While I have taken the time to write about a variety of topics over the past few months as they relate to allergy bedding and the benefits of protecting your sleep from the Micro-Toxins that build up naturally in every home regardless of how clean you keep your home. I have had various requests to go into more detail about the specific pore sizes of fabrics which are used in allergy bedding products and how the pore size can affect the performance and benefit the user receives from the product they buy. 

This entry will be the first of many discussing pore size, I will write specifically about MicronOne technology as well as other products on the market and for the first time I will mention brands and their specific claims. 

I would like to point out that all of the points that I will make in these posts have been idependantly verified by third party testing laboratories.

Measurements:

Not all companies and brands measure pore size the same way so it is important that you first understand the differences in how most companies describe their product’s pore size and how MicronOne and the family of products which use MicronOne technology differ.

You will find that most if not all allergy bedding products use an Average pore size as a description.  so lets take a quick look at how an average is calculated.  If a piece of barrier fabric is submitted for Average pore size measurement the following occurs.  A small sample area is examined and hundreds of individual pores are measured and the data is collected as a group here is an actual group of measurements from a pillow fabric manufactured by a brand named Allergy Luxe®.

The above measurements are in microns, there are 160,000 microns accross the face of a penney, a micron is very small; but so are the known allergens that can make you quite ill.

For example, dust mite waste can be as small as 2-3 microns, when compacted it can become even smaller.

Here are the interesting facts about the above data, the largest measured pore in the sample area of the Allergy-Luxe® fabric by London Luxury is 20.33 microns!  that is 10 times larger than dust mite waste, the known allergic trigger which the product claims to be protecting you from! So while the average pore size is 4 microns, you can easily see how that measurement can be quite misleading, in fact 20% or one fith of the entire surface of an Allergy Luxe pillow has pores larger than 10 microns, incapable of protecting your lungs and respirtatory system from most known allergens.

MicronOne technology only describes the largest known pore in its fabric and sets a new standard of clean by creating a surface where no single pore is larger than 1 micron, infinately smaller than the host of known allergens.

If you are like most people, you probably spend more time in your bedroom than you do in any other room in your home. There are several simple but important steps you can take to limit and reduce your exposure to common problem areas that can occur in any bedroom. If you suffer from nighttime induced asthma, airborne allergies or have other respiratory issues, these preventative measures can make a significant difference.

Healthy Sleep Diagram

1. Encase every mattress, pillow, duvet, and box spring in your home with CleanRest^® products featuring MicronOne^® fabric technology. Block allergens from migrating from your bedding to you. Encasing your bedding is the number one step that many doctors recommend.
2. Wash your sheets and bed linens at least once a week in warm water.
3. Remove carpets, drapes and curtains from your bedroom and replace them with hardwood floors and wooden or plastic blinds.
4. Use a dehumidifier and keep it set to less than 50% relative humidity.
5. Vacuum your bedroom floors and furniture once a week. Consider wearing a protective dust mask while you vacuum.
6. Freeze children’s plush toys in your freezer for 12 hours then wash them in hot water once a week to kill and remove dust mites and other allergens.
7. If your bedroom contains a fireplace, do not use it.
8. Keep your bedroom windows closed during peak allergy season.
9. While we all love our family pets, we strongly suggest that you do not allow them into your bedroom. This will help reduce transmission of pet dander and other allergens.

There has been a great deal of recent news coverage regarding bedbug infestation culminating with a summit last week in Washington, DC sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

US officials are on the warpath against a new plague pouncing on unsuspecting Americans from cellphones, keyboards and mattresses — the humble bed bug now staging a comeback after two decades.

The tiny blood-suckers had all but vanished over the past 20 years, but now pose “the most difficult, challenging pest problem of our generation,” entomologist Mike Potter from the University of Kentucky told a conference.

“In my opinion, we are not going to get out of this thing” until we “allow the pest-control industry to go to war,” he warned.

The two-day meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, dubbed the first National Bed Bug Summit by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), heard the insects are spreading rapidly, infesting all kinds of public buildings and spaces.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” agreed Mike Deutsch, an entomologist with Arrow Exterminating, saying bed bug colonies were being found in lamp bases, clock radios, televisions as well as snuggled up in the pages of books.

 It appears that the resurgence of this nasty little critter is directly ties to the elimination of the use of DDT as a pesticide.  As you well know, DDT was outlawed due to the fact that it was determined an environmental hazard and was responsible for weakening the walls of the the egg shells of endangered species like the Bald Eagle. As a result, Bedbugs have been growing in numbers with no real effective pesticide available to kill them. 

We at CleanBrands took this as a direct threat to quality and sanctity of your sleep, we worked hard to engineer our mattress and pillow encasements effective in stopping bedbugs from entering our protective covers.  Then we had our products certified by ICR and tested over 8 weeks with live bedbugs to insure that even the tinniest bedbugs were unable to get through our fabric, seams and zipper openings.  The result is a 100% effective protective barrier allowing you to sleep with total security that no insect will enter our product and infest your mattress or pillow.  To show you our commitment to Protecting Your Sleep we are offering a fantastic promotion on our CleanRest® web site, a free box spring encasement for every mattress encasement purchased. 

free box spring encasement with every mattress encasement purchased

Please leave a comment and share with us your bedbug stories and helpful tips you have to stop these insects from their relentless assault in your sleep.

Set your Tivo, DVR and alarm clocks, I will be appearing live on QVC Sunday April 5th at 5PM!  Visit QVC’s web site to see their schedule online.  If you have been planning on purchasing a CleanRest product for your home or loved one, this is the perfect opportunity as there will be some terrific offers never before available.  Make sure to tune and and take advantage of this great opportunity, and if you are already CleanRest® user feel free to call into the show (800-345-1515) and share your clean sleep experience live.

See you on TV

Sleep well,

Gary

QVC behind the scenes picture

It’s a complicated question for many companies to answer, and in the ever changing global economy a company can find itself drifting away for its core values.  For me and the company and brand I founded CleanRest® our mission has never been clearer.  Clean Healthy sleep, allowing you to maximize every day by caring for you and your loved ones while you rest.  I never thought that inventing an allergy barrier fabric and transforming it into a simple mattress cover and pillow cover would profoundly affect so many people.  Just a few days ago I received a call from the mother of a young allergy sufferer who explained to me that for the first time in over a year, her child slep through the entire night without waking up to use his rescue medication.  As a result, the mother and the rest of her family got their first full night of sleep, they all feel better and that keeps our innovation engines motivated! 

As a company we feel that everyone deserves the dignity of a clean nights rest and we have worked hard to make our products available for free by donating our mattress and pillow allergy covers to a variety of local charities, like the Providence Rhode Island Ronald McDonald House as well as the Crossroads Shelter here in Providence.  Regardless of a person’s income, all should be offered the opportunity to experience a clean comfortable sleep, by making this a priority of your own family as well as your community everyone’s lives will become more productive and satisfying.  To that end I wanted to provide my readers with an offer to save 25% off on any purchase of CleanRest® products featuring MicronOne® technology, simply entering “garysblog” at check out.  Use this opportunity to invest in the health and wellness of your family and yourself.

I remember reading this for the first time when I was 15 years old in my high school English class, at the time I begrudgingly worked on interpreting the works of T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound and the like, carefully dissecting words and sentences storing them away in my subconscious.

“Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity”

Feeling anxious about my child’s wellbeing allowed me to take matters into my own hands, to pause and to reassess my purpose and as a result to refocus my efforts towards improving not only his sleep, but as a result the sleep of thousands. 

Do you feel anxious about the quality of your sleep, or the condition of a loved one?

Let’s break it down to a few simple thoughts to help all of us gain clarity and turn our anxiety into creativity. 

• First if you are experiencing allergy symptoms go see an allergist and ask that your doctor determine what it is you are allergic to.

• Dust mite waste is the leading allergic trigger world wide, and no matter how clean your home is, dust mites and their waste can be found in your bed, mattress and carpets.

• Work with your allergist to design an avoidance program to keep yourself away from the allergic triggers that are making you or your loved one sick.

• Get smart and proactive about your bed room, encase your pillows, mattress and box spring to start, and then begin to examine the remaining areas of your sleeping environment.  Can carpets be removed? Have pets been allowed to enter your bed room? Is your sleeping environment properly maintained, cleaned and kept clutter free? 

Your anxious energy refocused on a creative solution will allow you to wake up rested and provide you and your loved ones the opportunity to reach their maximum potential, leading to an improved quality of life.

When I first began the research phase of the MicronOne® project I was lucky to personally have the opportunity to visit with some true heroes of today’s medical field.  Dr. Robert Klein of Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, RI truly supported my desire to understand the fundamentals of allergen avoidance and helped me better understand what exactly the know micro-toxins that occur naturally in our home looked and behaved like. At first I was under the impression that my son was allergic to Dust Mites, the fact is that Dust Mites themselves are not the allergic trigger, it’s actually the enzyme that they use to digest their food that is the root cause of the allergic response.  The fecal pellet of the dust mite is just the right size and shape to easily become airborne and quickly lodge itself in the soft moist tissue that lines our respiratory system.  From there it is easily transferred into the body’s blood stream and at that point does the allergy symptom cycle begin to trigger.  I owe an additional great deal of gratitude to Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen, having met with both of these wonderful physicians on numerous occasions I learned so very much about the relationship between toxin avoidance and the body’s ability to remain healthy, as well as the critical relationship between sleep and health and well being.  In fact I should tell you on a personal note that both of these men live what the preach, I can recall sitting with Dr. Oz in his office at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and he asked if it was ok if he ate at his desk while we talked about CleanRest® and my vision for MicronOne®, it was at that time that I saw he eat his ever famous recommended brown rice, beans with walnuts sprinkled on top.  The fact remains that the development of MicronOne® technology was born from my own personal desire to provide my family with the protection they needed but was truly unavailable, a pore structure so small that no other product available could meet our level of protection, while remaining comfortable and breathable.  However, without the help of medical leaders, like Drs. Klein, Roizen and Oz, I would have been hard pressed to truly understand exactly how to define both the words “Protection” and “Success”.

When JetBlue first approached us to develop a healthy alternative to their current offering of reusable in flight pillows and blankets I was excited by the idea of giving their passengers the opportunity to make a healthier choice.  Using our MicronOne® fabric, we quickly set out to design a pillow that would provide not only comfort, but lasting quality and cleanliness. During the design phase of the project I often brought home different iterations of The World’s Cleanest Travel Pillow and would allow my kids to play with them, sleep with them and cuddle with them.  They were an immediate hit, and my oldest child decided to name his Charlie, which he now refers to as his Charlie Pillow.  Each of my children use their pillow at different times in different ways about our home, and my wife and I enjoy the peace of mind in knowing that where ever they take their Charlie pillow their lungs and respiratory system will be protected from the micro-toxins that naturally build up over time in our home.

The World’s Cleanest Travel Pillow Commercial on all JetBlue Flights

     According to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a small variation in the CHI3L1 gene increases the risk of asthma and bronchial hyperresponsiveness.  Researches originally studied the Hutterites, a genetically isolated population in South Dakota, but expanded their efforts to include three genetically-diverse populations around the globe to in order to examine the behavior of the gene variation.
     The discovery is a huge step in the study of asthma — it may lead to the ability to identify the susceptibility of asthma, as well as lead us to a treatment to prevent it.