Cat Friendly Plants

To clean the air in my home, I wanted to buy plants. However, I share the house with two cats, who have a tendency to eat my plants.

What to do.

Which plants are best at cleaning the air? From NASA's list:

Back in the late ‘80s, NASA was looking for ways to detoxify the air in its space stations. So it conducted a study to determine the most effective plants for filtering the air of toxic agents and converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. In 1989, their results were published in a clean air study that provided a definitive list of the plants that are most effective at cleaning indoor air. The report also suggested having at least one plant per every hundred square feet of home or office space.

Here is that list:

Dwarf Date Palm *
Boston Fern *
Kimberley Queen Fern ?
Spider Plant *
Chinese Evergreen 
Bamboo Palm *
Weeping Fig
Devil's Ivy
Flamingo Lily
Lilyturf *
Broadleaf Lady Palm ?
Barberton Daisy *
Cornstalk Dracaena
English Ivy
Variegated Snake Plant
Red-Edged Dracaena
Peace Lily
Florist's Chrysanthemum

I checked the list of these plants against the list of toxic and non-toxic (to cats) plant list from the ASPCA. I crossed out those which were toxic and marked non-toxic plants with an asterix (*). Where I was uncertain about the toxicity, I marked those with a question mark (?).

So here is a short list with the best non-toxic cleaning plants and images to help you with your shopping:

Dwarf Date Palm *
Boston Fern *
Kimberley Queen Fern ?
Spider Plant *
Bamboo Palm *
Lilyturf *
Broadleaf Lady Palm ?
Barberton Daisy *

Happy cat friendly plant shopping!

Broccoli Sprouts as Medicine: Sulforaphane

I've been having issues with my left knee for a year now. When I twist it or run on it, it feels sore. Before my MRI results came back, someone suggested it may be due to arthritis. Well, turns out I had a torn meniscus. This did not stop me from researching cures for arthritis.

Why Sulforaphane?

There are myriad benefits to eating sulforaphane. Some of my favourite benefits are the prevention or delay of:

1. arthritis;
2. Alzheimer's;
3. cancer; and
4. diabetes.

Broccoli Sprouts vs Mature Broccoli

I started researching the role of broccoli to reduce arthritic symptoms and came across broccoli sprouts as a much more potent source of sulforaphane, which is the salient component of broccoli. Three day old broccoli sprouts contain 10 to 100 times the amount of sulforaphane of mature broccoli.

One ounce (28 g) of broccoli sprouts has 10 times the amount of glucosinolates as half a cup of mature broccoli. So your jar of broccoli sprouts is equivalent to eating 50 cups of mature broccoli!

How much broccoli sprouts should you eat daily?

According to Dr. Rhonda Patrick:

1 g of broccoli sprouts has 0.425 mg of sulforaphane.

Studies have shown beneficial effects of sprouts on inflammation, cancer biomarkers, or a reduction of triglycerides with a dose of 40 to 60 mg/day of sulforaphane, or 100-140 g of broccoli sprouts.

Each 1L jar of broccoli sprouts, grown from two tablespoons of broccoli seeds, produces 280 g of broccoli sprouts or around 90-120 mg of sulforaphane. I did not get as high a yield as Dr. Patrick. I was only able to produce 160 g of broccoli sprouts per jar.

Of course, the longer you grow the sprouts, the heavier they become. I weighed them at the four day mark.

In other words, each jar contains sufficient sprouts for two people per day, or about one tablespoon of broccoli seeds per person.

One tablespoon of broccoli seeds produces about one cup of broccoli sprouts.

Increasing bioavailability of sulforaphane

Dr. Rhonda Patrick suggests soaking the sprouts for 10 minutes at 70C to increase the bioavailability of sulforaphane. You must be careful not to overheat the sprouts as this will destroy the myrosinase which is used to create sulforaphane.

How much is too much?

Four cups of sprouts is the limit for toxicity.