All About YOU: Green Is Great for Health and Home

Forget the green beer and the green shirt today. Going green inside your home is where it's at.

That's right. Sprucing up your home with some live greenery helps keep you healthy. How? Plants can prime you for good health and better blood pressure.

All-Natural Health Helper
It's not clear why, but nursing-home residents who were surrounded by greenery got fewer infections than peers who were in less green environments. And plants seem to have a soothing effect that helps keep blood pressure under control. Plants may help protect your lungs, too. In particular, English ivy, rubber plants, and spider plants are known to remove chemical pollutants from indoor air. Allergic to pollen? You might consider a few silk plants instead. (Learn which common home pollutants might be posing health problems for you and your family.)

More Healthy Ways to Celebrate Green

• Fill up on this green drink.
• Load your plate with this green goody.
• Go ahead and give yourself a double helping of cabbage. Here's why.

Read this article for a printable shopping list of good-for-you green foods.

YOU: Staying Young. Roizen, M. F., Oz, M. C., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.