beauty | esposavida

You’ve probably heard of the latest new beauty fad, recommended by beauticians and celebrities alike. Oil Pulling. Sounds kind of disgusting if you ask me… but what is it?

Oil pulling basically consists of swishing oil (most people seem to be using coconut oil but you can use any vegetable based oil) around your mouth for 20 minutes before spitting it out, rinsing your mouth with salt water and brushing your teeth. There are many reported benefits, such as:

• Whiter teeth

• Cures spots and acne

• Better breath (halitosis suffers also reported greatly improved morning breath)

• Stronger teeth and gums

• Helps with sleep issues and sinus problems

• Eases headaches and hangovers

As the oil actually pulls germs and bacteria from your gums, the whole process is about removing the toxins from the mouth before they can travel to other parts of the body. This means you literally end up with a ball of toxins in your mouth at the end of the 20 minutes.

Although this beauty trend has ancient roots, it’s been brought in to the public eye recently by Gwyneth Paltrow. The practice apparently originated from ancient Ayurvedic Indian natural medicine, which claimed oil pulling was a remedy for oral diseases.

So is this really a miracle cure? Can I throw away my Crest white strips and face wash? I don’t think so. Although there is some evidence that oil pulling can be beneficial, it’s not the answer it’s claimed to be. Most experts agree that it won’t really do any harm (although you might make yourself ill if you swallow the oil!) but it also doesn’t really have any proven health or beauty benefits. I think I’ll be sticking to my more conventional products for now, at least until a bit more research is done, and perhaps when someone invents a better tasting oil!

What do you think of the oil pulling trend? Have you tried it?

On Saturday I was lucky enough to get to go to London Fashion Weekend, with my lovely friend who agreed to fly 400 miles from our hometown of Edinburgh to go with me and indulge my fashion addiction.

Our tickets were from 1.30-7.00, with designer catwalk tickets for the 6.30 Julien MacDonald show. The venue was the beautiful Somerset House, home of LFW, just a short walk from Temple underground station. It was a beautiful day on Saturday, blue skies and even warm- we were so lucky with the weather!

We arrived at Somerset House just after 1.30 and joined the queue to pick up our tote bags. We had booked silver level tickets, which included a tote bag with goodies. We didn’t have to wait long to pick these up, as the queue moved pretty quickly and the staff were organised, which was great! We then picked up our lanyard passes and that was it… We were in!

First order was then of course to have a good look at our tote bags and goodies, and to grab some lunch before we got down to shopping!

We made our way to the little cafe in Somerset house, waited in the humongous queue for food, paid £8.50 for a sandwich & lemonade (!) and sat down to have a good look at our goodies!

The tote bags this year were designed by Julien Macdonald, a black tote with a white dragonesque design. Inside we had an Essie nail polish in ‘naughty nautical’ (a nice turquoise), babylips lip balm, some lavazza coffee (they were a sponsor) and various other bits and pieces- like a beauty bar. There wasn’t much in it, but I was pretty happy to see the nail polish and lip balm!

Our next point of call was the Vodafone Lounge, where some brand were there to ‘shop the catwalk’. We also went in to the VIP Vodafone area, and thanks to being a Vodafone customer I picked up my free limited edition nail polish out of the very cool nail polish vending machine – I need one in my house!!! You could also book in to get a manicure & there was a recharging station, which was a nice addition.

I won’t go in to my purchases in detail but lets just say… I didn’t spend much! I did fall in love with a Roberto cavalli clutch bag but for £49 and the fact that it was so tiny that I wouldn’t have even been able to fit a bank card or my iPhone in it, I couldn’t justify the expense! I did buy a book to add to my fashion book collection, a tongue in cheek reference to my upcoming wedding ‘the art to a well dressed wife’ and some maybeline nail polishes and lip sticks. Coming out at just under £20 for all of these purchases- I was patting myself on the back for being so well behaved! The truth is the choice was really.. Spend HUNDREDS, or spend very little, so again the upcoming wedding kept me on the straight and narrow.

I did really enjoy having a good look around the shopping areas, and we happily whiled away a good few hours doing so. There were also some stands amongst the shopping areas, such as the ‘Bueno lounge’ where you could book in for a massage and pick up free kinder Buenos- yum!

This post is getting far too long so I’ll talk about the catwalk show in my next post!

esposavida

Tag Archives: beauty

Oil Pulling: Fad or Fabulous?

London Fashion Weekend Recap Part 1: The Shopping