Product testing

A cool thing for both us at Olive Branch as well as our customers, is that we get to use (hence "test") the products we carry. I am a lover of paint, and I love it that I can run down to the store and mix up a color to put in my house even if it's 10:00 on Saturday night (I know, not everyone's idea of a fun Saturday night). The cool thing for customers is that we have tested Yolo paint extensively. And I love this paint. It goes on smoothly, dries quickly despite the lack of toxic-chemical-drying-agents, looks beautiful, and an especially nice feature is that is cleans easily. I take very good care of my paint brushes, and before Yolo I hated how the chemical-laden paint hardened near the base of the brush before I even finished painting sometimes.

We also had a left-over piece of IceStone, which we installed as a hearth for our wood-burning stove. I can't believe how beautiful it is and it must wear terrifically as a countertop because ours is on the floor and gets ashes and wood and dirt on it and it is still shiny and gorgeous.

Here at the store, we have Marmoleum Click flooring, and even though it's not rated as a commercial floor, it's held up great and is an absolute dream to clean. Dirt truly does not stick to it. We also have a Caroma dual-flush toilet in the store and can attest to it's effectiveness and cleanliness using an amazing .8 or 1.6 gpf of water.

Most exciting, we just were trained and installed American Clay wall surface on one side of our store. The look and feeling is awesome and each addition like this makes the store more of a pleasure to be in. It's so remarkable when I walk into a non-green store, the sharp scent of chemicals is amazing. It feels good here in the store and I am so pleased that we are selling these feel-good products to others!

Light therapy

I knew the natural lighting would benefit me when we installed the solatube at home, but now we have discovered something that may be equally beneficial:  blue LED lights.  Thanks to one of our lighting suppliers, we were just alerted to the benefits of this lighting.  But first, I must say that I am trained as a researcher and am extremely skeptical of holistic and natural "therapies" unless there is scientific research to back it up.  So once the lighting person told us that blue LEDs have an effect on circadian rhythms, I got interested and then excited when I checked it out.  

Turns out there is a newly discovered cell in the eye that acts as a photoreceptor (in addition to rods and cones) that regulates our circadian rhythms (biological clocks).  In short, this cell is particularly sensitive to the blue light wavelengths of light emitting diodes (LEDs).  The blue light suppresses melatonin, which is in part responsible for sleep.  So researchers tried using LED lights during the day, basically to inhibit melatonin in case it's too dark, like during the winter or if there's some other upset making you produce too much melatonin during the day (e.g., jet lag).  

There are at least two studies I found in peer-reviewed journals that show improved mood in general and reduced depression for my favorite disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder (see previous post about Solatube).  As I type, my blue light is shining, but resetting your biological clock to make it easier to get up in the morning presumably requires only about 45 minutes of blue light when you first waken.  I now drink my coffee to blue light.  Now of course it could be a placebo effect, but I swear I am waking up more easily.  I have to admit that for some reason I love the idea of this.  I guess because it's something that can improve mood via a non-pharmacological approach which I'm sure many would agree is a good thing for a multitude of reasons. 

I intend to try this out this winter; the acid test for anything light-related, since counteracting the effects of the brief daylight hours is paramount, for me at least.  I'll continue to update as the evidence comes in.  I'm recruiting my friends and others as experimental subjects in my own completely unscientific clinical trial.

And, oh yes!  The blue LED runs on 2, that's right, 2 watts of power.  How else could I feel good about this?