Shhh: How the Power of Silence Can Rewire Your Brain and Transform Health

“Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well.” ~ Florence Nightingale

In this day and age, we’d be hard-pressed to find a few moments without the cacophony of modern life swirling around us. With 24/7 access to television, streaming video, radio and all sorts of digital music, we might not give a second thought to the constant audio bombardment. Nor do we typically notice the day-to-day chatter from our coworkers, friends and families. Then there’s the constant buzz of lawnmowers, highways, trains, planes and automobiles. But science is finding that “noise pollution” may very well dumb us down, compromise health and dramatically increase stress and the accompanying hormones — unfortunately, this last bit can lead to weight-gain and heart disease. Even low levels of noise can trigger a cascade of undesirable effects. It’s enough to drive one mad — literally.

Meet Maizy, the Fifth Grader Taking on Education for Girls — With Bicycles

Hi! This is Maizy from BraveBikes!

I am in 5th grade and I like to mountain bike in my hometown in Montana.  I also LOVE to go to school. I want to help girls around the world be able to get to school and be AMAZING, so I hand craft-button bikes to help buy girls bikes.

BPA-Free Plastics Are Still Scary — Here's Why

By Mariah Blake, March/April 2014 Issue Mother Jones

The Scary Evidence About BPA-Free Plastics — and the Big Tobacco-style campaign to bury it.

Each night at dinnertime, a familiar ritual played out in Michael Green’s home: He’d slide a stainless steel sippy cup across the table to his two-year-old daughter, Juliette, and she’d howl for the pink plastic one. Often, Green gave in. But he had a nagging feeling. As an environmental-health advocate, he had fought to rid sippy cups and baby bottles of the common plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA), which mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a long list of serious health problems. Juliette’s sippy cup was made from a new generation of BPA-free plastics, but Green, who runs the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, had come across research suggesting some of these contained synthetic estrogens, too.

Science Says We Are Healed by Nature (And Even Houseplants)

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Green growing things heal us in surprising ways. Communities are trying to bring plant life to areas that lack it.

Via Yes! Magazine

In some of my earliest memories, I’m perched between two branches of a plum tree that grew in front of my house. To climb, I’d grip the lowest branches and stretch my foot as high as it would reach, pulling myself up to sit comfortably in my little throne of branches. There, I’d peer through the pale purple blossoms, across the sidewalk, admiring the tops of cars.

7 reasons why kale is the new beef

(Organic Authority)

By Jill Ettinger

Like the saying goes, the only constant is change. We may resist it all we want, but Time and its inevitable evolution of everything in its path is unaffected by our attempts to stop it. The resulting trajectory of humanity’s nascent ascent appears to be positioning itself to sweep us into progressive new times, especially where our food choices are concerned, as nearly 7 billion people are now standing on the little scraps of land that we share with some 55 billion rather large animals raised for food each year. (As another famous saying goes: This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.) So, beef (and all factory-farmed meat) may be going from rib-eye to relic as we transition to a greener world… literally—as in leafy, green vegetables.