News — green beauty

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I love honey for many reasons! 

We grew up with honey bees on our acreage in eastern Ontario and enjoyed having fresh honey on hand for eating and baking. My favourite kind was probably clover honey. As you might have guessed, I grew up eating a lot of honey and as I got older I learned more about its unique properties, beyond being a delicious, anti-inflammatory food, that were beneficial for healthy skin. 

Simply put the no poo movement is ditching shampoo in favour of an alternative. The most popular alternative is using baking soda for washing your hair and apple cider vinegar rinse as your conditioner.  For many people this works great, but…it’s not ideal for all hair types.  I even found that I had to find a different alternative as the baking soda wash was a bit too harsh for my scalp after a period of time and was causing me to get dandruff. Yikes! Something I had never had before! Dandruff can be caused by disrupting the delicate slightly acidic...

I used to think the richest product for our skin was a lotion, but surprisingly it's not and I'm about to tell you why. Lotions have a high concentration of water (generally 50% of the content), which makes them cheap to produce, but also hard to keep shelf stable without spoiling, hence they have lots of emulsifiers, preservatives, and stabilizers, many of which are toxic substances and known carcinogens. Yuck. 

Our bodies are 80%+ water, so wouldn't a water-based product be nourishing? Surprisingly the answer is no. The reason is, our bodies were meant to be hydrated from the INSIDE out through drinking fluids and consuming healthy, juicy foods. Our skin doesn't really like water. In fact, our skin has a layer of oil that our own body produces to protect us from the environment. It's called sebum. Without it, our skin cracks, and dried out from exposure to wind and water. Think of professionals who have their hands in water all day or must wash them several times a day such as health professionals, cooking staff, etc. If water were nourishing to our hands, they should have the softest skin of anyone! But they don't, not without slathering on lots of creams, all day long etc.

So, if lotion isn't the most nourishing for our skin, what is? Products that contain mostly oils, plant butters, and waxes are the best for our skin as they mimic the action of the sebum. e.g's being salves, body butters, body oils, creams (with a low water content). Body butters are excellent moisturizers that work hard and provide lasting protection throughout the day. Check out our rich moisturizers in our online shop such as our Whipped Cocolicious Body Butter. It smells like chocolate heaven! 

 The Oil Cleansing Method sometimes referred to as OCM is a way of cleaning your skin without using soap!

It's especially beneficial for the face and one of the most natural and simplest ways to let your skin glow! The concept behind it is 'like attracts like'. i.e. Oil dissolves oil. Your skin produces natural oils called 'sebum' to protect itself from environmental factors which include: dryness, pollution as mentioned above, but also to keep ON healthy bacteria and yeasts and keep OUT unhealthy or unwanted bacteria and yeasts. When we strip that protective layer off your skin too often with soaps, it not only causes our body to produce more oil, but it makes your more vulnerable to colds/flu bugs and/or infections as well.