Webinar Replay Pillar 1: Non-Toxic Environment, Water, and Food
This is part 1 in a 4-part series on the 4 Pillars of the Marama Alzheimer’s reversal lifestyle.
Keeping toxins out of your environment and body is often is the hardest part As I mentioned in my clinical practice—what I saw was people who weren’t getting the most out of the Bredesen Protocol were still taking in some contaminants and had some toxic burdens on their system.
Non-Toxic Air
At Marama we have thoroughly tested for mold. I work not only with Dr. Bredesen, but also with Dr. Neil Nathan—I’ve followed his work very closely for many years—mold can directly impact cognitive function. So I have made sure that we thoroughly tested Marama.
Of course, leaks come up. We’ve had a dishwasher leak, we’ve had a shower leak and immediately we get plumbers and then also we have mold inspectors and mold remediation happening immediately after any sort of water damage.
We also run the GC Multi air filters by IQ Air. This is a very high quality air filter. There are things that we cannot control, like wildfires in Southern California. And so, we make sure that those air purifiers are going 24 hours a day, 7 days, a week and then regularly replacing the replaceable parts and filters.
Non-Toxic Products
We also have a hundred percent non-toxic cleaning products. We love
- Branch Basic
- EO
- Bioclean
- Dr. Bronner’s
In the bedroom we’ve curated our mattresses, pillows, linens—everything again is organic and non-toxic. We use Avocado brand green mattresses, pillows, and mattress pads. We have organic cotton sheets and towels—everything including the detergents are fragrance free. There are no artificial smells in the bedrooms or in the communal space.
When a resident arrives, we offer them a welcome bag. It has an organic cotton robe in it. We also have soaps, hand sanitizers, lotions, toothpaste, and shaving cream that is non-toxic and fragrance free. We do all of this because I know how overwhelming it can be to decide what to buy with these different products and labels. We want to relieve all that worry.
Usually again, it’s an adult child, often the daughter, who has the power of attorney, POA and who is doing the decision making. We want to make sure they don’t have to worry about that. We curated the welcome bags as a way to simplify the experience.
Clutter
At Marama we are very mindful of the influence of sounds, smells, and visual stimuli on our residents. We can all relate to being a little frazzled by a place that feels very cluttered. We keep the clutter down. We keep the sounds to a minimum, or make sure that we’re using them intentionally as calming music instead of background chatter. The same with smells. Really, I think the only smell that we have at Marama is that amazing aroma coming from the kitchen.
Organic Ketogenic Diet & Safe Water
The ultimate goal of Marama is for our residents to move in, and then move back home and return to independent living. The goal is to use what we know to maintain an independent lifestyle for as long as possible. An organic ketogenic diet is critical to brain health. We have an onsite orchard and two large greenhouses with tons of food growing there that is used in our kitchen daily. We offer cooking classes to all of our residents. We seek to engage and to teach residents how to cook in preparation for when they move home. The residents also actively participate in gardening and growing food.
Unfortunately in San Diego we are at the end of the river that feeds the municipal water supply. Our water sources are not ideal. There are pesticides, herbicides, even pharmaceuticals that are ending up in the water—lots of contaminants. It is quite a chore, however we have staff that go to a local spring and fill up glass jugs every week to make sure that we have plenty of drinking and cooking water for everyone that is non-toxic.
At home, I recommend you can look for spring water that is delivered. Here in San Diego, we use Mountain Valley spring water. You may be able to find another clean water source, but you want to make sure that it’s been third-party tested and that there are no contaminants in it.
Read all 4 Pillars:
