Swathy and Sky

Cardamom for acidity {Health}

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So, a few days back, I did overeating and got a stomach ache. Then, my mom prescribed me this.
Cardamom relieves Acidity
Mom told me that cardamom should be taken when one has acidity. I was out of pudin hara tablets and had nothing else and was in a little painful state. So, this was the only thing available at hand.
Otherwise, as far as I know, cold milk is also great for acidity.
Other Uses of Cardamom
I am not doing a research on cardamom so I shall mention only those uses which have helped me personally.
  • Mountain or Travel Sickness: Has always helped me to an extent when even tablets tend to fail. So, always carry some cardamom and cloves with you on your travels and tours.
  • Stomach Upsets: Apart from acidity, regular stomach indigestion can also get cured by cardamom.
  • Bad Breath: Ok, I never have used this but I know it helps 🙂
  • Dry Cough: Keeping cardamom in the mouth and not swallowing it but letting its essence flow through the throat slowly helps with dry cough and sore throats.
So, what do you use for acidity problems? 

Mistakes and Improvements in Perfume Making (Part IV) {DIY}

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So, last three weeks, I had discussed and elaborated on my efforts on perfume making at home. Today, I wanted to talk about some of my mistakes and shortcomings in the whole process and what I have learned from them.
Profiles of Essential Oils

This is a very important point. Whenever you are going to buy EO’s or in fact, going to blend them, always make sure that all the EO’s you are going to use do blend with each other harmoniously. For example, when I decided to buy the first 5 EO’s, I had checked out their profiles very carefully from MountainRoseHerbs.com [go to the Essential Oils and click on Learn More for further information].
I got for myself – Bergamot, Rosemary, Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Frankincense. And, then, I decided to do a blend of all the 5 EO’s together. After I had made the blend, I sensed that something was wrong because nothing was blending well and then, I checked out the profiles once more and found out that Rosemary doesn’t go with any of the others so the blend was fruitless.
So, when you are going to try any new blend, you should definitely keep this in mind.
Ways to try out new blends
EO’s don’t really come cheap so there are a few tips which might help you.
  • If you think about a promising blend, take those EO’s and open their caps and inhale their scents together and see if you find the aroma promising. This is a little of hit and miss so I tried out the next tip.
  • Use cotton ear buds. Fit them in the EO’s nozzle and take out a drop of the EO. Put it in a small glass tub. Do the same with all the EO’s you want in your blend. Use separate buds for each EO. You can also cut the buds in the middle. Keep all the buds in the glass jar and keep it ina  dark place for 48 hours. Take it out and sniff the aroma. If you like it, you can proceed with the blending.
Either of these methods save the wastage.
Disadvantages of Homemade Perfume Making
Ok, what I found out was that the longer you keep the blend, the stronger the perfume becomes. But, application of perfume oil is really difficult. You either need a dabber or a roll-on otherwise the oil doesn’t get applied smoothly. So, always think about packaging before hand. Same problem went with the solid perfume too. The applicators are easy to apply otherwise you have to use the fingers to apply.
Another issue which I faced was how long the perfume stays on me. And, this is quite a concern. And, I really need to work on making my perfume oils stay long enough. As of now, I am not really happy with it because a lot of factors affect this. But, still I do want to keep the perfume oil on my skin for entire day or at least half a day and I am not yet sure how far have I come in this endeavor.
So, this finishes my DIY series on perfume making. I shall keep updating whenever I find something significant to report. And, hope you liked the series and it has intrigued you enough to try out this interesting DIY for yourself 🙂Previous Posts in the series:
How to make Perfume Oil at home? (Part I)
How to make Perfume Oil at home? (Part II)
How to make Solid Perfume at home? (Part III)

Skipping Conditioner = Split Ends? {Hair Care}

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PS: Hey all, please do let me know if you prefer this layout to the previous one or was that better. I will really appreciate the feedback.Last week, when I did a post on “Should I apply conditioner or not?“, I got a lot of responses on the post and one of the comments made me think about this post. The comment was from Krupa and she said “skipping conditioner n using leave in serum is a gud idea but without conditioner wont we get split ends?”. 

What does a Conditioner do?

Anyways, thinking from her point of view, she is right. Conditioner is supposed to condition our hair and provide it moisture and nourishment and when the hair strands are nourished, moisturized and hydrated, they do not develop split ends. But, I want to clear a misconception. Conditioner never ever repairs Split Ends. No product can repair Split Ends. How to get rid of Split Ends?
Split Ends can only be prevented by taking care of the hair and being diligent about applying the products meant to keep the hair in a good condition. But, if they develop, you can only snip them off. Otherwise, those split ends can travel up the length of your hair strands and cause your hair to look rough and damaged. So, always take good care of your hair with regular deep conditioning treatments and snip off the ends at regular intervals too.

How do you take care of your split ends?