Laura Bruno – Bizarre Natural Remedies That Work – 31 March 2014

laura-of-the-rocks I just had to share two of these strange tips that really work:

1) Cucumber for squeaky door hinges:

I don’t even remember where I saw this, but we’ve been living with squeaky door hinges all winter, because we didn’t want to use WD40 without being able to open the windows. Actually, we didn’t want to use WD40 at all, but those squeaks were getting ridiculous! I finally saw some decent looking organic cucumbers at the co-op. We used them yesterday for a fresh and yummy salad. I saved one of the ends and rubbed it on our squeaky hinges.

They are now silent. David and I were stunned.

2) Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth for wrinkles:

I had some diatomaceous earth on hand due to last year’s war with slugs in the garden, but I’ve often read about all sorts of benefits from internally taking this silicon-rich powder. People credit it with everything from killing off parasites to rebuilding the intestinal lining to resolving food allergies to increasing the body’s ability to absorb calcium. I’ve drunk oatstraw and horsetail infusions for silica before (love the oatstraw, gag on the horsetail); however, I recently felt led to drink some diatomaecous earth mixed in water. Not only do my teeth feel even stronger than they’ve felt since my spontaneous tooth healing last summer, but the recently thinning skin around my eyes seems to have plumped up like magic.

Until I looked it up last night, I had forgotten that in Eating for Beauty, David Wolfe credits silicon rich foods like radishes, hemp leaf, oatstraw and horsetail with relaxing wrinkles from the inside out. He says that the silicon-calcium ratio is a youth marker: we have far more silicon than calcium when we’re born and then that ratio gradually flips as we age. Although I feel great with oatstraw infusions whenever I bother to make them, I’ve never noticed such a dramatic shift in skin thickness as I did this week with the DE. No, these weren’t deep wrinkles, but it was still pretty astonishing. I didn’t think to look up David Wolfe’s research again until a guy at the co-op who synchronously mentioned taking diatomaceous earth also looked like he’d erased 5-10 years from his face.

(NOTE: If you decide to take diatomaceous earth, make sure it’s food grade, and also build up very, very slowly … maybe a 1/4 tsp to start, working up to 1-2 TBSP per day. This is not medical advice, just sharing my own and others’ experiences.)

Anyway, I know tons of natural remedies that work, but these two off the wall remedies both blew me away yesterday. I thought I’d share the wonder. 🙂