Why Going Low Toxic is Important
As you may know, we live in an extremely toxic world these days making it necessary to be hyper-vigilant in what we choose to allow in our homes and bodies in order to remain healthy and optimize the quality of our lives. Chronic disease including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and neurologic disease is rampant throughout our society and culture. With all the latest and greatest technology and a motivation to make things in large quantities for the least amount of money, the consumerist mentality in our culture has forgotten to consider the toll that all of these products, materials, chemicals, and toxins have on our brain, nervous system, gut, mental and emotional health, and our body and mind in general.
Stress on our body comes in many forms, including toxins and chemicals from our food, water, and environment as well as emotional stress, mental stress, and other physical stressors. All of these stressors take their toll on our wellbeing. As we begin to wrap our brains around what is happening as all of these harmful stressors come in and affect our bodies, we begin to understand more why people get sick when they do and why so many people are suffering from chronic disease in our culture.
Lessen The Burden
Each of us has a bucket that holds a certain capacity before it begins to overflow; this capacity varies from person to person. Once that bucket is maxed out with emotional stress along with chemicals and toxins coming in from our food, water, air, and environment, we are likely in or entering a disease state. We believe that inflammation is at the root of many diseases and that decreasing the inflammation in your body, will allow you to prevent your bucket from overflowing.
In order to prevent this overflow, we each can look at how to prevent toxins from entering our bodies, as well as dealing with the toxins inside that have accumulated over the years. We highly recommend working with a skilled practitioner who specializes in detoxification in order to detox in a safe way.What we focus on here at Low Toxic Lifestyle is preventing as many toxins as possible from entering our bodies in the first place in order to reduce your overall body burden.
The majority of toxins that most of us absorb are from within our homes and therefore, to an extent, we have some control over what we expose ourselves and our family to. Some of the exceptions to this rule are with those who work in highly toxic industries or live in areas of poor air quality and in these situations, it is especially important to decrease toxins in anyway possible and the home is a great place to start. Our hope is that you will use this website as a guide to learn about and minimize toxins and chemicals in your environment in order to optimize your health and well being.
Our Approach
We choose to address this challenge from a position of solutions, focusing on what we can do to empower others to take control of their health and improve their quality of life. We believe that this is a process of simplifying and getting back to the basics in many ways. When possible, we choose products that are made from natural materials and that are sustainable and healthy for the planet.
We want clean food – hold the pesticides, herbicides, and in depth processing and give us nutritient dense real food. We want clean drinking water without heavy metals, VOCs, and the multitude of other toxins and chemicals found in our tap water. And, we want clean fresh air. Unfortunately this is not our reality in today’s world… unless we consciously choose to make it that way.
We whole-heartedly encourage shopping locally or buying from companies that you know have good practices both for their employees and for the planet. With this type of website it is impossible to locate products locally for everyone. We are doing our best to find companies that support environmental health and good ethical practices as well as offering low toxic products. We welcome feedback if you know of companies or find a product that fits this description.
We are a family of four that fell into this work while trying to improve the health of our own home and lives for ourselves and two young kids. During this process, we have done tons of research and have tried out many products to find ones that we truly trust. Since we have put in this time and went through the trial and error process, we would like to share what we have found with you in order to exponentially improve the quality of your life and the planet as a whole.
Any action is better than no action!
We understand that this can feel like a huge undertaking and may be intimidating for some, but it is totally possible to make these changes bit by bit as you are able financially and energetically. Remember anything that you do is decreasing a number of toxins from entering your home and body.
We also know that during the transition time that there can be a drain on your finances; we try to find a combination of the best and most affordable options. There are many modifications and strategies that are quite cheap or even free, so if finances are a concern, we recommend starting with those and we suggest to make these changes as you are able both financially and energetically.
Choose a speed that works for you and remember stressing also causes harm to your body, so take this process in stride and give yourself a break knowing that you are making changes that will impact your health and the health of your family and planet for years to come. Some people do one thing a week or take on one project a month. With cosmetics and food, many people choose to use what they have and switch products when it is time to replace the old one.
Our intention is not to spread fear or cause overwhelm, but rather to empower people through knowledge and make this process as straightforward and as simple as possible. We went through this transformation over time as we learned each piece and it feels amazing to come home to our sanctuary and know that our kids have a safe space to grow, sleep, and play in. Once you go low toxic, you’ll never want to go back!
