Tag Archives: natural beauty

Natural Skin Care – Coconut Oil as Replacement for Beauty and Skin Care Products

January 11, 2018 Suzana Vukcevic 2 Comments

Coconut Oil Instead Of Many Beauty And Skin Care Products!

Once you realize that majority of beauty and cosmetic lines contain extremely toxic and cancerogenic substances, you may find yourself lost in deciphering the ingredient lists and trying to figure out which products are safe.

How about throwing away your dangerous and expensive creams and products and go get some virgin coconut oil?

Oh Lou Lou! Natural Skin Care Using some high quality virgin coconut oil as base/carrier and adding some essential oils and couple of other ingredients you can literary replace majority of skin care products. Plus it will save you lots of money!

When applied topically, coconut oil will reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by keeping your connective tissues strong and flexible. It will also help with exfoliating the outer layer of dead skin cells. As a result, your skin will look fresh, younger and smoother.

Contrary to many claims that you can see lately on social networks, VIRGIN coconut oil is non-comedogenic (it does not clog pores)!

In fact, when used in its purest form it works wonders for any type of skin including acneic! This is because Coconut oil is anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. For example, Candida, Staphylococcus aureus, and other pathogens, fungi, bacteria and viruses are destroyed by coconut oil.

DIY recipes on how to use coconut oil as base ingredient for different beauty and skin care products are posted daily all over the web.

Also, the entire concept of many handmade organic small-batch skincare start-ups including ours http://ohloulou.com is based on using mostly VIRGIN coconut oil as a base for its products.

If you don’t have the time or desire to learn about it and make it, we can gladly make it for you – see our range of purest possible organic skincare products Oh Lou Lou!

Coconut oil can be used in hundreds different ways, here are some of them

Make-up remover. Apply some coconut oil with a cotton ball and clean your make-up just as you would use a regular make-up remover. Wash off with some warm water and pat dry.
Facial cleanser. Massage some coconut oil onto face and neck. Wash off with warm water and pat dry.
Shaving lotion. Massage some coconut oil on area to be shaved, and shave as usual. Coconut oil is a good antiseptic due to lauric acid and helps with shaving cuts.
Face and body moisturizer. Mix some coconut oil and essential oil hydrolat (the water collected when plants are steam-distilled to gather essential oils).
Deodorant. Apply some coconut oil directly onto your armpits. I mix coconut oil with a small amount of baking soda and it works perfectly.
Facial/Body Scrub. Mix coconut oil with baking soda, or oatmeal with a dash of cinnamon, for a gentle facial scrub. Add organic cane sugar for a good body scrub.
Insect repellent. Mix coconut oil with essential oils known as insect repellent: peppermint, citronella (Java), rosemary, tea tree oil, geraniol, catnip oil etc.
Natural Sunscreen. You can find here a Quick Recipe for Natural Sunscreen
Facial Cream. Ladies, instead of throwing tons of money on big brands you can try this 5 min. DYI Anti-age Facial Cream

Just make sure to look for organic, cold pressed, unrefined, virgin Coconut oil. Refined coconut oil is indeed comedogenic (pore clogging) and we don’t recommend it for skincare products.

For true lovers of DIY you can find a bunch of more sophisticated recipes like for example Top 15 Coconut Oil Skin Recipes

Check out a great free resource on the benefits of coconut oil Coconut Oil Ultimate Guide

Remember – what you can’t eat you can’t put on your skin!

Food On, Beauty Out 🙂

Sources and Credits

Natural Skin Care, Quick & Easy DIY Beauty Recipes

Japanese Beauty Secret

December 8, 2015 Suzana Vukcevic 1 Comment

What Japanese Ladies Have Known for Centuries…

Besides being the staple food, the rice also has been part of Japanese women’s beauty rituals since ancient times.

Geisha used leftover water from washing rice in the bath for smooth and luminous skin. The rice has been appreciated for its ability to make the skin clearer, brighter, provide even tone, lessen the dark spots and give the skin a smooth texture.

The rice promotes collagen production due to the presence of linoleic acid. As a result the rice is able to diminish the wrinkles and rejuvenate the skin.

Simple Rice Mask

Mix some rice flour or powder with some mineral water, apply and leave it on the skin for 10-15 minutes. Wash it off gently with warm water.

Instead of water you can use milk or yogurt and add some honey.

Rice Water

Wash and cook the rice and use the leftover water. Wet the cloth or towel and pat onto your skin for few minutes. Let your skin air dry. Feel the difference 🙂

Which Rice to Use?

Which rice is most beneficial (from over 40,000 types of rice, including white, brown, black, and wild varieties) is a complex and controversial topic. Some advocate white over brown, some wild over brown etc. More serious concern to me that today most of the rice contain arsenic (this is due to the rice being grown in contaminated soils) and some rice contains even plastic.

I concluded that all varieties of rice are good in moderation but it has to be organic and preferably Jasmine rice from Thailand and Basmati rice from Pakistan and India as they have been shown to contain the least arsenic among rice varieties.

In addition, adding whole rice bran to your diet can offer a rich source of Vitamin E and linoleic acids which benefit your skin and your body.

Rice bran oil also contains squalene, a potent antioxidant, and gamma oryznol, which helps heart health and reduces cholesterol.

Rice bran oil is very good to use for cooking as it can support higher temperatures.

Be Beautiful Inside and Out

Homemade Organic Beauty Products Online Store, Natural Skin Care

Why Organic Handmade Beauty Products?

May 20, 2015 Suzana Vukcevic Leave a comment

Many people are looking for alternatives to commercial cosmetics. Whilst the reasons may not be that obvious, they are quite disturbing, once you get to the bottom of what’s behind the curtains. Here are some of the top reasons.

Traditional cosmetic products contain dangerous toxins like heavy metals, phthalates and hundreds of others linked to cancer, hormonal disorders, fertility issues etc. The United Nations Environmental Program estimates that approximately 70,000 chemicals are in common use across the world, with 1,000 new chemicals being introduced every year!
Women absorb an estimated 2.5 kg of chemicals a year just from the makeup they use. Most items we rub on the skin end up in our bloodstream, and are distributed throughout our body.
The skin is actually our largest organ, and it is highly absorbent.A large portion of the toxins we are exposed to on a daily basis comes through our skin, not just through the food.
Using chemicals on our skin is actually worse than eating them. When we eat something, the enzymes in our saliva and stomach help to break it down and flush it out of our body. However, when we apply these chemicals on our skin, they are absorbed straight into our bloodstream and going directly to our delicate organs. They tend to accumulate over time because we typically lack the necessary enzymes to break them down.

5. Even when the product is certified as organic (biological) it may still contain some controversial ingredients and preservatives.

For example, Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) is an approved ingredient by many eco and organic certification bodies even though nearly 16,000 studies mention the toxicity of sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS). SLS is a surfactant used as foaming agent, detergent and emulsifier in thousands of cosmetic products and industrial cleaners.

So what to do, what is an alternative?

Luckily, most of the beauty and skin care products can be made at home at affordable price and far superior quality. The recipes can be found all around the web; I also post them regularly at http://foodinloveout.com along with many other natural beauty tips.

For those who don’t have the time or desire to go into the adventure of making the products, you can order them from our shop at http://www.ohloulou.com and we will be more than happy to produce them for you. Or look at the other shops making small batches of truly handmade and toxin-free products.

Our handmade beauty products are almost entirely made of organic, mostly edible ingredients like raw butters, unrefined cold pressed vegetable oils and pure essential oils.

This in essence means ZERO toxins, ZERO preservatives, ZERO dangerous ingredients.

Our products are delicate and pure and since no preservatives are added, they need to be carefully handled (kept at dark and dry place, the temperature usually needs to be below 25C).

Once you understand the need and importance for natural toxin-free products, staying true to them will be easy and rewarding.

Food In, Love Out