The Air You Breathe: Why the Air in Your Home Deserves More Attention

I’m back to reality after spending a week in the Norwegian fjords and honestly, I really needed it.

We had pretty much no WiFi which is just my dream, I spent most of my time outside, we were drinking water straight from the glacier and I was surrounded by mountains and water every single day. Everything just felt clean, quiet and simple and it was honestly bliss.

I am going to miss those views soooo much.

But coming home got me thinking about something that we rarely think about when we’re trying to improve our health, and that is the air we’re breathing every single day.

We think about what we eat, we think about the water we drink and we’re becoming much more aware of what we put onto our skin, but most of us don’t really give much thought to what we’re breathing in our own homes.

When you think about how much time we spend indoors, it is actually quite mad that we don’t talk about it more.

I want you to understand why the environment inside your home deserves your attention and some really simple things you can start doing to improve it, without panicking, without throwing everything in your house away and without becoming terrified of every candle you’ve ever burned.

That is never what my work is about.

I want you to have awareness because awareness gives you choice, and once you know something you can decide what you want to do with it and start making changes.

Why I started looking at my environment

When I first started looking at my own health, I didn’t think about my environment at all. I honestly thought health was basically food and exercise.

Eat well, move your body, drink your water and done.

Then my own health started changing.

At the time I was running two businesses, I was stressed, I was under eating and I was constantly switched on. Eventually I lost my periods and my body was very obviously telling me something wasn’t right.

But I was so confused because I was eating really healthily and I was training every day, so in my head I was doing all the right things. I didn’t get why my body was reacting the way it was.

Yet like so many women, I was dismissed when I went looking for answers and that experience made me start asking much bigger questions about what was actually going on.

I wanted to understand why my body was reacting like this and that eventually led me into studying nutrition, hormones and environmental medicine.

Environmental medicine completely changed the way I looked at health because your body doesn’t exist separately from your environment. It is responding to what surrounds you every single day, from the food coming in and the products you’re using to your stress, your sleep and the environment you’re living in.

All of it forms part of your health picture.

I don’t want you becoming obsessed with eliminating every possible exposure because that isn’t realistic and it isn’t how I live either. I want you to reduce the things you can and then get on with living your life.

Think about a normal day

Think about what happens from the moment you wake up.

You’ve probably spent seven or eight hours in your bedroom, then you shower, use your skincare, deodorant, perfume and maybe hairspray. You clean the bathroom, maybe spray something around the house because you want it smelling nice, then you cook, sit on your sofa, work in your office, clean the kitchen, wash your clothes and eventually get back into bed at night.

There are cleaning products, fragrances, cooking fumes, dust, particles coming in from outdoors and materials from our furniture and homes around us all day without us really thinking about it.

That doesn’t mean your home is some toxic danger zone, but it does mean your environment is worth paying attention to, especially when we spend so much of our lives indoors.

I think it is fascinating how conscious we have become about certain parts of health. People will spend ages choosing their water filter, buying organic vegetables and checking ingredients on their skincare, then sit in the same room for hours without ever thinking about the air they’re breathing.

We breathe thousands of litres of air every day, so it deserves some attention too.

And there are really simple things you can do. You don’t need a crazy protocol and you definitely don’t need to spend thousands of pounds.

Start with the basics.

Open the bloody window

One of the simplest things you can do is ventilate your home.

Open your windows.

It sounds almost ridiculous that this would be health advice because it is so basic, but you know I love the basics. Health doesn’t always have to involve buying something and sometimes supporting your environment really can be as simple as opening a window and letting fresh air move through the house.

Think about your bedroom in particular because if you’re sleeping eight hours every night, you’re spending around a third of your life in there.

I always open my windows first thing in the morning and then especially in the summer, if I’m in the house, I’ll often leave them open throughout the day.

Then think about your kitchen too. Cooking can create airborne particles and gases depending on what and how you’re cooking, so use your extractor, open the window and get some airflow through the room.

They are really simple changes but they can make such a difference and you can start doing them today.

Look at how much fragrance you’re using

Then I want you to look at fragrance because fragrance is literally everywhere.

Perfume, candles, room sprays, plug ins, laundry products, cleaning products and diffusers. That is a whole lot of fragrance when you actually stop and think about it.

We all want our homes smelling nice and I do too, but I think we need to be much more conscious of how much we are layering into the environment around us.

Some fragranced products can contain chemicals including phthalates and other compounds that are being looked at for their effects on hormones and health, so for me that is enough reason to be more aware of what I’m using and how often I’m using it.

Could you use less? Could you choose fragrance free when something runs out? Is there something you’re using every single day that you don’t actually need?

I recently switched all of my mum’s washing products over to lower toxin alternatives and at first she hated it because her clothes didn’t have that really strong perfume smell anymore.

But you get used to it really quickly.

Then when you smell those stronger scents again you suddenly realise just how intense they are and you’re like, what the hell, that is SO strong.

This is how I approach environmental health.

One thing at a time.

Because if I walked into your house and told you to replace your perfume, cleaning cupboard, mattress, bedding, candles, cookware, skincare and half your wardrobe by tomorrow, you would probably kick me out.

And rightly so because it would be completely overwhelming.

You don’t need to change your entire environment overnight. Just reduce the load gradually.

Do you need an air purifier?

Another thing you can consider is an air purifier with a HEPA filter.

HEPA filters are designed to capture very small airborne particles including things like dust, pollen and some fine particulate matter.

You don’t necessarily need one in every single room, so think about where you actually spend most of your time.

If you work from home and sit in the same office for eight hours, maybe that is where it makes most sense. If you’re more conscious about your sleeping environment, maybe you put one in your bedroom.

I always want health changes to fit into your actual life because if they don’t, you won’t continue doing them.

Bring some nature inside

I also love having plants around my home.

They make a room feel calmer, they make it feel alive and after spending a week surrounded by nature in Norway I appreciate that even more.

Plants like spider plants, snake plants and peace lilies are often talked about in relation to indoor air and I actually have all of them in my house. I have loads of plants because I love them.

I wouldn’t rely on plants alone to clean the air in your home, but they make the space feel good and they give you that little connection to nature which I personally love.

For actually improving indoor air, ventilation and filtration are much more important.

Start with one room

So this is what I want you to do after reading this.

Choose the room where you spend the most time, whether that is your bedroom, kitchen, office or living room, and actually look at it through a health lens.

When did you last open the window? What are you spraying into the air? Do you have plug ins? Are you constantly burning heavily fragranced candles? How are you ventilating when you cook? Does the room feel stuffy? Would filtration genuinely be useful there?

Then choose one thing you’re going to change.

Once you’ve changed that, change another thing and just keep going gradually until that room feels like one of the cleanest and nicest spaces in your home.

Maybe you start opening your bedroom window every morning, maybe you stop using the plug in, maybe when your cleaning spray runs out you replace it with something you’re happier using or maybe you decide to invest in a HEPA purifier for the room where you spend most of your day.

Pick your thing and then actually do it.

Because information does not change your health if you never implement it.

We can become addicted to learning about health. We save another post, listen to another podcast, buy another book, watch another training and then carry on living exactly the same way.

I would rather you learn less and actually implement it.

What Norway reminded me of

This is probably the biggest thing I brought home from Norway.

I felt incredible and my brain felt so clear.

Sometimes I can be really forgetful at home and I’ll walk into a room and completely forget why I went in there, but in Norway I just didn’t notice that happening.

And I wasn’t doing anything complicated.

I wasn’t doing some insane detox, I wasn’t following a twenty step morning routine and I wasn’t sitting there thinking about cancer prevention all day.

I was outside, I was moving, I was drinking beautiful fresh water, I was breathing clean air, I was around nature and I wasn’t constantly attached to my phone.

Apart from taking pictures because I have genuinely come back with thousands, it was so bloody beautiful.

But you know what I mean, I wasn’t constantly replying to people or scrolling.

I was just living.

And that matters to me so much because I never want cancer prevention to become another thing women are scared of getting wrong.

I want you to feel confident that your daily choices are supporting your future health without having to give up everything you enjoy.

That is what prevention should give you.

More confidence, more choice and more life.

Your air is only one part of the picture

Your air matters and your environment matters, but I also don’t want you finishing this thinking that buying an air purifier means cancer prevention is sorted.

It isn’t. That is just one part of it.

Your environment is one piece of a much bigger health picture and this is why my work looks at so many different areas, from nutrition, nutrient balance and hormones to stress, sleep, environmental exposures, toxic load, gut health and immune support.

Your body is responding to your life as a whole.

And this is where health becomes so confusing online because one video tells you sugar is the problem, the next says toxins, then hormones, stress, supplements and suddenly somebody else is telling you to completely change your diet.

No wonder women don’t know what to do.

You don’t need another hundred things to worry about.

You need to understand your own priorities.

Think about your future

I want you to think about yourself ten years from now, twenty years from now and thirty years from now.

I want you to be able to look back and know that you started taking your health seriously before you were forced to.

You didn’t wait for something to go wrong and you didn’t wait for your body to scream at you.

You started paying attention now and over time those little choices just became normal.

Opening the windows, choosing better products when the old ones run out, eating foods that support you, moving your body, sleeping properly, understanding your hormones, reducing the stress your body is constantly carrying and creating a home that feels good to live in.

You don’t wake up every morning thinking, I need to prevent cancer today.

You are simply living in a way that supports your long term health.

And you are still going out for dinner, travelling, having the wine sometimes, building your career, spending time with your family and having fun.

You are actually living your life.

Because you can have health and joy.

You can care about your future without becoming obsessed with it and you can make better choices without needing to be perfect.

That is the future I want women to have.

If this has made you think, what else am I not considering?

This is exactly the work we do inside ONE LIFE, my three month personalised cancer prevention programme.

Because the air you are breathing is one piece of a much bigger picture.

Inside ONE LIFE we look at your nutrition, hormones, nutrient balance, stress, environment, toxic load, gut and immune health, sleep and most importantly how all of those things are showing up in YOUR body and YOUR life.

I don’t want you trying to reduce your cancer risk by saving another hundred posts on Instagram and I don’t want you changing random products because somebody online told you they were toxic.

I want you to understand your body, know your priorities and have somebody beside you helping you actually implement them.

ONE LIFE starts with testing and a Health Audit so we can look at what is happening inside your body and what is happening around it.

Then across our seven sessions we work through your foundations, hormone regulation and liver support, environmental exposures, gut and immune support, nervous system, sleep and your long term health plan.

This is where we go much deeper than changing an air freshener or opening your windows because we are looking at the bigger picture.

By the end, I want you to feel confident about the way you are living, to know why you are eating the foods you are eating, understand why you have changed certain products, understand your hormones better, know how to support your body through stress and know that you are doing what is within your control to support your future health.

Without your entire life revolving around cancer prevention.

Because I don’t want that for you either.

I want you travelling, going for dinner, going on holiday, building businesses, having babies, seeing the world, having fun and living your bloody life.

We are protecting your health because there is so much life still to live.

So if you’re a woman who refuses to simply accept cancer as her future and you’re ready to start prioritising prevention now, ONE LIFE is where we do this together.

It is three months of personalised support with me and we start with your testing and Health Audit before building your plan around your body, your lifestyle and your future.

If you feel like this is your time, you can book a complimentary discovery call with me and we’ll talk about where you are now, what you’re concerned about and whether ONE LIFE is the right next step for you.

Because this is your one life and I want you here for as much of it as possible.

Here’s to more life,

Chloe x