Most of us pull out our aloe vera gel and liberally apply it when we spend too much time in the sun.  It’s a lifesaver for helping out a bad sunburn, but did you know that aloe vera juice can have all kinds of powerful healing effects on the body? My use of aloe vera juice expanded when my horse coliced.  (Colic in horses is essentially severe abdominal pain that can be life-threatening).  My vet determined that he had an ulcer, and told me to give him aloe vera juice.  We’ve given him about 1/2c a day for 3 years now, off and on, and his tummy is doing great!…

We had a SUPER DUPER GROSS mess in our house last week.  I’ll spare you the details, except to say that it was revolting.  I’ve traveled to 3rd world countries and seen some scary stuff.  This was up there. We needed a super-hero for our drain, and FAST!  I didn’t want to use harsh chemicals because, well, I didn’t.  I also didn’t want to spend $7 on a drain declogger. Vinegar and Baking Soda are my new heros.  As well as my husband, because he cleaned up the SUPER DUPER GROSS MESS. My husband hero dumped about 1 c of baking soda in the toilet, and then followed it by…

While I love having great resources for recovering from sickness, I’m a huge proponent of avoiding getting sick in the first place.  I bet you are too. We all have various methods for staying healthy; a big one for us is taking daily vitamins.  I want to share with you what our daily vitamin routine looks like (and include two others that I’d love for the kids to take, but they won’t cooperate just yet. 🙂  ) I’ve included lots of links because sometimes I want to see exactly what someone else does.  And since I can’t invite most of you over to look in my cupboard, this is the…

A recent study showed that people who eat canned foods have 1,221% higher BPA levels than people who ate fresh foods!   Wow!   I knew canned foods had a potential for spoilage and bacterial contamination, but I still felt like they were rather a safe fallback if the ingredients were decent. Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A refuses to eat canned tomatoes.  He says that the acidity from the tomatoes causes the BPA to leach into the food and ONE tomato can has enough BPA to affect you. BPA is linked to reproductive problems like suppressing sperm counts as well as diseases like heart…

Have you seen the recent headlines about a major baby products company and the ingredients in their baby bath products?   Their products contain both formaldehyde and propylene glycol.   The company promises that their baby products will be carcinogen free in two years – so I’ll check back in two years and see how they’re doing.  In the mean time, I’m finding new shampoo! It’s funny, about a week before the news broke, I had picked up my bottles during the kids’ baths and starting reading the ingredients.  That’s the last time I used them. I expected more, honestly, from this company.  Their entire marketing strategy is all about safe…

Did you know that some of our favorite organic brands have been purchased by big corporations?  I know this probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but part of me feels “sold out” by some of these brands.  Reports are now surfacing of GMO contamination in some organic brands, and the USDA is now pushing to water down the organic standards.   One of the most disturbing to me is the inclusion of GMO’s that are being included in ORGANIC baby food and every single organic baby formula on the market, except for one. Read more in Dr. Mercola’s article, “Beware of These Organic Brands” and learn how you can help…

Did you see the recent headlines screaming about women increasing their mortality rates if they take supplements?   That would definitely be alarming – if it was true!! The Iowa Women’s study is junk science at its best.  A 9th grade science student would have received an F on this report if they’d reported the same conclusions! First flaw – no one looked to see if the women had any underlying health problems.  People with health issues generally take more supplements than those without any.   Life Extensions explains, “If a woman was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and began ingesting 40 supplements daily, but died six months later,…

Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin that is crucial for our normal health and development.  Because it’s water soluble, you can’t overdose on it.  Some doctors are even seeing results in treating cancer with high amounts of Vitamin C given intravenously! Vitamin C works well in shortening the duration of colds, as well as helping build a strong immune system so we can skip the cold entirely! You can get Vitamin C from foods like oranges, but that’s getting trickier these days with our declining food quality.  Your best bet is to take a Vitamin C supplement.  Read the ingredient label carefully to make sure there aren’t any nasty…