Category Archives: Beauty

The Beauty of Butterfly Pea Tea

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This spring I went to a mocktail event at the Thyme Herbal Apothecary in Worcester. They taught us to make several delicious, healthy, and beautiful mocktails with different herbs. The star of the show was the Butterfly Pea Tea because of its dazzling blue hue (although sometimes it’s a gorgeous purple like in the picture).

As a nutritionist, I know that those natural blue and purple pigments are extremely healthy and not that easy to come by in our regular diet, so I eagerly bought a package of the dried Butterfly Pea flowers to brew up at home.

I told one of my friends about it and we both started drinking it daily. Within one month, we both noticed a notable lack of interest in sugar. Cravings had just vanished even when around our favorite things. My friend had been eating sugar throughout the day so this was a minor miracle for her.

Then, one month after that, she showed up looking like a new person. She had lost 25 lbs and was feeling so light and joyful, like “a deer prancing in the woods” as she described! Her routine bloodwork confirmed that she is no longer prediabetic.

Yet another bonus – we both notice that our hair has become thicker and healthier. Since this all happened, we’ve been telling our friends about our experiences, and they in turn are also delighted with the effects of drinking it daily. Some friends have reported a reduced need to pee all the time and dark spots on the skin fading. Of course it’s possible this is all coincidence because of the small size of our unofficial “study” but I do believe that there really is something profoundly healthy about this tea.

The Science

  • The scientific, Latin name of Butterfly Pea tea is Clitoria Ternatea.
  • The rich hue in butterfly pea tea is due to a class of antioxidants called anthocyanins which have numerous health benefits.
  • One published review reports that Butterfly Pea has “diuretic, nootropic, antiasthmatic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antipyretic, antidiabetic, antilipidemic, anti-arthritic, antioxidant, and wound healing properties.”

A Few Tips

  • You can get Butterfly Pea Tea from Thyme Herbal Apothecary or Mountain Rose Herbs. If you choose another supplier, just be sure that the flowers are organic.
  • We make a big batch of the tea once a week by adding about a half cup of the dried flowers to a saucepan of water. Depending on the size of the flowers you get, you may need more or less, depending on what color tea you want (blue or purple). You can’t go wrong. Let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes, and then let it cool. Once cooled, strain it into a bottle and store it in the fridge.
  • The tea has a unique earthy flavor. You can add enhancements to the tea like a little lemonade, fresh lemon juice, or lavender.
  • Don’t ruin your tea by adding artificial sweeteners!
  • Have a cup consistently every day and see what happens in a month or two.

I hope that you also have amazing results from your Butterfly Pea experiment. Please let me know how it goes!

Shush the Sugar Cravings

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I want to apologize if my last post about what sugar does to the body was a bummer. If you felt that way, just know that I totally agree. Most of us grew up eating lots of sugar, believing that the worst it could do is give us cavities. It was a treat we enjoyed all during our formative years and it’s deeply embedded in our psyches. It was a reward, a comfort, and is associated with wonderful memories. So the thought of breaking up with sugar is especially rough because there’s an emotional and physical component to it. Sugar and I have parted ways several times, and I know how depressing it can feel at first.

But! After you get over that, you feel SO much better! No addictions, better energy, more emotionally even, clarity of mind, weight loss, less puffy… the list goes on.

In addition to those tangible benefits, your risk for all the major chronic diseases goes down. So, even though it may feel impossible, sad, and extreme, it’s worth the effort. If you’re not willing to ghost your sugar completely, just reducing your intake is fantastic too.    

How to Reduce Sugar Cravings  

As you reduce/eliminate sugar, cravings are sure to rear their ugly head. The good news is that they go away almost completely in as little as a week. You almost can’t even believe that you were so addicted to the stuff. Until you get there, here are some of my favorite methods for avoiding and dealing with cravings:  

  • Stay hydrated – start your day with a couple big glasses of water and sip it every half hour for the rest of the day. Dehydration makes you feel depleted, and more likely to grab any quick energy fix.
  • Eat protein rich meals. This is filling and increases satiety.
  • Be sure to have regular meals – getting hangry is a recipe for disaster.
  • As you transition, enjoy some whole food,natural sweeteners in moderation – like raw honey, pure maple syrup, raisins, figs, or dates.
  • Eat sweet potatoes and other sweet vegetables. Soon these will taste really sweet!
  • Experiment with spices like coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom. Cinnamon has been shown to stabilize blood sugar.
  • Drink licorice or Gymnema Sylvestre herbal tea which also help regulate blood sugar.
  • Slow down and find sweetness in non-food ways. Despite what we learned growing up, a treat does not = sugar! Sugar is certainly not a treat for your body.
  • Move in some way – take a walk, dance around, do some pushups, jumping jacks, or a few sun salutations. It’s energizing on its own and distracts you from the craving.
  • Brush your teeth. When your mouth feels refreshed, subconsciously you don’t want to muck it up with all that sugar.
  • Reduce strong yang foods and beverages like animal protein and coffee, because they increase cravings for yin foods like sugar and alcohol as the body tries to rebalance energetically.
  • In the midst of a full fledged craving, drink a glass of water. If it’s still there, eat a nice refreshing apple. If it’s still there, have a protein smoothie. If it’s still there, take a nap if possible. Lastly, the craving will usually go away in less than 20 minutes, so waiting it out is an option too.

I’d love to hear how these suggestions work for you and also what tips you have used successfully that aren’t on my list! 

Image by Stephanie Wu Photography

Hold On To Your Pancreas!

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Halloween is coming!   

I’ve always loved Halloween, but this year seeing the Halloween decorations actually filled me with dread*. Halloween is supposed to be pretend scary, but it does have a truly sinister side that harms people and causes a great deal of suffering.  

The real monster is the sugar. 

If it were just during Halloween, we would surely survive. However, our sugar problem is more like 24/7/365. Our taste buds have adapted and now we “need” a certain level of sweetness regularly to feel satisfied.  

Our taste buds aren’t the only thing that have adapted. Sugar affects every cell, organ, hormone, and tissue in our bodies. Here’s the short and not-so-sweet progression of what happens when we eat our body weight in sugar every year:  

  • First the pancreas obliges by churning out more insulin to get that sugar into the cells.
  • Once sugar intake is chronic, the pancreas gets in the habit of churning out high insulin all the time. 
  • Our cells get inflamed from all the sugar being forced into them by the insulin, and they don’t work as well as they should.
  • Insulin stays consistently high, which inhibits fat burning, and we become resistant to fat loss.
  • Eventually, we have way too much blood sugar regardless, and the liver starts packaging it into fats called triglycerides, which then deposit not only in fat cells, but also in the liver, the muscles, and even the pancreas. This is toxic, inflammatory visceral fat, which often takes the form of a beer gut.
  • Then our cells start resisting insulin, causing blood sugar to stay high, where it damages our blood vessels.
  • Plaques form in the blood vessels causing hardening of the arteries, blood pressure rises, and the eyes and kidneys show early signs of damage.
  • If you’re getting bummed out, just skip to the last bullet point.
  • Since we can’t get the sugar into the cells because they’re now resisting insulin, we don’t have the fuel to create cellular energy. On top of that, the high insulin shut off fat burning. So we have a plethora of fuel, but our cells can’t burn it. Sugar and fat end up where they don’t belong. We’re exhausted.
  • Our sex hormones even get whacked out on all the sugar. Men grow “moobs” and women grow facial hair. Libido is a thing of the past.
  • The immune system is suppressed and we get sick a lot.
  • Our risk of every health horror imaginable goes way up.
  • We gain weight. We feel tired and old.
  • We think this is just “getting old”, but it’s all accelerated by the SUGAR!
  • This process is reaching epic proportions in the US and around the world. More than half of the adult population has prediabetes or diabetes. Even scarier, Type 2 diabetes diagnoses in kids is skyrocketing. 
  • This scary story can have a happy ending. The great news is that it’s all reversible, even entrenched cases of diabetes. It’s in your power! So don’t worry. Instead, get motivated!

To summarize – if you’re tired, unable to lose weight, having health and hormone issues, aging fast… maybe it’s the sugar. I wish this were all “pretend scary” like the rest of Halloween, but hopefully it’s made you more aware of how insidious and far reaching our collective sugar addiction is.  

Click here for more “how-to’s” for kicking the sugar addiction. But in the meantime, notice how often you eat foods/drinks with added sweetener, don’t be tempted by the evil Halloween candy, and do our cleanse 🙂 which is very effective for reversing sugar addiction and the health effects of it! 

* I do realize that my transformation to a totally un-fun downer of a health nut is nearing completion. But it’s totally worth it if others get healthier and happier! 

Image credit Jee World

3 Simple Steps to Thrive

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If you want more energy, clarity of mind, to be in a better mood, to love and be comfortable with the skin you’re in, to heal from chronic symptoms, be stronger, love better, sleep better, poop better, and more… we wrote this for you.

All of those goals are your natural state of being. If you’re not feeling optimal, there is nothing wrong with you. It’s just a mismatch between how you want to feel and the environment you’re asking your body to live in.

“We are not designed to be stressed, toxic, inflamed, infected, malnourished, & unrested and still find a way to thrive, grow, reproduce, be thin, and have great sex. This combination would be Not Natural.”

Tracy Harrison, the founder of the School of Applied Functional Medicine

So the question is, are we stressed, toxic, inflamed, infected, malnourished, and/or unrested and what are we willing to do about it? For most of us, wellness usually comes down to optimizing diet/digestion, reducing stress, and releasing toxins. Yes, genetics does play a role, however we do have the ability to control which genes are activated through diet and lifestyle. This  exciting field called “epigenetics” assures us that we are not doomed by our genes; our genes just tell us how we should be living.

Methods for optimizing our genes are often so basic and seemingly obvious that we tend to ignore them. We love shiny objects, new pills, ancient secrets, new workouts, etc. But the answers have been hiding in plain sight for years. We can dramatically increase our energy and vitality through simple practices like mindfully eating whole, nutrient dense food, reducing stress (and having fun!), and perhaps a bit of gentle detoxing. This is all easy to say, but when the rubber meets the road, people are often at a loss because we’re so deeply entrenched in our processed food, stressful western way of life.

Follow these three simple steps to get more thrive into your life:

  1. Eat & Digest Nutrient Dense Food: Ditch all processed food (including anything made with flour, refined sugar, and chemicals) and eat more organic produce. Plant foods are nature’s medicine chest, and you get thousands of healing, anti-inflammatory compounds with every serving of fruits and vegetables. Eat mindfully, in a relaxed state, and chew well.
  2. De-stress (+ have fun): Make stress reduction a process of continuous improvement. Many people are so used to being stressed, they don’t even realize they are! Even the busiest people can fit a little meditation, deep breathing, fun, and attitude adjustment (if necessary) into their day. You can too. It’s just a matter of recognizing the importance and making it a priority. You can start with just 5 minutes, if that’s all the time you feel you can spare. The many online resources for meditation, including Head Space and the Chopra Center’s 21 Day meditation series, make it easier than ever. Breathe deeply in the car,  while waiting in line, when your computer hangs up, etc. Let those inconvenient moments be like mindfulness bells. When you catch yourself dwelling on negative thoughts, replace them with gratitude. Check out your local yoga, Pilates, and fitness studio – lots of resources there!
  3. Detox: Up your intake of detox veggies, including broccoli and cauliflower, onions and garlic, radish, cilantro and parsley. Drink lots of water throughout the day. Sweat and move daily. Be sure to have at least one bowel movement per day and if you don’t, click this green text. Upgrade the toxic products in your home and personal care. If it’s not too much trouble, consider giving your liver a break from alcohol for a week or two. We promise – you can relax and have fun without wine. 🙂

We cover all this in great detail in our gentle 4-week program “The Ultimate Rejuvenation Cleanse”, where we guide you every step of the way into more relaxation, more nutritious foods, and more self care. We provide daily inspiration, all of the how to’s and the why’s, SO MANY delicious and easy to prepare recipes, and multiple ways to connect with us and other cleansers. Our next group cleanse begins on January 20th. We’d love for you to join us. To learn more, click here.

Wishing you glowing health, energy, and joy in the coming year!

Image credit: santypan

The Many Benefits of Daily Body Oiling

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Abhyanga is an Ayurvedic practice that involves massaging good quality oil into your skin every day. It’s the perfect remedy for the cold, dry, winter air! Most obviously, daily oiling helps your skin retain its hydration and luster. When you oil your skin in the morning, you feel warm and cozy all day, as if you were wearing silk long underwear. Oiling your feet at night helps you to get more restorative sleep. The physical action of massaging oil into your skin and joints helps to relieve stiffness and improves circulation, giving your whole body a nice glow and boosting energy and overall health. Since there is so little circulation in the joints, they can really benefit from the extra attention. You can even put a little oil in your nostrils to help keep the sinuses moist, which helps you to avoid colds and sinus infections.

The benefits of abhyanga don’t end with the physical. According to Ayurveda, the cold winter air can also impact the mind, causing us to feel jittery, scattered, and exhausted. Regular application of oil infuses your body-mind with a grounding energy that soothes any winter-induced anxiety or forgetfulness. All of these symptoms (cold, dry, stiff, anxious, scattered, tired) that we can relieve with abhyanga are often associated with aging. This is why abhyanga is considered one of Ayurveda’s top anti-aging strategies!

How to oil

  1. Since your skin absorbs whatever you put on it, use the highest quality oil you can find – organic, cold-pressed, and in a glass bottle when possible. Jojoba, sesame, and coconut are great choices. Most of these are available at the grocery store. However, you can also purchase wonderful oils infused with herbs or essential oils (we especially love Sarada’s Woman Power oil!). Natural, cold-pressed oils contain fatty acids, vitamin E, and other antioxidants that promote healthy skin. Sure, lotions often add vitamin E, but not the whole vitamin E complex, like natural oils have.
  2. Before your shower, rub the oil into your skin, using long strokes on the long bones, and circular motions around the joints. Be sure to pay attention to your toes and feet, fingers, and neck too. Enjoy it!
  3. You don’t need to use a lot of oil.
  4. If you like, you can rub some into your scalp. This helps keep your hair healthy and conditioned. (When doing the hair, it’s great to let it soak in for 10-15 minutes if possible.)
  5. Using your pinky finger, you can apply a bit of oil to your nostrils as well. “Nasya” oil was created for this purpose, and is usually infused with sinus opening herbs like eucalyptus. But of course regular oil also works well.
  6. When you shower, the warm water will help the oil to sink in. Be sure you don’t use soap on the arms and legs. You may need to shampoo twice if used a lot of oil in your hair. Blot your skin dry after the shower.
  7. An alternative option is to apply the oil after your shower. Just use less oil, and give it a few minutes to sink in before getting dressed.
  8. When you’re cooking, rub extra olive, sesame, or coconut oil into your hands!
  9. Ayurveda is pretty obsessed with oiling. They even put drops in eyes, ears, other places :-0 and swish with oil like mouthwash. It’s really good for dental health. Swishing with coconut oil actually whitens your teeth while improving dental health! If you decide to try this, swish for about 10 minutes as you do your morning routine, and spit the oil out in the trash, not the sink (because it can clog the sink over time).

Image credit: Lisa Mair

Three Ayurvedic Beauty Tips for Summer

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Ready to glow this summer? These simple tips from the time-tested wisdom of Ayurveda (literally “the knowledge of life”) will help you look and feel your best!

#1 Body Skin Care

Abhyanga, or self oil massage, will restore youthfulness and radiance to your skin. Like all Ayurvedic beauty practices, the benefits are never purely superficial, and the application of oil over the entire body is renowned for its healing effects on the body and mind. From boosting the immune system and balancing the nervous system to promoting flexibility in the muscles and lubrication of joints, Abhyanga is like giving yourself the gift of beauty from the inside-out.

The ideal oil to choose depends on your constitution, but in the summertime it’s safe to say that organic virgin coconut oil is an excellent option. If it’s a cool day and the oil has solidified (as coconut oil will if it’s under 76 degrees), warm it up first to liquefy it. Massage your entire body slowly, with loving care (this increases oxytocin levels), before you shower. The water in the shower will help the oil penetrate more deeply.

Bonus tip: Apply ground chickpea flour to your skin in the shower to soak up residual oil and leave your skin extra soft.

#2 Facial Skin Care

Here are the steps to doing an Ayurvedic facial.

Steaming

Pour boiling hot water into a large bowl. Cover your head with a towel and lean over the bowl, breathing in the steam for 5-10 minutes. This will open your pores, release toxins and prepare your skin for a mask.

Bonus tip: Add 5 drops of nasya oil or a combination of eucalyptus and rose essential oils to the steam to improve respiratory health and promote mental clarity.

Mask recipe

  • ½ tsp organic neem leaf powder
  • ½ tsp organic triphala powder
  • 1/8 tsp organic turmeric powder
  • 1 Tbsp organic chickpea flour
  • Organic rose hydrosol (rose water spray)

Mix ingredients to form a paste and apply to face, avoiding contact with the eyes. Leave it on for 5 minutes and rinse several times with warm water. If you need to replenish some oil to your face afterward, apply a thin layer of coconut oil. Finish by spritzing with rose hydrosol

#3 Hair Care

Massage coconut oil into your scalp and comb it through your hair. I hate to be redundant with coconut oil tips, but it truly is our ally in beauty! Leave the oil on for a minimum of 30 minutes before shampooing, but if you can leave it overnight, even better. Put an old towel over your pillow to prevent staining, or wrap one gently around your head. Coconut oil is full of fatty acids that will repair split ends, penetrate the scalp and thereby soothe the nervous system, preserve color, resolve dandruff, detangle, and hasten hair growth. This treatment will also leave your hair looking lustrously healthy. Wow!

Bonus tip: To get the oil out of your hair more easily, do a “dry shampoo” which means don’t get your head too wet before shampooing.

I heard a quote that recently that really resonated (source unknown): “Haste and superficiality are diseases of the 20th century.” While I’m sure hastiness and superficiality have existed to some degree historically, they are prevalent features of our modern day culture and are root causes of psychological and physiological illness. None of these ancient Ayurvedic beauty tips are hasty in the same way that putting foundation on your face to cover blemishes is, and they’re not superficial either because they have far reaching health benefits. That said, nothing can make our skin shine and our hair lustrous like taking the time to do a well crafted cleanse, like the Ultimate Rejuvenation Cleanse, at least twice a year. After all, 80% of the skin’s appearance on the outside is determined by the health of our organs, blood, lymphatic and circulatory systems. So enjoy the immediate benefits of the practices I’ve described here, and do the work of radiance from the inside-out by following Michael Pollan’s sage slogan, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”

Image credit: Susanne Ollmann

Emmie Stamell is an Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga and meditation teacher. She offers private Ayurvedic consultations, mindfulness coaching and personalized yoga. She loves connecting with folks and is happy to answer questions. Feel free to reach out via email: [email protected] or phone: 781.608.9369. Learn more about Emmie at www.sukhayoga.org

Oil Pulling for Oral Health

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Oil pulling is a method of daily detoxification (and very beneficial for oral hygiene) that is easy to incorporate into your morning routine. Toxins are usually fat soluble and when you swish the oil in your mouth, toxins are pulled through the mucous membranes into the oil, so you can then spit them out. In addition to the detox benefits, teeth become whiter, breath becomes fresher, and overall dental health improves. This is probably why my dentist so highly recommends it!

Every morning, before eating anything, put 1 tablespoon of cold-pressed coconut oil in your mouth. (If it is solid, it will melt in less than a minute.) Slowly swish the oil in your mouth for 5 minutes. You can walk around and do your morning clean up routine while oil pulling. DO NOT actually swallow the oil because it is loaded with bacteria, toxins, pus and mucous! When done, spit the oil into the trash (NOT your sink or toilet where it will accumulate and eventually clog the drain. To maximize detoxification, you can repeat this a couple more times. When done, rinse out your mouth thoroughly, scrape your tongue, and brush your teeth.

Image credit: Amirul Mukminin