HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE - AROMA THERAPY WITH GUEST AUTHOR CHRYSTLE FIEDLER

Joining us for another visit today is natural remedies expert and mystery author Chrystle Fiedler. Scent to Kill is the second book in her Natural Remedies Mystery series. Chrystle is also the author of several non-fiction books as well as magazine articles on natural health, home remedies, and diet. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

For a chance to win a copy of Scent to Kill: A Natural Remedies Mystery, leave a comment about your favorite natural scents. Don’t forget to include your email address or check back on Sunday to learn if you’re the winner. We can’t get your book to you if we have no way of contacting you. -- AP

Scent to Kill, my latest natural remedies mystery features tips about aromatherapy which is the practice of using essential oils to improve health and well-being. Aromatherapy can ease stress, insomnia, anxiety, depression, aches and pains, and more. Three of my favorite scents are lavender, jasmine and roses, so I thought I’d share a few simple tips on how to use them today.

Lavender

Not only does Lavender (the Latin verb lavare means “to wash”) smell terrific, it’s calming and soothing and good for cuts and burns, insomnia, diaper rash, tension headache, PMS and cramps (use with clary sage and Roman chamomile). The phytochemicals (plant-based chemicals linalool and linalyl acetate) in lavender are absorbed in the skin and in the membranes inside your nose, slowing nerve impulses, and reducing stress. An easy way to start using lavender is to put five to ten drops of essential oil in your bath. Add the oil after you have filled the tub so you can enjoy the full benefits of this wonderful aroma.

Jasmine

The aroma of jasmine (Jasminum officinale v. grandiflorum) is intoxicatingly sweet, exotic, and floral. It’s also incredibly therapeutic for a variety of conditions. Jasmine essential oil eases mild depression, anxiety, and tension. It also balances energy and helps you feel more optimistic. It calms coughs and laryngitis, soothes sore muscles, stiffness, and sprains. You can apply it topically, use it on a warm or cool compress, put it in the bath, inhale it from your palm, or put it in your diffuser. It will make any room an oasis.

Roses

I love the rich, sweet floral bouquet of roses and the approximately 275 compounds have a myriad of therapeutic uses. For example, if you apply it topically, rose oil can help banish eczema, wrinkles, and acne. If you feel blue, rose essential oil will naturally lift your mood. If you have painful periods, it helps to balance hormones (just put the oil on a warm compress and apply to your lower abdomen). Rose oil also eases nervousness, anxiety, anger, sadness, and grief and can be helpful if you have respiratory problems such as allergies and hay fever. You also use rose oil to help you sleep better and feel happier. For all these conditions, simply put some on your palm and inhale it or put rose essential oil into a diffuser. Your bedroom will smell like an English garden.

Scent to Kill: A Natural Remedies Mystery

When naturopathic doctor and shop owner Willow McQuade’s ex-boyfriend Simon Lewis invites her to a party for the cast and crew of a new television show at Long Island’s scenic Bixby Estate, she’s most excited to visit the property’s exclusive lavender farm. But a whole field of her favorite stress-reducing herb can’t provide enough soothing support to calm the effects of a murder!

Even the show’s psychic star didn’t predict the demise of Roger Bixby, the estate’s owner and estranged husband of Simon’s new girlfriend. Now Simon, who’s been collared by police, needs Willow’s help to remedy the situation. As Willow snoops about the mansion, offering natural cures to ease the mounting tension, a strange energy—and the discovery of an eerily similar unsolved murder decades earlier—makes her wonder whether the alternative source of the crime might actually be . . . supernatural. Can she find harmony between mind, body, and possibly even spirits before somebody else goes up in smoke? 

As a bonus, you’ll find dozens of natural aromatherapy cures throughout the book that can improve your health. I think you’ll be surprised as how much they can help you feel better in mind, body and spirit!

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Don't forget to leave a comment to enter the drawing for a copy of Scent to Kill. -- AP

BEAUTY WITH NICOLE - GUEST BLOGGER, DR. WILLOW McQUADE

Beauty editor Nicole Emmerling has invited Willow McQuade to visit with us today. Willow is a naturopathic doctor and the star of Chrystle Fiedler’s new Nature Remedy Mysteries.

Chrystle Fiedler is the author of the newly released Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery. She’s also the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Natural Remedies and the co-author of Beat Sugar Addiction Now!, the Beat Sugar Addiction Now! Cookbook and The Country Almanac of Home Remedies. Her magazine articles featuring natural remedies have appeared in many national publications including  Better Homes and Gardens, Natural Health, Vegetarian Times and Remedy. To learn more about Chrystle, visit her at her website and blog.

Chrystle is offering a copy of Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery to one lucky reader who posts a comment. -- AP  

A big thank you to Anastasia Pollack for welcoming me to her blog today! I'm a naturopathic doctor named Willow McQuade and I'm the star of my own book called Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery. I'm a big believer in natural cures and I thought that you would enjoy these recipes for different kinds of baths. Luxuriating in a bath tub can help you rest, renew and heal your body. You will look and feel better! 

Flower Power Bath: Let the stress drain away with a bath full of fresh flowers, orange or lemon peels. You can also use  lilac, dandelion, daisies, honeysuckle, jasmine, camellia, or lavender. 

Dry Skin Bath: Herbs can have a soothing lubricating effect on the skin. Moisturize by adding to the bath calendula flowers, chamomile flowers, comfrey leaves, elder flowers, fennel seed, jasmine flowers, lavender flowers, oatmeal, rose buds, and violet leaves.

Baking Soda Bath: This alkalinizing and detoxifying bath can help calm allergic reactions, chicken pox, eczema, hives, itchy skin, insect bites, poison ivy, sunburn, and fungal infections. Baking soda baths also aid weight loss. Use one pound per bath.

Cold and Flu Bath: Try these natural remedies when you want to soothe deep muscle aches that often accompany viral infections. Add Epsom salts, ginger root, marjoram, mustard seed powder, pine needles, and thyme leaves to your bath.

Detox Bath: Consider these cleansing herbs in the bath to help the body get rid of toxins. Try apple cider vinegar, cypress essential oil, Epsom salts, ginger root, grapefruit, juniper, lavender flowers, lemon peel, rosemary leaves, sage leaves, seaweed (buy in a natural food store unless you live close to the ocean), and tea tree essential oil.

Epsom Salts Bath: Relax sore muscles, soften the skin and detoxify. If you have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease rinse off after the bath. Follow package directions.

If you have any medical conditions and are not sure if you should try any of these baths, please see your health practitioner. This is in no way meant to be medical advice. 

About Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery:

Dr. Willow McQuade, N.D., a twenty-eight-year-old naturopathic doctor specializing in natural remedies, has decided to take sabbatical and visit her Aunt Claire, the owner of Nature’s Way Market and Cafe in idyllic Greenport, Long Island. But the idea of rest and relaxation is quickly forgotten when Willow arrives from a morning meditative walk to discover her Aunt Claire dead in the store, a strange almond-like smell emanating from her mouth and a bottle of flower essences by her side. Despite her Zen nature and penchant for yoga, Aunt Claire had a knack for getting into confrontations with folks. An activist, she held weekly meetings for different causes every week in the store. The police want to believe the death is accidental—but Willow thinks she may have been poisoned.

Things get worse when Aunt Claire’s valuable recipe for a new natural age-defying formula, Fresh Face, is stolen during a store break-in, and an attempt is made on Willow’s life. Desperate for a way out of the mess, she turns to handsome young cop Jackson Spade. Together the two set about solving the case the natural way—through a combination of hard work, common sense, and a dose of luck.

Thanks for joining us today, Willow. I can’t wait to soak in some of those relaxing baths! What about you, readers? Post a comment for a chance to win a copy of Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery. -- AP