by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 30, 2013 | Beauty, DIY, Health, Home Remedies, Self-care, Skin health
As I’ve shared before (to the delight of my readers, for sure) I have oily skin. Therefore I love toner. I find that a cleansing regime isn’t complete without it. At once it shrinks and cleanses pores, controls oil and evens skin tone and I find my skin looks dramatically better with it. However, most commercial toners use less-than-desirable ingredients, like isopropyl alcohol or mineral oil, which dry out the skin and clog up pores, respectively. Fortunately, it’s easy and cheap to make your own, in your kitchen (where all the best beauty ingredients are found).
Skin-Balancing Apple Cider Vinegar and Green Tea Facial Toner
You need:
An empty shampoo, pump or spray bottle.
2 bags of green tea, water and a kettle
Apple cider vinegar (preferably organic)
1/4 tsp of Vitamin E (in capsules or in a bottle)
Antibacterial, acne-fighting essential oils. I like tea tree and lavender.
Directions:
Brew a large cup of green tea and steep with 2 tea bags, to make the brew good and strong. Set aside to steep and cool. Green tea is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, astringent (tightens pores and controls oil) and provides the skin with nourishing anti-oxidants to decrease the signs of aging.
Add in the apple cider vinegar so that it fills 1/10 to 1/4 of your shampoo or pump bottle. Apple cider vinegar controls skin pH, unclogs pores, controls oil production, kills bacteria and even decreases dark spots and wrinkles. Use a higher percentage for oilier skin and a lower percentage for dry skin.
Fill the spray bottle up with green tea until it’s about 3/4 full and add filtered water to top it off. Next, add in 1/4 tsp of vitamin E (or cut open ~5 capsules and squeeze them in). Vitamin E acts as a preservative and is nourishing to skin.
Next, add in a few drops of the lavender and tea tree essential oils, which are anti-bacterial and calming for skin.
1-2 times a day, after washing skin with a gentle cleanser, swipe your entire face with this toner using a cotton ball or pad. Do not rinse. Apply moisturizer afterwards, if needed. After a few days of using this toner after cleansing I noticed that my skin tone looked more even, my cystic acne calmed down and my skin cleared up. I’m definitely making this a permanent part of my cleansing regime.
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 25, 2013 | Balance, Community, Family, Finding yourself, Gratitude, Happiness, Health, Mindfulness, Philosophy, Relationships
I’ve been reading a book I recommend to all of you: The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. This book is, in one, a Western philosophy refresher course and self-help book, outlining a guide for living as dictated to us by 6 great philosophers. One of my favourite chapters examines the life and philosophy of Greek philosopher Epicurus and distills the lessons he shared with us about finding true happiness and fulfillment in our lives, while still living modestly.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 23, 2013 | Beauty, DIY, Health, Home Remedies, Recipes, Women's health
Winter time is a time for chapped lips and that means a time for lip balm. I, for one, have been addicted to the stuff ever since I started buying Bonnebell Lip Smackers (glitter and all) in packs of 10 in a variety of flavours and colours. Now that my glitter days (short as they were) are over, I’m back to basic, creamy, natural balms. Since I’ve heard shocking statistics (not sure where they’re from) that the average woman eats 5-6 pounds of lipstick in her lifetime, let’s make sure that the stuff we put on our lips everyday is natural, non-toxic and, actually edible.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 21, 2013 | Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Finding yourself, Health, Naturopathic Philosophy, Philosophy, Stress, Student
After December finals, I had my first naturopathic preceptoring experience. At CCNM, we are required to sit in on a total of 100 patient visits with a practicing naturopathic doctor. From these visits comes the kind of learning that one can only obtain through experience. This particular session, however, served to be a pretty big eye-opener for me.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 18, 2013 | Cooking, Dessert, Diet, Gluten Free, Holidays, Recipes
Wednesday was my mom’s birthday and, to celebrate, I made her a very chocolate-y gluten-free cake. Since cake and chocolate are not exactly naturopathic (although dark cocoa has been shown to modestly lower blood pressure), it’s important that, when eating and preparing dessert, we make sure we create a 10/10 on the delicious-ness scale. Making sure that birthday cakes are as chocolate-y and delicious as possible makes it worth it and justifies the extra sugar and calories. I hope this one was a 10.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 16, 2013 | Beauty, DIY, Recipes, Skin health
I used to be a drugstore junkie. There was a Shopper’s Drugmart, our Canadian drug superstore, at the corner near our house while attending high school and there was one near my house while attending university. I’d slip in a few times a week, sometimes for legitimate items, such as toilet paper, but mostly to check out the new lip glosses or eye shadows. I spent long hours and dollars there, and ended up filling my body (and medicine cabinet) with a lot of useless junk.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 14, 2013 | Art Therapy, Community, Culture, Healing Stories, Health, Music, South America
In Paraguay, South America there is a village, called Cateura, whose main industry is collecting and recycling the waste from the rest of the country. Being from a poor village that acts as Paraguay’s dumping grounds, the citizens of Cateura subsist mainly on sorting and recycling garbage. The documentary Landfill Harmonic, tells the story of Favio Chavez, a music teacher in Cateura, who decided to create a school music program using instruments made entirely of recycled garbage.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 11, 2013 | Body Image, Nutrition, Research, Weight Loss
The new year brings with it the onslaught of new year’s resolutions, the most common being, of course, to lose weight. While most people think that losing weight can help them better their health and well-being, a new study published in JAMA begs to differ.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 9, 2013 | Detoxification, DIY, Health, Natural Body Care, Recipes, Skin health
It drives me crazy when we find that the things we once thought were so complicated are actually incredibly, insanely simple and that the truth of their simplicity is not common knowledge. This turned out to be the case for deodorant.
Most people who seek natural alternatives to their cosmetic supply have a problem when it comes to deodorants. All women’s deodorants are anti-perspirants, which contain high levels of aluminum, natural deodorants don’t work and make me itch and men’s deodorant, which I’d resorted to using for a while, is still full of chemicals and smells like, well, “antifreeze man”, for lack of a better description, and actually contains propylene glycol, which is, in fact, antifreeze. So there you go.
I started shunning women’s deodorant at summer camp when a hippie friend of mine (wise at her 14 years of ago) explained that it caused breast cancer. I don’t know why I was worried about breast cancer at the age of 14 (maybe it was my early naturopathic doctor self, shining through) but I got scared and starting using men’s deodorant, which, because it’s not an anti-perspirant, doesn’t contain aluminum zirconium. So, does anti-perspirant actually cause cancer? Studies are inconclusive, but we do know that it blocks lymph nodes, which are plentiful beneath our arms, and which contain the specific lymph nodes that drain the breast tissue and chest. Clogged lymph nodes are just bad news in general because our lymph nodes are responsible for clearing out the debris and toxins that our body is exposed to. Good health can only ever be attained when our lymphatic system is operating to its full potential.
After entering the world of natural health products, I started shelling out $8-$10 a tube for natural deodorant. It was an expensive experiment as I tried a grand total of 4 different brands, all to discover that, firstly, none of them worked, and secondly, some of them even gave me a weird allergic rash under my arms, which made me scratch myself like a gorilla throughout the day. Not exactly attractive.
So, my deodorant choices ultimately boiled down to: a) blocking the lymphatic drainage in my underarms, causing edema of my arms, aka “Bingo Wings“, or possibly increasing my risk of cancer b) forever living with allergic dermatitis like I’m back in my eczema-tainted childhood days, c) searching through the men’s deodorant section of the grocery store, trying to find the most “feminine”-scented anti-freeze available or, even, d) going “au naturale”, and thus, probably spending the rest of my life alone. What would you choose?
So I went back to smelling like Old Spice for a while. That is, until I found and developed this recipe for homemade deodorant. This recipe is so simple, so easy and so cheap to make that it irks me to the bone that making deodorant at home isn’t common practice. Our consumer-driven society dis-empowers us to the point where we can’t even take care of ourselves. We are forced to either apply toxic substances to our bodies or cough up huge amounts of cash for inferior “natural” products full of natural substitutes for the very chemicals we’re so certain are necessary. Can’t we do anything ourselves anymore? We had over our cash and our bodies so willingly we – alright, enough political banter; it’s time to take action!
Allow me to be the bearer of excellent news: you can create natural deodorant that smells great, contains no harmful chemicals and is made of only 3 ingredients, all of which can be found in your kitchen. You can even eat this deodorant, if you were so inclined. And it takes about 1 minute to make. Not kidding. Oh, and it works really well, too!
DIY Natural Edible Deodorant
You need:
A small mason jar or glass container (using an empty soap container or recycled cream jar works well too)
2 tbs baking soda
2 tbs arrowroot (or cornstarch)
2 tbs coconut oil
*This recipe makes about enough for one person to last them quite a while (about as long as a regular stick of deodorant would last you). If you are making multiple amounts of deodorant, you know, to share the lymph node-love and gift to all your family and friends, simply add more of all the base ingredients in a 1:1:1 ratio.
Optional:
A few drops (~10) of your favourite essential oil
1-2 probiotic capsules
Directions:
Soften coconut oil by putting it in the microwave for 10-20 seconds. Mix in the baking soda and arrowroot. Mix the three ingredients thoroughly and then scoop into the container of your choice.
Optional: Add in your essential oils. I used a little bit of vanilla extract, but I found that the coconut oil gives the recipe a delicious coconut scent already. For your male or sweat-prone loved ones, I would recommend adding in an antibacterial essential oil, such as peppermint, tea tree, sage, etc. You can also break open a capsule of a probiotic (1-2 capsules per batch of deo) to add in for extra bacteria-regulating power. Also, some people are sensitive to the baking soda. If so, just decrease the amount of baking soda and increase the arrowroot. Problem solved.
Allow the mixture to cool at room temperature. This takes about a day. If you’re in a rush you can just stick it in the fridge.
There. That’s it. To use, I just scrape a pea-sized amount with my fingers and apply it directly to my underarms. No itching, no lymph node clogging, no weird chemical-man scent, no anti-freeze. Just soft, healthy underarms that smell like coconut.
It should be enough to put Speedstick out of business.
You might also like:
DIY Natural Dry Shampoo
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 7, 2013 | Community, Health, Holidays, Writing, Year in Review
Happy New Year, everyone! I took a much needed computer fast for a few days and thus left this blog for a little while, but I’m back now. The world didn’t end in 2012, and it was an interesting, productive year. Here are some highlights!
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