Few allergies in unstressed babies: Detox Your Life

What a great article! Stress definitely can be passed onto our children and really affects their health. 

VS 

Few allergies in unstressed babies
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011) — A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that infants with low concentrations of the stress-related hormone cortisol in their saliva develop fewer allergies than other infants. Hopefully this new knowledge will be useful in future allergy prevention. The study is published in the December paper issue of Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 

Read the full article

• Few Allergies In Unstressed Babies (medicalnewstoday.com)

Related Articles

• Children with pets are less prone to allergies (money.marksandspencer.com)

Detox Your Life: Babies are being born pre-polluted. Awareness is the first part of change.

Babies are being born pre-polluted... Awareness is the first part of change.  

It's shocking, but it's true. EWG's research has found hundreds of chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of newborns.

Senator Frank Lautenberg has taken important steps to fix America's broken toxic chemical policy by introducing the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 in the Senate. This bill would require the chemical industry to prove that its products are safe even for the most vulnerable among us.

Click here to sign the EWG's petition and help out. Through public awareness we can influence change! 


For more info on how babies are being polluted view the EWG's video "10 Americans"

Detox Your Halloween: Heavy metals contaminate Halloween Make-up

I've  been on the hunt for non-toxic Face Paint, back in September my husband and I were in Whole Foods asking if they were going to be carrying any for the Halloween season and they said they have had a very hard time sourcing a lead-free non-toxic product. The lack of safe products was confirmed by testing by the Ecology Centre.

Hazardous heavy metals contaminate 100% of 31 Halloween make-up, tests sampled by the Ecology Center

"Every single product contained traces of some kind of metal, but that is just the beginning. More than half of the products contained cadmium, a toxic heavy metal linked to cancer, birth defects and brain damage. Other toxic metals like mercury and lead were also detected."

"A May 2011 study by Environmental Defence (Canada) of adult cosmetics also found that 100 percent of the 49 cosmetics tested were contaminated with hazardous metals."

 So, what are your Halloween Options? 

• SmartMama.com recommends Luna Organics (photo below). 
• HealthyStuff.org recommends a homemade face paint recipe from TheSmartMama.com
• I also found a recipe for face paints using zinc cream as a base from Fun Frugal Mom
• Here are the ingredients: Diaper Cream (zinc oxide), Cornstarch, Food Based Liquid Food Coloring, Water. Check out Fun Frugal Mom for the full recipe.

Let me know if you have any other product suggestions or recipes!

Detox your Life: Is your child's car seat toxin free?

One more thing you should not have to worry about is whether or not your child's car seat toxin free.

Testing by HealthyStuff.org has revealed that over 60% of car seats tests contained hazardous flame retardants and chemical additives with links to allergies, impaired learning, and cancer.

As reported by HealthyStuff.org, and initiative of the Michigan based Ecology Centre:

Most Toxic 2011 Car Seats:

• Infant Seat: Graco Snugride 35 in Edgemont Red/Black & Graco SnugRide 30 in Asprey

• Convertible Seat: Britax Marathon 70 in Jet Set & Britax Marathon in Platinum

• Booster Seat: Recaro Pro Booster in Blue Opal & Recaro ProSPORT Toddler in Misty

Least Toxic 2011 Car Seats:

• Infant Seat: Chicco KeyFit 30 in Limonata, Graco Snugride 35 in Laguna Bay & Combi Shuttle 33 in Cranberry Noche

• Convertible Carseat: Graco Comfort Sport in Caleo, Graco MyRide 65 in Chandler and Streamer, Safety 1st OnSide Air in Clearwater, and Graco Nautilus Elite 3-in-1 in Gabe

• Booster Seat: Graco Turbo Booster in Anders

For the full report, go to HealthyStuff.org

Detox your Body: Bisphenol, Phthalates and Reproductive Health

This afternoon I watched the CBC Documentary "The Disappearing Male".

I was deeply disturbed and troubled as it reinforced the amount of chemicals we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Among these thousands of chemicals (85% of which are untested on humans) are bisphenol-A and Phthalates. Although many products containing bisphenol-A have been pulled from from the shelves (baby bottles, water bottles) there are many more products that we use every days that contains this endocrine disrupting chemical including the lining in canned food and canned soft drinks. Health Canada Reports that Phthalates “are hazardous to reproduction and development". Phthalates are in soft plastics and cosmetics in everything from bugs sprays, children's glow sticks, dentures, clothing, automobiles (part of the odour of new cars) and polyvinyl chloride products, the plastic often used in building materials such as pipes.

Health Canada is proposing regulations to prevent the use of six phthalates (DEHP, DINP, DBP, BBP, DNOP and DIDP) in soft vinyl children's toys and child-care articles. Which will bring Canada's regulation closer to that of the European Union. This past week however, the Globe and Mail reported that:

Health Canada's proposed regulation doesn't go far enough because exposures to chemicals that disrupt hormones are most dangerous during fetal development. Pregnant women were not covered by Health Canada's proposed measurers. The federal agency was not immediately able to respond to questions on why it didn't include restrictions on products used by adults.

What can you do?

The Environmental Defense has a campaign to ban bisphenol A in drink cans please go to their site to send an email to your MP and to learn more!

From the Documentary:

Factsheet: Male Infertility

• There are more than 20 heavily industrialized nations where the birth of baby boys has declined every year for the past 30 years - amounting to 3 million fewer baby boys.
• The number of boys born with penis abnormalities and genital defects has increased by 200% in the past two decades.
• Boys have a higher incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities, Tourett's syndrome, cerebral palsy and dyslexia.
• Boys are four times as likely to be autistic.
• The average sperm count of a North American college student today is less than half of what it was 50 years ago.
• The quality of sperm is declining. Eighty-five per cent of the sperm produced by a healthy male is DNA-damaged.
• Damaged sperm have been linked to a 300% increase in testicular cancer - a form of cancer that affects young men in their 20s and 30s.
• The chemical industry has developed more than 90,000 man-made chemicals in the last sixty years. Eighty-five percent of them have never undergone testing for their impact on the human body.

Detox your Body: Babies are born pre-polluted. Let’s change that.

The Earth is more toxic now than any other time in human history. We are a part of the Earth and anything that happens to the air, water, plants and animals also happens to us. I believe that achieving optimal health begins with clean air, clean water and clean food. What happens to one body of water happens to all, we are inseparable from our environment.

I became intimately aware of this connection as I embarked on my own environmental testing in the Fall of 2009. I expected to find some heavy metals, as I have been exposed to mercury through amalgam dental fillings, and through the consumption of mercury containing fish. However, I was not prepared for what everything I was about to discover:

My testing for Heavy Metals revealed (Doctors Data urine toxic metals) high levels of six metals: Thallium, Arsenic, Nickel, Cadmium,  Lead and Mercury. These are all highly toxic metals that are detrimental to health. There are no safe levels of mercury in the body - it is always neurotoxic.

My testing for Cholrinated Pesticides in my blood (Metametrix Accuchem pannel) found levels of:

• DDE (breakdown product of the pesticide DDT, banned from use in Canada in early 1970's)
• Trans-Nonachlor (used widely as an agricultural pesticide from 1953 to 1974, and as a termiticide until 1988)

My testing for Volatile solvents in my blood (Metametrix Accuchem pannel) revealed a number of highly neurotoxic compounds:

• Ethylbenzene (found in gasoline paints and inks)
• m,p-Xylene found in gasoline)
• Hexane, 2-Methylpentane and 3-Methylpentane (solvent used in glues, adhesives and paints, also found in gasoline exhaust)

For me uncovering these toxins has started a year long environmental detox, I'll write more about that in an upcoming post. I was expecting to find some toxins and am going to do the work to decrease my exposure, and decrease my body burden. But what about in my nieces and nephews, what about your children? The younger you are shouldn't your body burden of these toxic chemical be zero to none? NO! Alarming work done by the EWG in testing 10 Americans has shown otherwise. These chemical are bio-accumulative, this means that they accumulate up the food chain. As Adult humans we are near the top of the food chain, and babies are on the very top, and get the most concentrated toxin exposure.

With increased awareness, comes increased power for change. We can make a positive impact on the environment and our health. Please follow this link and watch the video below "10 Americans" from From EWG:

Babies are born pre-polluted. Let’s change that. The human race is now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals – with little or no understanding of the consequences. Babies are born pre-polluted with as many as 300 industrial chemicals in their bodies when they enter the world.

"Ten Americans": We all know pollution and toxins are bad for you. But the Environmental Working Group has conducted perhaps the deepest analysis of this issue on the most vulnerable demographic on the planet.

Updated: Kid-Safe Chemicals Act: 10 Americans @ Yahoo! Video