Air pollution is a concern factor in all big cities around the world. In our case, in Mexico City we have seen noxious elevations of conaminants in the dry season. While we cannot escape pollution, for we live and work in the cities, there are things we can do to protect ourselves from it and to help our bodies deal with the toxins.
Tips to protect ourselves from air pollution:
1. Avoid exercising outdoors. It is a better idea to go to a closed gym with air conditioning.
2. While out in the street, it is recommended to wear a medical face mask. It won’t avoid all contaminants, but it will at least filter out the suspended particles in the air.
3. Try, as much as you can, to avoid the peak traffic times to be outside. If your job can handle it, arrive and leave earlier, or later than anyone else, when traffic is lighter.
4. Using public transportation can be a good way to lower the contamination index by lowering traffic, as is sharing your car, carpooling, etc.
5. Inside your house you can use air filters and humidifiers, maintaining doors and windows closed, especially in peak traffic times, which are from 7 to 10 in the morning and 5 to 9 at night. If you enjoy them, plants are natural air filters and humidifiers. You can put plants inside the house and office to purify the air in the spaces you are in, the most effective ones are the plants with big leaves.
6. Avoid places where people are smoking, since cigarrette smoke is one more contaminant that we are adding to the environmental ones.
7. When you can, try to visit green areas far from the city, to breathe clean air and dexotify the lungs.
8. Steam baths also help the body get rid of accumulated toxins, besides the steam penetrates the lungs and helps clean them.
9. Ionic detoxification can help elliminate more persistent toxins, like heavy metals. If you are interested in this therapy look in the web for someone close to you that offers it.
10. Eat plenty of fruit rich in vitamin C, which is a great antioxidant and helps the body counteract the oxidizing effects of air pollution inhaled day by day (like strwberries, kiwi, guava, citrus fruit, etc), Try to eat healthy and organic foods, to keep the general level of toxins in the body as low as possible, giving it the opportunity to deal with the ones in the air that you can’t avoid.