The scent of desire, it turns out has more to do with our biological imperative than we might have ever imagined. That magical x factor in seeking and connecting to your special someone is actually right under your nose- or at least in it. Author Rachel Herz’s new book The Scent of Desire will be the first of many volumes on the often overlooked olfactory system that will forever change how we think about our relationships. And even though I have long been promoting smell as our primary sexual sense, I had no idea that its reach went to the very core of the species regeneration.

Our sense of smell and what attracts or repels us, is blueprinted in our immunological gene structure called the MHC. Every individual’s own genetic scent makeup is as unique as their fingerprint. What’s more, when it comes to reproduction, the healthiest progeny comes from two individuals whose MHC is most distinct and different from each other. This assures that any offspring has the widest range of immune function and therefore is the most disease resistant. This actually makes perfect sense in terms of our biological imperative to go forth and multiply, but it also profoundly affects the whole courting process as well as the likelihood of making your love sustainable. MHC compatibility is a predictor of not only bearing healthy offspring, but relationship longevity and frequency of cheating on your partner.

Even more remarkable than the biological compatibility of scent between partners is the new recognition that our ability to smell is completely intertwined with our ability to feel.
Recent research on people who suffered anosmia (scent blind) usually from a traumatic injury to the head, shows that they also became unable to feel a wide range of emotions. “Our sense of smell and our emotional experience are fundamentally interconnected, bi-directionally communicative and functionally the same.”

Suddenly the axiom to “Wake up and smell the roses” is not just good advice but actually may save your life. Without scent, we lose the texture and depth that makes life the rich and varied tapestry that it is. Imagine not being able to smell or taste not just a ripe melon, but your lover, it would make the experience almost inaccessible. Practice smelling, indulge in scent and taste and bear witness to the emotional response that accompanies this. It will surprise you.

I have been promoting the use of true scent products that enhance your own natural chemistry for years, intuitively knowing that products made chemically are not just bad for your most sensitive tissue, but also covers up your own natural odor and may just interfere with our ability to find and smell our true mates. So take this message to heart and as you breathe- inhale deeply, build your vocabulary and experience of scent especially around the people you love most. It will make you feel better.

A great review of this topic can be found in the article Scents and Sensibility in this month’s issue of Psychology today(psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000001.xml ). The book is also definitely worth the price.

Whenever I get time I like to check out other green blogs and recently I came across one called Green Unlimited which is run by three sisters. They talk about the latest green products, environmental news, and also about the steps they are taking in living greener lifestyles.

One of their latest posts was about an investigation conducted by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) which found hormone-altering chemicals in air fresheners.  I really do think that this should be highlighted to more people as not only do most of these smell awful, and I think can give you a headache.

I think that the best bet is to open your window or use natural products. For example in the kitchen I mix water with lemon juice and spray it in the air to get a nice refreshing and clean smelling kitchen. In the bedroom I dry lavender which makes my bedroom smell lovely. Having plants around your house is also a great way of creating a healthy, clean and nice smelling home.

“Gratitude is the heart’s memory.”  French proverb

I have generally not been a sports fan in life, but living with my husband for over 20 years and raising two sons has trained me in the importance of “the game”.  Tonight we shared a real loss as we watched the dreams of our star quarterback slip away with an injury to the knee. He stood on the sidelines watching his team lose their chance at a national championship.  This is the game of life we watched play out- the winning and the losing that defines our lives. I always tell my boys, especially after they lose, that you can’t ever win if you can’t risk losing.  The losing is what makes the winning real.

We can never imagine the full range of possibilities that can befall us in the games we play or the relationships that we live in. By default our imagination is limited by our experience and we shape the future pictures of our lives by what we hope will happen, rather than what could likely happen.   It is often the thing that you couldn’t imagine, that you often don’t see coming- even when it is barreling down on you like a linebacker, that ends up to be the defining moment.   Not being able to accurately predict our future and the outcome of the game, is what makes life so exciting and risky.

Recovering from loss takes great courage- especially when it happens on ESPN.  The young men on the team will come home today and figure out how to try again.  They will have to be willing to take the risk again.  Losing in private, with no one else is watching is not a lot easier.  Finding the courage to try again in the game of relationships, careers or athletic endeavors depends on our ability to access our heart’s memory.

It is through our heart’s memory, the place where we remember gratitude, that we find that what we have is enough and that we are enough even when we fail.  When we experience gratitude for both our own efforts and the efforts of the people around us, we can come back from our losses with courage.  This grace is the energy that is able to turn denial into acceptance, chaos into order and confusion into clarity.  Using the heart’s memory is what champions do after defeat and I think the only sustainable path to live a life that gives as much as it takes.  We realize that having the chance to play in the game is enough, even when we are left with less than the golden win.

This is the week we set aside to be thankful for the gifts of life and well being that is so easy to take for granted. This year consider being thankful for your heart’s memory- the inner store of loving thoughts and connections that has given you the courage to keep going.   Communicating your love is the essence of gratitude.  And gratitude is the essence of turning a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a day into a celebration of thanks.

I have recently transgressed (again) from being vegetarian to vegan. Since I was 12 I have been going through stages of being vegetarian and vegan and for about four years I was weak and went back to animal based food and products. However I am now 100% COMMITTED to being vegan and will never ever go back to animal based food or products.

Important! I am not writing this post nor will I be writing the subsequent Veganism posts with the aim of converting you all to being Vegan. Instead I am writing about veganism to share with you an element of my life and also to hopefully start a discussion / debate on GGG how our lifestyle choices can affect the planet and even our health (whether in negative or positive ways)

So you may be asking ‘Why vegan? Well I personally believe in the vegan principles and ethics. Also I am now 100% committed to being vegan because it is better for the environment and also my health.

Principles and Ethics

Some may argue that we are born omnivores (meat and veg) and that eating and using animal based products is only natural. But is killing any animal (including human) ‘natural’? Is exploiting any animal (including human) keeping them locked up in pain and suffering ‘natural’?

I don’t think that it is ‘natural’ at all. Yes in the animal kingdom and in the circle of life some other animals kill other animals for food and some even ‘fun’. But these animals do not have choice – as humans we have a choice to choose that no animal including humans suffer in order for us to survive as a species. We do not need to eat animals to survive. We do not need to exploit anyone or anything including animals, humans or the planet to survive.

For more information about vegan principles and ethics then please watch the The philosophy of Vegan Values: The practice of non-violence Youtube video, go to the Veganism article on Wikipedia, or go to The Vegan Society website.

Environmental Benefits

Being a vegan is better for the environment compared to an animal based diet because fewer resources are used.

Here is a simple demonstration:

Land + Water + Energy = Crops

Land + Water + Energy + Crops = Livestock and dairy products

I could go into this in much further detail but the post would be far too long. However hopefully from the simple diagram you can see by eating meat or having dairy products additional resources are being used. So to me it makes sense to just eat the crops. Yes energy and land is needed to grow crops and I will write more about vegan farming / agriculture in another post.

If you want more information about the environmental benefits of being vegan then please check out an interesting online essay called ‘Logical Environmental Reasoning for a Vegetarian Lifestyle’.

Also some food for thought is, in “A 2006 study by Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the

University of Chicago, found that a person switching from the average American diet to a vegan diet would reduce CO₂ emissions by 1,485 kg per year.” Source: Diet, Energy and Global Warming study.

Health Benefits

As the vegan society says “How many times have you been told to eat more fruit and veg? Contrast this with how many times you’ve been told to eat more burgers…” The typical vegan will eat more fruit and veg than the average meat eater! And who can deny that an increase of fruit and veg is bad? Also people who “avoid meat also tend to have lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, and higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, and phytochemicals” Source: “Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada: Vegetarian diets (June 2003)

A well balanced vegan diet provides a range of health benefits compared to meat eaters and even vegetarians. For further details about the health benefits and for some recipe ideas etc, check out Super Vegans – Living proof vegan diets and nutrition.

Next Post

My next veganism post will explore about how easy it is to be Vegan using organic and locally sourced food. But in the mean time feel free to leave comments about your experiences of being a vegan or your arguments for or even against the various benefits of veganism including environmental.

I beleive that local, fresh and organic food can help to prevent ill-health and also help heal those who are ill. Which is why I am  supporting Nottingham City and QMC Hospital’s proposal to have an on-site kitchen using sustainable development technologies at the hospital.

The proposed kitchen would supply patients with freshly cooked food, brought in from local farmers. This would replace the existing food contract that the hospitals have with a large food contractor who currently provides cook-chill meals and delivers these from its Colchester base.

If you would like to provide feedback about this proposal (I have) then write as soon as possible to:

Mr John Hughes, Catering Manager, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Hucknall Road, Nottingham, NG5 1PB.

For those who do not live in Nottingham or the UK even, why not encourage your hospital to use local food and cook it on site too.

I have many friends who not only rarely sleep with their husbands, they can’t even talk about it. I would go even further and suggest that most of their conversations probably move them further away from intimacy than towards it. Connecting with our verbal language has it’s limits- especially since men and women, don’t just speak differently, we also hear differently. This is why I urge all of my closest friends to explore an entirely different dialog, one where the spoken word is left outside the door, and the conversation is lead and answered with what some would argue is our true intelligence- the body.

Our bodies do have a profound intelligence that we rarely give them credit for . Emotions are not actually thoughts running around your brain, although this is how we often describe them. Actually emotions are visceral experiences that live in one’s body, as true as chills on a windy night or burning skin in a late spring sun.

A conversation without words is often times the only answer in a conjugal life. It took me a very long time to learn this. The countless ways that I would rephrase my frustration with my husband’s silences and perceived lack of interest was continuously lost on deaf ears. I’m not sure the messages ever even reached his ears, my expression and body language was loud enough for him to get my negativity toward him with out needing to hear a word.

Contrary to popular belief, these wordless conversations of the body, have nothing to do with being “in the mood” . In fact, if you haven’t been physically intimate in a while, then the mood concept is a moot point. A physical conversation requires a willingness to be vulnerable enough to be touched. To allow your body to truly feel someone with you, has nothing to do with sexual arousal, and yet with out this permission, sexual arousal is impossible.

Listening and asking questions with the body are skills we mastered as children. Some of these conversations will culminate in sexual pleasure, some may provide a physical reflection of the borders that keep you separate- in either case, the journey of opening up to your own body will change the conversation. I guarantee that by taking the conversation to the body you will hear something that words could not communicate. Physical conversations can only help to make the subsequent verbal conversations kinder and more meaningful.

My sister is in the process of trying to help organise the first carbon neutral triathlon (A swim followed by a cycle ride and then a run for those non-sporty people of you out there) with her club Crystal Palace. Anyone who has ever taken part in a triathlon or has been to watch one will have seen how many plastic water bottles the triathletes get through, the amount of promotional merchandise that is produced and will know like most big events that transportation and energy consumption is high.

Hopefully this will be a first for this type of event and as the triathlon is the fastest growing sport in the U.K could be a great example of how to plan other eco friendly sporting events and races.
If you would like to know more about their plans or could help with sponsorship of the event please get in touch.

Kate

“I love plastic. I want to be plastic,” said Andy Warhol back in the groovy sixties when this seemingly miraculous substance began to shape and colour our everyday lives.

Back then the new plastic furniture and futuristic fashions seemed like a lot of fun but as the decades moved on increasing awareness about the toxicity of these products has left us with a serious ‘plastic’ hangover.

Today in the North Atlantic there is a floating mass of waste plastic – this is literally hundreds of miles long and poses a dire threat to the ocean’s sealife, with six times more plastic particles by weight here than plankton. And Charles Moore from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, who has studied this ‘plastic tsunami,’ is concerned that each year we manufacture yet another 60 billion tones of the stuff.

“Every bit of plastic ever made still exists,” he says. The fact is that plastic crumbles into ever smaller fragments when exposed to the elements, but never biodegrades. In reality, we don’t actually know how long it will take for plastics to degrade and although some plastics can be recycled, most require a new virgin layer of plastic added each time.

The negative health effects of plastic toys were well publicised in 1999 due to a ban on teething rings and soft vinyl toys for under 5’s made from PVC containing phthalates in both the European Union and Japan. Although teething rings containing this chemical are now banned, according to the International Plastics Task Force there are other pliable toys available such as bath and squeeze toys which still contain phthalates.

Because of this traditional wooden toys are coming back into fashion. They are made from sustainable materials, can be painted in bright colours with non-toxic paints and they are timeless classics. Not to mention the benefits they provide in-terms of both our children’s health and the environment when compared to plastic toys.

It’s virtually impossible to rid your house of all plastic products to reduce your child’s exposure to the potentially harmful toxins but you can make a choice about the toys they play with. Make a start by only purchasing toys made with alternative natural materials such as sustainable timber or textiles.

Traditionally, children’s parties have been one of the worst contributors to the ever growing problem of landfill saturation due to the amount of disposable goods they use but again you can make small changes for maximum benefits.

Carrier bags and party bags don’t have to be made from plastics, why not choose natural cotton drawstring bags, which can be reused? Party bags don’t have to be filled with cheap plastic disposable toys from the pound shop, it’s better to invest in a single toy your child’s friends will love than a bag full of rubbish they won’t. Not only that, it doesn’t have to cost the earth (pun intended!) there are many sustainable wooden toys such as spinning tops, pencils and pretty wooden jewelry starting from as little as £1.

With more and more options for a greener lifestyle becoming available, now is the time to choose goods with a conscience, both for your child, your peace of mind and the future sustainability of the environment.

Author: Lucy Brindley
Company: Little Cherry
Contact: lucy@littlecherry.co.uk
Tel: 01753 857003

“Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing…I am not aware of any other factor in medicine- not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery- that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes.” –Dr. Dean Ornish

These words began a revolution of thinking about the critical connections between our physical well being and our level of connection in life. As a heart doctor, Ornish paved the way in demonstrating not just a mind- body connection, but a heart connection which determines our well being, ability to heal, our most basic ability to enjoy life. That our physical heart is deeply connected and influenced by our relationships is intuitive and has been understood in this light since ancient civilizations, so in some ways the scientific studies only underline what we have always known. Love is the cure as well as the illness in our world, and evolving our ability to love, increases not only our chances of survival but creates a depth and meaning in life that only happens in relationships.

The healing affects of intimacy and connection extend deeply into the physical act of lovemaking. Hundreds of major medical studies have shown that an active sex life leads to a longer life, better heart health, a healthier immune response, reduction in chronic pain symptoms, lower rates of depression and even protection against some cancers. Men who have regular sex (only twice per week) have half as many heart attacks as men who only have sex once per month. In fact, a regular garden variety sex life has been shown to extend life by as much as ten years. People who enjoy a meaningful sex life are less anxious, fearful and inhibited.

If you are looking to green your lifestyle, why not start here. All the habits that you develop about sustaining your environment and home apply to your relationships. Feed your relationship with the same energy that you bring to the selection and preparation of your food shopping and cooking habits. Giving your time to composting and recycling is no different than finding the space to air out your feelings. Making commitments to simplify your life and reducing impact on the environment requires the same amount of mental energy as constructing the space and time for deep and meaningful touch in your days.

And just look at the sustainability benefits- Not only will you be happier and more optimistic as you take on the challenges of dealing with our quickly-changing biosphere, but you will likely be healthier and have more time to make a real difference. Greening your love has the power to extend out to the world in ways that we can barely imagine. It’s a worthy practice that can only make life more sustainable.

Hello Everyone! I haven’t posted in a while as I’ve been out recovering from a pretty major surgery a few weeks ago. All is well now and I’m starting to get my energy back and feel like myself again. My doctor is encouraging me to walk as my strength permits me (and the pain medication I might add – it keeps me pretty drowsy), as this will help in my recovery.

Well it turns out one of my favorite websites is trying to get everybody to walk. Lime has launched Live The Change. The goal is to have people walk 24,900 miles which is the equivalent of one lap around the world! If they reach this goal they will have: Reduced 20,772 lbs of CO2 emissions from car use, burned 2,490,000 calories, and walked 498,000 minutes.

Besides the health benefits to walking they want to let people know about the environmental benefits as well: Reducing just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year. The cost of operating a car for one year is approximately $5,170. The cost of operating a bicycle for a year is only $120. Walking is free!

As of this posting 2,420 miles have been walked! They encourage you to post your photos, videos, blogs, and any comments on Lime about your daily “Live The Change” routines.

Many of us walk to work, home, the gym and the grocery store. Here’s a chance to make each step count! Don’t forget your energy snacks and Kleen Kanteen!