From Guest Blogger Garry: Environmental and Health-Related Reasons to Switch to Organic Bed Sheets

You will spend around a third of your life in bed. For most of us, that time is well spent; there is nothing like lying in bed. However, some people will wake early in the morning and find that their skin allergies are causing them trouble. If this is a problem for you then your sheets may be causing it. If you are sleeping in cotton sheets then they could be causing your allergies to flare up. To get an allergy-free sleep you need to make the switch, not to polyester sheets, no one likes them, but to organic cotton.

Organic Cotton has always been promoted as the best material for sheets and in days gone by it was. The problem is not so much with the cotton itself but rather in the way we grow it now. The global cotton crop is one the most intensely sprayed crops on the planet. Every cotton plant will be sprayed a staggering 200 times with a huge range of toxic chemicals before they are even harvested. Then when they are harvested they will be exposed to much more as they are processed.

This means that every night for around 7 or 8 hours you are swaddled in a blanket of toxic chemicals. The skin is an incredible absorber. There is an easy experiment you can do to prove this. Try this skin test yourself to see just how absorbent it is- all you need to do is rub a clove of garlic on the sole of your foot and you will be able to smell it on your breath within 10-20 minutes. Absorbing toxins in polluted bed linen for 8 every night is a major cause of skin allergies.

The next question that pops in your mind would be how to make sure whether a product is genuinely organic? There are couple of symbols associated with such standards those authenticate the quality of the cotton used in making the sheets. Let’s have a look at the symbols and what they mean:

GOTS symbol: This symbol ensures the cotton is grown and processed as per organic standards. The product is prepared from organic fibres under certain environmental conditions and certified by an independent and a Third party.

Soil Association symbol: If the product is GOTS certified, it has to be done by The Soil Association who founded GOTS and manages it.

OE100 symbol: Similar to GOTS it ensures the product has been traced and tracked w.r.t a supply chain by an independent body. The product contains 100% pure organic cotton thread, but hasn’t necessarily been processed to organic standards.

OE blended symbol: This tag will appear when a product has 5% of organic cotton fiber.

If you want a healthier sleep then you need to use only organic cotton as they are free from the toxins and chemicals. They need to be certified organic as if they are not certified they aren’t organic. Organic farming methods use mother nature’s solutions to ensure the crop grows well without chemicals. Without the interference of chemical sprays the plants grow stronger and are better able to fend for themselves.

With organic sheets, you will wake each morning without an allergic reaction. Organic cotton sheets offer an anti-allergy sleep. Not only are they better for you but they are also better for the environment, with organic sheets we all win.