beauty

No matter how sparse and how good your diet or how many antioxidants you take, no matter how conscientiously you deal with stress and how enthusiastically you exercise - all of which are central to ageless aging - it can be helpful periodically to spring-clean your body from within. Controlled fasts are not the only way of doing this. In fact I have come to believe that they are not even the best way. The natural-law approach to age retardation and the long tradition on which it is based also offers a number of other simple methods. Some - such as a spring-clean semi-fast or the sauna - are helpful when used every few weeks, while others, such as techniques for improving lymphatic drainage, can be used to advantage every few days or even more often. The whole purpose of spring-cleaning is to stimulate your body's eliminative capabilities so that any sluggishness in the blood and lymph circulation and any stasis in the tissues is cleared away. Then whatever toxicity may be present - heavy metals and cross-linkers for instance - can be broken down and eliminated via the skin and lungs, bladder and colon before it can cause degenerative damage and premature aging to your body.

In the way so many half-truths get blown up by commercial interests, we have been led to believe that all men and women need for strong bones is to get lots of calcium—either by popping pills or drinking milk. Millions of pounds and dollars have been spent to propagate these fantasies. Bottom line? Both these beliefs are fiction. Meanwhile, after four generations of aggressive milk promotion, the incidence of osteoporosis has reached epidemic proportions in the West. In countries where milk is not drunk, osteoporosis hardly exists. FORGET MILK So negative an effect can milk and milk products like some cheeses exert on a man or woman's health that, if you would care to experiment by leaving all milk products out of your diet for three weeks, you are likely to find you look and feel better, as well as experiencing great boosts in vitality. Sometimes doing this can be more difficult than you expect, however. Why? Because, in one form or another, milk finds its way into most convenience foods, including breads, biscuits, and sauces. It is even in a lot of nutritional supplements. Why, I cannot imagine! Milk is designed by nature for a very specific purpose—to feed young mammals until they can feed themselves. Cow’s milk was made for cows, and human milk for humans. As we grow up, our bodies lose the ability to produce lactase, the enzyme that digests the sugar in milk. This creates what is known as a lactose intolerance. Studies show that three out of every four adults in the United States have some degree of lactose intolerance and are therefore unable to digest milk properly. When they include dairy products in their diet they experience lower energy, their bodies produce more mucus in an immune reaction, and they experience food sensitivity reactions with symptoms that can include mood swings, depression, aches and pains and many other undermining issues, often with no sense of what has been causing them. UNDERMINES HEALTH Milk is the most common food allergen in the western world. Wheat follows close behind. But you find milk in one form or another just about everywhere—in cheese, cream, foods with cream sauces, yogurt, ice cream, breads, and all sorts of other manufactured food products. There is also strong evidence that milk—the pure white food which we are continually told will give us good bones, strong hair and “a lot of bottle”—is toxic to many. Dr Daniel Cramer at Harvard Medical School discovered that using milk products increases the risk of ovarian cancer in lactose-intolerant women. After extensive analysis of lactose-intolerant women in 36 countries, as well as meticulous examination of human and animal studies, researchers concluded that galactose, one of the milk sugars, is toxic to the ovaries and interferes with fertility. It may even trigger birth defects. According to Executive Director of The Dairy Education Board, Robert Cohen and many others, the consumption of milk and milk and milk products are in no small part to blame for a long list of health problems: rheumatoid arthritis stroke kidney stones acne heart disease multiple sclerosis diabetes breast cancer REAL MILK IS DIFFERENT Milk that comes from pastured cows containing all the natural fat, has not been processed and is not pasteurized or homogenized is the way to go, provided you are one of the lucky ones whose body can handle milk without any of the negative side effects. It is taken from healthy cows under sanitary conditions. Raw milk is full of natural components which kill pathogens in the human body and strengthen the immune system: Lacto-peroxidase and lactoferrin as well as anti-microbial components in blood, helpful carbohydrates (polysaccharides and oligosaccharides), healthy fats (medium chain fatty acids, phospholipids and spingolipids), and wonderful enzymes to aid digestion as well as growth factors, beneficial bacteria, bifidus factor and B12-binding protein. These natural ingredients in real raw milk are inactivated and destroyed when milk is pasteurized. Yet the huge dairy industry and governments continue to spread false information about the “dangers” of real milk and even to forbid its sale in some countries. WHAT ABOUT CALCIUM? Far from turning to milk as a source of calcium, most men and women who value wellbeing and good looks would be better off clearing out milk and milk products from their diet altogether. But hear this: If you are going to cut milk out of your diet, you need to get rid of anything that might contain milk products such as milk solids, sodium caseinate, sodium lactate, milk fats, whey, or lactose. So read labels carefully. As for taking pills, a number of researchers have shown that calcium supplements do little to stop the loss of cortical bone tissue. They have virtually no effect at all on trabecular bone in the spine and the hip, where most osteoporotic fractures occur. Yet having been told it again and again, most people still believe that the best source of calcium is milk or milk products. Of course, the question which is rarely asked is: Where does the calcium in milk come from in the first place? EAT YOUR GREENS Cows get calcium from eating green foods—grass, silage, herbs and plants. Only plants can take the calcium from the soil and turn it into a form available for absorption by animals. Beetroot tops, chinese leaves, roquette, lettuce, seaweeds, herbs and broad-leafed green vegetables are all excellent sources of calcium. A cup of any of these vegetables supplies as much calcium as a cup of milk. And vegetable-based calcium is easily assimilated, along with a collection of other important minerals and trace elements, without having to deal with possible negative side-effects of using milk products. Include plenty of leafy green vegetables in your meals and you’ll need never give calcium another thought. Incidentally, the reason why taking calcium supplements or drinking masses of milk has no effect in halting osteoporosis is this: The problem is not an absence of calcium in the body, but rather a disorder in calcium metabolism. A DELICATE PROCESS Calcium metabolism is a very complex process. In most people, absorption of calcium in general tends to be highly inefficient. Only somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the calcium you take in through your foods will actually be absorbed. The rest gets filtered through your blood and then excreted in urine and sweat, or eliminated through the feces. Many factors influence just how much calcium your body will absorb at any time. When you are growing rapidly or when you place stress on your bones doing weight bearing exercise, your absorption of calcium is increased. When your body is in great need of calcium it is also absorbed more effectively. In fact, the smaller the supply of calcium available from your foods and the greater the need your body has for this mineral, the more efficient calcium absorption becomes. The opposite is also true. When large quantities of calcium are available—say if someone has been drinking a lot of milk, or has taken masses of calcium supplements as many women do—then the absorption of calcium is markedly decreased. It is worth remembering that in the United States, where the consumption of calcium supplements and milk products is highest in the world, so too is the incidence of osteoporosis. METABOLIC KEYS For calcium to function properly in relation to bone building, it has to be accompanied by phosphorus—but not too much—as well as magnesium, Vitamins A, B6, C, D, E and K. Zinc is also important, since zinc is a co-factor in the intra-cellular conversion of beta carotene to Vitamin A which in turn helps manufacture the collagen matrix of bone. Zinc has to be present in sufficient quantities for the body's enzymes to make the conversion. Even the trace elements boron and silicon, which are needed only in the most minute quantities, play important roles in bone strength. ALL POWERFUL MAGNESIUM What surprises most women—doctors too, for that matter—is that it is taking extra magnesium that can make the greatest difference to good calcium metabolism. Magnesium is another element essential for the proper metabolism of calcium. Magnesium probably acts as a catalyst for more enzymes in the body than any other mineral, in fact. Magnesium is plentiful in whole grains—brown rice, buckwheat, millet, whole wheat, whole rye and in legumes such as beans, lentils and peas, but low in highly processed foods. Adequate magnesium helps the body absorb calcium. Where there is a magnesium deficiency, not only can osteoporosis develop easily; so can joint and soft tissue calcification. Low intracellular magnesium undermines immune functions too, making women susceptible to infection and such hard-to-handle conditions as M.E. in which women with low intracellular magnesium have been found to have unnaturally shaped bone mineral crystals. Magnesium deficiency is common in both men and women with osteoporosis. Milk is relatively deficient in magnesium—another reason why it is a poor food for protection against osteoporosis. Magnesium deficiencies are particularly widespread in women over 35 who have long been living on the standard diet of convenience foods. PMS expert Guy Abraham MD showed that giving women 600mg of magnesium a day could bring about a significant increase in bone mass in nine months, although the women he treated were also given other vitamins and minerals as well as HRT, so it is impossible to determine just how much of the improvement was due to the magnesium. In an Israeli study, however, where 31 post menopausal women were given between 250-750mg of magnesium a day for two years, bone density increased between 1-8 percent in 75 percent of the cases and remained unchanged in the remaining 25 percent, while women who refused magnesium supplements altogether experienced losses in bone density of 1-3 percent. START EARLY IF YOU CAN Osteoporosis prevention is best started early—preferably in the teens, twenties and thirties, while the density of bones is still increasing. This makes it easy to build good strong bones and to establish good habits that can carry you through the second half of your life with no trouble. If you are female and osteoporosis has already begun, you may want to make use of topically applied, natural progesterone cream to help restore normal bone density, then keep you permanently osteoporosis-free. Finally, just in case all this sounds like a tall order, take heart. The benefits an osteoporosis-protective lifestyle can bring to overall health and good looks are immense. Such a lifestyle helps keep your immune system functioning well, helping to protect you from illness, countering early aging and degeneration, and enhancing your energy all round. Such a program begun at any age can make you look and feel great. Learn more: http://www.realmilk.com http://www.llli.org/FAQ/bflength.html http://www.notmilk.com/ http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/

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.

Real age—your biological age—has little to do with how old you are in years. Most people age prematurely. This is avoidable. It is also reversible. Some of the reasons I have such a passion for herbs is: when you know what to use, they can slow biological aging, help restore balance, and improve how you look and feel, as well as how your body functions. Combined with regular detoxification and a natural diet low in carbohydrates and sugars but high in a wide variety of fresh vegetables and top-quality protein, herbs can rejuvenate your body in medically measurable ways: better circulation, increased resistance to illness as well as balancing emotions and bringing clarity. They also help you rediscover innate vitality, whatever your chronological age. Each herb and plant works in its own special way. Some, like ginseng, garlic, and gotu kola are specifically anti-ageing in their actions. Others such as purslane and thyme together with foods like seaweeds, oranges, carrots, and green vegetables—are brimming with anti-oxidants and other phyto-chemicals. These are protective to your whole body as well as immune enhancing. They will help protect you from free radical damage that underlies both premature aging and the development of degenerative diseases.   Here are my favorite anti-ageing herbs: Gotu Kola—Centella asiatica—has been used for centuries in India to extend life span and enhance memory. Gotu kola, like many quality bulk herbs, is native to the tropical regions of Asia and Africa, particularly Sri Lanka and Madagascar. Traditionally, its leaves are dried and steeped in order to create a tea or infusion. Gotu kola is also easy to grow in your garden or in a pot in the kitchen window. It’s also easy to introduce into your life. Just add a fresh leaf or two or a teaspoon of dried gotu kola to whatever herb tea you are drinking. You can also put a few leaves into salad when you make it. Nori Seaweed—If you have never used sea vegetables for cooking, you have a wonderful discovery ahead of you. Not only are they delicious—imparting a wonderful, spicy flavor to soups and salads—they are the richest source of organic mineral salts in nature, particularly iodine. Iodine is the mineral needed by your thyroid gland. As your thyroid gland is largely responsible for the body’s metabolic rate, iodine is essential for vitality as well as protecting you from early aging. I like to use powdered seaweeds as a seasoning. It adds flavor and minerals to salad dressings, salads, and soups. Personally I’m excessively fond of nori seaweed, which comes in long thin sheets or tiny flakes. It is a delicious snack food that you can eat along with a salad or at the beginning of the meal. It has a beautiful, crisp flavor. I toast sheets of nori by passing it over a hob flame for no more than a few seconds. This brings out its wonderful flavor and turns it crunchy. The only problem I have with toasting nori is that one of my Burmese cats, Gus, is completely addicted to it. This means there is no peace while I’m making it. He can smell nori from far away, even when the kitchen door is closed. As soon as I open it, he devours a couple of big sheets that I have crumbled into tiny pieces for him. Green Barley—This is a dried form of the natural juice taken from young barley leaves. It must be to be organically grown, GMO free, and pesticide free. Rich in proteins, flavonoids, minerals, including iron, and vitamins such as K and B15, as well as chlorophyll and other nutrients, green barley boasts thousands of enzymes, not all of which are destroyed in the digestive process. Enzymes play important roles in anti-aging metabolic processes. It also contains a high concentration of superoxide dismutase (SOD)—an anti-oxidant enzyme. Sprinkle from 1⁄2 to 1 teaspoon of green barley on to salads or mix into juices, miso broth or water. Purslane—Portulaca oleracea brims with anti-oxidants as well as vitamins known for their abilities to quench excess free radicals in the body. Purslane improves immune functioning. You can grow purslane in a vegetable patch or just about anywhere—even in window boxes, between the rose bushes, or wherever you have an extra bit of space. Add purslane to fresh vegetable juices or put it through a blender to make ‘live’ vegetable drinks.   Ginkgo Biloba—improves circulation to your brain.  European research confirms this. The leaves from this most ancient of trees restore memory, elevate mood, and quell anxiety. There are more than 300 published studies and reports that support the anti-ageing properties of Ginkgo. Its extract is used in Germany to treat everything from depression and cerebrovascular insufficiency to asthma, transplant rejection, and hearing loss. It is even added to expensive skin products to protect against environmental irritation. You can take ginkgo as an extract, tincture, or in capsules. I prefer a high potency herbal tincture—1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon 2 or 3 times a day. Horsetail—Equisetum arvense is the best natural source of the mineral silicon, which declines in your body after 35. Silicon is essential for you to maintain strong bones, prevent osteoporosis, firm your skin, and protect it from wrinkles and sagging. Horsetail is one of the world’s oldest plants. Organic horsetail tea is the best way to take this wonderful plant several cups a day. My favorite brand is organic, of course, and sells for less than US $12 a pound. Make a friend of these herbs, use them daily, and you will be surprised at how much they can help protect you from early aging. Here are some of the very best products: GOTU KOLA ORGANIC Gotu kola herb, like many quality bulk herbs, is native to the tropical regions of Asia and Africa, particularly Sri Lanka and Madagascar. Traditionally, the leaves of such herbs are dried and steeped in order to create a tea or infusion. Order organic Gotu Kola from iherb NORI ORGANIC SEAWEED Emerald Cove, Organic Pacific Nori Order Organic Nori Seaweed from iherb ORGANIC GREEN BARLEY Frontier Natural Products, Organic Powdered Barley Grass Order Organic Green Barley from iherb HORSETAIL ORGANIC FOR TEAS Frontier Natural Products, Organic Cut & Sifted Horsetail Order Organic Horsetail from iherb

Corrupt information about sugar from advertisers, multinational food corporations and mainstream media abounds. Meanwhile, an unsuspecting public often swallows what they’re told, hook line and sinker. For the sake of your health, you need to become ever more savvy about which products you can feel good about buying and which to avoid completely. Bear with me. I’ll lay out the bare bones of what you need to be aware of as you wend your way around the continually expanding selection of sugar-related products deceptively disguised as “good for you.” SWEET TRUTHS Sugar purveyors have got away with murder. Along with governments who have been supposed to guide us on what to eat to stay healthy, they have for decades wrongly told us that eating fats is dangerous for our health. Multinational food and drink manufacturers cunningly decided to replace fats in the convenience foods they sell with sugar to make their wares more palatable. The vast majority of shoppers, consciously attempting to follow “official” advice, wholeheartedly embraced all the sugar-filled packaged foods they were offered. Many shoppers are now waking up to how dangerous sugar is to their health and their life. But we have a long way to go. Sugar is the most damaging of all the carbohydrates. Ordinary table sugar consists of 50% glucose and 50% fructose. The glucose part gets digested in your stomach. Then it enters your bloodstream, where it makes your blood sugar rise. This triggers insulin release—a major cause of the development of insulin resistance. The other 50% component of table sugar—fructose—acts differently in your body. It does not affect your blood sugar, and we do not yet know for sure what part fructose may play in the release of insulin. So we are still being taught that eating and drinking fructose fine. This makes fructose healthy, right? Wrong! WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW When you eat a piece of fruit—say, an apple—the fruit sugar it contains comes wrapped up in natural fiber including pectin, a soluble fiber which helps your body eliminate heavy metals from your system. It can take you 10 minutes or so to munch your way through an apple. It takes even more time for your body to break down the fiber and absorb it. This means that the fructose in the apple you eat is released relatively slowly. As a consequence, its fructose can be processed a little at a time by the liver, which is the organ that handles fructose. However, when you drink a nice big glass of apple juice or a soda (which contains 10 times more fructose than an apple) it can take as few as 10 seconds for you to swallow it all. Then your liver gets bombarded with a very dangerous form of fructose known as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). An excellent article published in the prestigious journal Nature, “The Toxic Truth About Sugar,” points out that the consumption of the fructose in high-fructose corn syrup has increased one hundred fold since 1970. “We’re being poisoned to death,” says Robert Lustig, MD. “That’s a very strong statement, but I think we can back it up with very clear scientific evidence.” Lustig and his colleagues suggest that sugar be regulated in the same way alcohol is regulated. The human body, especially the liver, never evolved to handle the kind of fructose load that it is now getting. What does it do? It responds by turning much of the fructose you take in into fat deposits. It also makes you highly prone to cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, hypertension, dementia and type 2 diabetes. SUGAR INFESTATION In the 19th century, we ate between 10 and 20 pounds of sugar per person per year. Today, each of us consumes between 150 and 200 pounds of it a year—much of it hidden in convenience foods, fruit juices and sodas. Because sugar, added to so many processed foods, is everywhere, it is virtually unavoidable. Millions of poorly informed people continue to consume 500 calories or more every day in added sugar alone. What few people yet know is that sugar acts upon the same areas of your brain as alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes do, creating cravings, unnatural hunger and an addiction for yet more sugar. The excessive amount of “stealth” sugar in processed foods has become the backbone that supports the profitable disease care business worth billions. Chronic high blood sugar and insulin don’t just make you fat and predispose you to chronic diseases, they age you. Sugar also undermines the integrity of your skin. When you eat a diet full of non-vegetable carbohydrates—grains, cereals and sugars of any kind—your body gets busy fabricating wrinkles, sags, a puffy face and a lackluster complexion. And, as a result of the chronic high blood sugar and insulin resistance which develops over time, you can end up without the energy to do anything to change it. HEALTH DESTROYERS High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is something food and drink manufacturers have used in ever-increasing quantities since 1978. It was originally a worthless by-product of the corn industry. That is, until someone had the bright idea of turning it into syrup and pouring it into sodas, cakes, breads, cookies, ready meals, even smoked meats and fish—you name it. Nowadays you can find HFCS just about everywhere in packaged foods and drinks—juices, sodas and fruity yoghurts, luncheon meats, even in smoked fish. Foods that most people still believe to be “healthy” are now riddled with this cheap, dangerous stuff. Not surprisingly, HFCS is ultra-sweet—55% fructose and 45% glucose. Because nothing raises blood sugar levels and triggers insulin release more quickly than sugar in its many forms, eating anything full of sugar gives you an immediate ‘high’. Then, it can just as quickly bring you down, leaving you craving something else sweet to keep going. Want to do one thing which can dramatically improve your health, your weight and your good looks? Just stop eating sugar, including fructose, in any form, as well as any foods or drinks that contain it. Beware of what you buy because it is often not even listed as an ingredient on labels. HOW TO CUT YOUR SUGAR INTAKE It’s easy. Change your way of eating from a diet of packaged convenience foods to pesticide-free, whole organic foods that are unprocessed. Never use canned fruits in recipes that need sweetening. Instead go for fresh, low glycemic fruits or top quality stevias. Use organic seasonings to create great flavors for your dishes. Most often, the sugar content of a food has been deliberately hidden by food manufacturers by giving it a name that shoppers will not recognize. Given the dangers implicit in using sweeteners, it’s equally important to be cautious when looking for alternatives to sugar itself. These fall into three main categories: Artificial sweeteners—which you want to avoid like the plague. Sugar alcohols. Natural sweeteners. All artificial sweeteners are harmful, each in its own way. These include aspartame—the worst of the lot. You’ll find it in Equal and NutriSweet; sucralose, which you’ll find in in Splenda; saccharine, which you’ll find in Sweet and Low, as well as many other artificial sweeteners by different names. There is much evidence to back up how dangerous these are. Avoid all of them if you care about your health. Sugar Alcohols with “ol” in their name such as xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, glycerol and lactitol can spike blood sugar but beware. Just because some product label says “sugar-free” this is not necessarily the truth, nor can you be sure it is calorie-free or low-sugar. Probably safest of them is xylitol, but only if you use it occasionally and very sparingly. (By the way, it is deadly for cats and dogs.) “Natural Sweetener” does not necessarily mean natural. Agave Syrup and Agave Nectar can be even worse than HFCS. It’s a misnomer to refer to them as “natural”, despite the advertising hype that has most of the world still believing they are. Higher than any other sweetener on the market, Agave has virtually no nutritional value. As for honey, which has become seriously distorted as a result of the hideous damage being done to bee colonies, it too is to be avoided unless you happen to gather it from your own hives. The Safest Choices: Stevia is an exotic herb which grows in subtropical areas of South America. This plant has been used to sweeten herbal drinks since pre-Columbian times. It’s a godsend for enhancing health and reducing your sugar intake. It’s great for sweetening drinks and baking dishes. But make sure you use only the best. All sorts of so-called stevias such as Truvia and Purevia continue to be promoted by multinational corporations. They call themselves “all-natural sweeteners”. In reality, they have been manufactured only from “certain active ingredients” in the stevia plant, not from the whole plant. As a result, they are distortions of the real thing. Don’t use them. Another good natural sweetener is Lo Han Guo, which comes from a Chinese fruit. It too is good, but more expensive than stevia. Spoonable Stevia By Stevita: Spoonable Stevia by Stevita uses only stevia extract with at least 95% pure glycosides (extremely sweet tasting ingredients of the Stevia herb leaves), and a little erythritol, a crystal granulated naturally produced filler found in fruits, vegetables and grains. It is best for baking and sprinkling. Order Spoonable Stevia By Stevita from iherb ENGLISH TOFFEE STEVIA: Wisdom Natural, SweetLeaf, Liquid Stevia, English Toffee Sweet Leaf liquid stevia with all natural flavors is convenient and easy to use. As a supplement, add this nutritious stevia to water, tea, coffee, milk, sparkling water, protein shakes, plain yogurt or anything else you can imagine. It comes in many different flavors including lemon but English Toffee flavor is the best by far. Order English Toffee Stevia from iherb

The type, the length of growth, thickness, thinness, straightness, and curl of your hair depend on your inheritance, but the condition of your hair depends on the internal state of your body, which feeds the papillae that produce it. For hair to be beautiful, the cuticle and the cortex have to be strong. It has always amused me when I hear hairdressers arguing about whether or not diet has anything to do with the beauty of hair, because it does, as any farmer knows well. Not only can you change the look of an animal's hair by altering its diet (and that goes for the human animal too), you can also tell a great deal about its internal condition by examining its hair. If you have a sheep that is poorly, its coat shows it. Horses, dogs, and cats are given special vitamin and mineral supplements to improve their coats for shows. But only recently has this aspect of hair care even begun to be looked at for human beings. What occurs in each hair follicle depends on the current nutritional state of your bloodstream and on adequate oxygen reaching the cells. So true is this that when you put someone on a poor diet, you will detect detrimental changes in the hair bulb even on the second day of the regimen. In a study of people placed on a protein-free diet for fifteen days, researchers have found that hairs plucked from their heads and then analyzed microscopically showed significant changes in color, texture, and structure - damage that took some time to correct. The worst thing you can do for your hair is to go on a crash diet for weight loss or live on typical Western fare, high in refined carbohydrates, processed foods, and white sugar. Both upset the vitamin and mineral balance in your body, and adequate vitamins and minerals are vital to hair. silica Probably the most important element of all for strong beautiful hair is silica. A French biochemist, Professor Louis Kervran, began in 1949 to study the effects of trace elements on living organisms and became fascinated with silica's health-enhancing effects on the hair, bones and nails as well as the whole human body. Kervran was aware that many people in the West, unbeknown to them, have subclinical deficiencies of silica because of our depleted soils and highly processed foods. He also knew that a good supply of organic silica in the form of a nutritional supplement was hard to come by and that taking unprocessed silica direct from the horsetail plant as a ground-up herb can lead to gastric irritation. Kervran worked for several years to develop a revolutionary technique of deriving a natural silica extract using no chemicals or solvents that would respect the integrity of the wonderful complex of nutrients and plant substances which are bound together with the organic silica in horsetail. The result is a plant-derived supplement with a remarkable ability to support the body's metabolic processes involved in rebuilding the collagen of connective tissue, the ground substance in which it sits. One more bonus: Because of its ability to bind and keep minerals in living tissue and to strengthen the keratin bonds, supplemental organic silica improves the strength and beauty of hair and nails better than anything I have ever come across. As you get older the amount of silica present in your body decreases year by year. With the decrease comes increasing weakness and fragility of hair, nails, connective tissue, veins, the ground substance of skin and arteries. Most women notice a difference within three to six weeks of beginning to take silica. Make sure the kind you buy has been processed without chemicals and is highly bio-available - which means in a form your body can easily make use of (see resources). You should never take powdered horsetail herb incidentally, for it is extremely irritating to the intestines.  Besides which your body will be able to make very little use of the silica present since very little of it will be bio-available. sea help Another source of plant complexes particularly useful in creating strong hair and nails are sea plants. All seaweed - from kelp to dulse, to the Japanese foods like nori and kombu - are rich in the minerals which your body's metabolic processes require to function properly. In a time when our foods are becoming increasingly depleted in important minerals and trace elements the use of plants from the sea becomes more and more important. Even things which your system requires in minute quantities such as vanadium, chromium, and lithium to help replenish the body's supplies are found in sea plants. Sea plants also tend to be rich in special forms of fiber called the alginates which have the ability to bind and remove heavy metals from the body. And they are rich in organic iodine which, used both internally and externally, tends to stimulate metabolic processes. A good supplement of sea plants which have been collected from unpolluted waters and then `atomized' or broken into very fine particles can offer another source of important metabolic support on any anti-cellulite regime. This process of atomization is very important in choosing any supplement based on sea plants. For seaweed tends to have very hard cell walls and unless these plants are extracted or their cell walls are exploded to make their mineral contents more easy for the body to absorb, much of the metabolic treasures they contain remain little available to the body. When choosing a good supplement of sea plants it is also important to make sure their source is unpolluted waters. For like fish that live in chemically contaminated waters these plants can absorb many negative elements which can badly disturb body ecology and which you certainly do not want in your body. iron One of hair's most important minerals is iron. If you are anemic or iron-deficient, your hair will tend to be brittle, lusterless, and hard to manage. It may also be thinner than is normal for you. Iron-deficiency anemia is a condition often implicated in excessive hair loss. If you have any of these hair difficulties, it is worthwhile having a serum iron test (which measures the total amount of iron in your bloodstream) and a total iron-binding-capacity test (which gives the ratio of blood iron to the blood's total capacity to hold iron). If your serum iron is low then your hair would probably benefit from iron therapy. Your doctor can arrange these tests for you. And it is important to remember, whether or not you take iron supplements, that vitamin C enhances iron absorption by helping ferric iron to be reduced to its ferrous form; also iron is best absorbed when calcium is present in sufficient quantities. sulfur Another important mineral for hair is the "beauty mineral," sulfur. It keeps your hair glossy and smooth. Sulfur is one of the constituents of keratin. When it is supplied in adequate amounts, your hair is strong. Eggs are particularly rich in the sulfur containing amino acids and are excellent hair food. Other natural sources include cabbage, dried beans, legumes, fish, nuts, and meat. zinc Research has established that a zinc deficiency is commonly the cause of hair damage in animals. It is probably true of humans as well and is certainly one of the factors contributing to the hair loss that women on the Pill or oestrogen therapy experience, since the hormones reduce zinc levels in the body. But the Pill can have other effects detrimental to hair too. It lowers blood levels of vitamins B12, B6, and B2, increasing your body's need for these vitamins as well as folic acid, vitamin C, and the trace minerals zinc and iron. If you are an oestrogen taker and your hair is giving you trouble, it may be helpful to take supplements of these nutrients. the B Vitamins The B-complex vitamins are particularly important to hair health and beauty. Deficiencies of biotin, folic acid, pantothenic acid, and PABA can lead to a loss of color, and there has even been some success in reversing the graying process by giving supplements of these nutrients - particularly megavitamin doses of PABA. One researcher claims to have restored color to graying hair in 70 percent of cases. A lack of any of the B complex vitamins can result in hair troubles and losses. Vitamins B1, B2, and B12 are particularly important in invigorating lackluster hair, dandruff, scaling, redness of the scalp and hair loss, Vitamin C is important too, because it maintains the health and strength of the capillaries supplying your hair-producing follicles with nourishment. If your levels of vitamin C are too low, this results in perifollicular hemorrhages, in which these capillaries break and bleed, which results in improper nourishment to the papillae. How fast your hair can grow depends on adequate - but not too much - protein, since more than adequate amounts can deplete your body of the minerals it needs. The widespread notion propounded by many glossy magazines that if you eat lots of meat and drink milk several times a day you will have strong and beautiful hair is simply untrue. It is the right balance of nutrients that is most important. The condition of your hair is greatly affected by medicines that you take - and I don't just mean antibiotics and sulfa drugs, although these two are common culprits for causing trouble. But aspirin, the Pill, diet pills, tranquilizers, thyroid pills, cortisone, anticancer drugs, and even cold remedies are a common cause of brittleness, dullness, breakage, and loss. Hair follicles are ultrasensitive to hormones. If you are taking a birth-control pill and having trouble with your hair, this could be why. Try another form of contraception.

One of your body’s most effective mechanisms for protecting itself from excessive toxicity taken in through food, air and water, or produced as a by-product of metabolism, is to lock these toxic materials into fat cells. In the case of cellulite, this natural protective mechanism goes one stage further—encasing these wastes in the interstitial fluids and ground substance of your skin by binding them with hardened connective tissue. To shed cellulite, you need first to help your body detoxify itself. The reason you have built up these wastes is simply that your body continually has to cope with more toxins than it can eliminate in the normal day-to-day course of events. Remove some of the burden of what is creating this excess toxicity in your system by laying aside coffee, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, over-processed foods complete with chemical additives, and avoiding sugar and grain-based foods for a time, and you’re halfway there. Add to that a very simple and temporary regime designed to trigger rapid detoxification, some gentle exercise, and some external help, and quite naturally you trigger your body’s own mechanisms for clearing out the junk. There are lots of ways you can do it, but the simplest of all to begin with is to go on a two-day apple fast. (See Apple Magic.) External work on your body is also important to trigger the detoxification process. Incorporate skin brushing into your daily routine during an apple fast (see Skin Brushing), and afterwards continue to use skin brushing to help break up hardened connective tissue and keep the detoxification process going while you are rebuilding new, strong connective tissue and ground substance. Another excellent technique which helps with this process is hydrotherapy, particularly the German Blitzguss. A real one needs to be done by a professional, but you can get many of the same effects in the shower yourself at home—especially if you have a hand-held shower which you can direct on different parts of your body. Here’s How [video src=http://d1vg7rm5xhtxe9.cloudfront.net/video/sd/blitz-guss.mp4 poster=http://d3oy45cyct8ffi.cloudfront.net/health/into-the-bliss/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/02/lk-video-blitz-guss.jpg ] Take a warm shower until your skin is really glowing with warmth. Then turn off the hot water and using only cold, direct it over your face and then down your arms and legs, over your trunk and abdomen and down your back. Finally, concentrate on the areas of your body where cellulite accumulates—the thighs, abdomen, hips and buttocks. The whole process should take no more than 30 seconds. Then get out of the shower, pat off the excess water and dress warmly. Do this at least once a day after skin brushing. Help From the Outside Exercise used as part of a program to banish cellulite needs to be isotonic in nature. This means it needs to take you through large movements such as running, walking briskly, rebounding on a mini-trampoline, rowing, swimming and cycling, all of which shorten and lengthen your muscles rhythmically without bringing about a big increase in tension. Isotonic exercise is one of the finest ways for you to eliminate wastes before they have a chance to build up. What kind of exercise is best? The kind you like best. Try walking briskly in comfortable clothing, dancing, cycling, whatever you love to do, for 15 to 60 minutes a session, three to five times a week. Start slowly, then when you notice positive changes in energy taking place in your body, and an enhanced self-awareness as you get into an exercise program, you will find your body craving more.

For generations European experts in natural medicine and top athletes have been masters at using hydrotherapy to vitalise, restore strength, regenerate and rejuvenate the body. Yet few of us anglo-saxons have been privy to their secrets. It’s time you learned about them. You’ll it once you do. Hydrotherapy is a powerful external tool for rejuvenation. The Germans are masters of it. Thanks to the electrical properties of water, using alternate hot and cold water on your body can alter the electrical charges of its molecules in the body—particularly the low-level voltages which regulate lymphatic drainage—by alternately increasing and decreasing them. In physiological terms this opens up your capillaries increasing blood flow and helping to stimulate the elimination of wastes through your blood and lymph systems. It also relaxes and tones muscles and heightens your overall vitality. Hydrotherapy - Blitz guss Hydrotherapy in one form or another is a must both for helping to prevent cellulite and for restoring cellulite-riddled tissues to normal. It enhances circulation, eliminates stored wastes, increases energy exchange on a cellular level and even heightens immunity. The best water treatment for cellulite is the traditional German Blitzguss. The classic Blitz Guss needs to be done by a professional but you can get much of the same effecta and benefits in the shower yourself at home—especially if you have a hand held shower which you can direct on different parts of your body. Here’s what to do Take a three minute hot shower so you skin is really glowing. Then turn off the hot and immediately turn on the cold water so it flows on you face and down your shoulders and arms, your chest and belly and back then down your legs but for no more than 30 seconds. Now go back to 2 to 3 minutes of hot shower followed by 30 seconds of a cold then back to hot again and so on. You repeat this process three times, always finishing off with 30 seconds of cold water. If 30 seconds seems a daunting length of time in cold water at the beginning only do 15 seconds of cold followed by 2 to 3 minutes of hot three times finishing off with cold. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you want to adapt to the full 30 seconds I suspect. When you get out of the shower, dry yourself briskly with a thick soft towel. The main reason you always finish your Blitz Guss with cold is that this stimulates warmth in your skin and whole body. It will surprise you just how warm and enlivening this experience can be. which leaves you glowing with life. How Good You Feel Once you get used to your Blitz Guss protocol you are you’re going to be surprised at how good you feel and how vital. Never do a Blitz Guss just before bed or you more likely to feel so energetic that you can’t sleep. And, of course, if you have a pacemaker or any sort of heart issue or other condition it is essential that you check with your health practitioner and get his or her OK before you try it. Be brave and give it a go. I thik you’re going to love the experience.

All over the world, people are getting sicker by the year, while food manufacturers, government bodies, and the mainstream medical profession keep telling us to eat more low-fat-high-carb foods and plenty of unsaturated golden oils. They warn us to stay away from all the “dangerous” saturated fats and oils. So we go on buying convenience foods riddled with carbs and sugars, believing that we are doing the right thing to protect from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and mounting degenerative diseases that plague the Western World. Well, my friend, such advice from the powers-that-be is not just untrue—it is positively dangerous. To stay healthy, protect yourself from obesity, degenerative conditions, and early aging, it’s important that you avoid starchy carbs, hidden sugars, and all highly processed unsaturated oils. We have been indoctrinated with an irrational fear of fat because of inaccurate research carried out way back in the 1960s when absurd assumptions became turned into quasi-religious non-sense dogma. Since then, instead of protecting us from heart disease, obesity, and other degenerative conditions, what we’ve been told has made us highly susceptible to all these diseases. It’s time to get savvy about the fats—to learn which fats are life-destroying and which are health-enhancing and to change the way you eat. Here’s the truth: Polyunsaturated fats and oils turn rancid when heated. They turn into a health-destroying source of free radicals that do your body great harm. They attack cells and damage DNA. Recent, reliable scientific studies show a definite connection between consumption of these polyunsaturated oils and the development of cancer, as well as heart disease and many other illnesses. Here’s the gen: avoid these oils at all cost: Safflower, Corn, Sunflower, Soybean and Cottonseed. They are badly processed, and are often full of dangerous chemicals. As far as canola oil is concerned—commonly used in the manufacture of convenience foods—it turns rancid quickly and is associated with the development of fibrotic heart lesions. The oils and fats you want to eat to look after your health and to stay lean are these: butter from grass-fed animals, and tropical oils such as coconut oil. Coconut oil is great for cooking. Extra-virgin olive oil is ideal for salad dressings. These are quality fats which, eaten on their own, or together with protein but without an abundance of starchy carbohydrates and sugar alleviate hunger and act as a great source of energy throughout the day. Eating too little of these good fats can lead to an experience of sitting down to a meal and, no matter how much you eat, still craving more food at the end of it. These natural fats let you know when your body is satisfied. They also help balance your hormones while significantly enhancing how you look and feel. Low-fat foods fill our supermarket shelves, attracting ignorant consumers trying to be good and eat what they’ve been told to eat. Manufactured convenience foods have become a roaring financial success story for food manufacturers. So people eat low-fat foods, believing that these are good for them, without realizing that manufacturers, in preparing low-fat menus, have replaced fat with sugar in their wares. We have been told the false notion that all saturated fats are dangerous. Back to the good oils: Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat and one of the safest vegetable oils you can use. It is well suited to dressings and can be heated, but only to moderate temperatures. Make sure that the Extra Virgin Olive Oil you buy is cloudy (not filtered) and a golden-yellow color. Coconut oil is your safest, healthiest choice for cooking since it remains stable, even at high temperatures. It also boasts antiviral and antibacterial properties. The other good, and often forgotten, saturated fat is butter but only from cows who have been grazed on green grass for at least part of their life. Here’s the good news: Natural fats eaten on their own or together with protein, without a lot of carbohydrates and sugar, will not cause the laying down of fat on your body. Neither will they create insulin resistance, as polyunsaturated oils, grain and cereal-based carbohydrates and sugars can. This is the most difficult truth for most people to grasp when we have been schooled for more than half a century in inaccurate and dangerous high-carbs-low-fat approaches to weight loss and protection from illness and obesity. Yet, when it comes to becoming radiantly well and staying that way, you need to grasp this truth and put it into practice. One more thing: Be sure to take a top quality Omega 3 supplement each day. (See below for my recommendation.) And from this moment on, eat GOOD FATS and thrive. You’ll love it. Life Extension, Super Omega-3, EPA/DHA With Sesame Lignans & Olive Fruit Extract, 240 Softgels The body needs fatty acids to survive and is able to make all but two of them: linoleic acid (LA), in the omega-6 family, and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) in the omega-3 family. These two fatty acids must be supplied by the diet and are therefore considered essential fatty acids (EFAs). Omega-3 fatty acids, found in coldwater fish (and fish oil), perilla and flaxseed oils, are essential elements of a healthy diet. Omega-3 oils contain eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are usually lacking in the typical Western diet, which is filled with foods containing high amounts of omega-6 fats. EPA and DHA can be synthesized in the body from ALA, but EPA and DHA synthesis may be insufficient under certain conditions and for most people that consume Western diets. Order Life Extension, Super Omega-3 from iherb Carlson Labs, Super Omega·3 Gems, Fish Oil Concentrate, 1000 mg, 250 Soft Gels Medical Scientists Internationally are encouraging people to eat more fish. Fish body oil is the only major source of the polyunsaturated Omega-3's EPA and DHA. For those individuals who do not eat an oily fish diet, Carlson offers Omega-3's in easy-to-swallow soft gelatin capsules. Carlson Super Omega-3 Gems soft gels contain 1000 mg (1 gram) of a special concentrate of fish body oils from deep, cold water fish which are especially rich in the important Omega-3's EPA and DHA. Order Carlson Labs, Super Omega·3 Gems from iherb