7 Steps To A Super Natural Home And Life

Beth Greer thought she was leading a healthy life. But after a lifetime of eating right and exercising regularly, at age 49, she was diagnosed with a 5-centimeter tumor in her chest. The tumor, although eventually discovered to be benign, caused pain in her shoulder, which radiated down her arm and made two of her fingers numb.

The three top thoracic surgeons Greer consulted all told her that surgery was the only option. "They all agreed I needed surgery," says Greer. "They just could not agree on where. One thought he should cut under the collar bone, another under the armpit, and another wanted to remove a rib from my back," she says.

What all three specialists did agree on, however, was that the surgery was risky. Because there were so many nerves in the area, Greer could potentially lose feeling in her right hand if one of the nerves was cut. Greer, who has a strong belief in the body's ability to heal itself, weighed her options and decided to go another route.

For six months, she followed an all-organic diet, ate raw food, did an internal cleanse and cleaned up the everyday chemicals found in her home environment. When she went in for a thermoscan one year later, there was no evidence of any mass.

Last week, Greer's book, Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home, and Planet One Room at a Time (Rodale Books, 20090), was released. In it, she gives relevant research and practical advice on some simple ways to clear the chemicals that go in you, on you and around you:

1. Eat organic or pesticide-free foods whenever possible. One 1997 study from Mt. Sinai Medical Center found that women with high levels of the popular crop pesticide DDE in their blood were four times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with lower levels. Two vegetables Greer says to go organic on all the time include tomatoes and potatoes.

2. Use chemical-free body-care products and cosmetics. Greer says consumers need to read the label on these types of products much more carefully. Watch out for parabens, as well as the chemicals DEA (used as a foaming agent in shampoo and baby wash) and BHT (used as a solvent in lipstick and nail polish). For more information on how the cosmetics you use rate, go to www.safecosmetics.org.

3. Clean your house with non-toxic, natural cleaning products. Try vinegar, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Avoid chlorine bleach, strong solvents and ammonia whenever possible. "It's trial and error as to what will work," says Greer. "You may need to use some elbow grease, but the trade off is that you're not using harsh chemicals." Clorox and Shaklee (among others) both have green cleaning products.

4. Avoid volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are found in vinyl wallpaper and floor coverings, new carpeting and paint. VOC's can often be identified by their plastic smell - reminiscent of a beach ball. Companies such as Bed Bath and Beyond and Target are starting to offer products with low or no VOCs.

5. Sleep on a mattress made from untreated, non-toxic natural materials. If you can't afford a new mattress, buy a wool and organic cotton mattress topper. Natural mattresses are sold at J.C. Penney and IKEA.

6. Switch to sheets and towels made with bamboo or organic cotton. Regular cotton is one of the most intensively sprayed crops in the world. By some estimates, cotton accounts for 25% of all pesticides used in the U.S. Check out Macy's and Pottery Barn, both of which sell organic cotton.

7. Get rid of non-stick, Teflon cooking pans. When preheated, Teflon emits potentially toxic fumes that have been known to kill pet birds. Use cast-iron, stainless steel, enamel or glass cookware. Martha Stewart and Cuisinart both sell a green line of cookware.

Want to find out how supernatural your home is? Go to www.supernaturalmom.com and take the quiz.

Karen Leland is author of the recently released books Watercooler Wisdom: How Smart People Prosper In the Face of Conflict, Pressure and Change and Time Management In An Instant:60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day. She is the co-creator of a new line of Productivity Pads from Time Tamer™ and the co-founder of Sterling Consulting Group. For questions, comments or to book Karen to speak at your next event, please e-mail [e-mail].

Comments

[timezone]

Thanks for sharing that info, Ms. Leland. I think most people really want a more natural environment and are concerned with toxicity, but just aren't sure where to start. This is a great beginning.

[pdxoutsider]

Also:

Recent years have placed numerous figures before the public eye whose claims of personal accomplishment, extraordinary happenstance, or special knowledge did not prove to be true. Cases in point: James Frey, Herman Rosenblat, Kevin Trudeau.

Greer's assertion of authority stems from having allegedly reabsorbed a five-centimeter benign tumor after a week at a value-added holistic spa and six months of nutritional and environmental micromanagement. Greer has made an extraordinary claim of self-healing, and should provide extraordinary evidence in the form of public statements from her physicians and the results of her thermal imaging, plus whatever other tests may be judged conclusive.

This corroborating data would fit on a single page of her shiny new website; that it is absent implies at worst that Greer is knowingly and crassly targeting a market who is unlikely to factcheck her statements, and at best that she herself is so uncritical a thinker that she ran away with the first test result that told her what she wanted to hear, and now she wants the rest of us to join her down the slope. If I'm making this judgment based on incomplete information, it's only because Greer herself has invited skepticism by omission.

(I'll grant this much: she could have simply received marketing advice that middle America doesn't care to read that sort of sciencey-evidencey-proofey stuff, in which case she's not quite off the hook, but shame on the rest of us, too.)

[JillinPittsburgh]

I was losing faith in the our society's intelligence as I read through these comments until I came to yours, pdxoutsider. Thank goodness someone out there can see through this hogwash.
Why do so many females believe in factoids, junk science and the supernatural rather than facts, math and science? As a woman it shames me.
Shame on women's magazines and talk show hosts who promote this stuff.

[GrumpyOldrePublican]

I'm one conservative who doesn't doubt that we've only just begun to realize the potential damage our convenient way of life will impact on us. so what's a good liberal to do when cotton is the largest benefactor of pesticides & the alternative organic cotton uses up to 2500 gallons of water to make one measly T-shirt. (I guess hemp is an option if you could get US on your side).

so it seems your dilemma (not withstanding economic costs); SAVE yourself OR the environment???

good luck w/ that...

[pdxoutsider]

"SAVE yourself OR the environment???"

False dichotomy. It's the process of finding another way (instead of a non-functional, committee-compromised "middle way") that is taking so much time and expense. We should have started rationally looking for these solutions two generations ago; if the hippies had been more plugged into policy and less plugged into their bongs and each other, maybe we'd already have a hybrid grid, a coal moratorium, and more intelligent ag policy.

To speak to your previous point, yes, hemp is an option, and maybe if the prison-stuffing disaster of the War On Drugs finally takes a dirt nap (by having its funding withheld if by no other mechanism) we can start reaping the economic benefits of an above-board hemp industry. If anything's going to rival cotton as the globe's number one fiber, though, it's bamboo. It's a mostly self-sustaining crop (Ever try to get rid of it once it's in your ground? It JUST. WON'T. DIE.), the shoots are edible, and it's naturally antimicrobial. What's not to like?

[pdxoutsider]

Let's look at that book (which I just examined) through a different lens:

The co-owner of unqualified non-information peddler The Learning Annex has compiled a body of largely unsourced and unattributed factoids that uses personal anecdotes and appeal to the naturalistic fallacy to justify shopping and eating habits that her target audience is already engaged in. It's a two-hundred page reassurance to media-saturated, anxiety-prone Gen X moms that the buckets of money they spend so they don't have to eat like the working class is a justified expense, signed and sealed with cover blurbs by self-help vampires Deepak Chopra and John Gray.

This book is lifestyle merchandise for kneejerk antiglobalists and health trend victims. If it has any value, it's as a one-stop guide to all the pseudoscientific vagaries the media should be debunking instead of endorsing, including "toxins" and the evils of "frankenfoods". You're better off doing your own research and following the science, wherever it points.

[kayrobi03]

Beth Greer's Book Super Natural Home highlights how pervasive toxins are in our immediate environment, and serves as a survival guide to our well being.
I have not found, in one place, the volume of critical information that Beth has compiled.
I can not help but to think how many of us are truly aware of the extent of detrimental products that are in our homes.
Congratulations Beth on an eye opening guide and expose to the harmful environment in our homes.
JOB WELL DONE!!!!!

[arostolder]

I read the super natural home article by beth greer and found it to be an eye opener and a very must read for people that have youngsters. getting a good start will set the path for a healthy future....

[PatA]

I think that the baking soda/vinegar paste is fantastic and I use it daily. However, when people talk about bamboo sheets and flooring, etc. that leaves me shaking my head and wondering what is going on with other people in similar situations. I wash with cold water and line dry my clothes. I have a compost pile and grow as many vegetables as possible. Organic produce is very limited at HEB (my grocery) and the prices give me shivers. Growing my vegetables is something that I learned growing up. I don't eat processed food period.
When an organic mattress cover is too expensive.....what do we do?
Have you priced organic cosmetics recently? Lipstick prices make the dollar store stuff more appealing.
I laughed out loud when I saw you suggesting Martha Stewart and Cuisinart cookware. (I'm old enough to know that I don't have to have Martha for everything. However, her glitter is fantastic and priced reasonably.) A set of either line of cookware would pay my truck insurance for a year
I am no less committed to saving Mother Earth than, say, Mark Cuban. (I like him...) Thank you for checking in.

[PatA]

I don't know why I always read these guides to "greener, safer, smarter" lifestyles. I have yet to see one article that will help people with an income of less than $30k. Not everyone, that reads Huffpost, lives in NYC with a job at AIG......
Generally, I can never afford these "fix-your-life" solutions.

[Karen Leland - Huffpost Blogger]

I take your point, since especially in these times, regardless or where we live, I think we are all spending our money more carefully and wisely.

What I particularly liked about Greer's book and some of her suggestions I put in the article, was that they took into account, lower cost solutions.

For example vinegar and baking soda as cleaning agents are cheaper than commercial cleaning products and even Safeway and Cost Co carry organic produce at a price not far from commercially grown food. I personally have found many fair priced items that fall into these categories at Ikea and J.C. Penny. FYI, I don't live in New York and thank goodness I don't work for AIG :-)

[prog]

I don't know what Safeway you are shopping at...but organic grown produce is 40% to 300% the price of non-organic at mine.

This is a deal breaker for people trying to feed families. I buy organic when I can afford it. I also use some non-commercial cleaners.

The sticky part is that buying organic and "clean" items causes the price to go down...but it's kind of a Catch 22.

[prog]

I had one more comment: I don't use non-stick cookware. It's patently dangerous. My father was a chemist and was adamant about that. My favorite cookware is a steel wok that I've had for 20 years and a $10 cast iron skillet that I use for almost everything.

[MsIrisMG]

Especially since VOC-free paint costs $30/gallon, just not feasible.

[garagewriter]

Yes but you can paint a room for $30 and you won't do it again for another 10 years.

[garagewriter]

I recently came across a website which cited how currently banned drugs were commonly used in standard over the counter medicines: anyone for Heroine cough drops, or cocaine throat tablets, morphine based baby-soothing medicine or the benzedrine inhalers handed out to airline passengers in the 1950's? http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/preprohibition.htmm). So what's my point?

I have not read the book, but Beth Greer is obviously prepared to point out that, similarly, a few things we do in our modern world may well be considered crazy in hindsight - like covering our foods and maybe the walls of our house in chemicals. I'm prepared to be open to that. If you take away anything from this article surely that is enough. No need to be defensive but just what are we accepting as normal?

Some of the changes will come at a cost, but I think she's saying even a few changes may end up being better choices for your family. We can all make those decisions for ourselves and it's true that is much harder for lower income families especially in areas where there is no access to farmers markets or cheap organic produce but that's no excuse for carrying on the way we are. The more we are aware, the more the entire market will eventually have to change and maybe then our descendants won't be so ready to scoff at our choices.

In the meantime, just pick your own poison.