Sarasota, Here I Come!

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been on PNN as much as usual lately. That’s because I’m working on buying my first house—in Sarasota!  Boy, buying a house is sure time-consuming and stressful, not to mention expensive. There are about 8 million things I still need to do, and I’ve already spent a month or so house shopping and preparing for the move. I’ve basically stopped eating and sleeping, so I’m not the best person to give health advice right now, but I’m hanging in there and it should totally be worth it!

I’ve wanted to live in Florida for more than 20 years. I grew up in Baltimore and I have lived in Norfolk, Va., for the past 14 years. I’m soooo sick of long cold winters. I’ve been thinking about moving for quite a while, but change is hard and coming up with reasons to put it off is easy. For years, I said I was “saving up,”  but since you can never have enough money, it's hard to move beyond that point. But I guess the good buyer’s market, the first-time homeowner’s credit, increasing rent prices, and another impending winter helped kickstart me.

I always planned to move to the warmest part of Florida, like the Ft. Lauderdale-area, but after researching a few different cities, Sarasota turned out to be the most promising option, for now at least. I’ve only seen photos of my soon-to-be-house (I’m supposed to close on November 9th) but my parents flew down and looked at it for me and said it’s pretty nice for my price range.  

My dog, Carly, doesn’t travel well and we don’t like to be apart from one another, so I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until I was staying. But the house has a nice, private fenced-in yard for her, so I think when we finally get there and she sees her new yard (and the house that goes with it), she’ll forget about the ride down.

By coincidence, Sarasota is the best place to buy a house I the nation right now. I didn’t know this until my realtor sent me a link to a Today Show segment on real estate after I had made an offer on the house.

I’m excited because a good friend and former neighbor, who currently lives in Oregon, is planning to move to Tampa in December. It’s about an hour away from Sarasota, and another friend just happened to move to Venice, about 20 minutes away from Sarasota, six months ago or so.

Starting this February, my favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, will start spring training in Sarasota too. Spring training only last for about a month and a half, but it’s still a huge plus for the area!

Of course, since I am “Veganchick,” one of the things I’m most looking forward to exploring and telling you all about is all the vegan-friendly restaurants in the area! According to www.VegSarasota.com, there is an all-vegan Indian restaurant not far from where I’ll be living, and one place even sells vegan donuts! OK, so they don’t count as “health food” but occasional vegan treats never hurt anyone. Yum.

Anyway, if there are any Floridians reading this-- especially anyone in Sarasota--I’d love know any tips you may have. And everyone please keep your fingers and toes crossed that everything goes smoothly!  Once I’m a bit more settled, I’ll be on PNN more frequently and I look forward to writing and reading more blogs again!
   

Have The Blues? Eat Some Greens!

I recently came across this article about how a Mediterranean diet rich in veggies, fruits, and grains can help battle depression. There’s always a study showing something good about these foods and some may seem hard to believe, but I figure if healthy foods can help beat heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc., it’s not too hard to believe that they can battle depression too.

Eating veggies should cheer people up in the long run anyway since I doubt anyone will be happy if they have to go to the hospital because they’ve become sick from eating lots of meat and other unhealthy foods!  

Good health is definitely something to feel good about.

McD's Recruits McMoms For "Health" Promo

“The corporate giant sent a team of "McMoms" - handpicked Big Mac loving parents - to the E. 23 Street eatery to show skeptical New York mothers how their kids can eat at Mickey D's and still keep the calorie count down.”

Sad. This whole article is just sad.

I mean, sure; some McDonald’s options are lower in calories than others, but do we really want to hold them up as nutritious choices? Especially since few people actually adhere to that “in moderation” concept  they like to talk about.

I can’t remember the last time I ate fast food, but if I was travelling and needed a quick bite, I would probably choose a BK Veggie burger or maybe a cheeseless bean burrito from Taco Bell. 

Nothing from McDonald’s, that’s for sure. Not even water. In addition to this ploy, I don’t like the company’s indifference to animal suffering. It’s not like other fast-food chains care much either, but McDonald’s is especially bad. (See my Care2 blog about Andy Dick’s humorous, yet creepy, portrayal of Ronald McDonald to see what I mean.)

Anyway, perhaps the McMoms mean well, and I know what it’s like to be pressed for time, but is a public McD promo really the best option?

Can You Get Sick From What Someone Else Eats?

I often write about the health ills of eating meat, eggs, and dairy products--cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and so forth. But, as this NYT article shows, you don’t even have to eat animal products to get sick because of them. Pollution and waste runoff from factory farms can sicken anyone. 

According to the article, one cow produces as much waste as 18 people. In one Wisconsin town, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months. Parasites and bacteria from animal waste seeped into the town's drinking water, and residents suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses, and ear infections. One woman’s 5-year-old son required an operation because of the ear infections, which were most likely caused by bathing in water polluted with E. coli bacteria.

This can happen to anyone--it doesn’t matter if you’re a vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, fruitarian, or full-fledged meat-eater. That’s why it irritates me when people act as if their food choices don’t concern anyone else. That’s not quite true. Factory farms not only help foster diseases like swine flu, they also pollute our shared environment and sicken people living nearby.   

A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution said this about animal waste: “[I]t’s untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased. … It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. … Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick.”

A Duke University Medical Center study showed that people living downwind of pig farms are more likely to suffer from tension, depression, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, headaches, shallow breathing, coughing, sleep disturbances, and loss of appetite.

It's not entirely the farms' fault though. I mean, if billions of people insist on eating animal products, there have to be facilities to raise and kill billions of animals. No one wants factory farms and slaughterhouse in their community, yet plenty of people want the products they churn out. This comes with waste and pollution too.

It’s just another reason to consider going vegan, as far as I’m concerned. Meat, eggs, and dairy products just aren’t worth so much sickness and suffering.

Do Detox Patches Work?

I’ve been under a lot of stress lately; in addition to the usual chaos, I’m looking into moving to Florida and buying my first home!  I don’t have much time to try typical stress reduction activities like mediation and yoga, and I’ve slacked off a bit with my regular exercise routine and other healthy habits.

Out of curiosity, I tried some Avon Healthy Remedies detoxifying patches that my mom brought on her last visit. They contain green tea and wood vinegar and I wanted to see if they might remove some of the toxins (and maybe some of the stress) that had accumulated in my body.

We all store toxins in our body fat—whether we stressed or not. These poisonous substances are all around us; they’re in food, water, cleaning products, and even the air we breathe. People who eat meat and milk are exposed to high levels of cancer-causing toxins called dioxins.  The more toxins you build up, the worse your liver functions and, as a result, you can become sluggish and gain weight.

Anyway, you’re supposed to attach these Avon detox patches to your feet at night for three nights in a row. They supposedly pull out the toxins in your body. On the first night, the patches turn dark green, almost black (supposedly from the toxins, although it could just be a ploy to make it seem like the toxins are being sucked from your body). They get gradually lighter the next two nights.

I guess I felt better after the first night, but it could just have been because it was a Saturday and I got to sleep longer than usual. It could have also been a “placebo effect,” as discussed in this article about Kinoki detox foot patches.  It is a relief to see all those “toxins” in the patch—real or not. I felt sort of like, “whew, all those toxins are out of me now!

I haven’t come to any real conclusion on the Avon patches yet, although I am sort of skeptical. They’ve gotten good reviews though. I do think green tea has lots of “healing properties” though, so I haven’t totally wrote the patches off as a useless health “gimmick.”

If anybody is interested, a friend of mine, who runs HolisticVoice.com, wrote an article about easy and natural ways to reduce the amount of dangerous substances (like MSG, dioxins, and other toxins) in your body. She does suggest drinking green tea, as well as taking certain herbs, eating wholesome and organic vegetarian foods, and buying green cleaners instead of chemical-based ones.

Whether those detox patches work or not, this is good advice!

A Lip-Smacking Good Deal

Sorry for the re-post--I've been having trouble with my page. (Too much on it--had to thin it out!)

I rarely wear much make-up, but since my lips get dry easily, I do usually wear lip gloss or lip balm. Cruelty-free and cheap are my only criteria—and I just found a decent product that meets both requirements.

Drugstore.com sells e.l.f. (eyes. lips. face.) brand  therapeutic conditioning lip balm for $1.49! The product isn’t anything to write home about, but its fine enough, and for that price, I think it is worth writing about. (I think ANY cruelty-free company deserves a shout-out anyway.)

So far, the lip balm is the only e.l.f . product I’ve tried (in both blackberry and strawberry), but it looks like they make some good, inexpensive lotions and make-up too.  Some of the stuff gets mixed reviews but the product reviews on the site vary so much, I figure its best just to check everything out myself. Most products work differently  depending on your skin type, tone, etc., anyway.

If you’re looking for a product to make you (more) glamorous, this likely  isn’t it, but if you want an affordable, non-animal tested balm to keep your lips from drying out, this will fit the bill.