Natural Beauty from Nature Purity

Dear Reader,

The Spring equinox is right around the corner but we are just coming out of a tough Winter. Each cold season takes a toll on our skin, which needs help and nurture to heal itself. As explained in one of our latest articles Cold season: the other worst enemy of your skin, Winter can be as damaging on your skin as sun exposure: dryness, irritation, sensitivity, wrinkles, fine lines and the whole nine yards are the usual aftermath of Winter… Fortunately, there are simple and easy ways to repair these damages: there is nothing better than a soothing facial mask to replenish your skin. Step into the freshness of the Spring with a glowing skin with this exclusive recipe.

Soothing Spring Mask for dry, tired and sensitive skin

As with any of Nature Purity Home Spa recipe, give yourself the treat of being completely free for as long as you can: turn off your cell phone, stay away from your computer, TV and ask everyone at home to leave you alone. Preparing the mask will take less than 5 min if you have the ingredients. Applying the mask for 10 min. is already a big treat to your skin.

What you need:
- 1/2 cup rice flour
- 1/3 cup white clay
- 1/3 cup organic Orange Blossom floral water
- 1 tbsp organic Apricot Kernel oil
- 1 tbsp local liquid honey

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the Orange Blossom floral water and stir. Add the Apricot Kernel oil and honey and mix until the paste is smooth. Adjust the texture of the mask with more Orange Blossom floral water to get a perfectly smooth paste: not too dry and not too liquidy.

Apply the Spring Soothing Mask on your cleansed face and neck, avoiding the eye and lip contours. Leave on for 10 min while relaxing and visualizing your most beloved natural landscape. Rinse with lukewarm water and moisturize with an organic anti-aging and nourishing cream like Biolift or Tocophea Night Cream. Notice how you feel. Every single time I take the time to do a mask, I feel so relaxed and my skin looks and feels like a million bucks.

If you still have some Spring Soothing Mask left in the bowl, cover it and put it in the fridge: you can use it within the next few days.

Enjoy the Spring and St Patrick’s day!

Dear Reader,

Just yesterday, I read a news showing that most Americans want government’s help with healthy eating guidance. In which way? By setting new rules about food labeling and providing guidance about what is healthy or not. I think it’s time to get back to the basics of what America is about: freedom! Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” But freedom means responsibility, so take your health and beauty in your own hands and use your own common sense. Experts are formatted according to their training and belief system. Fifty years ago, doctors and experts claimed that it’s better to feed babies with a bottle. We now have  the scientific proof that it was baloney and that babies are much better off being breast-fed by their mother.

A must read

I am preparing a full review of a wonderful book  Clean by Dr Alejandro Junger. I am always on the look for good health and beauty books: this one is as good, as The Thrive Diet I reviewed last year. You only need to read the first chapters to understand that if you need to read a label, it most likely means that the food you’re looking at contains preservatives, additives, maybe colorants, taste enhancers and modifiers and the whole nine yards. None of the above is good for you, and actually they’re quite detrimental to your health and beauty as Dr Junger clearly demonstrates in his book Clean. Thus, things are pretty simple: look for foods that don’t need a label. For example, salads, potatoes and apples don’t have or need a label, except the organic certification label. They don’t need a label because they aren’t processed foods: that is what you want to look for when you do grocery shopping. The simpler the food, the healthier it is. The best food you can find is at your local farmers’ market because it’s local, it’s fresh and it’s in season; if it’s organic it’s even better. Your next choice is your local health food store (a good one!).

You are what you eat

If your schedule is so crazy that you are too busy to do grocery shopping and prepare your own meals and you do take-out all the time, then think twice. There is a price for everything, including being too busy. No pill will be able to repair the damages in your body after years of dietary and stress abuse. No anti-aging cream will be able to reverse the ashen tone of your skin because your skin had to build itself with crappy material coming from crappy foods.

Spring cleaning

Spring is one of the best season to do detox. Eating healthy is good, but not enough. We all need to detox once or twice a year at least because of the level of toxic chemical pollution in our everyday life environment and because of the cellular waste stuck in our overwhelmed body. Even before the chemical pollution eras, traditional healers recommended to do detox yearly. Now, detoxifying is not optional if you care for your health and beauty: it’s a must. Detox is good for you and it can be fun. Look for our new Spring Detox program in our next newsletter.

Take good care

Enjoy the weekend!

Dear Reader,

Yes, that is the terrible truth if you and I don’t do anything: all males are going to turn into females and that will be the end of our species (and the end of lots of fun sex for a great part of us). Why? because one of the most used herbicide is messing up with the hormonal system to the point that it turns males into fully functional females. Of course, we are talking about frogs right now, but have you heard about the epidemics of low sperm count and male infertility (together with female!) that has been raging for about 30 years at least? Maybe (I am being very very very conservative) there is a link?

The facts

A new scientific study by the University of California-Berkeley was published last week in a major scientific review showing that male frogs raised in water containing the EPA-safe level of weed-killer atrazine were turned into females. 10% of them were even able to lay eggs (although they had male chromosomes), the other 90% were castrated by the same chemical.

You may not be a frog, but…

I know you’re not a frog, neither am I (even though I’m French!). However, this is not the 1st time atrazine’s mischiefs are scientifically reported. This crappy chemical has been shown to feminize more than frogs (rats, mice and other animals) and it’s one of the most common man-made chemicals found in US waters. If you think that your water is safe, think further…

As Dr Hayes, the leading author of this study, says of atrazine: “It’s a chemical… that causes hormone havoc. You need to look at things that are affecting wildlife, and realize that, biologically, we’re not that different.” You may be interested to know that the manufacturer of atrazine is the Swiss giant Syngenta and that Switzerland has banned atrazine.

This is what you can do

Buy organic: for your personal care, for your diet, for your lawn and garden, for your house cleaning needs. Organic personal care products are not much more expensive that conventional, plus they work better (see our article on natural versus conventional skincare). If you think that organic lifestyle is more expensive, think of the tens of thousands of dollars any in vitro fertilization program costs, plus all the stress that it puts on both parents. Organic lifestyle is better for your health and for your sex life. Atrazine is not the only bad chemical present in our food, water, air that has a profound effect on our health, life and happiness in general. Stop the intake by changing your lifestyle and shopping habits and clean your body by doing natural detox. Spring is one of the best season to do it. Look for our next newsletter with a super detox program easy, simple and efficient.

Enjoy the day and take good care

Dear Reader,

Is your hair dull, damaged, too oily or too dry? Are you seeing more wrinkles showing up at a worrying pace on your face? Did you lose your radiance during this long winter? Think Jojoba oil! From personal experience, it is absolutely amazing what this simple oil can do for your skin and hair. Once again, Nature has all the solutions to beauty and health problems, you just have to know what to use in which case.

What is Jojoba?
Jojoba is a shrub native to deserts in southern Arizona, southern California and northern Mexico. Usually bushy, it is a long lived, drought resistant plant often reaching heights of ten feet or more under ideal growing conditions. Jojoba plants have a natural life span of at least 100 years and perhaps over 200 years. Jojoba oil is extracted from the small nuts growing on the female Jojoba trees every year. Although it’s called “Jojoba oil”, it is in fact a wax that resembles the natural wax (called sebum) produced by our body to protect our skin and hair from dehydration and damage. Not enough sebum, and your skin is dry, itchy, sensitive. Too much sebum and your skin is oily and prone to acne.

Jojoba: a precious gift from Nature to your skin
Jojoba is a light oil with unique benefits for your skin. It is:
- hydrating
- revitalizing
- anti-aging
- soothing
- deeply regenerating

Jojoba oil stimulates the production of elastin, a major structure protein responsible for the suppleness, youth and strength of your skin, and prevents the loss of moisture in skin cells. It is an ideal anti-aging product for all skin types, but especially the dehydrated and dry types. Not only that, but it’s also normalizing for oily skins as it regulates the production of sebum. As everybody with oily skin knows, trying to strip your skin off its oiliness only makes things worse. Instead, use a gentle facial cleanser and apply Jojoba oil as a moisturizer and oiliness-normalizing treatment. Whatever your skin type is, feel how much product it needs to feel comfortable and protected: neither too much, nor too little, just the right amount.

More beautiful hair than the stars
Man or woman, your hair is a crucial part of your looks as it crowns your face. Although lots of tricks and artifices and chemicals are used to achieve the magnificent hair of the stars, you don’t have to go through the same expensive and ultimately deceiving path to have a gorgeous hair. I wrote about the hair beauty secret of Ho Shou Wu in the previous blog. That was for your hair beauty from within. Now, Jojoba oil is a key product for your hair beauty from without. It use it myself and although my hair is fine and delicate, it looks absolutely beautiful and full of vitality and shine with just a little bit of Jojoba oil. More interestingly, its benefits build up with time: it’s as if Jojoba oil was stimulating the growth of hair stronger, more beautiful and full of body. Like with the skin, it helps both dry and damaged, as well as oily hair. It regulates the production of sebum by the scalp, therefore normalizing the oiliness of the hair. It also gives vitality and strength back to dry, damaged and brittle hair. In both cases, it brings beauty, shine and suppleness back to your hair and prevents hair loss. It is also protective against climate and pollution damage that make your hair age faster.

You can use Jojoba oil on your hair in two ways:
- do a hair mask for 20 min with a warm towel around your head before shampoo as a deep treatment
- use it as a leave-on conditioner after shampoo. Only a little bit is enough to bring life and beauty to your hair. Spread the oil on your whole hair and blow dry or let it dry naturally.

Dear Reader,

Natural shampoos and conditioners are crucial players for your hair beauty. But they’re not enough. Your hair’s vitality, suppleness, color and shine are a reflection of the vitality and health of your internal organs. More precisely, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, they are a direct indication of your Kidneys’ and Liver’s energy. If you have already done a thorough detox on yourself, and your hair isn’t yet shining in the sun; a little known herbal secret is what is missing for your hair to be gorgeous again. This little marvel’s name is Ho Shou Wu.

Nourish your hair’s vitality and reverse greying and loss of hair from within

Ho Shou Wu (Polygonum multiflorum) is also known as Fo-ti. It is a general tonic and nourishing herb, known to strengthen and nurture the skin, and hair (as well as nourish the teeth, bones, ligaments and tendons). It is widely used to prevent or reverse loss and greying of the hair. Even its name shows its properties: in Chinese, Shou-Wu means “a head full of black hair”. How does Ho Shou Wu do this? It replenishes the deficiencies of the Liver’s and Kidneys’ energy by bringing some specific nutrients and  stimulants. Once the Kidneys’ and Liver’s energy is rebalanced and revitalized, it can support  and nourish a healthy and beautiful hair and skin. It’s simple, easy and powerful. But that’s not all…

Ho Shou Wu does even more

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this precious herb is considered to be a “yin essence” tonic which promotes a long healthy life, boosts physical energy, enhances learning and memory, and promotes sexual virility and sperm production in males. It cleanses and nourishes the blood as well as lowers the level of bad cholesterol according to some scientific studies. It may sound too good to be true, unless you remember that every single herbal extracts contains hundreds or even thousands of natural compounds, each of them having its own properties, in addition to the synergistic effects with the other compounds. Unlike chemical drugs that contain just a couple of compounds, herbal extracts have a global action.

How do the Kidneys’ and Liver’s energy get deficient?

Stress is the answer. Physical, emotional, psychological, chemical, nutritional stress all add up. Today, almost everyone in the US has felt the stress of the economic crisis the country is going through. We all come to the world with a built-in resilience, but as the stress burden piles up on us, our capacity to rebound withers and that’s when physical problems start showing up. Like an ashen skin or breakouts, or hair loss… Ho Shou Wu is here to help you get your vitality and beauty back. Nature has lots of solutions to help you look and feel great. It just takes some knowledge to pinpoint what is needed and I am here to help you with this. Nature, health and beauty are my passions and it’s my real pleasure to be able to share these with you.

Enjoy!

Dear Reader,

The tension and excitement are building up with the academy awards ceremony happening in just less than 2 weeks from today. But I will not write about Avatar, George Clooney or Quentin Tarantino. Instead, I would like to share what I think is an absolutely extraordinary movie from 2005: Angel-A by Luc Besson. It’s worth the best anti-aging creams and cosmetic surgery procedures because it’s going to make you feel beautiful just the way you are.

The story

André, a small-time ex-convict, seems to owe money to everyone in Paris, including a crime boss who promises to kill him if he doesn’t repay him by midnight. After failing to find protection from the American embassy and the French police, a despairing André jumps onto the Alexander III bridge over the Seine, intending to commit suicide. But suddenly, after talking to a God who doesn’t seem to care about him or even to bother to answer his questions, he sees a beautiful girl clinging to a rail on the same bridge, apparently preparing to end her life as well. She jumps, and he jumps too, suddenly resolving to save her life. After scrambling ashore, she tells him her name is Angel-A. They begin an amazing odyssey in Paris that will bring peace and love in Andre’s heart for the first time in his life.

Like Andre, we all have shadows in our heart that make us believe that we’re not good, beautiful, intelligent, sexy, successful (you name it) enough. We often seem to think that there’s something wrong with us and if we don’t, people around make sure that we know about all the things that are wrong with us; unless they want something from us… . But when do we stop this craziness and sit down to see the beauty in ourselves, all the goodness we have and express? Almost never. This movie is a wonderful opportunity to see this beauty in a very deep way.

Movie can be better for your skin than skin care sometimes

The mind-beauty link is much more powerful than most people realize today. By always being unhappy about the  way you look and focusing on what’s wrong with your skin, hair or body, you make things worse. On the contrary, if you are happy with your look, you help your skin, hair and body stay young, healthy and therefore… beautiful! If you can connect with the characters in this movie (and I think it’s pretty easy), they can bring you a lot of good things and change your life. They can help you to love yourself, deeply.

Enjoy!