NatureWomen's Blog

Why Use Natural Skin Care Products?

naturewomen — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:24:24 +0000

The belief that our skin protected us from potentially harmful chemicals has long gone with evidence that it is more like a sponge. It absorbs up to 60% of what we put on it. Hence, the growing awareness of the importance of using natural skin care products.

There are many chemicals in our day to day personal care products that have proven to be harmful. Sodium lauryl sulphate (sodium laureth sulphate or SLS) is a cheap ingredient that is easily formulated and provides our products with plenty of bubbles. You’ll often find SLS in shampoos and body washes. It is an abrasive ingredient that causes many hair, scalp, skin and eye problems. When used in toothpaste, it can weaken your teeth.

Although the levels of toxic chemicals in some skin care products may be very small, repeated use and exposure to them may cause long term effects on your health.

There are many natural skin care products on the market today, but BEWARE, a lack of regulations has allowed products to state that they are organic or natural, but still have toxic chemicals in them. A basic rule to finding pure natural skin care products is to look for ingredients with names that you can pronounce and read without the need of a science degree.

Here are my favourite natural skin care sites:

Natural Skin Care Australia

Natural Skin Care USA

Beetroot Leaf Recipe

naturewomen — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:00:19 +0000

Beetroot is such an easy vegetable to grow and has apparently been given the status as a new superfood. Now don’t go throwing out the leaves…they’re just as edible as the root and can be cooked just like spinach or silverbeet. Baby leaves can be eaten raw in salads. Anyway, here’s my favourite recipe with beetroot leaves.

It’s a cheat’s version of Samoan Palasami which is usually made with taro leaves. Of course it’s not a good as the real deal, but it’s a quick and easy alternative.

Ingredients:

A big bunch of beetroot leaves (it also works with spinach or silverbeet)
1 can of coconut cream
1 sliced onion
Salt and pepper

Method:

Add them altogether in a pot, bring to the boil then turn down and simmer untill the leaves and onion are cooked through.

How easy is that! It makes a great side dish. Enjoy.

Genetically Modified Food Revealed

naturewomen — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:31:32 +0000

I never really understood what the hype was about genetically modified food until I read an article by Dr Stan M. Gardner about genetically modified food. I understood that it was used to boost higher yields and to help crops resist diseases etc, which sounds like a good thing. And I understood that the crop’s DNA was modified to do this, but I didn’t understand what the implications of modifying DNA could do. The reason being: Apparently a lot of studies that prove that genetically modified foods are unsafe have been suppressed. Read the article below for details.

In Dr Gardners 20 years of medical practise he has observed an increasing number of people becoming allergic to foods such as wheat, milk, eggs and a number of others. He puts it down to people being exposed to genetically modified food or the toxic residues that reside in the food. For example, chickens are feed GM wheat which affects their eggs; cows may be injected with GM antibiotics and fed GM food which affects milk.

This makes sense to me. I’ve heard of quite a few kids that have to carry around EpiPens these days because of severe allergies. This was never heard of back when I was at school (20-30years ago)

Here’s the article which is worth a read http://www.meridianmagazine.com/healthyoutlook/090901evil.html