Things I’ve learned in the past year

• I am so grateful for all the blessings in my life.  My life is a journey so I am thankful for who I am and how my life has turned out.  I have been blessed and I intend to share those blessings.
• I started getting answers to questions like why are so many kids suffering from allergies and food allergies?  Why is there so much asthma?  The answers aren’t pleasant.  Any mom would tell you she wouldn’t deliberate harm her kids. 
• There is a Plastic Garbage Patch some say is twice the size of TEXAS out in the Pacific Ocean.  Why doesn’t that concern more people??

 (this isn’t the actual plastic garbage patch – I just wanted to catch your eye.  For more info, check out http://www.vbs.tv/watch/toxic

• We are poisoning ourselves and we don’t even know it.
• The government has a database website where you can check all your brands and what harmful chemicals they contain.  Huh????  Shouldn’t they protect us and not approve such products?
• I learned what a feed lot is.  I learned where the food in the supermarket comes from. I learned what ingredients are used and how they are modified.  I would say “you don’t want to know” but really – you should know.  Knowledge is power and everyone can make better choices.  We vote every time we go to the cash register.
• Everything takes twice as long (at least) as I thought it would.
• Money is what makes the world go round.  Big companies that have the most money have the loudest voice and the biggest say in what goes on.
• There are some good companies out there.  Shaklee is one of them.
• Many people don’t like change. People will rationalize their poor living habits.
• Being passionate about helping the planet and the community got my brain working again. sometimes it can be a downer when your ringing the bell and sounding the alarm and no one’s paying attention!
• I am extremely sensitive – it upsets me when I learn what’s been done to our planet and the people around me.

New Jewelry or New Way of Life??

It never ceases to amaze me! Ask a bunch of women to come to a jewelry party and they come in a pack. Invite them to a Healthy Living meeting and one shows up! Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good jewelry party and have been know to treat myself to a few trinkets. I’ve even gone to those home decorating and fancy pottery ones and splurged a little.

But when you start talking about the dangers of the FRANKEN FOODS we’re now eating on a regular basis or the toxins in the common household cleaning products, somehow people have something better to do. I find it incredible that some people just don’t want to deal with this stuff. They think it’s not their problem. But if we don’t start taking notice, the consequences are dire.

Some people don’t want to change. They think it’s hard. You know what’s hard – dealing with disease, dealing with a child stricken with cancer, dealing with a parent with dementia, dealing with breast cancer and your own mortality.

The thing is, you can deal with these in a positive way. Start making small changes. Start eating whole foods. Live foods. 75-85% of our food supply is GENETICALLY MODIFIED. Do you know what the long term results are to eating the majority of your food this way? No? Well neither does the food industry or the government. If that doesn’t scare you I don’t know what will.

See the thing with the toxins in the cleaners you bring into your home is that they accumulate in your body. They don’t get passed out. They sometimes mimic what supposed to be going on or they block nutrients from getting where they are supposed to go. Short term – maybe no problem. Long term, you’re looking at cancer, allergies, asthma, ADD, ADHD, Austism, Heart disease, diabetes. All these illnesses are caused by our lifestyles – by what we expose our bodies to in what we eat, what we put on the body and what’s around us in the air.

What about genetics? That’s become a cop-out answer for just about everything. But in reality – genetics only accounts for 10% of serious illness. The rest is how we deal with the genetic hand of cards we received. When you have over 66% of the adult population of your country overweight or obese, you can’t blame that all on your parents. Because 30 years ago the population was less than 15% overweight.

There is something that’s passed directly to you from in utero – toxic chemicals! A 2004 study found almost 200 toxins know to cause cancer in humans in babies umbilical cord blood. How did they get there?

So I’m ringing the bell! I’m sounding the alarm! Wake up people. Don’t put your head in the sand. Don’t think it will all go away if I don’t think about it.

How many people do you know that struggle with some health issue? Most people don’t have to look far. Now ask yourself how did we get here?

How did we become a society who buys the majority of their food from a box that’s been sitting on a shelf for months and that was made with ingredients that were stored for possibly years. How did we get to a time when there are more cleaners available then there are fresh fruit and vegetables in the produce aisle? How did we get to eating the meat of an animal that was injected with hormones that now reside in our bodies? I didn’t ask for them, did you?

The next time someone offers you a few simple suggestions for living a healthier life, please take a moment. The jewelry is nice to look at but it won’t save your life.