Relieve a Sunburn with Apple Cider Vinegar and Coconut Oil

June 8, 2017November 23, 2024

As hard as I try to help my kids avoid a sunburn, there have been a couple of times over the years when they’ve gotten sunburned regardless of my best efforts. Learning about this surprising use for apple cider vinegar that helped my daughter recover quickly and comfortably from a sunburn after a day spent bike riding in the Colorado sun.

This month my teen and tween are both enrolled in a fantastic bike camp where the kids bike to various parks all over the city while learning bike safety, maintenance, and urban navigation along the way. Being in the sunshine is unavoidable when biking –and of course, good for absorbing vitamin D– and I encourage them to lather on a chemical-free, mineral-based sunscreen in the morning before they leave the house. And mostly they do.

However, sometimes the sun is so strong that they burn anyway. Especially my blue-eyed daughter, who will be nicely tanned by the end of the summer, but now, in early June, is still pretty fair-skinned. Which is why what happened yesterday when she rode fourteen miles with her camp group and came home with reddened arms.

By bedtime, her arms were hot and burning. I suggested she rub aloe vera gel on them, which she did, but it wasn’t enough.

A true child of the computer age, she got online and searched for sunburn remedies and found this one that had been recommended by many people. So we tried it… and lo and behold, it worked! Within just a few minutes her pain diminished, and by the next morning she rejoiced in how significantly the redness had faded.

Here’s what she did.

Apple Cider Vinegar Sunburn Remedy

Soak a small washcloth in a bowl of apple cider vinegar to saturate the cloth.
Place the washcloth on the sunburned area for a one to three minutes. Allow skin to dry.
Slather coconut oil over the sunburned area and allow to soak in. Do not rinse off. The coconut oil will moisturize, nourish, and heal the skin.
Repeat every twelve hours (morning and night) or as desired until redness and pain are gone.

Alleviating the inflammation from a sunburn quickly translates to reducing the cancer risk from a sunburn.

Pure, Clean, and Trusted Vitamins: Back2Health

May 31, 2017November 23, 2024

When I look for clean supplements from a trusted source, I find them at Back2Health.

European Extracts vs. Chinese Ingredients

Unlike many supplements where the ingredients come from murky Chinese sources, Back2Health uses European extracts created using strict extraction methodologies and tests each ingredients for identity, strength, purity, and composition in their FDA-certified in-house laboratory in Southern California

All Back2Health products are completely additive-free, meaning that you’re getting the vitamins rather than extra ingredients like lubricants, flow agents, disintegrants, binders and fillers. Additives like these are highly refined and could potentially trigger inflammation –not what we’re aiming for when we take vitamins!–, so it’s best to avoid them whenever possible.

Why We Should Avoid Stearic Acid

The most common additives in supplements may be stearic acid and magnesium stearate. Although stearic acid is found “naturally” in many foods, the stearic cid that is used in the nutritional supplement world largely comes from cottonseed oil.

What’s wrong with cottonseed oil? Besides knowing that cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops with pesticides, most of the conventional cotton grown in the USA is GMO.

If this weren’t enough, the cottonseed oil is hydrogenated in order to bioengineer it into stearic acid, turning it into a trans fat, and we already know that we should be avoiding trans fats to protect our health!

Magnesium stearate is produced using stearic acid, making it an even more highly refined mix of pesticide residue, GMO, and trans fat. Yuck! This isn’t what I want in my vitamins!

Back2Health Supplements are Clean

We can rest easy knowing that Back2Health supplements contain the active ingredients sourced from whole foods and the vegan capsule and nothing else. Most of the products are gluten-free and all contain pure coenzymated methyl folate, making them bioavailable to the 46% of Americans who have the MTHFR genetic variance and don’t assimilate regular B vitamins well.

Daily Multi-Vitamin Supplements for Women and Men

We know that women and men have different nutritional needs, and these multi-vitamins are good sources for the ingredients we need to be healthy.

The Women’s formula is tailored for the specific health needs of women, including antioxidants, extra vitamin B6, extra calcium, coenzymes, and coenzymated L-5 mthyl folate.

The Men’s formula addresses the specific health needs of men, including antioxidants, extra zinc and lycopene plus co-enzymes and coenzymated L-5 methyl folate.

Purchase a single bottle, or save by signing up for regular shipments so that you’ll never run out.

Mitochondria and MS

May 9, 2017May 16, 2017

In the continuing quest to discover the cause of multiple sclerosis, some researchers are looking at a new source: our mitochondria.

Mitochondria are the structures in our cells that create energy for our body. Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Alberta have noticed that MS patients have a lot of a protein called RAB 32 and, when there is a lot of RAB32, intercellular calcium supplies are pushed too close to the mitochondria, disrupting normal processes and causing toxicity.

Scientists believe this research will lead to treatments that target RAB32 and may lead to discovering that other proteins contribute to MS symptoms.

When I hear that MS patients have an abundance of a protein in their cells the first thing that comes to my mind is the need for plant-based digestive enzymes in our diets.

While Dr. Loomis believes that every adult over age 40 should be supplementing with digestive enzymes due to the wear-and-tear on our digestive tracts from simply living that long, I find that the great majority of my MS patients have dysfunctional guts as well as an autoimmune diagnosis.

I believe that healing the gut, avoiding your personal inflammatory triggers, and supplementing with the right plant-based digestive enzymes is the foundation for managing every autoimmune disease, including the one I’ve been diagnosed with myself, multiple sclerosis.

I’m happy to offer anyone a free 30-minute phone call to discuss whether this approach could help you live a symptom-free life with MS or any other autoimmune disease. Contact me to schedule your free call now and empower yourself to heal without waiting for microcellular science to catch up!

Is Ocrevus the Answer for Multiple Sclerosis (MS)?

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017

Very interesting stuff going on in the world of MS, including a new disease-modifying drug, Ocrevus. Is this new drug the solution to MS that we’ve all been searching for? Let’s take a closer look at how it works.

“Ocrevus works by depleting a specific type of a patient’s B cells, which circulate in the blood and are part of the immune system. While they normally help the body fight off infections, they are believed to malfunction and contribute to central nervous system damage in people with multiple sclerosis.”

This new drug reduces the number of B cells because they are “malfunctioning”. B cells are activated during hypersensitivity reactions triggered by an exposure to a substance deemed to be a threat by the T cells, which do the initial assessment.

Although Ocrevus is targeting B cells instead of T cells, the view of the immune system as “malfunctioning” and needing to be dampered is sadly familiar and mainstream in the medical community.

In my theory of MS, the B cells are not “malfunctioning”, but rather being triggered unknowingly by the foods and chemicals that the T cells have decided are threatening to that person’s body.

Therefore, if we can identify what substances are B cell (or T cell, as they work together) triggers and eliminate those exposures, then we can get the same result as this new medication– a pause in the downward trajectory of MS– without any of the pharmaceutical side effects or a decrease of normal immune functions.

It’s much less expensive for someone to use the highly accurate MRT test to identify those reactive substances and change his or her diet accordingly (less than $2,000) than it would be to go on this new drug ($65,000/year for an infusion every six months), and he or she wouldn’t have the side effect of a lowered immune system without enough B cells to fight off a cold.

In my clinic, I have worked with more than 80 multiple sclerosis patients and have found that more than 90% improved when following a customized anti-inflammatory diet, where improvement meant no unexplained exacerbations, less fatigue, more energy, clearer thinking, better balance and coordination, and most importantly, a halt to the downward slide that is the otherwise unavoidable trajectory of MS.

I’d love to tell you more about how it works for MS patients! Send me an email to schedule your free 30-minute initial consultation today!

The BEST clean foundation: Beautycounter

April 18, 2017June 12, 2017

I’ve found the pot of gold at the end of my quest for the perfect foundation: Beautycounter’s Tint Skin Hydrating Foundation! Even better: it’s free of a lot of the nasty stuff that’s in regular make-up!

Mainstream cosmetics companies include all kinds of chemicals, dyes, and synthetic additives and preservatives in their make-up, and these can absorb into your skin when you wear the make-up.

Remember that our skin is our largest organ and it has tolerance thresholds for toxins just like our immune system does. Cross these thresholds and it will start reacting in uncomfortable ways.

Keep your skin and your body healthy and safe by avoiding chemicals as much as possible, not only when selecting your food, but also when putting things on your skin.

Beautycounter’s mission is to produce safer personal care products that are accessible to everyone. They have a “the never list of chemicals in personal care products” containing more than 1,500 questionable or harmful chemicals that they never put in their products. This includes 1,400 chemicals banned in Europe but allowed in the US (the US only partially bans 30), and others considered suspect by Beautycounter.

For best results, use this foundation brush with Tint Foundation!

Back to my quest to find a great foundation that didn’t float on top of my skin like pancake make-up and wasn’t full of questionable ingredients…

I’m so excited to have found the answer in Beautycounter’s Tint Skin Hydrating Foundation!

I think applying Tint Foundation with BC’s Foundation Brush is key, too. Watch the video to learn how — it’s not like how you’ve applied foundation in the past!