Egyptian Cotton

A good night’s sleep is essential to good health. It helps you keep alert during the day and promotes overall wellbeing. It is only natural to look for high quality beddings to make your bedroom the best place to rest after a long day. Achieve the kind of comfort you are looking for with 300-thread-count sheets made of

Egyptian cotton.Egyptian cotton has the longest fibers of any cotton grown in the world. These are great investments worth your money. In the long run, Egyptian cotton beddings will pay for their worth many times over. Among the advantages of having these kinds of bedding is having the softest and most luxurious fabric touching your skin at night.

Send your freshman college student off to the university with her own sets of soft beddings. This will insure she will have comfortable and restful sleep that she used to having at home. Twin Egyptian cotton sheets are the best choices for covering a dorm room bed. Your daughter will love snuggling between these luxurious sheets.

Egyptian cotton sheets are made from 100% pure Egyptian cotton grown in the Nile Delta. These products are chemical free so you are assured that nothing harmful will touch the most sensitive skin. Send off at least two sets of twin sheets so you’ll have peace of mind knowing your daughter won’t be without these essential sleep items at night.

Like a racecar rushing toward the finish, 2008 is almost over.

It has been a busy and unpredictable year. The mortgage market, the real estate market, and the stock market have all been volatile. Gasoline prices have soared, well known banks and retail chains have gone bankrupt, the auto industry is hurting and so are the airlines. With all the bad news on the evening news… it’s easy to overlook the good.

Yes, there are a lot of good things that happened in 2008. Children were born, couples were married, families went on vacations. There were picnics in the park and moonlit walks along the lake. Kids outgrew their toddler beds and parents went shopping for twin sheet sets. If you were looking for a new house, the combination of lower prices, high inventories and low mortgage rates made this the perfect year to buy!

While times of change can result in economic profit or loss, they also provide an opportunity to ponder things that do not change.  I hope that whatever 2009 has in store, you will be blessed with the love of family, fun times with friends, and an abiding faith and dedication to causes greater than yourself.

A Cure for the Holiday Rat-Race?

I enjoy the Holiday season, but sometimes the pace gets a little bit too hectic. With Christmas only 10 days away, a whole list of presents left to buy and even more to wrap, parties to plan, decorations to set up and yes… one more blog entry to write… things can become a bit overwhelming!

Here’s a suggestion that might help: take a few minutes of quiet before bedtime. Snuggle up in your King size Egyptian cotton sheets and slowly sip a mug of your favorite hot beverage.

Take time to remember. Think of fun times with family and friends, vacations by the beach, quiet evening walks, or a child’s squeal of delight at some new discovery. Think of all the things that are still right, good and wonderful about the world we live in. With a little practice, Thanksgiving need not end in November… it should continue throughout Christmas and into the New Year.

Are Twin Egyptian cotton sheets appropriate for Kids beds?

Some parents feel understandably reluctant to purchase luxury bedding for kids because young children have an annoying tendancy of destroying anything they wear, sit on, walk on, or sleep in. Other parent’s are of the opinion that nothing but the finest is good enough for their little darlings.

I believe both sets of parents should consider Egyptian cotton for their kids bedding. By the time kids are into twin size beds, they are usually past the wet diaper stage so stains should not be a problem. Kids are also transitioning from fleece footed PJ’s into more grown-up sleepwear. The softness of Egyptian cotton sheets will remind them of that soft snugly feeling with out being to ”baby-like.”  Although Egyptian cotton is a luxury product, it is also a durable and less likely to show signs of wear caused by wiggly little bodies.  A good quality set of Twin Egyptian cotton sheets should only need to be replaced once or twice between toddler & teen years, possibly making them more affordable in the long run than lower quality bedding products.

To avoid any sleep problems, we must pay close attention to our pillows, mattresses, and sheets and choose them right. Any discomfort brought about by our bedding materials may interrupt our sleep and cause some insomnia. Having a duvet makes our bedding more comfortable. When choosing a duvet, make sure it is warm enough.

A duvet can be filled with feathers or down. Goose down is the most luxurious and it is lighter than its counterparts. However, if you are allergic to feathers, synthetic filled duvets are also available. This can be more practical as they can be machine washed. For more comfort, Egyptian cotton duvet covers are available. These will make your duvets last longer and also feel softer.

You don’t need to be a princess to enjoy luxurious bedding. Those king size Egyptian cotton sheets provide much needed comfort when sleeping. They are preferred by hotels and people in the know because they are smooth and soft. Manufacturers actually cater to the higher-income market but are available to everyone.

Perhaps a bit more expensive than ordinary bedsheets, these sheets made of Egyptian cotton boast of high quality. This cotton is weaved with long fibers; hence, there is more continuous fiber in making a thread. This cotton boasts of durability as it is stronger than other cottons. At first Egyptian cotton may feel stiff but it gets softer and softer after every wash. Like wine, the sheets get better as they age. They are a good investment as sheets will last you a long time and you’d get to enjoy luxury bedding all the time.

How Egypt Solves the Organic vs. Chemical Free Dilemma. 

The Egyptian Department of Agriculture has some of the strictest standards in the world. All cotton must be grown “chemical free” and “pesticide free”. They also have severe penalties for even possessing non-approved cotton seeds (even if they are not genetically altered) In the generally accepted motto of “no chemicals” and “not genetically altered” it would be fair to say that all Egyptian Cotton could be considered “organic.”

In order to keep prices high, the Egyptian government limits the number of growers allowed to use the organic label even though by US standards, they could probably all qualify. Understandably, the various growers are constantly lobbying various government officials for these rights.

Ultimately, you as the consumer will make the final decision. When you’re looking for a set of King Egyptian Cotton sheets for that special someone… read labels, check prices and then decide if that “organic” label is really worth the extra money.

What does organic really mean anyway?

“Organic” when used to describe agricultural products and the goods made from them is more of a marketing term than a scientific one. The general expectation is that products marketed as “Organic” contain no toxic pesticides and that the crops have not been genetically altered.

Scientific evidence notwithstanding, some people cling to the view that all chemical (ie. synthetic) pesticides are bad and that only “natural” pesticides can be used safely.

There are also a variety of views on what “genetically altered” actually means. Farmers have been genetically altering crops for thousands of years so the argument really becomes what are acceptable and non-acceptable forms of genetic alteration.

In reality, organic certified simply means that a government authority says this crop meets it’s “organic” standards. Because these standards are set by politicians, not scientists, they are prone to change like other political issues. Before you pay a lot of extra money for those organic king sheet sets look at the labels a little closer. Do they specify who has certified that they are organic? Is it an agency you can trust?

Is there really a difference between “chemical free” and “organic”? You’ll need to make that final decision yourself. In either case, Egyptian Cotton is still your best (and safest) choice. See why in my next article.

How is “Chemical Free” related to Toxicity?

As we discussed in our last article, the term “organic” is not a very scientific way to determine if something is good or bad for you. Scientists determine how “good” or “bad” something is for you by measuring its toxicity. One standard method of doing this is measuring the LD50. In a series of experiments, groups of test subjects are given varying doses of the chemical in question and the researchers record how may subjects die as a result of that exposure. The dose required to kill 1/2 of the subjects is known as the LD50 (Lethal Dose for 50% of the subjects)

Although this test is the accepted standard, there are some problems. The only thing it tells you for sure is the LD50 for the test subjects you used in your experiment. If you were testing a new pesticide for boll weevils, you would want it to be very toxicto boll weevils. Repeating the same experiment using rats could give quite different results and using humans would be unthinkable.

Because we can’t (and should not) use humans as test subjects, we really don’t know for sure what effects low dosages of chemicals have on humans.  As a substitute, scientists determine levels that are known to be toxic to animals (usually mice) and then compute a safety factor of 1/10 , 1/100 or in some cases 1/1000 of that dose and define it as the “allowable level.” In some cases, government agencies add their own level of safety by only permitting levels 1/10 of those establish by the scientists resulting in a safety factor of 1/10,000 or more!

So “chemical free” products are really products that contain no chemicals that exceed “allowable” toxicity levels for that chemical. So go ahead… buy that set of chemical free twin size Egyptian cotton sheets  you’ve been looking at.

Still considering “organic” cotton sheets? Before you buy, see my next article to see what “organic” really means.