Is Your Bedroom Keeping You Sick?

Did you know that your bedroom, and what is in it, probably causes more harm to your body than what you are exposed to during the day?  Your body needs to rest and heal at night but many bedrooms are filled with things that deplete the body rather than aid in restoration.




Here are a few simple, free, or inexpensive ways you can change your health--while you sleep:

Power Down:  This is the most important thing you can do in my opinion.  Sleeping without the EMFs (Electric and magnetic fields) from outlets, clock radios, televisions, and all kinds of phones is important for restorative sleep.  We have a device that looks like a garage door opener that we hit to power down the kids' rooms and then another to power down our room.  It is called a "Remote Circuit Cutoff Switch".  It also turns off the wi-fi and our televisions and cable boxes throughout the house.  We save $90 a month on our electric bill by just doing this!  Before we had the remote, Tim would just flip the appropriate switches on our fuse box.  We have a battery operated alarm clock but never need it because our kids are up early every morning.  You can read more about how EMFs affect our body in the websites linked below.

Sleep in complete darkness:  This helps your body produce melatonin, the hormone that gets you sleepy and is an important antioxidant.

Turn off your cellphone:  Or at least keep it in another room far, far away from your sleeping area.  Some phones, like the iPhone, are constantly checking reception so they function like a mini cell tower.  You don't want to sleep next to a cell tower--just google cancer and cell towers.  We have a very cheap, corded phone in our room that is safe to keep next to our bed as we sleep.

Make sure your bed faces north:  This optimizes red blood cell production, yields optimal deepness of sleep, and prolongs REM sleep by 7%.

Sleep with your head away from things like computer stations, smart meters, etc.  It doesn't matter if a bedroom wall is separating you from the item--you are still exposed to radiation.

Avoid metal in your bed:  Headboards or bed springs can act as an energy concentrator.

Avoid using chemicals and fragrances in your bedroom:  Clean your bedroom and bed linens with green products.  Use no VOC paints and buy furniture that is either used (and done off gassing) or made of real wood and stained with natural stains.  Cheap furniture often outgasses formaldehyde. 

Avoid carpet and drapes:  This allows you to keep your room relatively dust free, and carpet is a breeding ground for dust mites.  I will talk more about this in my "Healthy Bed" post next week.
            
I learned about almost everything above from Larry Gust http://gustenviro.com/about_us.html  He is a Building Biologist who came to evaluate our home and educate us on what we could do to make our home a healthier place.

Here are some EMF websites if you are interested in learning more:

http://emf.mercola.com/

http://www.electric-fields.bris.ac.uk/
http://www.electromagnetichealth.org/
http://www.emrpolicy.org/

Next week I'll write a post on everything we've done to make our bed the most comfortable and healthiest one we've ever slept on--even better than the Four Seasons!  We don't sleep as well anywhere else!

Image from http://www.freedigitalpictures.net/