8 Things Healthy Families Use

I'm a mom and I'm all about keeping things simple and natural. Are you the same way? I have a lot to get completed throughout the course of a day and I'll take as much support as I can get. I don't like depending on unnatural chemicals daily. I'd rather use items from nature for self-care, cleaning, and eating. I find nature does our family best!

Here are 8 things as a concerned Momma and certified health coach that I would say are the bare minimum for a physically healthy home after real whole foods. There are several other things I like to keep around as well, but this is a great start!

8 Things:

Raw Organic Honey: Kick out the refined sugars and artificial sweeteners, they just feed cancer. Instead use real, organic, raw honey. You always want your honey to be in its natural raw state because then it contains nutritional values and anti-bacterial properties. Avoid heating your honey to keep nutrients in tact. To support skin health you add raw honey to minor cuts and scrapes as well as using it for a facial mask once a week. 

Fresh Garlic: This is truly nature's antibiotic. It also happens to taste really yummy in foods. It is inexpensive and great to keep around all year. You can easily grow it as well. Try to make sure sure you purchase local garlic or at least from inside the USA. A lot of garlic is from China in the grocery store, and the agricultural practices there are not the same as ours here in the USA. Keep in mind heating it does destroy it's antibiotic properties. It's still a worthy add to cooked meals though for a flavorful plate. 

Fresh Raw Ginger: This root is such a treasure. Ginger is a natural over all body anti-inflammatory food. It's a spicy delicious addition to smoothies, baked goods, soups, and stir fries. It provides wonderful digestive system support. It's a safe tummy tamer for pregnant women. 

During my pregnancies I love to make fresh ginger root tea. I actually enjoy this all of the time. Use about 1 1/2 inches of ginger, peel it, and slice it. Add it to a mug of hot boiled filtered water. Cover the top and steep for about ten minutes. I prefer mine without a sweetener. You can add a little raw honey or organic stevia drops. 

Fresh Organic Lemons (Lemon Water): What a joy it is to slice into a fresh lemon! When you slice into a lemon, that delightful smell is actually a tiny bit of the natural essential oil escaping. Did you know citrus scents help enhance good mood? Be sure to purchase organic citrus fruits if possible. Even though we do not typically eat the peel, whatever we touch and our children for that matter touch goes into our skin and is absorbed. Conventional citrus fruits are coated in toxins and some are even grown in toxic waste. No amount of washing will remove it. Even if you use vinegar. 

I like to drink lemon water first thing each morning. This is a great way to prepare the body for your day by hydrating and getting enzymes flowing. I drink 32oz of room temperature water when I wake with one fresh squeezed lemon added plus 1 drop of Young Living Lemon Vitality. Yes, you can over due it with lemons just like anything else. Healthy foods consumed in moderation then stay healthy. Benefits to drinking lemon water are natural support to your liver, digestive system, and immune system. 

Essential Oils: In our home due to purity and the highest of standards, we only use Young Living Essential Oils. Essential oils can help support the body, mind, and spirit as well as make a lovely addition to your natural cleaning regimen. Essential oils are the heart and soul of the plants, basically the plants' immune systems. They are aromatic oils that disperse into the air in tiny molecules quickly and they can come from various parts of different plants. You can get your's here. 

Good Salt: Have you bought into the lie that salt is bad for you? Salt is actually a necessary component to our lives. It purifies our bodies as well as adding many needed minerals. The difference is knowing the salts to stay away from and the salt to consume. Regular table salt has been bleached and all of the minerals have been stripped from it and sold to supplement companies. Some salts even add MSG, sugar, and aluminum. The iodine added is not natural iodine either. Table salt is very hard on all of the body systems. 

The best salts to purchase are Celtic (real Celtic salt is a little wet and greyish in color), an actual brand called Redmond Real Salt (shown in the picture), and Himalayan salt (this is pink in color). You can purchase all of these in whole rock like forms, little mini rocks, or finely ground. I like to add a pinch to my water throughout the day to ensure I'm getting necessary minerals. No, it cannot be tasted. Most filtered water takes out a lot of our necessary minerals along with  the toxins so adding a pinch of salt helps replace the good stuff. 

You can even make something called Sole. This is basically a concentrated salt water. You can make this simply by getting the good salt of your choice, a glass jar, like a clean mason jar, and filling it 1/3 of way with the salt. Fill it to the top with water. Leave a little room. Shake it. Let it sit for about 8-12 hours. Add this to your warm or room temperature lemon water or plain room temp water first thing in the morning. You can use a plastic measuring teaspoon or a glass dropper to add 1 tsp to your water to help start your day off well will lots of minerals. One tsp should be all you need. Your naturopathic doctor or holistic health practitioner can tell you exactly.

Remember I mentioned salt purifies. If your throat is feeling scratchy, add 2 tsp to a glass of water and gargle to support your body.

Organic Unrefined Coconut Oil: It was a great day when I brought coconut oil into my life. I believe this was one of the first food and body care switches that I ever made. Organic unrefined coconut oil is comprised of three antimicrobial medium chain saturated fatty acids: capric, caprylic, and monolauric. The monolauric acid is very supportive to the immune system. This type of fat is great for brain support. I do so many things with this oil. I bake and cook with it, use it in my homemade skin care products, as well as my homemade toothpaste. I also oil pull with it; click on the link if you don't know what that means.. 

It has a heat tolerance of 350, which makes it lovely to bake with since most recipes bake at 350. Cooking eggs in it is my favorite. Never heat it in the microwave. The waves will damage it's integrity. Depending on weather it will go from solid to liquid. When you need it liquid, put some into a glass measuring cup, close to what you need. Always put it a bit under the marker on the cup because once it melts it will most likely be right on the money. Put the measuring cup into a small pot with a little water. Boil on the stove until the oil melts. 

Raw Unpasteurized Apple Cider Vinegar: I add a splash of this each day to a glass of my water as well. There are numerous benefits to the body in consuming raw unpasteurized ACV. It absolutely must be raw and unpasteurized containing the what is called mother. Real ACV is made through a lengthy fermentation process. The mother is the brown healthy strands of amino acids. This vinegar is particularly supportive to the digestive and immune systems. You can use it with food and drinks and you can clean with it. Another use is for body care as a facial toner or it can be a support to the scalp if there is flakes or dandruff. When anyone in our family even looks like they are getting under the weather for natural support I make this tonic that contains:

1 Tbsp ACV ( I like this one.) 

1/8 Tsp Ground Organic Cayenne Pepper (Try this brand.) 

1 Fresh Garlic Clove, sliced

1 Inch Ginger Root, peeled and sliced

2 Tbsp Raw Honey ( Local is best, but if you can't find any, I like this kind.)

1 Mug Hot Boiled Filtered Water

Add everything to the mug EXCEPT for the honey. Cover and let it steep for about 10 minutes. When it's time to drink, add the honey. 

Helping you to be a good steward of your health!~Marie A. Brock, HHC

Health Disclaimer: No medical diagnoses, claims or promises of cures have been made. The information offered is simply for educational purposes. Any addition to diet or supplement routines should be discussed with your regular health professional.

There are affiliate links in this article. You are never required to shop through them. If you do though, I want to say thank you. If you like the information that I present, know that shopping through those links helps me to keep writing.

Resources:

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/17/this-bee-product-has-enormous-benefits-for-your-health.aspx

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27158056 

http://foodfacts.mercola.com/garlic.html

http://draxe.com/10-benefits-celtic-sea-salt-himalayan-salt/

http://foodfacts.mercola.com/lemon.html

http://foodfacts.mercola.com/ginger.html

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/20/salt-myth.aspx

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/11/18/coconut-oil-uses.aspx

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/21/apple-cider-vinegar-uses.aspx

Ever Been Promoted While You Sleep?

Feeling grateful beyond measure to the Lord for getting promoted in my Young Living essential oil business yesterday :) I got out of the car about to walk into church, and my best girlfriend, Cheryl, of 11 years who lives in California, is also my awesome, supportive, direct upline, as I'm about to shut my phone off texts me and says YOU MADE EXECUTIVE! (Kinda cool, did ya catch that? It was like while I was sleeping, I got promoted. That's a tiny bit AWESOME!)

I'm so very humbled and thankful to family and friends for being so supportive. Young Living is a wonderful company due to its integrity and commitment to its customers and its craft of being the industry leader with over 20 years of experience, its Seed to Seal guarantee, and it's patented distillation process. Literally no one else is doing things quite like them with essential oils. 

After working so hard at juggling multiple jobs as a single parent the last six years this promotion was certainly good news. Now working the business with my family, my loving husband, Ken (1 month married tomorrow), and his daughter (my very dear friend) Kendra, makes it even sweeter. I couldn't have gotten promoted without them. 

I certainly didn't start out wanting to do the business side, but I'm glad I listened to the Lord when he spoke in my ear late last spring. See the cool thing about Young Living is they allow everyone the chance to become wholesale members and save 24% on purchases without ever having to work the business side. That was me. I'd been a happy wholesale member just enjoying the oils and other products in my home for a whole year not thinking about the business much at all. Then on a whim Ken and I went to a YL workshop in Charlotte, NC extremely last minute in spring of 2014. Following that summer I took the plunge and started teaching classes. Kendra hosted my first intro class ever in July, and two other wonderful friends, Candace and Briggs, then volunteered to host in their homes as well that same month.  

Network marketing is a lot of hard work in the beginning, and I'm still very much in the beginning. I believe it's so worth it though. It's not sustaining me yet, but will, if I don't give up. I'd rather work hard for little while though and grow instead of fighting for my little place on the map and worrying about getting fired from my $9 an hour job. (I was there not too long ago.) It is not for the faint of heart since many of us need to keep our day job for quite a while until our network marketing business builds. A sweet phrase rings in my ears though: residual income.

There's nothing like residual income. I also love that those above me are invested in my success because we help each other out. It goes both ways, they want me to move up since  it helps them move. It's just a business model that makes sense. The key is choosing a company that you truly love, you actually use what you're sharing about with others, and that as a company they do business legitimately. If you aren't a product of the product, it won't work. That's dishonesty.

 I just finished reading a book called The Four Year Career, if you're considering adding a network marketing business to what you have going on, read that book.

 I love that I have the opportunity to teach this all to my sons now so they can grab a hold too! My young men see the value in taking care of their health through healthy diet, fitness, and essential oils. They also see the pay check in the mail each month. I am so blessed to homeschool them and make learning the business as well as the essential oils part of our lessons.

 Young Living was a perfect fit for me since I'm already running a holistic health coaching business, I do wellness. If it's a fit for you too, then please let me know. I'd love to talk with you. I'm not some business guru. I won't make you promises I can't keep. I will support you, answer your questions to the best of my ability, and teach you what I know. This is not a get rich quick scheme. 

So maybe you aren't a health coach, so what, you don't have to be one. At the end of the day, I'm just a mom who wants the best for her family and friends. Young Living is special because they fill a need in someone's home, they promote wellness daily. While we are on this Earth, we need to care for our health. 

Feel free to check out my Young Living website or send me an email.

Helping you to be a good steward of your health!~Marie A. Brock, HHC

*Some links on my page are affiliate links. That means when you shop through them the company gives me a small percentage of your sale. You of course are never obligated to purchase, just know that when you do, you are helping me to continue to share this information with you. 

Being Green with Essential Oils

Today is the 22nd anniversary of Earth Day. Part of being a good steward of your health is taking care of the world around you! Our Holy Creator Yeshua the Messiah of All created this planet just for us. What a wonderful God we serve! So it our duty to take of the health of planet, so it in turn can help us with our health. All of creation is connected, while we are not same, there is a definite connection.

Here are Easy Ways to Be Good to the Earth with Young Living Essential Oils:

1) Keep Your Air Clean:

Still using Glade Plug Ins, aerosol room freshener sprays, or those crazy eye ball looking scented balls for a pleasant scent in your home or office? Ditch that mess! 

These products contain comments like: 

Phthalates: serious hormone disruptors, extremely dangerous for children, amounts built up over time can cause testosterone disturbance, and even genetalia mutations

Dichlorobenzene: precursor to DDT and linked to lung cancer

Instead....use a cold air diffuser! Young Living provides several high quality diffusers to choose from online. 

Pictured above is called the Home Diffuser. It covers smaller spaces like bedrooms and larger spaces like living rooms. Just adjust how much oil you use. Always start with just 4 drops. Increase from there if needed. 

Here's how to use it:

There's 3 parts to the home diffuser:

The Base

The Lid

The Plug

Remove the lid. There's a little plastic shelf line inside. Fill it with distilled water. Yes, use distilled. In this particular diffuser there's a stainless steel plate, and the minerals from the water can clog it. 

Add your desired oil and desired amount of drops directly into the water. 

Place on the lid.

Plug it in.

Push the button in the front to turn it on. 

The first time you push the button it will run continuously for about 3 hours.  The second time you push the button it switches to 90 second bursts, so it just depends on what you want.

This diffuser (or a higher quality substitution) comes for FREE when you purchase an Everyday Oils Premium Kit from Young Living. You get 8 essential oil sample packs, 2 Ningxia Red Goji Berry Health Drinks, and eleven 5ml sized bottles of therapeutic grade essential oils to use in your home! Order one here.

There are other diffusers available on the market besides the ones from Young Living, but many of them are cheaply made, and the plastic quality is lower. You won't be able to use citrus oils in some of them. For quality and control, choose Young Living.

2) Keep Your Water Clean: 

Get rid of the detergent and fabric softener. This stuff is seriously toxic. Then it goes into our waters, yuck! There are safer ways to have lovely smelling, fluffy towels. 

In commercial detergents and fabric softeners you'll find some of the following, and I'm not listing all of them:

Benzyl Acetate: linked to pancreatic cancer

Benzyl Alcohol: an upper respiratory tract irritant

Ethanol: on the EPA's list of hazardous waste

What works great at my house is I make my own laundry detergent, which is super easy, and way cheaper than brands you'd buy in the store. Here is the recipe I use, given to me from a friend a long time ago. 

Laundry Detergent Recipe

1 Cup Borax

1 Cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

1 Full Sized Dr. Bronners Baby/Unscented Bars of Soap

1 4-5 Gallon Bucket

Directions:

Put your bucket into the tub (if you have one). Grate your bar of soap, put it into the bucket. Pour hot boiling water over the top, and stir until mostly dissolved. Pour in other ingredients. Fill the rest of the bucket with water from the tub spicket and stir. Allow this to set for 1-2 days until it kind of gels on top, then it's ready for use. You only need 1/4-1/2 cup per full load, depending on how soiled.

As an option you can scent your laundry detergent itself with 5-10ml of essential oil. You can add the essential to the bucket and stir once it's set. Consider using lemon since it's great on stains!

For fabric softener you can rinse with vinegar. Vinegar is great for softening clothes. Add 1/2 cup for a large load to the rinse cycle. No, your clothes won't smell like vinegar!

For even fluffier clothes, use wool dryer balls. My girlfriend, BethAnne is a Norwex consultant, so I got mine from her. 

Use all three balls for each load. You'll get a ton of uses out of them. I add 2-3 drops of lemongrass essential oil to each ball. That gets me through about 2 loads of my favorite scent!

3) Keep Your Soil Clean:

Do you garden? Did you know that Round Up and other pesticides are toxins to the brain and to the gut? Instead for pesticides use essential oils! 

Try 10 drops each of rosemary, thyme, peppermint in a gallon of distilled water. Keep in a dark, cool closet. Mix the solution, and pour some in a smaller dark glass spray bottle for easy use.  Apply on flowers and vegetables.

4) Reduce Reuse Recycle:

Have a ton of essential oil bottles? Don't throw them into the trash! Make your own essential oil blends and use them for your family, or give them away as gifts. Print out a special label for them and pick a name.

*If you need essential oils, you can purchase them here. You can contact me if you have any questions here.

Enjoy the rest of your earth day! Helping you to be a good steward of your health!~Marie A. Ligorria, HHC

Gluten Free Hair & Body Care

                  

When I first went gluten free about five years ago, I didn't realize just how entailed the change needed to be. Never in my wildest dreams did I consider having to switch body care, make-up, cleaning products, or shampoos as well as my food. Boy was I wrong! 

I understood the harsh chemicals, solvents, dyes, and perfumes were harmful, but I never considered that there would be gluten in these products, nor did I realize how much they were affecting me. 

I found out that the acne and eczema I was suffering from was actually from severe gluten and processed cows milk intolerance. Once I removed those items from my diet all subsided, at least for the most part. What I couldn't figure out is why the skin by my scalp and hair line continued to break out with a vengeance.

Then I began to dig deeper and research skin and hair issues. I decided to do an Internet search on what other products contain gluten and if it was possible that my newer, swapped out, cleaner body care and hair care products could be bothering me. Turns out they were. Now I totally get it, and it truly made sense at the time, it just hadn't occurred to me that my Eco-friendly, organic products could be making me sick. We absorb components through our skin so quickly and easily, and they travel right into the blood stream. 

So then I started my quest for safe, gluten free shampoo and body care items. Today there are more options than five years ago, but I definitely found some I liked.

I eventually started making my own body care items because I found it was less expensive if I bought in bulk and I enjoyed the control and customization.  Friends knew I was making items, so I started making things for them too.

The one item that I've not been able to make and be satisfied with was shampoo. I tried other people's recipes, my own recipes, and nothing really satisfied me. So over the years I have just bounced in between gluten free shampoos on the market. I have to say that none of them ever really did my hair justice. 

I thought I'd share I'm really happy with the No-Shampoo or No-Poo method of washing my hair! It's gluten-free, safer, cheaper, and really low maintenance. I can now wash my hair twice a week. There was a period of adjustment. I have very thick, curly hair. I hear if you have thinner hair that a homemade coconut milk based shampoo may be more appropriate. 

 

 

I use 1 TBSP of baking soda in a pint size mason jar, fill it with water in the shower, put on a lid, shake it, then pour on my head. I rub my scalp gently, then rinse (using the same jar) with 2 TBSP Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar and shower water. (You could use another Apple cider vinegar. I just always have this one here, plus it is organic.) I make sure to pour it on my scalp plus the rest of my hair as evenly as possible, then rinse with plain water from the shower. The combination of the vinegar and the baking soda creates a perfect pH balance for the scalp and hair.  

 

If you suffer from dry scalp or dandruff chronically, chances are there is a bacterial imbalance in the body. Using Braggs vinegar in this case is imperative because it has good bacteria to help the restoration topically. Consider also taking a high quality probiotic.

 

If you find using this complete method is not working for your hair type, but you have an itchy, dry scalp, then you can alternate it with your regular shampoo, or at night you can spray diluted apple cider vinegar on your scalp before bed. 

 

 

After I get out I gently towel dry my hair. I scrunch with argan oil, 1 drop of Oola Grow, and 1 drop of Oola Balance...smells awesome. The nights before I wash my hair I massage organic unrefined coconut oil plus 1drop of Lavender, and 1 drop of Tea Tree onto my scalp and mid to bottom part of my hair. The coconut oil deeply moisturizers my hair and scalp. The oils promote a healthy environment on my scalp.

I hope you find this helpful. If you are in need of Young Living Essential Oils, you can order HERE. If you sign up for a wholesale membership, you can get a 24% discount on every purchase!

Helping you to be a good steward of your health!~Marie A. Ligorria, HHC