simple.green.organic.happy.

Category: Conscious Consumerism: Shopping & Reviews

Gifts to Reduce Stress and Stay Healthy

There’s nothing sadder in this world
than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

-Erma Bombeck

Just kidding. The Christmas season is magical and exciting no matter what your age, but it can be harder to hold on to that Yuletide spirit as you get older. Choosing the perfect present becomes burdened by a budget, decorating and winter concerts are a strain on an already busy schedule, holiday parties are enjoyed with a guilty mental calorie count. I’m not even going to bring up travel.

The truth is that for a lot of people the holidays can be stressful, and stress puts a serious damper on your immune system. Add that to the number of people you’re around in relatively close quarters and the scene is set for sick days you simply don’t have time for.

I’m kicking back with gift ideas for those people on your list who could do with some relaxation: parents, teachers, party throwers, workaholics… and you.

Treat yourself and stay happy and healthy through December and into the new year.

Note: affiliate links follow.

Wake Up Right

I’ve been attempting to carry out a personal crusade against the alarm but my husband is the kind of the multiple snooze button. Ideally, you want to have a good bedtime routine and go to sleep early enough that you wake up automatically, without an alarm, but I know that’s not realistic for everyone, especially during the dark mornings of Daylight Savings Time. Instead, forego the adrenaline jolts and resulting sleep inertia and be awakened gently with increasing light, simulating sunrise. (This gentle wake-up light alarm clock also allows you to choose nature sounds to wake you, and works the other way, gradually decreasing light at bedtime to help you fall asleep.)

Meditation in the morning

79% of those surveyed in an IDC Research report admitted to checking their phones within 15 minutes of waking up (89% of 18-24 year olds, yikes). That’s stressful, guys. You’re jumping right into the fray by dealing with emails, scanning the news, reading up on whatever the latest outrage is on Facebook (Reese’s peanut butter trees not looking like trees, by the way: not really an outrage, just an aggregation of a handful of people making observations. We’ve reached this weird place where people become outraged about other people being outraged, when nobody was actually outraged to begin with). And then, too much time has already gone by and you’re already running late, rushing around.

Instead, take some time to ease into the day. Clear your mind entirely for calm, focus on your intentions with optimism or empowerment. Studies support again and again that meditation is good for your mind and your body, both short term and long term. For those who can’t shut down their monkey mind or SQUIRREL! mentality, try a guided meditation. I like the OMG I Can Meditate app, which has daily meditations for morning or night as well as short on-the-go options and special meditations for dealing with anxiety or attracting abundance. There’s a free option which can be upgraded to full access paid monthly or yearly.

Aromatherapy to energize your afternoon

We’ve all experienced the way that certain smells can evoke emotions and memories: there’s no denying the feel-goods associated with walking into a house where Thanksgiving dinner has been cooking, or the cleansing of the sinuses and the soul you get from the scent of pine, whether it’s in the forest or a nursery filled with just-arrived Christmas trees. I was sent the GuruNanda Essential Oil Diffuser set for review purposes and I love diffusing the included peppermint oil in the afternoon, when I tend to slump/crash and burn. The set also includes lavender oil, which is calming and great for destressing and relaxing you into sleep.

We use ours in the living room, where everyone can enjoy it and it’s a nice welcome for those walking in the front door, but I keep thinking it would be a great option for a child’s bedroom at night. (Or both. It’s lightweight and easily moved around.) The cool steam would help ward off the dry nasal passageways of winter, the muted changing color lights could act as a nightlight, and the quiet hum is comforting. Plus, the unit shuts down once all the water has evaporated— about 2.5 hours. At $20 for the set it’s honestly a great deal; you only need to use a few drops of essential at a time, so the bottle will last a long time. It’s also easy to pick up since it’s available at Wal-Mart; a similar model from the same company is available from Amazon for a few dollars more, but you have to buy your oils separately.

Take time for tea

The Brits are spot on here. Although there’s not a whole lot of concrete evidence that tea itself does a whole lot for stress, the act of making tea can. Making tea promises comfort, warmth and psychological escape, and one study found that putting the kettle on reduced stress in its subjects by up to a quarter.

My favorite teas of the moment were sent by Choice Organic Teas; organic, fair trade, and manufactured in a certified organic facility where Green-e Certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) from wind power are purchased to offset 100 percent of the facility’s electricity. I love the Breathing Space (peppermint, echinacea and eucalyptus) in the morning, Irish Breakfast ironically in the afternoon, Simply Detox for Sunday brunch, but they offer tons of delicious and health-centric options. Loose leaf teas are available.

Sweat away stress

Getting your daily 30 minute sweat session in clears your head and fills you with those feel good hormones, along with all the obvious health benefits. Exercise helps you to sleep better and can strengthen circadian rhythms, although you may need to experiment to find the best time of day (some people will find it harder to fall asleep too soon after exercising).

I personally recommend a high intensity program like CrossFit, which keeps you completely mentally involved during your relatively short workout: no room to stress about things. You could gift a month of classes to CrossFit, Zumba, swimming, whatever works for you and promise to meet up for class a certain number of times a week. Or, gift a race registration and train together. Just get out there and move— and as a bonus, you won’t pack on those pesky winter pounds.

Brain dump before bed

Losing sleep has many adverse health repercussions along with increased stress levels and suppressed immunity. If the chaos of the holidays along with a never-ending to-do list and a chatty brain keep you from easily drifting off to sleep, journaling can be an immense help. I recommend keeping a notebook next to the bed and on the fronts of pages, dump out the contents of your brain: everything you need to do, things you need to pick up, people you need to call, etc, until the well runs dry. Then, turn the page and list three things you are grateful for that day so that you’ll see them tomorrow night. You’ll go to bed relieved of the burden of worrying you’ll forget something, and with gratitude in your heart.

I’m a firm believer of nice notebooks, they’re just a joy to use and keep you committed. This black leather-bound journal is 8 inches tall with nice paper and gilded edges for just over $11.

What are your favorite ways to destress for a healthier, happier you— during the holidays and beyond?

November 29, 2016
Gluten Free Allergy and Cold Relief (and an Organic Goody Basket Giveaway)

Over-the-counter gluten free allergy, cold and sinus relief that’s also sugar free, alcohol free, dye free and acetaminophen free. Keep reading for a chance to win a basket of natural goodies, valued at $100! Sponsored by DayClear.

My own prescription for health is less paperwork
and more running barefoot through the grass.

-Leslie Grimutter

When Jake was young he couldn’t do a whole lot of running through the grass. The poor kid was allergic to the entire outdoors, it seemed; his breathing would get all stuffy and congested, he would sneeze over and over again, his skin would rash up and thicken like an alligator’s, he would be all red around the eyes from rubbing them constantly.

He gets mad when I talk about it, saying that I’m always exaggerating his illnesses, and to him the memories are probably more of the running-through-grass variety than the results of it. But as a parent, it’s so hard to see your kids struggling to breathe; to be constantly, idling scratching, to the point where it was such a habit I don’t think he was aware of it.

What linguistic genius
set up the sneeze and wheeze
To rhyme so very perfectly
with the word “allergies”?

-Terri Guillemets

It was the worst at night, when his narrowed and raw nasal passageways would wake him up all night long, either because he was having a hard time breathing or because he’d been startled out of sleep by yet another nosebleed. He’d climb into our bed and I’d be kept up by the awful sound of him scratching away, often ripping his skin open in his sleep.

Scratching. Always scratching.

We tried everything out there that claimed to help, that didn’t involve a constant stream of meds. Oatmeal baths, cool showers, fewer showers, goats’ milk lotions (along with a hundred other lotions), black soap, no soap, apple cider vinegar, teas, local honey, and an ongoing process of cutting out and reintroducing foods.

(It’s worth noting that the most effective treatment was making him shower immediately after coming inside for the day, to get rid of whatever pollens and other irritants were on his skin and in his clothes. But that wasn’t enough.)

imagine him similarly dusted with pollen

Some things would help for a little while. Some just sort of suppressed some symptoms only to exacerbate others. Since the worst of it happened at night, we had to start giving him a nightly dose of allergy meds to keep him from doing serious damage to his skin while sleeping, and while that helped a lot it came with its own set of problems. Prescription meds were super expensive and some of the warnings for kids were alarming; we tried to save this for more severe flareups. Liquids definitely worked faster and better for Jake, but the sugar in the OTC syrup, which made it easier for the medicine to go down, made it harder for him to go down. Ironic, since we tend to think of allergy meds as being drowsiness inducing. Also, like his father, Jake was sensitive to the food dyes that added color, especially red; they made him hyper.

Eventually a dye-free allergy formula came out, but not every store carried it, and dye-free didn’t expand to other medicines, so we just never gave Jake anything but Tylenol for coughs and colds.

As to diseases, make a habit of two things—
to help, or at least to do no harm.

—Hippocrates

Gluten Free Allergy and Cold Relief

Odes Mitchell has a similar story. He was already active in the pharmaceutical industry when his son Mason was diagnosed with celiac disease, after several long years of struggling with illness. As Texas natives, the Mitchells were also privy to severe allergy seasons. They had a hard time finding an allergy medicine that alleviated his symptoms, without causing more side effects and symptoms due to his gluten intolerance.

Odes saw this gap in the over-the-counter market and formulated DayClear, a long-awaited solution for those with intolerances, allergies, or diseases that require near-constant vigilance when it comes to ingredients. It’s the stuff you need, without the stuff you don’t want.

This completely clear, non-syrupy line is:

Gluten-Free

allowing people with Celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and wheat allergies to avoid side effects and symptoms

Sugar-Free

for diabetics and those looking to lower their risk of illness and disease while helping to control cravings, improve energy, and avoid allergens

Alcohol-Free

eliminating the side effects of alcohol intolerance that could include nausea, headaches, flushing, increased heart rate and fainting. Research indicates that cystic fibrosis and fibromyalgia patients may experience intolerance to alcohol and sensitivities to sugar, food colors, and artificial flavors.

Acetaminophen-Free

Did you know: 80,000 people head to the emergency room due to accidental acetaminophen overdoses?

Dye-Free

Most prescription and OTC products contain artificial dyes for no reason other than making them look colorful. Food coloring and artificial dye sensitivity can lead to hyperactivity, lack of attention, sleep problems, stomach and respiratory issues in some adults.

click here to enlarge

I love stories like this, where people tweak long-standing products and you just have to think: why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Our sample bottle of DayClear made it not even 24 hours before Jake cracked it open. While he has mostly grown out of the worst of his allergy symptoms, he still gets flareups during the spring and fall, and anytime we give the house a deep cleaning. His verdict was that it worked to alleviate his scratchy throat and nose, and that it tasted like medicine, not like medicine-masked-with-cherry-flavor.

DayClear is currently being launched in the northeast states including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia and Delaware— you can find a local store here and save $2 with this coupon. It’s also available nationwide via Amazon. I’ve added a graph of which products treat which symptoms at the end of this post.

Giveaway!

He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors.

-Chinese Proverb

Because I like to really stress that health is about a lot more than just management of symptoms, we’re going to balance out all this talk of allergies and medicines with a bit of healthy indulgences!

DayClear has provided this basket of organic goodies, pictured above and valued at $100, to a lucky simple. green. organic. happy. reader. Enter using the Rafflecopter widget below; you can choose one entry option or as many as you like.

This giveaway will run until 11:59pm on Sunday, May 22nd. Good luck!

For more info on DayClear’s products, visit their product page.

May 16, 2016
Sustainable Tuna: For Our Health and the Health of Our Oceans
The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope.
Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning:

we are all in the same boat.

— Jacques Cousteau

My interest in environmentalism and sustainability began like it did for a lot of people in the 80s and 90s: the movement to save the dolphins. I was a card carrying Greenpeace member, very vocal and emphatic and in awe of these big, playful, social, intelligent creatures.

Whenever I’d get really wound up, my dad would always say, “won’t anyone THINK OF THE TUNA?” He was being silly, but that didn’t make him any less right. (In retrospect, that statement was true for a LOT of things my dad said.)

While it was and still is important to fight for the dolphins, whose numbers were dwindling as they were trapped in undiscriminating tuna nets (purse seine nets), we also need to think of the tuna. They might not be as cute and cool as dolphins, but they and all of the other creatures of the sea are part of a delicate ecosystem; decimating any one part hurts all the others, and harming our oceans harms our land and our health as a species.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

—John Muir

Tuna is an important food for our health; it’s a lean protein, full of B vitamins, and an easily bio-accessible source of essential omega-3 fatty acids, which are great for our brains and our hearts. Unfortunately tuna can also be a source of mercury, thanks to the state of our oceans, and in danger of being overfished out of existence, especially as more and more people turn to fish as an alternate meat source.

Sustainability when it comes to tuna requires a multi-faceted approach:
- protecting habitat by taking measures to keep our oceans clean,
- putting fishing practices into place that ensure tuna populations remain strong for future yields,
- while not endangering other species through bycatch.
When purchasing sustainable canned tuna, making your choice is actually pretty easy. You’ll want to look for the blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label: this indicates your fish has been responsibly caught by a certified sustainable fishery. These fish are caught at levels that “allow fish populations and the ecosystems on which they depend to remain healthy and productive for the future” (emphasis is mine). From ocean to plate, this fish is kept separate from non-certified stock and can be traced back to its source, so you can rest assured it’s labeled correctly: you know exactly what you’re getting.

(By comparison, no matter where your chicken was raised, it’s likely processed alongside other chickens, and therefore susceptible to contamination. In the event of contamination, it can very difficult to determine where the problem started.)

Now I’m going to make things even easier! The only brand that is a full line of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified sustainable seafood is Wild Selections®. This brand really is working hard to ensure a healthier planet and “fish-full” future.
- Wild Selections gives back to the oceans by donating 13 cents from every can sold (a total of $1 million by 2018) to World Wildlife Fund marine conservation and fishery improvement projects.
- They bear the blue MSC eco-label, letting you know the fish in your can comes from well managed fisheries and healthy fish stocks.
- Their tuna is premium quality, sustainably sourced and 100% traceable; you can actually enter the code on your can at WildSelections.com to learn where the fish inside was caught.
- They use simple, all natural ingredients; Wild Selections tuna is Non-GMO Project verified and delicious.
So, save the dolphins, but save the tuna too. You can check the store locator to see who carries Wild Selections near you; I was able to pick mine up at my usual grocery store (Giant). Check out the Wild Selections® You Tube channel for videos to learn about the Wild Selections difference, their partnership with World Wildlife Fund and the Marine Stewardship Council certification.

And for more about the importance of sustainable fishing— some of the numbers are mindblowing— and how Wild Selections is helping to ensure healthy seafood is around for future generations, feast your eyes on the infographic below You can make it full-page for easier reading by clicking on it.

We must plant the sea and herd its animals
using the sea as farmers instead of hunters.

That is what civilization is all about—
farming replacing hunting.

Jacques Cousteau, Oceanographer

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
April 28, 2016