Synopsis
The promise of beauty is as close as the drugstore aisle—shampoo that gives your hair more body, lotions that smooth away wrinkles, makeup that makes your skin look flawless, and potions that take it all off again. But while conventional products say they'll make you more beautiful, they contain toxins and preservatives that are both bad for the environment and bad for your body—including synthetic fragrances, petrochemicals, and even formaldehyde. In the end, they damage your natural vitality and good looks. Fortunately, fashion writer, nutritionist, and beauty maven Julie Gabriel helps you find the true path to natural, healthy, green beauty. She helps you decipher labels on every cosmetic product you pick up and avoid toxic and damaging chemicals with her detailed Toxic Ingredients List. You'll learn valuable tips on what your skin really needs to be healthy, glowing, and youthful. Julie goes one-step further—and shows you how to make your own beauty products that feed your skin, save your bank account, and are healthy for your body and the environment, such as: • Cleansing creams and oils • toners • facials • under eye circle remedies • anti-aging serums • lip balms • scrubs • exfoliators • clay and cleansing masks • moisturizers • acne treatments • makeup remover • teeth whiteners • shampoos, conditioners • fragrances • sun protection • bug repellents • baby products • and much more!
With her friendly, thorough, and helpful advice; fabulous beauty recipes; product recommendations and ratings; Toxic Ingredients List; and a complete appendix of online resources, Julie Gabriel gives you all the information you need to go green without going broke and become a more natural, healthy, and beautiful you.
Review
As I have entered into my thirties, I have started paying more attention to how my skin looks and how my skin reacts to certain products. Seeing those first inklings of wrinkles and wondering whether I may have caused them by my indifferent attitude towards sunscreen and moisturizers led me to find a new system for making my skin healthier. Along the way I ran into many high-end products that created disastrous rashes and irritations, not to mention the damage they do to your wallet. Much of the undesired results I’ve blames on the incredible amounts of chemicals found in beauty supplies these days. Additives, chemicals and things I couldn’t begin to pronounce are being added to products we are supposed to use in order to make our skin look beautiful and natural.
Reading Julie Gabriel’s The Green Beauty Guide, will help to create a beauty regime containing all-natural and non-toxic ingredients. Throughout this guide you will also learn many facts regarding exactly what your skin needs to remain healthy. A solid emphasis is also made on health care and being friendly to the environment, as many store bought products contain things that are very damaging to our eco-system, not to mention the crazy amounts of non-biodegradable packaging these products come in.
So, The Green Beauty Guide is an invaluable tool to help learn about our beauty habits, but now that we know how to be healthy and beautiful, how do we go about getting these healthy, natural products? We make them! Included within The Green Beauty Guide are lots of wonderful and easy recipes to create your own products at home. I decided to test out some of these recipes for myself and was enormously happy with the results.
I like to use a facial scrub once or twice a week, but the store bought ones often leave my face and neck feeling sensitive and looking blotchy. So I tried out Julie’s recipe for Sugar Mommy Scrub. It took me less than 5 minutes to make and used 4 ingredients that I already had lying around the house. The results were wonderful – a gentle feeling scrub that left no abrasive rashing and held a lovely aroma.
My son, who is fifteen years old, is a huge athlete. The mix of his age and the constant sweating from playing sports, he is plagued by breakouts in his forehead region. We have tried many of the available acne fighters (clearasil, pan-oxyl, etc) but these all dry out his skin, leave burning or irritation and also don’t work in clearing up the pimples. So I enlisted my son as a guinea pig to try out Julie’s Tea Tree Healing Oil. The recipe calls for 4 types of oils/essentials that I found at the local health store and cost less than $15. All you need do is mix together in a bottle and you have 5 ounces of acne fighter. My son applied the Tea Tree Healing Oil twice a day, and after a week the results were positive. Although the pimples did not instantly disappear the redness and swelling minimized greatly. Now in the second week of use, it appears that the breakouts are not returning. He does have the occasional zit, but nothing like before. He has asked that I continue making this oil for him to use as a preventative measure against future breakouts!
Overall I am completely satisfied with The Green Beauty Guide and I’m looking forward to trying out quite a few more of the deliciously helpful recipes found inside.
About The Author
Julie Gabriel is a registered nutrition specialist (RHN) educated at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrtion. She is in the process of launching her own organic skin care line called Petite Marie Organics. She has been writing and editing fashion and beauty for fifteen years and has worked with CNN’s Style, Harper’s Bazaar and numerous women’s magazines.
Published by HCI Books
© 2008-2010 Joanne Mosher of The Book Zombie. All rights reserved.
5 comments:
this sounds like a helpful book. I know what you mean, once I hit my thirties, I really started to take better care of my skin.
the Sugar Mommy Scrub sounds great.
http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/
I love tea tree oil. It helps with so much stuff. I find I have to be careful to really dilute it when using it on my skin because it is such a strong anti-bacterial.
Oh this is wonderful. I try a lot of the organic/natural beauty products but some of those are quite pricey too. I'll have to check this one out!
Wow! So great to hear of success with the two "recipes" you tried! Especially nice to know that the ingredients were things you had on hand or easy to find. I'd love a remedy for dry skin (hands) with winter coming!
This sounds awesome! I've read lots of books about going green, and while some of them have sections on beauty, none of them have been this thorough. I'm definitely going to try to track down a copy.
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