A New Mom Finds a Niche in the Roaring Fork Valley

When Summer Pine moved to the valley newly pregnant and not knowing a soul, she was relieved to find the Moms for Moms Communities in Glenwood Springs and Carbondale. Through these online social sites she found connection and support with other moms and soon grew a crop of friends in her new home.





When her son was about 6 months old, Summer jumped at the opportunity to purchase the Glenwood Moms for Moms business and it has been a thriving endeavor for her ever since. Summer is passionate about offering and being a part of this FREE local, online community. 

Glenwood moms for moms offers local moms the opportunity to connect, share, and receive day-to-day support that Summer says we all need more often than we like to admit. It's about genuine connections.

While the Moms for Moms Communities are nationwide, each community site is owned by a local mom.

The social aspect of Moms for Moms allows for event postings, niche group activities and a discussion forum where moms can ask for parenting advice, referrals to local professionals (physicians, dentists, etc.) Moms participate in micro-groups from knitting to exercise and service work to book clubs and food allergies. The membership site is moderated and provides a safe and private environment for sharing.

Some of the events mentioned in the podcast include:
Dr. Johnson’s Easter Baskets for Child Victim’s of Crime
Meal Trains-Good Karma Mamas
Mudderella
Nursing Nook at Strawberry Days
Health and Wellness Expo

As Summer says, “none of us are the same”, so she provides many opportunities for people to engage in their own way. As for the benefits Summer has received in her affiliation with Moms for Moms, she says "it has been my sanity."

To support this endeavor, Glenwood Moms for Moms offers advertising to local businesses who want to reach out to moms in their community. Mom-owned businesses get some special perks.

To learn more, visit www.glenwoodmomsformoms.com or email Summer Pine atsummer@glenwoodmomsformoms.com

Other links:

www.rfwellness.com
www.healthandwellnessexpogws.com

Call for Vendors, Glenwood Springs

Call for Vendors for Health & Wellness Expo

Glenwood Springs, CO - Vendor and sponsorship applications are currently being accepted for the third annual Health & Wellness Expo in Glenwood Springs.  The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 26, at Ramada Inn & Suites.

The Health & Wellness Expo is being produced locally in hopes of providing information and education about integrative health and preventative wellness solutions that are available throughout the valley.  The event will feature more than 30 educational vendor booths, informative speakers and interactive activities for all ages.

For more information about this event or to obtain a booth vendor application, visit www.healthandwellnessexpogws.com.

Dangers of Chlorine Bleach

You clean your home to make it a safer, more enjoyable place to be. But what if the very products you use to clean your home are actually making it more dangerous and more uncomfortable for your family? For decades, customers have mistakenly equated chlorine bleach with words like “clean” and “safe”. But the reality is frighteningly far from it. That bottle of chlorine bleach in your laundry room, those cleaning products that proudly tout “with chlorine bleach” on their labels—they contain something far more sinister than a simple germ killer.

Coming Clean: The Deception of Chlorine Bleach

The killer in your cupboard.
Did you know that chlorine was one of the first ingredients used to create chemical weapons in World War I? During the Second Battle of Ypres, on April 22, 1915, the Germans released chlorine gas on their enemies—marking the first full-scale deployment of deadly chemical weapons in WWI.¹ The lethal chemical is still used in warfare today, with insurgents of the Iraq war making bombs out of giant tanks of chlorine.²

Unfortunately, this lethal gas can also be created by accident when you unwittingly mix chlorine-based cleaning products with other common cleaning agents. And it isn’t always mixing two cleaners, together, sometimes it’s simply residue from a past cleaner that reacts with the chlorine-based product. In 2011, 152 workers were hospitalized due to exposure from chlorine gas after someone poured chlorine bleach into a container previously used with another cleaning solution.³


The dangers of chlorine bleach don’t stop there.
This chemical is caustic and deadly even before it is mixed with other products. Of all injuries to young children cause by cleaning products, exposure to chlorine bleach is the most common. The most common types of injury from chlorine bleach are poisoning (68%), chemical burns (15.9%) and skin/eye irritation (10.4%).⁴ According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, chlorine bleach is responsible for more than 38,000 reported poisonings per year.⁵ As many people die from chlorine bleach poisoning as from rattlesnake and spider bites combined.⁶

Recent medical studies have also revealed another disturbing trend. Chlorine bleach specifically aggravates the membranes in the lower respiratory system, causing shortness of breath and wheezing.

Studies show that a person with asthma who cleans in their home with chlorine bleach once a day will have a 5% increase in asthma attacks in a year. A person who cleans in their home with chlorine bleach twice a day more than quadruples this figure—they’ll experience 28% more asthma attacks.

So the next time you decide to clean with chlorine bleach, it might be good to add a ventilator in addition to the goggles rubber gloves and protective clothing most chlorine-based products recommend you use.

The cleaner that doesn’t actually clean.
If the dangers of chlorine bleach weren’t discouraging enough, here’s another sad truth many consumers don’t realize—chlorine bleach is not a cleaner.

It doesn’t get rid of grime, dirt or stains. What it can do is make color invisible to the naked eye, making us think it’s getting rid of stains.

Chlorine bleach is a highly reactive substance. It changes everything it comes into contact with, destroying it on a molecular level.

We see colors based on light absorption and reflection. When we see a red apple, it’s because the red color wavelength is reflected to us. When chlorine bleach comes into contact with stains, it destroys the molecules’ ability to reflect light. Chlorine bleach doesn’t get rid of dirt—it only turns it white. We may not be able to see the dirt and grime, but the truth is, the stain is still there.

To get your home truly clean you don’t need chlorine bleach. You need products that can safely remove hard water deposits, grime, and other stains and buildup. That’s something chlorine bleach just can’t do, and is just one of the many reasons why all EcoSense^® products are chlorine bleach-free.

Sources:

1. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/second-battle-of-ypres-begins
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/middleeast/22iraq.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
3. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6028a3.htm?s_cid=mm6028a3_w
4. Household Cleaning Product-Related Injuries,Pediatrics, September 2010
5. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of PoisonControl Centers
6. As reported to Poison Control Centers over the last 10 years

SOURCE: The Melaleuca Journal

Smart Shoppers Do This......Do You?

Originally posted on the Melaleuca Journal.

Shopper Alert: Grocery prices are going up, and up, and up, and up…

Do you sometimes wonder how in the world a few bags of groceries could cost as much as a cart-full used to? With groceries and gasoline in a battle to see which can do more damage to the wallet, shoppers are finding it difficult to keep both stomach and gas tank full enough to make it all the way to payday.

The good news, says Melaleuca, is you have many more options when it comes to grocery prices than you have concerning gasoline. The bad news is you may have to make changes in your eating habits as well as in your spending habits. 

Smart shopping is about more than simply choosing generic labels over brand names. Smart shoppers consider the nutritional value of the foods they buy—and that can be an eye-opening experience.

Take the standard advice, add some thought, and amplify your savings

You probably already know the basics of getting the most out of your food budget: tactics like clipping and using coupons, checking the weekly advertisements for bargains, not shopping when you are hungry, and comparing cost per unit are commonplace and fundamental.

The next step is to couple those standard tactics with some introspection. If you will do that, the resultant savings can be significant.

Smart shopping begins in your attitude towards food, and that means a “checkup from the neck up” before you even begin to plan your shopping.  Work to develop an attitude towards food that reflects reality: the primary purpose of food is nutrition, not pleasure.

Now we’re not saying that your food shouldn’t taste great, but focusing on food as a means of satisfying some unnamed longing or unreasonable craving is a sure path to overspending on the food budget. That sort of thinking can also get you headed down the path towards metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, or obesity. Focusing on food as a means of supplying your body with nutrients casts grocery shopping in a different light altogether.

The following ideas are not meant to be a complete list. They are suggestions pointing in the direction of health—both physically and environmentally. They are meant to help get you going.

• Rather than eat from cans and packages, start as close to the source as you can. Example: A crockpot of beans, cooked from a bag, saves about 80% over canned beans (and doesn’t require the recycling or disposal of a can). Cook a bunch of beans and freeze them for future use. Basic food ingredients tend to be much less expensive than precooked and prepackaged alternatives. Moreover, by cooking and storing basic foods, you save money and have the makings of any number of creative and fun meals on hand.
• Turn first to leftovers. Get creative. Try to never let food go to waste. Studies show that up to half of our available food goes to the trash—and much of that occurs in the kitchen. Here again, creativity is the key. Staple foods can be used in any number of recipes—whether from a cookbook, the family files, or made up as you go. Have fun. Let your primary concern be getting the nutrients you need—and that is much easier when you are working with basic ingredients instead of name-brand concoctions.
• Revisit the basic food groups you learned about in school. The plate has replaced the pyramid as a way of looking at how your diet should be structured. Go to ChooseMyPlate.gov to find out more. And think about this: the food recommendations call for fruits, vegetables, protein foods, grains, and dairy—not McDonalds^®, Betty Crocker^®, Pillsbury^® and Stouffer’s^®. Sure, there are times when prepared foods are handy—but it may be that your wallet stays fatter and your body trimmer when you prepare meals from scratch instead of from a package.

There is one more consideration though—one that is especially critical today. Even when you start with basic foods, you may not be getting all the nutrients you need. Most of the available food supply is now produced by giant agri-corporations, and the methods they use have resulted in foods that look good, but may pack considerably less nutritive value than the foods our grandparents ate.

Smart shoppers are turning as much as possible to crops grown organically or purchased from local farms that still work at building up the soil through natural, instead of artificial, methods. Most of us will need to add quality vitamin and mineral supplements to our diet in order to make sure we get the nutrients we need.

Wellness Perspective on Groceries

Great information and visual examples of healthier shopping. Advocates shopping locally whenever possible.

Plastic Water Bottles Banned

You have to admit, plastic water bottles are convenient.. but the expense, the environmental consequences and the flavor of bottled water leave a bad taste in my mouth.

What say you?

Here's an article about Concord, MA and their attempt to ban plastic water bottles.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/plastic-bottles-banned-concord-massachusetts_n_2395824.html