Coconut Oil
One of the biggest health and beauty crazes of 2014 is coconut oil. The best kind to use is pure, unrefined, cold pressed, organic extra virgin. This can easily be found at any grocery store for around $7-10. What's all the fuss about you ask? Well, after conducting a 2 month test, I'll let you in on all the goodies this yummy oil has to offer.
Cooking:
To start off, coconut oil is a healthy alternative for butter and fats in the diet. You can use it to saute vegetables, roast kale or sweet potatoes, add into smoothies or oatmeal (which I do every morning), use it in baked goods, and even over popcorn. Not to mention it tastes great too, just like a coconut, go figure. I use this oil as much as I can in my cooking or baking. If I juice some vegetables or fruit I mix some in, if I make a smoothie the oil goes in. Any more when I bake up some treats, this is the oil I use or when I need to coat some veggies for sauteing or roasting, you guessed it, coconut oil.
Beauty:
This light weight oil, jam packed with vitamin E, can be used on your skin or hair. I like to add some oil, heated so that it turns into a liquid state, into my hair before I take a shower for about 1 hour. Then I shampoo it out and continue with my normal conditioning. Also, sometimes I put the oil on after my shower, while my hair is still damp, as to moisturize the ends and keep them shiny. Only a little bit is needed though or the hair looks too greasy and no one likes that. As a body moisturizer, I put this on after my shower, within 3 minutes of getting out so as not to loose any of the moisture from the shower. It does smell faintly of coconuts, which I like, but that does fade after a little while if you are one who does like the scent as much.
Oil Pulling:
The reason why most people are becoming aware of coconut oil is because of a morning ritual technique called oil pulling. Before brushing or flossing, you take a spoon full of the oil, swish it in your mouth for 20 minutes like a mouth wash, spit it out preferably into a trash can as to not block up your drain, rinse your mouth with salt water, and then continue on with flossing and brushing as you regularly would. What happens within those 20 minutes really is quite remarkable. The oil literally pulls out all of the bacteria from inside the mouth and creates a clean environment. Your breath smells fresher over time, your teeth become whiter, and the bacteria becomes non existent. I do this about 3 times a week for the full 20 minutes. When I'm traveling I take it down a notch to about 10 minutes. One thing to remember is not to swallow any of the oil while swishing. In doing that, you basically swallow the bacteria back into the body.
Health:
This do it all oil not only helps hair stay shiny, skin stay moisturized, eases cooking and baking, but it is also extremely good for you as well. Where has this magic oil been all of my life!? Health benefits include, helps in easing digestion, improves bone health, healing damaged tissue and infections, treats pancreatitis and Alzheimer's disease, rich in lauric acid that helps maintain blood sugar and cholesterol, prevents diseases affecting the liver and kidney, prevents and effectively cures candida, and strengthens the immune system.