Orthokeratology also known as Ortho-K is a non-surgical process which reshapes the cornea of the eye using special rigid contact lenses to reduce refractive errors of shortsightedness. The lenses are worn at night and gradually reshape the cornea and the new corneal shape is retained during the day.This method of reshaping is said to reduce the light refracting power of the cornea and reduce or eliminate shortsightedness and astigmatism. After lengthy optical examinations a precise and accurate measurement is taken of the eye detailing the curvature of the cornea and then custom made lenses are manufactured for you. You need to have several follow up appointments with your Ortho-K practitioner to monitor your progress. It is claimed that your shortsightedness up to -5.00 and mild astigmatism can be corrected by this moulding of your cornea. It is not a permanant fix for shortsightedness, once your corneas have been reshaped you will need to continue to wear the night lenses as a maintenance measure,or your eyes will return to their original shape and your vision will deteriorate. However the idea that you can wear these reshaping lenses at night and be glasses or contact lens free with great vision all day the following day is quite fascinating!
I have owned a Squeem waist cincher for 3 years now. The type I purchased was the one with straps as the theory behind it was you can squish all the displaced fat from your stomach and around your armpits upwards and inwards toward your bust area creating the appearence of a fuller bust. (Also if the theory of consistent fat resdistribution is true, permanantly increase your bust size with some of this rearranged fat, but more of this claim will be explored on the bust enhancement and enlargement page).
The image shows the Squeem vest which I bought in the small size. It has 2 rows of hook and eyes so that you can make it even tighter. It was a struggle for me to even close the first row of hooks and eyes lol. It is made from a material which feels almost rubbery on the inside with a cotton lining and it is this material which encourages your midriff to sweat and subsequently help to reduce the inches around your waist. The manufacturer claims that the squeem vest will:
"Not only make you look slimmer instantly, it accelerates weight loss through it's high compression and micro-massage. Here's how this amazing cincher will help you to reduce your measurements from 1 - 4 inches within thirty days!
The power of rubber will promote a micro-massage while you move, helping you reduce your measurements.
It accelerates weight loss as a result of compression combined with perspiration.
Waist cinchers correct your posture, maintaining vital organs in their right place and improving your metabolism.
Simply stated, these are the best rubber waist cinchers on the market today.If you are seriousabout looking slimmer instantly, feeling sexier & healthier, andpermanently reducing your measurements, look no further than the women of Brazil!
I did experience good results with my squeem as well as getting that instant hourglass figure i did notice that my waist did indeed appear to be shrinking. However i did find it quite uncomfortable to wear after a few hours, i felt very restricted and found that if i ate a big meal the pressure on my abdomen from the vest would make me feel as if i was going to throw up sometimes lol (Probably another way it helps with weight loss as you can not stuff your face whilst wearing one of these!!!)
I am however going to start wearing the squeem again for 30 days consistently for a minimum of 6 hours a day in the interests of providing all of your natural body modifiers and enhancers with an honest review of my personal inch loss experience and how it compares with the manufacturers claims.
I will be posting my starting waist measurement and then once weekly measurements until the 30 days are up. I will start after the weekend as there are some celebrations coming up this week and I want to eat drink and be merry before I embark on the wonders of waist training again!
As you may know cellulite or 'orange peel skin' is quite often a disheartening sight to most of us when we look at our thighs and bottoms! According to wikipedia Cellulite is a topographic skin change that occurs in most postpubertal females.[1] It presents as a modification of skin topography evident by skin dimpling and nodularity that occurs mainly in women on the pelvic region, lower limbs, and abdomen, and is caused by the herniation of subcutaneous fat within fibrous connective tissue, leading to a padded or orange peel–like appearance There are numerous creams and preparations available for cellulite with a price tag to suit most pockets.*
Here are some home remedies said to improve the appearance of cellulite.
Dry Skin Brushing
The Benefits Of Dry Skin Brushing
• Dry skin brushing helps to shed dead skin cells, which can help improve skin texture and cell renewal.
• Dry skin brushing increases circulation to skin, encouraging your body’s discharge of metabolic wastes, which greatly aids the lymphatic drainage of the entire body. When the body rids itself of toxins, it is able to run more efficiently in all areas.
• Dry skin brushing also helps to tighten the skin because it increases the flow of blood. Increasing the circulation to the skin can also help lessen the appearance of cellulite.
• Dry skin brushing stimulates the lymph canals to drain toxic mucoid matter into the colon, thereby purifying the entire system. This enables the lymph to perform its house-cleaning duties by keeping the blood and other vital tissues detoxified. After several days of dry brushing, you may notice the gelatinous mucoid material in your stools.
• Dry skin brushing helps with muscle tone and more even distribution of fat deposits.
• Dry skin brushing also rejuvenates the nervous system by stimulating nerve endings in the skin.
• Dry skin brushing helps your skin to absorb nutrients by eliminating clogged pores. Healthy, breathing skin contributes to overall body health.
How To Do Skin Brushing:
Buy a NATURAL, NOT synthetic, bristle brush, since it does NOT SCRATCH the surface of your skin.
Buy a brush with a LONG handle, so that you're ABLE to get to the areas of your body, that are NOT EASY to reach, when doing your own Skin Brushing.
Skin Brush, before showering or bathing, at least ONCE per day, and TWICE, if possible.
Do NOT wet your skin, since it will NOT have the SAME Effect, because this stretches your skin.
Do LIGHTER Strokes over and around your breasts, but do NOT brush the nipples.
Brush each part of your Body several times VIGOROUSLY, COMPLETELY brushing your WHOLE body.
Brush the soles of your feet FIRST, because the nerve endings there affect your WHOLE body, next Brush your ankles, calves, and thighs, then brush across your stomach and your buttocks and lastly brush your hands to your arms.
ALWAYS skin brush towards the heart.
Do circular counter-clockwise strokes on your abdomen.
Take a WARM bath or shower, which should always be followed by a COOL rinse at the end to INVIGORATE blood circulation and STIMULATE surface warmth.
Wash your brush every few weeks in water and allow it DRY.
There has been a lot of research to suggest that caffeine can help in the fight against cellulite. According to Dr Ava Shamban 'Dermatologist to the stars' says in an interview with CBS news "The theory behind caffeine is that it actually can reduce fat. It can enhance fat metabolism and also reduce some of the edema, or swelling that we get around the fat, so the skin appears smoother."
Here are a few home recipes for anti-cellulite creams and scrubs containing coffee.
I will be testing some of them out and posting my results. If you try them do let me know how you get on!
I will be trying this recipe from Ferndama of Youtube first as the recipe uses instant coffee granules. I am not a coffee drinker and so don't have the coffee maker which uses freshly ground coffee. I have heard that you can get spent coffee grinds from coffee shops for a nominal price if not free if you ask nicely :) the grinds are supposedly good for your plants too!
I curiously ordered a similar lip pump to this just to see how effective it was. I already have fairly full lips but as this works on the vacuum principle * I wanted to test this gadget out . It takes a few days - a couple of weeks to get used to the lip pump. This is because the area of the lips is very sensitive and the skin it thin and can easily bruise. Another reason you don't want to exceed the recommended time of use is because the outer rim of the pump fits over your lips and if you're over zealous with your pumping you may end up with a red ring around your overly inflated lips- not cute. I definitely advise you to take it slowly as i have over pumped and my lips became ridiculously over inflated and i had the sexy red ring around my mouth too! Learn from my mistake! If you still went ahead and did it anyway lol it took around 2 hours for my lips to deflate to normality but i suspect that some ice would have sped things up.
I recently spoke to a friend of mine who had notoriously bad eyesight asking him if he still wore contact lenses. To my surprise he told me that he had corrected his eyesight by drinking herbal teas of billberry and eyebright daily, in conjunction with doing eye yoga exercises. He added that he eat healthily lots of living (raw) foods and meditated daily! I was fascinated with the mention of eye yoga as I had never heard mention of it before. Below are a few youtube videos with guided eye exercises. Worth a try I think. My eyes really felt as if they got a work out! Its weird when I looked all the way to the left and right whilst keeping my head straight I could really feel the muscles in my eyes working!! Take a look at these:
In this video the yogi Baba Ramdev talks about eye diseases and talks about which ayurvedic powders,eye yoga exercises and foods can help improve eyesight and eye health.
Lip Plumpers
There are a number of lip plumpers on the market to choose from most containing Cinnamon or some kind of mild irritant to make your lips swell. Its really easy to make your own lip plumping gloss or balm, as long as you have cinnamon or peppermint essential oils. Or you can use cayenne pepper or ground cinnamon.
My own recipe is
Small pot to keep the balm
1/8 tsp beeswax or hemp or jojoba wax melted
1/4 tsp shea butter
1/8 tsp coconut,castor or almond oil
4 drops cinnamon essential oil
Melt the wax in a glass bowl sitting in a pot of boiling water, make sure the water doesnt dry out. When the wax has melted remove the bowl with gloves. Add the shea butter, oil of choice and cinnamon oil and stir with a small kebab skewer or teaspoon. Pour the mixture into the container once it has cooled a little, dont leave it too long in the bowl or it will set in there. Once in the container you can put it in the fridge to speed up the setting process
Pinhole glasses, also known as stenopeic glasses, are eyeglasses with a series of pinhole-sized perforations filling an opaque sheet of plastic in place of each lens. Similar to the workings of a pinhole camera, each perforation allows only a very narrow beam of light to enter the eye which reduces the size of the circle of confusion on the retina and increases depth of field. In eyes with refractive error, the result is claimed to be a clearer image I hastily tried on my pinhole glasses as soon as they arrived. I am short sighted (-3 in both eyes) so objects faces and words which are any further than arms length away from me is just a blur!
It was a strange experience at first but once my eyes relaxed i was able to see the faces and read the words on the TV which is about 15 feet away from me on the wall. You are advised to use it for initially 15 minutes each day to give your eyes a chance to get used to wearing them. My initial reaction to them is that although great for looking at the T.V not so great to just wear around the house highly impractical to say the least as I cant see whats going on around close to me so I can only wear them while watching T.V , reading or blogging. I shall use them daily and note any improvements/worsening of my sight.
As I sit typing I have on the Sanitas SEM 35 toning belt which I just started using 20th February 2012 cos quite frankly the sit ups aint working anymore!! Ive graduated from 50 situps/crunches to 100 and finally 200 each day and the belly keeps looking up at me saying bwah haha ha ha!!! So i've decided to take affirmative action and start using a toning belt in conjunction with my situps (which have now become about 10 every other day lol). Ok so initally i put the belt around my pet stomach and fastened it up and took a deep breath and switched it on.......Quite frankly it was an anticlimax as i felt nothing more than a prickly tickle, so i cranked it up to the highest power which was #7 Still no stomach contorsions. After repeatedly trying i was convinced that i had bought a faulty one and proceeded to take it back to the store to change it. There was none left i was stuck with it grrrrr. Any way after mooching around feeling sorry for myself because my master plan to defeat my arch nemesis belly seemed to have failed, I noticed on the instructions that i was supposed to wet my stomach before attaching the belt as it has 4 water contact electrode doh!!! So hastily i moistened my stomach and applied the belt and although i felt slightly more of the prickle sensation there was no muscle contractions goin on round my midriff. I felt defeated and decided i would have to look in the Argos catalogue for another model but the one in my price range used a conductive gel and the forums and reviews i read about the belt said that it was basically impossible to get more gel once it ran out.
Hmmmmmm my little brain started to contemplate trying my abdominal belt with conductive gel but it was sunday and the only way it seemed to get hold of gel was on ebay!!
Then the light bulb in my head went off and i had the idea to get some hair gel and smear it on my ample stomach that was my conductor but as it was quite gloopy i wet my hands and diluted the gel somewhat and excitedly put on the toning belt and cranked it up. OUCH yes you guessed it. My watered down argan oil hair gel was an excellent conductor. I quickly reset it to program A It has a pre-programmed routine which you can easily alter if you feel you want to get started at a higher pace.It recommends that yo just using setting A for the first 2 weeks to acclimatise yourself to the sensations.
I kept it on for an hour and couldnt resist doing another hour later on that evening. I intend to use it at least 3 times a week and i will keep you updated as well as post photos.
Hi, and welcome to my Naturally Enhanced You blog. My name is Nehisi and my intention is to explore both natural and mechanical methods of physical enhancement as alternatives to invasive and plastic surgery.
I will deal with each part of the body as a separate post and I will also personally be testing some of the methods to see what kind of a difference they really make.
I have always had a keen interest in herbal remedies and also accupressure. My theory is that just as there are natural remedies for illnesses, there are also natural/mechanical method of altering your appearance without the use of harmful chemicals or painful surgical procedures. By mechanical i refer to gadgets such as the abdominal toning belt or perhaps a corset which claims to trim inches off of your waist permanantly. I will explore alternatives to cosmetic surgical procedures and publish my experiences as well as other resources on each method.
