FREE Subscription
The World’s Most Popular Natural Health Newsletter   
 
 
POSTED BY
January 15 2008
How Your House and Office Makes or Breaks Your Health

Vicki Warren is the program director for the International Institute for Bau-Biologie & Ecology (IBE).
Have you ever spent time in an environment that invigorated your body and mind, calmed your nerves and inspired you to think clearly and creatively? Chances are high that this place was in nature.

In contrast, how do you feel when you spend hours inside a cubicle in an office building, or surrounded by fluorescent lighting, wall-to-wall carpeting and artificial paint? Dull, down and dreary may come to mind.
The 2008 Building Biology Conference: Building the Way Nature Intended

Join the international movement of individuals who are rebuilding the built environment into one that nurtures and restores human life.


Bau-biologie is a term from Germany that means “building biology,” and it is at the forefront of intertwining the nurturing feelings of nature with the places in which you live and work. This is the holistic approach to the “built environment.”

Building biology describes a movement that promotes “the use of healthy building principles as a means to improve living and work spaces and the health of people who occupy them.”

Building “ecology” can then be defined as the relationship between the building and the environment.

Among the 25 principles of bau-biologie are:

1. A building site shall be geologically undisturbed.

2. Residential homes are best located away from industrial centers and main traffic routes.

3. Housing shall be developed in a decentralized and loose manner interlaced with sufficient green space.

4. Housing and developments shall be personalized, in harmony with nature, fit for human habitation and family oriented.

5. Natural and unadulterated building materials shall be used.

At the International Institute for Bau-Biologie and Ecology, a non-profit organization, work is underway to educate people about the health hazards that may exist in typical living spaces, and to raise awareness that homes and workplaces can be created to bring the benefits of both health and aesthetics into your living environment.

They view buildings not just as shelter, but as a third skin (the first skin being your body, the second your clothes).

You can experience an embracing, nurturing feeling in your home and office, such as what you might feel when you are in a forest with the sun shining gently on your face, if it was built in accordance with the laws of nature.

Whereas a home or office built from artificial materials will gradually deplete you, a home made from nature will nourish you.

Dr. MercolaDr. Mercola's Comments:
How much time do you spend in your home and office? If you’re like most people, it’s the vast majority of your life. So the materials used in these spaces -- and the overall feeling you get when you’re in them -- can and does have a huge impact on your physical health and mental well-being.

This is a major reason why I am building a new office building for my practice and Web team (which we hope to move into in the spring of this year). This building has the highest possible LEED certification, but we are going beyond LEED and applying the Bau Biology principles.

LEED focuses on ecology or environmental issues but Bau Biology focuses on biology and the notion that if a material or approach is good for your body it will also be good for the environment. So it is a much higher standard. This is in many ways similar to the use of the term organic, which although well intentioned, has frequently been perverted and does not always mean the food is good for you.

The Hazards of Typical Buildings

Walking into an office building or typical home will probably not make you immediately sick, but over time your body will absorb any number of potentially toxic substances that exist freely around us in our daily lives. For instance:
  • Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are toxic gases emitted from paints, cleansers, air fresheners, vinyl floors, carpets, upholstery fabrics, and much more, can cause cancer and damage to your liver, kidney and central nervous system. VOCs in the indoor air of new buildings have been found to average 20 to 40 mg per m3. Adverse health effects may begin with exposure at just 10 mg per m3.
  • Engineered wood products commonly used to make cabinets, furniture, wall paneling and more emit pollutants such as formaldehyde into your home’s air.
This is truly only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the chemicals floating around most homes and office buildings. And it doesn’t even touch on the mental impact.

The environment in which you live and work very dramatically impacts your state of mind. If your living space is cluttered, for instance, it’s proven to bring you down. Meanwhile, if you feel trapped or closed in (in a cubicle for instance), your thinking will not be at its best (the height of your ceiling can actually impact the way you think!).

To be truly happy, not to mention productive and at your “top game” emotionally and physically, you must immerse yourself in an inspiring environment, and for most of us this does not include four walls, a desk, and a fluorescent light buzzing overhead.

“Greening” Your Living Environment

You may not be able to build a new natural home or office for yourself, but you can make small changes to bring more natural, aesthetically pleasing and healthy materials into your living spaces by:
  • Redoing a portion of your home with a natural material, such as bamboo flooring.
  • Avoiding all chemical cleansers, air fresheners and detergents, and switching to natural varieties instead.
  • Installing full-spectrum lighting to bring the benefits of natural sunlight indoors.
  • Adding houseplants to your home and office.
  • Getting outside to spend some time in a natural environment as often as possible.

Related Articles:

Did you find this article interesting?  Interesting Not Useful
Community Comments ( 16 )
Comment on this Article
  
  
Kissamee
[ Joined on 12/07 ] [ Posted on January 3, 2008 ]
16 Points        
   
 
Apprentice User
logical and reasonable.  I always try to make my surroundings as personal and comfortable as possible.  I think one of those desert tents of silk and hemp rugs from the mid-century technicolor movies.....

Kel
 [ Reply ]
  
  
Islander
[ Joined on 03/07 ] [ Posted on January 2, 2008 ]
14 Points        
   
 
Moderator User
I can understand this principle. My passive solar house has...

...a slate floor
...walls of old barnboard
...a massive chimneypiece/heat sink made of fieldstone from stone walls
...windows all along the south side that bring the outside in
...and lots of houseplants, and oh, how could I forget?
...three singing, talking birds!

 [ Reply ]
Mercola
  
Rawmaste
[ Joined on 01/08 ]  [ Posted on January 19, 2008]
       
   
Novice User
  Mercola

Your house sounds devine Islander. I aspire to manifest the same for my family one day.  (=^_^=)

  
  
Russ Bianchi
[ Joined on 09/06 ] [ Posted on January 2, 2008 ]
8 Points        
   
 
Savvy User
We are what we eat, as well as where, and how, we live.

May Your Health Be GREAT, In 2008!

;-)

Uncle Russ
 [ Reply ]
  
  
NieeMA
[ Joined on 06/06 ] [ Posted on January 6, 2008 ]
6 Points        
   
 
Apprentice User
I love this video.

I hope we all get back into AromaTherapy.  It is one way to clean and refresh the air and us.

NieeMA
 [ Reply ]
Mercola
  
Magnolia
[ Joined on 06/06 ]  [ Posted on January 22, 2008]
       
   
Savvy User
  Mercola

NieeMA, you are so right! Our olfactory sense is there for a reason! And there's more to it than meets the nose.

  
  
mmc88121
[ Joined on 11/06 ] [ Posted on January 2, 2008 ]
6 Points        
   
 
Moderator User
Very true, I have a friend whose house is build with natural products, and I find visiting them very relaxing and energizing at the same time.  I also have friend who live in trailers and they tend to have more health problems than those who live in the natural house.

Mary
 [ Reply ]
Mercola
  
EQ
[ Joined on 03/07 ]  [ Posted on January 3, 2008]
7 Points        
   
Savvy User
  Mercola
I have been living in my RV (travel trailer) for several years now.  I am constantly looking for ways to make it healthier.  If I ever get the funds, I'd love to install a bamboo floor.  There are some things that are easier with an RV in terms of environmentalism.  First, I don't vacation or travel with it.  It remains parked where I live.  It seems like the footprint would be smaller in general because the space is small & it doesn't require clearing earth to live in it.  Everything is made for conservation, the lighting, the water.  It is easy to filter all the water in the house.  It's also easy to run a hepa filter in a small place.  Plants also help a great deal.  Solar & wind options are easily available for the RV since it's already wired with batteries.  Since rent is low, I'm financially able to live in a place with clean air, water, and plenty of organic farms.  When it's cold, I put on more clothes, throw down natural rugs & blankets on the walls.  When it's hot, my space has a shade tree & I have an awning.  The park I'm renting from has a composting toilet, and the sewer system chemicals for the RVs are almost all biodegradable.  Also, I live out of my house, not in it.  I am an avid outdoors person.  There are ways to do RVs healthfully.  It probably helps to buy used so that everything has finished outgassing too.  I love my RV.  I love the simplicity of it.  I love the freedom of it.  I own it, and if I wanted to, I could paint it pink paisley (don't think I will, but it's nice to know I could).  This is a great way to live fully as a single, highly independent person.  It would take a major miracle to get me to live in another fashion.
  
  
queenbird
[ Joined on 12/06 ] [ Posted on January 19, 2008 ]
2 Points        
   
 
Novice User

Has anybody heard that CFL is actually unhealthy?

I read the following on this website www.dirtyelectricity.ca

Ways to Avoid Excess Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields

12 Ways to Avoid Excess Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields and Radio Frequencies

1) Replace all the dimmer switches in your house with regular switches. Even when turned completely on full power a dimmer chops-off part of the electrical current, then it discards in the form of a strong electromagnetic field. Dimmer switches also create dirty electricity that can contaminate an entire home’s electrical wiring with dangerous high frequency energy.

2) Avoid installing low-voltage halogen, florescent tubes and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting (CLF). Virtually all create of these technologies create dirty electricity and at the same time throw a nasty electromagnetic field.

If these bulbs are giving off " dirty electricity " why are we being told to use them?

 [ Reply ]
  
  
Yung Red612
[ Joined on 06/08 ] [ Posted on July 10, 2008 ]
       
   
 
This user is BELOW novice level and all their comments need to be reviewed with great caution.

I wish I could make my hose cleaner but i stay in a rented apartment so I cant make changes to it

 [ Reply ]
  
  
Haven
[ Joined on 10/06 ] [ Posted on February 21, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Novice User

What are the pros and cons of electric ranges vs gas ranges? Does any one make an electric that has lower EMF than other brands?

 [ Reply ]
  
  
Sean Uisce
[ Joined on 11/06 ] [ Posted on February 4, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Apprentice User

Those into the BauBiologie principles might be interested in the work of Ireland's Peter Cowman.  www.livingarchitecturecentre.com (his "about" page).  He got into living architecture when he realised that he, as a qualified architect, he had no idea of how to design a house for people!

From there he began to explore what he calls "the vernacular tradition" and came to realise that we are operating from an unhealthy mind/emotional place when we consider creating our shelters; and it is this that leads us to build unsustainabiliy.  That unhealthy mindset is fed by our own unresolved insecurities around our own deaths and leads us to create poor spaces for ourselves - because they feed the egos need to be protected from death and isolate our spirits from Nature.

He also cautions against the 'false sustainability' - because if one examines most modern use of the term "sustainable" it is actually just more ways of sustaining "the economy" by keeping people in debt and the construction industry going (at least that seems to be the approach here in Ireland anyhow).

Encouraging people to take control of their own building (the vernacular tradition) required that he develop a method that other people could follow.  He now offers that through is sustainble shelter-maker course: www.livingarchitecturecentre.com (good video clips of his thinking on that page).

No bull with this man... he just talks it as he finds it (whether that's within or without).  Particularly interesting I found were his video diaries about the experiences he encountered while building his own shelter.  I'm looking forward to doing a course with him - after which I'll be embarking on my own shelter-making journey.

Reckon he and the BauBiologie folk would get on quite well.

 [ Reply ]
  
  
LORENLSMITH
[ Joined on 03/07 ] [ Posted on January 27, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Novice User

We are happy to have installed mexican clay tile on all floors, use electric base heaters, eliminated all chlorinated water, planted a forest of bamboo, and hope the bureaucrats let us plant hemp which will be a help to save the rain forests.  I just read that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper that requires no chemical leaching, is a renewable resource that improves the soil from which it grows.  You would think a democrat congress would recind some laws passed that help only the industrial complex but sabotage the invironment.  The president can't sign a bill that never reaches him.

 [ Reply ]
  
  
todd_binkley
[ Joined on 01/07 ] [ Posted on January 20, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Novice User

Bau-Biologie principle #3 states:  Housing shall be developed in a decentralized and loose manner interlaced with sufficient green space.  This is appears to suggest that standard low-density suburban development is healthy.  Planners throughout Europe, and increasingly, throughout America and elsewhere, are recognizing that the automobile dependency that such neighborhoods create substantially contributes to many of our society's most pressing health challenges: lack of exercise, and the obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease that result from it, asthma and other air-pollution-related illness, stress from long commutes, etc.  

The healthiest place to live, as well as the least damaging to the environment, is in a condo or an apartment in a city, where you can walk to the local farmers market, ride your bike to work, and get fresh air, sunlight, physical exercise and serendipitous interactions with old friends and interesting strangers all at the same time.  

Todd Binkley DC

 [ Reply ]
  
  
doces321
[ Joined on 12/07 ] [ Posted on January 19, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Novice User

I agree with Vicki..

The excellent news is that while people are spreading the bau-biologie there are young people like my girl friend in college who is studying sustainable architecture which is environmentally friendly and economical. As for me the "health nut" among my friends i support all these ideas. In my generation (I'm in college) most of my acquaintences and friends are aware but not committed to learning about eating healthy and living different lifestyles... fortunately im not alone... there are young people worried and we will become the business people of tomorrow and make a change together with people that care. Hurrah to Dr. Mercola.com and community. May we grow in numbers and awareness... a healthy earth is a healthy human race!!  

 [ Reply ]
  
  
tanya
[ Joined on 06/06 ] [ Posted on January 19, 2008 ]
       
   
 
Apprentice User

btw,  arsenic has been removed from pressure treated building materials.  it was replaced with additional copper as a fungicide.  presumably healthier.  copper is used in gardens as a fungicide, too

 [ Reply ]

 
Truste