Why the Gut Microbiome Is Crucial for Our Health?

January 17, 2022 by Liz Carter

Why the Gut Microbiome Is Crucial for Our Health?

The human body is full of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. They are collectively known as the microbiome, and their totals are impressive, numbering in the trillions.

While some bacteria are associated with disease, others are extremely important for your immune system, heart, weight, and many other aspects of health.

What is the Gut Microbiome?

Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microscopic living things are referred to as microorganisms, or microbes, for short.

Trillions of these microbes exist mainly inside your intestines, with some also known to be on the skin. It is here that most of the microbes in the intestines are found, in a “pouch” at the junction of the small and large intestine called the cecum. The microbes found in the cecum are generally referred to as the gut microbiome. For various reasons, bacteria are widely studied even though many different types of microbes exist inside us. [Read more…]

The Importance of Indoor Air Quality in Your Home

January 4, 2022 by Liz Carter

Air Pollution in Your Home

We’ve covered why it’s critical to clean up your foods and personal-care products. Now it’s time to examine the chemicals in your home. A growing body of scientific evidence has indicated that the air within homes and buildings can be more seriously polluted than the outdoor air in even the largest and most industrialized cities.

At no other time in history have there been so many toxins and pollutants in our environment, particularly the home. The home is the No. 1 source for toxic chemicals.

According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), Common toxic chemicals found in the home are three times more likely to cause cancer than airborne pollutants. The EPA has also reported that nearly every American has 30 cancer-causing chemicals detectable in their fatty tissue.

This is another great reason to clean up toxic chemical products at home. It’s part of your preventive-medicine strategy.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the air within our homes can be five to 10 times more heavily polluted than outdoor air, even in the largest industrial cities. This is critical because individuals in Western industrialized cities spend up to 90% of their time indoors. One of the primary sources of this indoor air pollution is chemical cleaners, which also happen to be one of the easiest areas to fix. [Read more…]

How to Get Better Sleep in 2022

December 28, 2021 by Liz Carter

How to Get Better Sleep in 2022

For many, getting a solid night’s sleep is as elusive as winning the lottery. Getting too little sleep is so common that it’s become almost a badge of honor to get through each day with sleep deprivation. Even if you feel like you can function on little sleep, it’s actually debilitating, if not dangerous, to a person’s health and mental faculties.

As we approach the new year, health is often at the top of resolutions. One area of health that affects your entire body is your sleep. So, how do you get better sleep and more of it?

[Read more…]

Chemicals to Avoid in Your Personal Care Products

December 14, 2021 by Liz Carter

Chemicals to Avoid in Your Personal-Care Products

The average adult uses nine personal care products daily, exposing him or her to 126 chemicals every day (for many women, the numbers can be higher). This statistic accounts for personal care products alone—not the chemicals in your foods, environment, or home. Here are some interesting facts about personal care products sold in the U.S. marketplace today:

Fact: The Food and Drug Administration, unfortunately, does not have control over what goes into personal care products. In fact, the FDA has confirmed its inability to control what goes into them. Essentially, the agency has no oversight with respect to chemical ingredients in products, which means manufacturers can put just about anything they want into them: plasticizers, degreasers, surfactants, carcinogens, reproductive toxins or endocrine disrupters.

Additionally, our government does not mandate safety-testing of industrial chemicals that are used as base ingredients in everyday personal care products like shampoos, conditioners, soaps, lotions, makeup, deodorant, detergents, spot removers, and air fresheners—and the list continues! [Read more…]

Tips for Reducing Your Water Consumption

December 8, 2021 by Liz Carter

Tips for Reducing Your Water Consumption

Our water, specifically which is sourced from non-bottled varieties, will come from one of two sources – either from above-ground resources like lakes and rivers or from underground aquifers or wells. To learn the specifics of your local water supply, try requesting an annual water quality report from the utility company providing your community with water.

There is a lot of creative thought being put into the process of recycling water, using “gray water” and of course, the quality of our water considered potable. The reports are also sent out to customers by July 1st of each year. There you’ll begin to uncover what lurks in your drinking water supply including contaminants and chemicals like chlorine and chloramines (which are toxic to fish and amphibians).

It is important to know what’s in your water supply so you know what you need to filter out. This will help you choose the best water filter for you and your family. The report also gives you a summary of water sources i.e. lakes, rivers, aquifers, reservoirs). To further uncover what’s really in your tap water send a sample to lab and have it tested. [Read more…]

Waste and What You Need To Know About Landfills

November 30, 2021 by Liz Carter

Waste & What You Need To Know About Landfills

When we dispose of our trash, we are simply moving it. All garbage is sent to landfills where it piles up in large masses. When you consider that oxygen and water are in short supply in landfills, it takes a long time for garbage to completely break down. But in this process of decomposition, new types of wastes are created. Leachate and two greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide, and methane are created. A leachate is any liquid that, in the course of passing through matter, extracts soluble or suspended solids, or any other component of the material through which it has passed. [Read more…]

Transitioning to a Healthy Organic Diet

November 17, 2021 by Liz Carter

Transitioning to a Healthy Organic Diet

If you want your client to actually create lasting changes in their quest to live healthily we have to push for them to be honest with themselves. Only then can positive changes begin to take hold.

At times, our clients say that they are not aware of what they need to do in order to make changes. This isn’t new in coach-client relationships. But at the root of this thinking is a benign type of ignorance that we all have. What if you were to ask a client to answer the following question as part of their assessment: “What am I pretending not to know?”

This direct and honest question can get things started. You can be more efficient if you can cut through the unknown factors and dive into understanding why knowledge and awareness are being ignored. Have clients think of ways to apply this to every aspect of their life, beginning with health behaviors and food choices. This allows your client to take full responsibility for, and control of, their efforts to live a green and holistic life. [Read more…]

Coaching 2021: A Summary

November 11, 2021 by Liz Carter

Coaching 2021: A Summary

Time is such a powerful force, it even trickles into the coaching world. There was a time when a coach could skate by through working with clients, without any formal education! If you are already certified as a coach currently, you know how crazy this is. But this was how things were 20 or more years ago.

But advances in coach training do not come at us as quickly as advances in other areas, say, for example, science. Changes in the coaching profession come from either different techniques and training and how coaching services are delivered, or they are changed by events like our current pandemic. This results in a shift, whereby millions of people are forced to – literally – look inward at their own health. But the pandemic has also slowed down the already trickle speed of coach training. We didn’t really get to learn too much in 2020 apart from COVID19, we were focused on survival. But now that 2021 is nearly over, we’ve learned a few things in hindsight. [Read more…]

Are Toxic Chemicals in Our Food Making Us Fat?

November 9, 2021 by Liz Carter

Are Toxic Chemicals in Our Food Making Us Fat?

One obvious factor is our change in lifestyle. Americans move less in our day-to-day lives than in the past, but we often still eat the same amount of food. These excess calories are then stored away as fat.

Recent research, however, reveals a more complex causality for the obesity epidemic, with science suggesting that environmental chemicals also play a role. Certain chemicals are suspected of altering when, why and how much the body creates fat cells or stores fat in existing cells.

Chemicals found in our food, home and work environments and in the products we buy are among the substances linked to how our body creates or stores fat. [Read more…]

Can a Green Living Lifestyle Help Prevent Disease?

November 2, 2021 by Liz Carter

Can a Green Living Lifestyle Help Prevent Disease?

The truth is, most of us would not be able to afford to pay for medical expenses directly out of pocket but when you combine our current healthcare crisis with this fact, it becomes unsettling to think of what might happen if our client needs treatment for a serious or terminal illness. This is why we have to look at taking our own health and our health care needs into our own hands. This involves becoming our own health advocate, of sorts, and to become familiar with the term “preventative medicine” in the more immediate sense. [Read more…]

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