Summer Bummers? Best natural tips to prepare for the season.

Summertime… and the livin’ is easy… and a little bit brutal, especially in Texas! Try to stock your home with some of my favorite herbal products and tips to have a stress-free season.

1. Best Sunscreen: Badger Sunscreen (Adult or Baby): Badger consistently gets the best ratings for sunscreens from the EWG and is completely natural & organic certified. Badger products are NEVER made with nanoparticles or parabens, ever. I love the lavender scented sunscreen, but they also have fragrance free adult and baby versions. Since Badger is made with Zinc oxide it will tend to be more white in color than mainstream chemical sunscreens - this is a good thing and just takes a little longer to rub in, but is well worth it for your skin.

2. Best Sunburn Remedy: Ching Wan Hung & Egg White Mask: Ching Wan Hung is an all-time favorite medicine cabinet product at my house. It is a Chinese herbal balm for burns of all sorts - rug burns, sun burns, steam burns, even severe burns in hospitals! - it is amazing. Keep this at home all summer and see how handy it can be. If you are really in a pickle - whisk some egg whites and brush on a mask to your burned skin and let sit until it dries. You can repeat this remedy for several days until your skin looks healed and the redness has gone down. It’s truly remarkable!

3. Best Bug Bite Remedy: White Flower Oil & Cedarwood Oil: The mosquitoes. Thorns in our sides. I like to have these oils on hand for when the bites get too itchy or painful to handle. Dap 1-2 drops of oil into a cotton ball and apply it to irritated skin. With little ones, you might want to keep a vial of diluted cedarwood oil on hand for applications, as using the pure essential oil can be too strong for them, although the white flower oil is ready to go!

4. Best Ear Ache Remedy: Onion steam & Grapefruit Seed Extract: Long ago, I posted my favorite home remedy for ear aches - the onion steam. You can read all the details of that right here. If feels so good, and releases so much pressure on the inner ear. In addition to the steam, for swimmer’s ear or bacterial ear infections you can easily use hydrogen peroxide drops in each ear, or Grapefruit Seed Extract ear drops. These have always worked so well for me - tea tree oil & grapefruit seed oil are both anti-bacterial, anti-biotic, and anti-microbial, and the combination of the two really cuts out any pain-causing junk. Put a couple drops in each ear and wait for the liquid to penetrate deeply inside the ear canal before shaking it out.

5. Best Acne/Skin Products: Wake up and smell the Rose! Rose is sort of a cure-all for redness problems. In homeopathy, like treats like, so rose (being red) can treat a multitude of red skin issues while promoting a healthier, softer, smoother looking complexion. My favorite rose-infused products are Weleda Wild Rose Facial lotion, Mario Badescu Facial Spray with Aloe, Herbs, and Rosewater, and Thayer’s Rose Petal Witch Hazel (alcohol-free). I use these simple products daily on my face - especially during the hot and harsh months - and have never had less skin issues in my life.

Do you have any favorite remedies to combat summer bummers? I’d love to hear them. Now, let’s go swimming!

Skin health is just as important as the health of our gut. In fact, skin health should be considered internal health, as Chinese medicine says the skin is the “outer lung”. Your skin is actually the largest organ of your body, coming in contact with thousands of chemicals, environmental agents, germs… not the mention all the food you eat. Your skin “breathes” and sweats out toxins, and is a very important tool in cleansing the body. So, why are we so harsh with our skin – slathering it with sunscreens, makeup, harsh chemical peels, Botox, fragrances, hairspray residue, tanning lotions, acne treatments and more? There is the definite pressure of living up to the high standards of appearance and beauty we have in our culture… but the best approach is one that takes the root cause in mind and treats more than just the outer symptoms.  Once I transitioned all my skincare products over to organic and natural sources, my skin cleared up greatly and has never felt better to this day. Learning how to eat well was the first step, and discovering organic products that nourished my skin instead of beating it into submission was the next step! Here are a few of my favorite products that I use daily for optimal skin nourishment. Nothing fancy, but several active ingredients really infuse my skin with the healing nutrients it needs:

Rose // Homeopathy states that “like treats like”, and rose is a great example of this. Red treats red. Rosewater and oil are perfect for soothing redness and inflammation of the skin, it smells lovely, and will hydrate your skin during dry or cold months. Rosewater is also used in some cultures as eye drops for red eyes. 

Aloe // Aloe has commonly been used for wound healing for centuries in herbal medicine. It has a wonderful healing effect on the skin, and also in the gut when taken internally. 

Calendula // Did you know that calendula flowers are edible? Calendula also is used medicinally for wound healing, anti-inflammation, and anti-tumor remedies. It has been studied as an acne remedy, with astounding powers in healing irritated tissue, and when taken internally can treat constipation and abdominal cramping. 

MSM // MSM is a sulfur compound and has been studied for its effects on stress, mucus membranes, GI conditions, and allergies. In addition to being present in some skincare products, it is also sold as a dietary supplement for these reasons. 

Jojoba oil // Often, acne and blemishes can occur when TOO LITTLE oils are present in the skin. Jojoba oil helps my skin stay hydrated and nourished so my sebaceous glands don’t over-produce and cause acne breakouts. 

Weleda Skincare and Inventive Organics (locally made in Austin!) are two of my absolute favorite skincare lines. Most of my skincare products come from these brands and they always leave me wanting to try more. Check out all of the products they have to offer - skincare, haircare, men’s products, medicinals and more. 

Homemade Cough Syrup

My husband was the first, then passed it on to me, then our poor little babe got his first baby cough last week. While it’s truly heartbreaking to see a 3 month old try to cough up phlegm from his little baby lungs, children are the best responders to herbal remedies and will often not need any further treatment if you catch things quickly - of course, if they are running fever over 100.4 or have labored breathing, that’s a definite visit to your MD. But his cough is all but gone now, and all it seemed to take was some pediatric herbs, some nasal rinse, a lot of patting on the back, and some time. For yourself, try this simple adult concoction to break up your own phlegm and ease a sore throat:

2 parts Local, raw honey

½ part Lemon juice

½ part Apple Cider Vinegar

Pinch of Ginger or Cayenne powder

Mix up a batch of this to your preferred taste (~¼ C) and keep it for a few days, taking spoonfuls up to 3-4x day as needed for cough. ♥