5 Reasons to Add Pink Grapefruit to Your Wintertime Health and Beauty Regime

As colder weather sets in, our natural urge to curl up on the sofa with a big dish of our favorite comfort food can often become overwhelming. One of the easiest and most delightful ways to fight off a case of the winter blahs is to add a healthy serving of pink grapefruit  (Citrus grandis) to your diet and your skincare regime.

Get a jump on seasonal stresses this November with the perfect fruit. 

Pink Grapefruit: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

Pink grapefruit is a delicious way to consume essential vitamins and minerals and to increase your intake of flavonoids, cartenoids, and other potent disease-fighting phytonutrients. To get these nutrients into your bloodstream without delay, you should eat pink grapefruit (and other fruits, too) at least two hours before or after a meal. While eating this wonderful fruit first thing in the morning is optimal, its healing powers aren’t confined to the breakfast table.

Both the fruit and the essential oil derived from the pink grapefruit’s peel offer a range of therapeutic benefits, including:

1.    A mood-lifting scent—The refreshing fragrance of pink grapefruit peel essential oil helps banish the seasonal blues.

2.    An immune system booster—The high vitamin C content of this nourishing citrus fruit strengthens resistance against colds and flu.

3.    Anti-aging and health benefits—Grapefruit’s antioxidant properties help repair free radical damage, detoxify cells, and improve cardiovascular health. In addition to its potassium soluble and fiber (pectin) content, the pink variety contains lycopene, a vitamin A precursor that according to a Harvard-based Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study may not only help protect artery walls from the damaging effects of cholesterol, but also reduce the risk of stomach, throat, and several other cancers.

4.    A safe, gentle skin toner and blemish fighter—A plant-derived antiseptic, pink grapefruit oil helps control the bacteria and excess oil that promote acne breakouts.

5.    Cellulite relief—In your diet and as a topical skincare treatment, pink grapefruit stimulates lymphatic drainage, reducing the orange peel look of congested tissues.

 Add pink grapefruit essential oil to your facial care regime to control sebum without drying your skin,   

The Perfect November Pick-Me-Up—Any Way You Slice It

This month is the ideal time to start enjoying the multiple mental and physical benefits of pink grapefruit. As a health food, skincare ingredient, and aromatherapy treatment, it’s an all-natural prescription for a happier and healthier winter.

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Relax Your Wrinkles From the Inside Out

The latest research into the mind-body connection is giving the old expression “beauty comes from within” a new meaning. According to today’s anti-aging researchers, meditation and other relaxation techniques can actually slow physical aging by reducing the harmful effects of stress on our bodies and strengthening our immune systems. While it takes time and regular practice to reap the full physiological benefits of a calm mind, you can observe the rejuvenating effects of meditation on your face almost immediately.

Tranquility Is Beautiful

A serene expression and an exceptionally youthful appearance go hand and hand. If you’ve ever noticed the peaceful yet radiantly alive of an aged Zen Buddhist or a lifetime yoga or tai chi practitioner, you know what I mean. Although the ultimate goals of these practices may be spiritual rather than cosmetic transformation, meditative techniques do in fact help prevent what plastic surgeons call dynamic wrinkling. Dynamic wrinkles are the crow’s-feet, worry lines, and other facial creases caused by repetitive muscle contractions. Unlike Botox, which paralyzes facial muscles, meditation truly relaxes lines and wrinkles by relieving facial tension.

Meditating in lotus pose offers mental, spiritual, and physical benefits. 

Finding Your Own Personal Bliss

Eastern meditative traditions can do wonders for your body, mind, and spirit, but their particular rules and requirements can be daunting for Westerners to master. For instance, many Americans and Europeans are too distracted by the physical discomfort of sitting cross-legged on the floor to achieve a state of relaxation—or they may find that lying in corpse pose at the end of yoga class quickly puts them to sleep.

To fully benefit from meditation, your inner and outer being needs to find the ideal balance between relaxation and alertness. So if

counting your breath or chanting om makes you bored or nervous, you’ll be better served by a more personalized approach to meditation. A simplified form of the biofeedback employed by many clinical psychologists and other therapists is a good choice for some individuals. You can buy tapes that guide you through this process or simply rest in a comfortable position while you visualize a peaceful setting such as a beach or a mountaintop. Every time a distracting thought intrudes, return your attention to this mental image. 

Visualization techniques offer an alternative path to a harmonious mental state. 

Smooth Your Wrinkles by Soothing Your Soul

My own approach to meditation is even simpler. I put on some beautiful music and allow myself to melt into its rhythmic flow for 20 to 30 minutes each day. The trick is to really concentrate on listening and feeling the music. As thoughts and worries begin to arise, simply observe them as if they were white clouds drifting across the sky and then refocus on the music. I find that learning to avoid dwelling on daily events and preoccupations comes much easier than trying force a busy mind to go blank.

This routine can be customized to suit your own tastes. While listening to classical music works best for me, you can choose any type of  “sound environment” that promotes deep relaxation without causing drowsiness. The rhythmic patterns of African drumming, Tibetan Buddhist chants, and certain types of New Age music, for example, are believed to release endorphins and induce a restful mental state. Like any new discipline, meditation takes practice. So if you can’t sit still for ten minutes, don’t get discouraged. Do what you can each day and the process will gradually become easier. Eventually you’ll find that your sessions transport you to another world where time and your everyday cares disappear. When you return from your mental vacation, take a look in the mirror. I guarantee you’ll see a younger, more beautiful face looking back!

A calm mind is fundamental to total wellness and lasting natural beauty.

Image: federico stevanin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Botox May Come with an Emotional Price

A recent scientific study suggests that by freezing the muscles that create smiles and frowns, Botox injections may actually block the feelings associated with these and other facial expressions. You can read Newsweek’s summary of this fascinating mind-body research at www.newsweek.com/2010/02/07/hello-botox-bye-bye-sadness-but-not-for-the-reasons-you-think.html.

Are risks of Botox more than skin-deep? 

There’s a world of difference between the “stone face” look created by radical cosmetic procedures and the vibrant, youthful appearance achieved through natural wellness practices. I’ll share one of my favorite all-natural wrinkle relaxers in my next post.

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lavie Organique in STUFF Boston Magazine!

Natural Beauties

by Cheryl Fenton
October 04, 2010

You are what you eat, so they say. But you've that got covered, right? From your daily 64 ounces of water (sipped from a BPA-free bottle, of course) to the organic fruits and veggies you stock as snacks, you're a walking poster child for healthy living.

But what about your largest organ, your skin? Is it really covered - with the right products, that is?

Though skin is an effective barrier in many ways, some substances can penetrate it, and many can irritate it (as sensitive types know all too well). And people are increasingly thinking not just about what they put in their bodies, but what they put on them - leading some to shun skincare products filled with chemicals whose names have five syllables, "fragrances" whose component ingredients are a total mystery, and substances grown with potentially environmentally hazardous pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. "If you're choosing to eat the best natural and organic foods available, then you should also be choosing the best natural and organic skincare products to put on your body," says Noah Solomon of Whole Body, Whole Foods' division devoted to personal-care products. That way, continues Solomon, "You're not putting chemicals, harsh preservatives, artificial colors, or fragrances into your body that it needs to process."

Photo: Michael Diskin

His point of view is catching on. According to Mintel's Global New Products Database, organic and natural products accounted for nearly 10 percent of all beauty and personal-care product launches through 2008 and 2009, compared to 5 percent in 2006.

Right in our own backyard (for you Foursquare folks, that's Brookline) are two fantastic natural skincare lines; both are the creations of Eastern European women with heritages steeped in skincare savvy.

The recently launched LaVie Organique is a line born from time-tested secrets from founder Lavinia Borcau's native Romania, a region long renowned for its spas and treatments. Through her namesake day spa, Lavinia Borcau Skin Care (29 Harvard Street, Brookline, 617.734.5523), Borcau created these formulas using certified-organic and plant-derived ingredients and vitamins - not to mention her own 20 years of skincare expertise and a little of her grandma's know-how about Mother Nature's gifts.

"I chose every ingredient in my formulas, including the natural preservatives and fragrances, not only for safety, but also health benefits," she says. The ingredients read more like a tasty recipe - think apples, chili peppers, and grapefruit - than the unpronounceable stuff of a science experiment.

Cheryl Fenton is a freelance writer in Boston who also blogs at EasyPeasyBlog.com. Read more about Natural Beauties at http://stuffboston.com/.