Tag: Health Food

How to Treat Plantar Warts at Home

Plantar warts are warts of the feet. They can make walking very painful. As this cuts down on the amount of exercise a person gets, it can contribute to an overall decline in health. It is necessary to treat plantar warts, and sometimes you can do it at home.

First of all, many people with plantar warts also have diabetes. If this is the case, you should always seek professional consultation. People with diabetes can’t afford to take chances with their feet because of their particular health issues.

If you don’t have diabetes, though, you may be able to do something about your plantar warts at home. Just as with common warts, you can use salicylic acid liquids such as Dr. Scholl’s or medicated pads such as Mediplast,

With a plantar wart, it is especially important to protect the area surrounding the plantar wart. You may put a lot of weight on the wart. Any acid you put on healthy skin will soak in and eat away a circle of skin around the wart. To avoid this, you can put petroleum jelly around the circumference of the wart.

Keeping a plantar wart dry is crucial helping it to go away. Try putting on a drying medicated powder up to ten times a day. Change your socks at least three times a day. Some people have even used chlorine to thoroughly dry their feet. If the plantar wart is faithfully kept clean and dry, it doesn’t stand a chance.

On the other hand, some people recommend methods that keep moisture on the wart. As little as this makes sense given that warts thrive on moisture, some find these methods effective.

A remedy that is often referred to is the banana peel remedy. You tape the inner side of a banana peel down onto a plantar wart. This is supposed to draw out the wart. Some say it works well.

One method is to slice up lemons and use them in a remedy. Put them in apple cider and let them ferment for a couple of weeks. At the end of this time, rub the lemon slices on your plantar warts.

You can get Vitamin C tablets at a supermarket, health food store, or pharmacy. Crush tablets of it and apply it to the plantar wart. Cover it with a bandage. Again, bandages are usually not recommended by the experts because they hold in moisture. Moisture does nothing to help remove plantar warts, or any warts.

Another such treatment is applying grapefruit extract to the plantar wart a few times a day. Once more, the suggested treatment is to cover it with a bandage. If you do, make sure that you take the bandage off whenever you can. Let the area air out and dry up a bit.

Aside from genital warts, plantar warts probably require the most attention. Because they cause pain in the feet, they cut down on a person’s mobility. If you have diabetes, you need a physician’s help. If you can treat plantar warts, that’s great. If you can’t, go on to the doctor.

What You Need to Know About Organic Skin Care

Because today’s consumers are more conscious of their health and the environment, there are more organic skin care products available than ever before. Other people may have developed allergies to all of the toxins and chemicals used in commercial skin care produts and are looking for a healthier alternative. Some commonly used ingredients in commercial products include fragrances, dyes, and various types of acids.

By contrast, organic skin care products contain natural ingredients such as vitamins A, C, or E, essential oils, antioxidants, or proteins. These are necessary to replace the skin cells lost as we age. As the body gets older, it produces less collagen and elastin, which leads to dry, wrinkled skin. Re-hydrating the cells from the outside is the only way to repair this age-related damage.

You can now find organic skin care products in almost any pharmacy, drug store, or health food and nutrition store. If you do not have access to any of these places, there are many retailers online to choose your natural cosmetics from. Some spas and salons have also added organic products to their inventory, so you may want to look there as well. Most of these products are free of fragrances and dyes and will not cause or aggravate existing allergies.

There are organic products available both men and women. Men can find organic shaving lotion and after-shave, while women usually have more options of cleansers, creams, toners, and gels. Unfortunately, organic products generally cost more than the synthetic version of the same item. It is worth the extra cost to protect your skin and your health from toxic chemicals and preservatives.

An alarming number of mainstream skin care products may contain the wetting agents diethanolamine and triethanolamine, sometimes listed on ingredient labels as DEA and TEA, respectively. These substances by themselves are not considered to be a cancer risk. If the product contains nitrites as contaminants, this may cause a chemical reaction that creates cancer-causing nitrosamines.

Most commercial cosmetic products include some type of bactericides or preservatives. These are necessary to protect the cosmetics from contamination, but may also be dangerous or even carcinogenic. For instance, trace amounts of formaldehyde are found in some products. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and is neurotoxic in higher doses.

How can you be sure that your skin care products are really organic? Unfortunately, there is still plenty of room for vagueness in labeling of cosmetic products. Generally, a cosmetic product must follow the same USDA rules as would a food product. The product must contain no less than 95% organic and natural ingredients in order to qualify for the label.

After the 95% threshhold is met, there is a serious lack of additional guidance and regulations. There are no restrictions on the words cosmetic manufacturers can use on their labels, so you many see plenty of products called “organic” or “botanical” even though they may still contain a small amount of synthetic chemicals. Read the ingredient labels carefully to be sure that your organic skin care products are really made of only organic materials.

Fish Oil Grades

Fish oil production does not just provide one type of end product. In fact, there are also other grades of fish oil being produced. The three types of fish oil produced today depend on their level of quality.

Cod Liver Oil
Cod liver oil, despite its popularity as a nutritional supplement, is considered as a low quality grade of fish oil. It may only be used in small amounts as an ideal supplement since this form of fish oil may contain certain contaminants. Cod liver oil is also known to contain high levels of vitamin A which can be toxic to humans in large doses.

One teaspoon of cod liver oil contains 500 mg of long chain omega 3 fatty acids. Cod liver oil contains the highest levels of contaminants which may include DDT, PCBs as well as organic mercury. Taking this type of fish oil may not be safe in large quantities.

Health Food Fish Oil
Better quality grade fish oil is one that is sourced from a particular species of fish such as salmon. Most of these health food grade fish oil are usually available in soft gel capsules because they still carry with them a very poor taste profile. There is also a cholesterol free version of this type of fish oil grade.

This type of health food grade fish oil undergoes a slightly more purification process by means of limited molecular distillation in order to remove some of its cholesterol content in order to label it as cholesterol free. An even purified version of this health food grade version of fish oil is known as fish oil concentrate. This is the type of fish oil consisting of ethyl esters of the fish oil that undergoes fractional cooling. This allows a more purified form of fish oil with lesser amounts of contaminants that cod liver oil.

Generally, this type of fish oil contains a better concentration of omega 3 fatty acids. A single one gram capsule contains about 300 mg of omega 3 fatty acids. One capsule of a thermally fractionated health food grade can contain as much as 500 mg of long chain omega 3 fatty acids.

Pharmaceutical Grade Fish Oil
Pharmaceutical grade fish oils have been ultra refined in order to provide the highest quality of fish oil. This grade of fish oil undergoes through certain specialized processes in order to come up with the most refined fish oil. Certain specialized equipment is usually used in order to detect the minutest amount of contaminants in the fish oil. Because it is ultra refined, it is thousand times purer than the molecular distilled health food grade fish oils.

An ultra refined pharmaceutical grade fish oil contains more omega 3 fatty acids than the previous two fish oil grades. A one gram of this type of fish oil contains around 600 mg of long chain omega 3 fatty acids. And for being the most refined of the three grades of fish oil, it contains the smallest amount of contaminants.