 The state of the tissues in which the germ finds itself that causes the problem. We have an immune system and our immune system, if functioning properly, can easily deal with bacteria and with viruses. And it's only when it's not functioning, when something's getting in the way, and we come back to this idea of the vital force, if you like, when something's blocking the vitality of the system that we get disease. Let's just take a condition like eczema. Now, eczema we associate with itchiness, redness, you know, people really scratching, you know, that really horrible pain and discomfort. Now, eczema could, at the root of it, be associated with poor elimination in the body. Maybe that person has eczema because their bowels are not moving well enough, and therefore the waste that that body's trying to push out is going back into the blood, and your body is simply trying another root of excretion. Maybe it's trying the skin, and those waste products coming out through the skin, seeping out through the skin, are perhaps causing irritation. Along with being abundant in enzymes, raw food also has some other benefits. First of all, it tends to have more vitamins and minerals in than its cooked counterpart. And that's because things like vitamin C are lost when vegetables are cooked. When you boil them or steam them, the vitamin C leaches out into the water. Levels of B vitamins can also change during cooking. So, not cooking food allows a better retention of our vitamins and minerals. Okay, so we're still on the label, but we're moving from the back of the label to front of packed labelling. And what we're going to look at is the traffic light system. And I'm going to compare or just highlight, I guess, the advantages and the disadvantages of this system. But let me just explain it a little bit more to you first. The other key thing is making sure that you imbibe the seeds or soak the seeds in water first. Because it's doing that, that actually activates the enzymes in the seed to simulate the germination process. I mean, otherwise we would never be able to keep seeds, would we? So dry seeds are almost in this state of hibernation. Fennel seeds actually are really fantastic for babies who are experiencing colic. Because a bit of that fennel seed will go through into the breast milk. And we know that fennel seeds are a carminative herb. They can really help with digestion, really calm down digestion and to help with any sort of gas. So if the mum is experiencing, has a baby with a bit of colic, including fennel seed tea into her diet can be really fantastic for the baby as well. It's clear that when we look at her symptoms, acne, mucus membrane issues with the mouth ulcers, recurring infections, so there's an immune system issue, that it sounds like she's got signs of vitamin A insufficiency. We know vitamin A supports gene expression, it supports skin health, supports the immune health. Fortunately vitamin D is fat soluble, so we can store quite a bit of it in our liver. And if our levels are topped up, we can kind of last up to four months before we start to show signs of deficiency. And what seed cycling is, is that in the first part of your cycle, which we call the follicular phase, we would ask you to try and have one tablespoon of flaxseed and one tablespoon of pumpkin seeds during that first 14 days, the follicular phase, to regulate estrogen levels. What we want to do as naturopathic nutritionists is we want to focus on every person as an individual. So there is no one standard diet for the one person. We all are very individual and therefore our recommendations need to reflect this.