Lifestyle

To be truly healthy, we must decrease the toxic exposure in our home, spend time outside and play in and eat from the soil, but we must also take a close look at our daily habits.

  • Birthing & Baby Care – there are so many amazing gems in this growing list/post.
  • Clothing – stop absorbing toxic chemicals from laundry detergent through your skin.  Learn more here.
  • Cold Water – Get Stoked? – have you ever jumped in a cold water and felt great afterward?  Dr. Mercola says that “cold thermogenesis is another stressor that is similar to heat stress in that it stimulates beneficial adaptations.  Cold stress helps your body burn fat as its primary fuel because regular cold exposure increases your stores of “brown fat” – a particular type of fat that is far more effectively used for fuel than the more prevalent white fat.  When you’re exposed to cold, your brain increases production of norepinephrine and dopamine, both involved in focus and attention. These neurotransmitters also improve mood and alleviate pain, partly because they lower inflammation.  You an increase norepinephrine twofold just be getting into 40-degree water for 20 seconds, or 57-degree water for a few minutes.  While best known as a neurotransmitter, norepinephrine also acts as a hormone.  One of its function is causing vasoconstriction, as a signaling molecule to make more mitochondria in your fat tissue (mean energy reserves), and a by-product of energy production is heat.  This also helps prepare you for the next time your’e exposed to cold, the more mitochondria you make in your fat cells and the better you can withstand lower temperatures.  So yes, you can become acclimated to colder temperatures with time.  This is because that previous cold exposure has cued your fat to make more mitochondria.  This means you are capable of burning more fat for fuel, the result of which is heat, and that heat makes it possible for you to tolerate colder conditions for a longer period of time.  Just as when you expose yourself to heat you make heat-shock protein, when exposing yourself to cold you also make a cold-shock protein known as RNA-binding motif 3, or RBM3, in your brain.  Animal studies have shown that RBM3 can help ward off Alzheimer’s disease, suggestion that cold therapy can also have neuroprotective effects in addition to boosting your mitochondria, aiding in fat loss, and resolving leptin resistance.  There is one important caveat worth mentioning: when you’re doing strengthening exercises, you generate ROS that help increase muscle mass.  If you expose yourself to cold within the first hour after strength training, you suppress that beneficial process, so avoid doing cold immersion (such as a really cold shower or ice bath) immediately after strength training.”  Dr. Mercola suggests listening to your body, and does warn that while sauna bathing and cold immersion are generally safe, it does put stress on the heart and cardiovascular system.  Have you heard of the “Ice Man” — Wim Hof?  Interestingly, Berberine also boost brown fat activity in the body but it has a short half life, so it needs to be taken three times a day to keep blood levels stable, 300- 500mg per dose before meals.
  • Death – Learn how to care for a loved in death, at homegreen burial sites for our loved ones who have been laid to rest without injecting toxic embalming chemicals are available everywhere.  .  The Home Death Movement.
  • Diagnostic Imaging.  Know the risks and facts before agreeing to a CT scan.  For cancer imaging, there are alternatives, such as thermography, blood anlaysis, etc.
  • Dishes – transition to healthy and sustainable dish washing tools and soap for $38. 
  • Dismantle Colonialism/Acknowledgment – find out who lived on the land you now live on.  Also, “Raising White Kids” is a good book.
  • Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) radiation (EMR) 
  • Fertility – there are so many amazing gems in this growing list/post.
  • Gardening: how to build an instant garden, using kitchen scraps, manure, cardboard, mulched hay, and seedlings.  You need to create an account to view this video of Geoff Lawton – it is free, and worth signing up!  There are a lot of other great videos too.
  • “Grounding” or, Connecting to the Earth – literally 🙂  – read about the amazing benefits of getting your skin in direct contact with the earth, including: wound healing, reducing primary indicators of osteoporosis, decreased fasting glucose among patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, increasing the activity of catabolic processes (regulating endocrine and nervous systems), reduction in inflammation, documented with infrared medical imaging [28] and with measurements of blood chemistry and white blood cell counts [21], stress reduction as confirmed with various measures showing rapid shifts in the ANS from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance, improvement in heart rate variability, and normalization of muscle tension.
  • Health Emergencies – have you thought about who will make healthcare decisions on your behalf in the event you are hospitalized?  Have you ever thought about how to ensure your healthcare wishes are respected in a hospital or emergency room setting?  Read this post to find out more. 
  • Laundry – toxic-free.
  • Lighting & Circadian Rhythm, Melatonin, Eyes, Blue Light – learn how to optimize your health – we need light during the day and we need to reduce our exposure to light, and particularly certain kinds of light at night!
  • Pregnancy – there are so many amazing gems in this growing list/post.
  • Relationship/Marriage.   Take some time to learn about “the mental load,” and see if your life can improve from becoming aware of this concept!
  • Sleep toxic free – avoid bromides and other toxic chemicals impregnated in synthetic bedding
  • Get Sun – Dr. Mercola says “that we are similar to solar panels.  When the sun is shining on our skin, a powerful chain reaction occurs that can then provide energy to improve our mitochondrial function.  This chain reaction is particularly potent when we are grounded, as it helps creates a circuit where the flower of energy through the body can be significantly improved, especially if one has sufficient levels of omega-3 fatty acid DHA in our cellular and mitochondrial membranes.  DHA is the only fat we know of that is capable of accepting the sun’s photons and converting them to DC electric current.  This is called the photoelectric effect, and Einstein received a Nobel Prize in 1921 for this discovery.”  Sounds like the work of Tesla, doesn’t it?   “The current that is created helps structure the water in our cells in a process that makes water molecules better organized and thus better abe to penetrate the cells.  This provides for superior hydration and helps the water molecules store a charge that will provide fuel for our mitochondria.  One of the other functions of ultraviolet radiation is that it stimulates the production of nitric oxide in our skin, which can dilate blood vessels and shunt up to 60% of the blood flow to the surface of the skin, where the solar radiation can be more easily transferred to the blood.  It’s ultraviolet B radiation that influences vitamin D production, but he other wavelengths provide  important functions too.” – Fat for Fuel.  If you ca’t get several hours a day with sun exposure on your skin while grounded to the earth in order to optimize this biological circuit, maybe it’s time to get an infrared sauna….
  • Use Infrared Sauna in the home?  “Red and infrared light from EMF-safe saunas penetrate deeply into our tissues, delivering energy to the mitochondria, which use it to increase ATP production.”  These saunas also help in removing toxins we accumulate.  The electric field in a low-EMF sauna should be below .3 milligaus, which can be measured with an electrical field meter. Many companies say that their saunas are “full spectrum” but they are actually only far infrared, which is insufficient for detoxing toxins. The near infrared wavelengths, especially 800 – 850 nanometers, are what cytochrome c oxidase, the fourth protein in the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, resonates with. Visit the shopping guide to find truly zero-EMF saunas.
  • Educate yourself about Vaccines – most of us spend more time buying a car than reading about what we are injecting into our own bodies.  There many many myths that we have been fed.  Educate yourself!  There are brilliant medical doctors like Suzanne Humphries (internist/nephrologist M.D.) who treated people with life-threatening conditions on a daily basis who have incredible information to share.