How to Color Your Hair Like an A-List Celebrity

Women often envy celebrities because of their great-looking, flawless hair. From Mia Farrow's classic pixie cut to Jennifer Aniston's Friends-era haircut called "The Rachel," we've been imitating our favorite star's styles for years.
Case in point, Glamour Magazine's UK edition just published the most popular celebrity hair trends for 2013, and short cropped cuts are back. Michelle Williams sports brilliant blonde locks, Rihanna and Emma Watson offer really rich reds, and Oscar-winners Anne Hathaway and Halle Berry are living for dark, glistening blacks.
While not everyone can pull off these short hair styles, there is something all these lovely ladies have in common, and which every woman can achieve for themselves: incredible color.
No, we're not talking about using a basic over-the-counter treatment. Those may be affordable, but these mass-produced colors don’t last as long, don't leave your hair feeling soft, and are often messy to apply. This is not a star-worthy option.
Big name celebrities obviously have big name stylists. However, even mainstream salons can provide high-quality hair dye and great results. The problem, of course, is that these visits are pricey, especially for women who frequently treat gray roots.
Now an innovative new company called eSalon is bringing celebrity-grade hair color to the masses — and at prices everyone can afford.
Getting the Perfect Hair Color
The reason salon treatments are so effective —and expensive— is because formulating hair color is both a science and an art. You get a fully personalized, custom blended color created specifically for you, and the ingredients are a much higher quality. That shows in the way it lasts, as well as how it makes your hair look and feel.
ESalon employs professional colorists, accessing more than 2,000 color variations, to create high-end custom blends specifically for your hair, and which can't be found in typical drug store brands. You just complete a short “hair profile” on the eSalon website, giving the same information you would provide a salon stylist. Next, you pinpoint exactly the color you want via their online matching system.
Professional colorists then review your order and profile, mix your color using salon grade hair dyes, and ship everything to your doorstep— all within two business days. Their high-quality dyes provide 100 percent gray coverage and include ingredients such as Vitamin E, B5, and aloe vera. This leaves hair rich and shiny, and helps the color last a long time.
It may sound crazy, but the company has prepared more than 300,000 custom hair color applications, thanks to both the quality and price.
A complete color application from eSalon normally costs less than $20 per application— not much more than drug store brands, but with the quality and formulation you'd expect at a professional salon for three times the price.
Best of all, eSalon is currently offering new clients an incredible deal: treatments for only $9.95 (that's a 50% savings), plus $4.95 shipping and handling. And every eSalon order features a 100% satisfaction guarantee; that means if you're not satisfied, they'll refund the entire amount — including shipping.
You don't have to be wealthy to show off beautiful celebrity-style. With eSalon, you'll have the rich quality and incredible color you love, and you'll never have to break the bank or settle for cheap drugstore brands again.

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Recipe: Creamy Baked Pasta Rosa

We’ve had turkey twice this month, tons of pumpkin and cranberry and all the usual holiday favorites. To be honest, I have to say that I’m ready to move on in the dinner department. It felt like time for a little pasta, so I played around in the kitchen until I found a recipe that satisfied my craving for cream sauce and my love for tomatoes. The result? Creamy baked pasta rosa…a blend of cream sauce, melted cheese, and diced tomatoes that smells great in the oven and tastes even better! A side salad rounds this meal out perfectly. Post-Christmas break from leftover turkey? Check. New recipe that the kids love? Double-check!
Start with fresh, healthy ingredients:  Raw milk mozzarella and Parmesan, cage-free eggs, fresh organic garlic, whole wheat or brown rice noodles, raw cream and organic tomatoes. While your noodles boil on the stove, start the sauce: Saute the tomatoes in a cast iron skillet until they are soft. Stir together the raw cream and a little flour (gluten free works fine), then add it to the tomatoes. Heat until it’s steaming and starts to thicken, then add some herbs and garlic. Stir together over the heat for a few minutes, then set aside.

Drain the noodles, and toss them with a beaten egg and some of the grated cheeses. Pour the sauce over the noodles and stir well, then pour the mixture into a baking dish and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese. Pop it in the oven, and 20 minutes later you’ll be ready to eat! Simple, elegant, and healthy all in one.

Creamy Baked Pasta Rosa

Ingredients:
8 cups dry noodles (shown are brown rice penne noodles, whole wheat also work well)
1 cup raw organic cream
3 tablespoons organic flour (I used rice flour)
6-8 whole organic tomatoes, diced (about 3 cups, include any juice from the tomatoes as well)
3 cloves organic garlic, peeled and pressed
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 cage-free organic egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups shredded raw, organic mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded raw, organic Parmesan cheese
Sea salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
Looking for quality real food ingredients? Be sure to the check out the Village Green Marketplace
Directions:
1. Start some water boiling in a large pot, and cook the noodles as the package recommends. Start the sauce as the noodles cook.
2. Saute the diced tomatoes  in a cast iron skillet until they are soft and cooked through.
3. In a measuring cup, whisk the flour into the raw cream. Pour over the tomatoes and cook, whisking, continually, until the mixture starts to steam and thicken.
4. Remove from heat, add the garlic and oregano, and salt to taste. Set aside.
5. Drain the cooked noodles and return them to the pot. Toss the beaten egg, 1/2 cup of the mozzarella and 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese with the hot noodles (add some ground black pepper if you’d like.)
6. Pour the sauce over the noodles, and stir until combined.
7. Spread the noodle mixture into a large baking dish, and sprinkle the remaining cheeses over the noodles.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20  minutes, or until the cheeses are melted and begin to brown.

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Recipe: Flu Fighting Tea

Fever, aches and pains, a wracking cough and a sore throat…sounds like the flu! It’s never fun to feel under the weather, but so many of the cold and flu remedies available are full of chemicals that you wouldn’t otherwise put in your body. One of my favorite all-natural ways to feel better is to drink a big cup of honey lemon flu fighting tea. This is a recipe that my  husband has perfected over the years, it tastes great and it’s very effective at soothing a cough and sore throat. Not only that, but the the ingredients in this tea are also excellent at fighting cold and flu symptoms at the root!


Start off by steeping a good quality, organic echinacea tea bag and several thin slices of fresh organic ginger root in some hot water. Then, stir in freshly squeezed lemon juice and raw honey. Finally, add the spices. Clove and cinnamon add a wonderful flavor to the tea, and a little cayenne pepper adds zip! The great thing about these ingredients is that they not only make the tea taste great, they also contain compounds that work to help you feel better…and get over the virus faster.
Let’s start with the echinacea tea. Echinacea is an herb (Purple Coneflower, it’s actually quite pretty!) that is traditionally used as a cold and flu remedy. Studies are mixed as to its effectiveness, but it has been shown to increase white blood cells…which helps your immune system fight off germs. Ginger tastes great with the lemon and honey, but it also has many properties that help when you’ve got a cold or the flu. Ginger has long been known for settling upset tummies, but did you know that it also contains a powerful painkiller and acts as an anti-inflammatory? It’s also used to fight the upper respiratory woes that come with  colds and the flu.
Lemon and honey are a great combination, they taste wonderful and the lemon juice is full of vitamin C. Honey has antimicrobial properties, and has been shown to be more effective in soothing a cough than the active ingredient in most cough syrups (here’s how to harness honey’s cough suppressing power in a homemade cough drop). And did you know that cinnamon is as healthy as it is tasty? Studies show that this sweet spice also reduces inflammation, and his antibacterial properties. You may know that clove was used to ease the pain of toothaches, you can harness clove’s anesthetic properties to soothe your sore throat too. It’s good for your cough, becuase it acts as an expectorant. Finally, the cayenne pepper helps clear out your sinuses.

My husband has been making this tea for years, and I had always thought that he’d just put together the ingredients based on taste and how soothing they were to a sore throat and cough. Turns out, he’d done his research too!  Don’t you love it when something you love turns out to be good for you? Me, too!

Flu Fighting Tea (Andrew’s Hot Lemon)

Ingredients:
1 bag good quality organic echinacea tea (optional)
3 or 4 thin slices of fresh organic ginger root
3 tablespoons organic lemon juice, fresh squeezed
2 tablespoons raw organic honey
1/2 teaspoon organic ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon organic ground clove
Cayenne pepper to taste
Looking for quality real food ingredients? Be sure to the check out the Village Green Marketplace!
Directions:
1. In a large cup of hot filtered water, steep the tea bag and the sliced ginger (you may omit the tea bag if you’d like).
2. Add the lemon juice, honey and spices and stir well. The tea will be cloudy.
3. If you’d like, you may strain the tea through cheesecloth to remove the ground spices and ginger. At our house, we just drink it as is.
Enjoy, and feel better soon!

What’s your favorite all-natural cold and flu remedy?

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Chewing Gum is Bad: 7 Reasons to Quit

Hello. My name is Robin and I’m a recovered gum addict. I was the girl that had at least two packages of different flavors of gum in her purse at all times. I was the girl that popped a piece in anytime I was going to meet anyone new, go out with friends, after finishing a meal, or “just because.” I loved gum.
But gum didn’t love me.
I actually quit my chewing gum habit long before my real food conversion. I was a graduate student who frequently had subtle stomach aches… nothing that would keep me from my day, but definitely uncomfortable and really annoying. Like I tend to do, I started researching possible causes. And, as you can imagine, through that vast vacuum of information we call “the internet” I found more than a gazillion possible reasons for my tummy troubles: Too little fiber, too much fiber, food allergies, sugar, carbs, my sleeping habits, too much water, too little water, etc. etc. etc.
Um, just as a reminder: Don’t believe everything you read online.
I started doing some self experimentation, trying to pinpoint what my particular issue was. And since I’m lazy efficient I decided to try the easiest and most simple thing first:

I quit chewing gum.

Surely gum chewing wasn’t bad, and surely gum chewing wasn’t my problem, right? I mean, every commercial told me that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend the stuff. But my research made me think twice about my gum lovin’ ways.
And for the record, I didn’t have access to or knowledge of some of the resources I do now, so the reasons behind the “chewing gum is bad” idea was from two simple ideas:
1. Chewing gum can produce a excessive “air pockets” that can upset your stomach.
2. Many of the artificial sweeteners in sugar free gum can upset your stomach.

So I stopped chewing gum.

And, lo and behold, my little stomach problems disappeared. No more discomfort. No more annoyed “why do I always feel this way!” episodes.
Of course, fast forward a decade or so (Man, I’m getting old…) and I have plenty of other reasons why I don’t chew gum.

7  Reasons Chewing Gum is Bad

1. Jaw Problems

For some people chewing gum is bad because it can cause mouth disorders. This is especially true for people with pre-existing jaw conditions like TMJ. But even if you don’t have a serious problem, excessive gum chewing can aggravates the cartilage and surrounding joints in the mouth through extra wear and tear.

2. Artificial Sweeteners

Most gum these days love to market that they are “sugar free,” but artificial sweeteners are far from my “okay to eat” real food list. Aspartame is just on example that has been linked to brain tumors, birth defects, and cancer. Read why I don’t trust the stuff here. But even the “safer” sweeteners are suspicious for this “back to basics, just eat what we recognize as real food” gal.

3. Chewing gum can cause headaches

According to Dr. Ben Kim, there are eight different facial muscles involved in chewing.

Unnecessary chewing can create chronic tightness in two of these muscles, located close to your temples. This can put pressure on the nerves that supply this area of your head, which can lead to chronic, intermittent headaches. (Source)

4. Other fake ingredients

Just because you don’t generally ingest your gum doesn’t mean it doesn’t go in your body:

The ingredients in gum travel into the bloodstream faster and in higher concentrations than food ingredients, because they absorb straight through the walls of the mouth, and these ingredients do not undergo the normal filtration process of digestion. – C. Thomas Corriher (source)

Yikes! That’s pretty scary when you think about some of the common ingredients listed on a pack of chewing gum:

• Gum Base
• Maltitol
• Mannitol
• Artificial and ‘Natural’ Flavoring
• Acacia
• Acesulfame Potassiu
• BHT
• Calcium Casein Peptone-calcium Phosphate
• Candelilla Wax
• Sodium Stearate
• Titanium Dioxide 

Learn more about these ingredients here.

5. Chewing gum only masks bad breath. It doesn’t get rid of it.

I remember how “minty clean” my mouth would feel after chewing a piece of gum (for a minute or two, at least), but gum doesn’t get rid of bad breath. Bad breath is symptom of digestive problems or excessive tooth decay. In fact, once I changed my diet and improved my health through real food I no longer had bad breath. Real food for the win!

6. Chewing gum could hinder your metabolism.

If you’ve been around the Thank Your Body site for a while you know how important metabolic health is. But did you know that chewing gum, which stimulates saliva production for an unnaturally long time, can take away from other important metabolic functions? Crazy, right?

7. Oh yeah, and the tummy aches.

And that brings me back to the reason I stopped in the first place. Chewing gum brings in an excess of swallowed air which can put pressure on the intestine and cause cramping and bloating. And for those who suffer from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) this can be really bad.

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Health & Nutrition Infographics

Infographics are a great way to provide lots of useful information in an entertaining way. Health & nutrition is a great topic that lends itself well to the infographic format, as many studies contain vital statistics and revealing results that are easily explained in the infographic format.
Below, we’ve provided a collection of our popular infographics about health & nutrition products, ingredients and research. We’ll continue to add more health & nutrition infographics as they become available. Click each photo to enlarge.
              

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The Health Benefits of Red Wine

Can wine really improve our health and increase longevity? Scientists are beginning to say "Yes!" Supposing that the theory is true -- which wines give us the most bang for the buck?
Researchers have found that red wines rich in flavonoids are best for our health. Flavonoids are best known for their antioxidant qualities and help the body resist such maladies as allergens, viruses and carcinogens.
Red wines also contain anxioxidants, which help the body resist cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Syrah and Pinot Noir contain the highest concentrations of antioxidants and flavonoids.
Other red wines such as Merlots and red zinfandels contain fewer flavonoids, but more than most white wines. So, the best bet for drinking wine for our health is to stick to the dryer red wines.  Just because wine contains components that are central to good health doesn't give us a free rein to get plastered every night. Don't overdo it -- but adding a glass of wine to your daily diet can definitely make a difference to our health.
Paracelsus, the noted 16^th-century Swiss physician wrote, "Wine is a food, a medicine and a poison - it's just a question of dose." As with almost any food or drink, wine consumed in large doses can be a detriment to our health.
Most health officials agree that one or two four-ounce glasses of wine per day can be beneficial to men, while women should limit their consumption to one four ounce serving per day.
Cardiovascular expert, Professor Roger Corder, has spent years studying the evidence of health benefits from red wine. In his new book, "The Wine Diet," he says he is convinced that most of us should include red wine in our every day lifestyle.
Corder discovered what he eventually labeled the "French Paradox." Specifically, he wondered why the French have a lower rate of heart disease despite the fact that their diet was extremely rich in fats. He concentrated his research on the southwest portion of France, where life expectancy seemed to be highest.
Professor Corder discovered that the region produces very tannic local wines, which contain the highest procyanidin (antioxidant) content of any wines, worldwide. This led him to further research on the amazing medical benefits of red wine.
While wine may not be man's ultimate elixir or fountain of youth, it certainly behooves us to consider adding a glass of wine or two to our daily diet - and raise a "toast" to our continued good health.          

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Facelift Results without Surgery? New Skincare System Makes It Possible

Movie stars get it done. Fashion models get it done. Television personalities get it done.
Many famous people turn to facelifts in order to appear younger. While it's true that these options can tighten loose skin and reduce fine wrinkles, there are many detrimental side effects and risks associated with getting a facelift.

• Pain - Lasting 2 weeks to 6 months
• Numbness - For 6-8 months, and up to 18 month around stitch lines
• Swelling - You may be unrecognizable for weeks
• Bruising - Up to 8 weeks of looking battered
• Surgery Risks - Including infection, adverse reaction to the anesthesia, failure to properly heal, or a doctor who goes "too far" once you're on the table.

Facelifts can also be expensive. Between the operating room rental, anesthesia, the physician's fee and other associated costs, people can pay between eight and fifteen thousand dollars. This isn't for a high-end celebrity plastic surgeon,  simply a reputable practice—and while you may find cheaper rates at some medical practices, you really shouldn't go to a discount doctor when having work done on your face.
Needless to say, for most people, that's a lot of money to spend on an elective procedure. But what's surprising is that even some famous A-listers are skipping facelifts, turning instead to the rare charentais cantaloupe, found in a remote region in the south of France, to help preserve their perfect skin.
Here’s the second surprise: The ingredient is not only affordable, it’s part of a great skincare system that’s available to women everywhere.
The Youth Molecule
The secret is actually a powerful super-antioxidant called superoxide dismutase or SOD. SOD has been referred to as a "youth molecule" for its miraculous age-defying properties, and is believed to be one of the most powerful antioxidants known to science.

The use of SOD as an anti-aging agent was pioneered by one of Europe’s premier skin doctors, Jean Louis Sebaugh. Dr. Sebaugh noticed that melons containing SOD decayed at a much slower rate than melons that lacked the nutrient (see image).
With this in mind, Dr. Sebaugh tested SOD as part of a skin care regimen and was amazed by its ability to restore the appearance of youth and vitality. From those results he created a first-of-its-kind skincare regime using this rare melon extract and called it Meaningful Beauty®.
Already popular among in-the-know stars and models, Meaningful Beauty's new Advanced Anti-Aging System helps smooth the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, adds radiance to your complexion, preserves skin’s youthful vibrancy, and protects it from environmental damage. It’s naturally enriched with SOD, as well as other powerful ingredients such as coenzyme Q10, lipoic acid, and restorative minerals.
But perhaps the best thing about Meaningful Beauty New Advanced Anti Aging System is the price. The entire 5 step system consisting of 8 separate products for just $39.95 (plus shipping and handling). There's also a 60-day money-back guarantee, so if you’re not completely satisfied, send back the bottles (even if they’re empty) and receive a full refund (minus s&h).
Thousands of women, including some well known celebrities, are now relying on the Meaningful Beauty system to deliver younger looking skin without going under the knife. And, at this price, you don’t have to be a supermodel to afford it.

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