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.

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.

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

2. Get a non-smoking room and if you are allergic to pets, a room that has not had pets stay in it.

3. Take a spray along to kill the mold and remove the dust in the air conditioning system. I recommend “Filter Plus”, available at Home Depot.

4. Ask that the air conditioner filter be changed before you arrive.

5. Hotel room a little dry? Throw a few wet towels around, or turn on the shower to fill-up the room with steam and keep your sinuses moist. Keep using your saline spray frequently. We don’t recommend asking the hotel for a humidifier - many of them only spray around ugly bacteria.

6. Allergic to dust mites? Take your own dust mite pillow encasings with you. You might try taking your own allergy free pillow if you travel by car.

7. If you are allergic to mold, do not get a room near the swimming pool- it is likely to have a higher concentration of mold spores.

8. Ask the hotel to provide you with a hypoallergenic, feather free pillow.

If you can minimize the dust in your home, you can minimize the risk of eczema, according to a study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Why’s that? Well, dust is comprised of dirt, fibers, and allergens from dust mites and cockroach allergens, the latter two which can damage the protective layer of the skin. This increases your risk of eczema inflammation. So, here are some tips pulled from The Open Press newswire about minimizing dust in your home:

• Make sure you don’t leave food out to attract roaches. However, those who live in an environment prone to roaches may have to take extra care. Try boric acid. If you buy it in chalk form it’s easy to run the chalk along the joins of cupboards (all of them) and along the floor/wall joins. It’s much more effective than the usual roach killer products, and you don’t load up your house with toxic chemicals that will exacerbate your dry skin or eczema even further.

• Dust mites are rather more difficult to eliminate as they are virtually invisible. However, vacuuming once a week in the spots that build up dust - behind the couch or refrigerator, in stuffed animals, carpet, furniture, pillows, mattresses, and blankets – will help. If you are extremely sensitive, you might want to encase some of them in hypo-allergenic dust covers.

• No matter how dust free your environment appears to be, it’s almost possible to completely eliminate it - which is why you also need a shielding lotion. A good shielding lotion bonds with the outer layer of the skin to form a protective layer that locks in moisture and prevents the absorption of irritants and allergens. With that protection in place, the skin can heal itself.

The American Asthma Foundation recently conducted a research breakthrough that explains why a common allergen; dust mites, triggers asthma attacks.  The American Asthma Foundation’s Strategic Program for Asthma Research (SPAR) established that the common “dust mites found in every household, trick the immune system into believing that it is facing a bacterial infection. Thus misinformed, the immune system mounts a strong allergic response to mites, a response that can trigger asthma attacks.

American Asthma Foundation Annouces Breathrough Discovery:  Full Press Release