Your toxic wardrobe

Chilly days are fast approaching! I've never been a fan of winter, but I do so love my winter wardrobe! I just love the warmth and softness of sweaters. As I have spent the last few years researching healthy choices for my family, I was curious to know what I might find out about fabrics and clothing. It didn't take long to come to a conclusion: I have to make careful, healthy choices about clothing the same as with food! Here is some of what I have learned:

• You like sweaters too? Most sweaters these days, especially for girls and women, are made at least partially from acrylic. Acrylic is made from polycrylonitriles, which is "reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen."
• Flame retardant clothing, i.e. children's pajamas, are treated with formaldehyde and therefore emit formaldehyde gas, which is a carcinogen.
• Wrinkle-free clothing achieves that "wrinkle free" result by being treated with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs). Teflon, used to make some clothing stain resistant, is one such chemical, and PFCs are carcinogens.
• All manmade, synthetic fabrics use varying amounts of chemicals in the fabrication process, often times to make them more soft. These chemicals can outgas even long after you buy them.
• Even natural cotton, though, is not completely innocent. Cotton growers use a lot of pesticides on the plants, which remain in the fibers when the clothing is made. Wash your cotton clothing several times before wear! Organic cotton may be an option.
• Dryer sheets load up the surface of your clothing with additional chemicals. Read your dryer sheet ingredients.
• Dry cleaners use perchlorethylene, a VOC that has caused cancer in animals. A few dry cleaners out there are now using "wet cleaning" with a different, nontoxic substance.

So, what can we do? First, try to buy clothing that is made from natural materials - cotton, wool, linen, silk. Avoid synthetic materials whenever possible - polyester, acrylic, rayon. (I have become a compulsive tag-reader when clothes shopping!) My personal view is that if you purchase flame-retardant, wrinkle-free or stain-resistant clothing, the risks far outweigh the benefits. When you buy clothing, wash the item a couple of times in a nontoxic detergent before first wear to avoid further exposure to chemicals through the skin or respiratory system. Now, pull out your family's winter wardrobe and check the labels, and reevaluate the healthiness of each item. Then get ready to bundle up!

Stress!

There is a lot of money in my mouth! I have 2 gold crowns on my back molars and it’s all due to stress. Believe it or not, clenching my teeth at night has caused so much pressure on my back teeth that they literally cracked! I am not the only mom who suffers from teeth clenching or grinding during our supposedly restful, nights sleep. I have many friends who have the same complaint.

Do you wake up with a sore jaw? Do you have headaches throughout the day? Do you have pain in your shoulders and/or neck? All of these may be a sign that you are clenching or grinding your teeth at night. They may also be a sign of something more serious called TMJ (temporomandibular joint syndrome) which afflicts 10 million Americans. Here’s a simple test to see if you have TMJ: place your little fingers in your ears so that your hearing is hindered. Then slowly and steadily open and close your jaw. If at any point you hear a clicking, popping, and/or grinding noise, the jaw joints may be out of alignment, and it’s time to see a professional!

Obviously, reducing the stress in our lives would help this painful situation but I’ve found that mission is almost impossible. And if I’m sleeping I have no control over what my teeth are doing! So, here is some help for those of you with clenching problems and it can also be helpful for those with TMJ. The help comes in the form of calcium supplements. I’m a big proponent of getting the vitamins and minerals you need from the food you eat but sometimes you need a little extra. For me, every night before I go to bed is one of those times that I take a little extra calcium.

To me, calcium has been a wonder drug. It’s essential in proper muscle function and has a calming effect. It also prevents bone softening and relieves stress. So, instead of clenching my teeth, my muscles are more relaxed and my bones are not deteriorating.

When choosing a calcium supplement, keep the following in mind:

1 – Your body cannot absorb more than 500 mg of calcium at a time.
2 – Choose a whole food supplement (that goes for all supplements you may be taking) not a synthetic, man-made supplement which have been proven to be possibly more harmful than helpful.
3 – Take magnesium with the calcium which balances the calcium and aids in absorption (most calcium supplements have magnesium already added to them)
4 – For added benefit, take them an hour before bed. Calcium can make you sleepy!

I use Garden of Life Living Calcium Advanced. However, there are many other good calcium supplement choices out there. Therefore, give this therapy a try. It might take some stress away, relieve teeth clenching and help you get a good night’s sleep!

Baby Mattresses

What age group spends up to 20 hours a day in bed? What age group stands to gain the most benefit from healthy bedding? The answer of course is babies! They spend most of their time each day with their faces just a few inches from their mattresses. Baby mattresses have come under scrutiny because of the materials and chemicals used to make them. Let's talk about the birth of a baby mattress:

1. First comes the shell, the vinyl surface of a baby mattress, which is made from polyvinyl chloride or PVC (remember dangerous plastic #3?). Then phthalates are added to the PVC, making the mattress more flexible. Phthalates are hormone disruptors and considered by the EPA to be probable carcinogens.
2. Next, the mattress is filled with polyurethane foam. This foam eventually breaks down into tiny particles called VOC's, which can irritate the child's airways or mucosal linings. These VOC's can cause eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizziness and allergic reactions.1
3. Lastly, a cocktail of chemicals is dumped onto the mattress to make it flame retardant, as required by law. The most widely used ones are PBDE's, which have been banned in Europe because they are hormone disruptors.

You can find many places online that sell mattresses made from organic cotton and wool. The layer of wool, which is a naturally flame-retardant material, meets the standards of "flame retardancy" required by law, rather than using chemicals. I purchased mine online about 3 years ago and have been very pleased with it. These natural or organic mattresses are rather expensive, usually running around $250-300, but I felt it was well worth the money to prevent potential health problems in my daughter. The Healthy Child, Healthy World organization also recommends an organic wool mattress pad if you simply cannot afford the cost of a mattress, as the pad will help shield the child from the toxins of a regular mattress. Check out this site for more info on the dangers, as well as one of many places to shop online for products: Natural & Organic Crib Mattress.

1 - http://www.healthychild.org/, Emily Lynne Ion, "Do you know what's in your baby's mattress?", updated August 2008.