If you had to choose just one room in your home to make environmentally friendly, it should be your bedroom. We can unsuspectingly create a toxic environment by sleeping on the wrong type of mattress, or exposing ourselves to electronic devices that interfere with sleep. Getting good quality sleep allows you to stay healthy and fight off illness because sleep is the time when your body heals, repairs and rejuvenates. (more…)

Your health starts in your home. If you want to get healthy and stay healthy in 2012, begin by taking eight small steps to make your home toxin-free. It’s really pretty simple. Start by first becoming aware of what goes in you, on you, and surrounds you. Why? Because on an average day you are exposed to hundreds of untested chemicals… from the additives in your food and personal care products to things you come in contact with like your mattress or household cleaning products or even your pots and pans.

Read the Full Article

“Natural,” “Nontoxic” or even “Eco-Safe” on the label of your shampoo, deodorant or makeup, makes you think it’d be made with healthy, safety-tested ingredients, right? Well, not always. Unlike drugs, The FDA doesn’t review cosmetic or personal care ingredients for safety before they hit the market. Also, manufacturers routinely do something known as greenwashing: using misleading, vague or even false claims about the eco/health benefits of their products. That leaves us wondering whether our lipstick, skin cream or wrinkle serum is safe. Reports say that many contain chemicals linked to cancer, infertility, hormone imbalances, birth defects, neurological issues and other health problems.

Read the Full Article at HuffingtonPost.com

We assume they are safe. But in fact, many popular household cleaners are dangerously toxic. Learn about the eight scariest substances hiding under your kitchen sink, and how to replace them with safer, more natural options that really work.

By Jessie Sholl for ExperienceLife.com / October 2011

When a pain in Beth Greer’s shoulder led her to a chiropractor nine years ago, she wasn’t that worried. After all, she led a healthy lifestyle: She watched her weight, meditated regularly, and ate mostly organic food. Greer’s chiropractor wasn’t worried either; he diagnosed her with a herniated disk. But after three sessions, not only was she not better, the pain was beginning to radiate down her arm and into her fingers. (more…)

Mill Valley Life recently wrote a feature article on Beth entitled “Mill Valley “super natural” mom, author, and entrepreneur Beth Greer keeps it green and healthy, one home at a time.”

The feature covers Beth’s journey and her devotion to helping people lead a more healthy life by limiting exposure to toxins commonly found in our environment, food, and in the products we use every day.  She also discusses her book, Super Natural Home.

Read the Full Article

Airborne chemicals are embedded inside our homes. They swirl around us as toxic gases emitted from the poorly-labeled bottles of cleaning fluids in our kitchens and bathrooms, from the bug sprays and air fresheners we use, and from the glues, sealants and flame retardants in our furniture. They are also dragged inside our homes on the bottoms of our shoes and then stirred up when we walk on our carpets. Studies have shown that the air that surrounds us indoors is more toxic than the air outdoors — even if you live in a highly polluted city like Los Angeles or New York.

Read the rest on Huffington Post Green

What if you could take 1 million pounds of waste that was heading towards landfill and repurpose it to grow food? Well, that’s exactly what two recent UC Berkeley graduates are doing with their company Back to the Roots. Founders, Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez started a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm that transforms coffee ground waste into the growing medium for gourmet mushrooms. The 2 year-old company is on pace in 2011 to collect, divert and reuse 1 million lbs. of used coffee grounds, from Peet’s Coffee & Tea, a San Francisco Bay Area company, and use it to grow over 250,000 lbs. of gourmet mushrooms.

They got the idea during their last semester at Berkeley in 2009. The two 23-year-olds had the intention to go into investment banking and consulting, but became intrigued, during a business ethics class lecture, with the idea of being able to grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. They walked around to local cafes and collected used coffee grounds, put them in paint buckets and seeded them with mushroom spawn. The experiment, to their delight, led to one bucket of pearl oyster mushrooms. They then saw the potential of these mushrooms… to turn waste into wages, as well as provide fresh, local food to their community. (more…)

If you had to choose just one room in your home to make environmentally friendly, it’s your bedroom. We can unsuspectingly create a toxic environment by sleeping on the wrong type of mattress, or exposing ourselves to electronic devices that interfere with sleep. Getting good quality sleep allows you to stay healthy and fight off illness because sleep is the time when your body heals, repairs and rejuvenates.

Read the rest on Huffington Post Green

If you’re like most people, a little voice inside your head has probably been telling you for a while that it’s time to get back to a more natural way of living and take a more serious look at the toxins in your everyday life. Even so, you may feel confused about the simple, practical things you can do to minimize your exposure and maximize not only your health, but your contribution to a cleaner planet.

Read the rest on Huffington Post Green

Stinky, sweet smelling air fresheners, cologne, body sprays, and scented shampoo are made with synthetic fragrances, and they’re bad for your health…especially children and pregnant women. These factory-made fragrances contain phthalates, which are chemicals that can cause hormonal abnormalities, birth defects and reproductive problems.

I tell my clients not to buy artificially scented products for their home or office because they can also trigger migraine headaches, allergies and asthma attacks. A recent Institute of Medicine study sponsored by the EPA put fragrances in the same category as second hand smoke as a trigger for asthma in school-age children. (more…)