Low Tox Life

Every once in a while a brand comes along that sets the standard for many to follow. One of those companies is indeed Weleda, founded by Rudolph Steiner 100 years ago next year, on the biodynamic principles he was defining at the time before being condemned by the Nazis - by Hitler himself - for his progressive ideas of oneness. From those first preparations, one of which is the still famous today, cult product Skin Food, has grown one of the biggest ethical, sustainable companies in the world. I am thrilled to have Annette Piperidis, International Strategic Sourcing Coordinator at Weleda global with us on the show, to take us under the hood of the brand and show us how they maintain high standards despite their scale. Annette is responsible for ensuring that all raw materials meet the company's high standards such as the highest standard of them all, the UEBT. Enjoy the show and head over to the show notes for our show sponsor offer and more details on Weleda at lowtoxlife.com/podcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second Eco-Building special release this week is with Australian business owners of Blue Eco Homes, Joe and Merylese Mercieca, from the Blue Mountains region. In this show we focus on Passivhaus building philosophy and implementation to help you understand not only what some of the drawbacks are to a regular house build, but what the many benefits are to getting it right for your health and the planet in the long term. Having spent a night in their show home to experience what it was like, I can tell you it's a home like no other. Joe had a vision to build sustainable quality homes, with minimal impact on the environment – both during construction and when occupied. This was the catalyst for Blue Eco Homes. With an aim to reduce environmental impact both during construction and habitation of their homes, Blue Eco Homes continues to pioneer sustainable innovations in the building industry. We work with local designers to build sustainable residential and commercial properties simply not offered by traditional builders. Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on xxx at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building and renovating is something we get asked about a lot and anyone who's met me knows, I am NOT the best person to ask. I do however know how to find the best people to help us all navigate these bigger low tox goals and substantial investments to make the most of what is often one's life's savings and dream home vision. Enter one of two builders I've got on the show this week bringing you a northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere perspective: First up, Canada's Casey Grey, aka the Conscious Builder. Casey was born to build as demonstrated by a voracious lego habit as a child, a passion for construction and seeing how things fit together, leading to his first job in construction at 17 and his own construction business a few years later. One day asking “WHY?” he realised he wanted to fulfil a bigger purpose than simply building houses for people, but making the experience a conscious, low impact one from start to finish: The Conscious Builder was born and the rest is history. We talk passive house, building materials, renovation vs building pitfalls and more on today's show. Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on today's show at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am thrilled to bring you the “brain retraining” work of Ashok Gupta this week, one of the wonderful resources I've found, investigating a long term issue of mine that I'd so dearly love to nip in the bud. Ashok suffered from ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. Through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. He then set up a clinic to treat others, and then published the well-known recovery program known as the Gupta Program in 2007. His mission: To help people retrain their brains and nervous systems to respond as required - NOT as if it's a state of emergency all the time. He has published several medical papers and is continually researching chronic conditions that don't resolve despite ‘people doing everything right'. I've suspected for some time now, that my nervous system and immune response have started having irrational responses to even the slightest of change or stressor as a ‘hangover' from a negative reaction to anaesthetic and experiencing CIRS from mold 4 years ago. Hayfever from air fresheners; palpitations if I even walk through a mouldy house, or past an air con system that's dirty. I get muscle twitches when at a traffic light near a phone tower. I got both when I recently changed the darn sheets and they'd been in the cupboard for a month. I knew it wasn't my conscious brain reacting so  I started to wonder if it was a nervous system ‘PTSD'. Turns out, I was onto something. Can we rewire these reactions? Ashok Gupta believes we can and his program has achieved results for many people healing from ME/CFS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, CIRS, EHS, Anxiety and more. So, here he is, explaining how a few exercises a day can help our nervous systems and immune responses stabilise. Fascinating work and hope for many.Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details as always on xxx at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes I have a guest on the show that makes me feel like I've had an hour-long hug and a cup of tea and all is just going to be fine in this topsy turvy world. Jane Milburn is such a guest. Author of Slow Clothing: Finding Meaning in What we wear. Her forever strategy is to use what you have to do what you can to ensure a resilient future. In today's show I inched forward a few extra steps in my readiness to get more creative with turning old clothes into something new, although my husband is the one who's handy with a sewing machine in our house. If you care about slow fashion, love repurposing things or perhaps feel a little lost as to how to get going doing better in this area, this show is very much for you. Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on xxx at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm thrilled to continue an “Under the hood” fashion series, this week looking at jewelry after last week's denim show. Pyrrah jewelry are one of the few jewelry brands with full transparency and commitment to ethics in the supply chain and for their team who make the pieces so founder Danielle is. In 1993, Wade and Danielle Papin met, fell in love and began handcrafting jewelry at their kitchen table in Vancouver. Two years later—following myriad conversations about their shared appreciation for good design and old things—they founded Pyrrha with a commitment to letting their materials inspire their work. The resulting jewelry is Pyrrha's now iconic line of talisman necklaces, bracelets, cuffs and rings made from reclaimed silver, bronze and gold. Each piece is handcrafted in Pyrrha's Vancouver studio—a striking contrast to the glut of overseas, factory-made, mass-produced jewelry that is so common in their industry. "Everything seems to be cranked out at a staggering pace and then left for dead," says Wade. "Because we live in such a throwaway society, it's necessary—and joyful—to create some things that can be kept."While Pyrrha remains a local treasure in its native Vancouver, the talismans have captured international attention. The line has been embraced by celebrities and style icons the world over, and retails at such global boutiques as Liberty of London, Le Bon Marche Paris and United Arrows of Japan. In 2010 Wade and Danielle took what felt like their natural next step, opening their extraordinary flagship store in L.A. The Pyrrha store allows fans to experience the Pyrrha world, as well as to see the extensive talisman collection in its entirety.I hope you enjoy learning about the jewellery trade more intimately as well as this beautiful brand and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on xxx at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's show and for the next 3 weeks we're talking fashion - denim, jewelry and becoming a confident textile repurposer and fixer! So this week, I have the wonderfully determined James Bartle on the show, sharing his purpose-led journey to creating Outland Denim. It's a brilliant example of business for social change and human rights justice and while this is a big feature in today's show, we also discuss where the denim industry is at with production, sustainability and ethics all along the supply chain. I hope you enjoy it. Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on James and Outland Denim at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wade Lightheart is someone who knows by sheer experience of failure, trial, test, measuring and eventual success, what the keys to optimal health are for humans. From his experience competing in the Mr Universe, to putting on a lot of body fat shortly after, to a tragic family story in his youth and much, much more, Wade arrived at the acronym A.W.E.S.O.M.E and turned his focus to supporting people through education and his renowned supplement company, BioOptimizers. He uncovered much of the shady-ness of the supplement industry in both research and manufacturing (if you want to dig deeper, I interviewed Kate Johnston/Holm on this last year, too!) and then started on a journey to independently support as many people as possible with the issues plaguing us today: Poor digestive health and the flow on effect in all areas of our health. We talk about what the second world war had to do with the food industry history, how what we eat today is very different to what every other animal's diet is, to how to reestablish great digestive health and vitality with some key basic concepts and changes. I hope you enjoy learning from Wade. A wealth of knowledge. Lots of health nuggets. Enjoy and head over to the show notes for the sponsor offer and further details on Wade and BioOptimizers at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you have a strange relationship with your dreams? Run to a dream dictionary to check the meaning of them? Not have them at all or struggle to remember them? Today I chat to Eric Tyrone-Brown all about dreams and how we can start to work more actively with them to have a richer dream-state life as well as using them to our advantage in our waking hours. It's a fascinating deep dive into dreams culturally, and also what some of the biggest scientific and cultural moments have been that were born from dreams. Enjoy the show and be sure to head to the show notes over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast to connect to our show sponsor offers and more details on Eric's work, Alexx xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Something like food waste isn't a very sexy front page story on the topic of global warming, but if you made food waste a country, according to Project Drawdown research, it would be the 3rd largest emitters behind China and the USA. True story. So food waste is huge, but then the modern person busy with a calendar full of to do's, sometimes finding it hard to get something on the table for dinner let alone a ‘considered' meal on the table asks: What can my little house do about the fact that of all food produced, the world wastes between 30-40% of it? Well, a lot. Enter Alex Elliott-Howery, founder of Cornersmith and author of her new and 3rd book “Use it all”. Alex has devised a unique and powerful way for everyone to get really comfortable with using it all up and I was so thrilled to discuss a deep passion topic of mine personally, with a leader in the Aussie field of making food waste reduction an appealing and clever thing for us all to do. Remember the saying “It's just 1 straw, said 8 billion people?” Well, same is true of food waste. Start where you are, do something, and as a collective we can dramatically change the story around food, grow our respect for it, our connection to it, and become clever, resourceful cooks (which means less stress in the kitchen!) SOUND LIKE A PLAN? Enjoy and head over to the show notes for this month's sponsor offer at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.