Entries from June 2008 ↓

HOLY COW Las Vegas is hot! If you want to know what being inside an oven is like, then come to Las Vegas in summer. This is my third day on holidays in Vegas and I’m still not used to the searing 40ºC (104ºF) dry heat.

I think my skin is cranky with me for being in this oven. And it doesn’t like the constant drying air conditioning either. It’s rebelled by stopping all production of natural moisturizer. Well at least that’s what it feels like anyway. I feel as though I’m slowly drying out to a prune. The worst areas affected are my hands, shoulders, back, elbows, upper thighs and feet. Thank goodness my face isn’t too bad [yet], but my chin this morning has become unusually dry. So much for that ditching my moisturizer idea I had in humid Toronto.

Here it’s dry everywhere. The heat outside is so incredibly dry, and everywhere indoors is heavily air conditioned. No amount of moisturizer that I slather onto my body is doing the trick. Last night when I went to bed the driest bits were actually a little sore. And my shoulders and back hurt in the shower as if they’re burnt!

If you live here I guess it’s different, your body just must be used to it. I also have very dry skin anyway [my skin has always been dry] so these hot and dry conditions are just making it worse. If you have oily skin, you’ll probably love it here. Continue reading →

I felt like a rebel last night. After I had cleansed my face then applied my BHA, I didn’t moisturize. I didn’t feel like I needed to. When I stepped out of the shower my skin did not feel dry or tight, and after I applied the BHA it felt as though it had been moisturized already. So it got me thinking, do we really need to moisturize our skin? Or is that just something the cosmetics industry tells us that we need to do?

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about not moisturizing my T-Zone, so I guess I’m now just taking it one step further. I had such good results with not moisturizing my T-Zone that I thought …why not just skip that whole step altogether. I’m still moisturizing my face in the morning, but not at night.

I’m leaving tonight for a trip to the U.S for two weeks, spending most of my time in Las Vegas and Sedona. I’m wondering if the dry hot air will send me back to moisturizing at night? So is this just a humidity thing or if we’re eating well, exercising, taking supplements and looking after our body, then perhaps our skin just balances out to ‘normal’ - as in not oily and not dry and we no longer need to moisturize?

Dr. Hauschka’s say on all of this

I remember reading a while back on Dr. Hauschka’s website that we actually shouldn’t moisturize our skin at night at all. I thought this was a load of bollocks at the time because I had quite dry skin …but now I’m wondering if there’s some truth to it. Continue reading →

My travel buddy has trouble swallowing tablets, he actually has to chew supplements and vitamins instead of swallowing them whole. And you can just imagine how awful some of them actually taste.

So when we were on the lookout for some multi-vitamins in Waikiki (we were both sick with a head cold) of course he loved the idea of the chewable variety because then he could chew them up without having to put up with a nasty flavor.

So we bought this brand of vitamin called ‘Multi Chewable’ from Nature Made which taste a lot like an orange sweet.

I was always a bit suspicious of these vitamins because nothing healthy could possibly taste that sweet and organgy. I felt like I was eating confectionery, not a vitamin tablet. BUT, stupidly I didn’t bother looking at the ingredients list until we’d gone through the whole lot.

Out of curiosity [too late] I discovered that the sweetness in the vitamin tablets was actually from the addition of fructose (fruit sugars), xylitol and aspartame. Now fructose I’m not too happy with because it has a very high GI, xylitol is okay because I haven’t found anything bad about it yet …but aspartame is a chemical that I swore would never pass my lips again for as long as I lived. And here I was, having just chugged down half a bottle of vitamin tablets that were packed full of that evil stuff.

For those of you who are unaware of the dangers of aspartame (which mind you can also be found in diet pop, chewing gum and confectionery), you can read my brief article about it here: DO NOT eat these foods. I think the title of the article speaks for itself.

I am absolutely appalled that a company selling health products has added aspartame into their vitamin tablets. I’m annoyed with myself for supporting a company that uses aspartame, and I’m even more annoyed that I purchased from a company which appears to be either oblivious to the fact that this chemical is poisonous to our bodies, or doesn’t seem to care.

From now on I’ll be checking every single ingredient on all vitamins and supplements that I buy, and so should you.

Fran

I’ve always thought multi-vitamins were a little bit useless unless you were sick. I thought that if I was eating enough fresh organic food then my body was getting all of the nutrients that it needed and I didn’t need to take a tablet to supplement it. I always thought that taking too many vitamins and minerals that your body doesn’t need had an adverse reaction in your body. Even when I had no idea what that adverse reaction was.

Well, it turns out I was wrong.

I watched this amazing documentary last night called Food Matters. It featured some of the top medical professionals and nutritionists in North America, Europe and Australia. These teachers taught me a lot of good stuff about food and nutrition. Including how good it is to take a daily multi-vitamin.

Where do we get our vitamins and minerals from?

Whenever I think of vitamins and minerals I always think of this TV commercial we have in Australia. It’s for the brand of breakfast cereal Nutri-Grain. Everybody knows that Nutri-Grain is packed full of sugar and is not good for you at all. But the commercial promotes the cereal as a ‘power’ food because it contains added nutrients. But can a food this sweet and this processed really be good for you?

Our body requires a certain amount of nutrients to function well (how it’s supposed to). The only place we can get these nutrients from is from the food we eat, and the only place the food we eat can get these nutrients from is the soil the food is grown in. So if the soil that your food is grown in is lacking in vital nutrients, then your body is just not getting what it needs.

It gets worse. If you shop at a grocery store, and buy non-organic food. Then chances are your food is already up to a week old (nutrients in food decrease with the age of the food), and chances are the soil the food is grown in is of poor quality, and chances are the food has been sprayed with chemicals and pesticides.

So really, you’re eating something that is old, lacking in nutrients and covered in toxins.

I don’t think I need to go into great detail about why eating this kind of food is not that great for our body or our skin because it’s obvious. If we’re not providing our body with what it needs to function properly, then of course we’re going to get sick, and it’ll very likely show on our skin with excessive oiliness or dryness, uneven skin tone, clogged pores and possibly acne.

So what do we do about it? Eat organic food if you can afford it for starters. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of money at the moment, I’m a traveller living on ‘the edge’. But whenever I can I will buy organic food. I’ve put good organic food as the highest priority in my life. I’d rather do something less fun tomorrow if it means I can eat good, healthy food every day.

And find a good multi-vitamin and take it. I’m in downtown Toronto today. I’m going to find myself a decent looking health store and I’m going to buy the best multi-vitamin in store. I’m going to support my body as much as I can by giving it what it needs.

The more I learn about health, the skin and acne, the more I realize how holistic it all is. It doesn’t work to just treat one symptom, like clogged pores or pimples. You must work on making your body healthier and stronger as a whole. The only way to achieve healthy, clear skin long term is to lead as healthy a lifestyle as you can. Eat well, take supplements, exercise and relax.

Fran

As I packed my suitcase to leave for Canada a couple of months ago, I was devastated when my yoga mat didn’t fit into my suitcase. Well, actually it probably would have fit, but I was already way overweight with the luggage allowance so unfortunately my yoga mat had to stay at home.

So I did yoga on the bare sand in Fiji, yoga on a towel in our hotel room in Waikiki, and yoga on the carpet of our apartment in Vancouver. Fortunately I’ve been staying with family in Toronto who’s house came equipped with yoga mats, but on Monday I’ll be on the road again and I do not want to do yoga on a slippery towel.

If you’re wondering what’s with this obsession I have with yoga and what the heck does it have to do with skin care, well …yoga is pretty much the answer to everything [including clearing acne] and apart from all the other benefits that I get from doing as much yoga as I can, I do notice an improvement in my skin when I follow a disciplined yoga practice.

The hunt

So a yoga mat should be easy peasy to buy right? Well you’d think so. But of course I started thinking about the environment, and uncessesary waste, and how buying another yoga mat is just contributing to land fill. So then I found these ‘eko’ mats. Yoga mats that are made out of recyclable and biodegradable material. What a perfect yoga mat to buy, and how very yogini of me.

However, the problem with these eko mats unfortunately are the price. To save the environment it’s going to cost me a bit of money. A regular yoga mat costs around CA$30, but a environmentally friendly mat will cost around CA$50. I’m a struggling traveller at the moment so I don’t really have that extra $20 to spend! Continue reading →