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- Denis Giles
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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
A great deal of thought should go into what you eat when you are pregnant. After all, the food you eat will decide what allergies your child will have, the diseases it will be prone to, even its mental and physical abilities. Because your immune system is suppressed during pregnancy (which helps your body not attack your growing baby), you're more susceptible to foodborne illnesses.
Associations of nutritionists, and medical centres like the Mayo Clinic usually agree on what foods should be avoided during pregnancy:
There is a great deal of research on why red meat should not be eaten during pregnancy. A study done by Harvard School of Public Health found that one additional daily serving of red meat in participants’ diets raised the risk of total mortality by 13% - 20%. Another study has shown why it is important for pregnant women to reduce their red meat intake to benefit the health of both themselves and their growing babies. This study looked at the pregnancies of a large group of women between 1991 and 2001. The researchers found that women with the highest intake of animal protein had a much greater risk of developing gestational diabetes (GDM) than those with the lowest intake. Findings showed that substituting 5% of animal protein for vegetable protein could cut the risk of GDM in half.
Precooked meats, like ham, sausages, luncheon meat, turkey, chicken, roast beef, prosciutto, hot dogs, bacon, salami, refrigerated pâtés and meat spreads, smoked meat, and bologna, can be contaminated with the bacteria Listeria. Listeria has the ability to cross the placenta to infect the baby. Refrigerated, smoked seafood often labelled as lox, nova style, kippered or jerky should be avoided for the same reason.
Listeria causes a condition called listeriosis. Most people don't get sick when they eat food contaminated with listeria. But healthy pregnant women are more likely to become dangerously ill from it. You can pass listeriosis to your baby while you're pregnant. This can cause miscarriage, still births, premature births, low birth weight, and life-threatening infections, like bacteria in the blood and meningitis.
Toxoplasma is a parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. Most people don't notice when they have it, but if you get infected during pregnancy, the infection can cause miscarriage, stillbirth or neurological damage.
Salmonella bacteria are more likely to cause serious illness when you're pregnant. In some cases, the high fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and dehydration could cause preterm labour or even a miscarriage.
Poultry can be equally contaminated.
The recommended daily protein requirement for pregnant women is around 71 grams per day. This can be averaged out over a week. Enough protein can easily be obtained by consuming legumes, beans, nuts, tofu.
Mercury is released into the air by power plants, cement plants, chemical and industrial manufacturers. It is used in thermometers, thermostats, fluorescent lights. When these items end up in a landfill, the mercury is released. When mercury settles into water, bacteria convert it into a form called methylmercury. Fish absorb methylmercury from the water they swim in and the organisms they eat. Methylmercury binds tightly to the proteins in fish muscle and remains there even after the fish is cooked. Your body easily absorbs methylmercury from fish – and when you're pregnant, methylmercury crosses the placenta.
Many studies have shown that exposure even to low doses of methylmercury during pregnancy can impair a baby's growing brain and nervous system. The results can range from mild to severe. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), cognitive skills, like memory and attention, language, motor skills, and vision, may be affected.
Women who are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or nursing, need to pay particular attention. While doctors abroad differentiate between fish that cannot be eaten - shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish, tuna, striped bass, bluefish, sea bass, golden snapper, marlin, amberjack, mackerel, walleye – and that which can, I would recommend not touching fish at all because it is unlikely that one type of fish would ingest mercury at such high levels and another species not have it at all.
Many water bodies in India, specially the major rivers, are contaminated with industrial pollutants. Avoid fish from contaminated lakes and rivers that may be exposed to high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These are long lasting poisoners of the body and you expose your unborn child to major cancer risks.
The majority of seafood-borne illness is caused by undercooked shellfish, which include oysters, clams, and mussels. Cooking helps prevent some types of infection, but it does not prevent algae-related infections. Raw shellfish and certainly, sushi, should be avoided altogether during pregnancy. Both, the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, recommend that pregnant women only eat fish and shellfish that has been cooked to 145 degrees F.
Raw or undercooked eggs, or any foods that contain raw eggs, should be avoided because of the potential exposure to salmonella. In order to destroy the bacteria, eggs need to be cooked until the yolks and whites are firm. That means no soft-boiled, scrambled, poached, over-easy, or runny eggs. Caesar dressings, mayonnaise, homemade ice cream, custards, and Hollandaise sauces may be made with raw eggs. Do not eat any salads with eggs outside your home and make sure you don’t eat any food which has eggs in it which have been kept for over a day.
Soft cheeses may contain listeria. Avoid soft cheeses, such as feta, Brie, Camembert, Roquefort, Gorgonzola and locally made cheeses, unless they clearly state that they are made from pasteurized milk. Unpasteurized milk may contain listeria. For the same reason do not buy or eat paneer outside the house, as it is likely not to have been pasteurized.
70% of India’s antibiotics are fed to animals grown for meat. In fact, most livestock in the world are treated with antibiotics. Only meat and poultry labelled organic or "no antibiotics added" come from livestock raised without these drugs.
If you eat this meat you will pass on some antibiotics to your child. The main concern about eating antibiotic-laced meat, or poultry, is that it could contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The child will be vulnerable its entire life to bacteria that it cannot combat.
What do the doctors recommend? At least five portions of fruits and vegetables, beans, peas, nuts, lentils, flaxseed oil, whole grains, should be eaten daily; fatty, sugary foods, including crisps, fizzy drinks, biscuits and cakes, should only be eaten in small amounts or avoided altogether. Avoid caffeine during the first three months to reduce the likelihood of a miscarriage. Caffeine is a diuretic, which means it helps eliminate fluids from the body. This can result in water and calcium loss. Some research shows that large amounts of caffeine are associated with miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight, and withdrawal symptoms in infants. There is no amount of alcohol that is known to be safe during pregnancy. Prenatal exposure to alcohol can interfere with the healthy development of the baby.
I would recommend giving up milk during this period and while nursing. Studies done in Oxford show that the children of mothers who did not drink milk during their pregnancies had no allergies at all – as compared to the myriad allergies that children who had been exposed to pre-natal cow/buffalo milk. All studies show a link between milk and cancer, reproductive disorders, early puberty, even acne. A pregnant woman is particularly vulnerable to hormonal changes caused by milk. I would replace milk with green vegetables.
The world ahead is tough. Give your child a fighting chance by eating healthy while you have custody of them in your womb.
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- Denis Giles
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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
I’ve just finished reading ‘Ten Million Aliens’ by Simon Barnes, a collection of articles that looks at animals in a new way. According to Barnes 80% of the living animals on earth are nematode worms. There are 28,000 species, of which 16,000 are parasites.
They range from 2.5 mm to meters long. The longest known nematode is 13 metres long and it resides in the sperm whale. One cubic metre of soil contains more than a million. They are found everywhere: fresh and salt water, mountains, the bottom of the ocean, deserts and marshes. Two species, Halicephalobus mephisto and Plectus aquatilis live as deep as 3.6 km beneath the Earth’s surface and are the deepest-living multicellular organisms known. They are herbivorous, carnivorous, or parasitic.
Their common name is roundworms. They have a head, muscles, a mouth with teeth and an anus. Nematodes breathe across their entire body surface. Their bodies have a flexible skin called a cuticle and they shed it often. They survive heat, drought and snow, and simply ride out bad weather by wrapping themselves up in a cyst and shutting down, and then coming back to life when things are better. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is famous because it was the only living being to survive Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003!
One nematode can lay thousands of eggs. Nematodes are also characterized by an unusual feature called "eutely," in which every individual of the same species has exactly the same number of cells.
They parasitize plants, animals and humans. You know them as hookworms, threadworms, lungworms, pinworms and whipworms. It is estimated that 25% of humans are infested with nematodes, especially those that live in hot, overcrowded spaces with bad water; especially those humans that don’t wash their hands after they go to the bathroom. Most nematode infections come from meat and fish. You can get stomach aches and diarrhoea from their eggs, and they are the second biggest reason for blindness.
How many ingenious ways do nematodes invent to survive? One species infects a tropical ant and cause its abdomen to become bright red. Those ants become sluggish. Finally, they get eaten by birds who mistake them for red berries. The worms develop in the birds and then excreted. The faeces of the bird is gathered by the same species of ant to feed its larvae. And so the cycle goes on!
The Sphaerularia bombi nematode parasitizes bumblebees. It moves into the bloodstream and then throws out its uterus. This swells into a huge long sac that is twenty times larger than the rest of the worm. The uterus becomes a giant feeding organ, taking in nutrients from the bee’s blood.
In 1862 the American Civil War left 16,000 soldiers wounded in the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee. The wounded soldiers sat in the mud for two cold, rainy, days waiting for medical help. The first night they noticed something very strange: their wounds were glowing with a faint light. It was discovered that those whose injuries glowed had a better survival rate and their wounds healed quicker.
In 2001, Bill Martin andJon Curtis researched the bacteria found during the Battle of Shiloh. They learned thatPhotorhabdus luminescens bacteria live in the guts of nematodes. Nematodes hunt down insect larvae in the soil, or on plants, and burrow into their bodies to parasitize them. They vomit out these bacteria which start glowing a soft blue colour and produce chemicals that kill the insect host and all the other organisms already inside it. The nematode and bacteria feed, grow and multiply till the insect corpse is hollow. Then the nematode eats the bacteria which hitches a ride to the next insect. The next insect victim comes quickly because the glow of the bacteria attracts insects to the body. The soldiers were savedbecause the chemicals used by the bacteria killed off other pathogens that might have infected the soldiers’ wounds.
The Grasshopper nematode, Mermis nigrens, attaches its eggs to plants. When grasshoppers come to feed on the leaves they eat the eggs. The nematodes feed and grow in the body and finally the grasshopper dies. The nematodes move into the soil, mate and the egg-bearing females emerge after the rains to lay their eggs on foliage to repeat the cycle.
Horsehair worms, Gordius robustus, have very thin, brown bodies with a blunt head and cleft in the hind end. They lay their eggs in long masses in water. The larvae are eaten by insects, like grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and caddisflies, as they drink water. The larvae feed on their tissues and blood. When the larva turns into an adult and needs to exit, it changes the behaviour of its host who seeks out water and throws itself into it.
The nematode Pristionchus pacificus lives in the body of a dung beetle. It lays eggs only when the beetle dies, and the eggs live off the corpse.But how do the nematodes get into the beetle to begin with? Hundreds oflarvae converge and glue themselves together into a single, squirming “worm tower,” which waits for a beetle to pass overhead. It is the only structure of its kind in nature.
The nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora is even smarter. It doesn’t feed directly on the moth caterpillars it infests. It uses the guts of the caterpillar to farm other bacteria which it feeds on. They eventually become so numerous that the caterpillar dies before it becomes a moth. What does the nematode do to make sure the caterpillar is not eaten by birds? It turns the caterpillar from almost colourless to a pinkish red, and it starts producing light which birds and other insects can see and who quickly learn that the red, glowing bugs taste disgusting. This ensures that the infected insect will belong only to the worm. This is the only known example of a parasite that changes its host’s appearance to keep its predators away.
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- Denis Giles
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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Online giant Overstock.com is the latest retailer to ban the sale of rabbit fur, called angora. Angora hair or Angora fibre is the downy coat that covers the Angora rabbit. More than 230 Major Retailers have publicly refused to sell rabbit fur any more. They include Anthropologie, ASOS, Calvin Klein, French Connection, Gap Inc., Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, H &M, Esprit, Zappos, Forever 21, Eddie Bauer and Zara among others.
In 2013 several clothing retailers suspended the sourcing of products containing angora wool after Peta’s video evidence surfaced of live rabbits with their paws tied and bodies stretched out on racks, their hair being plucked raw in Chinese fur farms. These normally mute animals scream with pain as their fur is torn out. Many rabbits go into shock, even die. Other rabbits watch this torture from their cages , waiting fearfully for their turn.
In September 2016 French animal rights group One Voice and its president Muriel Arnal released footage of how Angora rabbits are treated when bred for their fur in France . The video footage taken over a period of six months at rabbit rearing centres farms across the country shows animals being pinned down with their front and hind legs spread apart while workers pluck and rip the fur from their skin. In the video, the rabbits shriek as their fur is ripped off, leaving them completely bare except for their heads
These gentle, docile and clean animals rabbits, live their entire lives isolated in Chinese small, dirty wire cages surrounded by their own faeces. Rabbits are sociable, happy animals and to have to live as condemned and regularly tortured prisoners is another black mark against humanity – and the people who wear rabbit fur. Or buy it to make silly jangly toys hung from car mirrors. Or wear awful white rabbit hair collars and white bags.
Why are their hair pulled out rather than cut ? Because longer fibres get more money. So breeders pull the hair out from its roots. Once the rabbit has had all its hair pulled out , it is put back into its cage till it grows back and then the process is repeated.
Angora wool is one of the most sought after materials for those soft, warm sweaters so many people desire. There are five main types of Angora rabbit: English, French, Satin, German and Giant. Other breeds such as the Jersey Wooly and theAmerican Fuzzy Lopalso produce wool, though less. Each breed produces a different quality and quantity of fibre, and has a different range of colours from white to tan, grey, brown even black. It costs as much as$10–16 perounce(35 to 50 cents/gram).
While France, Chile and the United States have hundreds of angora farms (the rabbit was introduced to the US in 1920) , it is , of course, the land of the damned – China- that produces 90% of angora fur. China has more than 50 million Angora rabbits and collects 2,500–3,000 tonnes per year in this hideous, brutal, shocking way. Each rabbit produces on average one pound of fur per year. These defenceless prisoners are subjected to this terrible pain every four months. No one is allowed to enter these “farms” and picture taking is forbidden.
In some Chinese rabbit farms, the rabbits are sheared . This is done by throwing the rabbit on the ground and pinning it down by putting one foot on its ear and the other on its stomach while jabbing it with sharp scissors that often enter its body . The sheared angora sells for slightly less but, according to the Chinese , it takes less energy than pulling out the hair manually.
This is how rabbit fur is graded : The premium first quality wool is pulled from the back and upper sides of the rabbit. Second quality is from the neck and lower sides. Third quality is the buttocks and legs. Fourth quality consists of hair pulled from around the anus or feet and is sold to pet shops to line artificial nests
Angora is used alone rarely. It is usually mixed with wool to make it more elastic. Commercial knitting yarns typically use 30–50% angora to make the wool softer and warmer. It is usually blended with other fibres such as sheep’s wool, mohair, silk, and cashmere and used in apparel such as sweaters , shawls and suitings, knitting yarn, and felt.
After four years of this torture, or sooner if the animal yields less fur , it is killed by hanging it upside down on a conveyor line and slitting her throat. The carcasses are sold to the meat market. The male Angora rabbit has 80% less fur than the female so males are killed immediately after birth since they are less profitable to the breeder.
Rabbits are socially complex, and intelligent animals with individual personalities, just like dogs and cats. They make wonderful pets and are gentle with children. The industry tries to hide this cruelty by saying that rabbit wool must be harvested for the rabbit’s well being . The angora rabbits have a constantly growing coat and they moult every three/four months ( the hair comes out by itself !). It is only the loose fibres which are plucked or stripped from the rabbit, much as the hair of a pet dog is removed when it comes loose. Its like saying that the hair on your head keeps growing and has to be pulled out for your own good.
Angora wool farms, like every other industry, only continue to exist because of demand. The fashion industry systematically attempts to conceal the abuse and killing of animals for their products as much as possible – if consumers knew the truth, after all, it could hurt sales. But, the public need to take some of the blame as well for their refusal to acknowledge theabuse in the productsthey purchase.
Are you one of those people who couldn’t be bothered about what you are wearing and how much pain it has caused to a being exactly like you ? Are you a monster that believes in fashion that abuses and senselessly kills animals which are regarded as nothing more than commodities in the fashion market – leather, fur, feathers, wool , silk ? It is because we ignore the meanness to animals in the industry , that makers of fashion goods are mean to humans as well, crowding underpaid and overworked women and children into sweat shops that catch fire, like the one in Bangladesh that killed dozens of people.
China is notorious for being the most cruel nation on earth. It abuses every animal as it has virtually no animal welfare laws and encourages the poaching of animals all over the world. Money is the only thing that matters to this country and it doesn’t care how it is made – from adulterating baby food, making fake sugar and rice to killing every species on the planet. Stop buying anything with angora on the label. Write to manufacturers in India as well – many of those in Ludhiana import angora from China and blend it in to their products.
To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org
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- Denis Giles
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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Plants and animals are so interdependent that many plants change themselves, and even where they grow, in order to accommodate insects. For instance, the Bee Orchid of the Mediterranean has adapted its colour, shape and texture to make itself look like a female bee. It also releases scents (pheromones) to attract male bees. In their haste to get inside the plant the males cover themselves with pollen which they transfer to the next bee orchid. The hammer orchid of Australia looks and smells like a female wasp, to lure males to both deposit and pick up pollen. The Fly Orchid secretes sex pheromones that attract male digger wasps who attempt to mate with the flowers. Once spent, the wasps fly off covered in the flowers’ pollen, helping it to reproduce.
The passion flower vine doesn’t want butterflies laying eggs on its leaves as, once they hatch into caterpillars, they eat the vine. So it has developed little yellow spots on its leaves that look like Heliconious butterfly eggs. This convinces female butterflies to look elsewhere so that their offspring don’t have to compete with other caterpillars when they hatch.
The Venus flytrap produces smells that mimic food, luring in flies which it then eats.
Scientists have just found a new and bizarre form of mimicry: a plant, Ceratocaryum argenteum of South Africa, which imitates in shape, size and smell animal faeces of a local small antelope called Bontebok. What does the plant gain from this mimicry? It fools dung beetles, who mistake the seeds for antelope dung and roll the dung balls away and bury them. By fooling the beetles, the plant gets them to disperse the seeds but hide them from seed predators and destructive fires, giving them a head start in germination. The habitat of C. argenteum is swept regularly by fire, and, unlike many plants, this species doesn’t re-sprout after being burnt. So the ability to get its seeds away from the flames is obviously thought out.
If plants try and look like animals to survive, many animals try and look like plants so that they can survive and capture prey. Instead of spinning a web, the crab spider, with a pink body and legs, sits on the petals of a pink flower. Butterflies, hover flies, and bees come to feed on the flower and fall prey to the waiting crab spider. Some crab spiders change their colour from yellow to white depending on the kind of flowers in the garden.
Flower mantises use the same method. The Orchid Mantis is white and soft pink with flat, heart-shaped lobes on its legs that look like flower petals . Mantises can change colour in a few days to match their environment. They stay in white or pink flowers to avoid being eaten by birds and to catch pollinating insects who settle on them thinking they are flowers. Some mantises are green to match green petals.
Leaf insects are so adept that they even mimic leaves that have been partially eaten by caterpillars. The stick insect, has a brown twig like appearance and sways back and forth to seem like branches swaying in the breeze.
The wings of the Kallima butterfly of Sumatra match the colour, shape and structure of dead leaves. Many specimens even have markings mimicking patches of mould.
Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plant cells. The sea slug Elysia chlorotica, that lives in seaweed, takes chlorophyll from algae and turns itself green, looking like a leaf that crawls.
South America’s freshwater leaf fish hangs limply in the water looking like another dead leaf floating by. When a fish drifts by, the floating “leaf” suddenly lunges out and seizes its prey in a deadly grasp. In addition to their bursts of speed, leaf fish possess very large jaws that allow them to take on prey larger than themselves.
To catch birds, the African vine snake wraps its tail around a tree branch and holds its body out rigidly to look like a twig. It then sticks out its orange tongue, which resembles an insect, to attract birds
The Peppered Moth caterpillar of Great Britain imitates flat twigs, varying in colour between green and brown. The adult moth develops a colouring that looks like the lichen on trees, which is where it hides during the day.
In the 1950s, coal smoke darkened England’s trees, so that light pepper moths, which once blended nicely against bark, now stood out against the smudgy background. So they changed their colouring to look like the darkened bark. In the late 1900s, Britain cleaned up its air and tree barks went from dark to light. Strangely, the moths went back to being light coloured again.
Walking stick insects of California, Timema cristinae, have two colour patterns - Some are solid green, others have white stripes running up their bodies. Walking sticks don’t have wings, so they live mostly on a single bush their whole life. A new generation of walking sticks will disperse to a different bush. One species of bush, that the insects live on, has thick green leaves. A solid green walking stick blends right in with that foliage. Another species of bush grows needle-like leaves. The white stripes on some walking sticks divides into green strips, making them look like thin leaves. This allows them to survive their bird predators.
Stick insects, or phasmids, who are also the world’s longest insects, resemble sticks and leaves . Some have cylindrical, stick-like bodies, while others have flattened, leaflike shapes. The body is often further modified to resemble vegetation, with ridges resembling leaf veins, bark-like nodules. A few species, are even able to change their pigmentation to match their surroundings. The bodies of some species (such as Pseudodiacantha macklotti and Bactrododema centaurum) are covered in mossy outgrowths. Remaining absolutely stationary for a long time enhances their disguise, as does swaying from side to side like leaves or twigs
Bark Praying Mantises of the Amazon are camouflaged with flattened, mottled bodies that look like lichen, moss, dead leaves or bark. And when danger threatens, since they fly poorly, they leap to the forest floor, fluttering to the ground like so many dead leaves.
Plants that resemble animals, animals that resemble plants. What a wonderful world!
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- Denis Giles
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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
I like lizards. I think their eyes are beautiful. I find it is possible to engage with them, however briefly. My granddaughter likes them too. But I know lots of people who will not enter a room which has lizards. Recently I received a letter from a child “Why do lizards enter my room and how can I get rid of them?”. He got the short eggshell answer. But I am giving you the many options.
House Lizards are all friendly and useful. They come to your room because you have lots of small insects and flies in it and they come to eat them. If you leave crumbs and unwashed things like dishes in the kitchen, that attracts insects. If you don’t clean the corners of your rooms, both on the floor and where the ceiling meets the walls, you will get spiders who catch flies.
Lizards live in dark places, like behind cupboards, furniture. If you don’t air and clean those places, lots of other insects and spiders will flourish in your room and lizards will stay there.
So, the first thing is to clean and air your room and get rid of the insects.
Then, the best remedy is what you have heard from your grandmother (and ignored) in the village.
The most fool proof home remedy to keep away lizards is to take eggshells and strew them round the house, especially near doors and windows. Lizards hate the smell of eggs. (So do I, by the way.) Just change them every week. Lizards will not enter.
If you don’t like the idea, you can use a smellier option. You can do the same with garlic. Lizards hate the smell of garlic so you can hang it round the house, or keep cloves of garlic near doors and windows to keep away the pests. You can also make a spray using garlic juice and water and spray it around the house. The point is, can you bear the smell?
You can spray lizards with a homemade spray which has no chemicals in it. Just mix water, ground black pepper and chili powder and shake well. Pour the mixture into a spray bottle and spray the spicy water around the house. Lizards will be repelled by the smell. However, it might make you sneeze as well.
Lizards have a very sensitive nose. They dislike the pungent smell of onions as well. Hang them near doors or windows or behind cupboards. They will leave the house. Or you can make a spray out of water and onion juice and squirt this round the house.
Another variation of the paper spray is to use Tabasco sauce. Mix it with water and spray it behind cupboards and wardrobes.
Naphthalene and Phenyl balls are so pungent that they act as lizard repellents as well. You can keep them on shelves and cupboards. However, I would not recommend these mothballs, as they are commonly known, as they are poisonous and smell truly horrible. In fact, I think people who put them in bathroom sinks are just wasting money and poisoning the water.
Some people recommend putting sticky-paper, flypaper on walls and areas where lizards are frequently seen, like the corners of walls and near light sources. They will get stuck and then you can release them somewhere else. I think flypaper is a cruel and vicious solution. The creatures go near lights to eat the insects that the light attracts, so ‘no lizard’ means lots of more insects including moths which eat your clothes. Also, the person who wants to get rid of lizards is not going to bother to unstick them when he throws the paper out, so the lizard will die of starvation as it remains stuck to the paper probably on a garbage heap.
Lizards are rendered immobile with sharp temperature changes. Cold literally paralyses them. If you see a lizard on the wall, splash ice cold water on it. It will become immobile. You can pick it up gently with a dustpan and move it outside into the sun.
This one sounds like an old wives’ tale but you can try it. If you find the shed feathers of birds, you can hang them up in various places. Birds eat lizards so lizards might be fooled into believing that your house is frequented by them and stay away.
Cats are probably more effective than bird feathers. Cats eat rats and an occasional lizard. But lizards are not going to wait around for that occasion. They depart.
There is an electric lizard repellent that emits sound in ultrasonic frequencies that lizards cannot tolerate. You could get one of those and hope it doesn’t scramble your brains as well.
If you are brave enough, get a cardboard box and stalk the lizard. If you can corner it, put it in the cardboard box and remove it to outside the house. But this seems like an impossible thing for people, who fear lizards, to do. So the best way would be to remove the small insects in the house. When the lizard realizes its food is drying up, it will automatically leave for greener pastures.
You could seal up small openings on the side of windows, put rubber matting under the doors. This will prevent them from entering. You should, in any case, have netted window screens to prevent flies, mosquitoes and lizards.
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