RISE UP! A Gal's Guide To Yeast Infections

Gross.

First of all, just, gross. And those of you who know what I'm talking about? Right? Gross.

This is a condition that is never as simple as you want it to be. Yes, you can take Monostat, and I will guess that in a month you will be taking it again, and possibly the month after that, and the month after that.

Because generally a yeast infection doesn't happen in isolation from other things going on in the body. If there's an out-of-balance vajayjay, then the digestive tract is usually too. By out of balance, this simply means that the bad bacteria has gotten stronger/more numerous than the good bacteria. It happens.

There is a larger thing - Candida Overgrowth - which is (a.) a real thing; (b.) the subject of many books that have made lots of money, so I feel I don't need to cover that here. At least until I run out of things to say.

So, locationally specific things you can do. Meaning things you can insert in your ya-ya

-Take a tea bag, cut open one corner and drain the tea completely out. Insert 1 crushed garlic clove. Leave the tea tag on the bag, and insert down there. NO I AM NOT KIDDING. Go to sleep, get up and remove. Repeat every other night for a week, alternating with:
-A tampon with one of the following on it; Neem oil, tea tree oil, castor-oil plus apple cider vinegar
-Or, use tea tree oil suppositories, Yeastaway homeopathic suppository, or any other kind of natural food store suppository that is meant to tackle this condition.

Generally, here's a few other guidelines to speed healing.

-No sugar. That means no sugar, no honey, no agave, no maple syrup, no nothing sweet. Also, no high sugar fruits, and (this is really important) NO ALCOHOL, with a special emphasis on NO BEER.
-No simple starches, meaning nothing made with flour.
-Eat veggies, high quality meats with no antibiotics, whole grains (meaning the whole grain, not bread that is supposed to INCLUDE whole grains).
-Drink lots of water.
-Eat lots of high quality plain yogurt. You can add a small amount of frozen raspberries or blueberries to it.

I am sure I will post more about this particular subject, but for right now...gross.

CAGE MATCH! Holistic medicine vs. allopathic medicine, Round 1, just kidding, it's not really a fight.

So, a few people have talked to me about Barbara Ehrenreich's new book BRIGHT SIDED, and compared it to what I am advocating.

First of all, I love Barbara Ehrenreich. I loved NICKEL AND DIMED, and anyone who has watched my facebook page has seen that I listed her landmark article "Welcome To Cancerland" only a few weeks ago. 

BRIGHT SIDED portends to be about how Americans are all relentlessly positive thinkers, and how this is a sort of blindness, a refusal to see reality. Into this, she dumps alternative medicine. I.E. people take a lot of unproven crap because they all have fairies on the brain and are hoping to cheat death while running away from their doctors prognoses, hands over their ears, singing loudly.

This kind of thinking is sloppy, not to mention very indoctrinated. After all allopathic medicine's history is shallow - 100 years. And in the 100 years it has existed, it has done two things we highly value in this country: innovate and make shit-tons of money. And it has saved lives. And it has created new illnesses. And it has lots and lots of statistics. Why? Because allopathic medicine is scientific medicine. It does not believe particularly in the case of a single patient - it believes in the statistical majority.

But one thing that very few people understand about Western Medicine is simply this: it uses science, but is not one. There is no overarching ideology or philosophy about how the body works. Just empirical evidence of certain therapies that have produced certain results in the majority of the patients in a certain study.

Holistic medicine treats a whole person. And a whole person is more than the sum of their physical parts, which makes them two things: statistically insignificant (who cares what works for you?) and a combination of body, mind and spirit, which will always be complicated and individual and nearly impossible to quantify. 

The choice between the two is completely individual, and a combination is probably best. The most important thing is to be educated and to own your own health. More on that in CAGE MATCH!! Part two...

BREAK OUT!! of Your Expensive Acne Routine

So the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry has benefitted from a particular trope about how our skin works and why it breaks out.

OIL BAD. WHEN THE BAD OIL COMES THEN THERE BE PIMPLES. BAD. I'M SAD.

And most of the stuff that is commercially available is some kind of industrial strength drying agent with slight whiff of bleach. Hey, if this stuff works for you, have at it. It's always left my skin red and angry.

Anyone with problem skin can tell you that it's not that simple. There are tiny pimples, big pimples, painful pimples that you can barely see, chronic bumpy skin, and - my personal favorite - the pimple that seems to happen even though your skin is all dry. And beyond that, different kinds of pimples happen in different locations.

Your options for how to deal with your problem skin are numerous these days - Clearasil, whatever that stuff Jessica Simpson advertises is, dermatologist prescribed stuff. And everyone is different - all of the above have worked for people I know.

For me, my skin is an exact reflection of what is going on inside. When I drank coffee my skin was an oil-slick. When I indulge in a lot of sugar, I get tiny zits on my jawline. It's very, very regular and reliable.

This is interesting - it's a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) face map I stole off the web. Ignore the provider's address on it - I'm web-lazy.

From what I have experienced, this seems to be accurate, considering what times of the month I get zits and where.

Here are some skin cheats I have learned.

ROSEMARY OIL!!! This is cooling and drying and tends to make the zit smaller within hours. You can also put it on as a preventative measure before bed. Try a little on your face - if it seems too strong for you in its essential oil form, dilute it with a little almond oil.

LAVENDER OIL!!! As someone recently noted on my Facebook page, there have been some recent studies saying this can be a hormone disruptor in boys. So if you're a boy, no lavender oil for you!! But girls, this stuff is great. It dries, it tones. If you have a big, horrible zit that needs to "surface" before it will go away, lavender oil speeds up that process. And it smells purty.

CASTOR OIL!!! I know, I lurves the castor oil, but there's so many reasons too. If you are two days away from a wedding and you're growing either an enormous zit or a horn, do this before bedtime: put a drop of rosemary oil on it and massage in; put a drop of castor oil on it and massage in. If the castor oil is sucked right in, repeat again. Pat off the excess with a tissue and go to bed. Your zit should have significantly shrunk in the night.

WITCH HAZEL!!! This is the only astringent I use besides rosewater. I think that Sea Breeze stuff is too harsh and makes your skin more oily.

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR!!! Don't even get me started on how awesome the powers of Apple Cider Vinegar are. Really, it's the bomb. If your skin is being just kind horrible - dry here, oily there, I highly suggest you use a cottonball full of this twice a day. It's hard to explain why it works, it just does. You'll see what I mean.

Lastly, do check out your diet. Yeah, I know, shut up, but you know I'm right. There are certain food allergies I can identify from 16 paces by just looking at someone's face. Pale and gray with damp looking acne around the mouth and chin? Dairy allergy. Just saying.

WHY THIS BLOG AS OPPOSED TO MORE MISPELLING CATS, Or I Attempt To Philosophize, or (simply) SHUT UP, BODY!!!!

Illness is the body talking to you. Most of us are not really into the idea of having that conversation with our bodies. It seems too intimate. And if we haven't been talking with our bodies on a normal basis, we are probably afraid that once we open up that conversation with "HEY, LOWER BACK, SO WHY ARE YOU ALL ACHEY LATELY??" it'll be all "BECAUSE YOU SHOULDN'T BE LIFTING YOUR THREE OLD THAT WAY, AND BY THE WAY, I DONT LIKE MILK, OR SUGAR OR FUN OR TV AND YOU SHOULD GO TO THE GYM AND QUIT BEING SUCH A COUCH POTATO AND GIMME THE KEYS, I WANT TO BORROW THE CAR."

And it might be all "I GOT CANCER!" "I GOT SOMETHING INCURABLE!" "YOU'RE FUCKED!"

Medicine is our reaction to that conversation. We can be all pain-killer "SHUT UP ALREADY!" Or we can take the conversation further, figure out what the body needs, and try to find a compromise.

All these little home remedies are really a small way you can open up that conversation. Because having the conversation itself is important. This doesn't mean that you can't go to the doctor, can't take ibuprofen, any of that. And definitely, there is a time where the doctor is THE place to go.

Conversing with the body is the way we talk to our essential selves, which is not nearly as esoteric as it sounds. It's the self that doesn't care what other people want from us, it only cares about what it needs to express its essential nature, it's YOU-NESS. Put this way, I think you can see why having the conversation itself is important.

POST NUMERO UNO!! Weird Uses for Castor Oil

So, yeah, I know some stuff about herbal and homeopathic medicine. Not everything, I am not a healer or any other kind of practitioner. But I have been asked enough stuff this year, that I thought my x-mas present to people I know could be just a list of some helpful tips I have learned over the years. Most of this stuff is reasonably cheap, can be found at any reasonable hippie health food store, and if it doesn't work for you, won't do any harm.

So, in this edition, WEIRD USES FOR CASTOR OIL!! I know this has usually been used internally to treat constipation, but really, there are better remedies for that. All the uses here are external.

1.) MOISTURIZER!!! Use a half-teaspoon. Rub on clean skin and massage in. You can deepen the treatment by putting an wrung-out, hot washcloth on your face for a second. When you feel the skin has absorbed as much as it can, use a cloth or tissue to wipe off the excess. Follow with a very mild toner (witch hazel or rosewater).

2.) ACNE!!!! Castor oil is non-cystic, and works well to speed healing on large and painful zits. Yes, I know that spreading oil on your pimples seems antithetical to everything you have learned from commercials (OIL BAD! PAINFULLY DRY AND RED SKIN GOOD!) but it really works. AND it works on cysts too. Put it on, rub it in, if you want to deepen the treatment add some heat. You should see the zit start to get smaller very quickly.

3.) HANGOVERS!!! Castor oil presses will not make the whole hangover go away, but it will lessen the full body effects. Put castor oil on a clean piece of wool flannel (which is actually incredibly hard to come by) OR just spread it on your liver (lower right side of abdomen), rub it in, and then put a piece of saran wrap over it, AND THEN put a heating pad on it. Stay there for about 20 minutes, remove all the stuff, wipe the area clean with witch hazel, and drink lots of water. You should be feeling a sight better.

4.) EYELASH CONDITIONING!!! Use a dry mascara brush to comb onto lashes for longer and more manageable lashes.

5.) PAINFUL JOINTS!!! This doesn't always work, as it depends on what the exact cause of your painful joints is. But try using a compress on knees or hips when they feel dry and grind-y.

6.) CONSTIPATION!!!! Again, spread castor oil on liver AND stomach and massage. Add a little heat (no more then 10 minutes), and remove and take the excess oil off with witch hazel. This is best to do before bed, and in the morning, you should be fine.