Organic cosmetics such as lotions, oils, shampoos, soaps and makeup have natural ingredients that are allegedly free of pesticides. For example, the fruit and flowers that comprise the ingredients in shampoo, such as berries, shea and other plant-based products, must be grown and harvested as organic food is. A label…
Eliminate trans fats from your diet. Trans fats have earned a bad reputation over the last year, and rightly so. Used to increase shelf life and flavor, trans fat is made when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil. In essence, the trans fats found in margarine, cookies, crackers, bread and…
Skin care is not a topic of recent times; it has been in practice since ancient times, when herbal skin care was probably the only way to take care of skin. However, skin care has transformed in a big way. Herbal skin care routines have been replaced by synthetic/chemical-based skin…
Whether you had a Caesarean section or a natural birth, it’s important to take care of your own body after giving birth. While a C-section, which is major abdominal surgery, is the more invasive and traumatic procedure, women who deliver naturally still need to care for themselves postpartum. Expect to…
Diet & Fitness / Healthy Eating
by Ysabel J. Doran Before you throw that jar of fat-free mayo or those fat-free muffins in your shopping cart, thinking they’ll help you lose weight, consider this — fat does not make you fat. It sounds like a paradox, but in fact, it makes perfect sense. Fat on your…
OK, so maybe you hate to exercise. Lots of people don’t have workout fever, and that’s OK. But you know that you should be more active, so what’s the least amount of exercise you can do to reap the most health benefits? Data shows that a half hour of exercise…
You may think of the kitchen as mom’s domain, but letting kids get a feel for the process of creating a meal teaches them more than how much work it really takes. When you let your kids help select foods at the grocery store, you teach them about nutrition. Discuss…
When you’re on the go and thirsty, it’s always convenient to grab a soda or an energy drink. However, most of the time you’re sucking down an abundance of caffeine and sugar. A 32-ounce soda from McDonald’s has 310 calories and 86 grams of sugar. Surprisingly, a 12-ounce serving of…
For a lot of babies, pacifiers can soothe and help fussy babies float off to dreamland, without the help of a sometimes-exhausted mom. But when kids start to depend on pacis — or binkies — to fall asleep or for comfort, often up to the age of 4, then it’s…
Good old Mom — always telling us to eat our veggies, that our faces would freeze like that if we kept scowling…and heaping on the beauty advice. But there are quite a few things Mom shared about our appearance that just aren’t true. Here are a few of the rules…