Elizabeth Yarnell, Author, Innovator, Naturopath, Speaker
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Natural Remedies for Itchy Scalp, Dandruff

Every year around tax time my head starts itching. Coincidence?

Maybe. I would imagine the stress can’t help, though I suspect it has more to do with the quick changes in barometric pressure that accompany the march of the seasons around here.

Whatever. All I know is that my scalp itches and I seem to have a bunch of dry skin flakes that rain down when I relent and scratch to my heart’s content. Yeah, I know: very sexy. A bit distracting, too, I must admit. It reminds me that its time to do a scalp treatment and clear this up.

A scalp treatment is something that I love to get done at an Aveda salon in flush times, but I always keep a bottle of Aveda Active around for a do-it-yourself quickie whether I have the time and money for a salon visit or not. Here’s what I do:

I pour some Aveda Active serum into a small applicator bottle with a pointed tip and drizzle it onto each part in my hair, and then use my fingertips to massage it into the line of exposed scalp. Using my fingers or a tail comb, I separate my hair into thin sections, working from the front crown areas and moving toward each ear, then across the back of my head. This is much easier (and more relaxing!) to have done by someone else at an Aveda salon, particularly if you have a dense thicket of hair as I do, but I usually end up doing it myself at home, which works, too.

Once it’s applied over my entire head, I do an all over scalp massage to spread it around and use a wide-bristle, forgiving hairbrush with knobby-ended bristles to further stimulate the scalp, loosen dead skin cells, and spread the oils.

Aveda Active contains Jojoba oil, Menthol, and Wintergreen oil. It’s invigorating, refreshing, cleansing, and awakening. I’ve been told it encourages hair growth. It might, but more importantly it clears away all the dead skin and buildup that accumulate over the year and makes the itching go away. You’ll feel the tingling. I love it!

I usually follow up a scalp treatment with a cleansing shampoo to remove all the debris I’ve loosened and finish with a deep conditioning product that sometimes recommends heating the conditioner for a more effective treatment.

Once I do this, voila! No more itching, flakes, or dull hair.

Natural Remedies for Hay fever

It’s spring and that means hay fever season.

I used to only suffer from pollen-related allergies in the fall, when the weeds and grasses are at their peak. But, in my early twenties I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a time, and when the yellow chamisa bloomed in the spring, my nose would turn into a faucett.

Runny nose, frequent and unstoppable sneezing fits, red and itchy eyes… those are just the most obvious symptoms that I’m suffering. The most annoying ones include the irritating itching on the roof of my mouth, right on the palate, and how the skin on my face constantly tickles, begging to be scratched at a deeper level at risk of permanent scarring or at least visible damage. With my body in histamine overdrive it’s no wonder hay fever makes me feel like I’m interacting with the world through a thick pillow and leaves me wiped out by mid-afternoon.

For years I seasonally took prescription anti-histamines like Zyrtec and Claritin. They took away the itching, sure, but left me dehydrated, wired, and chemically-dependent. Now, I try to manage the hayfever with natural remedies instead of drugs.

Locally-collected bee pollen
Locally-collected bee pollen

My first line of offense is the locally collected bee pollen I find in the refrigerated section of my local Vitamin Cottage. (Check with your local health food store, or look for bee pollen collected in your area online.) An 8-oz. baggie runs me about $3.20 and may last me almost the entire season. I start each season slowly, with just about 1/8 teaspoon of pollen dissolved into a few ounces of juice or lemonade. Since bee pollen is like concentrated honey, it makes a sweet drink and I start to breathe easier quickly.

Once I’m sure I tolerate the pollen again this year, I gradually increase the dosage up to an entire teaspoon, if needed, as frequently as required. True confession: I don’t always wait for the pollen beads to fully dissolve before drinking them down. What can I say, allergies make me desperate!

This year, my homeopath also recommended a homeopathic remedy for hay fever that seems to be effective as well: Sabadilla. With homeopathy, you take a dose in an empty mouth and see what happens. If it works and the symptos abate for a while then return, take another dose. Discontinue when symptoms disappear or are not affected at all (which indicates you’re using the wrong remedy). While you can get a good selection of homeopathic remedies at a good health store, this one is hard to find and may be best ordered online.

Another homeopathic remedy for histamine reactions that may not necessarily be from hay fever is Histaminum. This was the only thing that worked to end my two-year old’s lifelong runny nose problem.

Natural Remedies for Spring Itching and Allergies

Aaahhh… springtime. The crocuses are peeking out, robins are building nests, and the trees are heavily laden with cherry blossoms. Spring has come… as if I didn’t notice. Oh, I noticed alright. For me, “spring” is synonomous with “itching”.

Yeah, I said it. Itching. As in, just about everything starts itching this time of year. From hayfever/pollen allergies to dry, itchy skin to dry, flaking scalp… they always seems to hit right around tax time. Coincidence?

More likely my hyper-histamined state is due to airborne pollens from those lovely flowering trees. The ultra-dry air from our winter-that-wasn’t is probably the culprit behind my relentlessly itchy scalp and knuckles, as well as my daughter’s eczema patches.

Which means it’s a good time to talk about some natural remedies for these problems that I’ve found that may work for you, too. Watch for the next few posts as I go through a number of remedies for itchy problems from constant sneezing to dandruff to hives.

Sweet Potato Glorious One-Pot Meal Recipe

There was a sweet potato eyeing me from my produce basket for the past few weeks, so last night I decided to put it to good use and build a meal around the delightful orange flesh.

Luckily, with the Glorious One-Pot Meal patented cooking technique, it’s easy to throw together whatever you have around and come out with something lip-licking good. Last night was no exception.

I started with Organic Coconut Oil, one of my current obsessions. After receiving a bad rap for decades, it’s finally been recognized that coconut oil has remarkable health-giving properties. It has a low smoke-point, too, so if you’re concerned about carcinogens created by smoking oil, switch to coconut oil for peace of mind. Of course, smoking oil is never a problem with GOPMs because you need oxygen along with high heat to cause this reaction, and GOPMs are cooked in a closed vessel.

So I slathered the sides and lid liberally with coconut oil. Besides offering non-stick properties, I love the subtle flavor it imparts to food. Especially to sweet potatoes, which came next in the pot. I scrubbed them well, removed the eyes, and sliced them into thin julienne sticks before scattering them in a thick layer across the base of the pot.

On top of the sweet potatoes, I placed individual frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I covered them with a 6-oz can of chopped green chiles and a bit of sea salt, then threw in the rest of my vegetables: an undrained can of chopped tomatoes (ok, I know tomatoes are a fruit rather than a vegetable, but bear with me), florets of purple cauliflower that I saw at the store and couldn’t resist, and trimmed and halved Brussels sprouts.

I set a couple sprigs of fresh thyme and sage on top, just because I happened to have them around and I thought they’d lend a nice touch. I was right: the whole thing was scrumptious. I have to confess, I licked my plate clean of the coconutty juices that I spooned over the food from the bottom of the pot while serving. The sage, especially, was a nice touch.

My kids did pretty well with it, too, both loving the chicken and purple cauliflower. My daughter liked the sweet potatoes, but not the Brussels, while my son must have eaten at least 8 whole Brussels sprouts but only the required bite of sweet potatoes “to taste.”

Backyard Chickens

I have a secret confession: I have a fantasy about building a chicken coop in my backyard and raising some hens.

If you saw my postage-stamp-sized backyard in the dense, urban area where I live, you’d laugh, though it looks like my city does approve of private coops on a case-by-case basis, and raising urban chickens is becoming more popular.

I’ve been thinking about the chicken project ever since I read Jenna Woginrich’s Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life.

Jenna’s engaging tales of rediscovering the simple joys of self-sufficiency, sustainable living, and learning how to do everything from sewing to canning to bee-keeping in remote northern Idaho inspired me. She even has her own dogsled team that she hooks up to her very own sled for silent night glides in the moonlight.

Not that I haven’t been into this kind of homesteading stuff before. Yes, I’ve gardened and canned and knit, but the two things that really caught my fancy in this book were the chickens and the bees. With more than 30 children under 8 populating the surrounding houses on our block alone, the bees are simply out of the question, though there is something seductive about sedating the bees with smoke and then stripping the combs of honey… But I’m back to the chickens. Hens, I mean.

Can you imagine, having farm-fresh, wholesome, antibiotic-free, free-range eggs produced for your family just steps from the back door? We LOVE eggs, and there is a difference in eggs raised this way: they are usually richer in color, flavor, and texture.

Slaughtering in the city is not allowed, which is just fine for me. Just the eggs, that’s all I’d want.

Even though this is just a fantasy for me, others are already raising urban chickens, even in my city. No roosters allowed, of course – that would really kill your popularity with the neighbors!

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Glorious One-Pot Meals

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