SEASONAL ALLERGIES

As a kid and a teenager growing up in Kentucky I had always been around bees and beekeepers and worked with honey, pollen, and any other byproduct of a bee. If I told you any more than that I'd have to kill you.

If there is one thing I learned it's the value of local bee pollen. Bee pollen comes from the male part of the flower that gets picked up by the bodies of the bees. As the bees enter the hive there is a trap that knocks the pollen off of the bee's legs. The beekeeper then bottles it up and sells it to either health food stores or the farmer's market. It is meant to be consumed raw.

What most people don't know is bee pollen can act as an inoculation to local allergies just as taking a flu shot is preventative with the flu if it is the correct strain. The bee pollen just has to come within a 25 mile radius to where you live to be effective. Otherwise you're ONLY getting a great bounty of vitamins, mineral, lipids and energy.
Taking a a granule to no more than a pinky nail size with your breakfast every morning is a great way to start and indicate if you will have a problem with taking bee pollen. You can build up to larger amounts slowly.

Bee pollen is great in cereal, yogurt, smoothies and more. It generally has a sweet, grassy taste to it as if you were eating wheat germ.

WARNING: I have been reading that there are reports of respiratory or allergy issues from taking pee pollen. Bee pollen is also not to be taken by children, if you are nursing or pregnant. In fact, most people don't know that babies can not have honey. They are unable to digest it.

By the way the video contained herein is not endorsed by Beauty By Mary Schook. There are many claims made that have not been approved of by the FDA. It is good 'food' for thought. In addition many of our bees are dying by the second allegedly from pesticides. This tells me pollen is not the end all be all, but among beekeepers it is known to be a very powerful food source.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN BEAUTY LABELS

I love this time of year when I get to try to explain to the tax accountant what it is that I do especially when deductions for items like stem cells and expensive equipment come up at the same time as French Chocolate. They are all related in some way because we find, test and share all of the best products the world market has to offer.

Just last week someone introduced a new natural line to me that had awesome packaging, tight marketing and even some impressive ingredients, BUT the first ingredient was water and shortly after that was alcohol. The goodies were all the way at the end of the list.

You want the goodies to be closer to the top of the list. Ingredients are listed in the order of concentration by weight. Actives are generally listed as actives. Aloe is a better ingredient that water because it keeps the bacteria counts low and is really great for inflammation and soothing the skin. Companies just don't want to spend the money.

You can check out more great facts by CLICKING HERE.

In the meantime I'll have to put together a better video than the one I found. It does have a few good tips for those who are visual though!

CONCEALER DO'S

There are thousands of tutorials on the market out there to tell you how to put on concealer.
Here's a small list of MY best DO's when it comes to applying concealer that I think many videos lack:

DO apply your foundation all over the face first to even out skin tone IF you need it.
(I recommend Revlon's Photoready Airbrush). BLEND. BLEND. BLEND.

DO choose a color concealer/foundation that is the same color as your skin. Selecting a lighter shade can make bags appear fuller and also make the look appear overdone. Remember darker colors recede and lighter colors highlight bags. The only areas you should use a lighter color are the actual creases if you have physical bags. Just make sure to use some translucent powder to set after application.

DO place a dime-sized amount of foundation and warm it on the hand before applying it to the dark circles. You'll use less product this way. It looks less cakey. You won't look older by applying it.

DO use your ring finger to apply the foundation/concealer. The ring finger has the lightest touch out of all the digits and will insure that you don't tug and pull the delicate tissue around your eyes.

DO use a tapping motion with the ring finger when applying the makeup. This might take a bit of practice for some, but so worth it to preserve that delicate eye tissue.

DO use a brush to blend your foundation/concealer. I actually use a blush or powder brush to make sure everything is really blended and that any excess product is not around to creep back into the lines.

Again these tips are more for the everyday application. We generally don't have bright, flashing lights and retouchers following us around in our lives and less is more when it comes to daily makeup n'est pas?

Trust me your eyes will thank you later!

WASTING YOUR MONEY ON VITAMINS?

There is just so much confusing information out there when it comes to supplements, nutrition, technology and skincare. I can't begin to attack it all in one post.

Our cells are wired to protect themselves from viruses and invaders in addition to transporting nutrients. As we age the cells get stubborn and crankier and don't want to allow ANYTHING to pass through the membrane, the protective outer layer. The video above gives a very simple, yet complex demonstration of how nutrients get into the cells.

When I was formulating an oral anti-aging product, the labs and manufacturers told me the maximum percentage of a vitamin that could be absorbed is about 10-30%. There are so many factors why. Enzymes, available glucose, particle sizes and much, much more. I will be able to surpass these issues with technology in the future if P&G would take me on (hint. hint).

When it comes to skincare most of the particle sizes are too large to absorb. I demonstrate this in an old video from years ago below.

Finally please make sure you check out this blog entry about Vitamins in Food versus Vitamins in Pills by Ron Lagerquist before you buy your next supplement. I also included the video below so you could learn more about studies done with popular supplements through the years and get some good sleep since it can be a bit dry to listen to.

ANTI-AGING BEGINS WITH ELECTRONS

by mary schook
Just in case you were sleeping in grade school biology, we are electricity. We have trillions of cells in our bodies that have a positive charge (proton), a negative charge (electron) and a neutral charge. I always say we are like a duracell battery. Batteries have a positive and a negative. A product can't work unless the battery has both positive and negative charges.
It's easy for the body to keep protons, but very difficult to maintain electrons because electrons can fall out of orbit very easily.
Our cells operate in a very similar way. When we lack electron pairs, the cell will try to borrow an electron from another cell to balance itself out. Some of us call this imbalance cancer. We are all walking around with 'cancer' and it takes very little these days to throw off a cell. Cells are being robbed by electrons every day through pollution, synthetic clothing, poor diet (or lack of essential nutrients) and so much more.
If this all sounds like a bunch of pseudoscience then why do we always talk about antioxidants and free radicals?
Free radicals are one of the roots of aging and many diseases.
I personally take a time release vitamin C so that I can reduce the oxidative damage that happens from working out.
For more information on cells and their electrical charges click HERE.
The moral of the story and goal is to find ways to get your fill of electrons!Electron sources come from rich foods filled with Vitamins A,C,E and more. Infrared saunas and mats and standing near a waterfall also supply the body with more negative ions. To find out more ways to supply your body with negative ions CLICK HERE.

DIGITAL ACUPUNCTURE

by mary schook

Back in 2009 I had severe pains around my spleen. I was difficult for me to even sit on an airplane without experiencing severe, stabbing pain that only seemed to intensify. I went to a doctor who thought it was a hernia and he decided the best thing to do at the moment was inject the area with lidocaine since he did not have all of the necessary diagnostic equipment at the medical office he was working from to know for sure.

Needless to say I ended up in the emergency room less than 24 hours later and violently vomiting everything I ate for over four months. Despite the chronic vomiting I had tipped the scales at 300 lbs! The hospitals and private doctors did CAT scans, upper GI's....you name it, but they could not find out what the problem was.

Alas I remembered years prior to this incident when ageless German fashion photographer extraordinaire Eva Mueller told me about something called Bioresonance after my near fatal car accident. Sadly it took this emergency to finally research her recommendation, but at this point I felt that my entire life force was being extinguished.

When I googled 'bioresonance' a woman named Galina from Vitalgate.com kept coming up for the NY area. Given I was beginning to now lose my teeth from vomiting and I could barely work without feeling like I was going to throw up on a client (when I bent over to work) I felt like I was running out of options (especially without health insurance).

I went to Galina without any expectations. I was having problems breathing by this point. Severe pain. Vomiting. I just felt like I was dying. She scanned my body with a device called the Asyra. It was like going to the best psychic in the world. It found my brain damage that NO ONE knew about. It found remnants of a stomach virus from when I was a kid. It found a bunch of joint tears from my car accident that still had not healed, but most importantly it located the paralysis going on in my pyloric valve that controls food going into the small intestine. It also located paralysis throughout my large intestine. Subsequently the diet the doctors had put me on of meat and potatoes had hardened my liver like an alcoholic. I had another doctor later confirm this through some blood tests.

The reason I am sharing this with you is because I have met countless people out there who are needlessly suffering from things doctors can't figure out when there are devices out there like the Asyra that exist. I would probably have died had it not been for this machine. In fact, Asyra was at an anti-aging medical convention the following year. I recognized the machine and thanked them for saving my life when Western Medicine could not.

There's a lot of stuff out there saying that these machines are 'pseudo science or placebos'. Given the fact that I have personally witnessed my own recovery and that of several people I know (who also had nothing else to turn to), I have to believe that these statements are made by people who must not have experienced this phenomenon in technology.

Check out the video above. It shows you in some detail what the Asyra does and please pass this along to someone you care about that may need to figure out the cause and not the symptom.

Thanks again for watching!

BRITTLE NAILS

by mary schook

A lot of people are complaining about brittle nails lately for many reasons, but the biggest so far seems to be from the alcohol based sanitizers that are drying out the nail bed. Nails need to have a balance of oil and water just as your skin does.

There are plenty of other health reasons that people get dry, brittle nails, but today I just want to discuss prevention. Make sure that you keep your hands and nails hydrated and moisturized. Shea butter is really one of nature's greatest moisturizers because it hits both the oil and water channels in the cell.

The other thing I do to make sure my nails toughen up is take 5mg of Biotin. My hair also grows like a weed from it, but more than anything I have seen Biotin do a lot for my nails.

Beware of nail hardeners. Most of them also have alcohol and formaldehyde in them, which can also dry out the nail.

Thanks again for watching!