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Sugar Shrinks Your Brain
I’m not as smart as I used to be. But, I just thought it was something that happened to everybody as we aged… part of life. Now I wonder – because I’ve learned: sugar shrinks your brain. And I have a CRAZY sweet tooth. Plus the blood sugar roller coaster ride that goes hand in hand. Can you stop the train? I’d like to get off. Blood sugar surges are old news. Brain shrinkage is new, at least to me. Sarah, the Healthy Home Economist, explains that when we eat sugar, glycation takes place in our bodies. Glycation is the chemical process in the body whereby glucose, proteins, and certain fats become…
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Common Toiletry Ingredient Found in 99% of Breast Cancer
Once you finish reading this post, I want you to get up from the computer and go to your bathroom. Pull out your personal care products and read the labels. Throw in the trash EVERYTHING that has an ingredient with a paraben on the label. Don’t think twice about it, or dwell too much on how that’s your favorite shampoo or deodorant, or whatever. Just throw it out. Your body will thank you. Our personal care products are full of chemical preservatives called parabens. According to a study from California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, these parabens trick healthy cells into acting like cancer cells. Furthermore, a study published…
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Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner Recipe
Alternatives for commercial cleaners are growing in popularity, as more people realize how easy they are to make, and how much safer they are to use around the house! I still use vinegar and baking soda a lot as a basic cleaner, but I also really like this simple, all-purpose cleaner recipe. It includes a number of bacteria-killers, including castile soap, tea tree oil, and vinegar. Tea tree oil demonstrates antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal qualities, including against staph and ecoli, among other things. I did find a medical report that said bacteria can develop resistance to tea tree oil if it’s used in concentrations below 4%. My bottle is a 25%…
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The Fluoride Question
Fluoride can be a controversial topic. As with so many things with life, many of us will have varying opinions. I’m great with that. My goal is to challenge us to ask questions and not simply accept the status quo, so we make informed decisions for our families. After that digression, back to fluoride. 🙂 In our society, we’re told by a number of dentists and water authorities that fluoride is a helpful and necessary part of our diet. While it *might* prevent a couple of cavities when used topically, the negative effects of fluoride are so overwhelming that it’s far better to utilize other methods for cavity prevention…
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Beyond the Sunburn – The Power of Aloe Vera
Most of us pull out our aloe vera gel and liberally apply it when we spend too much time in the sun. It’s a lifesaver for helping out a bad sunburn, but did you know that aloe vera juice can have all kinds of powerful healing effects on the body? My use of aloe vera juice expanded when my horse coliced. (Colic in horses is essentially severe abdominal pain that can be life-threatening). My vet determined that he had an ulcer, and told me to give him aloe vera juice. We’ve given him about 1/2c a day for 3 years now, off and on, and his tummy is doing great!…
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Declogging Without Harsh Chemicals
We had a SUPER DUPER GROSS mess in our house last week. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that it was revolting. I’ve traveled to 3rd world countries and seen some scary stuff. This was up there. We needed a super-hero for our drain, and FAST! I didn’t want to use harsh chemicals because, well, I didn’t. I also didn’t want to spend $7 on a drain declogger. Vinegar and Baking Soda are my new heros. As well as my husband, because he cleaned up the SUPER DUPER GROSS MESS. My husband hero dumped about 1 c of baking soda in the toilet, and then followed it by…
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Why It’s Time to Boycott Juice
I have some sad news. You might have heard Dr. Oz’s report that he had tested samples of apple juice and found them contaminated with arsenic. He received a lot of backlash for his claims, but it caused some of the mainstream media (and the FDA) to launch an investigation. Turns out, he was right. One of the worst offenders is, brace yourself, Whole Foods Organic Apple Juice. <sigh>. My son loves apple juice, and I started buying organic because of how highly sprayed apples are. You can watch the news segment that ABC News showed on Saturday and read the full results from the Consumer Reports study here. A few…
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{Handmade Gifts} Foaming Hand Soap!
I try to be a thoughtful gift giver. Part of it is being thrifty; part of it is loving the people I give gifts to – I don’t want to waste money and get them something they won’t like or use! So I love this simple gift – homemade foaming hand soap! It smells great, is simple to make, everyone needs it, and it’s much healthier than the common soap junk you can find in the store! I found Dial soap containers at Target for $1.84 each. I emptied out the contents, and filled it with a Foaming Hand Soap recipe! Decorating it was the most challenging part for…
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Our Vitamin Regimen
While I love having great resources for recovering from sickness, I’m a huge proponent of avoiding getting sick in the first place. I bet you are too. We all have various methods for staying healthy; a big one for us is taking daily vitamins. I want to share with you what our daily vitamin routine looks like (and include two others that I’d love for the kids to take, but they won’t cooperate just yet. 🙂 ) I’ve included lots of links because sometimes I want to see exactly what someone else does. And since I can’t invite most of you over to look in my cupboard, this is the…
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BPA in Canned Foods
A recent study showed that people who eat canned foods have 1,221% higher BPA levels than people who ate fresh foods! Wow! I knew canned foods had a potential for spoilage and bacterial contamination, but I still felt like they were rather a safe fallback if the ingredients were decent. Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A refuses to eat canned tomatoes. He says that the acidity from the tomatoes causes the BPA to leach into the food and ONE tomato can has enough BPA to affect you. BPA is linked to reproductive problems like suppressing sperm counts as well as diseases like heart…
