From Chains to Change

Posted on November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 by Rebecca

leaves of change

Breaking free from beliefs that prevent Safer choices at home

What if it were discovered that arsenic was being used to clean your house or corrosive acid was added to your favorite perfume or lotion? What would you do to protect your family from it? My guess is that all of us would immediately stop using it and remove it from our homes. We’d want to protect ourselves from what we know causes harm.

Current knowledge of the everyday products used in our homes that are manufactured with chemicals tells us that these products are harmful to human life. You can learn more about this here, here and here. While they don’t necessarily contain arsenic and corrosive acid, they do corrode and poison us, especially when they exist together. Hundreds of unknown and unstudied chemicals are in the air you breathe, the surfaces you touch and the things you put on your body at home. The only person with the power and authority to remove them is you.

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Good News: There is a Toxin Solution

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Rebecca

A review of Dr. Joseph Pizzorno’s book The Toxin Solution

The world is full of news. And at times it seems as if it is all bad news. The world is also full of toxins. Toxins released into the environment by human activity. But there is good news. Today’s good news is all about The Toxin Solution.

Dr. Pizzorno, the founder of Bastyr University, is the man I’ve been searching for for a long long time. His book, The Toxin Solution, How Hidden Poisons in the Air, Water, Food and Products We Use Are Destroying Our Health- And What We Can Do To Fix It, brings together all the learning I needed to overcome chronic ill health. I did it the hard way with blood, sweat and tears (literally). The knowledge and experience shared in this book is the solution most people are looking for and can be a safe and effective shortcut to healing. (Hooray!)

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The Fragrance Free Workplace – Whaaat?

Posted on September 13, 2019September 13, 2019 by Rebecca

Figuring out the Fragrance Free Workplace

September means, for many, goodbye to sunny summer days and vacation, and back to the routines governed by work and school. As a parent I’m concerned about what kind of environment my kids spend the day in. That means things like safety, kindness and air quality are all things I appreciate about our school. We are fortunate that our kids go to a school with a fragrance-free policy which protects the quality of the air they breathe. This means that students, employees and visitors are asked not to use fragranced products while on school property and no fragranced products are used in the maintenance of the school.

Read this to learn what “fragrance” is, exactly. You’ll be glad you did.

You may have noticed, or will now notice, signs in places of business, notifying personnel that the location is a Fragrance-Free Zone. And although sales of fragranced products seems to be at an all-time high, these signs, increasing in frequency, are an indication of things to come.

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Clean Clothes for Back to School

Posted on August 10, 2019 by Rebecca

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

Put non-toxic clothing on your back-to-school list

Toxins come at us from a variety of consumer products, most of which we can’t see or smell. One type of consumer product that contains many toxic chemicals that we use daily is clothing. Most people know to wash new clothing before it is worn. This is because there are manufacturing chemicals still on the clothing when we bring it home. Yes, the “new clothing” smell, due to manufacturing chemicals, is often perceptible. Have you ever wondered how much of it gets washed off? How are the remaining chemicals affecting my children’s bodies? And once the clothing is washed, what happens to all those chemicals?

Let me tell you. They don’t just disappear, they get washed down the drain. We get to wash it and forget it, but those chemicals still exist and now they are dissolved in water. As it’s hard to know exactly what and how much, I’ve decided to exit out of this consumer loop of using toxic chemicals for my clothing and washing them down the drain – for health of the planet and for my family.

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Grow a Wellness Garden

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Rebecca

Grow Wellness in your own backyard

In my case, I grow Wellness in my front yard. Here, Wellness comes packaged in juicy fruits, dirty hands and vegetables bursting with flavor and life. Each spring I anticipate the beauty of green shoots pushing through the earth with their promise of nourishment and deliciousness.

The front yard happens to be where we have the most sun to grow vegetables and fruits. It’s not a large garden, nor do I spend a lot of time in it. This year, since the arrival of our baby boy, I spend even less time there having put my 9 year old daughter in charge of it.

My garden could be considered by some to be a hobby garden, but to us, it’s much more than that. It’s where we exchange soil and sunlight for wellness. It is our Wellness Garden.

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Be the Change: Child Health

Posted on May 10, 2018May 23, 2018 by Rebecca

Child Health Begins at Home

Simple changes can have big impact

I’m a bit passionate about children’s health. Well, actually, I’m a lot passionate about kids’ health. I have 2 daughters. Both had a rough entry into life, putting them at greater risk for chronic illness and adverse effects related to chemicals in their environment.

Fortunately, because I am a proactive seeker of health (necessitated by an autoimmune diagnosis in my childhood), my girls caught a break. Our home and personal care routine is relatively low in toxic man-made chemicals. The benefit of that can be seen in these Beauties’ health today.

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Be the Change: Smog

Posted on April 20, 2018April 24, 2018 by Rebecca

Which contributes more to Smog?

Vehicle emissions or household products. The answer will surprise you.

Last summer was an unforgettable summer of fires and lingering smoke in the Pacific Northwest. Having grown up here I can say that weeks of clouds and falling ashes as a result of wildfires is not a normal occurrence. The one exception being the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s in 1980. That’s a different story – and no, I don’t remember it.

On beautiful mornings like this morning, however, I have started noticing a lingering smog through the trees toward the horizon. And since it’s not fire season, I have to wonder if my emerald studded city is going to one day have the air quality that I’ve always associated with Southern California.

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Be the Change: Healthcare Costs

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Rebecca

There’s More to the National Surge of Obesity and Healthcare Costs Than You Think

Obesity and healthCare costs Linked to toxic chemicals

So you want to lose weight. Or you’re concerned about the effects of the ever growing crisis of obesity and the rising healthcare costs that each one of us face as a result. Whether we like it or not, we are beginning to understand that other people’s health affects each one of us now like never before.

The Obesity epidemic is “astronomical,” according to WebMD. Can you even get your mind around that? What does that look like? And with obesity associated with heart disease, cancer and diabetes, healthcare costs are predicted to continue to surge. Not just go up, but SURGE, according to WebMD.

Obesity itself accounts for 21% of annual medical spending. Obesity: Overview of an Epidemic at NCBI confirms that “[obesity] is linked to the most prevalent and costly medical problems seen in our country, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, many forms of cancer, and cognitive dysfunction.” And it affects every level of society.

Can you and I do anything about that? Yes.

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Be the Change, Part 1

Posted on April 3, 2018April 5, 2018 by Rebecca

More Power

Power. Do you wish you had more of it? Do you know you have it but still find yourself wishing for a better world?

If one removes the “P” from “Power” you get “ower” which sounds like “our”. Our Power. Individually we have power, personal power to make our own choices every day and we know these choices direct our lives – what to eat or not eat, who to hang out with, what to read…the choices we make in the course of life are endless. But the power we have together, Our Power, is exponential.

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