Imagine yourself taking a walk outdoors. You may be picturing a lovely coastal scene, or a forest setting, or perhaps a stroll in the hills…ah, how pleasant, you can almost taste the clean, fresh air!
Now think again, and get a feel for what it would be like to take an extended, 8-hour long hike along a busy traffic-laden road! Every step of the way you’re breathing in toxic fumes and seeing nothing but the back ends of honking cars. Can you imagine the impact of doing this every day of your life? You’d be crazy to even conceive of such a thing, right?
Yet every night of our lives we sleep in bedding that contains a toxic soup of chemicals. Just to spell that out - that’s 8 hours a day, 122 days a year, or (on average) 27 years of your life! Given this amount of time, a lot of accumulative damage can be done, and being so chronic it can be hard to detect the source. However, people with very sensitive skin, or those with skin allergies, or eczema tend to notice, and their conditions fare much better in organic (toxin-free) bedding. We know because some of our customers at Sleep Organic have told us so. But for the vast majority of us who don’t suffer from these skin conditions, it’s not so easy to notice the very subtle ways we may be harming ourselves by chronic absorption (mainly directly through the skin, but potentially also by inhalation) of toxic chemicals/pesticide residues, heavy metal ions and formaldehyde fixative found in ‘conventional’ (i.e. non-organic) bedding. Such long-term exposure can lead to enhanced chronic low-grade inflammation, which recent research indicates, not only accelerates the ageing process, but “plays a role in the initiation and progression of age-related diseases such as type II diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, frailty, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and cancer” (1).
So isn’t it time you started treating yourself better? By using genuinely organic bedding (i.e. GOTS–certified via the Soil Association) you can have peace of mind that you and your loved ones are kept safe and sound each and every night.
Dr Chris Murphy, co-founder, Sleep Organic
(1) Chronic Inflammation: Accelerator of Biological Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2017;72(9):1218-1225.