Tropical Goodness

Hair fall problem is a common problem for some of us. It is a serious problem especially for people who are concern about their appearance. Baldness is a big concern for those who have hair fall problem.  There are many causes that lead to hair fall problem. Stress is one of them. Other that stress, ageing process and genetic also play a role in this problem. Lack of nutrients, some medicine and lifestyle also contribute to hair fall problem. Lack of sleep also may contribute to this issue.  It is important to find the root cause of your hair problem before taking any action or treatment. If you are stressed, reducing the stress may stop or decrease the hair fall problem.  One of the method to reduce the hair fall is by taking enough nutrients. Knowing or finding the right nutrient to cure your hair problem is quite a mission. First you will need to ensure what is the cause of your hair problem. If it is caused by the lack of nutrients, then you will need to find what nut...

I have been drinking Calamansi lime water for around a month. I drink it almost everyday. Only 1 Calamansi lime at a time. Slow and steady effort. I add plain water in a mug, and then I squeeze the lime juice from a Calamansi lime.  I did it for health, and for taste. Sometimes I don't like the after taste of the food I ate for lunch so I decided to drink Calamansi water to cover the after taste. It works everytime. And I also love the taste of lime juice.  After squeezing the lime, there will be the remaining lime juice on your fingers and in the lime peels. This, I did not throw away easily.  The remaining juice in the peel, I apply it on my skin as serum or face mask. It helps the skin to become smoother and brighter. And it works for me. Let it stay on your skin for 15 to 30 minutes and rinse it clean.  But before applying the juice, we must test a small amount of it on the sensitive and small area on our skin. It is because the lime juice is acidic and can cause...

Smooth and healthy skin is a bonus for one's appearance. There are many ways to obtain healthy skin. Drinking enough plain water, exercising, eating healthy diet are some of the efforts that can be done. Taking good care of the skin is also an essential effort to obtain beautiful skin. One of the mask which we can try is oat mask. Oat is known to help moisturize the skin, leaving soft and moisturized skin effect. It also work as scrub to clean the skin surface and pores.  The oat face mask can be made by mixing 3 tablespoons finely crushed oat in warm water, or milk, or yogurt. Then, apply the mask to your face for 15 minutes.  So what is the benefit of wearing oat face mask? By wearing face mask, we may get Instant glowing skin Smooth skin Healthy looking skin Oat face mask usually give an instant glow to the skin. And the skin become smooth too. Additional milk or yogurt may make the skin feel soft. For me, oat face mask is the homemade mask you can use if you need ...

Vitamin C is essential for our body. It is needed for many processes in our body, like tissue growth and repair, wound healing, neurotransmitter synthesis, immune system and many more. Reading about its functions in the body may convince a person to take Vitamin C supplements.  I will share the benefits of taking 1000 mg of vitamin C daily. I read that the maximum dose is 2000 mg daily for an adult. However I also read that our body only need less than 100 mg per day. Seems like 1000mg is more than enough. But it's okay. And I also read that our body do not produce vitamin C, so we have to take it daily from our daily food consumption.  After doing some testing, these are the benefits of eating 1000 mg vitamin C daily that I learned.  Smooth And Soft Hair  Vitamin C can make hair become smoother, and lighter. It feels like we just applied shampoo and conditioner on our hair. It also may solve rough hair problem.  Lesser Hair Fall  Eating Vitamin C daily may...

It has been a long time since my last post. I learned that health is a big blessing in life which many of us doesn't aware of. Being healthy, we can do many things we want and plan. We can put efforts on our dreams. And we can function well and do many things for our loved ones. Pain is one of the obstacle we always face in doing our daily activities, be it working, cooking or even resting. Muscle pain and period cramps always attack us women. These pain always hinder us from functioning well in our daily jobs and activities. One more problem that we always ignore is wind or bloating. This problem may originate from various cause such as from food we eat and may become more critical if we did not get early treatment.  There are many over the counter medicine made for these kind of problems. For less severe pain we can take pain killer. But we can also try drinking herbs tea to cure these problems. It may or may not work but drinking it usually won't harm unless you drink in lar...

Blackheads and whiteheads are some of the skin problems which many of us have to face. The dots on the face affect our appearance and also sometimes can be itchy, or can make us uncomfortable. It does make our face become oily and easy to get acne.    Oil to reduce blackheads There are some ingredients which might be useful or effective to remove this blackheads. And they are oils. Two types of oil which may reduce the blackheads are jojoba oil and coconut oil. I won’t be elaborating about jojoba oil because I have not tried it yet. I have tried only coconut oil.   Coconut Oil Coconut oil does help to reduce the blackheads. It has anti-bacterial properties which may help clean the skin and the oil also penetrates into the pores. The coconut oil must be applied for at least 30 minutes. It also helps to moisturize the skin and also tighten the skin. If you want to make your own coconut oil, here is the recipe. If you live in the tropics, you can add Pandan...

Rice Rice has many benefits to the skin. It works as anti-ageing agent, an effective scrub and also adds radiance to the skin. Rice can be used as a good base for making mask and scrubs. It leaves a cooling effect when applied on the face. The benefits and availability of rice makes it a good choice to be used as the base of our face mask.    Tamarind Tamarind is a tropical fruit which is rich in vitamin. A Bangladeshi man once told me that drinking tamarind juice may help to decrease fatigue and muscular pain. I think it does. Because I always drink this turmeric-ginger drink called jamu . It contains tamarind in it. And this drink is effective in boosting energy and reducing muscular pain. The vitamin C in tamarind may also be beneficial to our skin. Consuming vitamin C really help us to obtain healthy skin and helps our body to function better. Tamarind is also effective in eliminating or reducing oil on our face. Washing face with tamarind juice not only elimi...

Coconut oil is well known for its moisturizing effect and is widely used as skin and hair moisturizer. It is also traditionally used to moisturize hair in some cultures such as in South Asia and Southeast Asia.  In the ancient Malay Archipelago it is widely used in beauty care. Our grannies had been applying coconut oil to moisturize and maintain their hair. The oil is applied everyday, just after bath when the hair became a bit dry. It is believed that the coconut oil can make hair smoother and slow down the occurrence of gray hair. Coconut oil can be obtained through several methods. And the end result is different, based on the method used. You may end up with coconut oil or virgin coconut oil (VCO).  The best coconut oil is virgin coconut oil, as the properties in the oil is not destroyed during the extraction process. However, processing virgin coconut oil at home may be a bit challenging. Hence, most people usually go to second option which is coconut oil. Even thou...

Diabetes is one of the major health problem faced by the world. According to World Health Organization (WHO) 8.5% among adults over 18 years old are diabetic. (1) It shows an increase of 4.7%  compared to 1980. 1.6 million death in 2016 was estimated caused by diabetes. (1) It is one of the top 10 causes of death in 2016.  High blood triglyceride (fat) level, high fat and carbohydrate diet, high alcohol intake and obesity are some of the causes of diabetes. (2) Obesity and inactive lifestyle is said to be the main causes of diabetes. (2) Hence what we can do to prevent or manage diabetes? One of the effort we can do is to change our diet into a healthier diet. It is by consuming more healthy food and follow the food pyramid. This means we have to eat more vegetables especially green vegetables and also fruits. And eat them in moderation. Below are some of the food that is good for diabetic people. Bitter Gourd Avicenna in his Canon wrote that bitter gourd can b...

I have been nurturing this for few years now. The beauty and radiance never fail to impress me. That is my butterfly pea plants. There are two of them, living in flower pots. Prior to growing this plant, I don't know why people like to plant butterfly pea, but after reading some articles about the benefits of the plants I think it is wise if I grow one. And my other aunt happened to give me some seed from her garden that time. Hence I grew it.  My multi-layered butterfly pea flower. Planting butterfly pea is not difficult, especially when you grow them on the ground. In the pot, they just need more care, enough water and nutrients. And when it flowers it is so lovely. Striking blue flowers and mine is multiple layers flower. Oh I almost forgot, one think that you cannot do when growing this plant is not to grow chives nearby. Both plants' growth will slow down and plant might get sick.  Butterfly peas... I read in articles that the whole plant is edible bu...

Scrub is an essential beauty product in our beauty routine. Exfoliation is one of the important process for people who care for their skin. The process exfoliate dead skin cells and sometimes add nutrients to the skin. Thus the skin may become smooth, clean and healthy.  There are abundance of ready made body scrub in the market. Herbs, fruits, rice and milk are some of the ingredients contained in body scrub. And the price of these scrubs range from cheap, affordable to expensive.  But many of us also loves to make homemade scrub. Why. Because it is not only cheaper, but also fresh and flexible. It is flexible as we can control the ingredients used to make our body scrub. And making scrub is also take not much of our time.  There are many ingredients can be used to make homemade scrub. And they range from long lasting scrub to easily expire one. Dry ingredients such as rice, coffee ground and dried ingredients are usually last longer than wet ingredients...

Brazilian Spinach, or Sissoo Spinach, or Poor Man's Spinach is the name of a shiny crunchy small shrub plant which is also edible. I got this plant cuttings last year. In the beginning I did not have any idea what it is. I was looking at my aunt's plants when I noticed a pot of shiny shrub. They are so cute because they grow like a small bush with shiny green leaves. They look edible. I asked my aunt about the plant. And my aunt said it is Brazilian Spinach. It can be eaten raw or cooked. My cousin bought the spinach from fresh market and my aunt regrow the stems. Brazilian Spinach seedlings. I grew them in my container garden. They survived thank to God. Now I have 5 pots of it and I don't know where to plant them anymore. I put some in my DIY square container and some more in pots. They grow well. Even though sometimes I forgot to water them. Brazilian Spinach loves rich soil. Below are some tips to grow Brazilian Spinach from my experience. Love Rich Soil ...

This post is written on 2018 and transferred here.   Last week I went to my small backyard garden to spray my homemade pesticide to my plants. There are a big colony of ants and white aphid in my garden which I always fight with... They stay in the soil and on the plants, behind the leaves and on the stems. I mixed 1/4 teaspoon of dish soap, a few drops of cooking oil and 2 cups of pipe water. Then I spray to the area  where the ants and aphids are. Of course there are still half of them left but the damage they cause to my garden can be reduced. Some people spray them daily to ensure they did not disturb the plants, especially on chili plants. After spraying the plants with pesticide, I noticed that my lemon basil has turned from one small plant to a small bush which is about 1.2 feet height. I then trimmed it to less 1 feet height to promote more leaves growth. I then regrow some of the stem into my cherry tomato, mulberry, chili and lemongrass pots. The remaini...

Hi. I am CK. I am a plant lover and I love gardening. Because by gardening we can be calm, and fresh. Gardening may be a beneficial hobby both for your health and pocket. By gardening we get to exercise and get fresh foods. We also can save money.   I love fresh herbs and vegetables. The green view is refreshing and distressing. Watching the plants grow give me a kind of satisfaction. Plus if it is in the morning or after the rain. It is a refreshing experience.  However,gardening in a limited space is sure a challenging activity. Especially when you just feel like growing every plants around your house. I need to consider what plant to grow and their number , and how much space they will take along their lifetime . This depends on some factors such as the purpose of growing them , the maintenance , types of plants and the amount of water and sun they need , the airflow and humidity .  I also have to plan prior to growing to ensure the optimum use of space...

Compost is an important ingredient in a garden. Applying and feeding compost to the plants really helps them grow and produce well, God willing. Compost can be bought from nearby nursery or sometimes hypermarket and it also can be made at home.  I read many  articles about composting before, comprising on how to compost and what to put in the compost mix. To me, it is basically mixing the waste comprising carbon and waste comprising nitrogen. Nitrogen containing waste usually comes from wet kitchen waste and carbon containing waste come from browned materials such as dried leaves, paper and burnt materials.  Too much one of the waste type results in bad smell and longer composting time. Temperature, humidity and aeration also play important role in composting as it help and affect the composting process. Good compost does not smell, I think.  However I did not have enough space to make compost. What I did just, I put 1/2 pot of potting soil into an empty pot...