The Healing Place · Franklin, TN
The five swaps we'd make first.
You don't need to fix everything all at once. Start with these, in this order.
Some links below earn us a small commission. It's all what we use at home, and none of it changes what we'd tell you in the office. Where we have a discount code, it's yours.
Water
What we recommend
Drinking. A gravity countertop option, no power, no plumbing. Carbon all the way through, so it takes out what you don't want and leaves the minerals in. Be sure to add the fluoride filter upgrade.
Shower. NSF 177 certified, and independently tested to remove both chlorine and disinfection byproducts. Most shower filters only manage the first one.
Bath. If you have little ones, or if you love a bath, don't skip this one.
Whole house, when you're ready. Every tap at once, carbon and ceramic based. Their descaler handles hard water without pulling the calcium and magnesium out, which is the tradeoff most softeners make.
City water is treated to be safe from bacteria, not free of everything else. Chlorine is added on purpose. Lead, agricultural runoff, pharmaceutical residue, and whatever isn't being tested for come along for the ride.
Don't forget the shower. Hot water opens your pores and sends chlorine airborne, so you're breathing it the whole ten minutes. A toddler in a hot bath gets twenty minutes of it with a lot of skin and not much body mass.
One note on reverse osmosis. We are not recommending it at this time. RO strips the minerals out along with the contaminants, and we would rather take out what you don't want and leave what you do.
Search your city name plus "consumer confidence report." It's public, and it tells you exactly what's in your tap. And if you'd rather skip filtering altogether, findaspring.org maps natural springs across the country where you can fill your own bottles for free. Read the comments on a spring before you go, since people post recent test results and access notes there.
If you own a Berkey
Black Berkey filters got hard to find after the EPA classified them as pesticide devices in 2022 and stop sale orders followed. The case is still unresolved and the original filters aren't being made.
Your chamber is fine. Boroux filters use the same formulation and drop right in. That's what's in our kitchen, a Berkey chamber with Boroux inside. One catch: Boroux isn't intended to filter microorganisms, so well water is a different conversation.
Light
What we recommend
Healthy Home Circadian Lightbulb
Flicker free, low EMF, three settings you cycle by flipping the switch. Daylight for morning, Sunset for late afternoon, Campfire for zero blue light before bed. No app, no smart hub. All three live in one bulb, so you change your light setting from the wall or lamp switch instead of changing bulbs, and it lasts years rather than months.
Start with the lamps in whatever room you occupy most after dinner. They also make BR30, BR40, and a retrofit for four inch recessed cans, so ceilings are fixable later.
On a budget? Incandescent bulbs
A couple of dollars a bulb, and a real step up from a standard LED. Incandescents don't flicker, and nearly all of them work with a standard dimmer, so turning one down physically shifts it redder the way firelight does. You'll find them listed as appliance or rough service. They last 750 to 2,000 hours, so buy a few at a time.
One honest difference. Incandescents give off a continuous spectrum, so they do still put out some blue light. Far less than an LED, and spread smoothly instead of spiking, but not none. The circadian bulb's Campfire setting gets to zero. That, along with the ability to toggle between three settings on one bulb, is what the extra money buys you.
Check the base before ordering. Most lamps take a standard E26, while chandeliers and sconces take the smaller E12. And red or amber light is for the evening, not all day. Living in it around the clock, especially through winter, weakens the same signal you're trying to build.
Not sure which way to go? If you only change one room, make it wherever you spend your evenings, and put a circadian bulb there. Incandescent everywhere else is a cheap, real upgrade.
Your body reads light to know what time it is. Blue heavy LEDs in the evening tell your brain it's noon, and melatonin production waits. Cue poor sleep.
Most LEDs also flicker faster than you can consciously see. Your visual system still processes it, which is where a lot of headaches and eye strain come from.
Everyone is talking about nervous system regulation right now, and this is one of the biggest levers nobody mentions. Light is a direct input to the system that decides whether you're in go mode or rest mode. You can breathe and journal all evening, but if your house is telling your brain it's the middle of the day, you're working against yourself.
Overhead lights off after sunset or two hours before bed, lamps only. Overheads hit your eyes from the same angle as the noon sun. Then get sunlight in your eyes within an hour of waking.
Fragrance
What we recommend
If the label says fragrance, swap it
Start with anything running all day, like plug-ins and wall fresheners. Then work through the labels: detergent, dryer sheets, candles, lotion, shampoo, deodorant, cleaners, dish soap. Check your trash bags too. Watch for parfum and linalool as well, which are the same thing under a different name. Most of these cost a few dollars, so we wouldn't wait for them to run out. Start swapping.
"Fragrance" isn't an ingredient, it's a category. Companies can hide dozens of undisclosed compounds behind that one word and call it a trade secret.
Smell is the only sense that reaches your brain's stress centers without being filtered first. So plugging one into the wall sends it straight to the part of the nervous system we spend all day helping people settle.
Want your house to smell like something? Citrus peel and rosemary on the stove. Real essential oils are a different conversation from what's hiding behind that word on a label.
This category is too big for one page. We're compiling a master guide covering every room in the house: kitchen, bath, laundry, personal care, and everything for the littles. Sign up at the bottom and we'll send it the day it's ready.
Air
What we recommend
Start with the living or cooking area, or a bedroom if someone's struggling with sleep, breathing, or allergies. Use code HEALINGPLACE at checkout for $200 off each unit. If Jaspr is running a sale, the code always beats it. Their last sale was $300 off and ours went to $350.
Change your HVAC filter
Ten dollars. Go look at it right now. If you can't remember the last time, that's your answer. Set a reminder for every three months and buy the highest MERV your system can handle.
Indoor air is usually worse than outside. Modern homes are sealed tight, so off gassing, cooking particulate, dust, and dander all stay put.
In Middle Tennessee, humidity makes mold the one to watch. It's one of the most commonly missed drivers behind what people walk into our office with, and it's invisible until it isn't.
Open the windows ten minutes a day, even in August. Run the vent over the stove every time you cook, especially on gas. And leave the bathroom fan running at least twenty minutes after a shower, since trapped humidity is how mold gets started.
Cookware
What we recommend
Made In stainless
Everyday cooking and searing. The frying pan and saucepan.
Lodge cast iron
High heat and anything oven bound. The skillet and dutch oven. Cheapest good pan you'll ever buy, and it outlives you.
Xtrema ceramic
If you want zero metal. The Signature skillet.
If you truly need nonstick for eggs and pancakes. The Titanium Always Pan Pro and Perfect Pot Pro. The nonstick technology comes from a texture pressed into titanium, not a coating, so there's nothing to flake off. Look for the word Titanium when you order. The original Always Pan 2.0 is ceramic coated aluminum, a different product with a nearly identical name.
Nonstick coatings break down with heat and scratches, and then they're in your food. PFAS earned the "forever chemicals" name honestly.
This one has a real answer. Materials that are simply what they are: steel, iron, ceramic, titanium. Start with the same type of pan you cook with most often and gradually build your set.
Throw out any nonstick pan that's scratched, chipped, or flaking. Today, not someday. Cooking on it is worse than not having it.
Bedding
What we recommend
Quince linen or Under the Canopy
Start here. Linen is our personal favorite, and Quince makes it affordable. If you'd rather have cotton, look for the GOTS label, which certifies the whole supply chain rather than just the finished fabric. Under the Canopy carries both GOTS and OEKO-TEX without the luxury price tag. Skip anything labeled wrinkle free.
When yours is genuinely due. Natural latex, organic cotton and wool. The wool handles flame resistance, so there's no chemical treatment. We sleep on the Natural Escape. Don't rush this one.
The same company makes the Kiwi, which is on our guest bed, and the Emily crib mattress, which Good Housekeeping named best overall. Babies sleep more hours a day than anyone else in the house, and a crib mattress is one of the few things you buy before they arrive. Easy one to get right the first time.
We kept trying to cut this category and it kept refusing to go. You spend a third of your life in skin contact with your bed.
Conventional sheets are usually polyester or blends finished with resins. Conventional mattresses are polyurethane foam with flame retardants, an inch from your face for eight hours a night.
Stop using dryer sheets. They coat everything you sleep on. Wool dryer balls do the same job.
One at a time is the whole strategy.
Nobody does all six at once, and trying is the fastest way to do none of them. Pick the one that fits your week.
If you've been doing the right things and still feel off, your house is only half the picture. The other half is what your body is doing with it. That's the part we look at, with a detailed intake, a nervous system scan, and a real conversation about your history.
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