Slightly Crunchy or Slightly Crazy?

I figured I should tell you a little bit about what led me to become slightly crunchy.  After all, my family has decided that I'm just slightly crazy. I believe we have been blessed with an incredible immune system which can fight off many things, but our modern world with its stress and toxins and pesticides and pollen and pollution and everything that bombards us everyday has overwhelmed it.  We've come so far in medical treatment today (a fact for which I am eternally grateful) but these treatments, too, create stress on our bodies.  So, my journey to becoming a crunchy girl started with the idea of how to make my body stronger and helping my family grow as strong as possible.  

To give you some background, I've never really been one to follow convention.  We homeschooled our kids, one through eighth grade and one through ninth.  But when I started writing full time in addition to homeschooling, things changed around our house.  We started eating more convenience foods, more takeout, less vegetables.  I don't like doing things the hard way--whatever could make things easier for me, I did.  Those sheets you put in the washer with the soap, fabric softener and dryer sheet all in one?  I got 'em.  The disinfecting wipes?  Addicted to them.  So convenient.  One swipe and the bathroom counter is clean AND disinfected.  Make a peanut butter sandwich when you could buy them premade and already frozen?  Forget about it!  

So knowing I had to make some changes, I started with a book called Anti-Cancer by David Servan-Schreiber.  He was a doctor diagnosed with brain cancer, had treatment, and when it recurred he was given a very short time to live (he lived 20 more years).  I found his book really interesting about how inflammation works in the body and how different foods work to fight inflammation.  Other integrative medicine doctors, like Dr. Weil, have similar refrains.  But there is clinical research that backs up the pop science.  Articles like this one and this one about aspirin seem to support the theories about inflammation.

I don't believe any one thing causes cancer, or causes us to be particularly vulnerable to disease in general, for that matter.  What I do believe is that we can do a lot of things to help our bodies be as strong as possible.  So here are some things that I am working at changing in our house, in addition to the medical treatment I've already received:

• household products, changing to all natural whenever possible, or making my own
• shampoo, lotion, cosmetics, including toothpaste and deodorant...I'm looking for things with as few ingredients as possible, all natural, no parabens
• meat--we're buying pastured beef, chicken and eggs, locally when possible
• food--changing to an organic, whole food diet
• exercise--at least 30 minutes, six days a week

So there you have the plan.  I'll be filling you in as I go and learn, and believe me, it's a real learning process.  I have as many failures as successes.  Bread doesn't always rise and the kids don't like beets.  But we're making the journey together!