Detoxing my Home with Essential Oils

 

A while back, I shared with you how I was detoxing my home from harmful chemicals.  Studies have shown that indoor air quality can be up to 100 times more toxic than outdoor air quality.  Many of the cleaning products we use contain chemicals that were not around 50 years ago. These chemicals can lead to problems asthma, allergies, and other respiratory problems,  headaches, eye and skin irritations, sore throat, colds and flu memory loss, dizziness, fatigue and depression. 

Even more concerning, other health effects from highly toxic airborne particles could show up YEARS later, including heart disease, respiratory disease, reproductive disorders, sterility and even cancer (source here and here). Most vulnerable are infants, babies, children and elderly with compromised immune system who are likely spending large amounts of time indoors.

Some simple steps to detox your home:
1). Throw out chemical cleaners.  You can do a lot of cleaning with vinegar, baking soda and Norwex products.

2). Invest in some indoor plants. No need for some fancy, expensive air purifier. Mother nature made a natural air purifier through plants; they cleanse the air and replacing it with clean oxygen. Check out this article for 9 Indoor plants that clean the air.

3). Replace synthetic fragrance items such as perfume, febreeze, and candles with essential oils.  Did you know most fragrance has been made in a lab and is considered a neurotoxin, meaning they are poison to the brain? There are potential 500 chemicals listed as "fragrance" in your cleaning and personal care products.... scary!

When looking at essential oils, look for purity. Unfortunately, the FDA allows companies to sell oils marked as "100% pure" essential oil, but in fact it may only contain 10% of the true essential oil in the bottle and the rest can be filled with a filler oil or synthetics. Such marketing lies!

When you are looking at the label, make sure it is "100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oil". This is an oil safe enough to ingest. 

Only 2% of essential oils are suitable for medicinal/therapeutic purposes. Young Living makes 98% of the 100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils in North America. They have a "Seed to Seal" quality promise.  Essential Oils sold in health food stores are aroma-grade oils, and while they smell nice, they may contain less than 5% of pure essential oil. Even what you put on your skin reaches into your blood stream, within 20 seconds, so consider this fact when you put on lotions with "fragrance", or even aroma grade essential oils instead 100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils. 

I decided on Young Living because of all the reasons mentioned above and was so excited to receive my Young Living Essential Oils Premium Starter Kit in the mail. The Premium Starter kit comes with eleven 5 mL bottles of the most popular oils: Lavender, Panaway, R.C., Purification, Frankincense, Stress Away, Lemon, Copaiba, DiGize, Thieves, and Peppermint.  Additionally, for the rest of May, you get a free 15mL bottle of Tangerine - that's the big bottle!

The kit also comes with your choice of diffuser: Dewdrop, Home, Rainstone or Aria. I chose the Dewdrop because it gave good coverage of diffusion and could also act as a humidifier.

In addition, the kit came with 10 glass sample bottles, 10 sample packets of a variety of oils, 2 NingXia Red 2 oz samples, a metal roller ball fitment, a Young Living Product Guide and their most recent magazine that contained recipes and ideas of how to incorporate essential oils into daily living. 

At the time that I received my kit, our household was battling illness. We had some issues with coughing and sore throats, so I put Thieves in our diffuser. Thieves supports healthy immune function and it has a beautiful smell from real clove, lemon, cinnamon, and eucalyptus. We also used R. C. directly on the skin of our chests to relieve the ache from coughing.  I'm excited to use Frankinsense on my skin... it's said to help with aging lines. And add Peppermint oil to my tea. And Lavender to my bath.  There are endless possibilities on how to incorporate essential oils into your life. Below I share a simple replacement to Febreeze that we are using in our home. And let me tell you - it actually works BETTER than Febreeze to cover up after bathroom odors.

Non-toxic Essential Oil "Febreeze" Recipe

 (super easy!)

1. Go get an amber glass spray bottle. I used these ones. The amber glass helps protect the essential oils from going rancid.
2. Fill bottle nearly full with distilled water.
3. Add 5-6 drops of your favorite essential oil.  That's it!

Interested in essential oils? For the month of May, you can get a free 15mL Tangerine oil with purchase of your Young Living Premium Starter Kit!  To sign up for your Premium Starter Kit, just follow this link!

 And for those already using essential oils, what are your favorite ways to use them? Leave me a comment below and share!

New Year, New Sheer with Beautycounter

This past year, I have dedicated a lot of time and effort to finding great chemical free products—from cleaning products, to facial lotion and body wash, to cosmetics. And slowly, little by little, I'm detoxing our home. My good friend Becky introduced me to Beautycounter, a brand that is dedicated to making facial and cosmetic products without all the toxic ingredients.  Beautycounter makes products free from synthetic fragrance and approximately 1,500 questionable or harmful chemicals on their “Never List” that they never use to formulate their products. (i.e. perfect beauty products for pregnant ladies and nursing mamas!)  Beautycounter is a start-up company out of Santa Monica, CA with the mission of getting safer products into the hands of everyone.

A study conducted back in 2004 found that 28% of lipsticks contained cancer-causing chemicals. Modern lipsticks are formulated from upwards of 10,000 chemicals, 89% of which have never been tested for human safety. The average woman eats 4 to 9 pounds of lipstick in her lifetime, that’s somewhere between 481 and 1083 tubes.  Yikes!

Additionally, those who use lipstick for 3 days increase their risk of developing lupus by 40%.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 brand-name lipsticks, like Cover Girl, L'Oreal, and Christian Dior, and reported that "61 percent had detectable lead levels of 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm)." One-third of the lipsticks tested had levels higher than 0.1 ppm, the FDA's safety limit for lead in candy.

The problem with chemicals in lipstick is not only do they get absorbed through your skin, but they are also ingested when you're eating and drinking.

BUT there is hope for you lip color lovers! I recently tried lip sheers, a Beautycounter best seller.  There are ten shades in all and they are formulated to look great on every skin tone.  How amazing is that? They are very moisturizing, add a hint of color, and go on like butter.  There's no synthetic fragrance, just a sophisticated hint of vanilla planifolia, leaving these lip sheers not tasting or smelling like your average lipstick.  They can also double as a blush.  Non-toxic and gorgeous... a win-win.

Why not make 2017 the year you change to a non-toxic lip color? Lip sheers are an amazing and beautiful way to start to detox your makeup collection!

Lip sheer colors on me from top left to bottom right (left to right): bare/none, Twig, Terra, Coral, Raisin, and Plum.

I am excited to team up with my good friend and favorite Beautycounter consultant, Becky Pacini, to host a giveaway for a FREE LIP SHEER on my Instagram page. See below for details.

GIVEAWAY!
Enter the giveaway for a free lip sheer in Twig—Allure's Best of Beauty winning shade (over $30 value with shipping).

To enter, you must have an account on Instagram.
1. Follow me on Instagram @maliajayne
2. Like my Beautycounter  "New Year, New Sheer" photo.
3. Sign up for Becky's e-newsletter by messaging your email address to @beckyblevs on Instagram.
4. Tag friends for additional entries. One tag per comment, please.
5. Share the post for an additional entry.

Giveaway ends Monday, January 9th at 9pm. Winner will be announced on the Instagram post.

Purchase of Beautycounter products can be made through the link: http://www.beautycounter.com/beckypacini
Beautycounter Lip Sheers can be viewed HERE.