Remember when we were young. When we thought we would grow up to this “adult bliss”. When we thought the world would be a better place? And we would have energy, be optimally healthy, and be able to physically and mentally do all the dreams we had as children? Instead we have this:
Wake up – says your alarm clock, which was cute in the store when you purchased it, but now throws off your internal timing, to say nothing of putting you in a bad mood. Grudgingly you pull off your pajamas and get in the shower. The shower head sprays out nice warm water that has chlorine, fluoride in the water. That isn’t so bad right? Actually, these elements slowly displace iodine out of your body. (see Iodine: Why you need it, Why you can’t live without it by Dr. David Brownstein) Then you wash hair with shampoo that has sodium laurel sulfate (a detergent), as well as many other preservatives, perfumes, dyes and additives. I thought this was supposed to clean your hair, not make it more toxic? Next, you put on a hair conditioner with more additives, perfumes, and preservatives and wash your body with soap that has detergents, perfumes and possibly other additives such as methyl paraben, propyl paraben, then brush your teeth with toothpaste that has sodium lauryl sulfate as well as many other toxic substances (have you seen the warning label on your toothpaste box?) You notice they put it on the box that you toss, not the tube.
So then you reach for a nice dry towel that has been washed in detergents, with perfumes from the soap and dryer sheets. Oh and don’t forget that you have that Glade plug-in that is exuding more perfumes, with toxic substances for you to smell.
Then you put on an antiperspirant that prevents your body from sweating naturally – where are those toxins suppose to go now? Who cares that studies have found antiperspirant ingredients in breast tumors – it is no wonder you sweat so much, your body is trying to get the toxins out via the proper mechanism, your lymph system.
Then typically people put on more lotions, perfumes, powders, makeup, hairspray, etc – all that have preservatives, perfumes, dyes, additives, etc. Each one of these products typically has 10-20 different toxic substances in them.
You might notice how many toxins we have been exposed to so far, and we haven’t even got out of the bathroom yet!
Now you put on your clothes, which again have been washed in detergents and dryer sheets – or even worse – dry cleaned with more chemicals. You wear these all day as your skin and lymph system is trying to “breathe”. Hopefully you have other elimination systems that can help pick up the slack; else these toxins will eventually build up and make us sick. This is typically what happens.
You might decide you need to clean your bathroom now, and will use more chlorine, more harsh chemicals to “kill” all those bad germs. Remember this is your home and you are now breathing these toxic chemicals.
Once you make it to the kitchen for some breakfast, if you have coffee, you are probably making it with water with chlorine and fluoride, and if it isn’t organic, you are getting more toxins from how the coffee is processed. There are 800 different chemicals used to process coffee. If you put milk in your coffee, you are getting hormones, anti-biotics, and all the other toxins that the cows are eating and being exposed to before they milk the cows. If you are using fake sweeteners such as Equal, Nutrasweet or Splenda – you are getting more toxins and I would suggest you read Exo-toxins that Kill by Russell Blalock M.D. who has been a neurosurgeon for the past 25 years.
If you have a typically American breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. You are being exposed to nitrates. Nitrates are preservatives used to set color in food. Nitrites form Nitrosamines in the body. Nitrosamines are carcinogenic. This means they cause cancer. The high heat used to cook the bacon assist in the formation of nitrosamines. If you have typical wheat bread, there is bromine in there, which again displaces iodine out of your body. The eggs are most likely from chickens that have been caged all day, been fed toxic food, shot up with anti-biotics and hormones and the energy they are feeling as a caged animal, is now being passed onto you in the eggs.
If you are like many Americans, you probably now take one or more of an assortment of pharmaceutical drugs. Adding to the toxic condition of your body, instead of making it better, as all drugs are toxic – that is why they are controlled and called drugs. As these chemicals pass thru us, they go into our water supply affecting the animals we eat, the plants we eat, and our bodies in general. If you think you are an exception because are aren’t doing any of these “toxic” activities, you might want to read The Lost Language of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner which talks about how we are ingesting Prozac, Premarin, and antibiotics whether we want to or not.
If it is spring or summer, you might now go outside to spray some weed killer, or spray grass chemicals to keep your yard nice. Not really realizing that all of those chemicals are now in the air for you to breath, and as it rains, they end up in our water supply affecting the fish we eat.
The rest of our daily meals include more chemicals, more toxins, more artificial flavors, colors, antibiotics, hormones, and synthetic food. Why are we eating this stuff? My 6 year old son asks “mommy, why do people sell this stuff?” – isn’t that a good question! Why are you buying it? And why do people sell it in the first place? Could it be that we are not living consciously as we put toxic food into our bodies? If we were really paying attention with open awareness as to what we were eating would we knowingly eat that way? Have we become so disconnected to what our bodies really want, that we have to keep burying ourselves in toxins?
Then once we are ready to go to sleep, we might light a candle, which is putting more toxic chemicals in the air for us to breathe. We hop back into a bed that is sprayed for bugs (if you have a regular spring mattress). And we lay on that all night absorbing even more toxins from the mattress and the detergent washed sheets and blankets, and pajamas.
It is no wonder we don’t have energy, have insomnia, are sick and are tired of being sick with all the thousands of toxins we are exposed to each day.
If you are “awake” and aware of all this already that is great! Now it is our job to help make others aware and also the people we have voted into office to make them aware as well.
If you aren’t aware of any of this yet, WAKE UP! Literally, wake up and start making some changes.
Suggested Changes to Make
1. Get a bed that is not sprayed – they are out there – check out the air beds or ask your mattress store. There is also organic bedding available at many stores now.
2. Put a filter on your shower head. Even better put another one in the kitchen or on the whole house. These remove chlorine, fluoride and other toxic elements in normal tap water.
3. Check the label of your shampoo, conditioner and soaps to eliminate sodium lauryl sulfates, parabens and any other toxic ingredients – it is typically the words on the label that you can’t pronounce.
4. Switch from antiperspirants to deodorants – there are hundreds of options available, find what works for you. You may need to try several.
5. Switch from perfumes to essential oils – these are actually beneficial for you, start slowly at first and be sure to get pure essential oils and not those that are diluted with other harmful substances.
6. Switch from the toxic perfume plug-ins to natural essential oil diffusers, or natural incense, or natural palm oil or soy candles.
7. Wash your clothes with borax, soap nuts or other natural cleaners. There are many out there now on the market. You can add drops of essential oils if you like as well to make them smell a scent you prefer.
8. Stop using dryer sheets, get the dryer balls, or use natural dryer sheets like from Method brand, available at Target and some health food stores.
9. Use natural substances to clean your house with. Baking soda, Borax, and Hydrogen Peroxide are some that are inexpensive and easy to put into little spray bottles to use to clean just about everything in your home. Also you can use clear alcohol that you can purchase at the liquor store. It is great at cleaning and sanitizing and evaporates without leaving any residue or toxic chemicals in the air to harm your family. There are other natural cleaners available in health food stores as well.
10. Read the labels on your food – do you actually know what you are eating? You have a brain – use it to read what you are putting in your body. How far removed is your food from nature? Was it ever actually in nature? Realize that every step of processing food goes through, typically requires at least one toxin. If you eat food fresh off an organic farm, there are no toxins involved.
Every little step you make helps to make you, and the planet less toxic. You are worth it!