beauty

Our energy is balanced between dynamic, outpouring energy—which is exciting, creative, fun and challenging—and inner, moving energy, which is receptive. It’s a kind of quiet expectance that allows the universe to give you the gifts that it has to give. And of course, we can’t receive those gifts unless we know how to move from the dynamic state into the real receptive one. One of the things that’s important in helping us learn to do this—and almost everybody I know needs to learn to do it in our hectic, overstressed, dynamic world—is using water. Water itself is a powerful energy balancer. For instance, when you apply hot and cold water alternately to the surface of your skin, this stimulates circulation through the cardiovascular system, and it also spurs really good lymphatic drainage. From an electromagnetic point of view, by stimulating these systems you are increasing electricity at the heart of your cells, heightening your body's ability to produce energy at a cellular level and to produce vitality in your life. Hydrotherapy works in other ways too. Like a really good way of eating, high in fresh green vegetables and low or no processed and convenience foods, water helps detoxify acid wastes which are interfering with normal energetic processes. An excellent technique that works fantastically well is Epsom salts baths. They are magical in the way they can help you to balance your energies, not only on a physical level, but emotionally. Epsom salts are magnesium sulphate. Both magnesium and sulphate molecules have an ability to leach excess sodium, phosphorous and nitrogenous wastes from the body. By reducing toxicity, your body's energy becomes freed up for more efficient use. Magnesium and sulphur are also some of the most alkalinizing earth minerals. In practical terms, what this means is that they have the ability to create more physical space between the atoms and the molecules of your body. The greater the acidity in the body, and the more compressed the molecular space becomes, the greater the physical and emotional pressure you feel. When you get into an Epsom salts bath, the magnesium sulphate disturbs the pressure in your body, dispersing it and helping to restore balance. Magnesium sulphate dissolved in a body of water creates an electrical unified field. When you put your body into this field, it removes any excess electrical discharge from one area of the body and sends it to areas which are undercharged, creating a magnetic balance. There is nothing quite as good as an Epsom salts bath when you have been on a long flight or if you are suffering from jetlag, emotional tension, great fatigue or upset. Here’s How [video src=http://d1vg7rm5xhtxe9.cloudfront.net/video/sd/epsom-salts.mp4 poster=http://d3oy45cyct8ffi.cloudfront.net/health/video/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/08/epsom-salts-baths.jpg ] Take two cups of industrial grade Epsom salts. These are available from the chemist and sometimes from supermarkets. Pour it into a bath with a tiny, tiny bit of household bleach—the bleach is optional, but strangely enough it is another helper which, in minute quantities (and I’m talking less than a teaspoonful in a whole bath) ionizes wastes that are stored in the body. Fill the bath with tepid water, just above body temperature. Then immerse yourself in it for at least 20 minutes. If you begin to feel cool, add some more hot water. If you feel too warm, add a little bit of cold water, so that you are able to sustain being in this bath in a very relaxed state for 20 to 30 minutes. Get out of the bath, wrap yourself in a towel and rub yourself vigorously. This is lovely last thing at night and brings blissful sleep. You can also take an Epsom salts bath during the day, or before going out for the evening after a stressful day. When you get out of the bath, wrap yourself up in a towel and lie down for 10 minutes then get up, get dressed and go about whatever you are intending to do.

Cellulite makes everybody uneasy - from the woman who worries about her orange peel thighs to the British or American 'obesity expert' intent on proving that fat is fat, cellulite is nothing more than a figment of foolish women's imagination, and what any woman with lumpy thighs should do is get down to a good old calorie-controlled diet to shed it. Even staunch feminists who write hard-hitting polemics about the coercion of women by the beauty industry get het up about cellulite. It is, they insist, something invented by fashion magazines to make women feel bad about themselves. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of women with the problem bemoan their fate at having contracted a "nonexistent" condition and hope that if only they spend a little more money or endure a little more discomfort from one of the high-tech treatments - being pricked with multi-injector syringes or subjected to brutal pummeling for instance - it will make her legs smooth, sleek and svelte. banishing disbelief I've seen medical papers from all over Europe and America on cellulite, its cause and its development as well as proposed solutions to this lumpy bumpy flesh which can mar the thighs of even the leanest women. As of this moment literally hundreds of medical references to cellulite exist, some of them going back a hundred and fifty years. Next time someone tries to tell you you are imagining pea d'orange thighs smile knowingly and ignore them. None of the theories, analyses and descriptions of elaborate chemical treatments for cellulite have the full answer. In part this is because cellulite is a difficult condition to study in vivo - within the body of a woman who has it - since this means performing a biopsy of the tissue which is a painful medical process. In part it is because cellulite is a many-facetted syndrome with no single cause and no single effective treatment.

You know the old saying: “Good things come in small packages.” Well, it’s true. Flower essences are sold in little dark-glass dropper bottles. Open one. You’ll discover that, unlike herbal tinctures or essential oils, the liquid inside—from a chemical point of view—is nothing more than water mixed with a little alcohol. This is the medium in which the vibrational energy of a flower (or a gem) has been preserved. You see, the healing power of a vibrational essence depends not on its chemical constituents, but on the frequencies and energies it carries—the spirit or soul energy of the flowers or gems themselves. ENERGETIC FIELDS Where herbs and essential oils bring about direct biochemical and physiological changes, vibrational essences—rather like homeopathic remedies—influence the body via its energetic fields and electrical pathways. So do acupuncture, pulsed electromagnetic treatments, prayer and the laying on of hands. They can all transmit vibrational life-force energy. Dyed-in-the-wool materialists, still totally unaware of fifth entity physics, are surprised by how profoundly healing such energy treatments can be. Provided the vibrational essence chosen is an appropriate one, its health-enhancing effects are deep and long lasting—sometimes even permanent. Let’s examine flower essences carefully. They are made from living blossoms, harvested at the peak of their vibrational power. They influence our emotional and mental states by changing our body’s own vibrational state as well as altering our consciousness. These changes then filter down to a physical level, where they can do many things: energize, stop erratic eating patterns, clear chronic fear and anxiety and increase self-confidence, to name only a few. They can even—to me most interesting of all—help us align our outer lives and the way we choose live them with the nature of our unique innate essential being. When this happens, not only do we experience natural joy and creativity, we experience a sense of expanding freedom. We find it easier to live life by our own rules. We gain access to our unique authentic power. This helps us become aware of what we feel most passionate about, and empowers us to live an authentic life. VIBRATIONS AND WHOLENESS Flower essence healing is only one aspect of what is now known as vibrational medicine—a form of treatment about which have been hearing more and more as the century 21st century develops. British physician Peter Mansfield, one of its pioneers, describes this rather well in his book Flower Remedies. “Vibrational healing,” Mansfield says, uses “the different energy patterns present in nature to modify the vibrations within living bodies, leading indirectly to changes on the physical plane. This encompasses on the one hand methods which use the vibrations directly—light, sound, magnetism etc.—and on the other, methods which involve the preparation of essences from the source of the vibration, which can be absorbed into the body.” PROOF OF THE PUDDING Psychologists and doctors examining the effects of carefully chosen flower essences report that they are completely safe. They can be remarkably effective in helping patients deal with simple troubles—like insomnia, low energy, and fear of flying—as well as deeper issues. Dr Jeffrey Cram at the Sierra Health Institute in California gave subjects either a flower essence or a placebo and then exposed them to stress-inducing fluorescent lighting for long periods. He found, that unlike the placebo which had little effect, flower essences significantly reduced the muscle tension and erratic brainwave activity associated with stress. Meanwhile, Italian medical researchers who tested the effects of flower essences on patients suffering from depression and anxiety found that a surprising 89 out of 115 anxious, depressed and stressed patients who took part in the experiment were greatly helped by flower essence treatments. MAKE IT SIMPLE One of the best practical descriptions I have come across of how flower essences work, comes from the highly respected American researcher, and flower essences creator, Patricia Kaminski. “Just think about a hologram,” she says. “Each separate part of a holographic picture contains images of the whole. This is how it can be used to recreate a three-dimensional image. So it is with a flower essence. One drop of a flower essence holds within it all the energy characteristics of the flower it was made from.” An essence carries the spirit or soul of the flower in its energetic architecture. It communicates this healing blue-print at a very deep level to the energy fields of a human being using it. VISIONARY DOCTOR The first flower essences were created in the 1920s by a highly respected British immunologist and bacteriologist. Dr Edward Bach had become dissatisfied with the way orthodox medicine so often seemed unable to help patients suffering from both chronic and acute illness. Studying the work of the father of homeopathy, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, Bach discovered that many of his own beliefs about the nature of healing echoed Hahnemann’s findings. Like Hahnemann, Bach insisted that it works best to treat the patient, not the disease. Early in his career, Bach prepared bacterial vaccines then administered them to people homeopathically. The results of his work were widely acclaimed by his peers. They carved out a place of high esteem for him in the medical world. The vaccines he made were widely used—some still are. But Bach was not satisfied. He knew in his heart that there is more to healing than treating symptoms. He was convinced that the most effective healing can only take place at the very deepest levels. Bach knew that mental states like anxiety, worry, unhappiness and fear not only undermine vitality, they compromise the immune system, making us highly susceptible to illness and degeneration. He reasoned that, if he could find methods for clearing such negative states, this might well be a key to preventing and curing both acute and chronic illnesses. No matter what symptoms it presents, Bach insisted that any illness is the result of disharmony deep within. RESTORING HARMONY In 1928, Bach began to explore the possibility that the energy of flowers could do this for human beings. He chose to turn his back on a successful career in London and retreat into the wilderness of Wales in search of ways to help suffering people. Bach fasted, he walked in the hills, he opened his mind and his heart to nature, calling out for her help. His intuitive gifts were greatly expanded by the way he was living and eating and by his having abandoned a sophisticated industrial world for raw simplicity. As he came face to face with one herb and flower after another, he became aware of the vast life-force each carried. He also noticed that the healing energies which each held intensified greatly at just the moment when these plants blossomed. Over the next seven years, he worked with these plants in search of a way of collecting their life-healing energies. Gradually, he was able to identify the unique characteristics of each and to understand the kind of disharmony which they help clear. He formulated a group of 12 now-famous flower remedies known as ‘Twelve Healers’. Later he went on to expand them until finally he ended up with a group of thirty-eight flower essences. They are still today known as the Bach Flower Remedies. HEALING FOR THE MASSES So impressed was Bach by the results he got using these flower essences that he decided to leave behind forever his successful orthodox medical practice to devote himself full-time to their development, as well as to teaching people how to use them. Bach had observed that people were becoming more and more divorced from nature—and therefore from their own essential soul nature as well. He believed that in an industrialized world, flower essences are an effective way to counter the destructive processes that resulted from “desensitization” of people which he saw happening all around him. This was a process which he became certain was central to the development of disease. His flower remedies helped re-establish bonds not only between people and nature, but between a human being’s outer personality and his intrinsic soul nature—his innate essence. Before long, Bach’s beliefs would lead him into serious conflict with the medical establishment—especially his insistence that flower remedies should be available to everyone, not just to trained medical practitioners. LIVE YOUR TRUTH The Bach philosophy is simple. It says that each of us has incarnated on the earth to live out a unique divine purpose—our soul’s destiny, if you like. When we are diverted from doing so, either by our own resistance or by learned thought patterns, trauma, emotional repression, inner conflict, or the influence of others, then our personality is not able to become a free expression of our unique soul energy and we get sick. We become anxious, fearful, irritable and angry, thereby lowering our resistance to disease. In time, depending on our genetically inherited weaknesses, we often end up in pain, ill, and degenerating rapidly. Illness, Bach insisted, has its purposes. It is there to warn us when we are going in the wrong direction—to help make us aware of what needs to be honored in our lives that we may not yet be honoring. To be healed, a harmony between our outer life and our inner purpose needs to be re-established. Flower therapy is a powerful way of doing this. Not only does it release stress and trauma. It can help clear repression of our innate life energy and creativity. Most important of all, it can help us realign ourselves with our essential being as well as with nature herself. When this happens, much illness is healed and many degenerative processes are reversed. FOUR-FOLD WAY To Bach, health is not the absence of illness so much as it is an ability to identify its messages and act on them. This does not mean that we should blame ourselves if we become ill. Doing so would only result in further emotional repression. Instead we need to become aware of whatever emotional discord hides beneath a persistent cold or stomach upset and then be prepared to address it and finally let it go. To Bach, healing is a four-fold process. It asks that we: Recognize that we can overcome all difficulties Realize that illness is an expression of disharmony between our outer life or our personality and our soul Discover the cause of this disharmony Clear the cause of disharmony and strengthen the areas in our lives where the expression of our soul nature has been weak. ALCHEMY OF FLOWERS Bach’s explorations into the healing power of flowers, like the work of Kaminski and other flower essence developers, harks back to the ancient art of the alchemists. According to alchemy, when the four elements—earth, air, fire and water—come together in balance then a fifth substance, a quintessence, is created. This quintessence in turn becomes the healing force for body and soul. Bach collected the dew that gathered on plants in the early morning. This dew, he believed, contained the quintessence he had been looking for. It was a perfect fusion of the four elements. In these sparkling drops, he identified the earth that feeds the plant, the natural air in which it grows, the water element in the dew, and fire from the energy of the sun—on which all life depends for its existence. In his healing work, Bach relied strongly on his intuition when figuring out how to work with these elements in relation to extracting the essential healing body of each flower. For days before he investigated the healing potential of a flower, he would himself welcome into his body the physical and mental symptoms of the condition he was seeking to make a remedy for. Then searching for the right plant, he would place a petal or flower in the palm of his hand or on his tongue, register its effects on mind and his body, and record his findings. Gradually he developed a method for transferring a plant’s healing energy to spring water rather than continuing to collect morning dew. It is simple: You can easily learn to do it yourself. To identify the emotional states that each flower essence helps clear, Bach relied on intuition, as has every natural healer, wise woman and mystic throughout the ages. But being a fine scientist, he also “proved” or tested them out on one person after another until he became clear about their actions and confident of their effectiveness. The best of the flower essences prepared today are made in very much the same way—inspired by intuition, observation, conjecture, folklore, herbal tradition, sometimes even shamanic journeying, where the person expands their consciousness to connect with the spirit of the flower and learn from it. Then, once made, each flower essence is rigorously tested on volunteers and colleagues, the sick and the well, and information about its effects is recorded. DEEPEST HEALING Flower essences have been in existence for almost a century now—ever since the visionary Doctor Bach wandered in the Welsh hills in search of a new way to heal the fundamental underlying cause of all illness—classic splits we all have to deal with sooner or later, between soul purpose and the outer life; between mind and body; between emotions and enforced behavior. It’s at this deepest level of human life that flower essences work their finest magic. They bring greater integration and access to authentic power. They can help us shrug off much of the polluting physical, mental and emotional rubbish that prevents each of us from living out the essential beauty and creativity of our true nature. Bach himself knew that once we heal these splits within, the body’s innate tendency to restore harmony will encourage healing to take place on a physical level as well. That is just how flower essences work. They are gentle yet powerful catalysts. They can not only be used to shift emotional or spiritual patterns which we get stuck in. They can also help us remember at the most fundamental spiritual level who we are, then teach us to allow our unique inner radiance to shine forth. Next week we’ll explore how to connect with the essence of flowers yourself, how to make your own flower essences—it’s simple to do—and all the wonderful ways to make use of them enhancing your wellbeing and enriching your life. See you then...

Your skin doesn’t age by accident or just because time passes. It loses tone and texture when the order, energy, physiological and biological integrity of your body’s living matrix becomes undermined. Many factors can cause this to happen. But none is more insidious or sinister than chronic high levels of blood sugar and insulin which now threaten the majority of the population of the developed world. Stop this from happening to your own body, and you can not only slow skin aging. You can reverse its signs. You will also help yourself avoid degenerative illnesses and prevent weight gain. WHISPERS FROM THE DEAD Sugar destroys your skin. And I don’t just mean the white stuff that sits in bowls. Most of the foods we eat these days—from pasta and bread to packaged cereals and bagels—within a few minutes of entering the body flood the bloodstream with glucose. The reasons for this are simple and genetic. Yet for almost four generations, they have continued to elude most scientists, nutritionists, government bodies such as the FDA, and doctors. Grain-based foods and sugary foods are a recent invention. For over a million years of evolution, the human body never encountered them. Because genetic adaptation is a slow process—it can take one hundred thousand years for a significant alteration in even one gene to take place—our bodies do not have the ability to deal with sugars and starches in quantity for long periods. Yet such foods form the majority of stuff that people buy and eat. Our packaged convenience foods are based on them. Most are also riddled with junk fats and chemicals. These days, even smoked salmon and luncheon meats have sugars added to them. These manufactured products make up the largest portion of most people’s diets. When the body is forced to handle them (and most governments are still trying to sell us the false notion that a high-carb diet is good for health), it rebels. What form this insurrection takes depends on our genetic vulnerabilities. For some, it can show up as adult onset Type II diabetes. Others get fat and experience energy swings, high blood pressure, distorted cholesterol issues, and/or chronic fatigue. When it comes to skin, these carbs and sugar itself fabricate wrinkles, sags, puffy faces and lackluster complexions. This produces a situation where, even when you know all of this, you can find yourself with so little energy that you wonder if you are able to do anything about it. THE WRINKLE MONSTER When it comes to carbs and sugars, the wrinkle monster is two faced. To escape his insidious attacks, you need to understand and conquer both. First there is the all-encompassing glucose-insulin battle you need to win, probably after years of living and eating the way that, for the past 60 years, we have been urged to do by the powers-that-be. The monster’s second face focuses on the way excess glucose damages the body’s proteins. It attacks skin cells and collagen fibers leading to what are known as advanced glycosylation end products or AGEs. These nasties act like terrorists, wreaking havoc within your living matrix. AGEs cause the skin’s collagen proteins to cross-link, producing wrinkles, sags and bags on your face. Defeat the first face of the wrinkle monster and the second loses a lot of its power. Your skin will respond by literally rejuvenating itself. So will your whole body, and in medically measurable ways too. ALL POWERFUL HORMONE Insulin is the most important hormone in determining how quickly or slowly your body ages. This was one of the most important discoveries made during the past half-century. It began with the work of a brilliant American endocrinologist named Gerald Reaven. In the 1980s, Reaven identified a collection of abnormalities—high blood pressure, distorted cholesterol levels, and others which physicians commonly worry about, as they are viewed as biomarkers of illness and aging. These abnormalities, which generally occur together, have now reached epidemic proportions. They are major triggers in the development of degenerative diseases from heart disease and diabetes to including the dreaded skin-wrinkling and rapid aging. Professor Reaven named this collection of abnormalities Syndrome X—insulin resistance syndrome—which is now more widely known as Metabolic Syndrome. Although this condition often remains hidden to the person who falls prey to it, Metabolic Syndrome is a life-threatening, rapidly aging, perversion of body metabolism which we bring on ourselves—in small part by a sedentary lifestyle, but, most important of all, by having lived for decades on a carbohydrate and sugar-intensive diet. What is scary is that 95 percent of the population of English speaking countries still do. WORTHY OPPONENTS In your body, insulin and sugar are antagonists. In other words, they are meant to balance each other metabolically. All carbohydrate foods—from muffins to breads, cereals and packaged convenience foods—turn into glucose when you eat them. Insulin has two jobs to perform: First, when glucose from these foods enters the bloodstream, it is supposed to control blood sugar levels. Second, it is meant to see that glucose gets turned into the energy your body needs for health. In a healthy body, where blood sugar is balanced and in control, you have a good supply of ongoing energy. You don’t suffer from energy or mood swings during the day or at certain times of the month. It is insulin secreted from the pancreas which manages this. It responds to the level of glucose present in the blood from moment to moment. The more glucose there is, the more insulin it secretes to balance it. The less glucose present, the less insulin gets shunted into your blood. MASTER OF ENERGY Insulin’s second job is equally important. It has to do with getting all this circulating sugar into your body’s cells, where little energy factories there known as mitochondria can turn it into ATP—the currency your body uses to run metabolic processes, to make hormones, to repair damage to DNA and keep the body functioning well. The way it does this is interesting. On the surface of each cell there are receptor sites specifically for insulin. They are like locks that only the “key”, namely insulin, can open, so that this important pancreatic hormone can carry out its second major task: Escorting glucose inside the cell so its mitochondria can get on with their energy-producing. It’s a great system. But it was never designed to handle the onslaught of carbs and sugar which, for three or four generations, we’ve been forcing it to handle. After years of breakfast cereals and toast, sugary sweets and treats, the pancreas is forced to produce so much insulin in an attempt to limit high levels of sugar in the blood that it becomes trigger-happy. Day after day, month after month, it secretes so much of the hormone. This continually forces blood sugar to drop too low, which causes those awful 11 AM and 3 PM blues. We get hungry, eat more carbs—trying to get back our energy—and wonder why we suffer. The pancreas can also grow weary of the task after a while and give out. HERE’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE When high levels of unused glucose circulate in your body, they seriously disrupt the functions of the living matrix and cause rapid aging of skin and the whole body. For when glucose cannot be turned into energy in your body, it poisons it. Habitual eating of high-carb meals and snacks shunts massive doses of glucose into your bloodstream. In an effort to maintain balance, the pancreas produces more insulin, keeping insulin levels too high for too long. This creates insulin resistance, interfering with your body’s ability to turn glucose into energy. You feel fatigued, may gain weight easily, become prone to cellulite and develop the medical abnormalities associated with Metabolic Syndrome. This also stimulates your liver to produce more triglycerides and pour them into your bloodstream. All this can produce mood swings and hormonal distortions. This distorts cholesterol levels and balance, increasing your risk of heart disease. It also bombards fat cells with extra calories they need to find a place for. If you are genetically prone to weight gain, you not only grow fat. You find it more and more difficult to shed weight. This in turn creates yet more insulin resistance, and can even start destroying the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas. The energy, chemistry and physiology of the living matrix become disrupted. Cells no longer receive clear communications in this polluted medium. They become unable to effectively do the jobs they are meant to do. Skin shows the effects of all of this. It loses radiance, thins, sags, wrinkles and ages rapidly. Blotches appear. Spots, too, if you are genetically prone to them. You start to look tired, old beyond your years and, before long, you start to feel as bad as you look. Sorry for this long list of bad news. But it is important that you get a handle on how all this happens. The good news is you can actually reverse all of this by altering the kinds of foods you eat. DO WE NEED CARBS? A diet high in cereals, grains and sugars (the diet of 90% of the Western world) is the fastest way to ruin skin, get ill, age rapidly and get fat. Grains and sugars can undermine your immune system and make you susceptible not just to colds, but to degenerative diseases such as diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and coronary heart disease. Now, this is revolutionary stuff—as yet it’s known only to an elite few. On learning all of the above, the question most often asked is this: “Is a diet that is mostly or completely lacking in cereal-based, grain-based, sugar-based carbohydrates a healthy way of eating?” It’s little wonder that most of us don’t know this. For more than half a century, we’ve been told that we need lots of carbs for health and energy. WE DO NOT! Eating a diet that is low in convenience foods and grain-based, sugar-based, cereal-based carbohydrates but rich in low-sugar fruits and green vegetables, plus good quality proteins and good fats—coconut oil, butter from grass-fed cows and extra-virgin olive oil—ensures that you are never going to have a shortage of fuel for your body, nervous system or brain. You will not have to wrestle with insulin resistance, food cravings, blood-sugar-related health problems, weight gain or a poorly functioning immune system. What such a way of eating can do to regenerate and rejuvenate skin and slow skin wrinkling, sagging and spotting is little short of fabulous—no matter what your age.

Make up is the icing on the cake. Wear it if you love it. Play with it to discover new ways of expressing the many faces of you. When you don't feel into it, let your face go naked. That, too, is a path to freedom... the colors The idea that makeup color - say an eye shadow - is only to be used on the eyes, or a blusher only on cheeks, is absurd. Color is color, and it doesn't matter what you call a product provided it serves the purposes you want it to. The colors that you use on your face should all give support to each other, so they work together to create an overall effect that is pleasing. the whole process of making up may sound complicated, but with practice it should take very little time - no more than ten minutes from start to finish There are two basic possibilities: warm color schemes and cool ones. The effect of a warm color scheme on the face - which includes the earth colors such as browns, greens, beiges, golds, yellows, apricots, coppers, oranges, and peaches - is to enliven it, making your face look healthier and stronger and more glowing. Warm colors look wonderful on older women, too, because they accentuate youth. This is why some of the best foundations and powders now contain yellow pigments. A little peach or apricot blusher can make almost any face look younger, whereas bluish-pink blusher applied to a face over forty can age it drastically. The cool colors - the blues, purples, pale ivories, silvers, fuchsias, berries, magenta, blue-pinks, and whites give a look of delicate vulnerability to a face, especially when they are applied, as they should be, over a very pale foundation. But to wear them you have to have perfect skin and you have to be young; otherwise they can make you look tired, older, and even unwell. the moisturiser Every good makeup begins with a fine moisturizer complete with sunscreen lavishly applied over clean skin and then given a chance to settle in. You need to wait for your skin to take to the moisturizer before you put on your foundation, otherwise you will end up with a flawed finish and your makeup will not last. `Taking' time is usually between two to five minutes. In addition to the ordinary moisturizers, there are also tinted ones on the market. These products are halfway between moisturizers and foundations. They impart some color and also provide you with some measure of protection from water loss. They give a very light cover but can be a nice way of simply adding a healthy glow to your skin. Some of them also contain sunscreens. When choosing a tinted moisturizer, look for one that is not too far away from your own skin tone or you will find it doesn't blend in and cover well. A green moisturizer will soften a florid skin, toning it down and making it look more neutral. Green will also help conceal red blotches and spots on your skin. A mauve-colored moisturizer can improve a dull complexion and brighten the face of someone who is too pale. An apricot-colored corrective should be used only by the very few women who are really sallow. When you use a corrective, put it on with a sponge that has been dampened and then had all the excess water removed from it by wiping it against a towel. Among the tinted moisturizers are the `color correctives' - products tinted a specific hue in order to change the look of your own, natural coloring. They are worn under your ordinary foundation. the foundation Once your moisturizer has set, you are ready for the foundation. But why all over? Instead you can wear it only on parts of your face such as around the eyes where it gives a good base for eye shadows, on your chin,and on your cheeks. The advantage to this is that you still get the wonderful, delicate shading of natural skin, rather than that all-over deadness that can come from covering your whole face with one opaque color. Or you can wear two shades of foundation: a lighter one in the center of your face (on the nose, forehead, cheeks, and chin) and the slightly darker one of the same tone around the outside (near the hairline and along the jawline). This has the effect of preserving a natural-looking gradation of color and still lending the finished look of a well-made-up face. A foundation is not meant to give strong color to a face. It is supposed to be flat and neutral. About 80 per cent of Caucasian skin should wear one foundation color: a flat, true beige with neither pink nor peach overtones to it. It will look good on all ages of `northern European' skin, because it gives a neutral canvas on which to put your eye and lip colors. If your skin is olive or yellowish or very dark, then choose a foundation as close to its natural color as possible but slightly flatter. When testing out color, put it on your naked face and then again go out into the daylight to look at the results before buying anything. The kind of foundation you choose depends on what kind of skin you have, as well as on personal preference. Dry skin does best with a cream or oil-based liquid foundation. Aging skin needs the finest of liquid foundation. Anything heavily oily collects in the lines and makes you look haggard. Oily skin demands a water-based liquid or cream or a cake or block-type makeup. Put a little foundation in the palm of your hand and then dip the sponge into it and apply it to your face, brushing it lightly over your skin again and again until everything is well blended into your skin. the concealer Now is the time to deal with any problems you want to conceal, such as black circles under your eyes, or discolorations here and there. Concealer creams and sticks are good here, although some of them are greasy and, particularly under the eyes, tend to sink into tiny lines and make matters worse. Put your concealer on with a flat wedge-shaped brush and smooth into the skin until it blends perfectly with the surrounding areas. If you add a little powder here you will get just the finish you need to make the undesirable area fade into the surrounding skin tones. the magic of light and shade The secret of making light and shade work for you is simply to apply both sparingly and only where it matters to your face, and always to blend well into the surrounding area. Whatever part of your face you want to bring out or emphasize, you apply a light color to, and whatever part you want to minimize, you cover with a darker shade. Here are some of the things you can do with shading: To minimize a jaw that is too large or too square, apply darker shade along the jawline, blending it under the jaw and fading into nothing at the sides of the face. To shorten a pointed chin, apply shader to chin only, blending underneath into the neck and fading to nothing at the sides. To fade a double chin, put shader on the double chin and blend it skilfully. This will make it recede into the background and look less prominent. To give more interesting shape to a square face apply shader in the temple area and all around the jawline, carefully blending. To minimize a nose that is too large, apply shader in a single stripe down the centre of the nose, carefully blending into the color at the sides so that no definite line appears. To slim a broad nose apply a shader - preferably a slightly darker foundation or cream - in a stripe down each side of the nose and blend it carefully into the skin to make the nose look narrower. For most women, one of their best features is the eyes. Perhaps this is because eyes reveal so much of what goes on inside. Makeup for eyes should emphasize this and show off the eyes' beauty and color. There are lots of ways to use eye makeup to improve eyes, but all of them begin with the same principles. Use neutral tones such as slabby browns (without red tones in them), flat greys, and greyed greens, or even terracotta, for establishing the shape of the eyes (the darker shades to define the sockets and the lighter beiges or yellow, peach or apricot, or pink, on the lids and under the brows). All eye shadows are best applied to skin that has a foundation on it even if you don't put foundation on the rest of your face, and powder shadows hold best over a light skimming of translucent powder too. All eye shadows are best applied with a brush, whether they are liquid, cream, or powder. You will get a better, longer-lasting finish from them this way. the eyelids Apply the lighter shade of colored shadow you have chosen to the section of the lid nearest the lashes, and then brush it out, fading it away to nothing towards the eyebrows. Now you can have the darker shadow in the socket to define the shape. Remember that colors on the outer edges of your eyes will tend to widen the look of your face and open your gaze. Finally put on your eyeliner. A good way of emphasizing eye shape without looking too obviously made-up is to use a pencil in the same tone you are using for your eye shadow, dotting it all along the upper lashes and then just under the lower ones so the two lines meet at the outer corners and form a little triangle. This kind of liner looks good when it is gently smeared with a brush or fingertip to blend it into the surrounding area and keep it from looking hard. You can also use another color line drawn on the inside of the lower lid if you like. The other way of applying eyeliner is with a brush, in which case you use liquid or cake liner and get a more definite line. It is drawn just above the roots of the upper lashes and just below the roots of the lower ones, again meeting at the corner. Many women use black eyeliner, but usually a gentle grey or slate or muted brown is better. the mascara Mascara makes eyes look more glamorous. It seems to create an aura of mystery about the eyes when lashes are darkened and thickened. Unless you are planning to walk in the rain or to go swimming with your makeup on, you are better off using a mascara that is not waterproof. eyebrow sculpture Before you begin, brush them first one way and then the other to remove any loose hairs or makeup, and clean the skin around the eyes thoroughly. Now put moisturizer in the area, before you reach for the tweezers. Brush your brows into shape and take a good look at them. Start by removing stray hairs between the brows and the stragglers but never pluck from above the eyebrow. And always remove only one hair at a time, pulling it in the direction in which it grows. When you have finished with one brow, apply antiseptic or a simple toner to it before going on to the next one. This will help soothe the irritated skin. Don't try to apply makeup for an hour after plucking. the lips Most women tend to pick lipsticks that are too bright or too pink to flatter their coloring. There is certainly a place for fire-engine reds and vivid fuchsias, but for everyday wear you are probably better off with a muted brownish pink or a softened melon or salmon. Shop around until you find four or five lipsticks in differing tones that look good on you. Frosted lipsticks are for the very young. Older women are usually better off with cream lipsticks, since frosting shows up wrinkles on the lips and the see-through ones don't give enough definition. When applying lipstick, use a pencil or a lipbrush to outline your mouth first, so you get a good, sharply defined edge. Then apply your lipstick and blot it and apply again if you want it to stay. Alternatively use a pencil all over the mouth as well as for outline and then apply a clear gloss. It looks fresh and simple and the color tends to last. the cheeks The best colors for everyday wear for most women are terracotta, apricot-brown or dusky peach, because they make the skin look particularly healthy. Used high on the cheekbones it accentuates a well-sculptured face. Used across the cheeks it gives a simple warm glow. the powder A little translucent powder that imparts no color but gives a smooth, matte finish can actually make a face look younger. It is also an interesting effect to powder only parts of your face, such as the sides below the cheekbones, the nose, and the forehead, and then leave a sheen on cheeks and chin. Always use a powder that gives no color, just a matte, smooth finish, and always brush away every speck of excess once you have applied it. the finishing touches Last of all, after you have applied your makeup completely, you need to set it with water. This step is very useful, for it will make a face last far longer than it otherwise would. Spray your face with spring water from an aerosol can or with a fine mist from a plant-misting bottle. Then blot gently once with a tissue.

Some of the simplest techniques for supporting your body’s elimination processes also happen to feel wonderful and can bring delicious relaxation in their wake. Your body is working hard to get rid of all that stored waste, so treat it gently and give it some attention. Your mind will benefit too. Your two day apple fast is a not to be passed-up opportunity for some bodily indulgence of the first order. Skin brushing is now frequently recommended by health practitioners and has a long history for health and healing in the annals of European natural treatments. It is a particularly helpful technique to use during a detox, and can do wonders for your skin used daily afterwards. Skin brushing acts both superficially to draw out wastes from the skin, and deeply by boosting lymphatic drainage (more of this later) and helping to break down congestion in areas where the lymph flow has become sluggish and toxins have collected. It improves the look of skin, helps eliminate cellulite, and tones the whole body. It is an extraordinarily gentle yet powerful technique, and it feels wonderful. Using a natural bristle brush, preferably one with vegetable bristles and a long handle (available from pharmacies, natural beauty shops and health-food stores), go over the surface of your body once with long sweeping motions. Brush across the tips of your shoulders and upper back, then down over the neck and shoulders and down the arms and over the hands – always working in a downwards direction and covering the surface of the skin once. Now brush down over the trunk and tummy and down the back until you’ve covered every inch of your upper body. Then, beginning at the feet, brush upwards in the same long sweeping motions up the legs, front and back, and up over the buttocks. Do this slowly and enjoy the feeling of having the skin of your whole body gently exfoliated. Always brush your skin with a dry brush and never brush your face. How much pressure you put behind the brush should depend on how strong your skin is, your age, and how much stimulation it is used to. Go easy to begin with. Your skin will soon become fitter and then you will be able to work far more vigorously. But you should never go too hard too quickly or you risk being counter productive and will miss out on the benefits of steadily increasing skin firmness and fitness. Skin brushing encourages better circulation, brings energy into ‘deadened’ areas of flesh, smooths and softens skin, and encourages better lymphatic drainage. You are also sloughing off dead skin cells with the brush, so encouraging new cells to come to the surface and make the skin of your whole body glow. detox test Being your body’s largest organ and one of the most important for elimination (almost a third of your body’s wastes can be eliminated through the skin), skin that is brushed regularly yields up the most amazing quantity of rubbish. You can check for yourself just how dramatic is the skin’s elimination of wastes by performing a practical experiment with the help of a flannel. Every day before your bath or shower, brush your skin all over for three to five minutes. Then take a damp flannel and rub it all over your freshly brushed body. Hang the flannel up and repeat the process with the same flannel the next day. After a few days, the smell of the flannel will be quite revolting thanks to the quantity of waste products that have come directly through the skin’s surface. Just think how much better off you are without them.

These days we treat aphrodisiacs as folk fantasy. Don’t be deceived. The biochemistry of certain plants like ginseng, dang quai, fennel and wild yam, as well as certain essential oils, are known to bring powerful sexual regeneration to the body and to intensify libido. It is your own individual response to specific herbs that is the key to aphrodisiacs. Loss of libido or impotence can have many different causes. So when turning to herbs for help in the sexual arena, you may need to experiment a bit to find which plants work best for you. But watch out. It is not only easy to create an experience of intense desire; it can be just as easy for a woman to end up fertilized by the results of it. Wings Of Desire Sexual impotence or a loss of ability to maintain a full erection affects most men at some time in their lives. It can be a result of feeling unwelcome, afraid of one’s own power, or experiencing a sense of inadequacy or depression in your life. Such things reflect themselves in the behavior of the body. With real awareness of how each partner feels and with patience and consideration, psychologically-caused impotence will often clear by itself. But many difficulties with maintaining erection are biochemical in nature. In men over the age of 35, it can happen during periods of prolonged stress, after illness, or simply as a result of having lived for too long on convenience foods, so that your body has become depleted in essential minerals, trace elements and vitamins—so that some of its metabolic processes no longer work properly. The first step is to detoxify your body by doing an herbal cleanse. Then change the way you live. Eliminate processed foods. Eat lots of fresh vegetables and clean sources of protein such as fish, organic meats and poultry as well as eggs, or only organic tofu made from soya beans that have not been genetically engineered. It is important, too, to throw out margarine and all highly processed oils. Replace them with extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil and good old butter from grass-fed cows. Include a teaspoon of top quality omega 3 fish oil each day. This is important. For, if you do not have a good supply of these essential fatty acids, you will not produce the hormones necessary for sexual potency. Male Potency There are a several useful plants for enhancing sexual energy and intensifying erection: Ginkgo biloba not only boosts the flow of blood to the brain and enhances memory; it can also increase circulation to the penis, potentizing iffy erections. The best way to take it for this purpose is in the form of a concentrated 24% standardized extract capsule, once or twice a day. Do not take more, since in large quantities, gingko can cause loose bowels, nervousness and irritability. One research project gave men 80 milligrams of such an extract three times a day, and got good results. It not only cleared impotence, it also lifted the depression which often accompanies it. You can also use a ginkgo tincture: 1 teaspoon in a little water twice a day. Fava beans—Vicia faba—can have an astounding effect on erection. The first written record of this food having sexual connotations came from ancient Rome, where Cicero used it to heighten his own passion. Fava is the best natural source of L-dopa. This chemical (which is also used to treat Parkinson’s disease) intensifies erections in some men. That is how fava got its reputation as an aphrodisiac. One way to use fava is to make soup from them. Siberian ginseng—Eleuthrococcus senticosus—is a natural MAO inhibitor. It helps lift depression and improves libido in both men and women. It also helps overcome long-term fatigue. You can take it as an extract daily. Its effects build slowly over weeks and months. This adaptogen is an excellent restorative for the whole body. Women In Love When libido flags in women there are many herbs that can help revive it. Wild Yam—Dioscorea villosa—restores libido so successfully in most women that I would not advise you to use it unless you have a sexual partner. You can take the tincture—½ -1 teaspoon in water twice a day—or as a dried herb in capsules, 4-6 capsules a day. I have known women to take 10 capsules a day, but less than this works very well for most. American Ginseng—Panax ginseng—is as good a raiser of libido in women as it is in men, despite the assumption that it is a male plant. It is particularly useful in post-menopausal women. Drink it as a tea three or four times a day. Fennel—Foeniculum vulgare—is replete with plant steroids. In animal experiments it raises the libido of both males and females. You can take it as a tea. Bruise a teaspoon of fennel seeds and pour 2 cups of boiling water over them. Steep for 5 minutes, strain and drink. Caution: Do not use fennel oil on your body when you are pregnant, as it can cause miscarriage. Other simple herbs which you can add to your foods that have a reputation for enhancing libido are parsley, fenugreek—great to sprout and eat in salads—ginger, and anis (Pimpinella anisum). Even coca from which chocolate is made carries mild aphrodisiac power. Essential oils help with libido on the night. Massage your body and that of your partner with a carrier oil such as sweet almond oil or apricot oil to which you have added one of the aphrodisiac essences: clary sage, ylang ylang, rose, or jasmine. This is for external use only. Powerful stuff—you need only 1 drop of an essential oil to each teaspoon of carrier oil. A capsule of vitamin E squeezed into the oil when you mix it helps keep it fresh longer. Here are some products you might find useful: Carlson Labs, The Very Finest Fish Oil, Lemon The finest of fish oils from deep, cold ocean-water fish. Bottled in Norway it has a refreshing natural lemon taste. Take by the teaspoonful, mix with foods, even try it on salads. This product is regularly tested (using AOAC international protocols) for freshness, potency and purity by an independent, FDA registered laboratory and has shown itself to be fresh, fully-potent and free of detrimental levels of mercury, cadmium, lead, PCB's and 28 other contaminants. Buy Carlson Labs, The Very Finest Fish Oil, Lemon Now Foods, Ginkgo Biloba NOW Ginkgo Biloba is grown and extracted under the highest quality standards and is standardized to min. 24% Ginkgoflavonglycosides and min. 6% Terpene Lactones, including Ginkgolide B, the most significant fraction, and Ginkgolides A, C and Bilobalide. Order Now Foods, Ginkgo Biloba from iherb Now Foods, Ginkgo Biloba Extract Supports Cognitive Function 24% Standardized Extract With Gotu Kola and Eleuthero GMP Quality Assured A Dietary Supplement Vegetarian Formula Order Now Foods, Ginkgo Biloba Extract from iherb Bob's Red Mill, Fava Beans For over 5,000 years, Fava Beans have been enjoyed as a delicious source of protein, fiber and iron. Similar in taste and texture to lima beans, they are one of the most flavorful and meaty beans around. Bob's Red Mill Fava Beans have been naturally blanched to remove the unsavory skins. They're excellent for soups, dips, and a wide variety of other dishes. Order Bob's Red Mill, Fava Beans from iherb Dragon Herbs, Siberian Ginseng, Super Potency Extract This is a potent formula, made from the finest Chinese herbs, to enhance your adaptability and daily Qi. Order Dragon Herbs, Siberian Ginseng Extract from iherb Herb Pharm, Wild Yam To assure optimal extraction of Wild Yam's bioactive compounds, the rhizomes are hand-harvested only in late autumn, are carefully shade-dried and are then thoroughly extracted. Our Wild Yam is never fumigated or irradiated. Order Herb Pharm, Wild Yam from iherb Nature's Way, Wild Yam, Root Capsules Health & longevity through the healing power of nature—that's what it means to Trust the Leaf. Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa) was historically offered as "colic root" and used in herbal remedies for gastrointestinal irritations. In recent years it has become popular for women's health. Our Wild Yam is carefully grown, tested and produced to certified quality standards. Order Nature's Way, Wild Yam, Root Capsules from iherb Triple Leaf Tea, American Ginseng, Caffeine-Free American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) has long been a popular herb. Modern research confirms both American and Asian ginsengs contain ginsenosides and supports their long history of use. American ginseng is considered less yang than Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng). For this reason, Chinese herbalists valued American ginseng for regular long-term use. Native Americans in North America first used this herb in similar ways to Chinese herbalists. In the 18th century, it became popular in America, and began being exported to China. Today, a large amount of the American ginseng grown in North America is exported to a large amount of the American ginseng is exported to Asia. 100% pure American ginseng root sets this tea apart from other ginseng tea blends, creating a delicious tea with the maximum amount of this marvelous root. Order Triple Leaf Tea, American Ginseng, Caffeine-Free from iherb Frontier Natural Products, Organic Whole Fennel Seed A graceful plant, fennel is an aromatic, hardy, perennial with golden yellow flowers and feathery leaves. Also known as garden fennel, this plant's botanical name, Foeniculum vulgare, comes from the Latin for "fragrant hay", it is a member of the Apiaceae family--along with anise, caraway, coriander and dill. Fennel seeds are small, oval, and grooved. They resemble caraway seed (though less curved) and smell and have a lemony anise taste. Fennel was well known as a food, flavoring and medicine in ancient China, Greece, India and Egypt. Since Roman times it has been used as a diet aid and to overcome hunger during fasts. In fact, its early Greek name, marathron, comes from maraino, which meant "to grow thin." The Roman emperor Charlemagne popularized the use of fennel seed in Central Europe, and the ancient Saxons included the seed in their list of nine sacred herbs used to combat the nine causes of disease. 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The United Nations Environmental Program calculates that 70,000 chemicals are in common use across the world. Another 1000 new chemicals are introduced each year, polluting the planet and our bodies. Legal loopholes in every country still allow perfumes and other personal care products to be sold containing potentially deadly toxins that disrupt the order of the body’s living matrix and undermine your health. Each time you buy a bottle of perfume, be aware that it could contain any number of poisonous chemicals. There are more than 5000 stock chemical ingredients used by the fragrance industry, which manufacturers are not obliged to disclose on the labels. They are often hidden within a dangerous loophole of “trade secret formulas”. BUYER BEWARE More than ten years ago, the Sunday Times published an article shouting “Top Perfumes Linked to Cancer Scare Chemicals”. The article went on to report that when a Swedish government-accredited laboratory analyzed 34 common products, researchers found that well-known perfumes like “Chanel No. 5”, Dior’s “Poison”, Calvin Klein’s “Eternity” and “Tommy Girl” all contained di-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) or similar chemicals. Commonly used as “plasticizers”, phthalates are dangerous. They are linked to decreased sperm count, early breast development, kidney and liver damage and birth defects. Since then, the situation has become infinitely worse. Phthalates have long been known to be both carcinogenic and mutagenic. They adversely affect sperm in men and disrupt reproductive processes in women. Nonetheless, they continue to be used. Theys are found in other common products as well—body sprays, compacts, and hair mousses—even flooring materials. Now, largely in response to several research projects, the EU has banned their use based on the fear that they may be responsible for genital abnormalities recorded in 4 percent of male babies. Yet they are still be used in fragrance products under the sneaky “trade secret formulas” label. And phthalates are merely a pale echo of the problem—a minute concern—in a much more threatening and complex multi-dimensional and pervasive chemical toxicity which pervades our lives. POISONOUS SEAS In our 21st century industrialized world, we live in a sea of petrochemically-derived chemicals dangerous to health, and life. All manmade chemicals are foreign to living systems. As such, they are potentially dangerous to us. Why? Because, in a million years of evolution, our bodies have never come into contact with them. Our genes are not adapted to handling them. Nor do we have the enzyme systems needed to clear them from our system. Included in the group of potentially destructive chemicals are hundreds of common cosmetic ingredients—from artificial preservatives to fragrances. There are over 7000 ingredients commonly found in perfumes, cosmetics and other fragranced products from household cleansers to baby toys. More than 1000 of these have already been individually shown to produce toxic effects on living systems. It is simply not possible to determine just what blends of substances have been used to produce the product, and what is listed on any label represents only the tip of the iceberg. Companies manufacturing fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries, such as shampoos, are legally required to list the ingredients they use; however, fragrances and trade-secret formulas in these products are considered legally exempt. In effect, manufacturers indulge in stealth by hiding large quantities of ingredients which we have no way of finding out about. SECRETS SECRETS The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics commissioned the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to analyze ingredients in several well-known perfumes and toiletry products made by companies such as Chanel, Armani, and Calvin Klein. They found a total of 38 chemicals not listed on product labels. According to the report: “Among them are chemicals associated with hormone disruption, allergic reactions...in the rank of undisclosed ingredients are chemicals with troubling hazardous properties or with a propensity to accumulate in human tissues. These include diethyl phthalate, a chemical found in 97% of Americans and linked to sperm damage in human epidemiological studies, and musk ketone, a synthetic fragrance ingredient that concentrates in human fat and breast tissue.” Chemical hormone mimics not only carry dangers for male health, being largely responsible for the fall in male sperm count by almost 50 percent since 1940. They are also major culprits behind the exponential growth of reproductive disorders in women—from PMS, endometriosis and fibroid tumors, to infertility, osteoporosis and menopausal miseries. And, here’s the rub: Far more important than the potential harm any single chemical can do, is the dangerous way in which these chemicals can interact to produce far more toxic compounds within our bodies. This important truth still remains ignored by government bodies whose job it is to protect the public. LIVING TRUTHS A continuous interchange is meant to take place between your body’s trillions of cells and the surrounding interstitial fluids. This is how nutrients and oxygen enter the cells and cellular wastes are cleared from them. Wastes are then carried through lymph vessels to be eliminated from the system on the breath, and via urine, the bowels and the skin. This exchange of nutrients and oxygen and the elimination of waste are regulated by subtle electrochemical energies. A build up of toxicity in your body’s living matrix results in poor circulation and electro-chemical stagnation, causing poor cellular metabolism, distortions in the transmission of information, and a breakdown in hormone regulation. When cells thrive and your body is radiant, you have a high level of protection from aging. This continues so long as plenty of nutrients and oxygen get into its cells, and toxic wastes are efficiently removed from them. And, although your body has elegant ways of clearing wastes—including its own antioxidant enzyme system and detoxification processes through the liver and kidneys—chemical and electromagnetic pollution can create the kind of toxic overload that undermines its ability to do the job. AVOID TOXIC OVERLOAD Here are just a few of the most widespread chemicals commonly used in perfumes, makeup, and skincare. By now, every fragrance or skincare manufacturer of integrity should be working diligently to eliminate them from the products they sell. So far few companies are. Parabens: Made from toluene, a petrochemical derivative, these are the most common synthetic preservatives. They are still used in 99 percent of all products. They show up on labels with names like butyl paraben, methyl paraben, and propyl paraben. Naïve cosmetic manufacturers claim parabens are “safe” since they don’t directly cause inflammatory reactions to skin. But these enzyme inhibitors do damage the DNA of skin cells—something easy to verify by feeding placebos to live cells in a laboratory and then recording what happens to the cells via flow cytometry. Research carried out in Japan, Germany and Britain also implicates parabens—which we absorb in significant quantity day in day out—as a causative factor in male fertility problems and breast tumors in women, because it interferes with hormone production and hormone release. Synthetic musks: These have been shown to cause hormone disruption. They accumulate in breast milk and in the umbilical cord blood of newborns. DEA diethanolamine, MEA monoethanolamine, and TEA triethanolamine: These hormone-disrupting chemicals can form carcinogenic nitrates and nitrosamines. They are widespread in the United States and other countries. Hydantoin and Urea—Imidazolidinyl: Two of the many preservatives commonly found in self-care products, these release formaldehyde into the body, where they can trigger skin reactions, allergies, joint pain, dizziness and lowering of immunity. Formaldehyde undermines the life processes of your living matrix. This is why morticians use it to embalm dead bodies. Fragrances in general: Many chemicals used to make artificial fragrances are known to be both toxic and carcinogenic. They affect the central nervous system, and can set off emotional disturbances and behavioral problems in some people. This is a wide chemical group, most of the members of which are dangerous—to some degree—because of the solvents used to disperse their molecules and suspend these chemicals in solution. Where once the great perfumes were formulated from natural products like civet and essential oils, sadly this is most certainly no longer the case. HEADACHES AND FATIGUE Have you experienced a headache or felt sick when passing through the cosmetic area of a department store? I have. That’s why I tend to stay away from these places. Our olfactory mechanisms are closely allied to our limbic system—the primitive part of the brain that oversees our emotions, our behavior, and our memories. The limbic system also rules our basic animal drives and influences our autonomic nervous system, hormones and sexuality. Being exposed to cosmetic counters, or sitting next to people who are wearing poisonous perfumes can make you feel confused, dazed, bad-tempered and deeply fatigued. So can wearing many well known perfumes and using other fragranced products in your home or workplace. It’s far better to make your own fragrances to wear—as well as to make your home beautifully fragrant—out of organic essential oils. Your health and your life will benefit, and this could help protect you from potentially destructive long-term damage to your body. WANT TO KNOW MORE? “Scent of Danger: Are There Toxic Ingredients in Perfumes and Colognes?” Scientific American September 29, 2012. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Not So Sexy Examiner November 9, 2013 Environmental Working Group December 6, 2007 2 New York Times May 14, 2000 Business Week June 16, 2010 Psychological Science December 22, 2009

Lymphatic drainage is vitally important to making sure metabolic processes run cleanly and efficiently. Your body's lymph system is, amongst other things, a kind of metabolic rubbish dump. It helps the body rid itself of dead cells, toxins, metabolic wastes, pathogenic bacteria, foreign substances and other assorted junk the cells cast off. Lymphatic drainage Unlike the circulatory system, in which the circulation of blood is controlled by the pumping of the heart, the lymphatic system has no such pump. The plasma which has seeped through capillary walls gathers in the tissues and then slowly enters the lymphatic channels. These are tiny vessels with one-way valves in them for carrying lymph, along with whatever small bits of foreign matter, wastes and bacteria it has gathered, through the lymph nodes and eventually back into the bloodstream. The normal contractions and relaxation of your muscles and the force of gravity on the body keep the lymph flowing. They act to pump the lymph back through its channels and eliminate these wastes. Regular vigorous exercise encourages this elimination. It brings about a general flushing of the wastes from interstitial fluid and then helps them be carried away through the lymphatic tree of vessels until eventually they empty into the subclavian veins and are eliminated from the body through the actions of all the excretory organs - the skin, lungs, kidneys and colon. In Europe some of the finest natural treatments for healing involve a kind of massage dubbed `lymphatic drainage' which helps the body do this. It is not only used to treat serious chronic illness and fatigue but even as a beauty treatment for women on the face. Skin-brushing stimulates the tissues beneath the skin, encouraging efficient lymphatic drainage. It is an extraordinarily efficient technique for cleansing the lymphatic system and for clearing away waste materials from the cells all over the body as well as those which, as in the case of cellulite in women, have become trapped in interstitial spaces where they are held by hardened connective tissue and where they build up to create pockets of water, toxins and fat that make the skin look like peau d'orange. Skin-brushing is something any woman with cellulite should do twice a day.