Be Healthy, Well, & Inspired

What is your definition of “clean”?  Is it the smell of bleach, chlorine, or other chemical smell. I used to think that. I work in a hospital.  I thought having the patient rooms smell like a bottle of bleach; I thought the room is clean and able to put a patient inside.  Needless to say, having a bleach or chlorine smell is toxic to our bodies.  Did you know these toxins are in our bloodstream?  A recent study found 287 chemicals were found in the bloodstream of newborn babies.  These chemicals include pesticides, garbage waster, and flame retardants. 180 of these chemicals were known to cause cancer.  217 were toxic to the brain and nervous system and 208 causes birth defects in animals.

You may ask, ” How did these newborns get these toxins inside their bloodstream?”  I wondered the same thing too when I read this study. These toxins were passed on to the newborn even before they were born. The toxins were transferred from the parents to the newborn.  The parents of these newborns may work in a factory or a place where there are a lot of environmental chemicals.  Or these parents may have toxins in their homes:  cleaning products, lawn fertilizers, paint in our homes, fabrics, or the carpets.

You may ask, “what can I do to get rid of these dangerous toxins in my home?”.  First of all, take a deep breath and then slowly walk around your home taking note of your household cleaning products.  Please don’t throw all of your toxic cleaning products out. It will end up in our waterways.  All you have to do is to use up the products and then replace them with a non-toxic substitute.

In addition to our toxic homes, the air in our homes are polluted than the air outside.  It is two to five times more polluted than the outside.   How can that be?  Have you lived in an eighty plus year old home?  I stayed with my sister in her eighty-two year old home.  I thought how cold it was inside.  This home is supposed to be breezy in order for the air to circulate.  Before World War II, homes were drafty and air could move freely to circulate.  After World War II,  our homes were sealed and people air conditioned their homes.  At this time, chemicals such as plastic were introduced in our lives and homes.  Also, after the war, people started spending and buying things for their home, which led to cluttered homes.  People also spend 90% of their time indoors and breathing in all of these toxins.  It is not surprising that asthma has increased and 20 million people are affected.  In addition, other health problems cropped up such as allergies, chemical sensitivities, and cancer rates. As our homes are sealed tight, our air became toxic and we are breathing in these toxins, which leads to health problems.

This is why we need to detox our homes and our bodies.  How?  Each week I will take a room of a house and offer green tips to detoxify your home.  In addition, I will write about how to detoxify our bodies.  I wrote about a detox program earlier this year.

{image:  found via Eco Living}

Tags: detox program, green living, NaBloWriMo