Incredible Health Benefits with our NEW Strawberry Lemonade Green Tea for Summer!

Check out our new addition to the family!  Strawberry Lemonade Green Tea!

Our rich, hand-crafted loose leaf teas unite the finest ingredients with Fair Trade and Artisan practices, creating luxe, small batch blends using time-honored traditions to ensure freshness and one-of-a-kind quality.

Blended with completely natural ingredients and no artificial coloring, preservatives or flavoring, our teas contain real dried fruit pieces, nuts, herbal tisanes and botanicals, resulting in amazing flavors and aromas. Bonus: Each four-ounce tin makes 50 cups of tea.

Key Benefits

A light, fruity blend of strawberry and fresh lemon! Green tea benefits are derived from antioxidant flavonoids and polyphenols, which prevent free radicals. Green tea combats free radicals and helps promote healthy, smooth skin.

Health benefits attributed to Strawberry + Lemonade  Green Tea:

• cancer prevention

• strengthens immune system

• healthy hair and skin

• repairing skin damage

• fights rheumatoid arthritis

• lowers stress

• polyphenols block conversion of calories into fat

• protects the liver and kidneys

• strongest antioxidant as a berry extract

• boosts the immune system

• significant anti-cancer effects

• reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases

• improves diarrhea and indigestion

Link:  Incredible Summer Recipe with our new STRAWBERRY LEMONADE - GREEN TEA!  

Top Makeup Contouring Tips to Bring your Face Shape into Balance

Top Makeup Contouring Tips  to Bring your Face Shape into Balance 

As a veteran stylist and mineral makeup artist, I intuitively am looking at my clients unique facial structure.  It's part of my professional 'duty' to assist the guest in choosing the best hairstyle, color, and makeup persona to their unique needs.  If you do not have a professional that is aware of tactics and how to do this, the follow tips will be useful for you!

What is Facial Contouring Contouring is the art of highlighting and shading.  By contouring properly, you can alter your face shape and features.

The Golden Rule of Contouring

1. Makeup applied that is lighter than the skin tone will make an area more prominent.

2. Makeup applied that is darker will make that area draw back and recede.

Easily Alter your Facial Features

Round Face Objective:  

To make the face look more oval, apply a bronzer a shade or two darker than your skin tone in a "3" shape alongside your face: on your temples, the hollow of your cheeks, and your chin.

Prominent Forehead Objective:

Shade around the outer edge of your forehead along your hairline to minimize the area with bronzer.

Flat or Wide Nose:

Shade alongside your bridge starting from your inner brows. Then highlight right on the center of your nose.

Droopy Cheeks:

Apply a highlighter just above your cheekbone all the way to your temple. Use a blush directly on the cheekbone, then use a bronzer in the hollow of the cheek, underneath your bone.

Amp it UP! 

If you really want to make your contouring stand out, use a glossy highlighter, which will reflect the most light. (We love La Bella Donna's "Candlelight" for this effect).   Then grab your bronzer with a matte finish, which will absorb light and create a stark contrast.

Contact our team today to learn more about our chemical free and prestige mineral makeup line, La Bella Donna.  This line has all the tricks to contour and make your face pop and glow!  

Reference: Total Beauty

Spring Kidney Cleansing Smoothie and Juice Recipes!

Hello Informed Beauty - I truly believe the winter curse has broken!  It's perfect time to hit the reset button in our internal + external beauty regime.  Check out these GREAT SMOOTHIES that help to clear and support your oh-so-important  kidneys.  

Being that our kidneys are an important detoxification organ, it’s important that we learn to nourish them with the right foods. There are many beneficial herbs and foods we can include to support kidney health, and what better way to cleanse and support our kidneys than by juicing!

Here are 6 simple and delicious juice recipes that will help support the health of your kidneys and provide mild diuretic properties to help flush the kidneys of unwanted wastes.

Let’s get juicing…

Watermelon Flush

• 4 cups fresh watermelon, roughly chopped

• Handful of fresh basil leaves

*Note: This recipes works well in a juicer or blender.

Parsley Purifier

• ½ cup fresh parsley

• 2 celery ribs

• 1 carrot

• 1 cucumber

Dandy-love

• 3 dandelion leaves

• 1/2 green apple

• 2 celery stalks

• 1/2 lemon

• Chunk of broccoli stalk

Radiant-Radish

• 2 cups radishes, chopped

• 1 celery rib

• 1 cucumber

• 1/2 lemon

Mean & Green

• Handful of spinach

• Handful of kale

• 1/2 green apple

• 1/2 lemon

• 1-inch piece fresh ginger

• ½ cup fresh parsley

Cruciferous Goodness

• 1/2 head red cabbage

• 1/2 lemon

• 1 cucumber

• Chunk of broccoli stalk

• ¼ cup fresh cilantro

All these recipes can be pressed through your juicer and enjoyed any time of day to cleanse and rejuvenate your kidneys and support overall health.

Thank you Guest Post: Young and Raw - http://www.youngandraw.com/6-kidney-cleansing-juice-recipes/

90% of all food allergies are caused by 8 common foods! Do you have these symptoms?

Eight common foods are causing 90 percent of all food allergies! Do you have any of these symptoms?

This may surprise you, but eight common foods – milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, soy, wheat and shellfish – cause 90 percent of all food allergies. Chances are, half of those items make common appearances in your daily diet. They could, however, be jacking up your cortisol, decreasing your immune strength, and keeping you from achieving your wellness (and weight loss!) goals.

Allergies versus intolerances While the cause of true food allergies – the kind that produces severe or anaphalatic reactions — involve IgE antibodies in the immune system, food intolerances can arise when we consume the same foods day after day with little variety. This dietary stagnation causes the body to become “sensitized” to the food. In common parlance, the terms “allergy,” “sensitivity” and “food intolerance” are often used interchangeably, but sensitivities and intolerances are not true IgE allergies.

Food sensitivities or intolerances usually involve a different set of immune system antibodies called IgG antibodies. Symptoms are less intense and typically do not appear immediately, but rather within 12–48 hours, after eating the offending foodstuff. Heartburn, headaches, difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, looking tired even after sufficient sleep, an inability to lose weight, bloating and relentless water retention can all be related to food sensitivities or intolerances.

Because the connection between the symptom and a specific food can be difficult to pinpoint, those who suffer these discomforts often go on feeling worse and worse as their immune system takes a constant beating.

Many of us with food sensitivities don’t even realize how bad we feel until the problematic foods are removed from our diet. Then suddenly getting out of bed becomes easier, our energy, mood and concentration improve and joint pain, headaches and sinus congestion disappear. Here’s a handy chart on common symptoms associated with food sensitivities. You may be nodding your head to more than a few of these side effects:

Symptoms commonly associated with food intolerances/sensitivities

Digestive: Gas Bloating Abdominal cramping Loose stools Indigestion or heartburn Constipation GERD (reflux) Blood in the stool Lactose intolerance Inflammatory bowel disease Irritable bowel Syndrome

Skin: Eczema Psoriasis Acne Hives

Mental/Emotional: Irritability Anxiety Depression Food cravings Insomnia

General: Joint pain or stiffness Arthritis (rheumatoid) Fatigue Difficulty getting out of bed in the morning Headaches Migraines Malaise Weight gain Water retention Puffy eyes Dark under-eye circles High blood pressure Cellulite Difficulty losing weight

Nasal/Immune system: Sinus congestion Ear congestion Post-nasal drip Seasonal allergies Hay fever Asthma Chronic ear infections Itching in the ears Itchy mouth Runny nose Watery eyes Sneezing

Identifying your trigger foods To get to the bottom of your symptoms, I recommend that you do a 14-day elimination diet where you remove the most common food allergens from your diet to give your body a break, alleviate stress off your immune system, and detox overall. Slowly re-introducing each food after a 14-day break can allow you to connect particular symptoms with your food choices.

All that experimenting with different foods may sound like a major inconvenience, but the results can be invaluable. I recall one patient who had suffered with headaches for 20 years – they were gone after just two weeks of avoiding wheat. Another woman had bleeding from the bowel for two years – it was gone after one week on a dairy-free diet.

Uncovering food sensitivities is a powerful process to explore. But what you do with the information you gain is up to you. Once you’ve determined the effects of particular foods on your health, you have to decide whether or not you want to continue eating them.

Check out Dr. Oz's Elimination Diet HERE!

Plan B for determining your food allergies If you don’t want to do a 14-day elimination diet you can consider IgG food allergy testing. Although I encourage you to go through the process of food elimination and reintroduction because it’s so effective, you can choose to have a blood test to identify your IgG food allergies instead. This test identifies the presence of IgG antibodies to certain foods. Positive results to certain foods should be followed with the removal of those foods from your diet for a period of two to six months.

Guest Post:  Natasha Turner, N.D., is a naturopathic doctor

The "Connect 4" to Hormone Havoc that Causes Hair Loss

Many of our guests (salon family)  are fast paced - multitasking -super women!    Naturally, this brings on excess stress, fatigue and hormonal challenges over a period of time. Common first experiences of hair loss is after giving birth.  Years later women reach menopause or other hormonal imbalances, and all not uncommon for women to start losing hair. And while hair loss is a normal process  -  it’s also something that can be remedied by addressing underlying health and hormonal problems.

I appreciate the recent post shared by Dr. Sara Gottfried MD.  You may know of her most recent book "The Hormone Cure."   Sara understands the fundamentals of functional medicine and how it relates to women's health and hormones - inside out.  Enjoy the quick read and thank you, Sara!

4 Hormone Horrors that Cause Hair Loss

If hormones can zap your energy and steal your sex drive, it’s probably no surprise that they can also turn your tresses into a mess. Here are just a few ways that hormonal issues can cause hair loss:

1. Excess Estrogen.

Estrogen, the power player in women’s bodies, is your friend when it’s appropriately balanced. It makes you feel energized, helps stabilize your moods and contributes to a healthy sex drive. Yet too much estrogen, which can be caused by weight gain, perimenopause or toxicity from exposure to endocrine disruptors (which are rampant in our food, water and plastic products), can lead to thinning hair. During and after pregnancy, for example, estrogen levels peak and then dip, causing sudden hair loss for many women.

2. Insulin Issues.

Insulin, that helper hormone in charge of regulating blood sugar levels, also affects a number of different body processes, including fat storage, heart health and, you guessed it, hair growth. One study published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Risk found that women with some markers of insulin resistance have a greater risk for androgenic alopecia (AGA), or female pattern baldness.

3. Tricky Testosterone.

In men, testosterone is associated with being big, burly and hairy. But too much testosterone in women creates all sorts of unpleasant results. Namely, it can cause hair growth on the face, neck or chest, and hair loss on your head. Not pretty.

4. Thyroid Woes.

Your body is an intelligent system. So when it’s under stress due to hormonal imbalances, like fluctuating thyroid levels, it redirects energy used for noncritical processes (hair growth) to more important matters at hand (balancing your hormones). Low thyroid is often the cause of that thinning scalp some women get as they age.

3 Ways to Maintain your Mane               

If you’re tired of yanking out gobs of hair from the bathroom drain or piling on products to pump up your ponytail, here are three strategies that have helped many of my patients address the root cause of hair loss:  

1. Get tested.

Because there are a number of different factors that can contribute to hair loss, it’s best to ask your doctor for a few different tests. I recommend checking: fasting glucose, iron levels and complete blood count (which can determine if you have anemia), as well as thyroid, estrogen and testosterone levels. These assessments should give you a better understanding of what hormonal issues may be at the root of your problem.

2. Eat clean.

Incorporating more fiber into your diet will help to lower estrogen levels through the process of “elimination” (i.e., excess estrogen will come out in the wash). Focusing on a high-protein,

low-carbohydrate diet with lots of veggies will improve insulin resistance that may be contributing to hair loss.

3. Pop a quality multivitamin. 

Nutrients, or lack thereof, can affect hair growth, too. Vitamin A helps fat synthesis in hair follicles, encouraging growth; vitamin E helps protect your hair cells from damage; and B vitamins also help to restore hair thickness and shine. Vitamin C and zinc also help to repair cellular damage from the inside out, which makes for a healthy mane.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic solution, pill or product that will correct hair loss entirely. But if you think of your hormones as a cast of characters, knowing which ones are leading the show and which ones are only playing a supporting role can help you get to the bottom of the issue.  Manage your stress levels and get enough sleep. This will help with general hormone balance and can protect your precious locks from any further damage.

Find Sara's article here!

A missing link! Vitamin K2 and your Skin + Bone Health!

Vitamin K2 and it's amazing role in our 'Beautiful Health" both internal and external.

New evidence has confirmed that vitamin K2′s role in the body extends far beyond blood clotting to include protecting us from heart disease, ensuring healthy skin, forming strong bones, promoting brain function, supporting growth and development and helping to prevent cancer – to name a few. In fact, vitamin K2 has so many functions not associated with vitamin K1 that many researchers insist that K1 and K2 are best seen as two different vitamins entirely.

Vitamin K2′s role in the body includes protecting us from heart disease, forming strong bones, promoting brain function, supporting growth and development and helping to prevent cancer – to name a few. It performs these functions by helping to deposit calcium in appropriate locations, such as in the bones and teeth, and prevent it from depositing in locations where it does not belong, such as the soft tissues. One of the health benefits of vitamin K2 not often discussed is its role in ensuring healthy skin, and this vitamin is likely beneficial for preventing wrinkling and premature aging.

Adequate dietary vitamin K2 prevents calcification of our skin’s elastin, the protein that gives skin the ability to spring back, smoothing out lines and wrinkles.  This is because K2 is necessary for activation of matrix proteins that inhibit calcium from being deposited in elastin fibers and keeping these fibers from hardening and causing wrinkles. In fact, recent research suggests that people who cannot metabolize vitamin K end up with severe premature skin wrinkling.   Vitamin K2 is also necessary for the proper functioning of vitamin A- and D- dependent proteins. As I discussed in the first article in this series, vitamin A is essential for proper skin cell proliferation, and cannot work properly if vitamin K2 is not available. Therefore, vitamin K2 is important in the treatment of acne, keratosis pillaris, and other skin symptoms of vitamin A deficiency.

It’s important to get adequate amounts of dietary vitamin K2, particularly if trying to heal the skin or prevent wrinkles.

Foods high in vitamin K2

• Natto

• Hard cheese

• Soft cheese

• Egg yolk

• Butter

• Chicken liver

• Salami

• Chicken breast

• Ground beef

It is important to note that commercial butter and other dairy products are not significantly high sources of vitamin K2, as most dairy cattle in our country are fed grains rather than grass. It is the grazing on vitamin K1-rich grasses that leads to high levels of vitamin K2 in the dairy products of animals, so be sure to look for grass-fed dairy products when trying to increase your intake of vitamin K2. (11)

A great all-around supplement for skin health is Green Pasture’s Fermented Cod Liver Oil and Butter Oil blend. It has a great mix of vitamins A, D, K2, and omega-3s in the proper ratios to help maximize skin health, especially in people with acne.

New research has expanded our understanding of the many important roles of vitamin K2.  Proof is being published at a rapid pace to bring clarity to one of the most poorly understood by medical authorities and the general public.

For more information on VK2 and how to source this supplementally, contact us at Kassie@kasiaorganicsalon.com. 

Guest Post Reference For more information on VK2 - head over to Chris's Blog: http://chriskresser.com/vitamin-k2-the-missing-nutrient

SPRING FORWARD: Two Quick Liver Cleansing Yum-a-licious Smoothie Recipes!

It's that time of year - to SPRING FORWARD!

Spring is a time of change, a time to detox, and a time for......GREEN!

Liver Season

Bitter greens are a foundation food to bring into the spring diet.  Bitters contain compounds that help the liver with its multitude of functions.

About the liver:  It is the second largest organ in the human body and performs over 500 different jobs!  We breathe, ingest, and absorb toxic compounds daily. In addition, our bodies produce poisonous compounds during normal biochemical reactions. It is the liver who is responsible for filtering the blood to remove these toxins and excess hormones. The liver is responsible for changing the chemical structure of those toxins to make them water soluble so that they can be excreted in the urine.  LOVE your liver, please!

Hidden in your fat?

Many of the most threatening and dangerous toxins are fat soluble.   Unless these compounds are detoxified they are more likely to lodge in your cells and remain there causing damage. This is why a diet high in potential pesticides and toxins dramatically increases your intake of toxic compounds. (Organic and sustainably raised animal products have less toxic compounds and should be taken seriously). By supporting your liver with certain foods, you can detoxify and dramatically increase your energy and quality of life, energy, and beauty!

Now, what foods support the liver? We are looking for foods that contain nutrients to produce and activate enzymes involved in the various phases of detoxification.

So what are they?

• Sulfur-containing foods such as onions, garlic, and legumes are a good start.

• Cabbage family vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and cabbage are very important.

• Foods high in water-soluble fiber such as pears, apples, and oatmeal are fairly easy to consume on a regular basis.

• Certain spices even help such as turmeric, cinnamon, and licorice root. Hmmm, you see why we eat a lot of curry!

• And lastly, greens, glorious greens! All green foods are particularly important in liver health.

  

Let's look at a few greens......

Dandelion greens, sorrel, baby kale, collard greens, and wild mustard. Others may include arugula, spinach, mizuna, tat soi, and sunflower spouts.

All of these wonderful fresh, raw greens can be blended into a delicious-tasting smoothie! This is also an easy way for you and your children to get a healthy dose of green foods into your daily diet.

 Below is the recipe that can be changed everyday   depending on what is available. Soon the local fruits from the season will be available and you can change up our the recipe.

The key is - SPRING is a time for CLEANING OUT THE LIVER AND GALLBLADDER.  The intake of greens, bitters, and alkalizing agents will be beneficial as your body, mind, and soul transition seasons.   

 Two Yum-a-licious Spring Green Smoothie Recipes

I use a Vita-Mix for this, but if you have a smaller blender then cut this recipe in half. 

Spring Cleanse Smoothie with Cucumber, Pear and Kale

1/2 cucumber, sliced1 pear, sliced

1 cup kale

1/2 cup water

Sprig of mint to garnish (optional)

Spring Cleanse Smoothie with Apple, Ginger, Pear and Kiwi

2 ripe pears, cored

2 apples, cored

2 kiwis

1 very large chunk of fresh ginger

2 lemons, juiced

water

Blend the fruit mixture until smooth and creamy.

Beauty Benefits of a Super-Citrus Blood Orange Smoothie! (recipe inside)

Orangerie Benefits!

If you've been to the market lately, you've seen plenty of sweet oranges, grapefruits, tangerines and blood oranges…citrus galore!  Change it up and trade out the standard orange with a red flesh of blood orange!   This swap is especially satisfying when we learn of the beauty benefits that come along with this Mediterranean variant.

Superfruit power of vitamin C  stimulates collagen production and anthocyanins, the potent antioxidants found in berries. Both prevent free radicals that cause premature aging and ward off disease-causing inflammation. Paired with cucumber and greens, this smoothie is bursting with nutrients.

Blood Orange Smoothie Directions: Fill blender with…

• 10 oz coconut water

  

• 1 blood orange peeled and seeds removed

• ½ cucumber peeled

• ½ frozen banana

• 2 tsp chia seeds

• handful spinach

• juice from ¼ lemon

Blend ingredients until smooth and enjoy your organic Blood Orange Smoothie.

 Cheers!

Guest Recipe: BY LAURISA TRUEMPER