Asthma and Allergy Sufferers - How to Improve Your Health Instantly Overnight, Sleep on the Floor!

Asthma and Allergy Sufferers - How to Improve Your Health Instantly Overnight, Sleep on the Floor!

You may be wondering why the absurd title?

Wouldn't you agree that a typical home's carpets are professionally cleaned once or twice a year? And if they entertain a lot, their carpets can be professionally cleaned three or four times a year. Wouldn't you agree that our carpets are also vacuumed once or twice a week? This is great because carpets, especially in a bedroom, collect allergens and can harbor up to 50,000 allergen-producing dust mites.

How often have we professionally cleaned our mattresses and pillows, items with which we are in close contact for eight hours a day? Never, nor do we clean them ourselves, weekly or every other week! Bedding, yes, ... but neither the mattresses nor the pillows.

But do we sleep on our cleaned and vacuumed carpets? No, at least not usually. We are healthy people who sleep in our beds...our beds, which have NEVER been professionally cleaned, nor the pillows we lay our heads on have ever been professionally cleaned. So it would be more logical and even healthier to sleep on our cleaned and vacuumed carpets!

Our unhygienic mattresses and unhygienic pillows harbor an average of 2,000,000 dust mites and sometimes even 10,000,000 dust mites! Dust mites produce a digestive enzyme so powerful that it breaks down and kills living tissue. This digestive enzyme, called guanine, is secreted as a powerful and very harmful allergen. House dust mites excrete 20 to 30 fecal pellets every day. Calculated, that's the equivalent of 40 to 60 million fecal pellets accumulating in our mattress EVERY DAY! The fecal pellets are about 15 microns in size, but when they dry out they become powdery and break down into even finer particles. These particles can then be easily inhaled by YOU when you fluff a pillow or toss and turn at night, which happens on average 50 to 60 times per night.

Dust mites are responsible for 80% to 90%allergenicCompounds found in house dust. Although dust mites and dust mite allergens (DMAs) are found throughout a home, the vast majority of dust mites live, thrive, and breed in the micro-habitat of a mattress and pillow. It's time to incorporate regularly scheduled mattress and pillow cleanings into routine housekeeping.

In every average household, indoor air quality is now the worst it has ever been, and dust mites are the most common cause of poor indoor air quality. Visit EPA's latest website at: http://www.noattacks.org More facts about indoor air pollutionAsthma, “hidden” asthma, perennial rhinitis, bronchitis, sinusitis, eczema and many other respiratory and skin diseases have increased every year since 1980.

The ACAAI (American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology) has found that 50% of all illnesses are either caused by or worsened by poor indoor air quality.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that the air quality in our homes, schools, and workplaces is, on average, two to five times worse than outdoor air quality, and in MANY places, much, much, worse...as in 100 to 500 times worse! Really!!!

The EPA has also found that since the 1980s, children typically spend 90-95% of their time indoors. This is a MUCH higher percentage than in the 50's and 60's when our parents couldn't keep us indoors (regardless of the weather and time of day!).

How could this have happened in the USA? Here are just three of the top plausible reasons…

1). Energy conservation practices that began in the late 1970s led to newer construction methods, improved insulation, and more "airtight" structures to maintain indoor temperatures and climate.

The negative effects that the less "drafty" structures have shown are the increased accumulations of indoor organic pollutants (dust mite allergens, molds, molds, spores, bacteria, viruses, dander and outdoor pollutants (pollen is number 1) indoors and inorganic pollutants such as man-made chemicals and VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

VOCs emit gases from thousands of products found in a home, such as paints, varnishes, strippers, cleaning products, pesticides, carpet backings, building materials and furnishings, and in schools and workplaces such as copiers and printers, correction fluids and carbonless paper, graphics and craft materials, including glues and adhesives, permanent markers and photographic solutions.

Toxic chemicals are often used as ingredients in household products. Paints, varnishes and wax contain organic solvents, as do many cleaning, disinfecting, cosmetic, degreasing and hobby products. All of these products release chemical compounds as you use them and to some extent when they are stored.

2). Technology has played a negative role. The negative impact of technology is the increasing indoor entertainment options. Cable television, computers, interactive games (Play Station, X-Box, etc.) are often the entertainment of choice for school children and young adults. This type of entertainment keeps people inside instead of outside, playing games like Whiffle Ball, Jacks, Hop Scotch, 2-Square (or 4-Square), Tag, Red Rover, or even hide-and-seek...

3). Globalization (the latest “El Nino”-like excuse). While G-zation is pretty cool (the shrinking of the world leads to the exchange of new ideas, greater access for travelers to far-flung places, and encouraging cultural exchange). G-Zation is also responsible for some negative effects, some of which are already known, such as bird flu or the re-infestation of the once nearly extinct bed bug in the United States, as well as additional negative effects that have not yet been recognized.

Finally (and I can't quite decide whether these are major or minor reasons) I suspect that household practices and how "family life" has changed since the '70s and '80s. Divorce between marriages actually became the norm (and even became a status symbol), unlike in the '60s. The family (or what remained of families) became more mobile, leaving behind support (and knowledge) from extended family members (grandma and grandpa). Divorced mothers entered the workforce and left the house unattended (housekeeping became less important), or the household required BOTH parents to become wage earners, which in turn caused housekeeping to suffer, albeit minimally.

Source control, attacking the root cause of indoor allergens

Grandma and Grandpa and the generations before knew how important mattress cleaning is. This was a common spring cleaning ritual in the days when everyone hung their laundry out to dry. Although house dust mites were only discovered in 1694 (by the inventor of the microscope), they have lived on Earth for approximately 300 million years. When humans began sleeping on mattresses, dust mites learned about humans' new food source. This happened about 10,000 years ago and it is no coincidence that mattress cleaning became a normal “household” function about 8,000 years ago.

Health and wellness starts at home and to experience the best health, it's time to get back to sleeping on hygienic mattresses and pillows... or sleeping on clean carpets. If you appreciated this article, you may be interested in other articles written by Tom Hefter.

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