Health Starts at Home

Wellness Real Estate Explained: What Makes a Healthy Home | Ep. 40

• Holly Jean Mullen • Season 2 • Episode 40

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What if the real reason you’re not healing… is your house?

You’re eating clean, managing stress, taking the right supplements—so why do you still feel off? In this episode, we pull back the curtain on one of the most overlooked pieces of the wellness puzzle: your home environment.

From mold and moisture to EMFs, building materials, poor air and water quality, your home might be silently adding stress to your system and disrupting everything from hormones and sleep to immune health and energy.

You’ll learn:

  • Why ventilation and filtration are more important than your fridge contents
  • How synthetic flooring and foam insulation mess with your metabolism and fertility
  • What your Wi-Fi router placement has to do with insomnia
  • And how to design a space that helps your body exhale

Whether you're building, buying, or just trying to feel better at home, this episode will change how you see the place you live—and why it matters more than you think.

Your home should help you heal—not hold you back.
If you’re ready to explore how your environment could be impacting your energy, mood, sleep, and overall wellness, you’re in the right place. The Health Starts at Home Podcast is here to help you rethink health from the inside out—starting with where you live.

Curious about your symptoms or feeling “off” at home?
My free Body Wisdom Journal is still available and now includes prompts to help you track not just food and mood—but also your environment. Because sometimes, it’s not you... it’s your house.
→ Download Your Free Body Wisdom Journal Here

Connect with me on Instagram @hollyjean.healthandhome for real life, red flags, and wellness real estate tips you won’t hear anywhere else.

New episodes drop regularly - subscribe, share, and leave a review if this show speaks to you.

Because health starts at home—and yes, that includes yours.


© 2024 Holly Jean Mullen

Holly Mullen:

We've been told that health starts in the kitchen, the gym or maybe the supplement aisle, but what if the real starting line is where you sleep? In today's episode, we're answering a question that doesn't get asked nearly enough, and that is what is a healthy home? I am going to break down the connection between your living environment, your body, from air quality and EMFs to mold materials and stress. We're going to explore how functional health and building biology intersect to create homes that don't just look good but actually help you feel better. So if you've ever walked into a space and just felt off, or if you're trying to heal and nothing's working, this episode is for you. So let's dive in. You're listening to the Health Starts at Home podcast, where functional health meets intentional home design. I'm your host, holly Jean Mullen, a former wellness practitioner turned holistic realtor, and I help health-conscious families find or create homes that actually support their healing Around. Here we're talking about the stuff most real estate agents won't, and that is also the things that the wellness world often forgets, because your home isn't just where you live, it's what you're living in every single day. So let's dive into the show.

Holly Mullen:

We talk a lot about health these days. That's everything from clean eating, daily movement, your supplements, stress management but there's also one major player in your well-being that most people completely overlook, and that is your home. And I don't mean whether or not your home is tidy or trendy. What I'm really talking about here is does your home support your nervous system? Does it help you sleep better? Does it protect your lungs and your hormones? Or is it silently adding stress to your body without you even realizing it? If you are looking for the simplest answer to the question what is a healthy home? Or if I were to tell you I help people find healthy homes and you're wondering to yourself what exactly even is that? Let me break it down really simply. Pretty much, this is it in a nutshell A healthy home is one that supports your biology. It is working with your body, not against it. It is helping your body heal and thrive and be well, rather than in a state of defense or struggle. It is one thing that is not a barrier to your health. In other words, it is not just where you live. It is kind of your health headquarters, and that's why it is kind of your health headquarters, and that's why this show is called the Health Starts at Home podcast, because it is the embodiment of this entire concept and I'm going to start with this whole trend, even though this is not a trend. I'm going to start with a trend because I'm seeing this come up in articles all over the news lately. My Google Alerts keeps popping this up and it's all about wellness in the living environment as a luxury and I like to say I like to think this is a new kind of luxury. It's kind of a luxury rebrand, because luxury used to mean more meaning, more marble, more square footage, more cars in the garage. But today's high-end buyers, and now even buyers as a whole, they're craving and wanting something else entirely, and that is more peace. The new markers of luxury right now aren't about flash. They're more about how a space feels. It's about how a space feels mentally, emotionally, physiologically. They're going for the vibe. Luxury is a vibe.

Holly Mullen:

Now people are asking better questions. People are wanting to know what's the air and water quality like. They want to know how does this home impact my stress, or how can this primary suite help me sleep better? Is there mold? Are these materials off g? Yes, these are questions that regular, everyday people are starting to ask. They want to know does this layout support connection, and it's not just entertainment and parties. Does this layout support the flow for how my family lives and how we interact? Does it support calmness or does it contribute to the chaos of our already busy lives? And this is the heart and soul of wellness real estate, and it's not some elite niche trend. It is really this return to common sense. It's creating homes that align with how the human body is meant to live, and at the cusp of it is these two foundations of what makes a healthy home.

Holly Mullen:

And to really understand where this equation is coming from, we're pulling from two different frameworks here. We're pulling from functional health and from building biology, and these are coming together to make this little happy marriage. And from the functional health side, we're taking this personalized approach to well-being that looks at root causes. We're looking at answering the why there's dysfunction in the body. We're looking at every part of lifestyle, including environment, and wanting to know what are these other forces that are impacting health. And then we're taking building biology, which is this holistic science focused around designing the built environment, and we want that environment to work in harmony with the human biology part and with our natural body system. So we're taking how we build things, how our bodies work, and seeing how we can make these two work together harmoniously. So let's break this down a little bit deeper. That's like high level. Let's go a little more micro here, cat.

Holly Mullen:

So from the functional health lens, your environment is a variable in how your health outcomes exhibit, how you have symptoms. As a functional wellness practitioner turned real estate professional, I've seen it too many times to count where chronic fatigue, brain fog, hormonal imbalances, autoimmune flares, symptoms of all sorts all across the board are exacerbated or even caused by the environment, and whether that's the home or work, the environment where we're spending a lot of time. In this case we're just going to be talking about the home, because that's the theme of the show here, but most people focus on food supplements, stress, but they forget to look at what's going on in their environment. What's going on in your surroundings? What about the mold behind the walls? What about the VOCs from your flooring? What about that stagnant air in your bedroom? When your environment is constantly triggering your body's alarm system, whether it's through toxins, emfs or even poor lighting your nervous system can never truly regulate.

Holly Mullen:

So this means you're always in some form of fight or flight, and a healthy home should relieve that burden. It should lighten your health load We've all heard that expression of your body burden or your toxic load bucket. Your home should be contributing to your body being able to relax, not adding more stress to your bucket, your bucket. We want our home to be able to relieve our stress, our body burden, so that it can, so that our body can, focus on repairing and restoring and thriving, not just surviving. So then the building biology component comes in, and this is incorporating design that honors the way our human body is meant to function. And building biology gives us a clear framework for what a healthy home really means. It outlines 25 guiding principles that focus on things like clean air, water quality, emf safety, biophilic design, moisture control, non-toxic materials and creating peaceful flow and acoustics throughout the space. Some of these terms might be new to you or they might mean different things, depending on who you ask, so I want to walk through each one because I want to make sure we are speaking the same language before we dive deeper into what makes a healthy home.

Holly Mullen:

So, starting with clean air through proper ventilation and low toxin materials is what I'm talking about when I refer to healthy air or clean air. To healthy air or clean air. Fresh air isn't optional. It really is a foundational concept, along with water, which we'll talk about next. Yet most modern homes are built so airtight for energy efficiency that they trap pollutants inside. Off-gassing from synthetic materials, furniture, paint, cleaning products these can all linger in stagnant air and they can make your home feel more like a toxic soup than a sanctuary. Whether or not you can smell those toxic off-gassing scents, they are there. Healthy homes prioritize cross-ventilation through open windows and smart floor plans. They have energy recovery ventilators or heat recovery ventilators to bring in filtered outdoor air without losing heating or cooling efficiency. They have low or zero VOC paints, sealants, adhesives. They're using more natural materials like hardwood and clay, wool things that don't trap or emit toxins.

Holly Mullen:

The next one is water quality, and this is looking at things like filtration and plumbing placement and you can be drinking all the clean water in the world, but if your pipes are leaching heavy metals or your shower is releasing chlorine gas into the air, your home may be undoing the benefits. So when we're looking at things to consider in a healthy home in terms of water, we're looking at whole house water filtration systems. We're looking at point of use filters in the kitchen, like at the sink or at the fridge or in the shower. As I mentioned, we're looking at avoiding PVC and copper pipes in favor of PEX or other safe materials when possible. Plumbing lines placed away from high heat appliances and electrical panels. We're looking at access panels to be able to get to certain areas of plumbing in case we do need to make repairs, so we're not having hidden leaks that can then lead to mold and moisture issues. So it's just smarter design in how the plumbing is run and smarter design in terms of what materials to use in the inappropriate settings.

Holly Mullen:

The next thing is EMF safety, and this means being intentional about limiting our exposure to the constant stream of invisible radiation coming from our modern technology. Our Wi-Fi routers, smart meters, bluetooth devices, even our standard electrical wiring they all emit non-native electromagnetic fields which are EMS. These things can interfere with your body's natural electrical systems. In particular, that's going to be our brain, our heart and our mitochondria. Over time, chronic exposure which, just living in today's world, we are all chronically exposed, and that exposure has been linked to more than just sleep issues or anxiety. Emerging research points to more serious things, such as oxidative stress increases DNA damage, hormonal disruption, stress increases DNA damage, hormonal disruption, infertility, even certain types of cancers. Several studies have raised concerns about long-term cumulative effects, especially with 24-7 exposure in our home.

Holly Mullen:

So many of us go from our homes that are wired with all these I'm sorry, not wired that are equipped with all these EMF wireless devices, and we're going into our cars that are wireless and smart or battery operated, and we're going into our workplaces, which are also now equipped with Wi-Fi. We're sitting in front of computers, so we are constantly just being exposed to this wireless radiation, this non-native frequency just coming at us. So things that we can do to make our home less offensive in this area is we could use wired ethernet instead of Wi-Fi. We can be cautious about where we have our router placed. We don't want that near our bedrooms or living spaces. We can have hardwired smart home systems instead of the bluetooth ones, or we could avoid them altogether. We can have certain types of shielding or harmonizing devices in the home with smart meters. We could have smart meter guards we could opt out. I know that's difficult sometimes, sometimes not even an option, but there are things we can do, especially if we think about it ahead of time.

Holly Mullen:

If you are in a remodel or a new build phase, that is the time to really incorporate these changes into that. You don't have to live in a tinfoil hat, but you also don't have to microwave your nervous system every single night and all day, every day either. It's not about being panicked or freaked out about all of this, but we can do things to protect ourselves and to use a little bit of prevention. A healthy home reduces the interference. It's going to stop the cellular attack and support cellular function and give our body the best possible chance to heal and regenerate. So the next thing is the biophilic design.

Holly Mullen:

This one uses natural light and textures and material to regulate mood and circadian rhythm. It goes beyond aesthetics. It's about intentionally reconnecting your home with nature to support your biology, especially your light environment, which is quickly being recognized as one of the most foundational pillars of our health Our natural light exposure, particularly in the morning. It helps regulate circadian rhythm. That is, our internal clock that governs everything from our sleep cycles to hormone production, to our metabolism, to immune response and even the way our genes express. When we disrupt that rhythm, we disrupt almost every major system in the body. Everything in our body runs on a rhythm or a clock. We have our biological clock, we have our monthly cycles. Like everything runs on a rhythm, a cycle, a clock. So when our home is designed with light and nature in mind, when we have large windows, when we're exposed to the morning sun, when we have natural textures and materials and organic shapes, it doesn't just look good, it actually calms the nervous system, it improves our focus and enhances mood and it supports deep and restorative sleep and restorative sleep because sleep is actually where our body repairs itself. So when we're not sleeping well, we're not getting into repair. Our circadian rhythm isn't just about sleep, it is the conductor of our body's entire symphony. So biophilic design helps keep us in tune. So, recapping here key elements of this are natural light, views of greenery or open sky, natural textures and materials like wood, stone, linen, clay, indoor plants and living and things that emphasize living patterns and organic shapes over sterile or sharp modernism. Our bodies were designed to respond to beauty and rhythm and light, and so homes that reflect that just enhance our health and well-being in return, just enhance our health and well-being in return.

Holly Mullen:

Moisture management this one is big. It's reducing the risk of mold, rot, dust mites. Water intrusion is one of the most common and most aggressively downplayed issues in home health. Hidden leaks, poor drainage or lack of proper ventilation create an ideal breeding ground for mold, mildew, dust mites. Those things all go hand in hand. And they aren't just minor irritants. They're known to really wreak havoc on your lungs, hormones, immune system and even your brain. And what's really bad is how consistently this issue is ignored, denied or straight up gaslit by builders, inspectors, landlords and many real estate professionals who are sometimes just more focused on the sale than they are on the safety of buyers. And from the medical side, it's no better. Mainstream professionals often dismiss environmentally triggered illness entirely, leaving people who are truly suffering labeled as annoying, anxious, difficult hypochondriacs. From the real estate side, I'll just say it, it feels borderline, criminal. People with environmental sensitivities, those who truly need mold-free, low-toxin homes, should be protected under ADA in my opinion. But getting that recognition is a catch-22, because the medical system that would validate those needs is often the same one denying that they even exist.

Holly Mullen:

So, under this umbrella, healthy moisture control in a healthy home looks like sloped grating around the house to keep water flowing away from the foundation. High quality vapor barriers appropriate to your climate zone, to your climate zone. Dehumidifiers and humid client humid climates and that has some caveats there. Properly installed tile, properly sealed grouting, properly installed showers it's not just about the tile, it's not just about the grout, it's about the whole system and whether or not they're properly installed and waterproofed. We need moisture resistant backer boards in bathrooms. We need properly ventilated exhaust fans throughout the entire house that don't just blow up into the attic but actually go out of the home. There are so many things. This will be a whole separate podcast. Things this will be a whole separate podcast. I have some guests lined up just to talk about the many facets of moisture control within the home. But mold isn't always visible, but your body can sometimes feel it before you ever even see it. So if your house is making you sick, you deserve to be taken seriously. Period the end.

Holly Mullen:

Non-toxic materials these are things that don't off. Non-toxic materials that don't off-gas or irritate the body system. So these are going to be the low VOC types of things that we want in our house. The materials that make up your home shouldn't double as hormone disruptors, but unfortunately many do. Standard building materials like MDF cabinetry, vinyl flooring, spray foam, insulation laminates, synthetic carpets, insulation laminates, synthetic carpets, conventional paints and glues. These things often off-gas toxic compounds like formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, phthalates, flame retardants. And they don't just stop after the smell fades. These chemicals can linger in the air for months and sometimes even years after installation, and many of these are known endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with your body's hormone signaling.

Holly Mullen:

This isn't just vague. That's not good for you, I know. Sometimes when people hear endocrine disruptors they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I hear that all the time and it's like they hear it so often. I don't think people really let it sink in to what endocrine disrupting chemicals actually means. So in real life, when you hear someone say endocrine disrupting chemicals in real life, this is what it means and this is how it could actually play out for you in your everyday metabolism.

Holly Mullen:

They can contribute to stubborn weight gain, especially around the midsection. When you're saying my hormones are off or I've reached that age where I cannot get this weight to come off, it might not just be because you're at that age. It might not just be because your hormones are off, because your hormones aren't just get off because of a certain age. These other things contribute to it. Early puberty in children, especially girls, is linked back to synthetic estrogens and plastics and finishes. I'm not even talking about the stuff that's put into our food. This is strictly environmental. Worsened PMS, pcos, infertility, even miscarriage risks for women exposed to high toxin load, thyroid disruption and mood instability, menopause symptoms that are more intense or arriving sooner than expected. I know everyone's talking about perimenopause right now and just menopause in general. That is something that's all over social media and HRT and bioidentical hormones.

Holly Mullen:

We need to be looking at our living environments and how the chemicals we are exposed to in our homes are playing a role in how our natural hormones are being impacted and that includes our men too, because this also impacts our men and reduce sperm quality and testosterone. So we want to be choosing materials that are third-party certified low or no VOC. We want to be using natural ingredient materials that are things like milk, paint, beeswax, sealants, linoleum instead of vinyl. We want to look for things that come with from renewable sources like wool, insulation or bamboo floors. We want things to be able to breathe, allowing moisture to pass through instead of trapping it in.

Holly Mullen:

Hormones run the show your mood, metabolism, sleep, fertility, stress, response, more. That's a long list when your home is constantly leaking out synthetic chemicals. If you wouldn't put it on your skin, we need to be thinking twice about putting it on our walls. That's all I'm going to say on that one. The last one here is looking at the peaceful acoustics and the flow of the home.

Holly Mullen:

We know that tight, edgy feeling that we get when our home is cluttered or noisy or if we're in an echoey space. That is not just bad design, that is actually our nervous system signaling stress to us. And sound and spatial layout have a powerful impact on how safe, calm and regulated our body feels inside of a home. So when you are constantly surrounded by loud appliances or hard surfaces that bounce noise, or tight, closed-in rooms with an awkward flow, your body stays subtly activated, always on edge, never fully grounded. So if you are home shopping, pay attention to how you feel when you walk through a home. Your body will tell you if that home is a right fit for you. If you are feeling off in a home, pay attention to that.

Holly Mullen:

So a home that honors this concept of building biology means it's going to have open concept with purpose. Sometimes open concept can feel really chaotic to where you just like don't really know what's going on and you just feel kind of lost. You just like don't really know what's going on and you just feel kind of lost. An open concept that feels inviting and purposeful, that is going to respect this, this peacefulness. We want soft finishes when, like rugs and curtains and upholstered furnitures that are going to absorb noise rather than reflect it, we're looking for natural materials that create warmth and softness. We want thoughtful placement.

Holly Mullen:

I always think of feng shui when I think of this. We want things to consider the flow of energy and feel of a space. Open, uncluttered layouts, right, those allow energy and people to move with ease. Even if you're taking the feng shui out of it, we just put common sense into it. We want intentional pathways so we don't feel visually blocked in our own home.

Holly Mullen:

Design isn't just about what you see. It's all about how your body feels moving through it, and when a home flows well, it sounds soft, it promotes rest and presence and a deeper nervous system recovery. It's almost as if the home is inviting us to breathe deeper and to think more clearly and it just feels like huh. I know sometimes, when I travel the places where we stay, when I I feel the most relaxed. It's because I'm in a space that is is beautiful and invites relaxation and it just has a good flow. It has all these concepts there because together these concepts are a comprehensive way of thinking about construction and about how we live and about where we live, and it's all about respecting our biology and borrowing from nature's wisdom.

Holly Mullen:

And most homes miss the mark. Most traditional homes were built fast, cheap and without much thought for health. Most modern homes, the older homes, had much better design, in my opinion, our modern homes. Now we have toxic glues, synthetic carpets, off-gassing toxic glues, synthetic carpets, off-gassing cabinetry, poor airflow, there's tight insulation with no moisture control, and these are standard, not exceptional. And, yeah, sure, they might pass code, but they're not supporting long-term health and they are probably not even supporting the longevity of the structure, because all of these things or not all of these things, but not accounting for proper moisture control is going to deteriorate the structural integrity of the home much faster as well. Even if we're looking at newer green or smart homes, these can even fall short, even though they're like touted as being much better.

Holly Mullen:

If you listen to my previous episode 36, where I break down the differences between smart, green and healthy homes. You can learn more about those, but many people these days are prioritizing energy efficiency at the expense of breathability, and the result is trapping stale, contaminated air inside. And with all the smart tech, yeah, it might convenient, but it often comes at a hidden health cost, with the added exposure of non-native EMF. So it's not just about comfort, it's about health, but, more importantly, it's about our cellular stress, because all of these things are either contributing to or detracting from our cellular stress, and this is why we need a new standard, and one that goes beyond trend and talks about resilience, restoration and real wellness. So let's bring it to real life.

Holly Mullen:

What does a healthy home actually look like? It starts with the essentials clean air and water. That often means installing a whole home filtration system. So every faucet, showerhead, every breath supports your health instead of challenging it, and a high quality air filter can reduce dust, dander, mold spores, vocs, even bacteria in the air. And a comprehensive water system ensures you're not showering in chlorine and drinking heavy metals or cooking with contaminated tap water. We want to upgrade our input so our body doesn't have to work so hard to detox them later.

Holly Mullen:

And next we want to think about the materials your home is made of and surrounded by. Healthy homes lean into natural finishes like solid wood, clay, plaster, stone, wool rather than engineered wood filled with adhesives or synthetic materials that off-gas for years. These natural textures also support the biophilic design, creating a space that's not only non-toxic but also calming and grounding to be in. Then, of course, there's the tech piece EMF. Conscious design doesn't mean you have to go live off grid, but it does mean that you're being thoughtful about things like your router placement and your hardwired connections, precautions for wiring in the bedroom, minimizing smart tech overload, making smart choices about the things you want to be smart in your home, whether or not you're even choosing to have a smart home. Wi-fi can be on a timer or a kill switch. Bedrooms can be grounded. You don't need to ditch modern life. We can live modernly and harmoniously. We just need to make it more biologically respectful.

Holly Mullen:

When we're looking at layout and light, these are just as important as what's behind the walls. Homes that feel good tend to flow well. Sunlight pours in, pathways are clear, there's a natural sense of openness without a chaotic energy around it. Circadian lighting, meaning we're mimicking the sunrise and the sunset. We're not having bright, fluorescent blue light on all the time that can help regulate sleep and our hormone production. And intentional window placement, mirrors to bounce natural light and organic shapes over harsh lines All of those contribute to a space that supports mood and productivity and rest.

Holly Mullen:

You're not going to find synthetic air fresheners, plug-ins or flame retardant furniture in a truly healthy home. Instead, there is an absence of synthetic fragrance and chemically treated items Think beeswax candles, essential oil diffusers, natural fiber rugs. Your nose should be able to rest and not be assaulted and have to brace itself. In a healthy home, the bedroom is in natural fibers, like linen. Sleep is where the healing happens, so your space should be designed to make that process easier, not harder.

Holly Mullen:

And then, lastly, we're going to be looking at the location of a home. If a home's truly going to be healthy, it's all about the real estate of it, and that is location, location, location being placed on clean land. We want to be away from power substations and cell towers and flood zones and registered polluters. High traffic roads, airports All of these things matter more than people realize. Your environment outside the walls plays just as much a role as what's inside. Of course some luxury homes are going to go beyond inside. Of course, some luxury homes are going to go beyond, above and beyond. We're going to be seeing things in new construction in the luxury market that are adding in cold plunged hubs, infrared saunas. We see spaces for gardens built in now. We're seeing circadian lighting systems being incorporated now in new builds Meditation rooms, atriums for grounding, patios, in-home biohacking labs. Those are becoming more and more common.

Holly Mullen:

But you don't have to get caught up in the bells and whistles. You don't need all the things to create a healthy space, but we do need awareness, and then you can align your choices with what matters most to you and your body, and that is where we have transformation. I want to just talk about why this matters so much, because sometimes I start to feel like a broken record. But then I go out and I talk to people and someone will still say I don't really know what you mean when you say a healthy home.

Holly Mullen:

But once you have lived in a home that made you sick or you've experienced the relief of living in one that actually helped you heal or feel better, you can't forget that and you can't unfeel that you start to realize that health isn't just about what you eat or how much you move your body or how many supplements you take or how many protocols you can check off your list of that you've gone through. It's about what's around you all day, every day. It's the air you breathe, it's the water you bathe in, it's the light that you are exposed to. It's those hidden stressors that we can't always see. But our body absolutely feels, and I say this from experience, both as someone trained in functional health and as someone who's seen what happens when clients are doing everything right but still not getting better. They're eating clean, they're managing stress, they're following protocols, and yet their symptoms persist. Why? Because they're sleeping in mold, or their home is full of off-gassing materials that are throwing off their hormones, or their nervous system never truly downshifts because they're bathing in EMFs and sleeping under LED lights.

Holly Mullen:

Your home can either be a healing sacred space or a silent source of stress that keeps your body stuck in survival mode. This is especially important if you've ever dealt with mold exposure, where even small hidden leaks can just wreak full havoc on the immune system and trigger inflammation that does not stop. And just because someone who lives in the same home as you is seemingly unaffected doesn't mean that you aren't, and vice versa, because we all have different buckets. We all have different genetic loads, chemical sensitivities. If you are someone with chemical sensitivity, where everyday products or building materials cause you headaches or skin reactions, anxiety or energy crashes, this is especially important to you if you have ever dealt with autoimmune issues, which are often made worse by chronic toxin exposure or immune dysregulation caused by indoor pollutants. If you are someone that has experienced burnout or insomnia, where no amount of self-care can compete with an environment that keeps your adrenals on high alert, this is this is important for you. If you have kids with asthma or eczema or behavior shifts, this could be tied back to a reaction to mold or dust or VOCs or synthetic fragrance or air quality.

Holly Mullen:

You may not always connect the dots until you've experienced both sides, but once you've lived in a space that helps your body exhale, where you sleep deeply, you can breathe freely and you feel like yourself again if you can even remember what that feels like, because some people have been so sick for so long they don't even remember what feeling good feels like. But once you can get to that place, everything changes. You start to see homes differently. You start to look at them differently. You no longer see them as square footage or design trends. You see them as a container for your life and your energy and for your longevity. And you're not just buying four walls and drywall. You're buying resilience. You're buying your future and your quality of life. You're investing in peace of mind and your children's development and your mood and clarity and your ability to show up for your life with strength instead of just pushing through and when you've lived on the other side when your house was quietly keeping you sick. It's not about a luxury anymore, it is about necessity, and everyone I know who's in this boat is willing to do anything, sell everything, do anything possible within their power to get to this other side. There's nothing that they won't pay.

Holly Mullen:

So, to sum it all up, what is a healthy home? A healthy home is a home that removes obstacles to healing and restores your body's natural ability to live as God intended, your body's ability to thrive. And that word thrive is so annoying to me. I feel like it's just used too often. I feel like the word thrive itself is a marketing gimmick, but in this context that is really the best word to use, and that really is. The goal is to be able to live in a home that helps your body feel the way it's supposed to feel and our bodies are designed to feel so good and it kills me that way too many people don't even know what that feels like.

Holly Mullen:

But a healthy home is built with awareness, awareness of materials and layout and lighting and air and water and unseen frequencies. It's shaped with intention and not just style or a certain number pulled out of thin air of square footage. It's designed with intention and understanding and respect for what our body needs to function. You don't have to be perfect to get it right. We just have to be asking better questions. We need to stop settling for spaces that silently stress out our systems and we need to start demanding better.

Holly Mullen:

If you're building, buying or remod, this is your chance to make different choices, not flashy ones. They don't have to be for impressing anyone, they don't have to be trendy, but this is your opportunity to make choices that actually support the way your body is designed to live, because the future of home design isn't just about what looks good on Instagram or on your Pinterest dream board. It's about what helps you heal and think clearly and show up as your best version of yourself and makes you feel safe in your own space. That is not a luxury, that is baseline. Whether you're a home owner, a builder, a real estate professional, the opportunity right now is to shift from reactive to proactive and to invest in health on the front end instead of paying for it later with your energy, your peace or your medical bills. And if you want someone in your corner who understands both functional health and real estate, someone who sees the full picture and can help you create a home that actually aligns with your values and your biology, that is where I come in. Let's build something that doesn't just look good. Let's build something that feels good together In this episode.

Holly Mullen:

I hope it gave you some new insight or made you think differently about your space. If it did, please share it with someone you love. Differently about your space. If it did, please share it with someone you love. Hit subscribe. Leave me a review. I would appreciate it so much. Remember, health starts at home. No-transcript.

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Holly Jean Mullen

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