Have you ever wondered how our modern personal hygiene standards were formed? A little over a hundred years ago, several factors came together to make it possible for our truly dominant beliefs about cleanliness to emerge. These factors were: the increased availability of indoor plumbing and hot water the increased availability of soap germ theory advertising Prior to […]
Radically Natural Personal Hygiene
Did you know that many parts of our bodies are self-cleaning? I’m sure you know a few of our self-cleaning systems: our digestive tract and kidneys are famous, as is our liver. The lymph nodes and lungs are also part of the team that rids our bodies of toxins, but fewer people know that our […]
My Natural Menstrual Care Routine
Welcome, readers of The Montague Reporter! This post is especially for you, an addendum to my May 12 column, “The Surprising History of Menstrual Care, Part 2.” Thank you for joining me. 🙂 (I am a ciswoman—I identify as a woman and was assigned female at birth—and write from that perspective.) I learned about menstrual […]
One nice thing about working from home
One nice thing about working from home is that even when I’m under the weather, I can still work, and take care of myself at the same time. Not that I am averse to taking time off. But I’m not so unwell for that—just feeling kind of blech. There’s no arbitrary workplace decorum I need […]
Oystergirl on Periscope #2: a tour of my dynamic work station
Check out my dynamic work station! Credit for much of this goes to Nutritious Movement and especially Don’t Just Sit There. Follow me on Periscope: @oystergirl.
A few thoughts on hygiene
1.) The concept of good hygiene is cultural, not biological. 2.). Our bodies have several self-cleaning mechanisms, one of which is the skin (with assistance from hair and hair follicles). 3.) The combination of frequent washing and synthetic products can disrupt the skin’s self-cleaning process. 4.) You might never guess that the people around you—the […]
Movement Manna: Horizontal Rock Climbing
A photo posted by Vanessa aka Oystergirl (@theycallmeoystergirl) on Nov 9, 2015 at 8:26am PST One of my all-time favorite ways to move, for as long as I can remember. And it’s something I’ve always been good at. Despite the chronic pain and fatigue, easily-pulled muscles, unstable joints and trick knees that have plagued me […]
Link: How to live without air conditioning
The a/c in my car has always been broken and I’m too cheap to fix it, and also ornery about spending too much time in the car to warrant making it more “comfortable.” We put window units in our bedrooms, though this year I opted out, because now we have ceiling fans. However, on a […]
The primacy of gut biomes
Angelo Coppola’s LatestInPaleo podcast always make me nod and gasp in agreement and epiphany, but episode #119 made me holler. Gut biomes! Who knew they could be so exciting? Consider this. The health of our gut bacteria directly correlates to our own health–not only our digestive health, but our whole body and mind health. It […]
Good Hygiene Is Not Always What You Think It Is: A Conversation
In part 1 of “Good Hygiene Is Not Always What You Think It Is”, I began the story of how I changed from the constantly-compulsively-cleaning agent of mainstream synthetic hygiene I grew up as, to the crunchy, hairy, au natural, only mildly dirty hippie you smell before you. In part 2 of “Good Hygiene Is Not […]
Good Hygiene Is Not Always What You Think It Is (Part 2)
In part 1 of “Good Hygiene Is Not Always What You Think It Is”, I began the story of how I changed from the constantly-compulsively-cleaning agent of mainstream synthetic hygiene I grew up as, to the crunchy, hairy, au natural, only mildly dirty hippie you smell before you. It began when I was 20 and continued […]
Good Hygiene Is Not Always What You Think It Is (Part 1)
I have a very live-and-let-live approach to my hygiene. I agree to not bludgeon my body’s natural cleaning processes into submission with the use of synthetic commercial products, and in exchange, my body stays clean and socially acceptable with just a tiny amount of work on my part. I was not always this way. I […]
You Are What You Eat… literally!
You are made up of the cells which are regenerated by the nutrients in the foods you put into your body… a simplification, sure, but good enough. If you’re ill, unwell, have health issues—even if they are seemingly unrelated to digestion… how do you not look FIRST at what you put into your body?? Western […]
What Paleo Means to Me (a non-dogmatic view)
Paleo? You may be asking… Do you live on bacon and kale and CrossFitting* in your Vibram Five Fingers**? Paleo has been blowing up lately and as a result there’s a lot of weird ideas about what it is, and a lot of people getting really dogmatic about it. For me, this sums it up well […]
Homemade Tooth Powder and Mouthwash
Check out my guest post over at Healthy Roots, Happy Soul for recipes for tooth powder, mouthwash, and a toothache remedy.
My Interview for the Knowing Birth Series
Megan Alton over at Waking Up Happy has been conducting interviews as part of her Knowing Birth series. I am honored to have my interview featured. Where did you choose to have your birth and why?… …It was only when I was pregnant that I learned about Ina May Gaskin. I found out that the […]
How To Get A Bad Night’s Sleep
There are a lot of resources out there for getting a good night’s sleep. While they are helpful, frankly they can get a little boring. Where are the resources for those of us who maybe sometimes want a bad night’s sleep? I’ve created the very first resource on this topic, based on years of good-old-fashioned, […]
Vibram Five Fingers: Shoes For People Who Hate Shoes
I have always preferred going barefoot. But it wasn’t until about five years ago that I learned that wearing shoes can actually be bad for you. According to Women’s Sports & Fitness (Cheryl Sacra, August 1994, cited in Society for Barefoot Living): “[T]he skin on the soles of your feet resists abrasions and blistering and that going barefoot is beneficial […]
Quote: “everything is anti-bacterial now”
“If you watch advertisements, or cruise the supermarket shelves, you can’t fail to notice that everything is anti-bacterial now, as if common household bacteria have suddenly become as exotic and deadly as Ebola. “It’s a great marketing coup, but potentially a dangerous one. In our enthusiasm for all things anti-bacterial we are, thanks to the […]
What Does “Natural” Actually Mean?
The word “natural” is thrown around a lot these days, by itself or within a phrase like “natural health,” “made with natural ingredients,” “natural parenting,” etc. I don’t generally use the word, because although it seems simple, it can be a loaded with implications and assumptions. However, I often struggle to find an appropriate, equally […]