Holistic Feathers

1 very ripe, large banana
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1 tablespoon honey

To Make:
1. Mash the banana. Add the cream and honey and whisk together until smooth.

To Use:
1. Apply to dry hair from the roots to the ends, cover with a shower cap, and then wrap your head in a warm towel.
2. Allow mixture to remain on hair for as long as possible – up to an hour. Rinse thoroughly with warm water, then shampoo as usual.

Recipe discovered at Stairway of Life

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Please take a few moments out of your day to read this fascinating article by Natural News, reflecting all that we, at Holistic Feathers, believe in when it comes to natural beauty …

(NaturalNews) … today we focus on cleaning up your skin exposures. By “skin exposures,” I mean all the things your skin comes into contact with… and the sheer quantity of those things will probably surprise you.

But first, let’s get something out of the way that’s crucial to all this. The consumer products industry wants you to believe their “Big Lie”. The Big Lie is that chemicals you put on your skin don’t get absorbed into your bloodstream. So there’s no need to make sure consumer products are actually safe.

The FDA and most members of the conventional medical community also believe this lie: They don’t acknowledge the absorption properties of the skin, so they tend to say that all the things you put on your skin are perfectly safe for your health even if they contain toxic chemicals. (Of course, these very same people then promote nicotine patches and other drugs delivered through the skin, so they do indirectly acknowledge that the skin absorbs chemicals.)

How many different products come into contact with your skin on a regular basis? You’d be shocked to consider all the sources:

• Perfumes, colognes and other fragrance products.
• Shampoo.
• Shower soap or shower gel products.
• Pesticides used on your lawn which are carried to you through pets or children.
• Skin creams.
• Sunscreen products.
• Cosmetics.
• Antibacterial hand soaps.
• Laundry detergents and dryer sheets (through your clothing).
• Dish soaps.
• Furniture polishes.
• Household cleaners such as window cleaners.
• Artificial dyes found in clothing.
• Feminine hygiene products.
• Deodorants and anti-perspirants.
• Shaving creams and after-shave products.
• Hair dyes.
• Massage oils and lotions.
• Hair sculpting products and hair sprays.
• Tattoos and temporary skin art.
• Insect repellants.
• Over-the-counter creams: Anti-itch, pain creams, etc.
• Chlorine in your shower water.
• Anti-flea and tick chemicals acquired by touching your pets.

Cancer-causing chemicals
If you look at all these products whose ingredients come into contact with your skin, you’ll begin to realize something quite disturbing: They’re loaded with cancer-causing chemicals!

The average perfume product, just as an example, contains over twenty cancer-causing chemicals all by itself — and these are never even listed on the label. Antibacterial soaps are made with a chemical that’s similar to the nerve toxin chemical called Agent Orange which was used as a chemical weapon in the Vietnam War.

Hair dyes contain highly toxic chemical solvents. Conventional laundry detergents are made with extremely toxic cancer-causing fragrance chemicals. Conventional cosmetics are loaded with not just cancer-causing chemicals, but also heavy metals like lead. Lawn pesticides contain chemicals that promote Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The list goes on and on…

The products listed above probably contain over 10,000 different synthetic chemicals, and virtually none of them have ever been safety tested or approved as safe for human consumption by any federal agency. The EPA doesn’t even know what many of these chemicals are because companies claim they need to protect their formulation “trade secrets” by not even listing the ingredients on product labels.

But think about these 10,000 chemicals for a moment and ask yourself this question: Why are you putting them on your skin?

Mainstream consumers poison themselves
Consumers are very easy to covertly influence through corporate advertising. I’m particularly struck by the advertising of a cologne product called “Axe” which is marketed to clueless teenage boys who naively believe that wearing these toxic chemicals will magically bring them hoards of slutty women who want to have sex with them. That’s the underlying message of the Axe Cologne advertising, anyway.

So these teenage boys buy up these Axe products which include cologne, deodorant and shampoo. Naturally, they’re oblivious to the fact that these products are made with artificial, synthetic fragrance chemicals that are absorbed right through the skin. None of these chemicals have been approved as safe for human consumption by the FDA, of course. But young men coat their bodies with these chemicals with no regard for their own health, thinking that smelling like Axe will reward you with female companionship.

And the ads work! Axe sales are through the roof. Sex sells everything… even synthetic chemicals.

Are you poisoning yourself, too?
But if you think these teenage boys are silly for buying such products, think about your own personal care products. Do you buy conventional shampoo? Sunscreens? Lotions? Cosmetics? Which toxic products are still in your own bathroom, kitchen or garage?

I’ve visited a lot of homes of people who told me they were “super health conscious.” Yet in almost every case when I visit such homes, I still find they’re using conventional laundry detergents, brand-name soaps in the bathroom, toxic skin lotions and baby products, etc. It is extremely rare for me to walk into someone’s house and not find a huge assortment of cancer-causing products there.

People are poisoning themselves by poisoning their skin with synthetic chemicals. And they still think they’re “health conscious!”

Most people, you see, are kidding themselves about protecting their skin from toxic, cancer-causing products. They may follow a fairly healthy diet, but they still bathe their skin in chemicals that damage the brain, liver, heart and kidneys. For some strange reason, many people who are acutely aware of what they put in their mouth are surprisingly unaware of what’s contained in the products they put on their skin.

The point of this article is to raise your awareness of what’s in the products your skin comes into contact with, and then to take new action to get all those toxic products out of your home.

Action items: What you can do right now
This may sound crazy, but here’s what I want you to do: Go through your entire house, covering every room including the garage, under the kitchen sink, the bathroom closet and so on. Gather up every “chemical” product and throw them all out. (You’re poisoning the environment by doing so, of course, but you’re going to make up for that by never buying these products again…)

This includes all your conventional cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, fragrance products, cleaning products, laundry products, bug sprays, air “fresheners” and the whole lot. Gather them all up and throw them out.

More importantly make a commitment to never buy these products again. That’s the only way to enjoy a long-term benefit for your health, of course.

Once this is done, begin to detox your body from these synthetic chemicals using a variety of detox products: Zeolites, chlorella supplements, cilantro, spirulina, etc. Drink a lot of water. Take liver detox herbs to support healthy liver function during all this. (I recommend Livatrex from www.GHChealth.com ).

Within just a few days, your chemical burden will start to fall as your body eliminates the chemicals that have been routinely poisoning it. After six months, your chemical load can drop as much as 90 percent, greatly reducing the chemical stress on your liver and kidneys while sharply reducing your risk of cancer and other neurological disorders.

Over time, your health will improve as your exposure to synthetic chemicals plummets. This action, combined with all the other steps in this 15-day self healing series, will vastly improve your health while slowing or even halting the development of many different degenerative diseases such as cancer, liver disease or Alzheimer’s.

(c) Natural News

Holistic Feathers offers a range of natural, living, vegan skincare and bodycare products from our online store as well as our treatment rooms.

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I fell off the wagon a few weeks ago … I mean, in terms of only using natural, chemical-free products on myself!

At the beginning of January, I decided to stop colouring my hair. I have been ‘au naturelle’ just once in (ouch!) 25 years … and that was during my pregnancy, 20 years ago. Time to slide into my 40th birthday gracefully and be totally natural, I thought to myself.

Still, as a dark strawberry-blonde, I needed to a way to tone in the root growth, my wise-hairs (yes, yes, yes – ok, my white hairs!) and the colour left on my past-shoulder length mane. I finally gave in and picked up two bottles of Trevor Sorbie’s Cool Coffee colour shampoo in a moment of madness.

And would you but know it? My scalp eczema flared up within a week and although it gave a nice gleam to my hair, I couldn’t bear to carry on using something that was causing me such discomfort – and so full of un-natural ingredients.

To my surprise, I noticed that Raw Gaia – our favourite skincare range – had recently launched Shikakai, a completely natural powder shampoo which gives a slightly darkened sheen to hair. Great news! I ordered a pot alongside my trade order and have fallen in love with it …

Shikakai is known as as “fruit for the hair” and the powder comes from de-shelled shikakai nuts; an ancient Ayurvedic medicine for strengthening the hair roots and said to stimulate hair growth, shikakai also has a naturally-mild pH, which means it will gently cleanse your hair without stripping it of all its natural oils.

So it was a perfect find for my sensitive scalp, meaning it could gently darken my hair over a period of time. I am thrilled with the results I have had so far … my scalp is healing nicely, my hair has a lovely shine and I no longer need to use a conditioning product after each wash.

I use the shikakai powder daily, mixed with cool water into a thick paste – if you have a dry scalp or suffer with dandruff, you can also add 1 teaspoon of neem or jojoba oil to the mixture, to give it extra conditioning and soothing properties to your tender skin.

We are delighted to now stock shikakai hair shampoo alongside the Raw Gaia skincare products we use in our Living Facial treatments (we make it a firm rule to only stock products we use ourselves), so what are you waiting for? Give this magic shampoo a try for yourself …

PS – I am also thrilled to see that Raw Gaia ship their shikakai hair wash powder in a plastic pot; I am so accident-prone that I would have to have decanted it into a tupperware container, if they’d shipped them in their usual glass jars!

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Merry Christmas!!!

We are very happy to share our latest issue – the Winter 2009 issue – of Holistic Feathers Wellbeing magazine.

Wishing you a wonderful Yuletide and a very happy Christmas-time!!

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The British Prime Minister has told more than 60,000 people concerned about the effects of Codex guidelines on food supplements that they shouldn’t be worried. We presume concerned citizens are expected to feel humbled by the wise words of the PM, and should now go about their lives never fretting about Codex again.

The Downing Street petition

As we clarify in our news item on the subject, the Downing Street e-petition to which the PM was responding, was not well worded. But the sentiment in the petition was clear. Being told by the PM not to worry is not only patronising, it also misses the point of people’s concerns that to any thinking person was clearly evident. The petitioners had after all raised the point that the Codex Alimentarius guideline will in due course establish an internationally recognised maximum daily dosage for vitamin and minerals in food supplements. Levels above these are increasingly likely to be viewed as medicinal by governments. The US Food & Drug Administration tells us they wouldn’t dream of implementing the Codex vitamin guideline into US law—but why is the US Codex delegation so intent on nodding this and other nutrition-related guidelines through in cahoots with the European Union?

In some respects, the situation is actually worse than the petitioners claimed, because rather than forcing high dose supplements into a prescription-only category, they force them into medicinal law where such products are likely to be regarded as unlicensed medicines (which are illegal). It will then be down to nutraceutical or pharmaceutical companies to license them. Will companies have either the desire or the financial capability to meet the hugely costly data requirements for drug licensing? Time will tell.

Wider concerns about Codex

What really makes so many people uneasy is the notion that the global food supply is becoming increasingly controlled by a small number of corporations and governments. We have recently updated our Codex pages to explain better to people, in layperson’s terms, how it all works, and why, in some respects, Codex’s remit on vitamins and mineral food supplements is just the thin end of the wedge.

If you’re living in Europe, Codex actually makes little or no difference to your availability of food supplements as this is taken care of by a complex of EU laws, some of which, given the EU’s major influence on the Codex Committee on Nutrition, provide templates for Codex. Some of the key areas to be very concerned about include Codex’s role in approving technologies that are either downright dangerous or create unparalleled damage to the environment. These include endorsing genetically modified (GM) crops, pesticides, food irradiation and the use of synthetic chemical additives in foods.

The most recent issue of The Economist tells us that investment in agriculture has declined relentlessly over the last 25 years. Yet we are meant to feed a population that is expected to grow by another third by 2030 and hit an estimated 9 billion by 2050. And we’re expected to not be worrying about the quality of our food and our access to concentrated sources of nutrients (food/dietary supplements) to make up for its inadequacies? It’s no wonder the UK PM’s friends in the biotech industry are rubbing their hands—they are telling governments they can do the magic, just like they did with the Green Revolution of the 1970s. Successes like this, say expert’s like ANH’s Robert Verkerk, are “unrepeatable” and were in any event far from always the successes they were claimed to be. Trying to make such promises today, armed with the tools of genetic modification is in our view a recipe for disaster.

What you can do

A lot of people rightly feel very frustrated about the difficulty of impacting Codex. Many of us are simply not willing to take the British PM’s advice and stop worrying. There is just not enough trust in the small number of governments and corporations that are wrestling control of the global food supply. Codex and the World Trade Organization have become key tools in the process.

Find out what you can do as an individual. We urge you to not take the advice of the British PM and do nothing!

(c) Alliance for Natural Health

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Way back in 1995, I discovered the joys of Elizabeth Arden’s 8 Hour Skin Protectant … pricey for a single mum’s tight purse strings, but I found that it had a multitude of uses and lasted for AGES!

No better description of this product can be found other than to quote directly from Elizabeth Arden’s own website:

“The skincare classic that soothes, restores, calms and helps relieve chapped, cracked, dry skin. Soothes roughness, redness and minor skin irritations.

• Helps protect, soothe and moisturize skin.
• Soothes dry skin and provides anti-inflammatory benefits.
• Soothes and comforts minor weather burns, scrapes and abrasions.

The Legend
Created in 1930 by Elizabeth Arden to soothe skin, Eight Hour Cream Skin Protectant became an instant and overwhelming success. What made it so effective is a combination of petrolatum, a skin-soothing beta-hydroxy in one of its first cosmetic uses, and vitamin E. The apricot colored balm was so beneficial to her clients, Miss Arden used it to soothe her famous thoroughbred horses’ legs. Even its name came about thanks to a remarkable performance – a loyal client used it to treat her child’s skinned knee and “eight hours later” the skin was all better.”

Eventually I moved on to different products, particularly those that avoided petrolatum as my skin was developing bizarre sensitivities, in tandem with sensitivities developing on the inside!

So imagine my joy at CamExpo this October (2009) when I attended a seminar, where the founder of Herbfarmacy gave out sample packs of their products.

In a cute tester pot was a lovely herbal balm which looked interestingly similar in colour to the 8 Hour Skin Protectant cream I used to carry everywhere … I tested it on my lips and lo and behold!  The natural herbal smell even REMINDED me of Elizabeth Arden’s magic cream – a real blast from the past.

So my new favourite carry-all products is …

HerbFarmacy’s organic Skin Care Balm

At £8.95 for a 30g pot, this is a good price for a versatile balm – and if you spend over £35 with Herbfarmacy, you get a pot of this organic magic balm for free!

Herbfarmacy says about their Skin Rescue Balm:

“A luxurious herbal blend which melts into the skin leaving it feeling soothed and nourished. With Marshmallow, Calendula, Chickweed and Comfrey, this moisturising balm soothes and protects dry and cracked areas, rejuvenates sensitive and problem skin and nourishes any skin areas you feel are in need of a boost. For eczema-like conditions we recommend you also use our Dandelion and Burdock tincture to boost inner cleansing

Use to:

Moisturise, soothe and protect dry and cracked areas;

Soothe and protect sensitive and problem skin;

Nourish and moisturise any skin areas you feel are in need of a boost”

So what about the ingredients?  Always very careful about what I use on my skin due to occasional sensitivities, I was relieved to find that it was all-natural, wholesome herbal goodness …

Ingredients Ingredients: *Helianthus annuus (Sunflower oil), *Simmondsia chinensis (Jojoba oil), *Cera flava (Beeswax), *Butyrospermum parkii (Shea butter), *Althaea officinalis (Marshmallow) extract, *Symphytum sp (Comfrey) extract, *Calendula officinalis (Calendula) extract, *Stellaria media (Chickweed) extract, *Rosmarinus officinalis (Rosemary) extract, *Anthemis nobilis (Roman Chamomile) oil, *Lavandula angustifolia (Lavender) oil, *Helychrysum angustifolium (Helychrysum) oil, *linalool, *limonene, *farnesol, *geraniol, *eugenol (Last 5 essential oil ingredients) * = Organically grown/produced (100%)

I love using marshmallow and calendula macerated oils on my skin, so I knew I had found a new favourite – and of course, rosemary essential oil is a mild antiseptic,  and chamomile and lavender oils will gently soothe your spirits and give you a gentle etheric hug as well as soothing your skin.

I’d love to know if you still use Elizabeth Arden’s magic cream or whether you have switched to different – and organic or natural – products in its place:  and if so, what do YOU use?

Excuse me while I head off and shop at Herbfarmacy and grab my free gift …

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