Back to My Universe

Hi folks!  When I originally started this blog a long while back, I had planned to make it a regular thing.  But, as with a lot of well-intended ideas, life gets in the way!

I'm back now...for how long?  Who knows!  I'm a wing-it type of girl!  Life's more exciting that way!

Anyway, back to my universe...

Just over a year ago, I had myself a mid-life crisis...at the age of 41?!?  Now this wasn't the normal kind of mid-life crisis that most women seem to experience...I already had THAT one...at age 27...

This was the type of crisis that led me down a path of learning, knowledge, rethinking so much of what I had been taught, rethinking what I thought I knew...what we all think we know...

About the very basics of our everyday lives.  What we eat.  What we drink.  The products we use in our everyday lives.  EVERYTHING!  I didn't just wake up one day and decide to become some kind of crunchy health nut AND I am FAR from that today!  However, I had a few major, eye-opening experiences that led to start doing a little bit of research about a few basic things and once I started, I couldn't stop!  

Here is how my mid-life crisis materialized.

Spring 2009:  6 weeks post-partum.  I end up in the ER with a BP of 190/170.  OB thought I was going to stroke out.  Blood work, thyroid and renal artery ultrasounds ALL come back normal.  BP returns to normal on its own.

Summer 2009:  6 months post-partum my hair started falling out.  Blame it on the hormones, right?

Spring 2010:  Wake up one day and completely out of the blue I start having panic attacks.  Dr blames my age, puts me on anxiety meds and sends my on my way.  Blood work is perfect.  Meds don't work so I suffer through til the Fall when I have a follow-up.  Dr tells me to keep taking meds.  I never set foot back in said Dr's office again.  I go home and start going through my diet.  I was using Splenda in my morning tea and drinking iced tea with Splenda in it.  I googled "Splenda and panic attacks" and WHOA!  I started looking at labels of everything that I was ingesting and the damn stuff (also found on labels as sucralose) is in EVERYTHING!  Even stuff that I was feeding my 1 1/2 year old that I THOUGHT was good for her!  Crap!  I tossed it all out that very day.  I haven't had a panic attack since and I don't take any medication other than an occasional Advil for a headache or cramps.

So I get back to living a normal life without artificial sweeteners and we're all good for a while...Until...

DH brings home a jug of Sunny D.  My DD wants a taste.  Within FIVE minutes of her drinking it, her hands swell up in a red puffy rash and she's screaming and crying that they are on fire!  Flush her system with water and gave her a benadryl.  Hands calm down after a little bit.  No more Sunny D for her!  I come home a few days later and DH tells me that HE had a reaction to it as well.  His fingers kind of cramped up for about 20 minutes and he couldn't even open up a snack cup.  So we dump that shit down the drain and never buy it again!  

There have been other minor incidents of stuff like this happening and with each new incident, I had been spending more and more time researching ingredients and learning....Oh, so much learning!  I'm STILL learning!  There is so much to learn!  At one point, I had to fight the urge to throw out hundreds of dollars of food that I had bought, all the while thinking it was healthy!  Boy was I ever wrong!  We began our journey to leading a more chemical-free life.  We are not perfect but we have made a lot of changes and we continue to do so.  I'm not gonna lie.  It's hard!  I haven't eaten from a fast food joint in a year.  My littlest hasn't either.  We try to eat real food.  Not a ton of processed but we can still do so much better that we are doing!  It's a journey!  I've been working on finding out what works for us.  From food to cleaning products to health and beauty products...we are trying!  I've been dabbling with essential oils with great success!  We are really trying to embrace a more natural way of living!  It's exciting and exhausting at the same time!  

I've taken to creating a fb page where I can share the information that I come across.  I share it there so it's easier for me to find and also easier for those who follow me there!  I will link the page here for those who care to head on over and check things out.   

One last word here today...if you come across something that interests you, here or anywhere else, I would urge you to do your own research and make your own conclusions!  "Let life be a journey, instead of a guided tour"