Prior to having snow cancel 2.5 days off of school (and all local evening activities) the week before last, I got to attend a wonderful Moms Night Out with my chapter of Holistic Moms Network, starring special guest beauty mixologist

Amy Fromm, mixing body oil

Amy Fromm of Interlaken Soak Company. I met Amy back in the spring when my friend Kim and I stopped by the Columbia Pike farmer’s market on our way to prenatal yoga. I’ve been enjoying the delicious foot scrub I bought from her that rainy day and am so glad she agreed to come speaK to HMN. (And that I actually made it out of the house that night!)

Amy gave us the low-down on ingredients in beauty products and shared a whole bunch of tips on making your own. I’m so glad the weather waited until after this event to bring on the snow.

The following is adapted from  my article on my Washington Times Communities column.

If you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it” cautioned Amy, who reminded the group that the skin is the body’s largest organ. “Whatever you put on your body, you’re putting into your body.”

Amy’s presentation began with tips about things to avoid. Petroleum jelly is just that – refined oil – and it creates a barrier that doesn’t allow the skin to breathe. “Fragrance” listed as an ingredient can often indicate phthalates, chemicals that are usually used as a solvent or to make plastics more flexible. According to the Environmental Working Group, phthalates are endocrine disruptors. Many of the discussion attendees said they already look for products that specifically say that are phthalate-free, often in the aisles of MOM’s Organic Market or Whole Foods.

Other ingredients to avoid include parabens, endocrine disruptors that have been linked to cancer and sodium lauryl sulfate, which, Amy explained, is a surfactant that thins out molecules to reduce their surface tension and make the product spread further. This allows other ingredients to be more absorbed by the body.

Since there is no governing body to regulate the word “natural” on products, it’s important to know the companies you buy from, Amy said.  Her products are available at the Proper Topper throughout DC and in Falls Church at Stifel & Capra (in addition to the farmer’s market on Saturdays).

Amy kindly cut into her own customer base by sharing resources with moms wishing to learn how to make our own products. In addition to supplying them with a custom-made body oil, Amy showed the group some of the many books she has consulted since starting her business in 2009. While Fromm poured sweet almond oil into the moms’ recycled travel-size containers, the women pored over titles such as A Consumer’s Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients, Essential Aromatherapy, Natural Beauty at Home and Gorgeously Green. Fromm is also planning to launch her own line of mother and baby products later this year, for which Organic Baby Care Recipes will surely come in handy.

The group discussed a wide array of healthful ingredients to choose from when making your own products. Some favorites included apricot kernel oil for massage and avocado oil for a thicker barrier cream. Sunflower oil, Amy said, is closest to our own human sebum. Other ingredients to consider for lotions and balms include cocoa butter and shea butter, beeswax and honey. Fromm is a big fan of calendula and suggests planting some flowers in order to distill your own oil.

Flours such as arrowroot and tapioca can be used for dusting powders instead of talc, which as been linked to asbestos and ovarian cancer. Epsom salts not only break down lactic acid, which is why athletes often use them in the tub, but they can also act as a mood balancer because of their mineral properties. Soaking in an Epsom salt bath can also lower blood pressure, Amy noted.

One woman shared that she already used baking soda (applied by a blush brush) as an effective deodorant but was surprised to know that the powder can help relieve rashes when applied in a paste or used in a bath. Bath water should never be too hot, Amy noted, or it will try the skin, and 15-20 minutes is plenty of time, so busy moms need not lock themselves away for a whole hour to reap the benefits.

With the exception of lavender, essential oils should always be applied in a carrier oil rather than dropped into water or applied “neat,” directly from the bottle, where their strength has the potential to burn skin. Amy also reminded us that essential oils have physical as well as emotional properties and should not be used indiscriminately. Putting peppermint oil in a bath can actually lower a person’s body temperature, so it’s better used in an oil on tired feet. Consulting a manual for contraindications, especially during pregnancy, is a good idea.

Fun giveaway!

After nearly two hours, our group broke up smelling and feeling divine, with new recipes to try at home and a keener eye for how to read labels at the store.

For a long time, I’ve been eating a lot of calories. A typical breakfast would be sausage, one or two eggs (mostly just the yolk), raw/cultured sauerkraut, sprouts (usually pea, lentil or azuki bean — not alfalfa), sauteed zucchini and some kind of green vegetable cooked in homemade chicken stock. Kombucha and supplements on the side. If I was still hungry after that, I’d have some coconut milk and nuts and/or berries.

But once I was done nursing, I really didn’t need to do that. And I wanted to cleanse my liver, plus lose a little extra in the belly. I can’t afford to lose much weight, but I wouldn’t mind toning. I’m sure going to bed earlier and doing more yoga & meditation to help with stress would also help with the belly pooch. No longer keeping the house ready to sell helps a lot, but I will be most happy when we’ve closed and have moved into the new place.

I’m now juicing every morning with a real juicer, not just the Vita-Mix (and I’m finally composting everything else again, as evidenced by my son’s grape vines). I’m also spending a few days without meat or eggs. The hope is that my body will let go of some toxins and of the idea that I have to eat 2,000 calories at every meal.

I am trying to keep a low profile on fruits since I don’t tolerate sugar well. But now we actually have blueberries and black raspberries growing in our yard, and the farmer’s market has pesticide-free strawberries.

About a month after my first ionic foot soak (since pregnancy, since weaning), I did another. I think it looks a little less dark (less black/heavy metals) this time. But who knows if that’s good or not! Does it just mean I’m holding on instead of excreting? I’m so stressed out with showing the house to sell/to move, I can’t tell if my returned knee skin issue is a bad sign that I’m burning out or a good sign that my body is releasing more toxins. I hope that we sell soon so that I can finally use my infrared sauna again after almost 4 years. Right now it’s out of the way in a friend’s basement.

I’d hoped that this spring season would find me happily detoxing away. I made a good start nutritionally, and I did the one dramatic foot soak. But I haven’t gotten much beyond that.

We have been planning to move but had to do some unexpected negotiation after the home we want to buy got a lower appraisal than anyone expected, which put us in decision-limbo for a few days. Then we decided to move forward but still have had to prep our house to sell, which we’re trying to do by ourselves to save money (and because it’s been done successfully in our neighborhood several times). My husband has been between consulting gigs, so it seemed like we ought to do as much ourselves as possible since neither of us was really earning any money, and we will still be writing a huge check for the new home in a few weeks, employment or no.

But we’re finding that this FSBO business takes a lot of time and requires a lot of decisions — not as many as an addition would have, but still. I have enjoyed doing some of it — taking the photos, prepping the house. But there are so many questions and so much unknown, I’m getting to an I-can’t-take-it place. I am healthy when I take care of myself, and I’m not when I don’t. Add to that the money concerns that have totally tabled any extra detox and body wellness protocols I’d hoped to do this spring. If LJ’s expected new job starts up on Wednesday as we hope it will, I’m picking up the phone to get some appointments scheduled. Because I have to admit I need help to really be in the healthy zone — and if I get too far out of that zone, it will not look pretty. I can feel my thyroid reminding me that it didn’t heal on its own; it had a lot of help from my positive thinking and all the advice I got. The idea of trying for another child is, as far as I’m concerned, completely off the table until my body is not a walking stress-bomb.

And if tomorrow’s open house comes and goes with no serious interest logged by the time LJ goes back to work, I think we are going to have to hire an agent or the money we save by eventually selling on our own is going to by out-paced by my medical bills.

I went to a great detox class the other night with Monica Corrado of Simply Being Well. She talked about ways to use nutrition to support your liver and why spring is the best and most natural time to do detox. I hadn’t realized that a “cleanse” is the most intense thing you can do — and shouldn’t unless you’re in great health and have support to live very low key while you undertake it. A “flush” is the next level of cleansing — maybe a special liver-cleansing drink the morning and eat nothing for a 4 hrs. Again, this could result in headaches and other yucky symptoms if you’re particularly toxic or too run-down for your body to handle the dumping well.

So really, what I did last spring was not a cleanse but a gentle “detox.” I thought detox was a more intense term, but apparently it’s the mildest of the three processes.

This spring I was hoping to step it up, now that my son has weaned. But I began from a chubby, chocolate-addicted, mildly-caffeine-addicted and sugar-happy place.

On March 31, I ate a ton of cake a friend gave me — really gorged on it knowing the next day was April and I was going off sugar. So I made myself really feel plenty sugared up and ready to kiss it goodbye when I flipped the calendar.

Since then, I’ve had only minimal fruit, no refined sugar and only a little honey. I’m keeping the carbs to a minimum — trying to do only real-food carbs, as in veggies and rice cooked in stock. I’m cutting back on meat, giving up the nut butter again but not soaked & roasted nuts and (store-bought) sprouts; I hope to start sprouting nuts and seeds myself.

I’m eating lots of salad with added dandelion greens. I’m starting the morning with lemon & turmeric in hot water and am turning to my parsley-lemon-celery juice for snacks during the day. I did have half a Lara bar today between breakfast and lunch, and I ate a salad at Corner Bakery tonight, including some dressing and currants. So I’m not a purist. But I have made changes that have resulted in having already lost 2 lbs. I’m generally feeling pretty good. I ran 9.5 miles on Saturday. I did snack more that night on coconut milk and sprouted sunflower seeds with a few raisins. But that’s not bad.

Oh, and chocolate? After eating most of half a bag of chips in conjunction with decorating my son’s bday cake a few weeks ago, I’m now off. The sole source for the past week has been unsweetened, raw, organic cacao nibs from Wilderness Family Naturals with a spoon of their centrifuged coconut oil and maybe some almonds or apricot kernals.

One goal is indeed to lose a little pudge but mostly I want to get my liver and the rest of my body happy and healthy (my dry skin is back a little on my knees) and generally break some unhealthy habits so that I can eventually get back to a place of more moderation and a happy relationship with my body.

So, now that my son has weaned, I’m ready to do some detox. I tried an ionic foot bath twice the year I got pregnant. The water turned very yellow both times — like egg yolk. I heard at the time that this was connected to hormone issues.

Last week I tried it again, and you can see from the before and after pictures, the results were brown and black. According to the information at Whole Health and Wellness, this indicates liver and heavy metal issues. A recent trip to a holistic doctor came up with liver toxicity and heavy metals as concerns for me, too.

I’m planning to do some nutritional liver cleansing in the next few months, but this visual makes me think I might need some other help, too! Especially if I’m thinking we might want another baby. To be continued…!