beauty

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.

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...

BUILD A NEW BODY Strong, sleek, firm muscles are what I call power flesh. Creating power flesh means banishing flab and rebuilding your body’s natural, sleek contours. This takes time, and it can't be done without good protein. Proteins are made of long chains of amino acids—the primary structural components of your body. These amino acids act as building blocks for new muscle which is made up of protein and water. Amino acids also stimulate metabolic processes and hormonal activity. They are key to burning up fat and clearing cellulite. In fact amino acids—the building blocks of all protein foods—are needed for just about every physical process in your body from the production of new hormones to replacement of old cells with new. REBIRTH ALL ROUND Within your body old proteins are continually being broken down into their component amino acids and reshaped into new compounds. Even enzymes themselves are made out of amino acids. Radioisotope tracings show that more than 98% of the molecules in your body will be replaced during the next year—your muscles, your blood, your enzymes, even your genes will be made anew. How good they will be depends almost entirely on the raw materials you give your body to work with—in other words, what you eat. A coffee and cake diet will result in a coffee and cake body, not in power flesh. To rebuild a strong, sleek, firm body you need the highest-quality proteins. How much is easy to figure. On any anti-cellulite program you will want about the same quantity of protein that an active woman requires to sustain her body weight if you are exercising, say, an hour a day: This is approximately 1.4 grams of amino acids per kilogram of body weight (2.2046). In other words, if you weigh 8 1/2 stone you will need about 76 grams of protein a day. Once your rebuilding program is complete, unless you exercise a great deal, you can reduce that requirement to between 0.8 grams and 1 gram per kilo of body weight. Unless you supply this quantity of protein foods with a good balance of amino acids, you are asking your body to rebuild itself but not supplying the wherewithal to carry out your request. This would be like pushing an engine to its limit without supplying the fuel it needs to run, namely the right kind of protein foods. But these are not always easy to come by. And it may surprise you—during the Rebuild you may be eating more of these foods than you have ever done before. PROTEIN—CHOOSE WITH CARE There are some important things to watch out for when eating meat, fish, and poultry (quite apart from whether or not you want or don't want to eat meat on moral grounds). Unless you are able to buy organic meat, or at least meat from animals that have grazed on grass and been allowed to roam on fields, the animals you eat will have been raised on grain-based feeds laced with various chemicals, and more often than not fed on GMO grain and cereal fodder. Such animals will also have been treated with antibiotics—all of which you ingest. All of these things you don't need if you are going to live a long and healthy, cellulite-free life. This doesn't mean that if you are a meat eater you must shun a delicious steak for the rest of your life but it does mean that you should be wise and go for the best quality meat you can afford. Excellent sources of proteins also come in the form of fish and shellfish. VEGETARIANS RULE If you feel you must be vegetarian on moral grounds by all means do. The world has many beautiful women without cellulite who live on vegetarian fare. If not, however, at least while you are actively shedding cellulite (and this can take several months since nature works slowly but surely), you might want to explore fish, shellfish, eggs, and microfiltered whey—all excellent protein sources. Many vegetarians swear by tofu. Tofu is great, provided it is made from organic, non-GMO soya beans. More than 95% of soya these days is GMO and grown on depleted soils. Don’t touch soy milk or tofu unless you are certain it has been made entirely from non-GMO beans. Use only the very best microfiltered whey. I spent months exploring just about every variety of microfiltered whey looking for the finest. I was stunned to find just how badly produced and ineffective most of the wheys on the market are. I would not feed them to a dog let alone a human being. So buy wisely. BEST OF THE BEST The microfiltered whey I believe to be the best in the world both for the way it has been processed and the taste: Well Wisdom, Vital Whey, Natural Vanilla, 21 oz (600 g) Vital Whey is a delicious, 100% natural nutritional protein supplement which comes in Vanilla, Cocoa and Natural. All three are proprietary, non-denatured, native whey protein produced to maintain the full range of all the fragile immune-modulating and regenerative components naturally present in fresh raw milk. The milk for this product is derived from cows that are grass-fed and graze year-round on natural pastures. Well Wisdom whey does not contain genetically engineered materials. It is hormone-treatment-free, pesticide-free, chemical-free and undergoes minimal processing: You can learn more about this product and order directly from iherb.com by clicking here: Iherb is the best online e-commerce store in the world—with the cheapest prices anywhere. For over 16 years they have had the distinction of being the most celebrated online natural supplement supplier. They ship efficiently to over 180 different countries, faster than you can receive most goods from the country you live in. They get preferential rates from DHL so even with shipping cost you are often better off ordering from them than buying goods in your own country, even if you have to pay import duty. Check their information on import duty when ordering. In many countries you will not have to. There is nothing like the range of good products they offer, or the customer care they provide. However if you do not want to order from iherb, you can use the link here to take a look at this product so that you know what it looks like and see if you can find it locally or online in your own country. Do check the price too. I order virtually all of my nutritional stuff, fresh nuts, and even non-toxic cleaning and washing products from iherb because, for me, even with the shipping, it costs me less money that it would if I could buy what I want locally.

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.

I have little patience with the nonsense talked about cellulite. The prevailing opinion still seems to be that it is merely a ‘normal’ condition of 80-90% of post-pubertal females. The silly debates about whether or not it exists and the trivial yet often painful treatments designed to banish it miss the point. I have learned a lot about cellulite through working with women on Leslie Kenton’s Cura Romana®, many of whom have calmly told me when they start the program that nothing will help their cellulite. I have such a passion to lay bare the truth about cellulite, its cause and its cure that I have just finished a book on it which will be available on line in the next three months. In the meantime, I’m keen to share with you some important stuff related to it here. INTERNAL POLLUTION What they haven’t understood is that cellulite is no simple cosmetic problem of concern only to vain women who have been sold a bill of goods by the beauty industry. It is a sign that internal pollution is present in parts of your body which not only reduces your energy levels and mars physical beauty. These women are often shocked to experience their lumpy thighs transforming into sleek flesh while following my internet-based Cura Romana Journey Program. Here’s the bottom line: Whether or not you care passionately about having smooth sleek thighs, if you see cellulite developing you can be sure your body is telling you that something within needs attention. Just as the appearance of slime in a river bed indicates that the ecology of the earth is disturbed, a peau d'orange thigh tells a woman that the ecology of her body is out of whack and if you want to shed your cellulite nothing short of a revolution in body ecology is called for. END CRASH DIETS Many women with cellulite have gone on and off slimming diets where they lose weight then regain it in a cyclic pattern year after year. This does more than practically anything else to encourage the buildup of cellulite in the body. Crash dieting is the worst thing you can do if you want to get rid of cellulite. High-carb, low-fat diet programs result in your losing large quantities of water, electrolytes, minerals, glycogen stores and other fat-free tissue including muscle, with only minimal loss of fat from your body. Thanks to some very dodgy food dogma that came out in the 1960s, we’ve long been led to believe that a high-carb, low-fat way of eating is the right one for health, for energy, and to keep our bodies running properly. This will surprise you: IT JUST AIN’T TRUE! The rising rates of obesity and diabetes world-wide in the past half century attest to this fact. The powers-that-be, including most so-called scientists, the lion’s share of the medical profession and the mainstream media are still churning out the same old advice: “Eat carbs for energy and cut out the fat from your diet.” Ignore it. If you want to clear cellulite from your body, it’s time to wake up to the truth. REVOLUTIONARY STUFF Cellulite as well as weight gain and degenerative illness results from the carb-based foods we have been taught to eat—grains, cereals and all that packaged convenience stuff we have been devouring for half a century. High-carb, low-fat eating not only breeds puckered thighs, it depletes your vitality. It makes people who have inherited a tendency to put on weight obese. This way of eating is also largely responsible for the development of virtually all degenerative illnesses from heart disease, cancer, arthritis and the rest. If you want a lean, strong body, lots of energy and great protection against early aging, cool the carbs—you don’t need them. Instead, eat sufficient top-quality proteins, lots of green vegetables as well as…wait for it…THE RIGHT KIND OF FAT. Yes, the right kind of fat, provided your grains, cereals and sugars are kept very low indeed, can not only prevent cellulite, it can gradually eliminate it. Now this is revolutionary stuff. More about all this to come soon. BANISH TOXICITY Crash dieting depletes your body of its supply of nutrients that are necessary to fuel the exact metabolic processes on which the elimination of cellulite depends. It also breaks down the muscle tissue in your body on which firm flesh depends and gradually replaces it with fat and sludge which turns into more cellulite. In the process you can experience disturbances in blood sugar regulating mechanisms so you suffer periods of fatigue during the day and then have to fight with so-called 'will power' to keep from eating cookies and drinking coffee just to keep going (all of which further pollute your body, deplete your energy reserves and contribute to the buildup of yet more tissue sludge and cellulite). If losing fat needs to be part of your own anti-cellulite program stay away from conventional slimming programs. What is a desirable weight-loss program? It is one which transforms metabolism and teaches you how to prevent regain permanently. Take a look at my Leslie Kenton’s Cura Romana® programs (HURRY Get 10% off any of our Journey program before April 1st). These programs bring about rapid, hunger-free weight loss while at the same time building strong, sleek, firm muscles to replace the pockets of tissue sludge and cellulite so many people have gone on crash diets to try to get rid of. In the years that I have been mentoring people through Cura Romana, I have discovered that when you provide the body with what it needs in order to shed fat and heal itself, in time cellulite ceases to be a problem.

A detox can work miracles after a spate of too much work and too little sleep, after the over-indulgences of Christmas, in spring when all life is renewing itself, before you hit the beach in summer, or whenever you need a lift. Detoxification is just a long word for clearing out your system. A process which stimulates your body’s natural ability to get rid of the toxic waste products that build up in your cells, tissues and organs over months and years of living on the Western fare of convenience foods and polluted air. You can spend hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds on lotions, potions and treatments to improve the look of your skin, to firm your flesh and to renew your body. But none of these things is likely to bring you the same benefits as simple, natural methods for periodic internal spring-cleaning. You might think of spring cleaning in terms of carting out boxes of junk from the attic. In a way, an internal spring clean does the same thing. The human body is magnificently designed to cleanse itself automatically without ever giving thought to the process. The trouble is that the kind of food and drink most people in the West put into their bodies, the tendency we have to lead stressful but sedentary lives, and the increasing number of pollutants to which we are exposed through the air we breathe and the water we drink, have created a situation in which often far more toxins are taken into the body, and far more metabolic wastes produced in it, than we can effectively get rid of. In other words, your body is continually having to cope with more poisons than it can eliminate in the normal day-to-day course of events. Instead they are stored in the tissues where they lower vitality, encourage the development of degenerative diseases and early aging and rob the system of nutrients necessary to keep your whole body looking its best. garbage gathering Dr Dwight McKee, Medical Director of the International Health Institute in America, put it rather bluntly when he said: "anybody who has lived the mainstream American lifestyle for ten or more years has 70 trillion garbage cans for cells." McKee believes, as do a growing number of physicians, that the cells of anyone living in the West are literally chock full of metabolic and environmental wastes gathered over a lifetime. To live at a high level of health and vitality, not to mention being able to make the most of your potential for good looks and prolonged youth, we need to get rid of them. Beautiful skin, a firm and healthy body, and a clear mind are all dependent on your system being able to efficiently and effectively get rid of bodily wastes and toxins before they have a chance to do any damage. This principle forms the foundation of the long European tradition of natural medicine. Remove some of the burden of what is creating excess toxicity in your system by laying aside coffee, alcohol, and over-processed foods complete with chemical additives for a time, and you’re halfway there. Add to that a very simple and temporary regime designed to trigger rapid detoxification and quite naturally you trigger your body’s own mechanisms for clearing out the junk in the attic. good looks from within So what do you get out of it? Giving your body the chance to clear out the rubbish it has been carrying around, sometimes for years, will encourage weight loss if there is weight to be shed, will start you on the road to getting rid of cellulite, will improve the look and texture of your skin, minimize lines on your face, improve overall muscle tone, and increase your sense of vitality and well-being. It cleanses the digestive system, restores a good acid/alkaline balance to the body and generally stimulates the proper functioning of organs and tissues. In short, it puts you through the kind of transformation which leaves you sparkling with vitality. Regimes like this keep world-famous health-spas making money hand over foot as they take in worn, tired, stressed people and transform them using healthy foods and natural treatments into more energetic, younger looking, better functioning versions of themselves. Yet you, too, can get that health-spa lift by doing a simple detox in a weekend at home for – believe it or not – the price of a few pounds of apples. Following such a regime two or three times a year can be enormously helpful in transforming the way you look and feel, reducing excess weight, increasing your energy, and generally getting you back on track. It is particularly useful when you have been under a lot of stress, when you have overindulged, or to get you looking and feeling your best before exposing your body on holiday. Detoxification can bring you a new sense of vitality and regenerate all your systems for maximum good looks and energy. The theory is simple. Stop putting into your body as much as possible those foods which encourage the production of toxic wastes which clog the system. Take two days – a weekend - to relax, spoil yourself, and get your natural elimination processes going with an apple fast. Follow with a few days of taking in lots of delicious living foods to really put you on top form. It’s a cheap, effective program which fits perfectly into a normal working week.  Too good to be true?  Check out Apple Magic and find out for yourself. To Find Out more About The Apple Detox Click Here

The question I am most often asked is, “How do you keep your skin looking so good at the age of 74?” My answer is simple. I’ve used the same skin care range for almost 20 years. I continue be sent lovely products from other companies to try because I’ve been involved for so long in skincare. Some are beautiful. I love trying them. But I always go back to my Environ products. SIMPLY REVOLUTIONARY Environ is the brainchild of South African plastic surgeon Des Fernandes. Fernandes is not only a creative plastic surgeon, he has been a pioneer in simplistic skincare. I have found his products the most effective for my skin anywhere. They are not the most aesthetically pleasing, beautifully fragranced and self-indulgent, but boy do they work—regardless of your age or your skin’s condition. In fact, it seems to me that Environ products just go on getting better year by year. Fernandes has always concerned himself with both intrinsic aging—once believed to be caused by nothing but the passing of the years—and extrinsic, or photo aging. He believes both to be unnatural and looks upon them as disease processes, which can and should be treated. I couldn’t agree more. Exposure to strong UV radiation, just like exposure to chemical toxins, literally uses up your body’s antioxidant supplies. “Few people,” says Fernandes, “understand that photo aging is almost entirely a manifestation of a vitamin deficiency in the skin. The most important vitamins are the light-sensitive ones, and the antioxidants A, C, E along with other important nutrients and plant factors.” What he says is absolutely true. Using Environ products, along with—and this is very important—eating in a way that supports not just the health of your skin, but the health of your whole being, enhances the order of your body’s biophotons improving the function of your body’s living matrix. Put this all together, and you have a prescription for beautiful skin that knows no age. MY FAVORITE Over the years, Environ has developed a number of ranges for specific skin needs. The most important of these, in my opinion, is their AVST range. It consists of five different products which contain vitamin A and antioxidants, as well as Vitamin C, Vitamin E, green tea extract, honey bush and rooibos tea extracts, resveratrol and beta-carotene. To use this range, you start with the lowest concentration of these products. As your skin becomes accustomed to the concentration of active ingredients it contains, you then “step up” from AVST 1 to AVST 2 and so on, until you reach AVST 5—the most intense concentration of them all. This is important, because your skin needs to get used to absorbing the nutrients they contain and this takes time. There are other products in the AVST range, including gels, cleansing lotions, toners, and exfoliant masks. Frankly, I seldom use the others. Why? Because, provided you have the core products, these work so well you may come to feel—as I do—that you don’t need much else. PREMIUM SKINCARE The other Environ range I’ve used for years is their ‘Ionzyme’ range. Fernandes refers to this as his “premium” range. What it brings is a complete skincare program which, again, contains vitamins, antioxidants and peptides to enhance the skin’s appearance and protect skin texture—bringing it a healthy glow. As far as I’m concerned, the combination of AVST and Ionzyme is unbeatable. Again, the Ionzyme range is comes in steps as does the AVST range: You start with Ionzyme C-Quence 1. As your skin begins accustomed to the intensity of this first product, your gradually move one step after another until you reach Ionzyme C-Quence 4. There is also an excellent Ionzyme C-Quence crème in the range that you use as part of the the C-Quence series. I rely entirely on AVST 5—since my skin has grown used to it for many years now—as well as the C-Quence crème. There are all sorts of other Environ products, including a range to help counter troubled skin; a range for the body; and an intensive range. TRIED AND TRUSTED What I like about Environ compared to other skin care ranges is that it’s a real workhorse. It cares for your skin quickly, easily and effectively. You don’t have to worry about what brand-new—ultra-expensive—products are hitting the marketplace with all their advertising hype. I couldn’t care less. I only want skincare that works, and goes on working year after year. Environ does. Fernandes has also created other highly innovative devices which have, since they came on the market, been much copied by other companies—such as the roll-CIT. This is a small roller impregnated with minute needles. You roll it gently over the surface of your skin so it makes micro-channels in the stratum corneum, which is the epidermal barrier to your skin’s deeper layers. This allows active ingredients to reach your skin’s depths even more effectively than if you just apply the products on the skin’s surface. A WORD OF WARNING The tiny holes created in the outer layer of the skin reseal themselves naturally within 24 hours, but here’s the rub: You want to be careful about anything else you put on your skin during this period. You could easily allow the penetration of toxic chemicals, fragrances and preservatives, which under no circumstances do you want to allow into your skin and your body as a whole. I would never put anything on my face or body that contains toxic chemicals of any kind. When the penetration of the nutrients in Environ products is increased using the roll-CIT, your skin manufactures more collagen. It becomes firmer, thicker and tighter. Fine lines soften. Although the roll-CIT may not be the greatest tool in the world for the faint-hearted, it works a treat. It’s an excellent example of what skin revolution and ingenuity is at its best. There’s even a medical version of the roll-CIT which probes deeper, allowing a dermatologist or a surgeon to increase the keratinocyte and fibroblast activity in a patient’s skin, softening lines, tightening and firming, restoring elasticity and reducing pigmentation. It improves the appearance of dilated blood vessels, and can be used on all areas of the face and body for skin rejuvenation. I have two roll-CITs—one specifically for the under-eye area, and one for the rest of my skin. LOW-MAINTENANCE PHILOSOPHY I hate fussing as much as I hate being fussed over in any form. I don’t even like going to the hairdresser to have my hair trimmed. All my life, I’ve disliked visiting cosmetologists and hairdressers. There are many more interesting things I want to do with my time. In recent years I’ve used the roll-CIT only infrequently, since my skin, thanks to 20 years of Environ care, is pretty good. What I love about Environ products is that they work so well that I don’t feel I need to do much else to look after my skin. But you can judge for yourself. Take a look at our videos See what you think, and let me know. You can find out more about Environ products at www.environ.co.za

Want to have ageless skin whether you’re 35 or 80? It’s easy, I promise you. First, change your way of eating from a diet of packaged convenience foods to pesticide-free, whole organic foods that are unprocessed. Next, never use canned fruits in any recipe that needs sweetening. Instead, go for fresh top quality stevias. Then use organic spices and herbs to create great flavors for all your dishes. The sugar content of any food is most deliberately hidden by food manufacturers who, if they list it at all, give it a name that shoppers will not recognize. It’s essential to be very cautious when looking for alternatives to sugar itself. These fall into three main categories: Artificial sweeteners—which you must avoid like the plague if you value your skin and your health. Sugar alcohols. So-called natural sweeteners. Here’s what you need to remember: The first group never to use are the artificial sweeteners—each very harmful in its own way. These include aspartame—the worst of the lot. You’ll find it in Equal and NutraSweet, as well as hidden in all sorts of packaged foods and sugar-free gums. Then there is sucralose. It is also nasty. It’s the main ingredient in Splenda. And of course, there is good old 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 completely forever about your skin and your health. The second group of sugar alternatives are the sugar alcohols. They all have “ol” in their name—such as xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, glycerol and lactitol. These sugar alcohols can spike blood sugar, so beware. Just because some product label says “sugar-free” this is not necessarily the truth, nor can you be sure it is calorie-free. Probably safest of the lot is xylitol, but only if you use it occasionally and sparingly. (By the way, xylitol is deadly for your cats and dogs.) The third group of sugar substitutes is often referred to as “natural sweetener”. This is a misnomer if I have ever heard one. Take, Agave Syrup and Agave Nectar which are even worse than the dreadful high-fructose corn syrup. It’s absurd to refer to these products as “natural”, despite all the advertising hype that tries to make you think that they are. Higher in sugar content than almost any other sweetener on the market, Agave has virtually no nutritional value. As for honey—this has become seriously distorted because of the hideous damage being done to bee colonies. You want to avoid honey as well unless you can gather it from your own hives. So what are your safest choices? Stevia is number one on the list. This 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’s more expensive than stevia. Sugar of any kind is a killer both in terms of your health and your good looks. Make these changes now and in as little as three weeks you’ll be amazed at how much better your skin looks, and how much better you feel all round. You may be surprised after a month or so to find you no longer even want sugar once your body has quite naturally eliminated its sugar cravings. I find this happens to many, many people. It feels like breaking free from a control mechanism that once undermined your life and your sense of self. Try it and find out for yourself.

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.