Crunchy Stewardship
In this podcast we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resources that God has given us. We will look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health and lots more through a natural lens with a biblical foundation.
Crunchy Stewardship
The Real Cost of Unwellness: Why Prevention is an Act of Stewardship
This podcast episode of Crunchy Stewardship features cousins Katie and Chrissy diving into the significant monetary and intangible costs associated with unhealthy lifestyles, drawing on research and personal experiences. They explore how chronic diseases burden individuals and the healthcare system financially, while also highlighting the impact on mental, emotional, and social well-being. The conversation then shifts to the cost benefits of embracing a healthier, more natural way of living, grounded in biblical principles, and offers practical, budget-friendly strategies like reducing alcohol and tobacco, incorporating free physical activity, and prioritizing whole, nutritious foods. Katie and Chrissy also share personal anecdotes and cost-saving tips such as making homemade laundry detergent and bread, and opting for reusable alternatives like cloth diapers, emphasizing that small, consistent changes can lead to significant long-term health and financial advantages.
Episode Takeaway:
Consider the things in your life that could be costing you your health. Find small, simple steps that you can implement today to begin taking those baby steps to benefit your health in the years to come.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship
00:44 The Cost of an Unhealthy Lifestyle
01:54 Monetary Costs of Chronic Illnesses
10:04 Intangible Costs of Poor Health
14:01 Preventing Chronic Diseases
16:30 Healthy Lifestyle Tips
29:00 Cost-Effective Healthy Living
45:23 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
Links mentioned:
- CDC website that shares health expenses https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
- CDC Chronic disease burden https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2015/14_0388.htm#:~:text=Among%20adults%20with%20chronic%20conditions,annual%20total%20expenditures%20(%247%2C116).
- NIH Article https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10830426/
Connect With Us:
Join Our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crunchychristianmama
Follow us on Instagram @crunchystewardship
FREE How to Afford Non-Toxic Living Workbook: https://crunchystewardship.com/how-to-afford-non-toxic-living
Hey, and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. My name is Katie.
Chrissy:And my name is Chrissy. We are two cousins who are passionate about learning and sharing knowledge to equip others to steward their spiritual, mental, emotional, financial, and physical health in order to honor God in every aspect of their lives.
Katie:In our podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resources that he has given us. We will look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health, and lots more through a natural lens and with a biblical foundation. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode, Chrissy.
Chrissy:Yeah, so today we are going to be talking about the cost of an unhealthy lifestyle, and then the cost benefit of living a healthy lifestyle. So first off, Katie, I know you've done a lot more research than I have about the cost of living a toxic lifestyle. Do you wanna start off just by like giving us a little outline of the things that you have discovered and learned as you've been researching this topic?
Katie:Yeah, we were just talking right before this podcast that I stumbled upon a Google document that I had started in my own free time. This is the stuff I love is when I, when I stumble upon something that really hits me hard, I collect a lot of the data that I find. So that way when I'm having conversations with other people, I'm like, wait, I know something about this. I can go back and look to see what it was that I had learned. So the two main things that I have come to see as like the cost of continuing a toxic lifestyle. There's like two main categories. It's either monetary cost and then there's intangible costs. The thing that I collected a lot of information on were kind of those monetary costs, like increased medical expenses. You know, your health insurance will will cost more. You'll have more doctor visits that you need to go to, and there's just a lot of actual impact on our budget. It's quite significant the amount that we as Americans spend on quote unquote health related expenses like healthcare or health insurance. As well as like on a worldly basis. So in general, individuals with chronic illnesses, so anybody who has like an, autoimmune disease or even cancers or deals with things like allergies, eczema, you know, something that is ongoing, they typically face significantly higher annual medical costs compared to those without chronic conditions. According to current data, the estimated annual medical costs for individuals with a chronic illness averages around$6,032 in the United States, which is significantly higher than the cost for people without any kind of chronic condition. So when I dove further into this, I found out that the majority of healthcare spending in the United States is attributed to chronic diseases alone, which it reaches somewhere around 90% of the total healthcare costs. Now you can actually find this. The link that I have saved here is directly from the CDC website. So this is government data. I'm not just like spewing some things from some random news channel. No, this is directly from the government website that is telling us that we spend 90% of our total healthcare costs on chronic diseases alone, which is just so insane to me.
Chrissy:That is actually, yeah, that's mind boggling. And it really makes me sad to see because so many people think, oh, I have this problem. I'm gonna go to the doctor and get it fixed. And think of like with your car, you know, if you have a problem with your car, you go to the mechanic to get it fixed. Well, if you have to continue doing something to keep that fix in its fixed state every single day, is it actually fixed or is it still broken? And you just have to continually just keep the maintenance up to make sure it keeps running right. So,
Katie:It's like your car instead of actually like getting it fixed
Chrissy:right.
Katie:It's like, I'm just gonna duct tape this thing here and it'll be fine, and I
Chrissy:Yeah.
Katie:more duct tape when it starts to fall off
Chrissy:I, I'll tape the bumper back on. Yes, exactly. And you know, when people go to the doctor, they think a lot like in that mindset, you know, if they say, the doctor says, oh, you have high blood pressure, you need to be on a blood pressure medication. Okay, great. The patient's like, awesome. I'm gonna get on this blood pressure medication. It'll lower my blood pressure. Well, it does, but is your blood pressure problem actually fixed? No, the blood pressure pill is merely just putting a bandaid over the actual core problem that is causing the blood pressure. And so that doctor has now created for themselves a patient for life. How many patients go to the doctor and the doctor tells them you're gonna be on this medication for the rest of your life? A baby aspirin, 81 milligrams. Most adults who have any form of heart disease are on a baby aspirin. If you've ever had a stroke or a blood clot or anything like that, doctors automatically put people on a baby aspirin for life in order to prevent those things from happening again. But I think the real question we should be asking is. Why are these things happening to begin with? You know, like why do we have to take a bandaid pill every single day to prevent further complications from them, as opposed to just fixing the root cause of the problem to begin with. You know what I mean?
Katie:Definitely So what I'm hearing from you, Chrissy, is, okay, well, doctors and the people like the pharmaceutical companies that are creating these drugs, kind of want you to come back and keep paying for these expenses. It, and it goes directly with this other statistic that I learned because if we do get healthy, we won't be paying all this money into the medical systems, whether it's doctors or the pharmaceutical companies or anything, and then they would lose a bunch of money. NIH literally published this article that stated that the estimated cost of chronic diseases is expected to reach$47 trillion
Chrissy:Oh my gosh.
Katie:Worldwide by 2030. So that's five years from now,$47 trillion. So of course, like our doctors, and, and I don't mean to say like an individual doctor, like but I'm talking like big you know, medical companies think like, when we, say the big C church, like the church in general or whatever, not like your individual church, right? It's that same thing of like big medical companies, big pharma big agriculture, all these like big companies, they don't want us to get healthy because then that number wouldn't continue to grow and they wouldn't continue to make tons and tons of money. So of course, like of course they want us to stay sick. It's just so silly. But it costs us as consumers, as patients, as individual, wonderful people it costs us lots of money. I mean,$6,000 alone on just chronic illnesses for individuals in the United States. That's a lot of money that we could be doing much more with if we stayed healthy.
Chrissy:Yeah, actually true. If I think of like, what could I use$6,000 for if I had an extra$6,000 each year, what could I use it for? There's a number of things that you could use it for. That's like three years you could put a down payment on a house. One year you could put a down payment on a car, you know, it, it's just amazing when you actually think about how much money is wasted in managing a continual problem rather than fixing the problem at its core. You know? And I said it in one of the previous podcasts. I'm just gonna say it again'cause I think it's so funny that. Healthy people are, quote unquote, really bad for the economy because, you know, if you have a healthy person, they ride their bike to work so they don't have to pay for a car or car insurance or car maintenance. So those are three, parts of the economy that don't get paid and they don't have to buy gas. So that's another part of the economy that gets paid. And they're riding their bike every day. So they have great cardiovascular health, so they really only go to the doctor for their annual checkup. Every year and they look good. So the doctor's really not making any money off of them. And the only people that could be making money off of them is like a bike maintenance guy or a bike sales guy. And let's be real, bicycles are not expensive at all whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. And so I think it's really funny that healthy people are quote unquote bad for the economy. But the reality is healthy people have the benefit of being able to manage their money better because they have more money to go around. It's not tied up in the chains that are holding them in this unhealthy state of being, you know, the, the chains of not being able to ride a bike, not being able to walk or run, the chains of being addicted to fast food and things like that, you know, those are expensive and they have really expensive consequences, especially later in life. Not even just monetarily, but even looking at the emotional expense and the mental health expense of having a chronic illness. I mean, I see it time and time again in my line of work. I work in orthopedics, right? And so, we're not necessarily managing the heart disease and things like that. Like we have patients who come in with heart disease, but they're well managed when they come in. For us, the chronic things that we see often is joint infections and yeah. So if a patient gets a hip replacement or a knee replacement and it gets infected, it often turns into a bone infection. And bone infections take months to go away. And so our patients come in, they have multiple surgeries to take out the hardware, to put in antibiotics to stay in place, to then take out the antibiotics, to then put in another spacer to let the area surrounding the joint heel and then take out the spacer and then put in the actual hardware. But then if the infection's not gone yet, then that new hardware gets infected. It is a hot mess. And I've seen people in and out of the hospital for years in regards to a joint infection, you know, and I just wonder like how much does that tax their mental health also, you know. Of I have this problem. I am in a ton of pain every single day. Pain in and of itself is incredibly dangerous for mental health and emotional health because it saps you of energy to go on a walk to, hang out with friends, to enjoy a board game. You're so focused on that pain and trying to manage it, your brain and your body don't have time to think about anything else. And so that really does come with the cost of anxiety, depression, you know, a lot of our patients come in in a super depressive state because they've been able to do nothing but lay in bed for a year because of these infections, you know? And, it's really, really hard to see and I just, I want there to be like. Can we just get to the root cause of these infections or chronic illnesses in general? Why are people constantly having to deal with the exact same problem year after year after year? What can we do to make that problem not a thing that we have to continuously work at, trying to fix? You know what I mean?
Katie:Yeah. Yeah. The intangible costs. I, think sometimes outweigh the monetary costs in, in so many ways because yes, you have the increase of expenses for your health insurance or doctor's visits or treatments or medications, but those intangible costs, like the quality of life, um, a shorter lifespan. And even you think about the cost to your loved ones. I know, like I have some good friends right now who. Have family members who are very sick, very ill, and the emotional and mental tax that it weighs on them is also another one of those intangible costs, right? If we are unhealthy, it impacts our loved ones. And even like as parents, if we're not healthy, our ability to take care of our kids is impacted. And being a good spouse, being a good friend, like all of these. Things can be weighed into this idea of being healthy or not. It's, it's really that quality of life that it kind of comes down to.
Chrissy:Yeah, for sure. So Katie, we've been talking a lot about like the cost of living an unhealthy lifestyle both monetarily and intangibly, emotionally, mentally, things like that. So what are some of the things that we can do to either avoid those costs or even to, to have a cost benefit of living a healthy lifestyle, what are, what are some of the things that you do specifically for that?
Katie:Yeah. First I actually wanna mention when I read that NIH article that had that crazy statistic about$47 trillion worldwide. At the, end of the article, they actually say that many, chronic diseases can actually be preventable by modifying and addressing four major risk factors, which are physical inactivity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol. So, when I think about how do I avoid the increased costs of health? It's like, well, if I, if I look at these four areas of my life, is there something that I can also improve in order to avoid that myself. Now, I also recently learned in a podcast interview that was with an integrative oncologist that things like cancerous tumors, they don't just show up overnight or even within a year alone. Instead, they actually start forming anywhere from eight to 10 years prior to it showing up on
Chrissy:mm-hmm.
Katie:a scan or before it's actually showing any evidence in your life that that something's wrong.
Chrissy:Right. Yeah, I actually read a book that said the same thing about diabetes, that, um, type two diabetes actually starts 10, 15 years prior to the very first diagnosis of even being pre-diabetic. And so it's really interesting to see like if these things are starting 10 years prior, like there's gotta be ways to reverse it until it's too late.
Katie:Absolutely. That's why it's so important that every choice that we make today can actually make a huge difference in your life 10 years from now. And we're talking about those two costs, the intangible and the monetary, right? So if we
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:want to avoid the emotional costs. As well as the monetary, like actually, how is it going to impact your budget cost? We need to start taking action today. And the funny thing is like, kind of like you were mentioning, Chrissy, that a lot of these switches that we can make in living a more non-toxic lifestyle, living healthier, they actually end up saving us money here now and today because a lot of people have this idea that being really healthy means spending lots of money right now and, buying organic foods or getting expensive air filters for your house or drinking filtered water. These are all important things when you're going down this route. But at the same time, there are so many things that actually can save you money right now. One thing that I didn't consider before, but now reading this line in the NIH article about those four major risk factors like physical, nutrition, tobacco use, and alcohol, is that if you are someone who has excessive alcohol in your life, simply cutting that out is going to help you tremendously, but also save you a lot of money. Like alcoholic drinks are so expensive, right?
Chrissy:Yeah. But even then, if somebody is struggling with a alcoholic addiction or tobacco addiction. Not even just straight cutting it out.'cause going cold turkey can actually be quite dangerous.
Katie:Yeah.
Chrissy:slowly but surely decreasing the use of alcohol and tobacco. You know, those are the two biggest culprits that pretty much everybody in healthcare: conventional, eastern, western, whatever kind of healthcare, everybody pretty much agrees that those are incredibly carcinogenic and they do have a huge cost and toll on your health in general. And so merely just working to slowly but surely decrease the use of those, helps tremendously. And then also in terms of the physical activity, you know, physical activity is free. Like you don't actually need a gym membership to go on a walk, you know? My husband and I implemented this right when we got married of daily walks after dinner. And we did this even growing up too. We lived on like a little pond area and every single night we would eat dinner, clean the kitchen and go on a walk and it was great. You know it puts you in a place where you're not having distractions from your phone or anything like that.'cause lemme tell you, it's really hard to walk on a bumpy, curvy sidewalk while you're trying to play checkers on your phone. Very difficult.
Katie:Checkers
Chrissy:I've seen it. It actually was so sad. I actually saw a couple, like a month ago on a walk and the husband was like, playing checkers on his phone.
Katie:who plays checkers of all games on their phone. That is so funny to me.
Chrissy:I don't, but this guy was. Anyways, like going on a walk is free, you know, doing a workout in your living room is free. You have carpeting? Great. Do some yoga, do some squats, some stretches, you know, anything like that. Any sort of physical activity, go to the park. That is also free. Often people live really close to state parks or national parks, you know, within an hour or two drive. Go to the park. Or even just like local parks, you know, it's really easy to go out and be active, and just incorporate it, implement it into your lifestyle, you know? Just little, little baby steps at a time, one at a time. Big change does not actually happen overnight, even with companies like new startup companies, they say, and suddenly we are overnight sensation, 30 years in the making. It took 30 years to get there, 30 years of one step at a time, baby steps. And then they look back and they see all that they've accomplished and it's a beautiful thing. And so that's kind of how health is also, you know. One baby step at a time so that when you're old and all of your friends have these chronic illnesses, you can look back and say, wow, all of those small steps that I took have impacted me in such a great way. You know? So, then there's also the food. What do you think about the food, Katie?
Katie:Yeah, we've kind of touched a little bit on this in the past, but food, it's one of those things that I actually am starting to believe is like one of the most important changes in your health journey to make the greatest impact on it because our body actually uses the food to heal itself to make new cells, to build up our immune systems. It turns into the cholesterol that we need in order to fight off infections. and And so if we're not eating good, nutritious foods, then we are actually doing ourselves a disservice.
Chrissy:That's interesting that you mention that cholesterol helps to fight off infections. Back to my job, we have a lot of older patients come in and old patients who have a little bit more body fat on them actually have a higher likelihood of healing from an injury. And they heal much quicker because their body has those energy stores to be able to use in order to heal. Whereas, elderly patients who are very frail and are like literally skin and bone and have no fat on them. They are the ones that'll go down with a hip fracture. People always say fat is the devil. You don't want to eat fat, but fat is good for you. It is healthy for your body to have a certain level of fat on it. Even as young women, you know. Your body needs a certain level of fat in order to menstruate properly, to create estrogen and progesterone, and to manage the monthly cycle. You know, those are all very much fueled by fat levels in the body.
Katie:I actually was reading last night about cholesterol, and that's kind of why I brought it up because I learned, kinda like you said, we are, we're taught that fat and cholesterol are the enemy in, in our food, and that we need to have the reduced fat and the low cholesterol, low sodium, all these things, but we're actually doing our bodies a disservice a lot of times when we are reducing these things and. You know when you go to the doctor and you get your blood drawn and you have high cholesterol, it's actually more a sign that something else is wrong in your body and, and it's like the policemen showing up to the scene where there's a lot of crime going on. The policemen are not the problem in the situation. The crime itself is the problem. The policemen are showing up in order to reduce the crime that's going on in that situation. Same thing as the cholesterol is coming to try to repair the inside of your blood vessels because your blood vessels have damage. And so when cholesterol is there, it's actually, it's like a good thing that they're there, but it is a sign that something else is wrong. Right? You know, if police are showing up to the scene. It's not to say like, oh, let's get rid of them and allow whatever's going on to happen. No. That would ultimately lead to worse problems. And it's also why I learned this last night, that this is like one of the reasons that if you are vegetarian and don't have a lot of cholesterol in your diet. It ultimately might lead to something like leaky gut syndrome because the cholesterol is needed in order to repair the gut lining And so if you're getting rid of all this cholesterol from your diet and not allowing it to come in and repair, it's actually worse for you. And so when you have your blood drawn and you have high cholesterol, it's not to say you need to get rid of the cholesterol by reducing your cholesterol intake. It's more like you need to figure out what the problem is in order to heal that, and then the cholesterol will go away on its own. Right? If there's less crime in a city, the police won't have to be, as, you know, vigilant in trying to reduce the crime. They can just kinda go back to their donut shops or something.
Chrissy:And that's the beauty of the human body. You know, like God created the body to heal itself. We have so many self-healing mechanisms that occur. You know, think of, if a person is bleeding, they form a scab, right? But, the scab will only form if there's damage to the blood vessel wall. If there's no damage to the blood vessel wall, you don't want a scab forming that will cause big problems, especially if the scab is inside the blood vessel, you know? Then you get blood clots and then you get a stroke or a heart attack or something like that. And so these protection mechanisms that the body creates are very good things. But when you have a chronic problem, and your body is using these protection mechanisms consistently and constantly and not having any reprieve from these protection mechanisms, that's when you get worsening problems. So the body has it's, we'll go back to the scab, you know, your body clots off blood on purpose to prevent you from bleeding out from a paper cut. That is God's design for the body to heal itself. But if there is constant damage and those blood clots form in order to block a blood vessel from bleeding out, but they form in a major artery or a major blood vessel. Because of a chronic problem. That's where we get severe problems that could have been prevented and even reversed before, severe permanent damage has occurred. And so, yeah, it, it's really amazing to see, like God created our body to heal its itself, and God created food in order to help our body and to give our body the nutrients in order to heal itself. So. I think the biggest focus is, let's get back to the way God created food as beautiful and perfect as it was to begin with. You know, we see it time and time again in the Bible, people using food and essential oils and things like that as medicinal remedies, in order to manage illnesses and so it's, it's biblical guys.
Katie:It's Biblical. Yes. I, I actually have a running document going of all of the, like, health related remedies that are mentioned throughout the Bible and or just that were going on in biblical times, and so we'll have to chat more about that in another episode. I learned the other day randomly, so our 1-year-old son struggles with constipation and we've been trying to figure out all the things to do to help him, and I read that a lot of children when they're young, they really need a lot of fat and cholesterol for their bodies to just develop properly, especially their brains. But the other good thing about something like butter, like a fat or even tallow, is that it can really help your gut in having bowel movements. And so this one woman was like, get your son some grass fed, organic butter and let him just eat it. And I was like, that sounds so strange
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:But then so many other people were like, yes, that that helps. That has helped my child. Like go and do that. And I'm like, that sounds so much better than trying to do some sort of medication or just something else. But we've been trying to heal it in some kind of dietary way'cause you know, he's a 1-year-old and starting to do
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:that obviously he is still learning how to process it all and after doing just breastmilk
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:and everything. So, yeah, it's hard.
Chrissy:Even with adults, in terms of constipation, I've actually learned that, uh, concoction I make frequently for my patients of coffee prune juice and butter actually works very well and tastes better than you would think.
Katie:I actually have heard that like coffee and butter stuff before, but Yeah. for some reason I'm a coffee drinker. I'm drinking my wonderful organic coffee right now, but, I've never considered putting butter in it. So Chrissy, we've obviously talked about that if we don't take care of ourselves now, it's going to lead towards lots of these expenses later in life.
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:Do you think that there are ways that we can start saving money today in our journey to become healthier people? Right? So if we're trying to avoid the costs later, but also don't want to have a big influx of expenses to today to be healthy, are there things that you are doing that you actually have found have saved you money but also. You know, helping you become more healthy. Like, I mean, avoiding alcohol is a really easy one because it's literally taking something away that you're not gonna spend money on, but even just something that you are just choosing to spend your money differently on.
Chrissy:Yeah. Yeah. So the two biggest ones that come to mind are my laundry detergent and my bread. The laundry detergent I started making as a means to save money because I always felt like our budget was just completely destroyed every time I had to buy toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent all at the same time. And so I actually make it myself. It takes me about 15 minutes and I only have to do it once a year. Now mind you, this is for a family of two. So if there's more people in your family, it'll probably not last you a whole year, but it costs me. About$15 for the first batch, and then$5 additionally every year thereafter. Just'cause the boxes that you would get with the ingredients can last you multiple batches of this detergent. And so. Yeah. Uh, that's my biggest one. I've actually shared the recipe for my laundry detergent on our Facebook group. It's called Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget. Sorry, men. You are not invited. You gotta be a mama or a mama to be or a want to be mama. Or something of the sort in order to, be in this group. But I've shared it on there and, also you can really just Google any homemade laundry detergent recipe and you'll find it. But it makes a whole five gallon bucket, lasts me a whole year and cost me$5 a year. So that one is like the biggest one that has saved us a ton of money in the past. Only two years that we've been doing it, and then our bread making, you know, walking through the bread aisle in the grocery store. If you wanna spend$2 to$3 on a loaf of bread, you can, but it's not gonna be good for you. And even if you try to get the healthy bread, that's like$5,$6,$7 a loaf, you get the gluten-free bread, that can be like$12 a loaf for this teeny tiny little cardboard thing. Those still have preservatives in them and they still have enrichment with, synthetic vitamins and minerals that your body can't actually process. So it's really still not all that good for you. And so that's another method that my husband and I have used to both benefit and improve our health and benefit our checkbook is, making our own bread from scratch, grinding our own wheat in order to do it. Now, both of these items, the bread and the laundry detergent. Do have a little bit of a time cost to them, but ultimately that time cost is worth the amount of money that we are saving, by doing it. And so, yeah, our loaf of bread now costs about$3 and 50 cents a loaf. And, it, it's benefited us mentally, emotionally, physically, especially physically. Man, I feel so good after I eat my bread. I've actually noticed, two weeks ago we for some reason just didn't have a loaf. We were so busy, we didn't get a chance to make any bread and, I started feeling myself get anemic. I was tired. I was cold, I was moody. And then we made a loaf. I had breakfast of my eggs and toast as I usually do. And like suddenly all those symptoms of feeling anemic just went away and it was like, wow. I can actually see the emotional changes in myself from the vitamin and the mineral deficiencies that I develop from not maintaining a good intake of those vitamins and minerals. And I see it quick, and it resolves itself pretty quick as soon as I reintroduce those vitamins and minerals that I have in the fresh ground wheat bread. So those are the two biggest things that my husband and I do. But there's, there's a lot others. Katie, what are the biggest things that you guys do?
Katie:A lot of the things that have actually helped us save money have had a little bit of a cost upfront, like an investment upfront, but the larger investment in the front has actually ended up saving us more money over time. And a really good example of that, are cloth diapers. So we have chosen to do cloth diapers with our son and we actually did with our foster daughter for a while as well. And, yes, cloth diapers can be decently expensive. They can be anywhere from like$10 to$30 per diaper. However, when you do the analysis of how much it costs for diapers over the span of a few years for a child, the cost for diapers for a baby's first year alone can range from 500 to$1,000 or more. You know, it depends on whether you choose to do like the Costco diapers or if you are trying to do something a little bit healthier because diapers do have a lot of chemicals in them that unfortunately can be endocrine disrupting in babies long term. And so if you're trying to do the more healthy, less chemical ridden diapers, those are going to be much more expensive for you. However, if you choose to cloth diaper, that will avoid the chemicals in the diapers that make them absorbent but they also end up saving you money over time as well as they save the planet, right then you don't have as many diapers in the trash and in the landfills and everything. So, I would recommend if you actually are trying to go the cloth diaper route to get them used. I know it kind of sounds weird, but if people are taking really good care of the cloth diapers, they really can last you like a decade or so. Like you can use them for all of your children and you can pass them on to other people, but they just need to be well cared for, and it's really simple. You can use Chrissy's laundry detergent, like you can make your own laundry detergent, or just get something really good with no fragrance and that's non-toxic as well. And you can do sun bleaching, which is super helpful for them and keeps them really pristine. And so just putting them out in the sun for a long time. But I think like, so we got all of our diapers used as well. Some, some of them were totally free from a family member, but then others that we did buy used, it ended up being somewhere around like five to$10 a diaper at the end of buying them all. And so I think all in for our diapers. So including the ones that we got for free, we got all of them for like less than a hundred dollars. So you think about a hundred dollars for diapers for now. My son's childhood, like of diapers, right? Instead of the a thousand dollars per year that we could have been spending on diapers. So again, just like Chrissy said, it does, there's a little bit of a learning curve and it does require a little bit more time because then the washing and taking care of them, and some people think it's kind of just weird and gross in general, but we have really loved using them and it's saved us a lot of money. Um, yeah.
Chrissy:Do you have a second one that you guys use?
Katie:Yeah.
Chrissy:talk about chicken math?
Katie:That's another one of those things too, that chickens we have chickens. We love our chickens, and it does cost a little bit of money up front to buy the chickens. Actually buying baby chicks is super cheap. They're, I think they were$5 when they were babies. They were only like a week old or so, and they're about$5 per chick, and it does cost money to get a coop and to get the food and all of those things. But again, if you go on Facebook Marketplace, we got a really awesome coop for like 50% of the actual cost of the coop, and it was still in really great shape and my husband did have to drive all the way, like three hours away into the mountains to go get it. But it was so worth it because this coop has been awesome for us so yes, there is that cost upfront, but you know, I'd have to do the math, but over time it has started to save us money, but it takes a few years in order for it to really save you money because of the larger upfront cost. If you move into a house that already has a chicken coop, or you inherit one for free, then the cost would significantly decrease over time, and it would make it more cost effective to do it that way. So, we did actually get rid of part of our chicken coop recently for free. We just put posted on a Facebook marketplace and, I had so many people ask me for it, even though I told them, it is kind of a piece of junk and it's gonna fall apart. And they were like, yeah, I, I still want it. Because again, there's that cost benefit of just repairing it versus getting something brand new. So, anyway, chickens are wonderful they're much easier than having a dog, honestly. And we have so many eggs. We right now, unfortunately, a bunch of our chickens were attacked recently, and we only have two left, and we still get about a dozen eggs per week.
Chrissy:And then also in addition to that, what about the immune benefits that you get from having chickens around. You know, I've seen that kids who grow up on farms or like around, animals a lot tend to have higher immune systems because their bodies are introduced to all of those microorganisms at such a young age that they develop a super strong immune system also. Which then helps them in the future when they're older, to combat any illnesses that they might develop. And their body can fight them off much quicker and sometimes without you even realizing it, you know? So there's also that, which is really beneficial, not just monetarily, but that goes into that, emotional and mental and physical cost, benefit analysis. Yeah,
Katie:I think you've read that book. I have not read it yet, but that book, called Eat Dirt by Dr. Josh Axe.
Chrissy:Oh yeah.
Katie:And literally I mean, Yes, will be sitting outside and just eating twigs off the ground and he's not physically like swallowing them, but he's just munching on them and chewing on them. And I'm like, yeah, buddy. You just, you're just eat your little twig there. Have fun and build up that immune system and just get all the little organisms in there and yeah, and it's, it's been really good. We also, I mean thinking about like outside and just being outside, like gardening is another one of those things that has so many benefits. Obviously there is the monetary benefit of it saves you money because you're literally growing your own food. There's again, a small cost up front to get seeds and if you don't already have a garden set up, you will need to either get garden beds or get the tools necessary or set up a sprinkler system. There's, there can be a high cost barrier, um, when you get into gardening. But again, over time it will save you hundreds of dollars in just a season alone, if not thousands of dollars depending on how much you grow and, and your skills and, and gardening. And so it saves you money in that way. But there, there's a lot of research out there on the benefit of gardening to your health in general. Like not just the food, but physically being outside, getting active, getting your vitamin D, just the fresh air and like the emotional boost that you get from growing and, you know, bringing something to life like that. I, have only started gardening two years ago and it has been such a game changer for me because it's an amazing hobby that I have found so much like happiness from, and just getting back to again, that whole idea of like how God designed and made everything to work together so perfectly. It is so cool to see how God designed, taking just a tiny little seed, putting it in the ground, tending to it, and then it grows this abundance of, fruits or veggies, something for you to eat and then nourish yourself on. And it also, I mean, when you garden, especially if you're doing it organically and not using any kind of pesticides or, chemical fertilizer, if you do it organically, your soil will be so much better for it. And the foods that you produce from that soil will be much more nutrient dense. I read also when
Chrissy:Mm-hmm.
Katie:I was learning about that cholesterol stuff, that our vegetables and even eggs from chickens and our milk, when they are raised on the conventional agricultural system, they have an imbalance of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids. You need like a one-to-one ratio for your body to produce the proper cholesterol levels and everything and when they are depleted of the nutrients through the conventional agricultural system, we have an imbalance of 19 times higher Omega-6 fatty acids to Omega-3 fatty acids. And so our bodies have this overabundance of Omega-6. When you have too much Omega-6, it actually blocks your body from making prostaglandins, which is what you need in order to fight off cancerous cells and to fight off infections and viruses, and so the Omega-6 fatty acids actually block the prostaglandins from being fought off. Anyway, I won't get into too many more details. I was super nerding out on it last night and I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. And so, there's so much benefit to growing your own food or even just switching to organic. But if you're looking to do organic foods, more cost effectively, gardening is an amazing way to do that. And there's so many benefits besides just the, like health benefits and monetary benefits,
Chrissy:That that's true. And also for those of you who don't have a yard or an extensive space outside for gardening. You can garden in pots. We only have like a back deck pretty much in our neighborhood that is our property. The rest of the property is public property, and so we're not allowed to grow things on the lawns or anything like that. But, my next door neighbor actually has big pots on his deck of all of his fruits and vegetables that he grows, and he'll just like come over with a whole gallon sized bag of Maters. He calls'em maters. They're not tomatoes. They're maters. He's like, here's some maters. But they are so delicious. Honestly, the best tomatoes I've ever had. And so you don't need space. All you need is a little bit of time.
Katie:Exactly. Speaking of time,Chrissy, we have been chatting for quite a while, so don't we wrap it up
Chrissy:Yes.
Katie:Um, I think my last thoughts are just encourage people that you know, overall Your time and your money in a solution that's going to help prevent you from incurring both, you know, the financial and the intangible costs is absolutely worth it. And committing to improving your diet or your lifestyle now today will impact your life and the lives of your family members and those around you by staying healthy. So I would just encourage you that, if you don't have a budget for these kinds of things yet, learn how to budget first and plan for these expenses that you might incur from making this kind of change in your lifestyle. This is, honestly, you will thank yourself later. And I'm, and I'm saying that as like a 30-year-old, right? I'm in my thirties, and. I don't really know the cost benefit yet from growing old and making this lifestyle change, but I have seen many individuals who are twice my age who are struggling with chronic illness or lots of their friends now are getting really sick and they're dealing with the stress and the pain of chronic illnesses and I know that I want to be healthy and vibrant and just have the energy to live a long life for my son who's around, but also so that way I can continue to do kingdom work long-term without needing to spend lots of my time battling chronic illnesses that could have been prevented when I was in my thirties and things like that. So that's my inspiration is seeing the struggle and the pain that other people have been dealing with and trying to work hard now and learning all that I can now to avoid that later. So that's why we have really invested both our time and our financial resources to preventing these things in the first place. So I would just encourage people that if you're not doing that, start now wherever you're at, even if you are twice my age
Chrissy:It is never too late to start. All right, well, with that, we just wanna let you guys know that we pray over each of you guys and we hope that these episodes can be helpful in your journey to becoming a better steward of your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your finances, and your families. We are praying that this episode was helpful for you and we will see you next time.
Katie:See you next time.