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A lot of people are understandably skeptical about pharmaceutical companies, or “big pharma” as they like to call the industry. They feel like there are a lot of unnecessary chemicals and additives that go into our medicines just to justify the increasing costs of these goods. This makes having something as simple as a cold or a mild fever a potentially expensive illness!

Fortunately, there are natural remedies that can help you out with some of these ailments, making getting sick not such a daunting foe (financially at least). What we need to emphasize, however, is that many of these cures can deal with aches, pains, and minor illnesses like coughs and colds. If your illness gets worse, however, always be sure to consult your doctor!

Ginger

Ginger is a surprisingly useful and hardy plant. It contains a substance called Gingerol, which is the primary element of ginger that aids that contains its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. This makes it a useful cure for toothaches and other aches that are caused by swelling. It’s also good for dealing with muscle pain and soreness, which is why it’s such a popular ingredient in energy drinks.

In addition to aches and swelling, ginger is also highly effective at reducing nausea, from seasickness to pregnancy morning sickness. It’s worth noting, however, that while ginger can reduce the nausea that comes with pregnancy morning sickness, it won’t prevent the vomiting which is usually part of the morning sickness. Beyond birthing, ginger also helps reduce menstrual pains!

Apple-Cider Vinegar

Apple cider vinegar is one of the most useful things to have in your home. From cleaning wounds, to killing bacteria, treating nail fungus and lice, and disinfecting ear infections, apple cider vinegar is an incredibly versatile household item. Health-wise, it has quite a few applications as well. Science has shown that having vinegar with a high carb meal increases the feeling of fullness and reduces caloric intake by up to 250 calories.

Apple cider vinegar in particular has also been shown to be highly effective in lowering blood sugar levels. In addition to this clear benefit, apple cider vinegar has also been seen to improve insulin sensitivity, making it a highly helpful supplement to the diet of people suffering from type 2 Diabetes. The double-punch of lowering blood sugar and boosting insulin is a massive boon to them.

Turmeric

The ingredient that gives Indian curry its distinct yellow color, turmeric has been proven to have quite a few health benefits, making it more than just an essential ingredient in a delicious curry dish! Curcumin, the element of turmeric that provides its health benefits is also available as a supplement for people who aren’t fond of the strong flavors associated with Indian curry.

Curcumin has high anti-inflammatory properties. In fact, its properties are almost equivalent to the properties of some anti-inflammatory drugs but without the side effects associated with those drugs. It also boosts the body’s antioxidant capabilities while being itself an antioxidant. In addition, it has also been found to reduce risk of brain disease and improve memory.

When people talk about getting rid of chemicals and other unnatural elements from their food and water, they tend to forget that their homes are also full of these unnatural chemicals. While synthetic materials are often useful, and to a point irreplaceable, such as the plastics and alloys that go into our technology and appliances, there are some products that can be used as alternatives for other household products. Here are some of our favorites:

Lemon Juice/Oil

If you follow our site’s articles, you’ll remember this handy disinfectant from our post about keeping your car clean. Well, Lemon juice and lemon oil can also be used to clean and disinfect your household surfaces! This is especially useful in the kitchen and bathrooms where a fresh-scented disinfectant is really needed!

Additionally, it’s great for gutting through grease on pots and pans, polishing glass and mirrors, and as lemonade when you need refreshment while cleaning your home! There are a ton of recipes online about what to mix with lemon juice and how in order to get cleansers for specific products. We’d share our favorites, but that’s for a different article down the road!

Coconut Oil

While many of you probably already have coconut oil at home as a hair or skin product, it can also find other uses in your home as a useful tool. Combined with lemon juice, for example, it can be used as wood polish. One of the best aspects of this combination as a wood polish is that rather than the harsh wax scent most polishes have, this mixture has a fresh, mellow scent.

While it doesn’t have the disinfecting properties that lemon does, coconut oil can be used to handle some tougher tasks that lemon can’t. Coconut oil can be used as a rust remover for small items such as scissors and blades. It can also be used as a stain remover for carpets and upholstery. It can even be used to polish leather furniture and leather accessories such as belts and leather watchstraps.

White Vinegar

White vinegar, with it’s milder scent compared to other vinegars, has quite a few applications in the house beyond as a cooking ingredient. For example, if you remember the show Mythbusters, they had an experiment on deodorizing feet. Compared to the other products, vinegar did the best job of eliminating food odor. The good news: it works on deodorizing other things as well!

Other than as a deodorant, white vinegar can also be used around the house as a stain remover and glass cleaner. One of its most useful applications, however, is as a mould remover, eliminating the health hazard without having to resort to chemicals or poisons.

What are your favorite natural products for cleaning the household? How effective are they and how often do you use them over their chemical counterparts? Let us know!

With the state of pollution the way it is now, people are trying to find ways to be more and more environmentally friendly through the use of natural products and other green alternatives. Unfortunately, we can’t do it with every aspect of our lives. There are simple things made of plastic and steel that we use daily like our phones and gadgets, and more complicated things like the vehicles we use to get to and from work each day.

While there are some options for environmentally friendly vehicles, not all of them are affordable. Given that not all of us can afford a Tesla Car, there are other things we can do to help the world through the use of natural products to take care of the cars we do have. While there are certain things we can’t change, like the oil and fuel, there are some other things we can use instead of chemical based goods:

Lemon Juice

A natural anti-bacterial that also smells great, lemon juice can be used to disinfect and shine up solid surfaces of your vehicle, like the dashboard and steering wheel. One of the best things about natural lemon products is that they’re all essentially the same. If you don’t have lemon juice fresh lemons on hand, for example, lemon oil can also be used to fill the same purpose.

You may want to steer clear of artificial lemon juice or lemon juice mix, though. Given that those types of lemon juice have sugar mixed in, they’ll end up messing up your car and attracting pests like ants. While ants may be “all natural”, you definitely don’t want them moving into your car at all, right! Especially if you go for something extravagant, like hire a supercar in Dubai! There are some natural things that don’t belong in your car at all!

Castile Soap

A vegetable based soap that’s practically vegan (that’s right, no animal components in this soap!), it’s also a highly versatile soap that it can be used to wash virtually anything from you to your car to your hair and body. There are quite a few brands out there as the market is slowly growing. Don’t worry about application as well as it does come primarily in liquid form.

What’s important to note here is that as a wholly natural product, unlike other soaps that have heavy chemical components, the runoff from castile soap does not have the same potentially damaging effects on the environment that regular soaps will have. Not only are you keeping your car clean, but you’re also keeping the environment clean as well. Two for one!

Your Self

We’re not saying you should render yourself down into soap to clean your car, or to use yourself like a giant sponge to wipe your car clean, so don’t worry! What we’re referring to here is the human element of washing your car: the more work you put into the washing, the better it is for the environment. This means ditching the fancy hose attachments, the pressure washer, and the other gadgets.

When it boils down to statistics, hoses, especially high-pressure ones end up wasting far more water than is necessary to wash your car. Instead of worrying about that, you could also simply enjoy a limo ride in Dubai in an awesome luxury car. While you may want to consider still using the really high pressure pumps to only clean out the finer areas that really need the high pressure to get the built-up dirt out, but in the long run, a bit of elbow grease and dedication are the best way to clean your car while helping the environment.

One of the biggest environmental new stories to hit the papers recently is how much plastic is in our oceans and how all that plastic has been killing ocean life slowly bus surely over the last few years. For those who aren’t aware, the amount of plastic in the ocean has reached the point where, if placed all together, has the same mass as a moderately sized island.

Naturally, this has caused quote a bit of alarm, even to people who don’t usually react to environmental news. This has driven quite a few people to consider using eco-friendly alternatives to plastic, from metal straws to reusable shopping bags. Here are some alternatives that you may want to consider using:

Canvas Grocery Bags

While people are already going with paper bags or reusable plastic bags for their shopping and groceries, they tend to overlook the fact that these options may not always be the most eco friendly. Reusable bags are often made of plastic, and therefore part of the problem, while paper bags are made at the cost of trees being cut down fro a temporary measure.

Canvas bags, however, combine some of the best elements of the other 2: not only are they biodegradable, they’re also more eco-friendly than paper while also having the sturdiness of their plastic counterparts. The best part is, if you get a plain one, canvas is a much better medium for painting or coloring the bag as compared to paper and plastic.

Metal Straws

While some may argue that metal straws don’t usually count as natural products, we think that they’re right at home on this list. Like we mentioned earlier, plastic is a serious threat to our oceans. Given that almost all straws are made of plastic, metal straws provide a reusable, eco-friendly alternative. They’re also hands down way better than paper straws!

Keep in mind, however, that metal straws have to be washed regularly to prevent buildup inside the straws. This shouldn’t be a problem as most companies that sell these straws come with cleaning kits to make sure that your straw is still useable.

Beauty

While there are a lot of chemical and synthetic materials that are still very popular in people’s beauty regimen, there are also a lot of alternatives that people who want to look good can use that are natural products. One of the beauties of beauty products made up primarily of natural products is that these products usually carry the generally beneficial properties that their ingredients have.

Studies have also shown that beauty products made from natural ingredients are less likely to cause skin irritations with repeated use. Just don’t go to overboard, of course! Allowing your face to “rest” without any cosmetics once in a while is always a good idea, no matter what type of beauty product you’re using.

What alternatives made from natural products do you use regularly? Alternatively, are there products that you find essential that can’t be replaced by something that primarily uses natural products?