One of the biggest complaints I hear from women about health is they have no idea where to start. It can be incredibly overwhelming if you don’t have much knowledge of health.
There are some very easy, cheap and simple swaps you can make today to benefit your health.
Here are 5 things I did at the beginning of my health journey that didn’t break the bank and got me on the right foot.
- Choose Natural Deodorant
I can’t even remember the last time I used Dove or Secret because I’m pretty sure in high school or early college that was the first thing I kicked out on my health journey.
The main reason is that I learned about how almost all mainstream deodorants have parabens, triclosan, phthalates, propylene glycol, and aluminum in them. All these ingredients have been linked to cancer and reproductive issues.
Our armpits are a very unique area. For one, they are incredibly close to our hearts as well as our breasts. They also have over 20 lymph nodes in them. A lymph node is a small bean-shaped structure that is part of the body’s immune system. Lymph nodes help fight disease by filtering substances that travel through the lymphatic fluid.
Just think, if our skin can absorb a good amount of what we put on it, and every day we are rubbing toxic chemical on our armpits where we have all those lymph nodes, and then our armpits get warm and our pores open even more, taking in even greater amounts of those toxins what that is doing to our bodies.
It’s why I get incredibly frustrated when it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month and hardly there is any talk about switching to natural deodorants.
Removing generic deodorant is one of the best health swaps you can make today.
The biggest issue with most natural deodorants is smelling a little but too … natural haha. I have tried MANY and most have failed. Hands down my favorite deodorant I have ever used is Magsol in rose. It has incredibly clean ingredients and works great for me.
When you can, try to even skip natural deodorant though. The cleaner we eat and the less we wear deodorant, the less we should need it. It’s good to let our armpits “air out” and not have anything around them.
2. Ditch the Fragrance
I remember the days of Freeze, scented candles and plugins, but gone are those days.
Artificial fragrance are big endocrine disruptors, which means they are chemical compounds that interfere with the normal functioning of the endocrine system and the reproductive and other biological processes regulated by it.
We can think we’re smelling clean linen through a plug in or candle, but really it’s a chemical cocktail that when you smell it, your body needs to detox.
Dr Axe did a great post on the dangers of fake scents and how they affect our bodies’ negativity.
Once you remove these artificial fragrances, when you smell them again you will have such a greater sensitivity to them.
If you want a candle, choose non-scented. Even better would be bee’s wax candles. Bee’s wax candles burn longer and can help put toxins out of the air.
If you want a nice smell, choose an essential oil diffuser. I like Eden Essential oils to diffuse. Even essential oils can be fake so be sure to find a decent brand you trust if you want to diffuse them often.
3. Drink Real Coffee Cream
For some people, this might not even be an issue, but this fake coffee cream in early high school was one of the biggest culprits of my stomach issues.
Almost any coffee cream that is flavored is flavored artificially. My first health paper in college was on the dangers of aspartame, which is the ingredient used in many artificial sweeteners. The studies showing the side effects of artificial sweeteners leave no denying that this is a toxic substance to avoid.
For me, I was having horrible stomach pain and bloating. But even if you don’t have a negative symptom, artificial flavoring contributes to so many health issues down the road and can even contribute to weight gain.
Switch to plain cream like half and half or heavy cream. Better would be organic cream, even better would be a brand that does low-temperature processing like Straus or Kalona. These are mostly sold at more health food stores than general grocery stores.
But the best would be finding a local farmer that sells raw, organic cream. You can find local farms that sell raw milk near you at RealMilk.com.
5. Forget Processed Drinks
Energy drinks, pop or soda as some people incorrectly say (just kidding), sugary teas, packaged coffees and Starbucks flavored lattes, are all some of the worst things we can put in our bodies.
Usually, they are loaded with processed sugar, fake sugar, GMO’s, and additives.
Food Babe, who I have been a fan of for so many years, did a post on what’s in a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks and it’s shocking if you thought it was a sweet little innocent fall treat.
If you are going to choose a soda drink here and there, always choose the most natural form of the drink you can find, such as coke in a glass bottle sweetened with real sugar and not artificial or high fructose corn syrup. Obviously, this isn’t a healthy drink but some people love it so enjoying it here and there isn’t the worst thing.
Forget any form of diet drinks. “Diet” means chemical bomb in my eyes, so you might as well just drink the real thing and forget all that fake stuff added.
In the summer I make vanilla iced lattes all the time with raw milk, organic cold-brew, collagen, raw egg, honey and vanilla. This truly is a nourishing drink instead of all the processed chemicals from the artificially flavored vanilla latte at Starbucks.
For tea, I love making nettle or raspberry leaf infusions. An infusion is simply using loose leaf tea, boiling water, and steeping it in an airtight mason jar overnight.
5. Cook with Real Fat
My mom rarely cooked with vegetable oil. She always used real butter and real olive oil because her Yaiyai (grandma in Greek) taught her most of her cooking skills and real Greeks would never use fake oils.
Today though, maybe women buy “light olive oil”, margarine, vegan butter spread, canola oil, and other vegetable oils because they think it’s healthier. In reality, using fake fats is one of the most fattening things you could do.
Weston A Price did an amazing article on fats and how it’s really these fake fats disguised as health foods are contributing to much of our obesity and other health issues.
Using grass-fed butter like Kerry Gold is an amazing switch from any fake fat. The best would be using organic, raw butter, organic grass-fed tallow, which is rendered beef fat or even organic lard. You can also use a grass-fed organic ghee, which is clarified butter.
Some people think this is crazy and these fats are horrible for you. But really, these fats are what we used for centuries and other countries still use today where people are way healthier than they are in America.
For one, look at France, they use tons of real butter and cream. Italy uses good quality full-fat olive oil daily. And almost all older cultures have always used tallow and lard.
I hope these few little tips helped! Starting small is always better than not starting at all.
Blessing you to be in good health!
-Nikki
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