Popular Antibiotics May Carry Serious Side Effects

Antibiotics disrupt your natural gut flora, which includes "good" bacteria, so for fertility reasons, you should always be careful if prescribed antibiotics. Some studies show that even a single course of antibiotics can kill of entire colonies of good bacteria.

Further, science/the media is finally catching up to the overuse and unnecessary use of antibiotics, some of which can have severe harmful side effects. ALWAYS ask your doctor if antibiotics are absolutely necessary (and there are always the milder herbal remedies out there, depending on your particular condition). From the New York Times:

In an interview, Mahyar Etminan, a pharmacological epidemiologist at the University of British Columbia, said the drugs were overused “by lazy doctors who are trying to kill a fly with an automatic weapon.”

Dr. Etminan directed a study published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the risk of suffering a potentially blinding retinal detachment was nearly fivefold higher among current users of fluoroquinolones, compared with nonusers. In another study submitted for publication, he documented a significantly increased risk of acute kidney failure among users of these drugs.

Read more here

S'well insulated stainless bottles are SWELL

There are sooooo many "eco" water bottles out there, but they are not all created equal. Some have plasticky liners that can have endocrine-disrupting (i.e., bad for fertility) chemicals like BPA  (like Sigg--now they claim they reformulated their liners, but it's still plastic). A few bottles (especially the kind you get for free) look nice, but check to see if they might be aluminum. No one needs more aluminum in their system.

Stainless, of course, is best. It's non reactive, which means it keeps water tasting like water--but non reactive also means it's not leaching stuff into your water. Forget Nalgene bottles if you want to be healthy and fertile.

Then the problem is: do I have to carry a squat, unattractive bottle? And how abut an insulated bottle?

If you want to get all that AND no bad plastic liner, look for S'well bottles. They have a great, sleek shape, our tester confirmed that they keep cold drinks nice and cold--the website says for + 24 hours, our tester just did it for a few hours. Theoretically you can also keep hot drinks hot in there, although I'm not sure if you'd want to glug it out of the bottle.

They come in great colors as well as plain stainless, and the company's website says it helps foster water sustainability:

Your purchase of a S'well Bottle supports WaterAid, a 501 (c)(3) organization that provides sustainable safe water, hygiene and sanitation to the world's poorest communities. You're also taking a stand against the billions of plastic bottles clogging landfills the world over.

Check it out for yourself here: http://swellbottle.com/ 

Muffins, Mitt Romney, and my Dad - NYTIMES

I think my father would have been pretty pleased to be in the New York Times! What Muffins Say About Mitt Romney