Skip to content

Learning how to live long and heathy lives at Lake Cowichan Health and Wellness Fair

Various tricks to living a long and healthy life were provided during Lake Cowichan’s annual Health and Wellness Fair, Saturday, March 5.
68664lakecowichanWeb-Healthandwellness3
Shawnigan Lake resident Gail Tahmasebi

Various tricks to living a long and healthy life were provided during Lake Cowichan’s annual Health and Wellness Fair, Saturday, March 5.

In addition to the usual array of local area health enthusiasts, a number of out-of-town visitors set up shop at the event, sharing their unique insight into healthy living.

The Pender Island Kikuchi family were on site, kids and all, sharing their insight into healthy living in harmony with the environment.

The family, originally from Japan, moved to Pender Island in 2000, purchasing one acre of land, which they strive to become self-sufficient upon.

“The long transportation of things is not good for the environment,” matriarch Sanae Kikuchi said, of the family’s farming efforts.

Their farm is unique, in that, unlike their neighbours, they don’t transport anything from off-island. Not even fertilizers.

“We trust the power of nature, and the power of soil,” she said.

So far, Arthur Kikuchi, the family’s patriarch, said that they haven’t reached the point of self-sufficiency yet, but they hope to as soon as they can fully figure it all out.

In addition to farming, the family travels around the province sharing their expertise in Shumei, a Japanese form of holistic healing.

“We like to share what we know,” Arthur said. “We like to share the health and well being with the people of Canada.”

Heralding healthy eating as an ideal means of battling cancer, local area health enthusiasts Jennifer Heyne and Lorene Benoit attended the Health and Wellness Fair to both share their insight into healthy eating, and to spread interest for their upcoming classes at the Cow Cafe.

Benoit, a resident of Duncan, has written a book titled The Paw Paw Program; A Christopher Columbus Approach to Cancer.

A driving force behind her getting the book done was Lake Cowichan resident Marie Augustine, who died recently.

“She was really the one behind me getting this book done,” Benoit said.

Although Augustine died as a result of a rare form of lung cancer related to asbestos exposure, she lived for a lot longer than doctors expected her to.

This was thanks to natural alternative therapies, Benoit said.

“There are many approaches to it,” Benoit said, of the fight against cancer.

Another interesting take on cancer was provided by Shawnigan Lake resident Gail Tahmasebi.

Tahmasebi is a proponent of alkalized, or less acidic, water.

Tahmasebi is quick to cite Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg, who said, “Cancer grows in oxygen deprived acidic tissue.”

“Disease can not live in an alkaline body.”

Acidic beverages include soda pops, energy drinks, and even some brands of bottled water.

“One glass of pop; to offset the acidity of that, you need 22 glasses of high alkaline water,” she said.

Tap water can’t be too acidic, she said, as acidic water would rust communities’ pipes.

Translating pounds to ounces, she encourages people to drink half their body weight in ounces, every day, of water.

This translates into roughly six glasses of water for someone weighing 100 pounds.