Creating A Healthy Environment In Your Home

Welcome to the Five Star Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm your host Arwen Bardsley from Evenstar Wellbeing.

I am a holistic health and wellbeing coach.

I'm a reiki master and I also have qualifications as a certified food and spirit practitioner and a low tox method coach as well as having a bachelor degree in psychology.

With this podcast I'll bring you a wide range of information to help you to bring your energy and balance back.

We'll focus on the aspects of Evenstar Five Star Wellbeing which are food,

Sleep,

Movement,

Surroundings and being.

In each episode we'll focus on a topic and discuss all five aspects of wellbeing in relation to this topic and in some episodes we might just focus on one of these aspects of Evenstar Five Star Wellbeing.

I'm so looking forward to bringing you this episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 17 of the Five Star Wellbeing Podcast.

This will be the last episode for 2020 and it was an absolute delight to be able to actually record this interview in person with my beautiful friend Lordi Sinkota from Clean Fresh Group who is a building biologist and she joined me to talk all about creating a healthy environment in your home.

Really is a information rich interview and I will say right up front that there is so much information in here and a lot of it can be a little bit overwhelming and even a bit frightening when we realise all the things that we don't know about potential toxins in the environments immediately around us including our homes and our offices.

So I want to just emphasise that I wanted to bring this interview to you purely for informational purposes to open your eyes up to things that you can start thinking about and start taking action on and as Lordi beautifully puts it during the interview if you just try and make one change a week then you are going to have created more than 50 changes over the next year.

So you may like to even take some notes during this interview but there is a lot of information in the show notes which you'll be able to link to and I also do have a blog that I wrote all about healthy environments as well which has just been released and has heaps of written detail in it so you can probably refer to that if you're doing what I normally do and you're listening to a podcast while you're out for a walk or doing some absolutely fascinating work around your house.

What we're going to talk about is what building biology is because it's probably a term that isn't familiar to many people and also why you might like to consult a building biologist about your home's healthy environment.

Lordi shares her personal story of how the fatal illness of her first husband led her to begin to investigate the toxins in food and household chemicals.

We talk quite a bit about mould that comes up a number of times and why this is an increasing issue in modern homes and buildings and we also go on a bit of a deep dive into electromagnetic fields in the external environment and also the internal environment and talking about ways to mitigate the risks from those from things like cell phone towers but also your own use of your cell phone or mobile phone and how to make that the most risk free thing that you can do because let's face it we are all completely addicted to those technologies and Lordi and I are no exception to that.

We also briefly cover the Wi-Fi within your home and how creating a healthy environment in your bedroom is really the most important thing to do in regards to your home environment and how to actually do that.

Lordi's business Clean Fresh Group specialises in cleaning split systems very thoroughly to commercial grade standards and she tells us all about how they do that and we also talk about filtering water what is actually in our tap water and why it is really important to filter that water both for drinking and also for using anywhere on your skin.

I do talk about courses that you can do to learn a lot more about this stuff including two of my own the Nourish and Heal the Whole You program and my 7 Ways to Get Your Energy Back in One Month online course which is a course you can do anytime at your own convenience and start to investigate a bit more about these topics.

So in the meantime I will let you dive into it it is a long and in-depth conversation I hope you enjoy it and I'll touch base with you again at the end.

Okay so welcome to my last podcast episode for 2020 which is very exciting because I'm getting to do it in person with my beautiful friend Lordi Sincotta who is a Building Biologist and this is a fabulous way to end the year because I haven't yet featured one of my five elements of even star five star wellbeing which is surroundings and building biologists are really the experts in how to have a healthy and well environment around you healthy surroundings so really delighted to welcome Lordi and she has a business called Clean Fresh Group and also is a podcast host herself so hopefully she won't think that I'm too bad at the job but your podcast is called Healthier Homes and Living so we'll certainly put links in the notes so people can access that if you want to get more in-depth information about all the wonderful things that building biologists can help us with but for the moment let's start with you and tell us a bit about yourself why you got into building biology what is your why for building biology?

Firstly thank you for having me it's wonderful to sit here with someone and podcast.

It is isn't it?

It's so nice I know.

So I got into building biology through my own life experiences and pretty much illness and I think I'll go into that a bit more but building biology is where we look at your environment your home or workspace and look at what it is in that environment that could be contributing to illness so we're kind of trying to look at the hazards in your environment we'll come in and do that so I've done a two-year advanced diploma which is the only one of its kind in Australia through ACES with Nicole Bilsma who really started the industry here on her own through her own journey and she's learned a lot along the way because of that so when we.

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She's a bit of a legend.

She certainly is yeah yeah yeah so and her story started because people who don't know she had ten miscarriages in her home and realized that it was magnetic fields from a switchboard and poor air quality because she was living on a main road and there was a lot of diesel particulates with trucks running so once she moved from her front room to her back room she became pregnant so and it was really quickly as well wasn't it?

Very quickly yeah so it was really then that she started because she was a naturopath so she actually started then to understand that the environment's playing a role here so she would work with her clients then to look at their environment and that's really how it started yeah building biology started back in the late 60s early 70s in Germany okay so yeah it came about because after the second world war they had a huge population boom and they needed housing so they started whipping up apartment blocks concrete apartment blocks very similar to what we're building at the moment with the tilt concrete slabs here that you see going up yeah and what they found was people were getting really sick and moving out of them they couldn't live in them and it was then Anton I think his name is Schneider his surname who started to look at why these people were getting sick and they found that it was the environment and what so what illnesses were they having and what specifically was it in the environment in that case poor indoor air quality so there was a lot of moisture because there were concrete slabs there were little windows hardly any ventilation so the air quality was poor they were in a high rise so they were raised off the ground so the further away from the ground further from the natural environment and you know the electromagnetic fields that we naturally need to survive from the earth yes yeah so that was some of what they started to realize but mainly it was the moisture and the lack of air quality which was a really big issue so was it moldy was it moisture leading to mold yeah yeah okay which we'll get into yeah and I think just a disconnect disconnect from the environment yeah yeah isn't that so amazing and we but we haven't obviously learnt from that lesson we're starting to yeah yeah yeah but there's so much construction of high-rise still isn't there there is and you know I think what we see is that there's a really big it's starting to become a bit of a wedge because you've got a lot of money at stake so you know it's not just in the pharmaceutical industry or you know in the chemical industry it's also in the building industry there's a hell of a lot of money and they just haven't realized yet I don't think I don't believe there's enough of an understanding or a care factor yet yeah but people are realizing that this is making me sick and so there's going to have to be a shift at some point yeah there'll be it there'll be enough groundswell that there will no pun intended groundswell getting back to mother earth so did you want to talk about your own experience with you know why personally it was of interest to you sure so I um my first husband died 22 years ago he had terminal cancer he was only 32 at that stage it was a very short diagnosis to sort of the end of his life because he was so young and it was an aggressive cancer and at the time being very naive and not understanding anything about environment we kind of went well we've got to do something and my background is Lebanese so food is really important so that's where I started and usually I think food is the easiest place for people to start anyone to start yeah so we started with food and we eliminated chemicals we started researching so we went organic and actually at the time we went vegetarian and started looking at raw and just really how much nutrients could we maximize and supplements to give him and getting him out into nature when we could when he wasn't in hospital and that sort of thing so that was really when my interest started in all of that and then I just continued on over the years to look at lifestyle and that was where we eliminate chemicals not that I used a lot of chemicals in cleaning my home or you know everyone had Glen 20 or an air freshener or you know we had no idea about the damage that it was doing yep so it was eliminating a lot of that and changing over to more natural products because knowing myself if it's too hard I won't keep on with it and you know I really don't want to give up things yeah so I decided to find alternatives that were safer and so kind of that's where it started to lead me down this road and I'd seen I'd seen the building biology course but just went oh I don't know much about that and I just kind of skipped over it I wasn't ready for it at that stage and just kept going and I started my own cleaning business then because the one thing I owned cafes and the one thing I needed help with was home and so the cleaners that I looked at were always bringing in chemicals or wanting chemical products and I didn't want them in the house and also I was quite particular and they weren't doing things up to the standards that I required or would have liked and so you know I kind of tried to work with a number of different people and didn't work so I just got out of cafes and started my own oh wow what a change yeah certainly big change but yeah that was where I moved into and put all the principles that I wanted into place so no chemicals using microfibre this was going back 15 years ago and finding the most natural options we could then and educating my clients along the way as to what we're using because they'd say oh I can't smell bleach but gee that smells nice so you kind of talk them through the options so it's great and that was a really interesting journey and my partner along the way has had his own health issues so the journey with food and looking at so he had a stroke in his early 50s and bounced back from it but it left him with seizures and they were happening every three months and we kind of thought this is just not right it's not going to help you physically and it's just so disruptive to our business as well as everything else in life so we just started looking again we got really strict with food and went completely organic at that stage and looked at supplements and supporting his body and his system and worked with naturopaths and allied health professionals to just make sure that he was in the best shape he could be and there was one thing that there was something that we just couldn't we were missing something so went from having seizures every three months we got it stretched out to nine months so he improved a lot but there was still something in there that we were missing and we worked out that it was wines so the preservatives in wines yeah so now he drinks organic preservative free he has wine or he'll have a spirit because there's no preservatives so and that's made all the difference it went from nine months to three years without a seizure and now he'll only the last time he had a seizure was because he had shingles and his immune system was compromised but generally he's great he hasn't had any of those so it's been controlled through environmental and lifestyle factors yeah yeah so that was what led me into building biology because I was trying to clean up our environment and I was worried about the electromagnetic fields coming off smart meter it was a couple of years ago yep when smart me when there was a lot of stories yeah about smart meters yeah and so I rang Nicole and she talked me into the course okay okay thank you Nicole absolutely yeah it's very interesting that point about wine because I think a lot of people don't think about that like they may you know go down the path of mainly organic food but then they will disregard the fact that wine and you know obviously neither of us are going to advocate that you're necessarily drinking wine every day but I mean in some cultures it is a thing that you do have a glass of red wine every day and there have been benefits found of that through science but it can really make a big difference and I noticed that myself so it was something that I introduced that you know at home I will only have the same preservative for any organic wine but then you know you go to a friend's house or you go out somewhere and they don't have that on offer and I just always feel so much worse for you know having even you know just that little it's probably mills yeah at maximum wouldn't it be of preservative but it has a big impact and especially when you are mainly being clean then I think you notice it even more yeah and that's what he found and even you know last night we were out to dinner and he just had a gin and tonic and they were trying to get him to have a glass of wine and he said no I just don't have preservatives because I notice that even if I have a small amount I can feel it yeah so yeah you're right yeah absolutely and even in the tonic water you have to be careful to get the preservative free tonic water where do you stop yeah exactly all right that's fabulous so I guess then the question for people who don't know anything about building biology other than what they've just learned from you telling us is why in what situations would somebody want to employ a building biologist to use building biologists and I guess I know that you're going to tell us about in these kind of situations where somebody is ill and they just can't get to the bottom of what's going on and this is the last resort of well I need to look at my environment but I'd also love to hear about ways in which people can proactively and preventatively use building biology yeah I think we will move towards that in the next decade yeah and I think we just have to because there's just so much going on yeah with illness far more young people are becoming ill and it is because of what we have the increase of things in our environment so I'll go back to where would you get a building biologist yes yes yeah so generally a lot of integrative GPs or allied health professionals like naturopaths are aware of building biologists and if they've worked with someone and they realize that there may be something in the environment that could be contributing to their issues they will get them or refer them on to a building biologist at the moment the way it comes about is yes we are a last resort because they've tried everything exhausted all options and then come across oh could it be my environment but I think in raising awareness which is one of the things I want to do yes and what a lot of us are doing me too yeah yeah so a lot of us that have met in the low toxic space like you and I are raising awareness about a lot of these matters so it will become more mainstream so generally yes people who are sick are the ones that search at a building biologist and mainly at this point in time it seems to be mold mold is probably the majority of the work that comes across to building biologists only because we have an environment or homes that are tightly sealed so the building code the way it's written changed a number of years ago to you know the six star energy efficiency yes yeah and when it did that in our old times and I live in a 1950s home it's really drafty really dusty building materials aside but it's never been moldy because there is enough ventilation through that draft and airflow whereas our new homes are really tightly sealed and insulated really well so it's great for energy efficiency but what it's actually doing is the building code doesn't allow for people living in these times so they've pretty much written this code to make the house energy efficient but each of us outputs puts out 10 litres of water a day just through our breathing wow yeah it's a lot you wouldn't think but then we do washing cooking so we have a lot of moisture in our homes and a lot of people aren't trained to open their windows and allow for cross ventilation they used to in the olden days like my mum our doors were always open doors always being open and windows and I think that was one of the reasons why health and perhaps the homes fared a lot better yeah whereas now mold is quite a big issue and even in our kitchens with the exhaust fans on the stoves they're vented into the cupboards most of them are not vented out of the house yeah and they should be vented out of the house so there's a lot of issues you know in the way homes are built that are contributing to the mold so is there a way to so a builder's able to get around that if you used a building biologist in a construction to have an energy efficient but well ventilated home it is possible yeah yeah okay and it would be simple things like exhausting your bathroom fans and your kitchen fans outside of the ceiling yeah it would be looking at the positioning and the size of windows and allowing for airflow yes in the house so you can still have an energy efficient home but then it also if it's built correctly and with proper building materials so building materials that are what we call hygroscopic which I'll use a really good example and this is I've always loved this example when I learned building biology in the Alps in the Swiss and the Italian Alps you know they've got the chalets of in the snow yeah so those chalets are hundreds and hundreds of years old and they're made of wood but wood is hygroscopic it's a natural material so when it's cold it actually takes into account the material itself knows how to hold onto or expand moisture yeah yeah in the heat and the cold so the materials that we use in our homes if they're natural products will breathe and take in the moisture during the cold weather and hang on to it and not allow for mold and then when it warms up you know um expend it right so yeah it's really interesting but it's about understanding the building materials so that's where if you work with someone who's special like a building biologist who's specialized in this to work with your architect and your builder they'll look at the materials that are being used and give you the natural options yeah even things like the glues that they're using you know the type of wood the MDF and you know the cheaper pressed wood products they'll suggest better products that won't off gas in your environment so building boulders can be really helpful during a building process and that's true with your furniture as well everyone you know you're much better off using natural products metal or hardwood not the pressed not the manufactured wood products yeah so and they're sort of something that down the track yeah you would look at your furniture and what it was made of and fire retardants on material yeah another thing that is a huge contributor we know in the indoor environment so this is all part of the I've kind of moved into air quality now yeah but just your favorite topic yeah yeah so going back to the original question yes mold is probably one of the biggest things that we're called in for and people now are becoming very aware of EMFs yes yeah I was going to say that because you did mention that briefly before so so you think people are starting to be proactive about that yeah there's a lot more people calling in wanting assessments and I think the issue of 5G the advertising around 5G has highlighted a lot of the EMF or EMR electromagnetic radiation issue and so people are starting to to make noise and they're getting assessments done yes and we should just say so EMF in case anybody isn't aware electromagnetic frequency yeah field yeah field okay and EMR is electromagnetic radiation so they they're an yeah an umbrella term okay and so what creates these as an issue okay what within our homes so you've got your internal and you've got your external so externally we're talking about cell phone towers is the major major source of EMF and make some people very sick one about so our teacher that we met how we met through doing the low tox course with Alex Stewart is she's extremely sensitive to this and has had a big issue recently with that and it's probably I reckon it's something that a lot of people don't consider no they don't because we're we're not educated about this yeah we're told it's safe and you and I both know through studying with Alex and I've done some studies out of the US and pretty much the way Australia looks at it the US is very very much the same is that the onus isn't on the manufacturer of a product to prove that it's safe unfortunately the way that it works here for us is that we have to get sick and then prove it was that that made us yeah yeah in Europe they've got reach I don't know if you've heard of so reaches a body that they have and Europeans are really different and this is what I love about the Europeans is that they won't allow a product to go out unless the manufacturer proves it's safe so they're the total opposite of you know Australia yeah our method okay so with a cell phone cell phone tower I guess how close can you live to one and and be reasonably confident it's not going to affect your health each of us is different right so it will affect different people so Alex for example really really sick but she's quite close to a tower in her case the tower was concealed which they're now starting to do they're concealing because they're quite unsightly like they're pretty ugly yeah and that there are blight on the landscape so they're starting to now make them a lot smaller and they're painting them or they're hiding them in Alex's case they had covered it over so it looked like it was something on you know like maybe an air conditioning unit like a big box on the top of the building but they were inside that which is why it wasn't picked up until a building biologist came in with you know equipment and tested yeah and they found the levels were really high that's when they worked out what it was because everything else she embedded mold yes very carefully yeah yeah so sometimes they're they're not sighted but on the whole you will see it and a minimum absolute minimum safe distance is about 400 meters and you really don't want it to line of sight yeah right okay so if it's visible on ground level is a little bit better but the higher up you go sort of up towards the height of the tower obviously frequent yes yeah okay it's um it's very much higher on the second level and that's why high rise is really notorious for being not great for us as humans because apart from being away from the natural magnetic fields of the earth and you know all of that and the issues with mold that we talked about yeah yeah yeah higher up you are the more susceptible you are to the EMS in in the air as we get higher yeah okay wow so is there anyone who identifies where these things are and puts them on a map that people can there is a look up on the internet or something there is I'll give you a link to this yeah and that you can pop in the show notes and you can pop in an address and it'll show you all the towers that like as dot points on a map so it's like a google map yeah and you'll be able to see it and it'll give you the distances okay and that's where you would do a search and look at it nothing under 400 meters now that's not always true that is a rule of thumb but I will say the house that I've just rented and this is you know it's just really interesting so where I've rented there is two towers one's about 350 meters from me and one's just under 400 meters but where they are are both up on hills and I'm almost in a valley right so they actually go I took measurements because I was really concerned before I rented this and thought oh this is the house is perfect but this isn't going to work and funnily enough the readings were great so we took the house because they have no impact so really it's all about testing it yep because if I went by the 400 meter rule I wouldn't have rented the place yeah you would have just not even looked at it okay so but generally ideally you would want them 400 meters away so because I was in a ditch or not a ditch but on flat land and the towers were a lot higher right it was quite safe okay and so how do you measure that so we have equipment they look like sort of they're about that big and then it's got like a Christmas tree we call it a Christmas tree nozzle thing on the end of it they're German equipment so there there is really really expensive equipment that people like government departments like our panzer who's the Australian radiation protection body that makes the rules they've got equipment that's worth in the tens of thousands which is not practical and that needs calibration so our our equipment does need calibration to make sure that it's testing properly but it's more in the sort of under 10,

000 range so professional equipment so it is professional there are there are little units that you can get under a thousand dollars not as ideal but they could be used as screening tools to just give you an indication if it may be a problem okay there's a really good little little meter I'm trying to think mitometer yep that's under 300 I think it's under 200 actually it's not calibrated to building biology standards but it will it will light up it's pretty simple to use into popping your handbag and you know take it around with you and kind of just to work out am I being impacted if you're checking out new properties or correct and if you find a high rating you could then say okay I really want to buy this property or rent it but I might get a building biologist in to do a you know a better screening for me yeah sort of a pre-purchase or pre-lease assessment yeah okay so that's a proactive way that we can use building biology absolutely yeah okay yeah um so we've kind of taken a bit of a detour haven't we what else sorry so I know that's me but internal is where it's really important the external does matter yes but really in the society that we're living in today it's our internal habits and if we can minimize our internal habits then we've got a much better chance because you're you're sitting bathed in it in your home whereas this tower is 400 or 800 meters away it'll impact but you know it's not as close to you so we look at what we call long-term or latency periods so if you're passing by a cell tower for example yeah that's only transient it's not going to affect you because you're passing or you're somewhere that has wi-fi in a cafe you're there for an hour it's not really affecting you but in your home you'll be being bombarded 24 7 with these frequencies and so what we find is our our phones so our mobile phones our wi-fi so our routers mobile phone routers I'm just trying to think a lot of the kids the ways and the yeah yeah yeah the game machine consoles yes the consoles that's the word thank you I haven't had to talk about them for no I know my boys are always I do yes so the consoles are another area Apple TV gives off really high ratings so these are all things that are an issue in your home and you're with them 24 7 so most people's simple ways to reduce your way to jump into how reduce yes please yeah absolutely so really simple when your cell phone is with you don't carry it on your body yeah so the closer it is to you the higher the concentration that your body is being bombarded with yeah and so there's we were taught the inverse square law so if you double the distance away from the source which is your phone so even if especially when we're using it to our head you double the distance to this sort of distance you've reduced your exposure by 75% yeah so if you keep it away from you so with your phone keep it off your body so don't wear it in your pocket yeah use earphones yep and preferably a tube without magnets in them I'll give you a link to that there's a really good one that we sourced out of the US oh that's good because I have had a pair of those and they just really were not very good at all yeah okay these are good you'll like these okay so you're moving the signal away from your brain yeah which is really important it's the major organs your brain your heart are really important to keep it away from you know keep them away from you and those little ear pod things a disaster a disaster thing to happen yeah you're listening kids sorry sorry to burst everyone's yeah my son will not listen he's 25 he won't listen and I just keep no oh my god oh my god you've got to get rid of this thing yeah but yeah because it's right next to your brain so that frequency is literally in your ears and going yeah and it's very close to the brain yeah and the thing with using your phone is that even within Apple many people may have heard this it's somewhere buried in their terms and agreements and whatnot in the phone they actually say to hold it a couple of inches away from our hair do remember but nobody knows that yeah it's that we've talked about it yeah but it is dangerous and they don't know because the latency periods for brain tumors are 15 to 20 years now we've only had mobile phones for about that time yeah yeah so really I think in the next decade is where we're going to see a real explosion so so devastatingly of you know a lot of cancers and a lot more illnesses because we're not realizing that these are harmful to our health yeah but having said that I love technology and carry it everywhere it's just about we can have all of this it's just about being safe yes safely yeah so keep it away from you use speakerphone yes you know that makes it safe it's not near your brain you know you've got it and are there any because I know you can get little stickers and things that are supposed to protect from the EMS is there anything that as a building biologist you would recommend we don't recommend them we haven't tested them okay yeah so we can't authorize them and say yes they do because yeah we haven't tested yeah but realistically if the sticker was eliminating the danger or eliminating the signal you wouldn't be able to use the phone so it's kind of a bit like well if I can still use my phone then how much is it mitigating yeah sure that would be the one thing I will say yeah yeah and even when you purchase there are a lot on the market like little colors or cases to put your phone in if that phone still rings in there that means there's a signal yep and it's receiving a signal so in order to make it safe it should not receive a signal yeah okay yeah so when it's if you want to carry it on your body or in your bag against your body if it's in a case where it's actually shielded that you know it won't affect you it won't ring but if it's on your body and you're just going for a walk you've got it with you if you need to use it you can but at least if it's in your back pocket as a male right near your you know reproductive organs and women as well yeah which is where we put these phones so you know there's a whole host of issues that will start coming up from years to come about the way we use things so ideally you would I know there are people out there who actually you know literally put it on aeroplane mode you know unless they're actually using it at the time it's always on aeroplane and that's what I was going to say so the things that we can do to have it if you really don't want to switch it into aeroplane mode use your speaker use some you know air tube earpieces yeah pop it on a bench talk at a distance but aeroplane mode is definitely the way to go but you've got to really ensure also when it is in aeroplane mode I might send you a picture of it that might be good to put in your show notes yep if you've still got wi-fi and bluetooth switched on in your settings it's still going to be on even if it's in aeroplane mode you want to ensure that they are always off right okay so even the bluetooth it's got to be right okay bluetooth is probably um how do I put it without being alarmist it's quite bluetooth pulses so we can't feel it but there's a pulse being emitted by a bluetooth that's that your body's absorbing like it's it's difficult because it's not seen and we can't feel it so people don't realize the dangers but yeah they should be off bluetooth should be off right okay okay unless you need to connect yep yep and pop it in aeroplane mode yeah as long as it's away from you so what I do is I don't turn my phone off I've got a business I've got children I've got a partner who's you know always calling so I have it in the room but it's just away it's sort of over on the bench over there yeah when it rings I hear it and you can go to it yeah you can go take your call so really it's and it's the further away from you that it is the better yeah yeah okay so that's with your phones um they should never be in the bedroom at night that's another big that is another thing that I always say yeah absolutely um because most people and I was one of them until I learned this I would use it as my alarm yeah but it was never in aeroplane mode so you don't realize that but you can have it in aeroplane mode on your bedside table still use it as an alarm but provided it's not charging because then it will give off different fields because it's then you're talking electric and magnetic fields right okay which is a whole different thing so um what I now do is I charge my phone during the day as it goes to night overnight right okay so it's just little habit changes yes it's not hard it's just changing habits slowly slowly yeah that we can make these things safer for us so I still have I actually have my ipad I don't bring the phone in but I have an ipad that's just solely always on aeroplane mode and that's my alarm it just sits there yeah it's safe so when I need to charge it I just wait on charge during the day yeah when I'm not sleeping and I'm nowhere near it so it becomes or just by an alarm clock people a little one with a battery in it yes not digital because they are also an issue yeah so yeah just a little alarm clock so um if we move then on to just other general electrical appliances what is the issue with that and what's the safest way to use them so alarm clocks are the next one that we find because you've got them right near your head yeah um and the easy easy swap for that is just a battery clock like you just said and they're only about 20 odd dollars yeah yeah pretty cheap I got one in an op shop actually it's probably two dollars yeah brilliant yeah it works so um in your bedroom really what we want and what we teach as building biologists is one of the issues is you will know with your health background sleep is really important yes so we want eight hours or thereabouts if you don't need eight hours that's fine but can you yeah exactly but that sleep period is where your body needs to restore and regenerate yeah and if we're being bombarded with all of these frequencies this is the issue that we're finding so you would want to create a sleep sanctuary so your room is for sleep and sleep alone so no digital devices in there is what we suggest and so just your wind up clock no mobile phone just really simple so that's really really widely important I think sleep is the critical one and that means when you look at the rest of the house most people have a router that has a wi-fi component yep that should be switched off at night yeah so a lot of people will just tend to put it on a timer just like the Christmas tree timers switch it off at 10 30 like it goes off automatically so you don't have to remember to do that switches off at say 10 30 or 11 whenever you go to bed timer would switch it off yeah and then if you get up at 5 30 or 6 or just have the timer switch it back on so you've had restorative sleep yeah the wi-fi you don't need it while you're sleeping yeah you don't so we just don't think of these things because we don't realize that they are harmful but that's probably really important so that would be after the mobile phone and the alarm clock would be the router yeah what about little like lights next to your bed they don't give off the same frequencies as mobile phones yes but they've got different they've got electric and magnetic fields yeah so it means that there's electricity running through the walls and it's giving off magnetic fields as well so if you read like I do it's kind of you know it needs to be a bit of a risk management sort of a scenario as well well I've eliminated everything out of my bedroom that I possibly could I know these are an issue so I use it to read and then I move it to the edge of my bedside table so as far away from me as possible when I go to bed so it's about saying well I still need to live my life yeah and be practical so I can't completely live in a tent out in the bush or anything yeah so yes any electrical devices should be magnetic field will come out 1.

5 meters okay so it's a long way yeah it is so if you can mine are plugged in right behind my bedside table so it's a bit of a you know mission to pull it out yeah get to them yeah yeah but some people may have the plug on the side and if they don't mind just go and switch off the plug and pull it out of the wall then there is nothing coming off that yeah I'm safe yeah so it's just with a little bit of education and understanding you can actually still use all these things and be safe and the risk of the magnetic field is for the brain as well magnetic fields are very important in 1979 there was a study done this is before freedom of information and all of that stuff before and you know you couldn't get your hands on records they were done by a couple of one of them was an epidemiologist and the other one was I believe a scientist or an engineer anyway worthheimer and leaper and it's a quite a well-known study and I can give you a link to it if anyone is interested in reading it but what they found was with the high voltage transmission lines that we see that you know carry you know big ones not our distribution lines that are outside our houses yeah but the ones that carry all the electricity so they look like the transformers yes so what they found was that children that lived under those high voltage transmission lines for the first 15 years of their life had a greater where the magnetic field was measured at four milligrams and above and they are because there's such a concentration under those towers they had a 50 I think it was a 50 percent increased risk of contracting leukemia and that just highlighted since you know the early 80s now that children and magnetic fields you know are not friends they do a lot of damage they do damage to us wi-fi is the greater issue at the moment so so it's really a whole body risk it's not just the brain that may be at risk health-wise from electromagnetic fields correct yeah okay but in general they do have effects on us it all has effects and the way we live we never have radio frequencies so RF which is your phones and your Wi-Fi and they're the radio frequencies then you have magnetic fields and electric fields that come from electrical appliances that give off two fields and which field depends on whether it's on or off right in use or not okay whether you have an electric or an electric and a magnetic field okay so we have a lot more frequencies that were exposed around the time it's becoming a synergistic effect so it's not just one frequency it's three frequencies that we're being you know assaulted with really and it's long-term it's 24-7 because it is inside our homes and it's in a close field to our bodies yeah so this is where making it safer you know with my internet I got rid of my Wi-Fi and I had my non-believer son help me because he's an IT boy but he humored me and I said to him I don't want Wi-Fi so he went and found me a router that is hardwired yeah now the downside is I have cables running along the house I've got ethernet cables but I don't have Wi-Fi bombarding me during the day yeah but he did buy me a separate Wi-Fi component so that if something happens or I need to I can't run a cable or whatever or there's a study group happening and we don't have you know eight cables yeah we can switch the Wi-Fi on for an hour yeah and we do yeah but it's unplugged and it doesn't emit any of the time so I still have Wi-Fi but I choose when I use it so really that's what I kind of try and educate people with is that we can have them and use them safely yeah things like now jumping back into a magnetic field and appliance one that comes to mind is an induction stove which a lot of people have and that emits enormously high magnetic fields so you can't kind of say well don't have one if that's what you want to use yeah but the way you would mitigate that would be well when you're cooking don't stand in front of it for an hour if you're cooking something like a known casserole you'll come and go but as long as you're away from it the amount of time you spend in the field so if you can remove yourself from the field that's where it becomes safe and so at least a meter and a half away from that is removing yourself from the field okay yeah roughly yeah the rule of thumb is a meter and a half okay those fields yeah and so you know like lights and I mean we have so many little appliances hair dryers your all your little cooking you know your food processor and all that sort of stuff is it simply a matter of obviously turning them off when you don't you're not using them but is it better to turn them off at the power point do you need to actually pull them out of the power point it would be more ideal if you could right pull them out of the power point but as long as they're off it's a good start but yes definitely unplugging them would be the best case scenario because then you've eliminated completely any fields the connection okay right I didn't know that about pulling it out right yeah so we think we're switching them off they're okay but you actually need to pull it out because there's still a connection to the electricity so it is still connected it's just not giving off the magnetic field at that stage okay yeah okay all right and then so I guess if we can talk about some other common things in the house so we have spoken about mold I guess what's the obviously opening your windows and doors is a great way to remediate that yeah and anything else that we can do that's simple other than eliminate chemicals so I don't know probably most of your listeners will be on that journey but hopefully yes hopefully if they're listening but if they're not household products and personal care products are two huge areas so the more we can reduce our exposure to man-made chemicals yeah better when I first eliminated air fresheners I went to essential oils you know essential oils while natural can be really potent because they're still they are still a chemical compound yeah from a plant yes exactly so just because they're natural it doesn't mean they won't do harm they will you've got to be cautious with everything yeah but we can find safer swaps so if you're using a diffuser for example and you're in a sealed room you're putting moisture into the air so you want to have your windows open even if it's sort of just that much yeah you just need a little bit of ventilation to dilute and bring your relative humidity down in the room so you want to dilute the air and make it safe same when you're cooking open your doors and windows or a door a window even if it's a little bit yeah it will help to dilute the air you know I often say to people when you get up in the morning and you kind of flip your sheets over air out your bed for a few minutes while you're in the bathroom yeah give it five minutes open a window let some air flow through and then you've diluted that air from the night before that you've been breathing yeah because that in itself creates indoor air quality issues because of you know carbon dioxide yeah we yeah and what about then having plants indoors is that a recommendation or do they have mold issues and things they do have a number of issues and I know Nicole for one recommends that you don't put them in the bedroom because of the carbon dioxide thing people who have mold sensitivities could be and generally are affected by the soil yep and you're putting water in there yeah to water the plants so you're putting moisture into the soil and into the air so you want to be careful that you're not overloading your indoor air and raising your relative humidity levels because that's what the moist so for mold to occur we need two things we need high relative humidity over 60% and you need a heavy dust load which is the food yeah and then the mold yeah mold yeah so that's how you get mold so if you can manage your relative humidity with a hygrometer yep really cheap tool from jcar about $25 yes just always keep an eye on the relative humidity and if it starts to creep up depending on the weather outside it'll tell you just pop a window open and you'll watch that percentage decrease yes so they're really easy simple fixes once you know how to manage your environment yeah that you can keep it fairly safe and keep dusting is the other team yeah definitely because the more we reduce that dust load because it's the dust that carries a lot of the allergens yeah so people who have allergies generally won't have carpet because there's a lot that you know the carpet holds it's like a sink yeah so it'll actually hold onto stuff yeah so yeah yeah dust load is really important and anything else then for so i'll just briefly mention as well in regards to personal care and cleaning products there it's something that we covered extensively in our low tox course and it's something that i cover extensively in my nourish and heal the whole you course and is covered more briefly in my seven ways to get your energy back in one month course which anybody can do anytime it's all online now that little course but if you want to delve into a lot of detail and understand the exact issues what what exactly each of the chemicals are doing potentially to your body that are found in all these really common things that most people have in their homes to to do their cleaning to do their laundry to look after to look after their themselves their skin their hair care makeup then i do delve into that in a great deal of depth in the nourish and heal the whole you program so if anybody's interested in learning about that it is there on offer for you and also we probably should mention alex stewart does have her go low tox course i think she only does it twice a year yeah so probably you'd need to wait a few months to to do the next intake of that because i think there's one just finishing again but that's a really good resource as well that you you can do and it you know you'd be surprised how easy it is to make the swaps once you get into the habit and you actually become quite quite strict about what you will and won't use and especially in regards to things that we're using that we're going to put into our bodies so how you're washing your dishes how your your cooking utensils and also what you're putting on your bodies in regards to makeup and skincare and stuff are the really super important ones because they're directly in contact with your skin or in fact going into your body so really important to get on top of that if you really want to be as well as you can be so i'm just having a look at all the things we wanted to cover did you want to talk about water as well water is important and the other thing that i haven't touched on is something that we do in our business i set up a division of our business is to look at split system yes yes i was going to bring that up yes because that's another really big thing it is and something i did not know until nicole pushed us into setting up this part of our business because nobody really quite understands it so just because of the nature of the way a split system works there's a lot of moisture very high relative humidity within the unit because hot and cold and sort of behind the condenser yep is where a lot of this happens and there's a heavy dust load because we're not taught to maintain them so many many units are never cleaned and they have mold yep and this becomes an indoor air quality issue because that is blowing into your environment and then we're breathing mold spores so and while most of us are not affected by it and may never be there are a lot of people that are and especially if you've got allergies asthma sickly children you've got anything going on you're going to be affected yeah so it's nearly 25 percent of the population i think it's 24 yes actually genetically cannot deal with mold with the mycotoxins from mold so it that's a quarter of the population it's amazing it really is yeah so that's one of the things that we do within our business but um on the subject of mold and cleaning i may mention though this is one of the issues that i combat a lot people use bleach yes please don't use bleach on mold yeah you've got there's a misconception out there that the bleach will kill the mold it doesn't the bleach in fact only it's like getting a white out and whiteing it out it's still there underneath the bleach yeah it just looks better but it's still there but the danger comes from when you put bleach on the spores what you're doing is they're looking at it going they're trying to kill us so we're going to fight back they don't want to die so what they do is they release mvocs so they release a very nasty chemical reaction and that is what people react to so when you actually put bleach on mold you're actually making the mold a lot worse it becomes toxic yeah so that's one of the issues around mold and there is a difference between molds there is mold that you get in your shower behind your silicon and that's going to be natural that comes from moisture and you know the nature of bathrooms and whatnot but when you've got mold on your walls or on your ceilings that's a real water issue so you've either got very high humidity or you've got a water leak coming from somewhere that needs to be investigated you need to address the root cause of that but yeah i just wanted to mention please don't use bleach on mold so what would you recommend people do use we as a business use warm soapy water and scrub down our showers just with a little scourer pad or some scourer brushes and we scrub because unfortunately easy off bam and all these they don't work none of this stuff works we've got to go back to basics and if you maintain your bathroom you need to get rid of the soap scum and you know the body fats and oils and which are what the mold is going to feed on yeah there's food there so you want to wash that down and the key to controlling mold is always control the moisture yeah so after you've had a shower what we do and what we give our clients and have educated them to do is you know the little squeegees that you clean glass with yeah yeah like your car so we have hooks in the showers and we have a little squeegee just tiny little squeegees the full circle brand is really great because they're ethical and sustainable and that's what we use so you have a squeegee and you squeegee down your tiles and your glass so you get all that water off the walls and then you just squeegee the base bits into the drain yeah just use your microfiber droplet microfiber cloth to just dry it off yeah and you'll get longevity out of the amount of times you have to clean your shower because if you're leaving the water there water has minerals in it and it's minerals that mark and streak when they dry so if you're drying that off then you're actually eliminating the chance for these marks yeah so it'll look a lot cleaner it will be a lot cleaner and a lot less moldy yeah and it will give you the best chance that you know not getting mold issues in there it's pretty simple it's a habit yeah you have to spend a few minutes after your shower just squeegeeing it down quickly yeah it doesn't have to be a perfect yeah you know as long as it removes most of the moisture yeah okay yeah and in regards to the split systems I'm just looking at my the one up there so people can certainly clean the dust off them if they learn to open them up and take those filtering pre-filters out and even across the top of the unit you'll notice nobody ever dusts across the top yeah just even with your vacuum cleaner once every few months you know put the round brush on it yeah and just vacuum the dust off okay you know off the casing of the unit because any dust that you can eliminate is less food yeah more per mold yeah okay just keeping a control of your dust load throughout your house will prevent a lot of things and then in regards to the specialist cleaning that your business does so how often should they be cleaned using that kind of process it's probably every 12 months but if they've maintained the dust load and the pre-filters which are the you know the filters that you're talking about when you open the lid yeah filters that you put down yeah and you've vacuumed a lot of it you've really reduced your dust load you could probably stretch it 18 months two years depending on your usage yeah some people use it heating cooling year-round yeah so obviously they should be cleaning it at least once a year if you only use it on really hot days or really cold days yeah it might go a couple of years yeah okay so it's not a cheap process there's a lot of work involved to basically strip down that unit hang a bag a catchment bag and that and we pressure wash the unit so it is actually pressure washed all the pieces are taken outside washed down and then brought back in and reassess it's dried off for moisture and then reassembled so that could be a three hour process yeah yeah imagine per one yeah one so it's full on yeah it's not remediation but it's kind of in between just a fluff clean and a remediation more down the remediation and so it will definitely eliminate a lot of mold okay yeah okay what else is there anything else you need to ask me about water yes yes from both of our studies we both know that filtering your water is really important yeah and i think most people think they're drinking water so they're doing really well but what we don't know is there are a lot of chemicals added into the water to disinfectant at to disinfect it at the treatment plant and then along the way we have through the distribution system not all the pipes are safe we still have asbestos pipes there'll be metal pipes there'll be plastic pipes and there is no map telling you what your water picks up on the way through the distribution system until it gets to your house yeah there could be lead there's a lot of heavy metals pesticides yeah so there's apart from fluoride and chlorine and so there's a hell of a lot of stuff in the water so i i we always recommend to filter your water in some way and you know even a basic water bottle with a charcoal filter won't take out a lot but it'll take out some you know it eliminating any any of the pesticides and chemicals and heavy metals is going to be better for you than not so whatever you can afford if it's only a 30 jug or a bottle with a charcoal stick in it yeah start with that start where you can yeah and then kind of work your way towards it there are lots of bench top units like um zazen is one that comes to mind i think waters do waters co yeah bench top units they do um and southern cross that's the one yes that's another one yeah and they're beautiful because they're ceramic they're ceramic they look really nice and your water tastes so much better you can notice the difference yeah so anything you can depending on your budget and where you're at but start somewhere and start and slowly once you get comfortable with your little bottle then maybe start thinking about a bench top unit if you don't want to start there save towards that but yeah definitely filtering your water and you can get a whole house filtration system which obviously is going to be expensive and not something you would do if you're renting correct like you and i both are but um it's something to think about if you're if you own your own home or you're certainly if you're building a new home definitely renovating yeah it's not just the water we drink it's also we're sharing correct yeah and the chlorine in the showers is quite dangerous so what i've done is i have you know the hosey things yep so i'm lucky enough that i have that where i'm renting and i've just bought one that has a filter in the sort of the hen bit yeah that you use on that hose yeah and all i did was untwist the hose that was there and twisted my filtered hosing so now i share in filtered water yeah and then when i leave i'll just put their one back yeah so i only tampered with the system it's just in the shower itself just that little yeah nut thing that you unscrew so yeah and that's an easy and they're really cheap aren't they about 150 or 180 dollars it's a very low price to pay for clean water yes going on your skin at least once a day yeah definitely yeah so lots of little things that you can do it's just it's very overwhelming when you first come across it and what i always teach is don't look at the big picture let's just tackle one thing at a time yeah so where do you want to start let's just make a list and i always say one swap a week and over the course of a year you've made 52 swaps you will have no idea yeah how much healthier you'll feel yeah and you've done it with ease one thing a week's manageable it is yeah so that that's a great um that's a great tip one swap a week and also i just always like to say to people to not become yeah stressed and overwhelmed by all this stuff and you know worrying about oh my goodness all these things that potentially i'm you know doing to my kids or whatever because i don't filter the water and um the stress that you're going to feel as a result of that kind of worry is worse than whatever it is that's in your environment that you now you know and now you can change it so um just relax and go with the one change one swap a week and you will get there to a beautiful healthy environment and surroundings um anything else we haven't covered other than your podcast i'd love you to just um quickly tell people what that's about um and where they can find it sure so um tammy samad and i all met while we were studying and realized that there needs to be some form of education out there that a lot of people are unaware of the dangers of a lot of things or the issues so we decided to set up a podcast just before covid and then had to work out how to like everybody do it all on zoom yeah um so we've had some really interesting people so we look at it as sharing the knowledge our combined knowledge and wisdom so we hope there's wisdom in there but um sharing everybody and we we're interviewing people we know or people we love and admire and relating it back into how it contributes to the way we live and how we live and you know while as building biologists we all talk about the environment there's also an internal environment which you talk about yeah so um we did a great podcast tammy and i interviewed elena brauer yesterday who is um a yoga instructor and one of the essential oil leaders in doTERRA but um elena has had a fascinating journey and you know just talking to her about really the way she lives even just during that interview she was so calm that we left the interview really calm and that's really important as you just said and that's the energy that that you're putting out into your environment that she's obviously put out you've absorbed there you go on and put that out and yeah yeah it all has a knock-on effect yeah so she was really interesting and we learned from our guests and it's called again healthier homes and living healthier homes and living and your podcast is on all the platforms as well as iTunes and all the major spotlight all of that yeah okay and then what about for yourself for clean fresh group um you do it's commercial cleaning now is that right and the um split system so if people need that kind of service what's the best way for them to find you uh we're on facebook we're on i'm on facebook linkedin um and i can give you our details email you've got a website yes yeah yeah so clean fresh group will tap on that in the um in the notes and people can find you i would really love to thank you it's been so nice to talk and be able to do it in person and yeah have somebody who's just so closely aligned with all the work that i do and the message that i'm trying to get out there and i always think it you know people are more likely to pay attention the more people are saying these things to them so correct really great thank you for having me letting me talk pleasure i hope i haven't scared everyone there's nothing to be scared of i think it's just we don't know what we don't know i could kick myself for all the things i've done but um it's not going to get us anywhere so i think you start where you are and just start making small changes take on arwin's program which is amazing and start with what you can cope with and what's easy yeah that's right because if it's not easy you're not going to keep doing it so yeah so so true thank you well i hope that you found that interview fascinating and you learned a lot and it's really piqued your interest and made you determined to take some action to reduce toxins in your environment in your home in the coming new year what a great new year's resolution to make uh so as i mentioned at the start there are a number of links in the show notes that you can use to take you into information about courses that i offer that will help you dive into this information a bit more deeply i also have a link in there to my blog called healthy environment and that has a lot more detail in it and in written form if that's how you like to get your information so that is all in the show notes for you and also of course the contact details for lordie for her business clean fresh group and also her podcast healthier homes and living that is all available for you in the show notes so i really have loved bringing the five star well-being podcast to you over 2020 i will be taking a bit of a break now probably not bringing any episodes through now until february 2021 if you would like to request any particular topics so basically of course i talk all about well-being and that does cover a broad broad range of subjects so if there's anything that you would like me to cover anyone in particular that you would suggest for me to interview i would absolutely love you to let me know you can get in touch with me via my website www.

Evenstarwellbeing.

Com that is where you'll find the show notes as well your podcast platform will link you to the show notes on the website and in the meantime i would wish you and your loved ones an absolutely beautiful peaceful joyful and restorative festive season and i look forward to being back with you in what i hope is a much better year of 2021 thank you so much