be my recap of the trip, I usually end up writing a more useful mosquito post. So here goes: Last year, I shared some of my successful strategies to naturally avoid getting bitten by mosquitos by focusing on light coloured clothes, staying clean, and minor dietary changes. The most common diet tip is not to eat potassium-rich foods for the...

Oh the successes, I have known this week! There's nothing like a 6 day camping festival surrounded by friends old and new, fire-lit drum circles, pine woods and cool rivers to completely rejuvenate you and make you feel alive. These past few days have been extremely curative for me both physically and mentally, and I feel so grateful for the life I have. But on to my successes: Success #1: Mosquito Prevention As I mentioned in my last post , one of the most successful ways to avoid getting bitten by mosquitos is to avoid potassium foods a few days prior to and during your camping trip. So it's been no bananas, pumpkin seeds, strawberries, whole grains, and brazil nuts for us for almost 10 days now and the mosquito bite tally: 5 over 6 days, while everybody else was massively attacked. I don't know if it's the raw diet or potassium or both but it worked so well that at one point, we were talking to a friend and all the mosquitos were swarming around him while we just sa...

... mosquito that is. Well, I hope so anyway. Summer in many areas of North America often means it's time to try to avoid the mosquitos, so here are my five cents on that topic. Because of an impending camping trip, we've been dietarily preparing for the hoards of mosquitos that one finds in the Canadian wilderness, and believe me there are plenty. In a lot of campgrounds it seems that mosquitos have actually grown immune to every kind of repellent from the oh-so-chemically-laden DEET to 100% organic citronella. I've tried every kind of natural repellent: rosemary, citronella, lavender, you name it. None of them work. To make matter worse, mosquitos love me. Now I know that everyone says this, but I think my blood won some kind of mosquito-friendly award I wasn't aware of when I was a baby. On my first camping trip, I got over 30 bites on just one leg in one night. Everyone else? A couple bites, maybe a few more over there... the next night, I got bites on my face, my...