Livin' Lean Topic Tuesday: The Healthy Home

Creating a home that is healthy for our family is very important to all of us. We work hard to cook healthy meals, to keep our homes clean and to get our families movin'. We create nurturing environments where our children can grow into confident, well-adjusted people. It's a full-time job! Well, the making of a healthy home doesn't stop there, folks. As Dr. Myron Wentz and his son Dave Wentz explain in their book The Healthy Home, there are "...surprising health risks posed by the everday products and behaviors of any modern family."



Illustration from www.myhealthyhome.com.

DID YOU KNOW?

• We poison our children and pets to kill a fly
• The dirtiest, most polluted homes are often the ones that look and smell "clean"
• The "new car smell" that I LOVE has a harmful source
• Wearing your bra too tight puts stress on your lymphatic sytem (How's that for an excuse to hit up Victoria's Secret? I had to, honey. My health depended on it!)

The book, The Healthy Home: Simple Truths to Protect Your Family from Hidden Household Dangers, is one that will carefully help you identify areas in the home that may be a potential health risk to the family. There are colorful illustrations & quizzes; with each section pertaining to a specific area of the house (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living areas, garage & yard). There is a lot of information. However, for each "problem" or health risk, there is a simple solution.

To be quite honest with you all, and you know I always am, this book was a little overwhelming at first. As I started reading and realizing all of the things the Wentz team would find harmful about my house, I started to panic. How could I change all of this? I can't do all this stuff? There is so much to fix! I took some deep breaths and then it hit me. This is probably how some people feel when they read books on healthy eating or living. And what would my suggestion be to these people? I would tell them to take it one step at a time; gradually adding things little by little. So with this book, I'm taking some of my own advice and following that same approach. Take it one room at a time. Little changes can yield big results (the same with eating. Crazy coincidence). Regardless, my home will be getting healthier. As Dave Wentz puts it in the introduction, "...you don't have to be a scientist---or even a cave-dwelling technophobe---to protect your family from the toxic influences found in modern society."

I think this book is definately worth a read. If anything, it will get you thinking about the products we use daily and the habits we have that could be interfering with our quests for a healthy lifestyle. Oh, and don't be fooled by the cover. It looks pretty serious, but it is full of fun illustrations and is written in a way that is easy to understand and entertaining to read. To learn more about the book and how to create a healthy home, visit http://www.myhealthyhome.com/.

Thinking about picking up a copy? All author proceeds go to The Children's Hunger Fund! What great guys, right? Get your copy HERE!
 

About the Authors:
Dr. Wentz and Dave Wentz are a father-son team. Dr. Wentz has a PH.D. in Microbiology from the University of Utah. He founded Gull Laboratories, USANA Health Sciences and Sanoviv Health Institute. His son Dave is CEO of USANA and received his bachelor's degree in bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego. Donna K. Wallace is an accomplished writer who has co-authored several notable health books.