Pure Mavens

Many people have heard –  but many more are shocked to learn – that many plastic food storage containers can leach harmful chemicals like BPA in the foods they purport to protect. Glass storage containers are widely regarded as the better choice – not only to maintain the purity of your organic broccoli, for example, but to maintain the flavor, as well. This product obviously caught our eye: the Pure Box which we bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond for just $19.95. A good price, and a great product – the lids are even BPA-free plastic. So go ahead and double that recipe. Your leftovers are in pure hands!

A pure way to store food...

What is 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.93% Argon, 0.038 Carbon Dioxide?

YES, It’s AIR! You astrophysicist you.

I have been interested in air and air quality ever since I learned that there are many particles and gases in the air that are harmful for our bodies. We are exposed to many of these everyday.

As we are now in the colder months (in the Northern Hemisphere) we tend to stay indoors a greater percentage of the time. Indoor air can be harmful if it is not properly circulated or treated. Indoor air can contain constituents such as VOCs from paints and coatings as well as formaldehyde concentrations from carpeting and insulation.  On top of that indoor air that is not circulated/recharged properly with the outdoors can be oxygen deplete.

There is a solution:

Indoor plants such as the Money Tree, Mother-in-laws Tongue can literally ”Grow Clean Air” as proven in a TED talk by Kamal Meattle and are easy to maintain in the home or in the office.

For a more compact solution check out: Andrea, a pure product that uses a single potted plant to rid up to 144 ft² of VOCs and formaldahyde, as it lists in its product specs.

When it’s too cold to open the windows, recharge and purify your air the natural way. Stay healthy in the Great Indoors.

…..And no, this wasn’t named after that John Mayer song.

There have been a lot of people out there stressing about how to improve/maintain the look and quality of their skin through means of a special diet. Although I believe “you are what you eat”, I also realize that the skin “eats” too.

The skin, our largest organ, breaths, dies, protects us and absorbs every day.  On top of that, our skin has the main function of retaining fluids within our bodies. The funny thing is that most of us, including me, only immediately care about how the first few layers look. From experience, most of my skin problem occur through absorption through pores in my skin. The skin simply gets irritated. Choosing pure skincare products that don’t contain harmful chemicals and cleanse your pores can help this. Natural oils can help your skin glow while cleaning/protecting your pores. I challenge those same people to put the flipside in perspective, your skin IS what it eats.

Feed your skin Right

Some nerdy research about how skin absorbs.

In a quest to try and limit the amount of chemicals my body is exposed to, I started to analyze my personal care products. More specifically the deodorant I use.

The Beginning

The search for a natural deodorant started when I began using deodorant.  I developed rashes from many forms of deodorant. I tried numerous stick deodorants (gel and dry) without avail. Then I took to spray deodorants (which still caused irritation but much less sporadically) when I was 16 and have used them ever since. I knew there had to be a better product out there…and so my search began.

Research

I ran the product I use by a couple of rating sites and found:

Results of Findings: Not That Good

EW’s [cosmeticdatabase.com] Rating: 5 (scale is based on level of toxicity 0-10, 0 being the best)

The Good Guide Health Rating: 7.0 (scale is based on ‘goodness’ for you 1-10, 10 being the best)

Both ratings expose butane and fragrance as the main ingredients to worry about in that the ingredient ‘fragrance’ could contain a multitude of bad chemicals and that butane causes surface irritation and is currently banned in the EU(European Union) for use in personal care products. Which brings me to the question: Why am I paying to put these bad chemicals in my body??

Choices

I’ll tell you first off, I am not a health guru or a doctor, but I know that many chemicals can get absorbed through the skin and stay in your body. Since the under arms or arm pits contain many pores (see link: skin anatomy) it’s especially easy for the chemicals to enter your body there.

I made the obvious decision to stop using spray deodorant. I lead an active lifestyle so I needed a product that could be effective against body odor while containing no harmful substance and skin irritants.

My search led me to three choices:

1. Crystal Deodorant Stone

2. Arm & Hammer Essentials

3. A home remedy of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and water.

Any parent has heard that you have to be careful with plastics. There’s no question that it’s smart to use Pyrex, real glasses, ceramic dishes, uncoated aluminum water bottles, and real silverware as much as possible. But you just can’t eliminate plastic entirely, and it does appear that some plastic is tolerable (in baby bottles, for example), provided it’s BPA-free and you don’t heat it up (e.g. put it in the microwave) or cut food on it.

There’s a small triangle on the bottom of plastic products with a number inside – some numbers should be avoided, others seem okay. But for all the times I’ve heard what the acceptable plastics are, I can never remember when I’m actually buying things. So I made up a saying that has forever seared “the rules of plastic” into my mind:

“1 way 2 go 4 a high 5 is to avoid 3 and 7″

At this point, I just remember “1 way 2 go 4 a high 5″ – the latest research says that plastics with the number 1,2,4, or 5 on the bottom are best. Just repeat it a few times and you should be good to go!