“Do the best you can until you know better, when you know better do better” – Author unknown
This quote came up during a talk I attended just last week on detoxification, how to reduce toxins from your life and your body… The talk inspired me to share with you what I know and what I practice in my life to ensure that my family and I enjoy good health, and reduce the risk of disease and illness in our future.
I’m a personal trainer, which holds a certain stigma around it right? You may straight away think – exercise. I don’t know what you think really, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t expect me to talk to you about swapping your conventional pine o clean floor cleaner with a bleach free natural antibacterial solution or asking you to consider what type of heavy metals are in your deodorant or lipstick you put on your body every day…
Maybe I should change my title?
The point of this story is that when it comes to having good health it’s more than just about exercise, we need to consider our diet obviously, our sleep hygiene and a big factor is stress levels! Stress, physical or mental can be a good thing, but too much stress, particularly chronic stress is hugely harmful on your health. You may not know this but the toxic chemicals our bodies ingest, inhale and absorb on a daily basis place stress on the organs in the body which work very hard to get rid of. Your liver, your kidneys, your spleen are some of the organs which help cleanse the blood getting rid of harmful substances within the body. Time and continuous toxic loading on these organs can cause inflammation which in turn leads to chronic disease.
What I’d like bring to your awareness is the topic around toxic chemicals in our modern day lifestyle and how this can impact your health and wellbeing and equally important, your children’s health and wellbeing.
Considering what we put in our body through the foods we eat, what we put on our bodies with the products we use and what products we choose to use is in our home environment can all impact our health and is something which is slowly becoming a bit of concern to health nuts like me.
You see nowadays there seems to be more and more toxic chemicals in the cleaning products we use, products like skincare, toothpaste, shampoos and conditioner, makeup, sunscreens, lipsticks… And you might be thinking, what a load a garbage, our parents used all that and they’re fine. I guess my response to that is – are your parents fine? And actually they probably didn’t have as much toxic chemicals in their products because the technology of using cheaper harmful chemicals just wasn’t as common. The rise of toxic chemicals in products has increased with large scale manufacturing and big corporate companies cutting costs by sourcing cheaper materials to make their products. That’s how I understand it anyway, I stand to be corrected.
Did you know that your lip stick probably contains lead!? No level of lead is safe for you, it’s highly dangerous for brain function. Yet every time you lick your lips you might be ingesting traces of lead…
Did you know many farmers in Australia still use pesticides like glyphosate (commonly known as roundup) on their food crops, which have been declared by the World Health Organisation as probable carcinogen to humans, and completely banned from all major supermarket stores in Sweeden!?
Did you know the mainstream mouthwash and toothpaste you use is probably killing beneficial bacteria?
Have you thought about filtering your drinking water from copper, chlorine and fluoride?
Did you know the average women will apply more than 100 different toxic chemicals to her face and body (which include titanium dioxides and lead), including inhalation, every single day? But, she won’t drop dead from applying these chemicals, not instantly anyway. Over time, she will absorb and hopefully detoxify a lot. However, over time add to the mix toxic pesticides and herbicides in mainstream food practices, add heavy metals like mercury in tooth fillings (if you have them), add chlorine, fluoride, excess copper in regular unfiltered tap water, add heavy toxic chemicals in cleaning products and if she’s not big on exercise, or she doesn’t eat so well eventually her detoxification organs like the liver, kidneys, spleen will eventually get to breaking point. Before that though, people put on excess fat (which in my opinion is a symptom of an underlying health problem), and wonder why its hard to shed stubborn unwanted fat. We store our toxicity in our fat cells to protect the body and vital organs from harm.
I know it sounds a bit depressing and it may sound I’m being a hypocondriac , but it’s worth thinking about, and it’s worth looking hard at your products you use and the food you eat and the lifestyle you lead, because the big companies out there who’s game it is to make as much money as they can don’t care if their products aren’t safe for human consumption, they say it’s safe until proven otherwise. I say f#@! that, I’d prefer to use products which are plant derived and safe, particularly with young kids around.
If you want to learn more about chemicals in your products you use or food you eat there’s a great app called ‘The Chemical Maze’. It’s a great tool to help you navigate your way to educated decisions for your health.
It can be daunting discovering these things, but just like the quote says – “do the best you can until you know better, when you know better do better”