how to use coconut oil on sunburns and other things…

So I get burned very easily. As I’m walking around town doing my normal routine I get comments on my burns that I had gotten the weekend before. Everyone hisses in pain telling me they feel it for me. =) But I reply that it doesn’t hurt. I had just gotten it and had no stinging sensation at all. I tell everyone what to use, what the ‘secret’ is…even where to get it, but I always forget to tell people how to use it. LOL. So here I am blogging about it so no one with a computer will wonder anymore! (here is to the cashier at goodwill)

Extra Virgin Organic Coconut Oil is the key to sun exposure. Its all natural and it doesn’t cause cancer like sunscreens or sunblocks do. It doesn’t work the same as suncreen however. I’ll tell you the brand I purchase later in the blog. It’s preferable to coat yourself in the oil before you go in the sun. It helps prevent skin cancer and protects a tad from the rays. It doesn’t ‘block’ the sun, however, and you need to monitor your skin to make sure you don’t burn too much. (This is great for your tanning routine.)

If you didn’t use the oil before hand, or you did and you stayed out too long, you can use the coconut oil afterwards. Coat the affected areas in oil and sit (try not to touch anything! oil is slick!) for atleast 15 minutes, letting it soak in. Sometimes I watch an episode on the tv and sit for 30 minutes. After your done soaking, rinse off in the shower (that means NO SOAP). Dab your skin dry with a towel lightly. Go about with your day or if its right before bed (preferably) just hop in bed and you’ll feel great the next day. If the burn is really bad, you can still feel the heat radiating off of you but you can still hang things on your shoulders etc with no stinging sensation. If its a bad burn, repeat the process once a night before bed until you think its healed pretty well.

Another great use for extra virgin organic coconut oil is for cooking. There are many kinds of cooking oils out on the market but what people don’t think about looking into is the temperature that the oil goes rancid. Who wants to eat spoiled oil? No one that I know. Coconut oil can be heated to a very high temperature and still not spoil. Olive oil is a healthy oil to eat but many people don’t know that it goes rancid at a very low temperature, making it bad to cook with. If you use olive oil on salads or as a dressing, its perfect for the job, just not to heat up.

Coconut oil is also great for dry skin. As you can imagine, being so good with sunburns, its extremely moisturizing to your skin and helps with dryness and itch. You want to make sure to not go out about your day with it on (its messy and takes several washings to get out of fabrics), try to let it soak in for x amount of minutes and rinse off like with the burn. What I like to do when dealing with coconut oil is to only wear a certain shirt and pants so that those are the only clothes affected and if it doesn’t matter if it takes one washing or 10 washings to get the oil out, it won’t bother me one way or another.

If you’ve read any of my other blogs you’ll know coconut oil is good for bacteria and fungus. I’ve used it on my highly allergic cat (skin problems) every week until we figured out his allergy and a plan to prevent his breakout. He didn’t like it but it worked.

Another useful tip regarding coconut oil is rubbing it on scars. The more important information here is the rubbing motion. Rub the scar in a circular motion at least a couple times a day for as long as you can. Your hands will get tired but it’s worth it. The friction will cause our body to recognize it needs healing in that area and the motion will keep the healing process going. The oil helps with the rubbing obviously and it is also good for your skin opposed to using any old lotion you have lying around.

Now for the product and where to buy! I use Nutiva Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil. I buy in bulk because it tends to be pricey if you by a little at a time. Example: I bought a 16 oz jar at Walmart for almost $30. Went online to amazon.com and bought two 54 oz jars for $54. If you subscribe it’s actually even cheaper a $46.50 for the same two large jars! I get a small ketchup squeeze bottle (sold in the picnic area with an attached lid) and refill them when needed so I don’t have to carry the big jars around the house. Works perfectly. You want to make sure to only use the best most pure product since this is our bodies we are talking about! It’s getting me through the rest of my life and so is yours! We have to treat it well!

This is all useful information mostly given to me by my holistic doctor and I’ve figured out a few myself 😉 Good luck to all and enjoy the coconut oil, and maybe find some other useful ways to use it! Please feel free to post other uses as you find them! Have a great day!

Oliver on the road to recovery

            It will be four months tomorrow since I adopted my new kitty Oliver.  He is the sweetest little guy. As for his allergy problem, the coconut oil and colloidal silver is helping to grow back his hair in the hot spot areas that were a dark pink color and bald.  Now his skin in mostly back to the normal pink color except a spot on his elbow that I’m working on and the hair is growing back nicely.

           I changed his food to raw venison, since I believe he is allergic to salmon and who knows what else.  He was eating LID natural balance salmon and green pea, then I changed to LID natural balance duck and green pea.  Since his spots didn’t seem to improve after that I changed to the raw venison since I’m sure he’s never had that before.  Since I changed the food, he isn’t getting any new hot spots and the little red dots above his eyelids haven’t come back since the coconut oil bath, so I’ve stopped the baths and I’m now only treating the dark pink areas on his skin with a mixture of water and coconut oil in a spray bottle. 

            The way I tested to see if the natural balance salmon food was his allergy, I cooked up a piece of salmon plain and fed it to him.  He didn’t want to eat it at first but I sprinkled a few pieces of the dry natural balance food on top (about 10 pieces) and he went hunting for them amongst the salmon.  Soon he had eaten the whole plate.  I noticed about half way through his eyes had started watering profusely.  So much that he stopped to clean his eyes.  After that I decided to try raw. 

           If this ends up not working, I’m thinking about taking him to a holistic vet in town and also start making him raw food.  I found a great website by a DVM that tells you exactly how to make up 6 months to a years worth of raw food for your kitty and where to get all the ingredients if you have a problem finding them yourself.   Hopefully I won’t have to go to the holistic vet if we’re on the right track.  I might end up making his own food for him any way. We’ll see =)

Lounging on the heating pad.

Cat Allergies

My new cat has allergies of some sort. After taking the poor thing to the vet for 2 months, they tell me that SHE is not a she, SHE is a HE. So Milena had to be changed to Oliver. I don’t know how they missed that but they did. If they missed that, they could def miss other important things about my new kitty that could take him longer to heal in the long run. So I changed vets.
The first vet gave Oliver one shot per month of depomedrol which is a steroid shot, for the irritation on his skin. He was bleeding in little bitty spots over his eyes and had hot spots popping up. Over the course of the first month (the length the shot lasted), I changed his food to a limited diet food of green pea and salmon. He also had scabs all over his body under his fur and also in his ears. After the first shot wore off, only one large hot spot occurred on his back. When we took him back, they said they’d give him another depomedrol shot and told us we might want to do a skin scraping and to come back. (This is the day I found out I had a boy.)
So when the depomedrol shot was nearing a month, I searched for a better vet and took him there. They told me I could do a skin scraping and the next test for the allergies would be an allergy test which would be by blood and it would take 3 weeks to find out the results. Not to mention it was very pricey. I did the skin scraping and a blood test that checked out his internal organs and found that he is healthy except for the high white blood cells which means allergies. He does not have mites. I knew this meant more testing and much more money. I had already spent $567 on him alone plus the $115 I spent on getting rid of my other cats cold that she got from his cold. She switched his medicine from depomedrol to an antihistamine and a different steroid taken orally at a low dosage.
While waiting for the blood test results about his overall internal organ health, I continued medicating him. When I got a call from a different doctor, he let me know the results and also told me that it was very common for cats to get diabetes from taking depomedrol. The last case he saw like that was 2 months prior. I couldn’t believe it because several vets around town that I had called had told me I might just have to keep giving him depomedrol shots for the rest of his life since they eased the irritation. I couldn’t believe how careless these people were with animals that they were supposed to be helping. I lean more toward holistic healing anyway and I really didn’t like giving my animals medication, def not long term, but really not even short term. If it helped relieve the pain while we figured out the cause then I can deal with that but nothing more long term than that. He also told me that the allergy test they send off isn’t anywhere near as accurate or helpful as we would like it to be. That tells me its a waist of money.
After giving him medication for a week, the spots weren’t getting any better and additional spots started appearing. He was also acting like a zombie. He didn’t care to be pet, he’d actually shy away from it and he would sit unmoving all day. He didn’t even want to eat. I called the vet and skipped his meds that day. She said he could be sensitive to the antihistamine that relaxes them also. She told me to half the dosage and see what that does. I ordered a pill cutter on amazon and while i was waiting for it to come in I decided to ask my chiropractor what he’d do. They told me to put colloidal silver on his hot spots and coat him down in coconut oil. Since I do alot of holistic stuff already, I had a really high quality coconut oil and colloidal silver in the pantry. (As a side note I also got some advice from some horse owners that put something on their animals for ringworm and other topical problems, coating them down in a greasy liquid that smelled very strongly of bacon. I really didn’t want to go that route because it seems to me there must be some very bad stuff in it to cause it to smell so badly. ) So I put colloidal silver in the hot spots that he let me get to and let it soak a couple days. Then I rubbed him down in organic extra virgin olive oil. He hated it, poor thing. I let him sit for an hour and then rinsed him. He was still very oily and I had to cover the furniture in towels. I let him sit like that for a little over 24 hours then I gave him a bath with special shampoo and conditioner for animals with skin allergies. His fur isn’t quite like it used to be, a little rough looking but soft. Three days later the spots above his eyes were gone, the new hot spot on his shoulder was a lighter color and it was growing hair. The very small hot spot that turned to a bald spot between his ears started growing hair. The insides of his ears even went to a light pink color instead of red and one ear has no scabs in it anymore, the other ear is still scabby but the scabs seemed to move upward so that there weren’t any except close to the edges of his ear. The only thing is that I didn’t coat his nose and it seems the marks have moved to a darker color and moved to his nose. I don’t really know what that means.
I’ve only done this once so far and I haven’t continued giving him medication yet. If he gets worse I will def start it again and I will prob end up going to a dermatologist. He doesn’t pick at his spots anymore and bite them like he used to so maybe it will hold some relief for him for awhile. Coconut oil is antibacterial and anti-fungal; its also good for our skin. Its great for the winter time when your skin is really dry and itchy. Its also good to use as a natural tanning oil. It won’t give you cancer like sunscreens do.
Its still up in the air about treatment for Oliver, however it seems the coconut oil has improved his condition and provided some relief for the little guy. I don’t expect the battle to be over yet but hopefully we’re on the right path.

Cat Allergies

My new cat has allergies of some sort. After taking the poor thing to the vet for 2 months, they tell me that SHE is not a she, SHE is a HE. So Milena had to be changed to Oliver. I don’t know how they missed that but they did. If they missed that, they could def miss other important things about my new kitty that could take him longer to heal in the long run. So I changed vets.
The first vet gave Oliver one shot per month of depomedrol which is a steroid shot, for the irritation on his skin. He was bleeding in little bitty spots over his eyes and had hot spots popping up. Over the course of the first month (the length the shot lasted), I changed his food to a limited diet food of green pea and salmon. He also had scabs all over his body under his fur and also in his ears. After the first shot wore off, only one large hot spot occurred on his back. When we took him back, they said they’d give him another depomedrol shot and told us we might want to do a skin scraping and to come back. (This is the day I found out I had a boy.)
So when the depomedrol shot was nearing a month, I searched for a better vet and took him there. They told me I could do a skin scraping and the next test for the allergies would be an allergy test which would be by blood and it would take 3 weeks to find out the results. Not to mention it was very pricey. I did the skin scraping and a blood test that checked out his internal organs and found that he is healthy except for the high white blood cells which means allergies. He does not have mites. I knew this meant more testing and much more money. I had already spent $567 on him alone plus the $115 I spent on getting rid of my other cats cold that she got from his cold. She switched his medicine from depomedrol to an antihistamine and a different steroid taken orally at a low dosage.
While waiting for the blood test results about his overall internal organ health, I continued medicating him. When I got a call from a different doctor, he let me know the results and also told me that it was very common for cats to get diabetes from taking depomedrol. The last case he saw like that was 2 months prior. I couldn’t believe it because several vets around town that I had called had told me I might just have to keep giving him depomedrol shots for the rest of his life since they eased the irritation. I couldn’t believe how careless these people were with animals that they were supposed to be helping. I lean more toward holistic healing anyway and I really didn’t like giving my animals medication, def not long term, but really not even short term. If it helped relieve the pain while we figured out the cause then I can deal with that but nothing more long term than that. He also told me that the allergy test they send off isn’t anywhere near as accurate or helpful as we would like it to be. That tells me its a waist of money.
After giving him medication for a week, the spots weren’t getting any better and additional spots started appearing. He was also acting like a zombie. He didn’t care to be pet, he’d actually shy away from it and he would sit unmoving all day. He didn’t even want to eat. I called the vet and skipped his meds that day. She said he could be sensitive to the antihistamine that relaxes them also. She told me to half the dosage and see what that does. I ordered a pill cutter on amazon and while i was waiting for it to come in I decided to ask my chiropractor what he’d do. They told me to put colloidal silver on his hot spots and coat him down in coconut oil. Since I do alot of holistic stuff already, I had a really high quality coconut oil and colloidal silver in the pantry. (As a side note I also got some advice from some horse owners that put something on their animals for ringworm and other topical problems, coating them down in a greasy liquid that smelled very strongly of bacon. I really didn’t want to go that route because it seems to me there must be some very bad stuff in it to cause it to smell so badly. ) So I put colloidal silver in the hot spots that he let me get to and let it soak a couple days. Then I rubbed him down in organic extra virgin olive oil. He hated it, poor thing. I let him sit for an hour and then rinsed him. He was still very oily and I had to cover the furniture in towels. I let him sit like that for a little over 24 hours then I gave him a bath with special shampoo and conditioner for animals with skin allergies. His fur isn’t quite like it used to be, a little rough looking but soft. Three days later the spots above his eyes were gone, the new hot spot on his shoulder was a lighter color and it was growing hair. The very small hot spot that turned to a bald spot between his ears started growing hair. The insides of his ears even went to a light pink color instead of red and one ear has no scabs in it anymore, the other ear is still scabby but the scabs seemed to move upward so that there weren’t any except close to the edges of his ear. The only thing is that I didn’t coat his nose and it seems the marks have moved to a darker color and moved to his nose. I don’t really know what that means.
I’ve only done this once so far and I haven’t continued giving him medication yet. If he gets worse I will def start it again and I will prob end up going to a dermatologist. He doesn’t pick at his spots anymore and bite them like he used to so maybe it will hold some relief for him for awhile. Coconut oil is antibacterial and anti-fungal; its also good for our skin. Its great for the winter time when your skin is really dry and itchy. Its also good to use as a natural tanning oil. It won’t give you cancer like sunscreens do.
Its still up in the air about treatment for Oliver, however it seems the coconut oil has improved his condition and provided some relief for the little guy. I don’t expect the battle to be over yet but hopefully we’re on the right path.