Welcome!

It's taken me a long time to get to this point......17 years to be precise. It's been a long, slow journey, but in some ways the journey has only just begun. Writing about my experience is just the start of a new phase of my travels. Last week after a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning, I decided that it was time for me to embrace my situation instead of denying it......time to connect with others who have also travelled this road and to stand up for what I know to be true about the over abundance of chemicals we eat, clean ourselves with and pollute our environment with every day.

Suffering in silence produces a great sense of loneliness. You're different, your body responds differently from most other people's when it encounters the toxins of the modern world. You feel as if no one understands. Doctors think you're neurotic. They can't find anything wrong with you. You see that look pass across their faces and you know you've just been labelled. So you continue on alone, adjusting your diet and avoiding the things you know are bad for you as best you can. But what about the things you don't, the substances that are hidden away in the list of ingredients that take an advanced degree to understand? What about environmental toxins......the cleaning products, beauty products and other substances that we use every day without question? How do we protect ourselves from those?

I've called this blog Chemical Free Consumer because that's really my goal. In order to maintain optimal health, it's important for me to eliminate as many of these neurotoxins from my life as possible. My companion recipe blog is called Daily Bread because this is really where it all started for me. Something as simple as the bread I was eating every day turned out to be making me sick. When I discovered what actually went into making my daily loaf, I realized why. If we can't trust the staples of our diet, how can we ever be healthy? Here at Chemical Free Consumer I'd like to share some of the steps I've taken over the last (almost) two decades to maintain my health. I also hope that we can support each other by sharing tips, tricks and ideas on how to reduce the chemicals we expose ourselves to every day. It's no longer just food additives, preservatives and colorants that pose a hazard for me. There's make-up and skincare, hair products, laundry detergent..........an endless list of items we all use each day.

So what do you say? Do you want to come on this journey with me? Let's explore this subject together and help each other along the way.