Hidden Dangers in Your Home

Hidden Dangers in Your Home

We all know that there are hidden dangers lurking in the household cleaners we use. Cleaners – for clothes, floors, carpets, dishes and cookware are something we come into contact with on a regular basis. Yet more and more toxic chemicals are being added to these cleaners to make them more powerful. It’s wise to spend a little time reading the ingredient list on your cleaners – that is, if you can find it – and to look for eco-friendly products when you buy your cleaners. If you can’t understand the ingredient list that’s a clue that maybe you should not be using that product.

But cleaners aren’t the only thing that pose a health risk in our homes. Here are some hidden health hazards you may not be aware of.

How to Spot Toxic Fabrics in Your Wardrobe
Did you know that certain fabrics, used in the making of the clothes you wear, are hazardous to your health?

Clothing that is labelled “no iron” or “wrinkle-free” is usually coated with chemicals called perfluorochemicals that make them “stain resistant“. This family of chemicals cannot be broken down in the body once absorbed. They have a cumulative effect over time, and are known to cause liver and bladder cancers, reproductive and developmental malformations.

Polyester which is used extensively in clothing and home furnishings can contain carcinogens like polyvinyl chloride. Numerous washings will remove some of this chemical but not all.

The best thing to do is to avoid clothing items labeled as “wrinkle free,” “stain resistant,” or “static resistant.” Choose natural fibers like 100% cotton, linen, wool, hemp, silk or cashmere.

How to Buy Healthy Scents For Your Home
Did you know that, the fresh fragrances you spray on your clothes, and the scents used in your detergent and fabric softeners to freshen your laundry, are made from synthetic chemicals, that can trigger diseases like cancer and asthma, and damage your lungs?

Rule of Thumb: Keep in mind – the fresher smelling the fragrance in laundry products and household air fresheners, the more unhealthy they are likely to be. Fragrances in air fresheners, detergents, fabric softeners, and bedclothes fresheners, are created with a combination of petroleum-based chemicals. Know that these can trigger abnormal reactions in the body when you breathe them in. Cancer may not be the immediate result, but be aware that you are compromising your health, and increasing the chance that cancer may show up in your life when you least expect it.

What Alternatives Are Available?
Natural scents, like fresh flowers, essential oils, food extracts – dipping a cotton ball in pure vanilla extract, or pure orange or lemon extract will leave a delightful scent where you want it. Even citrus peels heated in a warm oven will permeate the area with a natural scent. If you want to eliminate all odors and not have any scent. Take a spray bottle and fill with 2 cups of water and 2 tsp of baking soda. Shake. Mist the air. It kills all those strong cooking odors and bathroom odors.

Useful Tips
To soften clothes - Add a quarter cup of baking soda to the wash cycle, and a quarter cup of white vinegar to the rinse cycle to freshen clothes.

To Preserve Your Favorite Clothes – Keep them from getting thin and then having to throw them out before you are ready to part with them, by always hanging them to dry after washing. Don’t use the dryer. That lint tray is evidence that your clothes are gradually disintegrating.

Most Mattresses are Fire Hazards – How to Pick a Healthy Bed
The mattress you sleep on could be a hotbed of chemicals, that in a fire would be likely engulf you in a flash.
Most modern mattresses are made with polyurethane, which is so flammable its nicknamed “solid gasoline”. On top of that, mattresses are usually treated with flame retardant chemicals. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and heavy metals like antimony are used. These can interfere with normal brain functions and disrupt hormone balance. If you have a new synthetic mattress what can you do? To minimize chemical absorption let it outgas outdoors or in a garage for a few days before you sleep on it.

What are the alternatives?
Consider replacing it with an organic mattress made with natural latex and wool.

What’s wrong with Tylenol?
It pays to be selective about the Cold Remedies you use. Did you know that Tylenol, one of the commonest cold remedies recommended by doctors and hospitals, is a known major health hazard?

Tylenol is in hundreds of cold remedies. It has 35% of the pain killer market in America. In the commercials it is associated with “feeling better” and “returning your life to normal”. But this is a short term effect.

Tylenol is known to be toxic to the liver and kidneys. It causes 3x as many liver failures as all other drugs combined. See a history of the Dangers of Tylenol at wikipedia.

When used with alcohol it causes irreversible liver damage. Combined with caffeine, it increases the chances of liver damage, esp in heavy caffeine users. It also accumulates in the body over time.

If you feel pain in your abdomen, or nausea or lethargy after taking Tylenol seek immediate treatment. Remember, after taking Tylenol, your body then has to deal with the introduction of a toxic substance. For more information on what to do when you suspect something is wrong see: About Tylenol Poisoning

What Other Common Products are Dangerous to Your Health?
Besides Tylenol, other common hazardous substances we use everyday are:
Aspartame – a sweetener in soft drinks which has 92 known health side-effects associated with it.
Fluoride a neurotoxin – in toothpaste and tap water, is associated with mottled teeth, reduced ability to think clearly, and ADD.
Sodium Aluminum Phosphate used in baked goods. Baking powder contains aluminum which has been linked to Alzheimer’s and brain deterioration.
Aspirin – depletes the body of folic acid, iron, potassium, sodium, and vitamin C. Symptoms of folic acid depletion include anemia, birth defects, elevated homocysteine – a significant heart disease risk factor, fatigue, headache, insomnia, diarrhea, increased infection and hair loss. Twenty thousand people die each year in the US from aspirin-related complications.
Antiperspirants – 99% of them have triclosan and aluminium zirconium in them, that’s what stops the sweat from staining your clothes, but the chemical reaction turns your clothes yellow. I know many women who religiously apply antiperspirant under their arms in the mornings, and they haven’t sweated for years from those glands. Aluminum and triclosan are toxic to the human body.

Do a web search on any of these products and see what they say. Be informed and protect yourself.

How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep

What Does Lighting Have to Do With How Well You Sleep?
Since the invention of the electric light bulb, our ability to feel truly rested after a night’s sleep, has declined dramatically.

Artificial Light: With the invention of electric light, we rarely go to bed when the sun goes down. And if you live in a city, which most of us do, it is next to impossible to experience a truly dark night. Why is that important?

The human body is evolved to be exposed to light during the day, but not at night. The kind of light we are exposed to, affects the body’s production of melatonin which regulates our sleep patterns. If you have less melatonin than your body needs, your sleep will not be satisfying and restful. And lack of restful sleep, as we know, affects everything else in our life.

Melatonin is produced at night, when the body expects lower levels of light. The amount of melatonin in your body can greatly affect immunity and the aging process. Lack of it can lead to degenerative conditions like heart disease.

Melatonin production seems to be more affected by blue or white light that comes from television and computer screens.

What can you do based on this information?
To encourage a restful sleep, keep your bedroom completely dark, and block external light sources with dark curtains. If you must use night lights opt for those using red instead of blue or white. You might like to try a trial of a few days without artificial light in your life, and see how you feel.

You can also find melatonin at health food stores. Take a couple of drops on alternate days to supplement your body’s natural production. But do not take it over a long time, or it will lose its effectiveness. The idea is to get your body to make its own melatonin.

And if you really want a good nights sleep, move all computers, smart phones and TV’s out of the bedroom. Reserve your bedroom for sleeping.

Be Informed – Be Wise – Be Healthy
If we want to stay healthy, we need to keep watch over what we breathe, eat, drink, wear, what we sleep on, and even the kind of lighting in our environment. The quality of your life is in your hands. Keep alert for hidden dangers in your home.

My Websites:
Finding the Right Diet
www.best-career-match.com

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