Author: Nerd

Why Every Woman Needs a Bidet

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When it comes to personal hygiene save money and the environment with a Toilet Sprayer.

There’s environmental, and personal health benefits from using water over toilet paper for personal hygiene. Every day the average American uses 60 sheets of toilet paper, and 800 million tons a year. Forests are being destroyed to keep up with this demand. One economical way to cut down would be the use of a bidet.

The bidet isn’t standard in American homes, but you can find them all over the world. The bidet was invented by a French furniture maker around the 1870’s mainly to improve the aristocratic lifestyle.

It’s environmentally friendly because it uses about an 8th of a gallon of water when in use. Though people mainly connect the use of trees when making toilet paper. They usually forget the water usage during the production process. It takes 37 gallons of water to produce a roll of toilet paper. Overall you end up saving money, the environment, and lowering household waste.

Some health benefits are, the water replaces the paper that can destroy the skin around the bottom due to heavy wiping and friction. This greatly improves your chances of not getting hemorrhoids. Bidet’s also help with urinary tract infections in women since a popular cause is from wiping fecal matter too close to the urethra.

Side note, This may not be fun in the winter if you cannot adjust the temperature.

Another use of a toilet sprayer is to clean off cloth diapers and toilet rags. Not everyone is ready to leave toilet paper behind, but aren’t comfortable with the paper use. They usually gravitate toward cloth rags. These rags get soiled just like the cloth diaper insert. One-way to prep them for washing machines is with a pressurized sprayer. This sprayer guarantees you don’t touch poop.

Side note, Newborn breastfed babies poop is water-soluble.

Lastly, one final use would be to rinse off or hose down your pet in colder months. Animals don’t like being cold just as much as humans. That being said, during cold months when you wash your pet inside, the pressure controlled sprayer is great for washing off soap and dirt.

What goes into making toilet paper:

Wood Pulp
Chemicals
Water

Question: Knowing this information now, would you still stick with toilet paper or, are you more likely to install a sprayer or toilet seat in your home? Please give your opinions below in comments.

Here’s a sprayer I highly recommend:

Purrfect Zone

You can easily control water pressure from a gentle rinse to a strong jet spray to clean up dirty messes easily and it makes cleaning cloth diapers a breeze. The kit includes both wall and toilet mount options and the sprayer can be mounted on either side of the toilet making it ideal for both right or left-handed people. The kit has all accessories you need to install yourself, including plumber’s tape.

All parts of the kit are designed and constructed to the highest standards with steel to prevent water leakage and ensure that the sprayer will last. The flexibility of the hose makes it possible for the user to get the sprayer at the perfect angle for them. The best part, the sprayer comes with lifetime warranty. PurrfectZone wants to make sure their customers are happy and satisfied.

Purchase $38.00

If environmental impact and household waste is your concern, I encourage getting this toilet sprayer and lowering your carbon footprint one smart purchase at a time. 

 

We eat Sterilized Bananas ???

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Bananas are a starchy, sweet botanical berry and edible fruit that come from flowering banana plants. I always wondered about seeds in the banana. Are there any seeds, are they so tiny that they’re edible, what’s the real deal? In my ignorance, I actually believed there were tiny seeds that were edible, like strawberries. With my logic, I assumed the seeds are there, they’re just too tiny to see, I figured how else do they grow? How do you grow a plant without seeds? I’m guessing the same way you grow ginger or potatoes.

The older bananas are considered wild. The wild banana mostly consists of inedible seeds and a starchy pulp. Many cultures boiled it before eating. I can understand why the wild banana was replaced by the hybrid sterilized banana, and I can also see the consequences being a less nutritious fruit. The first bananas were discovered around 10,000 years ago in the Papau New Ginea area.

The most recent banana is the Cavendish-grown from a corm, shown here next to a wild banana. They are a split of two wild banana varieties; musa akuminata and musa balbisiana. They aren’t grown from seeds but from a bulb or rhizome. You plant the bulb in the ground and it splits. The banana plant is considered a plant because it’s not a tree. Now we have what we call a sterilized banana with undeveloped seeds yummy.

Some other bananas are the musa velutina, or the hairy pink banana. The peels are like firm springs that come right off the banana. They are a bit smaller and filled with seeds about 30 – 40 to each one. The taste is similar to the modern popular banana but a bit tangy.

Say, “Thank You” and Shut up

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Compliments are a simple effortless way to brighten someone’s day. It’s also an activity that starts off challenging. My favorite quote is, “Being nice is one of the hardest things in the world.” Compliments are equally not as easy to receive as they are to give. It makes me wonder why? But only a nice person can give and receive compliments graciously hence making handling compliments hard. Why?

Compliments can start with confidence. People with low self-esteem have more doubt and are less likely to accept compliments and praise. They usually end up answering in a weird or awkward way other than appreciation because they don’t feel deserving. We sometimes second guess a compliment. Accepting compliments doesn’t mean you’re arrogant or conceited, they actually increase your self-esteem on average by 10%.

You can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to a compliment.

Compliments are like paying it forward, it’s equally beneficial to the giver and receiver. The better you get at receiving compliments, the more it will build you up, and the easier it becomes for you to give compliments to others.

What we learned today; Give more detailed compliments, make more friends, have a better life, be more secure. 

You should know Human trafficking

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Let’s talk about the third international crime industry behind drugs and guns. Human trafficking is the use of coercion, fraud, or force to compel another person to labor. Trafficking happens when need meets greed, but to go deeper it happens when workers are excluded from protections and denied rights. Human Trafficking better known as slavery is basically the new slavery or when it comes to sex, the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children. We also like to give it acronyms to make it not sound so bad. What is the true value of a human life? Unfortunately, Numbers don’t lie;

30 billion dollars are generated yearly from human trafficking

45 million USD spent a year on online sex trafficking in the US

35 million enslaved globally

300,000 children at risk for human trafficking a year

200,000 dollars Per year is what a pimp makes for 1 victim

13 The average age of a child prostitute

100 USD is the average cost of a U.S. slave

1 million slaves are moved across international borders on the black market 70 percent being women and 50 percent being children

60,000 is estimated to be the yearly amount of victims that die from abuse, disease, torture, and neglect.

11,000 USD is the average price to buy a child as a suicide bomber

This is a worldwide epidemic covered by news of many different countries:

Ex: Sex Trafficking in Bosnia

       Sex Tourism in Thailand.

       Human Trafficking in a New Jersey hair salon

       Suicide Bombers in the middle east

Human trafficking isn’t just found in the sex industry. It’s found in fields, mines, the food industry, the clothing industry, and the technological industry. Humans are sold as slaves for many reasons:

  1. Labor – (Main Reason)
  2. Forced Sex – (Main Reason)
  3. Organs
  4. Babies
  5. War soldiers (for armed conflicts)
  6. Suicide Bombers (Yes you can buy a child to sit in as your suicide bomber)

Ninety percent of women involved in prostitution were victims of child sex abuse or raped by the age of 18. Children that are getting prostituted and enslaved are usually by their own family members. They start getting swapped out for money, rent drugs, favors. A lot of these children are Caucasian girls in the United States. The internet has greatly increased human trafficking. They can use the Internet to filter out girls by so many categories. It’s like yelp for human trafficking. What does a sex buyer look like? I know your thinking of shady men driving through the street at night looking for prostitutes but, envision men in suits, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and your neighbors.  

I’ll leave off with this bit of knowledge; there are more slaves today in 2018 than ever in history. How is that for evolution? How did this happen? This is a huge problem that is quite easy to ignore. What can we do? It’s up to all of us to learn everything we can about the labor and supply chains of the products that we support.

The Oil Pulling Effect

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Oil pulling is an age-old remedy hailing from Ayurvedic medicine. Where one is using natural substances to clean and detoxify gums and teeth. It’s great for overall gum health and a natural teeth whitener. Certain oils combinations can also help fight harmful bacteria in the mouth.

Dr. Bruce Fife, whose written an entire book on oil pulling, says the oil acts as a cleanser.

“When you put it in your mouth and work it around your teeth and gums it “pulls” out bacteria and other debris. As simple as it is, oil pulling has a very powerful detoxifying effect. Our mouths are the home to billions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other parasites and their toxins. Candida and Streptococcus are common residents in our mouths. It is these types of germs and their toxic waste products that cause gum disease and tooth decay and contribute to many other health problems including arthritis and heart disease. Our immune system is constantly fighting these troublemakers. If our immune system becomes overloaded or burdened by excessive stress, poor diet, environmental toxins and such, these organisms can spread throughout the body causing secondary infections and chronic inflammation, leading to any number of health problems.”

The basic idea is that oil is swished in your mouth for 15 – 20 mins each day helping to improve oral health. The idea is the oil is able to cut through plaque and remove toxins without disturbing the teeth or gums. It was first introduced to the United States in the early 1990s by a medical doctor named Dr. F. Karach, who used it with success in his medical practice.

Most sources do agree that oil pulling is safe but debate how effective it is. I can say I have been oil pulling for about a year, and it has tremendous results. I enjoy how easy it is to do during the day, allowing me to easily multi-task.

Some Good Oil Pulling Recipes are:

1 drop oregano oil substitute for (peppermint, clove, and cinnamon)

1 tsp. sesame oil

1 tsp. coconut oil

1 drop oregano oil

1 tblsp. coconut oil

1 drop oregano oil

1 tblsp. sesame oil

Coconut and sesame oils are natural, antibacterial, antimicrobial.

Instructions:

1. Drink 1 cup of water on an empty stomach.

2. Put 1-2 teaspoons of oil into the mouth.

3. Swish around 20 minutes.

Timing is key, you want the oil there long enough to break through plaque, but not long enough that your body starts to re-absorb toxic mix. The oil will become thick and milk as it mixes with saliva and toxins. When you first start 20 minutes may be really hard to do. When I started I worked my way up 5 mins. every week.

4. Spit oil into the trash can. Spitting in the sink and toilet can lead to clogged pipes. Swallowing it would completely defeat the purpose of trying to detox. You would be ingesting all of the toxins.

5. Rinse well with warm water.It’s better to swish the water like you did the oil. This will get any remaining bacteria out of your gums and teeth. If you swish hard enough you may feel like you just drank peroxide. That’s perfectly normal. It may even be better to swish with salt water.

6. Brush your teeth

See More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elyK-UjPXKE

Exploring Natural Sweeteners : Maple Syrup

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One of our biggest issues as humans is our consumption of sugar or our addiction. On average we consume way too much sugar daily. Some great alternatives to help curve the habit, with moderation is maple syrup. Maple syrup was produced way before European settlers came to America. It holds cultural significance to many aboriginals and native American tribes. They viewed maple sap as a source of energy and nutrition.

Canada produces 30 liters of maple syrup a year, which leads to 80 percent of the world production. The maple leaf is Canada’s natural symbol which is featured on their flag. Maple syrup is graded by how much light passes through it. Make sure depending on the color that it’s not mixed with filler syrups like High Fructose, or Rice Syrup. Rice syrup is a common filler in honey.

Since maple is an unrefined natural sweetener, it contains higher levels of beneficial nutrients and antioxidants.

 Some health benefits are:

  • Rich in antioxidants properties, 65 to be exact, that can help delay or prevent diseases caused by free radicals such as cancer, or diabetes.
  • Protects against various cardiovascular disorders
  • Helps maintain a healthy heart
  • Aids in maintaining male reproductive health.
  • Boosts Immune system
  • Fights Inflammatory Diseases
  • May Help Protect Against Cancer
  • Helps Protect Skin Health

 In all plants, a sort of sugar is naturally present. Plants’ primary sugar is a product of photosynthesis that occurs when the sunshine comes into contact with the plant’s leaves. Sucrose is the most prevalent type of sugar found in maple syrup (at least 66 percent of the sugar in maple syrup must be sucrose in order for it to be considered pure).

Maple syrup is considered, by many, to be a “green choice.” This is due to the fact that a tree is not harmed when the sap is extracted. Keep in mind, the sap is the core ingredient, this is indeed a green choice. Maple syrup is quite popular in the vegan lifestyle. This choice has proven to be an excellent substitute for the ordinary sugar. Pure maple syrup has been called the complete and total “green choice.” Many individuals have named this is a green option. It ought to be noted, maple syrup does not harm the environment. This is a natural item.

Don’t Lock Your Knees! Are You standing Correctly?

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Are you standing correctly with relaxed knees?

Most people carry tension in their muscles. When you’re constantly contracting your muscles you’re also reducing the blood flow throughout the area and compresses joints, the muscles cross. Compression of the joints can lead to decreased mobility, friction, misuse of the limb, and potentially arthritis. 

One should be able to stand without clenching butt cheeks together or gripping our front thigh quadriceps muscles.Your legs must be straight in order to manage the tension. Just because the leg is straight doesn’t mean it’s locked. Your leg is “locked” when the quad muscles are contracted.

There are people who are able to hyperextend their knees, it looks like this.

There are people who stand with constant knee flexion (bent knees). It looks like this.

If the quads are relaxed, you should be able to contract your quads (notice your knee cap lift up) and return to the relaxed state.  If you can’t tell if your knee caps are lifting, more than likely your quads are already in a contracted state (this means that your patella is compressed against your femur, creating decreased mobility and friction which can lead to arthritis).

It sounds pretty simple to just relax your kneecaps, but if quad tension has become an unconscious habit for you, or if you’ve been unknowingly using your quads to keep yourself from falling over when you stand, relaxing the knees won’t be as easy as it seems.

Your four quadriceps muscles are designed to activate equally and at the same time when you straighten your lower leg, but in our culture, we’ve acquired alignment faults that leave the femur bone internally rotated and our pelvis misaligned. This changes the ability of the quadriceps to activate properly.

When your pelvis is not aligned, it changes your uses of the appropriate muscles for walking and standing, so your quads pick up the slack.

The quadriceps can get so used to staying on and being recruited for extra work that it becomes difficult to figure out how to turn them off, even when your brain is asking them too! This is where people may get a lot of spasms. 

See What’s In Your Deodorant

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After a trip to Africa, I discovered something interesting. It’s common for people in Africa to not use deodorant. Deodorant is more of a chemical luxury, meant to guard you against the smell of the breakdown of the bacteria caught in your pits from perspiration. If you keep your underarms clean and control your hair growth your “pits” shouldn’t have much of a smell.

Let’s look at the list of chemical ingredients in an average deodorant:

  • Aluminum Compounds.
  • Parabens
  • Steareths
  • Triclosan
  • Propylene Glycol
  • TEA and DEA
  • Artificial Colors

Aluminum is the ingredient in antiperspirants that clogs your pores and prevents sweating. People are exposed to aluminum in some cosmetics, antiperspirants, and pharmaceuticals such as antacids and buffered aspirin. When it enters the body it accumulates in the liver, brains, lungs, kidneys, and thyroid where it competes with calcium for absorption and can affect skeletal mineralization. Aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer’s and estrogen hormonal imbalance.

Parabens are preservatives for beauty products and pharmaceuticals. They are used to preserve products so they have a shelf life of many years. As you may not know all things eventually expire. The more preservatives you put in something, the longer it takes. But the less effective it is holistically. Parabens are said to mimic the hormone estrogen, which would leave anyone with a hormonal imbalance. The biggest concerns from parabens are endocrine destruction, reproductive toxicity, and its association with prostate and breast cancer. 

Parabens can be found in most common beauty products such as;

Soaps, shampoos, hair conditioners, dyes, lotion, shaving cream, waxes, household cleaning products, ointments, eyeliners, mascara, eye shadows, blush, makeup, foundation, sunscreen, and fragrance.

Steareths is a synthetic polymer. It isn’t as bad as the other ingredients, it basically weakens harsh chemicals while simultaneously producing carcinogens and dioxanes. Steareths is found most often in eye creams, anti-aging skin care products, and moisturizers, but has been used to a lesser degree in many other forms of cosmetics.

Triclosan is a pesticide according to the FDA. It kills bacteria during the manufacturing process as well as the bacteria on your skin, which is the main cause of odor. The carcinogenic gas, chloroform is made when Triclosan is combined with water.

This ingredient can be found in hundreds of consumer products ranging from antibacterial soaps, deodorants, toothpaste, cosmetics, fabrics, toys, and other household and personal care products. 

Here’s a full list of brands that use: Triclosan

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/antibacterials/triclosan/products-containing-triclosan

If used every day, Propylene Glycol can cause damage to your heart, liver, and central nervous system. It is a popular skin irritant, especially if you are sensitive. Propylene glycol can be harmful at as small a percentage as 2%, yet deodorants generally have a high dose of 50%.

Surprisingly this ingredient can be found in antifreeze and some processed foods, what crazy extremes. You can also find it in many medications, and electronic cigarettes.

Triethanolamine (TEA) and diethanolamine (DEA) are chemicals that seep into your skin through pores, enter the blood stream, and directly affect the kidneys and liver.

In conclusion, the point here is to read and know what ingredients are being used in your products. Don’t just look at the marketing that says, clean, fresh, or natural. In some way some of these toxic chemicals are natural. But not natural for your body. So the only preventative measure is knowing, and being familiar with these terms.

This article is written a source of information. I encourage you to read more about the topic as everyone is different. Everyone’s body and immune system respond to chemicals and toxins differently. What may cause a disease in one person may not cause a disease in another. You can’t avoid everything you’re exposed to, as always the best solution is to detox.

Organic Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe

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Ice Cream is always a fun treat. As long as it’s enjoyed in moderation and s made with as many organic ingredients as possible. Remember the fewer toxins you put in your body, the less your body has to get rid of them.

Here’s a recipe below. 

Amount Ingredients
2 cups organic cream or colostrum
1 cup organic milk
To taste organic agave (sweetener)
To taste organic vanilla
2 eggs organic egg yolks (optional)
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa or cacao powder
Optional Cacao nibs
1/2 tsp Cinnamon


Put ingredients in a bowl; whisk to mix, pour into ice cream maker, turn on for 25 minutes (to taste), and you’re done.

Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc. – Bennington, NH Company Highlight

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Another Brand to make an appearance at Sustainable Brands was this cool paper company from New Hampshire. Monadnock is a family owned an operated business with nearly 200 years in papermaking. They provide a diverse range of paper products including technical/specialty papers, premium printing, and packaging papers and melt blown non-woven media for leading brands worldwide.

With a passion for the environment and ingenuity, Monadnock is turning ideas into reality.

Across all levels of our organization, we believe there’s a lot to be said for doing the right thing — simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Socially and environmentally responsible investments in technology, processes, and products will deliver value to our customers and our community.

Monadnock Sustainability Commitment – http://mpm.com/about/sustainability/

Stewardship

We’re proud to be Forest Stewardship Council certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

All of our products are manufactured carbon neutral (VERs) using Green-e certified 100% renewable electricity (RECs). Monadnock is an EPA Green Power Partner, EPA Wastewise Partner, and EPA SmartWay Transport Partner.

You can tell a lot about a company by the company it keeps.  We have been recognized by leading environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and have earned the Governors Award for Pollution Prevention as well as the Cornerstone Award from New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility for our environmental efforts.

But awards and recognition aren’t why we do it. We do it because we live here. We do it because we raise our families here. And we do it because we would like to leave our beautiful area of New Hampshire as pristine as we found it nearly two centuries ago.

 

Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc. is committed to responsible stewardship of the environment by:

  • Promoting environmental awareness among our customers, suppliers, converters, employees and local residents.
  • Providing environmentally sustainable products and services to our customers.
  • Maintaining our record of compliance with environmental regulations and standards.
  • Continuing to invest in research to determine innovative ways to reduce waste and to efficiently use natural resources.
  • Choosing materials with minimal environmental impacts during the design and development of new products.
  • Encouraging legislators and state officials to develop sound environmental policies and regulations.
  • Senior management is committed to continual improvement in pollution prevention and in reducing environmental impacts identified in our 14001 Environmental Management System