Cough Remedy - Steamed Orange

I was coughed for a month recently. I had been drinking Chinese bitter medication soup as well as taking 2 courses of antibiotic treatment, the cough was still remained. My immune system dropped tremendously from insomnia due to coughing at night.

After I tried this traditional food therapy, steamed orange, my cough magically stopped. Hence, I would like to share this funny but workable remedy to you.

1. What you need is an orange. Normally, I use 2 oranges at one go.

2. Cut off the 1/3 top of the orange. 

3. Sprinkle a pinch of salt (less than 1/2 teaspoon) on the orange. 

4. Place the top back. Steam for 10 mins in medium fire. You may know when it is ready by a strong fragrance of essential aromatic oil.

5. Let them cool down for 15 mins. Lastly, enjoy it!

Yummy! It tastes so delicious! I would have the other one in the evening. From the picture, you can see that the albedo part is shrunk after the steam.

How it work?

In Chinese medicine, certain coughs are not advisable to eat orange. This is because orange is a phlegm stimulator. However, after the orange been steamed, it is suitable to all types of cough. You may wonder," Will the Vit C degraded and no more nutrition value after the heat steam?". 

Let's see the anatomy and the nutrients that contained in the orange.

Flavedo

Is the outer most layer, it contains aromatic oil, plant steroids, tripenoids, carotenoids, flavonoids, limonene and enzymes which are good antioxidant agents. When scraped, it can become zest and be use in cooking.

Albedo

Is the white spongy part which is a highly nutritious part. It is rich in bioflavonoids, include hesperidin, rutin, quercetin, diosmetin, diosmin etc. They have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The tread-like vascular bundles that we always remove before consuming, is rich in peroxidase, an enzyme that break down hydrogen peroxide. Albedo also contain pectin and pectiz enzyme that make the taste bitter. Pectin is a cancer preventing agent.

Pulp

Is the part that we love to eat. It is high in Vit. C, sugar and water.

By understanding the anatomy and nutrition storage in the orange, steamed orange is one of the ways to extracts the bioflavonoids out from the albedo into the pulp with the aid of salt as the extraction agent. Salt is a bitter suppressor too.

I hope my sharing will help you. If you have more information about the steamed orange, I would be glad to hear from you. Happy trying!

Stay naturally beautiful by staying naturally healthy!

Love,

Lai xoxo

My high heels and back pain

If I'm not satisfied with my nose, I can get a nose job; If I'm not satisfied with my height? Yup! High heels are short girl's best friend. High heels really can transform me from a little cute cygnet to become a tall elegant swan. ;)

With high heels, do my legs have a more slender appearance, look thinner and more shapely?

Obviously, I need to pay the price - back pain. Especially since I had an underlying sciatica problem before.

Here's how our body compensates when we wear high heels.

• Left pic: This is our normal way to stand. 
• Middle pic: With high heels, the elevated heels make us fall forward. 
• Right pic: In order to stabilise ourselves, we curve our back and use our lower back muscles to support the upper weight. This exaggerated curve is called sway back or lordosis. This will place more stress on our facet joints (in the spine) and increases the risk of misalignment thus hastening joint degeneration. The higher the heels, the higher the pressure on the front of our knee and we may feel knee pain after a whole day walking in high heels. 

Here, I would like to share with you how I take care of my back but still wearing high heels.

1.     I choose only the wedges or platform shoes that feel comfortable on my feet. The brand that I love most is Polo Santa Barbara wedges. 

2.     Use the 'kua' instead of back muscle to stand and walk. You can strengthen the kua through Tai Chi. http://www.davidbao.com/

Left, standing with stress on back muscle; Right, standing using kua

3.     I do the psoas muscle exercise every morning. Psoas contribute to the natural curve in our spine and control our pelvic tilt. If you want to see what the psoas exercise looks like, please check PSY's new song, Gentleman. ;p

4.   I stand on the stretch board 5 minutes everyday after wearing high heels as a reverse stretch.

 

5.     I immediately look for my back pain therapist, Dorn Therapy, if I do feel some pain. 

http://thevioletflamekl.com/my/index.php/private-session/energy-healing-reading/202-dorn-therapy-with-terry-every-wed

I hope my sharing will help you. If you have another alternative to share with me how to overcome back pain without saying Bye to high heels, I would be glad to hear from you. 

Stay naturally beautiful by staying naturally healthy!

Love,

Lai

The Cockroach. You hate it. I love it.

Everybody hates cockroaches. 

I love them. When I was doing research in an institute, I wished one day I could conduct some studies on the cockroach. That's because cockroaches are skillful survivors. If you remove the head, the body can still survive for weeks without food and water (obviously, with no mouth!). If its a female, it can still even lay an egg/ootheca. The cockroach has a cute nickname in chinese, 小強, which means 'little mighty'.

Do you know that cockroaches will be the last living creatures on earth? Do you know that cockroaches have a low risk of falling sick or getting cancer? That's because their cells don't multiply like ours do. In Cantonese, we use the cockroach as a symbol of a strong desire to live: 打唔死個蟑螂).

I'm sensitive to the smell, especially the odor that's emitted by them wherever they go. I have to get them out of my house. We all spend a lot of money on cockroach traps, home-use-pesticides and professionals who use even stronger chemicals. Do they work? They used to, but they're becoming less and less effective, as you may have found. Not only do they have a very smart protective epicuticle coat of wax and oils, but they are able to evolve quickly to adapt to whatever chemicals we use on them.

Wait a second... Wax and oils?  

Here, I would like to share with you my highly effective home-made cockroach killer! 

1. What you need are a sprayer and soap detergent. A friend uses Clorox but I chose Ligent dishwashing detergent because it is safer to spray around kitchen.

2. Mix the dishwashing detergent with filtered water in the sprayer in the proportion of 1:10. You can mix it stronger if you like. 

3. Last but very important step, labeling. I named it Sexy Cockroach Killer because of the bottle shape. ;)

There are a few types of cockroach. The common type that I can see in my house is the American cockroach. The adults are strongest. They need more sprays to dissolve their wax and oils.. Some react by cleaning the detergent off their antennae. The younger group will turn over and struggle for few minutes. Sometimes, if we get a female, it will expel the egg/ootheca. Remember to destroy the egg before you vacuum them. 

This is a picture of a cockroach that I have killed with Sexy Cockroach Killer. I don't think it's an American cockroach. Can anyone identify it for me? It was found by my guest from Sweden who stayed in my house, screaming when she saw it in her room. You can see how effective the spray was. Its body just froze and it stopped in its tracks.

I think it is a beautiful type of cockroach which I have never seen in my house before. Maybe it is just a nymph?

Well, I have to apologise if any pictures shared here make you feel uncomfortable. Have fun testing new environmentally friendly Sexy Cockroach Killer! 

P.S.: How does it work? The detergent dissolves the protective waxy layer on the outer skin so the tracheae based breathing system is blocked.

Stay naturally beautiful by staying naturally healthy!

Love,

Lai

Citrus fruit + cloves = Natural Mosquito Repellent

I'm a mosquito-philic or mosquito magnet. Some said because my body is heaty (radiate higher infa-red), some said because of my body pheromone (O.o I thought mossies that suck blood are female). I think it may be due to my blood being delicious and healthy and it helps the mossies to produce a healthy next generation. :)

Here, I would like to introduce to you the new technique that I used recently to repel the swarm of mosquitoes after the raining in the warm mid July in KL.

1. What you need are a citrus fruit (I used an orange) and a lot of cloves:

2. Stick the cloves into the fruit.
3. I placed it at the door of my house which is also the entrance for the mosquitoes. You can place it anywhere you like as it's totally harmless.

Result? I still could see some mosquitoes buzzing around my ear. However, the quantity apparently is reduced. Maybe I need to make more of these citrus fruit and cloves repellers. ;p

This is a natural and environment friendly mosquito repellent. I love the combination of the citrus fruit and cloves fragrance. Happy trying!

Stay naturally beautiful by staying naturally healthy!

Love,
Lai