Monday, June 4, 2007

A Slim and Alert Body

More than 60 per cent of the human body is composed of muscles and bones. To keep your posture healthy it is vital to keep these two components in good order. If we let our muscles go slack, the body structure will be weakened and will start to curve. It is important for us to know how to stand, sit and hold ourselves. Bad posture and unbalanced body structure lead to tension in the neck, shoulders and spine. To keep your body alert and straight, when sitting avoid deep, squashy armchairs. When sitting knees should always be higher than the hip joints. Always sleep on a firm mattress as a soft one will allow your spine to sag and bend.

Stress and tension are partners and a part of the world in which we live. Fear, anxiety, pressure of work and domestic problems contribute to a state of tension and such a situation causes both mental and physical pain and distress. Good sleep is the best immediate cure for tension. Inhaling fresh air and simple warming up exercises also help relieving tension. Learn to relax both mind and muscles for permanent cure. By taking a hot bath or listening to your favorite music, you can relieve your tension to some extent. If you feel sudden tension, take deep breaths. The extra oxygen released into the blood stream and the brain has a calming effect. Massage is also a useful aid to relaxation.

There are about 600 muscles in a woman's body comp­rising approximately 35 per cent of the body weight. These muscles need regular exercise and massage to maintain strength and elasticity. Without exercise and massage muscles decrease in size and attract excess fat around them.

Many girls put on excess weight between the age of 14 and 18-usually because this is the time when their bodies undergo a natural adjustment. Young married women, too, often find themselves overweight after their first baby. Provided there is nothing organically wrong, a good figure can soon be regained with a little effort. Whatever the cause of overweight, before taking any steps to reduce it must be decided how much is really superfluous. The following procedure will show you how to decide this, and the proportions at which to aim.

Measure your bust, waist and hips. Ideally, bust and hips should be nearly the same measurements and certainly the hip size should not exceed the bust by more than two inches. The waist should roughly be ten inches smaller than the bust. Next weigh yourself. Excess weight is often caused more by eating the wrong kind of food than by eating too much. Reducing your weight by balancing your diet is the safest method of all. To live a healthy life, cer­tain foods should be taken regularly. For proteins, take meat, fish, eggs, cheese, milk and lentils. Bread, rice, sweets, pastries, fats and sugar contain a rich quantity of carbohydrates. For vitamins and mineral salts take vege­tables and fruits.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Homemade Hair Perfume

It is pleasant to perfume the hair after washing it when the hair is half dry. The following ingredients are required to make this fragrant perfume.

6 tablespoons powdered charcoal
5 tablespoons powdered myrrh
1 tablespoon powdered benzoin
1 tablespoon potassium nitrate
2-3 drops oil of bergamot
2-3 drops of sandalwood
mucilage of tragacanth



Mix the powders together and sieve, and then add the oils. Add the potassium nitrate, and then sufficient muci­lage of tragacanth to make a stiff paste. Heat the mixture over a water bath and then make into little cones and dry. Just light one of the cones and let the smoke go into the damp hair. The smell is highly aromatic and exotic.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Homemade Hair Setting Lotions Recipes


Wood Shavings Lacquer
Wood shavings are soaked in water overnight, and the translucent sticky fluid rising to the water surface can be well used as lacquer. It should be applied with a brush. This lacquer is very common in China.

Hair Setting Lotion
Collect the following ingredients:
1 teaspoon gum tragacanth
8 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon alcohol
1 teaspoon glycerine
Crush the gum tragacanth with a pestle and mortar. Now add water to it and stir until the gum dissolves and yon have a smooth solution. Now add alcohol and glyce­rine. After a couple of hours the lotion will thicken.

Brilliantine
The brilliantine holds the most unruly hair and can be made easily by melting the following ingredients together over a water-bath.
1 tablespoon castor oil
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 tablespoon petroleum jelly (or vaseline)
1 teaspoon emulsifying wax, and
perfume

Remove the bowl from the heat and add perfume to it, if desired. Beat the solution till you have made brilliantine. To make it more useful, you can add 2 tea­spoons of lanolin to the above while melting and when removed from heat just mix 1 teaspoon of water.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Easy Homemade Hair Setting Lotions

For a good hair style setting lotions and lacquers are used. Beer, milk, gelatine and lemon are some of the things generally used as setting lotions. Beer is probably the most effective and popular product. Simply wet the hair with beer before setting. It gives added beauty and helps the set to stay in. Milk can also be used in the same way.

Lemon juice makes a good setting lotion too, and is especially good for fair or greasy hair. Squeeze a lemon and use the strained juice to obtain a very firm set. It makes the hair soft and shiny. Lemon juice dries very fast and can be used as an effective hair lacquer. To make a lemon hair lacquer, cut a lemon in pieces and boil it with a cup of water until it remains only half a cup. Strain and
use. A few drops of alcohol (or Vodka) should be added to preserve it.

Gelatine is a protein agent, and is excellent for a setting lotion, giving body to ]imp hair. Dissolve 2 tablespoons gelatine in 2 cups of boiling water, and use it as the final rinse.

To use sugar as a lacquer, simply add one tablespoon sugar to a glass of boiling water and when it has dissolved use it as a setting lotion by putting it into a spray bottle.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Hair Styling and Setting

It is important how your hair looks and to what extent it flatters you. Be guided by your beautician while choosing a hair style. Choose a hair style to suit the shape of your face. This should not be too difficult if you follow the basic rule of balancing your bone structure. Usually faces are of three shapes-round, long and square.

If your face is round, add length to your face by having fullness on the top of head and by either having no parting or one which is placed to one side. Avoid styles where hair is very long and straight or flat at the top of your head.

For a long face, the forehead, cheek bones and jaw are often of equal width and this can be hard, so a soft hair style is usually more flattering. Avoid centre parting and dead straight shoulder length hair but aim at a short one. If your forehead is high, break front hair with a half fringe or one or two curls.

Square face has an angular shape and any hair style should be gentle to soften the outline. Shoulder length hair, flicking at the ends or straight, is flattering and so is a short style flicking away from the face at ear-level. Hair swept to one side or with a diagonal fringe is attractive.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Homemade Hair Conditioner Recipes

Tension, overwork and illness can effect your hair. Short hair is normally healthier than long hair: Breaking hair or hair which split at the ends has usually been badly treated. This may have been caused by over-exposure to sun, over-perming, amateur bleaching, too frequent and in­expert use of tints, rinses or other colorants or too much hair lacquer.

Begin by finding the- cause of the bad condition of your hair and correct it. A good hair conditioner available in the market will help you enormously. You may easily make a conditioner yourself. This should be used after shampoo and before the final rinse. Leave it on for five minutes, combing it through the hair repeatedly, then rinse and set. The best conditioner is massage. All the recipes given below will show better results if well massag­ed into the scalp.

Quick Hair Conditioner
Mix together 1 egg,2 tablespoons castor oil, I teaspoon vinegar and 1 teaspoon glycerine. Beat constantly and massage into the scalp. Wrap your head in a hot towel and steam the hair, then wash off. This conditioner will make your hair look thicker, shiny, soft and manageable.

Honey Hair Conditioner
Beat up an egg and mix to it I teaspoon honey and 2 tea­spoons coconut or olive oil. Massage it well into the scalp. Steam the hair and then shampoo. This leaves the hair easy to manage and looking lovely.

Alcoholic Hair Conditioner
Beat up an egg and 2 tablespoons brandy. Massage into the scalp. Leave for 10 minutes and rinse off. The egg nourishes and the brandy stimulates.

Gypsy Hair Conditioner
Steep a medium sized onion. Cut into slices in half a cup of rum. Leave it for 24 hours. Now remove the onions and use the remaining liquid for massaging the scalp. This is an effective liquid for those losing hair.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Chemical Hair Dyes and How to Apply

These are mixtures of para (paraphenyle-ondiamine or paratoluendiamine), and some other chemicals (such as pyrogallol and resarcin). Hydrogen peroxide is also used in dyes to accelerate the oxidization of the hair. Chemical dye forms a kind of lacquer which settles on the cuticle or outer part of the hair and penetrates it. This lacquer does not reach the hair root. Chemical hair dyes .overcome all the disadvantages of the vegetable dyes, such as they require short exposure time on the hair, provide natural color, are obtainable in many shades, and are water-proof or shampoo-proof. However, the biggest dis­3.dvantage of the chemical dyes is that they may have an adverse effect on some skins. The symptoms of such ill-effects are violent itching all over the scalp which starts soon after the dyeing or any time within 48 hours after dyeing. This is quickly followed by swelling of the scalp, the ears, the eyelids and also the face. Should such a mis­fortune happen to you, do not be too upset. The swelling will go down rapidly and the eczema is cured quite quickly if the correct treatment is given. You should immediately consult a dermatologist.

If the services of a specialist are not immediately avail­able, here are two simple home remedies to avoid further mishaps. Rinse the hair with a solution of sodium chloride­(kitchen salt) diluted in water. Mix 100 gms salt to one liter of water, to which add a tablespoonful of hydrogen peroxide (20 vol). Rinse twice daily. Another remedy is to apply to the swollen part, for fifteen minutes after every three hours, a clean handkerchief soaked in the solution of camomile flowers. The preparation is made by putting camomile flowers in a cup of boiling water. Allow it to cool, then filter. Dip a compress in the solution and apply on the swollen area, including the scalp.

To avoid possible ill-effects, always test the hair dye on your skin before dyeing your hair. The skin test is made on the skin on the inside pf the arm at the elbow, or at the back of the neck. Apply test dye on a clean skin and allow it to dry for a few minutes, then make a second application. Wait for the result for 48 hours. It does happen quite frequently that a hair-dresser or beautician will dye your hair without a skin test, afraid of losing a customer. So it is up to you to insist on this test. Remem­ber, you should not go on a chemical hair dye, if­—

(a) You had an itching of the scalp at the time of the­ previous dye,
(b) You suffer from asthma,
(c) You have had or at present have eczema or urticaria on any part of your body,
(d) You suffer from kidney complaint,
(e) You have any sort of skin problem,
(f) You are pregnant,
(g) You have hair in bad condition and excessively dry,
(h) You are feeding a baby,
(i) You have menses.

 
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