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Equines are jealous of salt block present
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Friday, January 02, 2009
Apparently I had to reach Old Age before getting a New Age Christmas gift.
But now I can truly say that likely I am the first on my block “ out there in Deepest, Darkest Wapiti “ to possess a genuine salt lamp.
If I had a block.
At least I now have a block of salt, in any case. And boy are my horse and donkey jealous.
Yes, it’s true. My Christmas present from a son living in Blue Jean, Ore., that hotbed of New Age stuff, felt I needed more “negative ions” in my life. So he and his wife sent me some.
The ions came encased in a pinkish, foot-tall lump of salt from the Himalayas, with a little space carved out of the bottom that’s been fitted with a tiny lightbulb mounted on a fancy wooden base. The light unleashes the ions, which proceed to whiz around the room, making your life better.
When I unwrapped the box and saw the photo of this humungous lump of crystalline pink stuff, I thought it surely was a joke. The Himalayan equivalent of a Wyoming Jackalope, perhaps.
“Is this for me, or for Bucky and Sugar?” I wondered.
After all, the lump of salt sort of resembled the salt blocks my equines enjoy, at least the reddish mineral blocks they get in the winter.
The summer salt blocks are yellow, and are supposed to help the horses repel ticks. Maybe my salt lamp also repels ticks, which would be a plus in June. I’ll have to test that theory.
A salt lamp, it turns out, is simply a chunk of mined salt that has been hollowed out to allow room for a lightbulb or tiny candle in its base.
The light glows through the medium of the salt crystal, which can range in color from a dark salmon pink to a pale orange.
Salt crystals for salt lamps are mined in Russia and central Europe as well as in the Himalayas.
“Salt lamps make attractive accent lights,” quoth the Internet, though I know my family sent me the lamp because the lamps’ main attraction is said to be that heating the salt causes the crystal to release “negative ions.”
Youza. So New Age.
“Negative ions have long been considered healthy,” my computer tells me. “The sea air, mountain air and the air around swiftly running water is high in negative ions, but indoor air, recirculated air, and air around electronic equipment is low in negative ions.”
(I am feeling fairly weak, just tapping out these humble words on the computer here at work. If I don’t make it ‘till the end of this column, please look up salt lamps on the Internet. Save yourselves. And when it comes to negative ions, time could be of the essence, so hurry.)
My sources say many office workers who suffer health complaints around fluorescent lighting and computer monitors report considerably less fatigue and headaches if the concentration of negative ions in the air is increased, even though “why negative ions may be beneficial is only partially understood.”
Hmmm.
Why am I picturing the Wizard of Oz lurking behind a curtain and sneaking thunderbolts out at members of his audience?
“It has been shown that negative ions in the air bind with airborne pollutants, making them heavier so they fall to the ground, and therefore are unavailable to be inhaled,” the Internet declares.
I like the next part best: “Some studies seem to indicate that an increase in negative ions in the air increases blood flow to the brain, which would have the effect of improved concentration.”
Yessss. Better concentration. So there’s an Old Age benefit from this New Age thingamajig.
The amount of negative ions a salt lamp can release depends on its size and how warm the candle or lightbulb can make it, apparently.
The larger the crystal, the larger the area it can provide with negative ions.
Salt lamps that produce night-light amounts of light can provide ions to an area equal to the average office cubicle, the sources claim.
And the beauty part of my salt lamp is, if it just doesn’t work for me, at least my horses can dine on it someday.
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