VOCs in paint

We needed to have our apartment painted and insisted on low-VOC paints. The contractor screwed up twice (hmmmm) and just used whatever crap he had that was lying around. The landlord tried to tell us that after speaking with the people at the paint store, that after 30 days, it's all offgassed anyway, no biggie.

We did a little research on our own and found that VOCs are terrible and persistent - and can offgas for years. We are gently insisting that the stuff be repainted (it will need primer in some places) even though it will undoubtedly annoy people. Apparently VOCs are so bad, you shouldn't even store your paint where there are humans.

Also, watch out for VOCs in your floor sealer!

From the EPA: http://www.epa.gov/iaq/voc.html

Deaths tied to YAZ birth control pills:

This is pretty unnerving;

OTTAWA, Ontario — Health Canada records indicate that at least 23 deaths and 600 adverse reactions have been reported among women taking the birth-control pills (BCPs) Yaz and Yasmin (Bayer) in that country.

News of the reports was first reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and has been widely picked up by Canadian media [1].

Adverse-reactions reports, reviewed by heartwire , show that a total of 333 distinct cases, including 15 deaths, were collected for Yasmin and 267 for Yaz, including eight deaths.

The Health Canada database includes adverse reports collected between 2007 and February 28, 2013.

The most common categories of adverse reports for both products are nervous system, vascular, and respiratory/thoracic/mediastinal disorders, but cardiac disorders were not infrequently listed. For Yasmin, cardiac disorders are listed as the primary system organ class in 4.1% of cases; for Yaz, that number was 6.6%.

read more here: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/806286?nlid=31735_1441&src=wnl_edit_medn_obgy&uac=98206PV&spon=16

Alert! FDA Warns agains migraine treatment drugs for pregnant women

Valproate and other drugs are linked to diminished mental function of babies and are now being warned about by the FDA. If you're pregnant, read this: http://hcp.obgyn.net/pregnancy-and-birth/content/article/1760982/2141651

Stuff without carageenan

RE: my earlier post about the food additive carrageenan possibly causing inflammatory conditions like ulcerative colitis, here's a list of foods that normally have it but that you can get without it: http://www.cornucopia.org/shopping-guide-to-avoiding-organic-foods-with-carrageenan/

Ditch your bra?

Over the years I've posted about the possibility of bras contributing to breast cancer, mostly because they impede lymph drainage. You can read about how the daughter of Olga (yes, that Olga of the bras) died of breast cancer herself and how her daughter was committed to making a "better" bra, which may be no-bra. 

Here is an article on how it seems like anatomically, a bra might not be doing you huge favors, either and may make things SAG EVER MORE. Read more here.

Is Carrageenan bad for you?

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I'm a big seaweed lover, so I thought carrageenan was just another way to get seaweed. However, I'm hearing more and more about how this food additive (I think there's tons in McDonald's milkshakes) may cause gastro and BRAIN inflammation. I think I'd rather be safe than sorry. Also, it's in INFANT formula, although in Europe they don't allow it. That tells you something.

My sadness is that the nut and soy milks I make are so watery, while the commercial stuff is so nice...because of carrageenan.

Supposedly carrageenan is about as natural a seaweed extract as high fructose corn syrup is to corn; i.e., they use terrible alkali and so forth to get it out. I'm getting rid of all my carrageenen products right now.

Read more here: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-18/health/ct-met-carrageenan-0318-20130318_1_carrageenan-fda-scientists-food-additive-safety

and here: http://www.notmilk.com/carageenan.html

Chemicals in perfume

You may have already suspected this, but most commercial perfumes contain chemicals, some petroleum based, many cancer-causing, and in the cases of synthetic musk, they may even affect your hormones.

Especially if you are trying to conceive, you might want to be aware of fragrance use both for yourself and "secondhand" fragrance, e.g., by your colleagues at works, etc., so you can avoid it.

The Environment Working Group helps lay out some of the risks:

Just like American "cheese" isn't really cheese, soon what we think of as milk may not be milk anymore if the big business lobby gets its way: it wants to be able to add ASPARTAME (i.e., Equal, i.e., the stuff that can give people seizures) to milk and not tell consumers. Also, children drink more milk and are smaller and so will be affect disproportionately.

The FDA, by law, has to have this issue open for comments. LET THEM KNOW WHAT YOU THINK: http://www.infowars.com/u-s-dairy-industry-petitions-fda-to-approve-aspartame-as-hidden-unlabeled-additive-in-milk-yogurt-eggnog-and-cream/ 

Also, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but in this particular issues of you google "asparatame" "Searle" (the company) and "Rumsfeld" (yet, the Iraq war-monger), you'll see that it'sa travesty of justice that aspartame was ever approved as safe. Know what's in your food! Protect your right not to be drugged.

$10 off first order, free shipping at iherb

I love iherb.com, largely because you only need $20 worth for free ship and then with $40 you get free EXPEDITED 2-day shipping, perfect because I am always running out of supplements. Plus, their prices can be very good. I get everything from supplements to candles to gluten free groceries.

Even better, for first timers, get $10 off with this code: PIX328. Check it out: iherb.com

Hemp --biofuel? bio-plastics?

In Korea, so much stuff is made out of hemp: Clothes, rope, even shoes. It was SO useful, the early US colonists were MADE to plant it.

But now, we deliberately deny ourselves this useful plant that needs little in the way of fertilizer/pesticide all because we are somehow scared of another harmless/useless plant, Cannabis.

Treehugger.com has an interesting article on it:

Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0

Hemp, which is considered to be a wonder-crop by many, is now legal in Colorado. Voters not only gave the thumb up to marijuana in November, but also to its THC-light cousin. Since hemp has so many uses, from being an ingredient in many types of foods, to skin care creams and lotions, to paper, textiles, bio-plastics and building materials, biofuels, etc... It's going to be very interesting to see how commercial production will shape up and, hopefully, how it'll influence the mindset of the rest of the country and the world.

NPR has a great little piece about this, which you can listen to or read, and theDenver Post also weighs in on the federal-state issue:

Like marijuana, hemp is still illegal in the eyes of the feds, despite Colorado's clear electoral mandate to legalize it.
Federal officials have said little about how they will react to Colorado's new law. Some analysts say it's unlikely they will target individual users, but the outlook is less certain for federal crackdowns on larger enterprises, such as farm-scale growing.

Hemp backers say that would be an extreme injustice, given that hemp has no narcotic properties. But federal law does not differentiate between the cultivation of hemp and marijuana. (source)

read more here.

The Original OZONATOR - keeps food + fridge fresh

I actually have an ozonator to ozonate water because it's healthful. You probably know about theozone layer, but ozone is actually the natural way our planet cleans itself. You've probably smelled ozone after a big thunderstorm--it's that clean smell.

The Original Ozonator is a gizmo that ozonates the air in your refrigerator. It basically gets rid of things like mold and bad bacteria, so it freshens and also--here's the kicker--it KEEPS FOOD FROM GOING BAD FASTER. Foods that are full of natural bacterias and yeast decompose faster--think of how quickly berries like strawberries go bad. Or the "bloom" you see on blueberries is a yeast that starts the berry fermenting. The Ozonator gets rid of stuff like that and you will save money because your food lasts longer naturally.

Of course, it's not suspended animation--your food will still go bad. However, as an inadvertent test, when we left for Christmas vacation for a week, an expensive package of opened organic turkey (already a few days old) had been left behind, and I was sad it was going to go to waste.

When we got back, I was surprised that it still looked fresh and indeed was not only edible, but still good.

The Ozonator is small and unobtrusive, and works much better than a bo of baking soda. One thing I will caution is that it can be irritating to breathe in ozone, so don't put your face in it while you have the fridge open, wondering what to eat for a snack...

Is US polluting the water it will need to drink? NO FRACKING!

Fracking is ridiculous on so many levels--it uses carcinogenic chemicals, makes people and animals sick, etc. But shortsight profit seekers think it's ok to pollute local aquifers, and the government also exempts them from the Clean Water Act. Read this article and contemplate why this might be a bad bad idea:

http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-is-polluting-water-it-may-someday-need-to-drink

Routine Health Checks have No Effect on Mortality

This is interesting because I am of the school "Why go looking for trouble?" My father was a physician and so my mother goes to the doctor at the drop of a hat. Here's what's happened to her recently:

1. a botched mammogram required her to come in for *2* more radiation-filled mamograms, they thought they saw "something," which I predicted was a calcification. My mother got very very stressed and had 3 more mammograms, all which pointed to a misreading of the 1st one. Also, as I pointed out, she's in her 80s and shouldn't be getting them at all, even though her doctor wants her to come in every 6 months for one because the one was "suspicious"--see what happens?

2. she also has a benign heart palpitation called SVT. I know about SVT because I've had one all my life, too, and because it's benign, I just try to reduce stress, because it's exacerbated by stress. She started seeing all sorts of doctors, once was sent to the ER for some kind of "shot" (she didn't ask what it was) that made her feel terrible and gave her MORE palpitations later and she almost had open heart surgery to install a pacemaker....don't ask. a cardiologist friend finally explained what bullsh*t this all was and that she should leave it alone. She did, and she's fine.

3. she was diagnosed with "pre hypertension" even though her blood pressure was raised b/c she was in the doctor's office (it's called "White coat syndrome"--they even have a name for it). They put her on a BP med that made her faint. So then she almost had her driver's license taken away. They blamed the palpitations and wanted to do a surgical ablation (where they zap and kill the valve--50% success rate). She was fine once she was off the meds.

4. she had a benign cyst that I argued should be left alone. She went ahead and had ONE done and it became more painful and more inflamed that the other one--which went away on its own.

There's more, but let me stop there. My mother is robustly healthy and I wish the doctors would quit trying to make her sick:

This article is from Medscape, a physician's website:

In a systematic review of 14 randomized controlled trials conducted between 1963 and 1999, researchers evaluated the effect of annual health checkups on morbidity and mortality. The authors defined a general health check as "a visit dedicated solely to preventive counseling and screening tests," excluding visits required for the management of chronic conditions or acute care visits.

The researchers evaluated data from more than 182,000 patients and assessed primary outcomes of all-cause mortality and disease-specific mortality. "Secondary outcomes assessed included morbidity, new diagnoses, hospitalizations, disability, worry, self-reported health, referrals to specialists, and additional visits to general practitioners," the authors write.

The researchers found that general health checks had no significant effect on total mortality (risk ratio [RR], 0.99; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.95 - 1.03), even when other factors such as inclusion of lifestyle counseling, duration of follow-up, and types of testing were examined. In terms of disease-specific mortality, no significant reduction in cancer mortality (RR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.92 - 1.12) or cardiovascular mortality (RR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.91 - 1.17) was found.

Not all trials included data on secondary outcomes; however, the researchers noted an increase in the number of new diagnoses of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes mellitus during the health checks.

read more here

The flu is here

I'm not sure if the flu is really at an "epidemic" as the news media scaremongers seem to suggest, but an awful lot of people are getting the flu...and that includes people who are vaccinated. My friend who is a primary care physician says that the flu shot's efficacy is only around 60%, so it's up to you to decide your risk/reward ratio.

I used to get free flu shots at work (still do) but in the last few years have decided to go without and (knock wood) I've been fine. Ironically, I was still getting the flu shots so either (1) the flu shot doesn't work, at least for me or (2) it really does give you the flu!

Dr. Mercola suggests the following:

There are many other, far more effective ways to prevent the flu and other flu-like illness, such as dietary interventions, making sure your vitamin D and gut flora are optimized, being more meticulous about washing your hands, getting enough exercise and sleep, and eating foods that support your immune system like oil of oregano and garlic. read more here: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/22/flu-epidemic.aspx?

PLAIN SOAP AND WATER is as good or even better than those chemical hand sanitizers, many of which contain triclosan, and ingredient that is banned in Europe. I would add to that making sure you get enough sleep, and for myself, I drink a cup of green tea every day. That's seemed to help a lot of things. And laugh--laughing is good for the immune system!

Seabags Recycled Wine Bags

'Tis the season to give and get lots of wine. I have seen foam bags, mylar bags, neoprene bags, and of course a lot of plastic bags.

So I was tickled to find Seabags, recycled wine bags made of old sails, made in Maine. They are witty, durable and are a great size--the host or hostess could easily decide to use them as something else. Each one is different, and special. They come in a variety of styles, so check them out here: http://www.seabags.com/wine-tote/wine-bag-redclaw.html

Hurricane preparedness kit

Hunkering down for the Frankenstorm/climate change storm that may shut down NYC for days:

Frankenstorm preparedness kit: red hot chips, a new low-carb gluten free beer from New Planet, homemade hooch, coffee, gluten free cookies, pumpkin bread, extra pumpkin to make more bread, Woody Allen movie w/Korean subtitles, Buddha. Check!

$10 off at iHerb

I used Iherb.com for a lot of my supplements because you only need $20 for free shipping, $40 for free expedited 2-day shipping, especially awesome because I live in NYC with not a lot of time to shop. The merchandise seems perfectly okay, although sometime groceries (e.g. baking soda) so get damaged in shipping, but I think they are working on it. The prices are very good, you get a discount the more you spend...

...and with this coupon code PIX328 you can get $10 off $40 and $5 off anything else. Enjoy! iHerb.com

Cauliflower...leaves...are delicious!

When I buy cauliflower and broccoli at the farmers market, they come attached with beautiful broad leaves. I used to juice them (blech) or just compost them. I didn't realize that roasting them with some garlic makes them delicious.

Check out this easy easy recipe, and if you're shopping, ASK for the leaves if they don't give them to you. A delicious, free treat:

Roasted Cauliflower leaves recipe

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/