When I started this journey, the hardest part for me was how to wrap my head around where to begin. I was discouraged, overwhelmed, scared, upset, and wanted to set my house on fire! Not really but at the time thought that might be the easiest way to make changes. 🙂 I had no idea how to grasp the concept that my world suddenly didn’t seem as safe as it once was. Kind of in the same way my husband and I felt when we became parents. When we brought our children home for the first time we worried about everything. Did we have working smoke detectors, was our house child proof? Did we have the right car seat? (My husband literally drove 25 miles per hour the whole way home from the hospital.) Ha! Did we have band aids, the right diapers, diaper cream, was he warm enough, did he need socks under his onesie or would that make him too hot, if we left the socks off would he be too cold…?? It makes me laugh looking back. I sometimes wonder how we made it through the first one. 🙂 We also worried about the world around us. Is global warming a thing? Will the environment be clean for our grandchildren? Will our children have to escape to the moon to live a full life? Okay maybe I’ve seen too many movies but you get my point, we worried about everything. Things we could control and then all the things we couldn’t.
When I began learning about chemicals, toxins, pesticides, and harmful ingredients in everything surrounding us I was horrified and upset. To this day one of the hardest things for me to understand is how all these harmful things are allowed in our lives and considered acceptable. With that, I don’t find it shocking that so many people are sick with different types of illnesses from asthma to cancer. It seems there are so many harmful things around us, how can you pin point one or two and say they caused the disease? You can’t but one can question. If we breathed cleaner air in our homes, ate organic whole foods instead of fast food or from a box, stopped eating farm raised fish, eating only wild, ate grass fed pasture raised meats, more vegetables, less sugar. Would we be healthier? Could the statistic of “1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer over the course of their lifetime”, start declining instead of trending up? No one knows but I feel in my heart if everyone started making changes and stopped accepting what is currently considered “safe” or “has not yet been proven to cause illness” we would be heading in the right direction. I question everyone and everything these days and I couldn’t care less if someone says “it’s safe” or it “should be fine”. No way. I’ll take charge of my own life and my family’s no matter what others think.
If this is all seems too much or too hard, start small. I had to. There was no other way for me to handle it.
TIP ONE
First, start purchasing organic produce and stick with the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15”. For those that don’t know, the “Dirty Dozen” is a list of the 12 dirtiest or pesticide ridden fruits and vegetables. If you are on a budget or don’t want to buy all organic, at least buy organic produce on the Dirty Dozen list. The “Clean 15” is the same but lists the top 15 “cleanest” and “least” contaminated fruits and vegetables. If you don’t want to blow your budget buying all organic produce then stick with the 12 that are the dirtiest. Whatever produce you need that falls into the “Dirty Dozen” category, buy organic. Buy conventional for any produce you need that is in “Clean 15” category. Do keep in mind corn. Sweet corn ranks among the “Clean 15” however if it is GMO corn, which about 88% is, only buy organic sweet corn or don’t buy at all. GMO corn is basically a pesticide itself. They implant the pesticide BT into the corn then becoming part of the plant itself. When an insect eats the corn it dies – because it is eating a pesticide. This basically means if you are eating Genetically Modified corn you too are eating a pesticide.
Pesticides though still deemed “safe” have been linked to developmental issues in children, disrupt the endocrine system (hormone disrupters) and may act as carcinogens. They have also been linked to autism, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and others.
Deep Breaths………..more tips to come. Baby steps.
Sources:
https://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php
https://borntogrow.net/dangerous-pesticide-ridden-foods/
Passionately Holistic 