Entries Tagged 'Skin Care' ↓

It’s time. I’ve run out of my toxic night lotion (aka Dove) and toxic day lotion (aka Oil Of Olay) so it’s time to switch back to natural products.

And even though I’m really excited [because I love trying new products], I’ve also been procrastinating a little on my new purchases because there’s a lot of research involved in finding the prefect lotion.

Today I visited The Big Carrot in Toronto and browsed the huge range of organic and natural skin care products they have in store.

I was kind of lost a little and overwhelmed with what to choose. And of course I was stupidly more attracted to the pretty packages than anything else.

Eventually (and maybe out of frustration), I decided that I just hadn’t done enough research yet so took the easy way out and bought two sample sizes of Dr. Hauschka face cream to trial and see how they go. …Okay, the truth is I was staring dumbly at the Dr. Hauschka line when a staff member asked if I needed help, I guess because they’d noticed I’d been walking up and down the aisle for a good 15 minutes looking confused. So as usual I bought a trial size of the first thing a sales rep recommended.

Yes, I’m very easy to sell to AND an impulse buyer. Continue reading →

I’m a complete doofus for not seeing this before. I just discovered a “new” feature on MakeupAlley (MUA) that makes searching for products a lot easier.

In the product reviews section (and after you’ve done a search), there’s a function that allows you to filter the results by skin type. This is great for those of us with acne prone skin, because we can choose to only look at the product reviews by others that have the same skin type as us.

When I look at product reviews on MUA, I’m only really interested in looking at others with acne prone skin because the main thing I’m looking for is whether or not the product has the chance that it will break me out. If all the acne prone skin reviewers say it was great on their skin, then I know the product is good to go. If I read about clogged pores, blackheads or unusual breakouts, then I stay far away from that product.

Or if you’re reading this and you don’t get spots (lucky, lucky you), then you can choose to sort the results by whatever skin type you have.

And while we’re here, I might as well mention that you can filter by age as well. This makes reading reviews according to your skin type even easier. For example - my acne prone skin as a 28 year old is going to react differently to products that a 14 year old is using.

I’m going to be a hippy again, yay!

Well, in skin care anyway. I’ve come to the end of my pot of evil chemical filled moisturizer, and since my skin is doing so well I thought it’s time to return to natural products. I’m very excited about not putting chemicals on my skin anymore, and I’m even more excited about choosing a new brand. I love the range of products in Canada (you Canadians have no idea how lucky you are compared to what we have in Australia), so can’t wait to get my hands on them.

I’ll keep you updated on my new skin care purchases and how well they go with my skin.

I found this awesome video on YouTube last night.

It’s a video of an actual doctor who’s talking about natural skin care, and how to prevent premature aging and acne through natural treatments.

I love this video because this doctor confirms everything that I talk about with natural skin care and healing acne. And I love it even more because he talks a lot about how important nutrition is.

I can’t stress enough how important food and diet is for your skin, your body, your mind, your soul ..everything, so it’s awesome to actually hear it confirmed from someone who has a medical degree.

If you want to get serious about having clear, glowing skin long term, then you will at some point need to look at the foods you’re consuming.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time researching alternative nutritional medicine, and have discovered some really quite amazing information that I’ll be writing or videoing about on my blog over the next few weeks.

It just makes me realize how holistic everything really is. The food we eat, the water we drink, the place we live, activities we choose to do, television shows we watch, even the attitude we have towards life ..it’s all connected and it all mixes together and manifests into our health and well being.

Fran

On the topic of chocolate (sorry I know …again), I have recently discovered raw cacao beans and of course how ridiculously healthy they are for you. If you can handle the bitter taste, then these little beans are definitely something awesome to incorporate into your daily diet.

Not only are they absolutely amazingly fantastic for our body, but they contain an unbelievable amount of:

• Anti-oxidants - way more than any other food, and which are very powerful at healing the skin.
• Magnesium - more than any other food and which happens to be the number one mineral deficiency in the US.
• Chromium - again more than any other food and which also happens to be the number one trace mineral deficiency in the US
• Incredibly high levels of Vitamin C

So if you eat one of these little beans, you are getting a concentrated source of anti-oxidants, magnesium, chromium and vitamin C. More than any other food around and way better than popping a synthetic supplement or pill.

The word ‘cacao’ actually means ‘cocoa’. Apparantly the Brittish couldn’t pronounce the word cacao, so they called it cocoa instead. Seems strange to me, it’s not hard to say, you kind of pronounce it like: ka-cow. You can watch my video below for the proper pronunciation.

This food is so special, that a long time ago in Mexico City they even used it as currency. That’s how amazing and valuable the cacao bean was considered to be. Now you can just pick up a giant bag for around US$15. I guess we’re really lucky now how affordable and accessible this food is.

But what exactly are anti-oxidants?

So apart from anti-oxidants protecting us from free-radical damage of the skin, they are really just a measure of the color pigment in a food. So essentially, the darker the color of the food, the more anti-oxidants it contains. You’ll notice in the video when I crack open the cacao bean that it’s a black or deep purplish color. This just shows how many anti-oxidants are present in the bean.

Now blueberries are quite dark too, and they’re often thought of as being fantastic for our skin. But while blueberries contain 32 antioxidants, and wild blueberries contain 61 ..cacao beans contain an unbelievable 621 anti-oxidants!!! That is an insanely high amount. Now you know why I’m putting up with the bitter taste of these little things, because I know how GREAT they are for my skin.

Here is a video I recorded which shows the actual cacao bean, and some chocolate I bought from a farmers market that was made out of these beans.

Fran

I needed a change of scenery to work today so I packed my macbook into my backpack and headed off to a bookstore in downtown Toronto.

I love working in bookstores. Apart from the delicious smell of the brand new books (or is that the choc-chip cookies in the attached Starbucks cafe?), I love how if I need to research or look up any information while I’m here, I have instant access to a huge range of quality resources. And before you roll your eyes and tell me “Um, that’s what the Internet’s for …” (duh!), bookstores are great because you don’t have to weed through all the junk that comes with researching on the net. So there.

So of course, one of the first things I did when I arrived (apart from order a green tea and drool at those choc-chip cookies), was to browse the well being and skin care sections of the book store.

Call it fate, or whatever, but every book that I picked up popped straight open to the cleansing page. And every book screamed one key point at me - “Do not over wash your skin”. So unless these skin care experts have formed some kind of special ‘elite’ group and are getting together for herbal tea and note swapping, I guess there must be some truth to this point if they’re ALL saying it.

Why it’s really bad to over wash your face

It’s kind of simple. We were all born with great functioning skin. Skin that left alone does a really good job at looking after itself.

Take how I wash my skin as an example. I probably shouldn’t be publicly admitting this on my blog … but I hardly use soap or any other cleansing method on my body in the shower. That’s right, for years I’ve ditched the body cleanser and I only have a bar of [natural] soap in my shower to cleanse the dirty bits. You know, underarms, feet, and that other bodily part that I won’t mention. The rest I just let the water run over. So why is it that I can get away with completely skipping the cleansing of my arms, legs, stomach, shoulders, etc without any negative effects? Why is it that when I stopped cleansing those areas my skin actually improved. My skin is rarely dry (unless I have super hot showers or I’m in Vegas), and no, it doesn’t smell, and it looks clean and healthy. Continue reading →