Your World and You: Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health – Issue 7 (Premium)

Environmental and Nutritional Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health

This feature highlights reports, studies, and feedback from families on efforts that can make a positive impact in our quest for health. We invite you to share material with us that you think would be of interest to our readers.

Topics featured in this article:

1. Help Control Ticks and Fleas Around Your Home
2. Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry maybe inside your stomach
3. More on the gut! GI Biology, Pathology, and Treatment Strategies
4. Taking Time to Pick the Right Teas
5. Natural Simmering Air Fresheners

1) Help Control Ticks and Fleas Around Your Home

When the weather warms up, critters start to surface. The EPA offers these suggestions to deal with fleas. While some of them may seem common sense, skipping one or more can make control more difficult. See also the link at the end of this list for ways to make a “tick-safe” zone in your yard.

• Vacuum every day to remove eggs, larvae and adults; this is the best method for initial control of a flea infestation. Be sure to vacuum the following areas: carpets, cushioned furniture, cracks and crevices on floors, along baseboards and the basement.
• Steam clean carpets: the hot steam and soap can kill fleas in all stages of the life cycle. Pay particular attention to areas where pets sleep.
• Wash all pet bedding and family bedding on which pets lie in hot, soapy water every two to three weeks. If an infestation is severe, discard old pet bedding and replace it with fresh, clean material.
• Use a flea comb to suppress adult fleas. Hair can pass through the comb’s teeth, but not the fleas, removing fleas as well as flea feces and dried blood. Especially comb the neck and tail areas, which is where the most fleas congregate.
• Deposit fleas in hot soapy water to kill them.
• Consider allowing your pets to stay indoors as much as possible, which reduces their chance of being bitten by tick and fleas.

ALSO: Modify your landscape to create Tick Safe Zones.

2) Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry maybe inside your stomach