Review: Transition Nutrition's Golden Princess Brittle

Raw chocolate is known to have high antioxidants, but sugar and other things can be a problem. I like Transition Nutrition's handmade chocolate brittle that uses organic maple for sweetener AND has the good-for-fertility pistachios.

Raw organic fair-traded cacao beans & butter from Ecuador, organic maple granules, raw organic Tahitian Vanilla, Royal Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt and raw organic pistachios and Himalayan raisins.

There's a spring sale going on, check it out here. PLUS you can get %15 off your paid order by mentioning GREEN FERTILITY. Enjoy!

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Fire Retardants also Retard Fertility!

Yuck, we got rid of our NEW foldout couches because of worries about PBDE for our son. (at the time, my husband thought I was a bit loopy). I didn't know it has such a huge impact on fertility. Ugh! My tip is to buy furniture from IKEA because they adhere to European standards--i.e., they already know to ban those @)(*#&$ chemicals there!:

If your home is your sanctuary, you might want to reconsider what you decorate it with, especially if you plan to get pregnant. A recent study out of the School of Public Health at the University of California in Berkeley has found that chemicals commonly used to fire-proof furniture, textiles, plastics and electronics manage to get into the bloodstream and apparently, exert a powerful influence on fertility.

The study involved 223 women who were trying to get pregnant. Those subjects who had high levels of certain fire-retardant chemicals in their blood took about twice as long to get pregnant as the women who had low levels. The chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, became common in the 1970s. According to study author Dr. Km Harley, "For every tenfold increase in PBDEs in the blood, we saw a 30% to 50% decrease in the odds of becoming pregnant in any given month," said study author Dr. Kim Harley.

read more here.

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Elevated Levels of Cobalt and Chromium Found in Offspring of Moms with Metal-on-Metal Hip Implants

This is kind of scary considering how "popular" hip plants are getting. Makes you think of other things we just stick in the body (from Newswise):

Newswise — Women with metal-on-metal hip implants, where both the ball of the joint and the surface of the socket are made of metal, pass metal ions to their offspring during pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The ions are the result of wear and corrosion as the metal parts rub against one another.

The data showed a correlation between levels of cobalt and chromium – components of metal implants – in mothers and their babies at the time of delivery.

The study will be presented March 9 at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in New Orleans.

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Celery can help protect your memory

Remember when celery was touted as the perfect diet food because it supposedly burned more calories to eat than it contained? I don't know if it's true, but it DOES seem that celery contained a super ani-inflammatory flavonoid, luteolin, that may help protect your brain's hippocampus, and, theoretically improve and maintain your memory.

To be filed under, couldn't hurt, might help. Why not? Plenty of fiber plus water, trace minerals. And choose organic, so you're not introducing anything detrimental into your system.

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This everday food ingredient might be make YOU infertile!

Check out my article on FertilityAuthority.com to find out what this ingredient is! Click here.

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Do Lawn Chemicals Make us Age more Quickly? Dr. Oz

We already know pestcides and fertilizers found in lawn chemicals are horrible for fertility and for little children (how ironic). How about for your aging? Again, it's a good idea to take your shoes off in the house--go Korean.

From safelawns.org:

CHICAGO — Thanks to America’s most popular talk show host, Dr. Mehmet Oz is quickly becoming the nation’s go-to physician when it comes to diet and aging.

Dr. Oz, a regular guest on Oprah Winfrey’s syndicated talk show, turned the green industry on its collective ear on Monday, Nov. 5, when he linked common lawn chemicals to the aging process.

“It’s important to remove your shoes as soon as you enter your home,” said Oz. “Otherwise, you could track in the lawn chemicals that can lodge into your carpet and expose you and your family to the toxins.”

Oz, who is co-author of the best-selling book titled YOU: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger, also recommended that homeowners avoid the chemicals commonly found in cleaning solutions, paints, fumigants and other household products.

The message, according to SafeLawns Founder Paul Tukey, is an important one.

“Growing up, I think we inherently knew not to mix household chemicals, but no one ever really told us that daily exposures to these common products would ever harm us if we used them as directed,” said Tukey. “To get the message out about toxicity in a forum like Oprah’s is tremendously powerful. It will ultimately protect people from the inherent danger in lawn chemicals in particular and make them think twice about exposing their families to these risks.”

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Green Tea May Not Be Good in Pregnancy

Interesting, green tea is so good for you, but it's possible that the compounds that make it anti-cancer may (in high doses) affect the way your body uses folate, which could lead to birth defects or other things. Not to mention caffeine, while the jury is out whether it hurts a pregnancy, doesn't seem to help, either.

Check it out:

Green tea is rich in antioxidants, and has a host of health benefits relating to dental health, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and weight loss. But researchers have found, whilst examining the active constituent of green tea, the epigallocatechins, or EGCG for short, that it may affect the way the body uses folate. Folate is important for pregnant women as it prevents neural tube birth defects in babies.

The problem of green tea during pregnancy is that the EGCG molecules are structurally similar to a compound called methotrexate. Methotrexate is able to kill cancer cells by chemically bonding with an enzyme in the body called enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). Healthy people have this enzyme also - it is part of what is called the folate pathway, which is the pathway, or steps, the body takes to transform nutrients like folate into something that can be used to support its normal functions.

read more here.

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