All the women in my family have bunions. And that freaks the crap out of me.
I don’t want yucky claw feet that look freaky in sandals, and more importantly that hurt all the time!
This is exactly the sort of thing I love to investigate a natural prevention or cure for. We don’t have to be victims to these sorts of conditions. A bunion isn’t something that attacks and we just have to succumb to. Although it’s true that some people are more prone to them (like my family) and some people can wear pointy shoes to their heart’s content and never get them.
But generally speaking a bunion happens over time, and it’s something we can prevent and even reverse naturally.
I want pretty, pain-free feet forever
Probably around age 25 I started to notice my feet would be kinda achey if I wore pointy shoes for the day. The pain was mainly in the big toe joint. Eventually I made the connection that this could eventually result in bunions. I started researching prevention immediately!
When you’re naturally more pre-disposed to getting them, you can’t just avoid pointy shoes, you have to proactively reshape your feet to keep them flexible and youthful.
1. Get some toe stretchers! Mine are called Profoot Flex-tastic Toe Relaxers and they are TOTALLY AWESOME. At first I wore them every night for 5-10 minutes just when I was eating dinner or relaxing for a bit in the evening. I did that for maybe a week or 2.
Now, I only use them every couple of months if I feel a bit of tightness in my toe joint. They feel sort of pressurey when they’re on, but not uncomfortable. And then when you take them off your feet feel oh so flexy and lovely, like you want to do a twinkle toe dance. Very rejuvenating!
Another suggestion for relieving any pain and inflammation is to use some Deep Blue pain-relieving essential oil. It’s great for muscle and joint pain of all kinds. You can also rather conveniently get is as a rub.
We don’t realize how much stress our feet take every day and we should thank them and take care of them! If we don’t they will turn on us and make our lives hell! :)
2. Do some yoga!
I’m not saying you have to spend an hour every night practicing or get a membership or learn how to do a headstand. I’m just saying use your toes mindfully when they are out of shoes. Use them to balance, spread them and grip the floor, and feel the power of each little tiny hard-working toe.
I’ve noticed since I’ve been practicing yoga semi-regularly my toes get sore a lot less often. I love balance poses like Tree, Chair or twisting lunges and arching upward while in downward dog to really feel the toe power!
Here’s a nice half-hour video with Yoga with Adriene that you can try. See how your toes (and obv your whole body!!) feel afterward!
And finally, yeees, you do want to avoid wearing those pinchy pointy shoes every day. Maybe keep them just for a sexy date night or when you need an extra confidence boost. It doesn’t mean you have to wear granny shoes, but a more natural toe shape that doesn’t literally re-shape you foot into a sad, cramped, diseased state is probably a good call. Your future self will thank you when you can still go for a nice nature hike when you’re 80 ;)
Please share below…
How do you show your feetsies some love? What tricks have you discovered for lasting foot health? Let us know in the comments so we can all help eachother out!
Over the past couple of years, Will and I have been getting more and more “crunchy”. Eschewing commercial cleaning and self-care products, and instead making our own, or sometimes just foregoing them altogether :)
The time that I didn’t wash my hair for 3 months…
I tried that foregoing thing with shampoo for awhile – I was determined to make my hair self-cleaning. I stuck it out for about 3 months, which I thought would surely be enough to let it adapt. Some days it looked ok, but mostly I looked like a drowned rat and felt pretty darn un-sexy.
The classic no-poo method
Previously to that I tried the no-poo method, which is baking soda mixed with some water and poured onto the scalp to cleanse, (rinse out), followed by some apple cider vinegar mixed with water and poured over the hair as a conditioner to balance the pH.
I didn’t mind this, but felt that after awhile it made my hair kind of dry and brittle. This is a common review if you google around a little bit.
Effective DIY natural no-poo alternatives; aka washing your hair with breakfast
Most blogs I’ve read lately have shared the most success with occasional baking soda/ACV washes, alternating with various natural food-based rinses and cleanses in between.
You could basically walk into a diner and rob some unsuspecting person of their breakfast, smoodge it all over your head, and walk out with clean hair.
You can wash your hair with:
kefir
rye flour
egg
coffee
honey
And any number of other items. Personally I’ve had great success with both rye flour, and an egg-honey mixture.
How to make DIY non-toxic egg & honey shampoo with essential oils
This is such a quick and easy process, just grab a bowl and get mixing.
crack a free range egg, grab the yolk with your fingers and put it in your bowl. (keep the white for something else if you like)
whip it up a bit with a fork, then mix in a heaping teaspoon of raw honey (if your honey is creamed, you may want to dilute it first with some warm water to soften it)
use comfortably warm (rather than hot) water in the shower so the egg doesn’t cook on your head
You will find your hair is silky and infused with protein to make it stronger. The honey is a good gentle cleanser, and the essential oils add strength, cleansing power and a nice scent as well.
My no-poo routine
Lately my routine looks something like this:
baking soda/ACV wash once a month
egg wash once every 1-2 weeks
rye flour wash 1-2 times per week
In between I just rinse my hair with water, or preen it using my natural boar-bristle brush, or use a little dry shampoo (I just use baby powder).
Pretty easy, non-toxic, and it keeps your hair healthy with a variety of different nourishing, natural cleansers and conditioners.
One last tip: coconut oil for hair
If you find the ends of your hair get dry, try this:
Wet your hair in the shower
Scoop out a little bit of coconut oil and rub just through the ends of your wet hair
Continue with your chosen no-poo cleansing method and rinse well
Your ends should be just conditioned and moisturized enough, without getting a greasy ratbag head from too much coconut oil. The key is to put it on the ends only!
How is no-poo shampoo working for you?
Have you been experimenting with any DIY non-toxic natural shampoo alternatives? What’s working for your hair type? Are you finding balance in your routine? Please share so we can all help each other out!
We are all so harsh on ourselves. I’ll be the first one to admit I struggle with constant negative mental chatter, directed at myself and others. It’s easy to be critical and dismissive, and stay living in that shadow waiting for your “someday” self.
When resentment is high, self-care is low. – Dr. Jen Landa
Think about that. It makes —-SO—-MUCH—-SENSE. You fly through your day resenting everyone you have to talk to, and everything that you have to do, and just hating life and waiting for the day to be over so you can start the hamster wheel all over again tomorrow.
No one is going to step in and stop the madness for you; you have to do it for yourself.
And here’s where SELF-CARE comes in. It’s a simple concept based on small gestures that you make toward yourself. It’s like your right-now self being considerate toward your future-self. Your partner and family and friends can support and take care of you to a certain extent, but there are certain things you can really only do for yourself.
And those things can be pretty fundamental.
Only you are going to make sure you eat enough good nutritious food, drink enough water, get some movement into your day, get to sleep on time. These are things we have to be responsible for as adults, but too often these hugely important priorities get pushed aside by all the other “STUFF” flying around in our day.
Then there are the other “less vital” things that can still have a huge impact on how you feel and behave. Only you are going to go get that haircut that is going to score compliments and put you in a great mood. Only you can decide to take 7 minutes in the evening and take a lovely lavender bath. No one else is going to tell you do these things, or help you make the time for these things.
You have the power to make every day a good day
It’s incredible how showing your future-self a little love with small gestures can completely change whether today is another humdrum-normal-crappy-whirlwind day, or a sparkly-shiny-fun-happy day.
So how to take better care of and show love toward yourself?
I found this lovely, heartfelt graphic created by Lucille Zimmerman on Pinterest. I don’t know much about her practice but I really like what she is sharing.
Print this out and post it somewhere, or keep it on your phone to refer to, or write down the points in your notebook. Make sure you do at least one of these things EVERY DAY. Show yourself a little love, and resentment, stress and negativity will have less and less power over you and your day.
Please share what works for you
How do you show yourself love? How do you ensure you make time for self-care in a busy day? Please leave a comment so that we can all help each other out! I know a lot of people struggle with this…how have you found success?
This is a follow-up to my previous post on anxiety. In addition to breathing techniques, music and other strategies I’ve talked about before, I’ve recently discovered the wonderful potential of essential oils.
Not just a pretty scent…
We all understand that smelling something pretty, like inhaling the perfume of a rose for example, makes you feel happy. But it’s worth understanding a little deeper, because the therapeutic power of essential oils goes a lot further than that.
Without going too deep into the sciencey part, when your nose detects a scent, it means that tiny molecules have evaporated from an object, and entered your nose. The molecules interlock with specialized receptors and communicate with the brain through the olfactory bulb. This captures information from the scent molecules, and actually helps to form and record memories.
Ever had a sudden flashback from smelling an aroma wafting from a restaurant, or the perfume of someone walking by? I can totally recall the moldy, nasty but comfort-inducing scent of my parents’ old minivan, for example (lol). When you think about it, scent has a profound effect on our memories, feelings and emotions.
What you inhale affects your health
We all understand that inhaling bad molecules from the air can negatively affect our health. Car exhaust, glue fumes, poison gases, cigarette smoke, mold spores and airborne viruses for example. We easily acknowledge that these things, which we can’t see with our naked eye, wreak havoc on our health when we smell and inhale them into the body.
So what if good, happy, healthy airborne molecules could do the opposite? Re-program our system for better balance and energy, and help prevent and reverse illness? Well surprise, they can! Essential oils are the lifeblood of plants; they are the substances that help protect and support the successful growth of the plant. When they are harvested through gentle methods from excellent quality plants, they form wonderfully rich natural medicines for the human body.
And it doesn’t stop there…
Out of all five senses, smell is the only one directly linked to the limbic system in the brain, which is our emotional control center. The limbic system is directly connected to the parts of the brain that control heart rate, digestion, blood pressure, breathing, stress levels, arousal, and hormone balance. What this means is that essential oil molecules can impact not just emotion, but the body’s physical function.
All of these physical functions compile to form the body’s sympathetic and asympathetic nervous systems. The asympathetic system is the one you want to activate to calm down and turn off the stress response. Influencing the limbic system with essential oils is one way you can directly activate the asympathetic nervous system, like pressing a “chill out” button.
In summary, the use of therapeutic grade essential oils can have profound effects on our physical and emotional well-being. Recent research is showing that essential oils may help relieve symptoms just as effectively as medication, but without the side effects of anxiety drugs.
The best essential oils for anxiety and stress relief
Frankincense
Frankincense is a beautiful, warm woody oil distilled from the sap of the boswellia tree. The sap is sustainably harvested in crystal form, as shown here. Then it’s steamed and the distilled oil is collected.
The sesquiterpene molecules in frankincense help calm anxiety and create feelings of joy and happiness, by stimulating healthy neurotransmitter and hormone production from the hypothalamus, pituitary and pineal glands.
I like to rub frankincense on my face as it helps smooth and heal the skin, and that way I can inhale its calming scent and get a prettier complexion while I’m at it.
Lavender
Lavender oil is distilled from the flowering tips of the lavender plant. Hundreds of pounds are collected and steamed to make the precious essential oil.
Lavender oil has been commonly used for centuries as an antiseptic, a natural antibiotic, an insect repellent and a calming sedative.
Lavender is well-known as a natural sleep aid to bring relief from insomnia. I like to put a few drops on my pillow before I go to bed, or add some to my epsom salt bath water.
During the day I also mix a few drops with a little bit of frankincense and rub on the back of my neck. This is a nice stress-relieving ritual; take a few deep breaths as you massage your neck and clear your mind a bit. The warmth of the skin helps waft the calming aroma into the air.
Citrus Oils
Citrus oils are made by distilling the oil-rich peels of fruits such as Sweet Orange, Bergamot, and Lemon.
They are excellent for the purpose of uplifting the mood, creating a sense of well-being and chasing away those dark shadows in the corners of an anxious mind. They are said to aid in the body’s ability to respond to stress and also help with circulation and detox.
I like to diffuse these oils at home for a freshening and uplifting vibe. You can also add a drop of therapeutic-grade citrus essential oils to your drinking water or to recipes.
Quality is important
Please take into account the quality of the essential oils you purchase. By using natural medicine you are already saving a huge amount of expense on conventional medical care, plus the lost time you would have wasted with being sick, plus the side effects and toxicity that medications place on the body.
So it’s worth investing in the best quality essential oils to apply and inhale into your one precious body.
Drug-store or health food store grade oils are often laced with synthetics and they have very few quality standards applied. I choose to respect my body and my health, and in turn get the best results (!) by only using the best essential oils. Here is where I buy mine.
Please share your tips…
What oils do you like to use to relieve stress and anxiety? What strategies do you combine with essential oils? Please share so we can all help each other! :)
Eczema, psoriasis, acne, cysts, blackheads, whiteheads, milia, keratosis, dandruff, ingrown hairs. If you experience any of these skin issues, I feel your pain.
Having unattractive skin can be really difficult. Your skin is how the world perceives you, and if it’s riddled with any of the above, it isn’t easy to feel attractive, or even presentable.
Over $175 BILLION is spent every year on skincare and makeup, yet more and more people experience these problems and turn to spending yet more cash on medicating themselves, in the desperate search for balance and beauty.
Why it’s all a dirty money-grabbing trick
Here’s some news for you friends:
1. Applying washes, scrubs, creams, serums and other potions to the surface of your skin will do very little to actually improve your skin quality.
2. Your skin has a natural oil balance, and products only serve to strip off that oil (rendering your skin effectively a dry desert) and then force us to replenish that moisture balance artificially with yet more products.
3. Cosmetics are not legally considered food, and therefore have very few regulations applied, despite the fact that something you apply to your skin can enter your blood stream in less than 30 seconds. When you apply all those lotions and potions, you might as well be EATING all those toxic yuckies. Would you eat your sudsy body wash? Your perfumey moisturizer? Well surprise, you ARE.
According to this article by save-the-planet guru David Suzuki:
Some of the ingredients in beauty products aren’t that pretty. U.S. researchers report that one in eight of the 82,000 ingredients used in personal care products are industrial chemicals, including carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, and hormone disruptors. Many products include plasticizers (chemicals that keep concrete soft), degreasers (used to get grime off auto parts), and surfactants (they reduce surface tension in water, like in paint and inks). Imagine what that does to your skin, and to the environment.
We surveyed Canadians to see how many of the Dirty Dozen ingredients below appeared in their cosmetics, and our findings show that 80 per cent of entered products contained at least one of these toxic chemicals.
Your skin comes from the inside out. It’s a mirror of what’s going on inside your body. Literally your skin is a reflection of your digestive system; if your intestines are seething with crap food and gas and bacterial overgrowth, it’s likely your skin will look similarly junky. Whereas if your guts are glowing with wholesome real food and probiotics, your skin will glow and thrive in response.
You can’t out-product a bad diet
Have you ever heard the saying that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet? Well, you can’t out-skincare-product one either.
I can personally attest to this one. A few years ago, actually when I got my first full-time job after university, I was trying to figure out why I was getting sore lumps of cystic acne on my back. I tried all sorts of treatments, and even resorted to spending lots of my hard-earned moolah on special medicated bodywashes to try to fix the painful lumps. I also used extra-strength acne-fighting wipes, which gave me huge patches of super painful eczema, which I then had to go get a prescription cream from the doctor for. Talk about backward, pointless, multi-level bandaid solutions!
I’ve since made the connection that it’s totally linked with diet and stress. Now that I live a clean lifestyle, I can see the effect very explicitly: Every time I’ve gone on holiday this year, if I’ve let things get a little lax in the diet and sleep department, I notice very soon after that I start getting a little cystic acne on my back.
There is no point in spending all that time in the aisle of the store reading bottles figuring out which product to spend another $20 on, and then doing some 5-stage regime every morning and evening to fix your skin. This is exactly what the marketers want you to do.
You can ride the merry-go-round of potions and drugs for years, or you can get a much more affordable, more permanent, and more body-loving solution by fixing the problem from the inside out.
When your car isn’t running right, do you give it a coat of wax and touch up the paint? Or do you open the hood and actually get the engine repaired? We should treat our bodies the same way, seeking out and addressing the root cause of these issues instead of just slapping on the commercial, slickly marketed, bandaid solution that comes in the shiny bottle.
Step 1: Support your Liver
Another word for supporting your liver is ‘detoxing’. It’s a pretty flashy marketing term these days that is surrounded with all sorts of products and programs, but it basically just means supporting the liver with clean foods and smart supplements.
Your liver is responsible for trucking out all those nasty toxins that can come from food, the environment, plastics, products etc. If it can’t truck ’em out properly in your poop, your body tries to seep them out in other ways, such as through your skin. Hello acne!
These same detox foods will also help get rid of extra estrogen (in men and women both), which can be a contributing factor to acne and skin issues.
It can be really overwhelming to try and find good supplements that are worth your hard-earned dollars. My partner and I spend a lot of time researching this stuff, and here are the best we’ve found for B vitamins and a superfood greens powder that contains algae.
Garden of Life Vitamin Code Raw B-Complex – a highly absorbable real food-based B vitamin complex. There is no point taking cheap low-quality supplements that your body can’t absorb, therefore real food-based supplements are a lot more worthwhile.
Mighty Maca Greens Superfood Powder – a tasty mixture of South American maca (awesome health-promoting herb in like one million ways) and super greens, which you can get in little single-serve packets to bring along to work etc. I really like it mixed with a little lemon juice and then shaken in a big bottle of water to sip throughout the day.
Step 2: Supplement Wisely
Once you’ve taken care of the detox pathway, you can add in nutrient-dense foods and supplements which will literally help your body build better skin. These are some of the building blocks of healthy skin which are often missing from our modern diets.
Zinc: Personally I’ve found that if I eat pumpkin seeds or take a zinc supplement, the dry skin under my feet goes away (so key for summer!). I’ve heard it also helps hair grow thicker; I’m currently experimenting with that! Go for whole foods, or here is a great source for a supplement: Garden Of Life Vitamin Code Raw Zinc
Magnesium supports hundreds of important things going on in your body, and due to industrial agriculture our diet has become very magnesium-depleted. I prefer using Natural Calm Magnesium Liquid and either just mixing with some coconut oil and smearing it on, or making a simple DIY moisturizer that I use once or twice a day. You can find local stores to buy from, or here’s a place to buy online: Liquid Magnesium. You can also use their naturally flavoured tasty magnesium drink, although I find it a little sweet (depends on your taste).
Another option for magnesium is a simple epsom salt bath, which is also very effective. Dissolve 2 cups of salt into a bath and you only need 7-12 minutes for it to absorb. Grab some epsom salt here.
Collagen and gelatin are so key for soft, youthful, healthy skin. Make bone broth with organic bones at home, or take a good quality supplement like Great Lakes: Collagen Hydrolysate
Vitamin A: The animal form of Vitamin A is crucial for healthy skin. Keratosis pilaris is the official name for the little bumps that can form on the backs of your arms and elsewhere. These are easily treated with Vitamin A. Here is where to get the best cod liver oil supplement with highly bio-available Vitamin A: Blue Ice Fermented Cod Liver Oil
Step 3: Stop Abusing Your Skin
This step is a little counter-intuitive. Marketing would have us believe that if our skin is oily and acne-ridden, we just have to cleanse it more often and with stronger stuff. We are also told to use several different steps of skin care products at different times of day.
In reality, your skin maintains its own balance quite nicely,when it’s not constantly interfered with. It maintains a healthy pH and moisture level, as well as exfoliates itself consistently. People weren’t ugly ragged beasts in the days before they had 6-stage facial care product systems. We don’t need these things to survive and in fact our skin can be much more balanced and beautiful without them.
The skin has a delicate layer called the ‘acid mantle’ which gets destroyed by commercial cleansers and exfoliators. Basically the skin turns into a dry desert, and then we have to use serums and lotions and creams to artificially re-hydrate what we just removed. Totally pointless, and way confusing for the skin. That’s why we often find we get super oily too fast, because the skin is freaking out trying to re-hydrate itself after being stripped dry.
The other thing we hear often is to drink “lots and lots (and lots)” of water if we want nice skin. It’s true the average person probably doesn’t drink enough water. However it’s easy for this advice to go too far.
When you drink too much, the vital minerals in your blood become too diluted and you pee out too much valuable nutrition. Your kidneys can only process an absolute maximum of 1 L per hour at their highest capacity.
You should only be drinking around 2 to 3 L of water per day (depending on your size and activity level) – enough that your urine is not clear, but rather still pale yellow (perhaps a lemonade-like colour). Your skin will certainly benefit from being properly hydrated, but it’s a delicate balance.
Another great tip would be to purchase a filter for your shower head. This will remove much of the chlorine and prevent your skin from drying out so much.
This is the one we currently have and I’ve found it to be perfectly effective. It was pretty affordable, very easy to install and should fit any wall-mounted shower head. Sprite High Output HO2 with matching Chrome Showerhead
If I were buying one now, I would probably order this one online: Culligan Level 2 Wall-Mount Showerhead. It has really good reviews, plus massage settings :)
Step 4: Care for Your Skin Gently
There are so many wonderful ways you can nurture and care for your skin gently, rather than abusing it with chemical cleansers and smothering it with petrochemical-laden potions.
Exfoliating: Use a soft natural-bristle dry brush or natural sea sponge to gently disengage old skin. This helps circulation and lymph fluid flow as well.
Clean and Nourish: Apply coconut oil to the skin before washing or showering. Coconut oil is gently antibacterial and very nourishing, plus it is slightly acidic which matches the skin’s natural pH. Then, use filtered warm water (not too hot – it scalds and strips the skin). When you get out, you’ll find the perfect amount of moisture is left and the skin feels heavenly!
Balance: If you feel the need to tone or tighten the skin, a 1:10 mixture of raw apple cider vinegar to filtered water is a gentle, natural way to do that. If your tap water is very mineral-rich (and has a strongly basic pH, you’ll know if you get white build-up on your kettle) then the vinegar rinse may be a good idea.
Detox and Repair: Sweating every day is so important – it’s the skin’s natural cleansing system and it’s so easy. Just google “quick interval workout” or similar on youtube, and you’ll find any number of ways to get a quick sweat on in less than 10 minutes. No excuses!
The other absolute vital factor is sleep. This is when your skin repairs itself and becomes its naturally gorgeous glowing youthful self. Your hormones (your body’s messengers and signalers) also need sleep to stay balanced and effective. You’ll know how shitty and haggard your face looks after an all-nighter or a long flight or what have you. Sleep is sooo important. Sleeeeeep.
The Skintervention Guide
This is a good overall good-skin approach, however if you have a particular condition or concern, and want a detailed protocol (aka user-friendly, hand-holding, day-by-day action plan) to fix your skin, I have a GREAT recommendation.
Instead of spending another $10, $30, $50 plus dollars on another hit-or-miss product that is advertised by air-brushed models, I would highly recommend checking out Liz Wolfe’s Purely Primal Skintervention Guide.
This guide is a deep dive into what exactly is going on underneath each specific skin condition. What imbalances might be happening or what might be setting it off, and exactly what to avoid, what to eat, and what to adjust in your lifestyle to bring things back to normal. In fact not only to normal, but even better than your skin has ever been.
The author, Liz Wolfe, is an absolute POWERHOUSE of awesome actionable info. Her style is friendly and practical so it’s easy to read. Useful and empowering, not boring or overwhelming.
Don’t smear on another cream and hope for the best – rebuild healthy skin from the inside out instead, using a proven system from an established expert. The image below will take you straight there for more info…
Do you have any tips or success stories to share on how you’ve overcome skin concerns? Or any good books, supplements, protocols to recommend? Share & help others below!
