If you are anything like me, health is everything. You have to have good health to live a good life or to even live at all. Without health, your days could be spent in pain, and all the money in the world would not be able to make it go away. There are also many limitations to traditional medicine and prescription drug; so the best option is to focus on prevention. Preventing illness as much as possible can make life so much easier and much more pleasurable.

When you focus on prevention, you should start with the things that you can control, such as yourself and your home. Your home is the place that your physical body spends most of its time, so having a clean home is essential. However, even if you clean a lot, there are still some things that people miss because they simply do not know about them. So today, I will teach you about some of the appliances around your home that can physically destroy your home and take down your health, as well as some everyday normal habits that people have that contaminate their home.

1. Not Cleaning Toilets Enough

Every modern home these days has a toilet, and I honestly can not imagine life without one. It is hard not to love and appreciate a toilet in your home. Unfortunately, there are downsides to having a toilet inside. The main issue is that a toilet contains sitting water, which constantly has some of the worst bacteria going into it on a daily basis. Think about food poisoning or water-borne illnesses; all the bacteria from that goes into your toilet. Furthermore, a toilet offers an ever-constant wet moist environment that helps bacteria, parasites, and mold grows abundantly. If you have ever opened the back of your toilet bowl, you know what I am talking about. Sometimes, the bacteria growing in the toilet is so pervasive, that no matter how much toilet cleaning product you put into it, the bacteria will keep growing or keep coming back.

So what can you do? After a certain amount of time, you will likely have to replace the toilet and start fresh, but before that, lessening the amount of water in it helps reduce mold, and it makes it easier to clean away bacteria. Think traditional sit and squat Japanese toilets. Also, adding a cleaning agent to the toilet every time feces goes into it is a great way to extend the overall life of your toilet and to reduce how quickly bacteria grows in it. However, even if you do these things and mold grows out of control in your toilet, that mold can enter the whole bathroom and it can spread throughout the house on the floor where the toilet is.

Inhaling mold can cause many health problems including extreme tiredness, lack of energy, breathing problems, respiratory problems, damage to the lungs, cold-like symptoms, and asthma episodes in people with asthma. So, in order to reach optimum health, it is best to avoid mold exposure as much as possible.

2. Taking Long Showers

I think everyone has enjoyed a long shower at some point. It just feels so good to let the water run down over you; it also helps you forget some of the stress from your daily life. Doing this occasionally is fine, but it definitely should not be a regular habit or part of your routine. Showers should be limited to 10 minutes or so because the steam and heat from them can cause mold and mildew to grow in your bathroom. Furthermore, if there are any holes in the flooring in your bathroom around the bathtub, the water and steam created from a long bath can go through those holes and enter the walls and wood of your home; this can cause mold to grow in the very walls of your home, or cause the wood in the walls to wear out and rot.

How do you prevent this? The best thing to do is to always open a window or turn the fan on in the bathroom for 10-20 minutes after bathing to air it out. You should also keep a bath rug along the side of the bathtub to help prevent water from possibly leaking underneath the floor right underneath or beside the bathtub.

3. Not Washing Bedding Frequently Enough

Our beds, sheets, blankets, pillows, and pillowcases contain everything from bacteria, body secretions (all you couples out there know what I am talking about), hair and body oils, dirt, urine, and feces. Looking at this list, you might think that it is impossible for some of that to be in your bed, but it is very possible for all of them to be there. For example, if you fall asleep before bathing, or if you let other people sit on your bed with their clothes on, then the dirt on them or you from going outside will transfer to the bed. It is also possible for urine and feces to be in the bed from sleeping naked or from your underwear or thighs.

Every time we use the bathroom, though we may wipe it every time, some urine will remain on your skin because the water travels, and it dries quickly, so it can stick to your skin. What remains on your skin will transfer to your underwear, your pants, and then to your bed when you sit on it.

If you wear thick pants like jeans, then nothing will likely transfer from your underwear to your bed, but other clothing like exercise pants, leggings, skirts, and shorts, which are fairly thin, definitely are likely to have some transfer. The simple solution to this problem is to wash all bedding regularly, such as every week or every other week.

You can also spray your bedding with a disinfectant regularly or every time after washing your hair or contaminating your bed. This is especially important for pillowcases because hair is static, so it attracts a lot of bacteria and dirt. Putting that dirt on your pillowcases and then moving around in your sleep and putting your face on your pillow, will lead to acne and breakouts. So having clearer skin, starts with clean bedding.

4. Wearing Outdoor Shoes Inside

I am an American, and I hate how we wear shoes in the house. The only shoes that should ever be worn in the house are slippers, or shoes that never go outside. The reason that we wear shoes is to protect our bodies from things like animal feces, blood, throw up, and all the nasty things that we step in that are on the ground. When you wear outdoor shoes in your home, you bring all of that nastiness into your home and onto your floors where you and your children will step in it, and absorb it into the body through the bottom of the feet. By doing this, you help yourself and your loved ones die faster, and to be sick much more frequently; you are basically poisoning yourself and them slowly over time.

Your feet are so important. There are over 14,000 nerve endings in your feet alone. Over 7,000 nerve endings are in each foot, and they are connected to organs, the brain, your bloodstream, everything. So what goes into your feet, goes into your body, and it can poison you. Any bacteria can be absorbed through the feet and they can cause illness, or even kill you if they are strong enough and left untreated. Here is just one bacteria that can enter the body through the bottom of the feet:

“Strongyloidiasis was first described in French troops who had returned from modern-day Vietnam during the late 19th century who were suffering from severe, persistent diarrhea. It is a parasitic disease caused by nematodes, or roundworms, in the genus Strongyloides. The parasites enter the body through exposed skin, such as bare feet…Most people who are infected with Strongyloides do not know they are infected and have no symptoms. Others…may develop a severe form and, if untreated, become critically ill and possibly die” (“Parasites – Strongyloides”, CDC).

From a woman’s perspective, I have never understood wearing shoes in the house because if you are the one who does the cleaning, or if you are a housewife, that is so much extra cleaning work for you to do that could be avoided. The dirt, mud, and shoe prints on your floor from wearing outdoor shoes inside will have to be mopped up daily, so you could save yourself a few hours of extra cleaning each week simply by not wearing outdoor shoes in the house; following this simple rule will help lead to better health for the whole family.

5. Using Dryers Too Often

Dryers, like showers, can create a lot of humidity and put a lot of moisture into the air, so it is best to ventilate the area where you keep your dryer every time after each use. You should keep the door open in the room where your washer and dryer are when you are actively using them, and you should turn on a fan to air out the room afterward to help prevent mold from growing in that room. You should also leave your washer door open after using it to help the water inside of it dry and prevent it from stinking and smelling moldy.

6. Using Window Air Conditioners

Life without air conditioning when you are used to it is unimaginable. Summers would be unbearable, so naturally, it is hard not to love your AC unit; it definitely does have problems though, and the list is long. Most air conditioners bring outside air inside, so if anything happens to it, it can bring your health down fast. For example, if you have neighbors who hate you, and they put eggs in your AC unit, you will smell it, and you will have to replace the AC unit. If a small animal falls into it, urinates into it, lives in or on top of it, or dies in it, you could get deathly ill. There is also the possibility that a spider may go inside of it and have babies in it that could get inside of your home through any small crack in, or underneath the AC unit.

Birds can also create many problems for AC units, and they can harm your home. If a small bird creates a nest underneath the AC unit, it can lead to various problems. A mud nest can wet and rot the wall and the wood on the outside of the house, and even affect the wall on the inside of the house. If a bird nest is made from sticks and twigs, then you have to worry about bugs and mites getting inside the home. When the bird itself is on the AC unit, with or without a nest, it can lead to bird mites taking over the entire home, as well as getting into everything that you own.

Thus, any number of health problems can occur because of an outdoor air conditioner. Is there a solution to this problem? Yes. There are new air conditioners that are attached to a hose that is smaller, and which are supposed to only take the air out, rather than bring air in. These are supposed to be safer than traditional air conditioners, and they will have fewer problems.

If you have a regular air conditioner, then you will need to watch it regularly. I make it a habit to look out my bedroom window every day to see what my neighbors are up to, to watch the animals on the trees, and to check my AC unit to make sure that nothing looks out of place. Doing this has saved me from having to replace the AC unit in my room often, and my health has been much better during those hot summer months.

7. Contaminating Indoor Carpeting

Carpeting looks nice, pretty, and fancy, and it is really soft for the feet, but it is a job to keep clean. When you add in children and a pet to the mix, a carpet becomes a beast to keep clean. I feel sorry for any housewife who has carpeting because I know that she spends a lot of time cleaning it. There are as many problems with carpeting as there are with an AC unit.

When people wear shoes in the house, it is much harder to get the dirt out of carpeting than it is to wipe it off of a wooden floor. Even if you do not wear shoes in the house, health problems can still occur because of carpeting. For example, if anyone in your home develops a fungus or bacteria on the bottom of their feet, such as athlete’s foot, everyone will have it because they will put it into the carpeting, and everyone’s feet will go on the carpeting. If you have a lot of guests over often, you also have to worry about what bacteria they will put into the carpeting from the bottom of their feet.

Feet sweat a lot constantly. There are over 200,000 sweat glands in the bottom of one’s feet, and feet sweat around 8 fluid ounces of water a day for the average person. When we sweat, our toxins and bacteria can come out through our pores, and all of this will go into the carpeting through our feet.

Carpeting also creates problems with bugs, since it can be a haven for ticks, fleas, roaches, and other small biting insects. If someone comes into your home who has a pet that has ticks or fleas, they will fall off of that person and into your home where they will make a place for themselves in your carpeting; from there, they will reproduce and grow quickly. Wooden floors would be a problem for insects since they can not lay their eggs in it, it is not warm, and it leaves them exposed. Even if you get ticks or fleas in your home, having wooden floors would help make it much easier to get rid of them and to prevent them from growing and infesting your home.

All in all, carpeting is too hard to keep clean. It tends to smell over time, and even vacuuming does not stop the growth of certain bacteria on it, though it will help you vacuum up things like ants. So, the best thing to do is to get wooden floors if possible, but if that is not possible, the next best thing is to spray an antibacterial liquid mixed with a flea, tick, and bug killer over the carpeting each time after vacuuming it. You can also do this every time someone new visits your home. This will greatly help you to keep the carpet cleaner; it will help eliminate unpleasant odors in your home from the dirty carpeting, and it will help prevent bugs from settling into the carpeting that can bite you and infect you with diseases like Lyme disease, typhus, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF), and tularemia, among other diseases.

Conclusion

It is fine to have modern appliances in your home. Simply knowing the hazards that can come with them helps prepare you for when things go wrong, and it helps you to connect the dots when you or your family members start feeling sick inside the home. Knowledge is power, and it can be the difference between those who survive well, and those who do not, so use this power to look after yourself and your loved ones. Good luck on your journey towards optimum health!

Check out some of the best health products on the market in our health store here

Interested In Health & Beauty Coaching? Learn About Teeth, Hair, Nails, Makeup, and Vital Medical Health Research

Click here for information about health and beauty coaching with dlshealthandbeauty