Enviro Mentality

What could be more romantic for Valentine’s Day than to gift your sweetie with detox bath products and organic facial care?

It’s not just for the ladies, either.  Detox bath products are important for the guy in your life to use too. Doesn’t he deserve a good soak in a hot tub after a long day?  Doesn’t his face need some moisturizing from organic facial care?  Spa baths aren’t just for girls anymore.  Guys appreciate a bath, too, especially in the winter.

Spa bath products make everybody feel better.  They rev up your immune system which is important now that flu season is here.  Tired muscles relax in a aromatic bath.

Why not give your sweetie ‘a bath’ for Valentine’s Day?  He -or she - might really appreciate it!

With the market for beauty and health care products booming the way it does today, manufacturers are coming up with all sorts of innovations they can find. The term organic seem to be the catch word for the moment. Anything with the word organic in front of it gets the consumer’s attention. Organic food, organic fertilizer, and so on. But getting the most benefits from the term are organic beauty products.

Today, women seem to have an obsession for great skin. Skin care product sales are soaring. It is also very competitive.  But organic skin care products seem to be having the edge, organic skin care is being adapted by skin care clinics around the country and women are patronizing it, hence its popularity.

Cosmetics/ beauty products is a billion dollar industry. Out in the market today are a range of products, mostly for women that are meant to beautify, improve and enhance. The skin gets the most attention, however. There are lotions, scrubs, toners, etc. that are created to make the skin smoother, whiter and more even toned. Creams are also widely used to achieve basically the same effects.

The most popular of these kinds of products are soaps. Only recently, a new kind of soap has become available. This is the exfoliating soap. This is the kind of soap that gently and gradually removes the outer layers of the skin. This outer layer naturally dies and sheds to expose a new and youthful layer. Needless to say, women love this and so the big sale of exfoliating soaps.

The Earth is talking back.  She is trying to let us know we need to change our ways.

WATER USE must be one of them.

The water outlook for California and Nevada is a grim one, according to an article posted on Reuters today. With snow pack in the mountains decreasing  due to climate change, consumers and farmers face the possibility of another year of shortages.

What does this mean for you?  Higher food prices as supply drops.

California is one of the top food producers in the nation.  Nevada, on the other hand, has experienced tremendous growth over then past 10 years and now has the nation’s highest water useage. We are in a water crisis in this country, but what can we do?

CONSERVE WATER in every aspect of your life.  If you think that your water use doesn’t affect the entire Earth, think again!  What you take from your tap or garden spigot has to come from somewhere. Unless you collect your own rain water, you’re drawing from the municipal supplies.

Especially if you live in an arid climate such as California, Nevada or other areas of the southwest, you  absolutely should be doing whatever you can to conserve water.

COLLECT RAIN WATER - what a NOVEL idea!  Our great grandparents did this.  Grandma had her rain barrel and used this to wash clothes with.  It was free water.  Then the water was used to water the gardens with.  The veggies grew better because the soap, a natural insecticide, kept bugs off.

You can do a lot to save water.  Start by checking all your faucets, spigots and toilets.  If they leak, fix them. One single leak can waste 200 or more gallons a day.

Use a rain barrel to collect water with.  You can do a LOT with the water you collect:  water your gardens, potted plants, hose off your deck, wash your car and not use any municipal water supplies doing it.

YOU CAN do your part in saving water easily and efficiently.

An article appeared in Reuters on children on medication for ADHD having hallucinations. Why is this no surprise?

The use of Ritalin and its cousins, all nervous system excitants, became the drug of choice during the 80s and 90s.  Ritalin is one of the most over prescribed drugs on the market today.  Although certain criteria should be met before assuming a child truly is ADHD, many physicians and parents are too quick to assume their child truly is ADHD, when all that may be needed is a ‘cleaner’ diet.

We’ve all seen kids bounce off the walls after eating high doses of sugar, haven’t we?  Why is it so strange to some that FOOD may actually be the cause of supposed ADHD in your kid?

The typical American diet is loaded with sugar and chemical additives. Browse any supermarket aisle containing lunch items and you will find a disturbing array of ‘food-like substances’ designed for convenience for Moms packing kids’ school lunches.  Food marketed as ‘healthy’ or a ‘good, nutritious lunch for your kids’ or ‘healthy snacks’ often contains more artificial ingredients than real, actual food.  Even so-called healthy yogurts:  low or no fat varieties of one popular brand, Yoplait, have a scary list of artificial ingredients.

Don’t fall for the claims of fast-food purveyors, either.  Every parent.., no.., make that every person, should read ‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser if you eat fast food.  Morgan Spurlock’s book, “Supersize Me”, which came out after the academy nominated movie, gives a behind-the-scenes look at McDonald’s and the fast food industry.  I guarantee, you’ll never feel the same about eating out after reading these two books.

ADHD is a real condition due to the brain’s neural transmissions and actual brain development. Rather than assuming your kid IS actually ADHD and is not just being a ‘normal’ kid with that kid energy, don’t automatically go for the doctor’s insistence on a drug regimen. Parents should consider a natural approach first.  What is your child eating during the day?  What IS IN their food that might be causing this?

Consulting with a licensed nutritionist or dietitian, having a chemical analysis done might be a good first step.  A cleaner diet, free of artificial chemicals, all sugars, no soda - might go a long way to helping the child.  Because studies have indicated that there are an average of 1,000 household  toxins in a child’s home  environment, eliminating these elements may also have some bearing.

As an old friend used to say:  “Start simple.”  It may be the most beneficial way to help your child.

American consumers use millions of tons of chemical lawn and garden products a year.

As an employee in a garden center at a home improvement store for many years, I personally witnessed a frightening aspect of American life:  a staggering amount of sales of toxic chemicals -  thousands of pounds of the stuff went out the door every week - in just this one store!

People thought absolutely nothing of spreading and spraying toxic chemicals all over their lawns.  Their concern wasn’t what it was doing to their environment -or- the potential toxicity to their children, pets and other wildlife. In what  I would call their ‘fanatical desire’ to eradicate   e v e r y   pest and   e v e r y  weed, they didn’t realize they were increasing their risk to cancer & poisoning themselves, their children and the planet!

Most of them probably never read the back of the bags where it gave warnings about the product and said:

WARNING: poison!

Many of them didn’t know that these chemicals were in fact, carcinogens and endocrine disruptors which have been proven in many studies worldwide to cause cancer.

In her her highighly acclaimed book, Living Downstream - An Ecologist Looks at Cancer & the Environment, author,  biologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph. D presents a frightening time line of the rise in cancer over the past 50 years.

Chemical preparations actually do more harm than good. They stress the plants out with a BIG dose of food.  This creates dependency on chemicals by the plant (think drug addict!) in which they do not naturally build up their own defenses. Roots come to the surface to get the food instead of growing down into the soil. Physical damage also occurs due to infrequent or over-dosing.  Granular or dust applications only deliver about 40% of the nutrients to the plant instead of over 95% with natural applications.

Then, of course, there is the environmental damage of groundwater pollution, runoff, introduction into far reaching water sources, to marine life;  all of this eventually returns to us in our food!

Using organic and natural yard care products and remedies helps to protect you and the Earth for further damage caused by pesticides.  Every choice YOU MAKE affects Mother Earth every day.

There are people in desert regions of this Earth who would give anything to have the amount of  good drinking water that the average American flushes down the toilet every day.

Consider the numbers:

A typical 4-person household,

using a 3.5 gallon low-flush toilet

flushes 70 GALLONS per DAY

-or-

25,000 GALLONS a YEAR  of  drinkable water down the drain

An older 7 gallon toilet uses double that: 140 GALLONS per DAY -or- about 50,000 GALLONS per YEAR

Toilet waste is over 90%  water content.  Pathogens like nitrogen and potassium, which upset the normal Ph of the soil, add tremendous pollution to groundwater.

To date, SUN-MAR composting toilets have saved about 3.2 BILLION GALLONS of water (to January 08) with an additional saving of 6,103 gallons a minute!

Sun-Mar toilets are adaptable for any situation.  Residential use, cabins, workshops, guest houses;  even for RV and marine use.  They’re the premier manufacturer of composting toilets.  They’ve been making them for about 40 years now, the same family-owned company started Hardy Sundberg in the 70’s.

I’d think they know what they’re doing by now, wouldn’t you?

A healthy body needs to rid itself of toxins.  A beneficial treatment is a massage, followed by a detox bath using bath salts.

Massage stimulates the body physically, mentally and emotionally, assisting healing and enabling the body to heal itself.  One of the ways that you can help your body is to follow a massage with a detox bath using aromatic bath salts and herbal remedies.

Following a massage, your body’s entire system is in a cleansing mode.  Human touch itself is a basic need of life;  our body actually responds to touch in beneficial ways. Direct stimulation of muscles helps carry toxins out of the body which is why, following a massage, you should drink plenty of water to flush your body.

The evening after a massage, you can continue the benefits by taking a detox bath in aromatic bath salts or sea salts. The action of the salts further stimulate the circulation which draws out toxins.  Other remedies, such as a mustard bath, combined with the salts increases the effects of the bath salts.  Epsom salts, which are very permeable through the skin, also serve to enhance the action of the bath or sea salts.

The scent of the aromatic bath salts - or the mustard bath - acts as an olfactory stimulation which relaxes you, assisting further in detoxing.

Help your body heal.  Schedule a massage, then go home and soak in a good hot bath!

It used to be that only older women dyed their hair.  In recent years, in an attempt to ’show their individuality’, more young women under age 30 have begun to regularly color their hair.  This adds 20, 30 years - or more - to the potentially toxic exposure of chemical hair dyes. Some girls change the color of their hair once or twice a month.  Think of the dose of chemicals they are giving themselves!

As the use of hair dye increases, (3 in every 5 women)  according to published studies, there was also a link to a double risk in non-Hodgkins lymphoma for women who have used chemical hair dyes over 25 years, especially if they used dark colors.  The lighter to color you’re trying to achieve, the higher the toxic exposure. Studies have also found that hair dyes are linked to increased rates of bladder cancer.

Chemical based hair dyes have many potential cancer causing and endocrine (hormone) disrupting toxins. Some ingredients, particularly lead acetate and sulfur, react to make the color.  This combination has been found to be extremely toxic by the FDA, and is popular in many dyes, especially in a best selling men’s dye.

A known carcinogen, called 4-ABP, is found in hair dye products which are commonly sold in supermarkets and used in salons. Although not a listed ingredient in the chemical hair dyes, it is a by-product of the processing. Recently science has found that the actual chemical action  of the dye (oxidizing)  on the hair  can contribute to the formation of compounds which promote cancer.

Some popular health store brands, which claim to be natural hair dyes, reveal that most contain two or more FDA-reviewed carcinogens: 4-methoxy-m-phenylenediamine (4-MMPD) and 4-methoxy-m-phenylenediamine sulphate (4-MMPD sulphate).   Other chemicals generally believed to be harmful, including: Resorcinol, O-Aminophenol, Ethan-olamine, Propylene Glycol, Nonoxynol.   According to John Corbett, Ph.D., vice president of the CTFA’s scientific and technical affairs committee, says, “If a natural product contains words like amino, nitro or phenyl or names of colors starting with the letters HC, the product is not natural.”

The good news is that  natural henna hair dyes which contain no artificial ingredients such as ammonia, peroxide, PPD (p-phenylenediamine) are a safe alternative.

Henna, which is made from plant extracts, is a natural hair dye that  actually nourishes the hair instead of stripping it. It also alleviates the risk of scalp infections, broken, dull hair, adding to body, strength and thickness.  This natural hair dye has been used for thousands of years from Cleopatra and Neferteri, but has also been used on nails and body art.

Using henna hair dyes may take a bit longer than chemical hair dyes.  The best way is to do the application twice.  Make the paste like a cake batter, add an egg or olive oil to seal in the moisture, apply it, then wait for 30 minutes or so.  Follow with another coloring. The first application lays down the color; the second puts the color over it.

When you use a natural hair dye such as henna, you are eliminating a large chemical load - and adding to peace of mind that your hair color is natural and safe!

When most people think of ‘Fair Trade’ they usually think of Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa.  The Canaan Fair Trade Association benefits rural Palestinian communities. This is an empowering chance for Palestinian farmers in a war torn region.

Dr. Nasser Abufarha, of the Canaan Fair Trade Association, says that the empowerment of these rural areas caught in the conflict is enabling them to sustain themselves with respect and dignity.  There is a direct working relationship with these communities using fair trade concepts.

The crop they produce is olive oil.  There is no current Fair Trade Labeling Organization certification (FLO) for olive oil, so they have developed their own using those guidelines.  After adoption by the Palestinian Fair Trade Association, their co-ops, processors and exporters, they have been certified Fair Trade by the institute of Marketology in Switzerland.

This provides access to a fair trade product that is produced across the largest sector of Palestinian society (Rural Palestine).  The farmers receive sustainable prices for their products and fair wages for all the workers along the supply chain.  Fair trade Palestinian farmers receive a 10% fair trade premium above the market price and another 10% organic premium, again above the market price.

What does this accomplish?  It provides a place for Palestinians in the Fair Trade market and benefits rural Palestinian farmers.  It promotes cross-cultural, multi-faith and multi-ethnic connections for all sectors of the fair trade process.  From farmers to workers, processors, traders, exporters, importers, distributors and consumers - one community is created based on fair exchange.

The Canaan Fair Trade Associaton hopes to establish traditional sustainable farming and to build an alternate cultural expression with connections to the outside world.

These fair trade Palestinian products are available in the US:  sun-dried tomotoes, couscous, olive oil, organic tahini, honey, almonds are available at:  http://www.canaanfairtrade.com