toxins

I consider myself a very “healthy” person. I eat well and walk and stretch every day. I challenge my balance to make sure I still can. I look both ways before crossing the street. But even with this preventative mindset, I still manage to end up wounded every month like clockwork. Don’t worry. It’s nothing my body isn’t designed to handle. And it is a wound borne by half of the people on the planet at about the same frequency.

When you’re doing everything you can to eliminate chemicals in your 1-year-old’s environment, getting gifts can sometimes cause a bit of a conundrum. Take the pajamas my mother-in-law sent us this week, which were treated with fire retardants.

When I think of plastic #5 — polypropylene, commonly used for yogurt containers, syrup bottles, ketchup bottles, caps, straws and medicine bottles — I think of my mother going into a fit of recycling rage, ranting about the fact that we couldn’t recycle plastic #5 in our area. But the real story here parallels the BPA scare with water bottles and baby bottles …

There’s a new phrase in town — “body burden” — and no, it doesn’t refer to the weight you gained over the holidays, nor that husband who doesn’t help around the house.

One of the easiest things we can do to make our homes, and ourselves, healthier is to remove our shoes. This simple ‘step’ helps keep all that nasty stuff (dirt, pesticides, you name it) out of our indoor environments, helping to keep toxins and pollutants out of our homes.