Tag Archives: natural

Why your skin care routine is making your skin worse (and what to do instead)

Posted on 10 November, 2014 by liivih | Leave a comment

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.

Even worse, there’s no point resorting to scary medications like accutane or even the pill to fix your skin. These only cause issues like poor mineral absorption, leaky gut and psychiatric problems. Seriously, and for years afterward.

A better approach for better skin

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!

How to deal with anxiety and stress naturally

Posted on 24 February, 2014 by liivih | Leave a comment

It’s easy to get wrapped up in chronic stress and anxiety

Anxiety is an ongoing problem for me. I think with adult-hood came increased expectations for my life, with accompanying worries of how to fulfill those expectations. I actually went to the doctor a few years ago with chest pain, worried that I had some sort of premature heart issues (which was possibly reasonable to be concerned about considering the history of heart and cholesterol problems on both parents’ sides). I had an ECG done and the doctor said my heart was fine; it was probably digestive upset that was causing the pain.

I didn’t have enough self-awareness then, but I know now I had caused the pain by breathing too shallow and too infrequently for too long. I think it was from stress from having my first serious full time job at the time, and the work environment there. Granted there was likely some digestive upset too, because I was still eating gluten and processed foods then.

I don’t remember how at the time but I guess I managed to sort of overcome my stress response for the next two years or so, but then it returned about 6 months ago, along with more job and career-related stresses. It was way worse this time, culminating in a couple of near-panic-attacks on public transit on the way home from work. I would also get headaches and jaw tension. I think I also caused myself constipation which results from elevated cortisol. It makes sense evolutionarily that if we are being chased by a predator our body wouldn’t be spending energy on digestion and elimination, and wouldn’t be cueing us to stop for a bathroom break.

Recently with studying candida overgrowth and other side effects of poor digestion/elimination, I realized how absolutely critical it is to work on my mental game and stress response.

What is stress exactly?

Stress can be anything “real”, as in a tiger chasing you or sitting through a tough exam, or “imagined/perceived”, as in a worry that your partner will leave you, or feeling like you’re not good enough at your job.

Dealing with real immediate stress should go such that our sympathetic nervous system jumps into action, with responses such as a spike in cortisol, adrenaline, increased heart rate, vasodilation, dilation of the pupils etc so that we can escape the immediate threat. However chronic stress is what most of us deal with these days, and although it may be all too real with our “busy modern” lifestyles, we can choose to remediate the effects with how we mentally respond to the stress. This will control our physiological responses in turn.

Why it’s so important to control your stress response

The reason why stress can mess you up so badly is that it involves an all-encompassing mental and physical system of responses. When stress hormones are released, your body’s energy is devoted to immediate action, and taken away from vital “maintenance” activities like digestion, immunity, detoxifying, repair etc. These functions are needed every day to keep your body running cleanly and efficiently, kind of like your car getting an oil change. Normally these are completed during a restful downtime, however with the chronic stress response being a constant force, you may not ever give them the chance to work.

Stress wreaks havoc on all of your body’s tissues

In a normal immune response the immune cells incite a battle on the offending agent, and when the work is done cortisol comes and tells them when to slow down or stop to prevent damage to the body’s own tissues.

However during a chronic stress response, all body tissues are targets for damage because the immune system becomes down-regulated to sensing cortisol. It re-programs itself to the “new normal” of a higher level of cortisol. It no longer reads the cortisol and keeps waging a battle on “the enemy”, which could now be any of the body’s own tissues. This causes damage and inflammation which could manifest as any number of health problems.

Cellular-level low grade inflammation is now cited as the root cause for most serious conditions and diseases including obesity, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune diseases and heart disease. This is why chronic stress can cause so much trouble for the body. A similar inflammatory cascade resulting in cell death and loss of nerve transmission also happens in the brain itself.

How to deal with chronic stress and anxiety with short every day routines

1. Breathing

This was a major working point for me, and still is, after working on it every day for about a month now. It’s definitely getting better but it’s really taken time! However take inspiration from this image (which I have as the lock screen on my phone):

And begin gradually I did, with lots of research.

When I was really panicked and almost hyperventilating, the first thing that helped me was to focus on breathing OUT. I read an article that explained that when you are anxious, you keep trying to breathe IN more because you feel like you can’t get a deep enough breath, when in reality you’re not making enough SPACE for your in-breath, because you’re not cleansing your body of carbon dioxide by not breathing OUT completely.

So, breathing STEP ONE:

Focus on breathing out, caving your abdomen in completely, pushing the air out noisily through your nose until your body is empty. Then relax and let your pelvis and belly and lower ribs fill naturally with fresh, oxygen-filled air. Keep your shoulders down and neck and jaw loose.

Do this as many times as you need to. It took probably a week of doing this, for several minutes, a few times a day for me to start calming my breath.

Breathing, STEP TWO:

Once you feel like you can get a deep breath again, expand your capacity and relaxation with this technique from Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the most respected experts in holistic health.

Do this technique at least twice per day. You can’t do it too often. Dr. Weil says it’s the single most effective preventive technique he’s ever discovered in all his years and travels.

Here is a link if you have trouble using with the iFrame viewer above.

Dr. Andrew Weil breathing technique

Breathing, STEP THREE:

I learned this technique from Sadie Nardini’s yoga classes on Youtube. She calls it “Golden Flame Breathing”.

Envision a small golden flame the size of a match on your pelvic floor in the middle of the core of your body, between your hip bones. As you breathe in, the flame grows bigger and wider to widen out your pelvis and fill your core with heat and energy. As you breathe out, picture your pelvic floor and hip bones pinching and folding up to squeeze the flame up and out of your body, so that it shrinks to a little match again. Engage your pelvic floor as you do this (sort of like kegels, but that is out of the scope of this article. You can google pelvic floor engagement exercises!)

Sadie explains that this gets your core working to bring fresh air to all your tissues and fire up your energy, digestion, detox and shedding extra weight. I found the golden flame image really useful.

2. Baroque music

Baroque music has been said to calm the mind and as a result all those other responses like heart rate and hormonal signals. The tempo is often similar to that of your heart beat which naturally calms your breath and slows your stress response.

I went online and downloaded albums called “100 Best Baroque” and “The #1 Baroque Album”. Some of the artists include Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Purcell. Here is a sample of a beautiful song I find very calming:

Here is a link in case you can’t use the above viewer.

I put on baroque music whenever I am walking somewhere, commuting or working. I try to make it an automatic because I do find that when it’s playing I remember to take more deep breaths and the beauty calms my mind.

3. Yoga in the bathroom

I’m talking about the bathroom at work, or wherever you might be spending your daytime hours and sitting still for long periods. Even 1 minute of a few quick poses with deep breathing can do wonders to re-centre your mind and get you breathing again. These would be standing poses of course. Please don’t get down on the floor in your office bathroom…

One of my favourites is the twisted chair pose, seen below. Since the pose is fairly uncomfortable it’s natural to hold your breath, but that is clearly not the point! I like to remember to force myself to breathe deep into the back of the body, keep the feet engaged, keep the spine long with the shoulders away from the ears, and try to lift the belly off the thigh.

The image is borrowed from blisstree.com

Here are a few other poses you can do in just a few minutes at your desk. They’re not even that awkward-looking so you shouldn’t get too many strange looks. I would seriously recommend printing this off because “out of sight out of mind” is all too true. Even if you might think “Oh, I should do some stretches”, if you have a little routine right in front of you, you are sooo much more likely to actually do it.

4. Herbs and Supplements

Ashwagandha is a known “adaptogen” herb that has been used for thousands of years. It has been shown to provide the relaxing and mood-lifting benefits of anti-depressant meds without any of the risks or side effects. Of course you should do your own thorough research first to check if this is right for you, especially if you take other medications.

The effects of ashwagandha take some time to build up so you could try one whole bottle and then evaluate. I got a bottle from my local natural foods store for about $18.00. I’ve been taking it for about a month and haven’t noticed any significant effects, but I honestly think I’ve just wound myself too tight to be able to appreciate this herb. I will continue taking it and hopefully as I work on my anxiety it will have more effect. I’ve read some great reviews/results online.

Magnesium is known to be one of the main factors lacking in our modern diet. It has a gentle calming effect. I take 300-600mg daily with dinner, or with a snack before bedtime. (Do your own research or check with a practitioner first).

B Complex Vitamins are known to help with brain and liver health, which can help with anxiety and detox. I take a low-dose B complex which has 25-50 mg of each type of B vitamin. Take these with food for best absorption.

5. Sleep and Eating

When you’re working on stress and anxiety, it’s important to show your animal, instinct-driven body that you are in a “time of plenty” not a famine or drought or under attack or anything.

Therefore getting quality sleep in a restful environment is important. I wear yellow-tinted glasses for an hour or 2 before bed to kickstart my melatonin production, and use f.lux on my computer screen to make it mellow-coloured. I also wear a soft comfortable black eye mask to bed for complete darkness. I usually do a quick session of yoga and breathing before bed – even 5 minutes can make a huge difference to ease tightness, get the breath slowed down and calm the mind.

I was beginning to experiment with intermittent fasting a couple of weeks ago, until I found research that said if you’re already dealing with stress or anxiety, fasting may trigger a greater stress response in the body. It’s important to show the body there is food available and prevent a stress response. So for now I am working on getting fat-adapted (fuelling the body with fat instead of carbs) and I may approach intermittent fasting again at a later time.

6. Holding Tension

This is an exercise of constant vigilance. Whenever you remember, check in with yourself and feel where you’re holding tension. For me this is my jaw and my neck/shoulders. Sometimes even when I’m “relaxed” on the couch or whatever, I’ll notice I’m clenching one hand, or some of my toes. I make a conscious effort to release this tension and take a few deep breaths. I also massage my face, jaw and neck sometimes while breathing deeply. Even if you’re not stressed or tense this feels amazing.

One final thing on this is I’ve noticed in many of the yoga sessions I’ve done, the instructor will mention “softening the eyes” or “keeping the gaze soft”. I think this is important especially with the amount of time looking at screens, and with our active, worried minds. Gazing softly helps calm your thoughts and soothe those creases from your forehead. I think it subconsciously makes you view the world in a more understanding, friendly frame as well.

In Closing

I know a lot of this stuff seems inconvenient or time-consuming, but even if you remember twice per day to do a little bit of stretching and breathing, and put those supplements right on your countertop so you can’t forget. I put them in a little container every evening and put them with my lunch for work. Make it a reflex to play that baroque music during your commute, and make a point to truly appreciate the beautiful sound.

Simple things like taking a moment for yourself, breathing and listening to music can be the beginning of a meditation practice, which is still out of my reach at this point but after having tried the above techniques for about a month I can see that I will eventually be able to get there.

What do you do for stress relief or to stop the anxious mental chatter? Share below!

How to make your own natural chemical-free mouthwash

Posted on 21 August, 2013 by liivih | Leave a comment

A few months ago I started getting wise to the idea that the “normal” oral care products that we use without a second thought may not be the best for our mouths.

Ingredients like fluoride, alcohol and abrasives in mouthwash and toothpaste are a result of the ultra-commercialization of our self-care routines and may not actually give us the result we are looking for, which is of course: strong beautiful healthy teeth and gums!

I’ve found many sources that support the idea of making your own natural oral care products with safe household ingredients. The underlying thought is not to put anything in your mouth that you wouldn’t eat! You definitely wouldn’t eat toothpaste – it has a warning right on the tube that says do not swallow more than a pea-sized amount.

The gums, mouth tissues and sinuses are one of the fastest routes to the bloodstream through an ultra-thin layer of skin. Why do you think people take cocaine by rubbing it on their gums or inhaling it? Gross reference, I know, but it’s true. Therefore I’m happy to have stopped administering chemicals right into my bloodstream with commercial toothpastes and mouthwashes.

Here is what I use for mouthwash instead:

Just mix up in a glass (rough amounts):

1. 1/2 tsp of baking soda

2. 1/3 tsp of good sea salt

3. 2 drops of tea tree oil

4. 2 drops of peppermint oil

5. the powder from one emptied-out calcium-magnesium capsule

with a little bit of warm water, so that it looks like this:

Mix it up until the salt crystals dissolve, then slurp it back and slosh around your mouth thoroughly for a good minute or so. Sometimes if I put too much water in I have to do it in 2 mouthfuls to use up all the good ingredients.

It doesn’t sting or burn like commercial mouthwash, and leaves a nice clean herbal taste.

Try it out and let me know what you think in the comments! Or maybe you have your own recipe you can share? I’d love to hear about it!