8 easy ways to detox your home!

8 EASY WAYS TO DETOX YOUR HOME!

You may have done some weird green drinking, herb taking detox in order to eliminate internal toxins from your body, but can you say that you have done anything about the toxins in your home? 

The average home contains up to 1000 chemicals, many of which we are unable to see or smell. Unfortunately the air inside our home is three times more polluted that outside  and here in Ballarat in winter we spend so much time indoors. 

Common household and body care products are increasingly being found to have negative health effects and while these chemicals may be tolerated individually and in small doses, problems can arise when one is exposed to them in combination. They can have an effect on any of our nervous, immune, reproductive, endocrine, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems.

Detoxing our bodies and our living spaces will allow the body’s own detoxification to function more efficiently. This strengthens our resilience to the daily onslaught of factors impacting our health.

You could choose to change one thing a week or one a month or heck just choose one full stop and it will be moving in the right direction…

Tip One

No shoes inside thank you very much!

Yep- it’s that easy. That’s how a lot of dirt pesticides and lead can enter your home.

Tip two

Keep the air clean.

Try opening your doors and windows as much as possible to circulate the stale and toxic air (hard here in Antarctica in winter, I know!)

Tip three

Have indoor plants

Plants remove toxins from the air and renew stale air by exchanging carbon dioxide with oxygen. Read our previous blog post on indoor plants here…

Tip four

Switch from standard household cleaners to greener, safer options.

It’ll be safer and cheaper and not to mention, fun to explore mixing up some concoctions!

Tip five

Replace skin care products with less toxic, chemical free products

On average a woman can be exposed to 500 different chemicals in a day from her daily beauty routine. I personally love Twenty8 skin care and use coconut oil for near everything.

Tip six

Keep plastic to a minimum

Some plastics contain BPA, linked to cancer and others phthalates, which are linked to weight gain and developmental problems. Storing food in glass and ceramics is a safer option.

Tip seven

Check for mould

Check your windows and walls for moulds and remove promptly. Mould is extremely toxic especially to children and babies.

Tip eight

Avoid toxic ‘stinkin thinkin’

Finally no amount of detoxification of the body or the home is as important as removing the toxic thoughts. A house full of resentment, jealousy or unhappiness will be just as toxic!

Why should you eat local and seasonal produce?

Great question that you have asked! So it's really become a bit of a thing at the mo to spend Saturday mornings at your local farmers market getting all the funny looking vegetables - but why exactly should one eat locally grown and seasonal produce?

Seasonal foods are picked at the peak of freshness and offer higher nutritional content with a variety of vitamins, minerals enzymes and anti-oxidants. When you eat with the seasons you can enjoy a rainbow of colorful and diverse foods that are in tune with our natural rhythms and  help support our bodies natural cleansing and healing abilities. For example in winter we are supplied with root vegetables that can be cooked in warming foods (think stews, soups and roasts.) Whereas in spring the focus is on green leafy vegetables to promote cleansing and detoxing ready for summer when all the delicious  fruits and summer vegetables are available. Eating with the seasons will stop you from having potatoes, carrots and peas on your plate all year round! (I seem to remember having meat and those three veggies a lot as a kid) Many out of season fruit and vegetables depend on waxes, chemicals and preservatives to keep them looking half edible and consequently less nutritious. 

So why local? Most foods begin to loses their nutrients the moment they are picked, so the quicker you can get them on your plate the better they will be for your body. Some fruit and vegetables on supermarket shelves were picked up to a year ago and have been in cold storage since! Not to mention some poor little buggers that have been flown across half the world just so you can have apples in December! By eating locally produced foods not only are you helping the environment by decreasing 'food miles' you are also contributing to your community and supporting it's farmers.

Just something for you to think about? I'm no angel at it, my kids want their apples year round and I'd rather feed them an out of season apple than a processed LCM bar. But I am becoming more conscious and increasing the amount of local and seasonal produce I purchase

Have a great day! x 

Oils ain't oils! What do you fuel your kids with?

Looks like Castrol have a great point! When it comes to your most important vehicle (your body- not the ford) the type of oil you put in it makes a huge difference to it's efficiency . I'm sure you have heard about essential fatty acids omega 3 and omega 6. These are the fats our cells need to function correctly and can not be made by the body. 

For the first 2.5 million years Humans consumed omega 6 to omega 3 at a ratio of 1:1. Today it is more likely to be 25:1 thanks to the introduction of seed oils. When the ratio shifts towards omega 6 fatty acids our body shifts towards inflammation and the development of chronic disease. These so called 'Vegetable oils' including soybean, canola, cottonseed, safflower and corn oil were originally considered waste product until World war two.

These oils are produced in large factories and in order to extract the oil from the seed a number of toxic solvents are used including hexane (eww!)

I suggest cutting out the use of omega 6 oils at home. Nearly every takeaway is cooked using them and they actually have a low smoke point and turn rancid at a high heat. Watch for packaged foods as pretty much all have it (most commonly labelled as vegetable oil) I'm talking bread, biscuits, cakes, muesli bars, soups, dips- hell nearly everything!

So what should you use to fuel your kids?

* Coconut oil: has a high smoke point, is high in omega 3 and lauric acid (a large component of breast milk). It has strong anti fungal and anti microbial properties. I personally use coconut oil in my cooking, smoothies, eat it straight from the jar, as a moisturiser, hair treatment, lip balm, make a toothpaste out of it and have even used it for furniture polish!

* Olive oil:  for dressing and baking (not to be heated at high levels as it has a low smoke point)

* Use butter: NOT margarine (see previous blog post)

* Eat grass fed organic meat as it is high in omega 3 whereas commercially produced cattle have been fed grains and subsequently are high in omega 6.

* Use fat like lard and duck fat. Fat? What? Yep, fat doesn't make you fat folks- toxins do! I personally use it to coat my roast veggies with- just like Grandma did! Turns out vintage clothes aren't the only things coming back in vogue.

Bring on vintage nutrition!

A letter to the 18 year old me! Pre- M.S diagnosis

I wish I knew then what I know now!

Dear 18 year old me,

In 7 years time you will be diagnosed with M.S, an auto-immune disease that will greatly affect you and those you love. It’s not one thing that causes it, it’s everything! So here are a few tips of things that I have learnt along my journey that will prevent this from occurring.

*The world today is quite toxic, you must do all you can to remove toxins from your body. They are coming to you in the form of the food you eat, the air you breathe, the water you drink, the things you put on your skin and even your toxic thoughts.

*Please note that your often occurring farting is NOT ok just because you have 3 older brothers but a warning sign that something wrong is going on inside your gut. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine 2000 years ago said “All chronic disease begins in the gut”

*So PLEASE investigate foods that you are intolerant to. Even though they may be ok for someone else, they are causing inflammation in YOUR gut.  I’ll save you the trouble.....for you its gluten and dairy!

*Please take note of the other warning signs, i.e.: the acne you’ve just developed especially as you never had it in your early teens when others did- another sign of inflammation in your body.  The little pot belly you’ve always had- it’s not just cause Mum has it too- It’s inflammation!

*I want you to get your mercury fillings removed that you had put in as a child; every time you chew toxic mercury vapour is released into your body. There is a strict protocol for the disposal of mercury into the environment but apparently it’s ok to put it in to people’s mouths!

*Please buy a water filter. The chlorine they put in the water to kill bacteria will also kill the good bacteria in your gut, imperatively needed for digestion. Not to mention the added fluoride in our water that is causing an iodine deficiency and your thyroid to slow.

*Don’t play with plastic toys and especially don’t put them in your mouth (hang on- your too old for toys, but I had to put that in to make it relevant to my blog!) Most plastic toys are made from non- renewable petroleum that contains many chemicals including arsenic, lead, bromine, chlorine, BPA, mercury and phthalates. If you don’t play with toys anymore be mindful of the amount of plastic you are exposed to. Packaged foods, receipts and food storage to name just a few.

*Pay attention to the things you are putting on your skin and using to cleaning your house (not that you have one yet) All of the products you are currently using contain chemicals. On average a woman puts 500 chemicals on her body per day through all her body care products! Recent research has classified that two chemicals commonly found in beauty products- parabens and phthalates as obesogens, meaning they promote fat storage in the body (remember phthalates in toys- hello chubby bubby!) MSG and fructose also have this same effect (rampant in processed foods these days) which brings me to the next tip.

*Just eat REAL food- not packaged, denatured chemically altered, low fat, high carb CRAP. Investigate into the Primal diet (It’s not a fad yet) But hey, it’s only been around for about 2 million years. It’s the way your paleolithic ancestors ate and they didn’t get M.S (or Alzheimer’s or cancer for that matter). Eat as organically as much as you can afford at each stage of your life. Eating organic grass fed meat is specifically important as grain-fed cattle are toxic! Your body stores toxins in your fat (hello muffin top) so the more toxins you ingest the more fat that will follow! Fat does not make you fat Jane- toxins do!

*Take note: DO NOT go running around like a headless chook, doing one thing only whilst thinking of the next task. It will only cause your adrenals to be exhausted. It is not your god given right as a woman to multi-task! Your future husband will break his leg 6 weeks before the wedding! You will run on adrenaline for weeks, working full time, organizing a wedding, and taking care of your beloved invalid. SLOW DOWN- this is just further depleting your adrenals, where cortisol is made, a hormone needed to calm the inflammation down consequently there because you’re living off low fat yogurt crap and exercising heaps too loose a few kilos for the wedding. Is there any wonder that you will suffer from you first M.S attack on your honeymoon!

*Quit your Interior design course half way through.  You don’t have to finish it just because you don’t like anything to get the better of you. It’s ok to reassess your life and take a different direction. You won’t enjoy decorating other people’s houses in the end anyway!

*So, find your life purpose! Hang on maybe you ARE supposed to get M.S so you can research all this stuff and spread the word to your family and friends?!

*The most important lesson that I have learnt is to be kind to yourself! If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself then you wouldn’t have any!!  You would never expect as much from them as you do yourself. YOU are the MOST important person in YOUR life (have you ever noticed that in EVERYTHING you do, you’re there?!)

Best of luck

Love from 33 year old me. Xx