October is National Breast Health Awareness Month, and in preparation we bring you this guest post by Maria Davis. What actions will you take to help end breast cancer?

Photo by Courtney Robinson

Would you walk 60 miles to cure breast cancer? Millions of people do just that every year as part of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. The walk covers approximately 60 miles over a period of three days, and is held in numerous cities across the United States, and in many countries around the world. In 2010, the 3-Day was held in 15 U.S. cities, and raised over $87 million.

The 3-Day walk is being held in 14 cities across the United States in 2011. Events began in July, and are running through mid-November, so you still have several opportunities to join in. Participating is easy if a 3-Day is held in or near your city. But how can you get there if the city where you want to walk is far away? If you need to travel to get there, here’s how you can save some money while you’re raising it for a good cause.

Recruit a Sponsor

It can sometimes be difficult to ask people for money, and you must meet a minimum fundraising amount of $2,300 in order to participate in the 3-Day walk. But rather than asking friends, family, and coworkers to contribute extra to get you there, try to find a sponsor. Talk to local businesses you frequent, and ask if they’re willing to donate money toward your travel expenses. Offer them something in return, such as wearing a T-shirt with their business name on it at the event. You can also talk to local radio and TV stations about interviewing you, and mention your sponsor business on the air.

Look For Travel Deals

Most of the online travel sites usually offer deals on airfare for holidays and other events throughout the year. But if the 3-Day walk you want to participate in is taking place outside those time frames, it can be difficult to find affordable fares. The best solution in this case is to find an online discount code. For example, a Travelocity promo code or Orbitz promo codes can save you specific dollar amounts or percentages off your airfare to the walk location. Be sure to do a little searching before you give up on attending because of budget constraints.

Photo by Leah Jones

Save Up

Walking 60 miles over three days is quite a challenge for anyone, even those in the best of shape. You need time to train before taking on the 3-Day, so if you’re not quite ready either financially or physically, start planning for 2012 now.

Next year, the walk will again be held in 14 U.S. cities starting in July, from Boston to San Francisco, Chicago to Dallas/Fort Worth. Choose the city where you want to participate now, and start saving money to cover your travel expenses. This will also give you plenty of time to work up to being able to walk 20 miles a day, not to mention more time to raise money for the event, and get well beyond the minimum required. Saving and waiting can be challenging themselves, but you’ll gain a much greater sense of satisfaction if you’re able to finish the event without injury, and if you’re able to raise more money for such an important cause.

Everyone’s lives are touched by cancer at some point. It may be a family member, a close friend, a coworker, or a friend of a friend. It may even be you. Consider doing something to support finding a cure, whether it’s the 3-Day walk, or any local event near you.

Rebekah K., founder of The Trampled Rose recently contacted us about the struggles of women in Ethiopia suffering from obstetric fistula. We are so moved by how something as simple as a menstrual cup could completely change a woman’s life that we had to share the story with everyone. Read her story below.

I am the founder of the Trampled Rose, Inc.  We work in Ethiopia helping those women who have suffered from Obstetric Fistula learn to read and write, find a way to earn money to make them valued members of their societies, and give them hope for the future.

Obstetric Fistula most often occurs in  women who were married as young as five years old.  They then become pregnant in their early cycles.  Because of their small physical structure and the lack of medical assistance they often are in prolonged labor for many days.  Their baby dies and as the fetus presses on the bladder and/or rectum it causes a hole.  the women then leak urine and/or feces for the rest of their lives.  Some are curable with surgery but many are not.

Their societies most often reject them and believe that their condition is caused by a curse from God.  We began using your Moon Cups with our incurable women a few months ago.  It stopped the leaking!!

One woman in particular began sobbing as she rode on a public bus for the first time in ten years.  She told us that she was never allowed to ride after her Fistula because the urine leaked uncontrollably and the other passengers threw her off.

I know it is difficult for us to imagine such a thing but women all over the world are suffering.  Our dream is to take back many of the cups and bring at least some relief to the women that need our help.

Thank you for your part.

Rebekah Kiser
Founder
Trampled Rose, Inc.
www.trampledrose.org

SheBop is a local, woman-owned adult boutique here in Portland that focuses on educating and creating a safe, fun environment for people of all genders and orientations. We love them for their unwavering dedication to healthy & safe sexuality and women’s rights, and their exceptional knowledge. Read on to discover why the PC muscles are important and how to strengthen them!

Of all the muscles that comprise the pelvic floor, the pubococcygeus muscles are probably the most famous. The pubococcygeus muscles (more well-known as the PC muscles) run from the pubic bone to the tailbone, and form a sort of figure eight around the genitals. All people have PC muscles, and these muscles are instrumental in sexual response — in fact, they involuntarily contract during orgasm, and help to propel ejaculate.

In the forties, a gynecologist named Dr. Arnold Kegel developed the idea of exercising the PC muscles, and the concept of kegel exercises was born. Although Kegel was primarily focused on treating urinary incontinence, one of his papers did mention off-handedly that “sexual appreciation can be increased by restoring function of the pubococcygeus.” Indeed, kegel exercises are now largely associated with sexuality, and for good reason — doing them regularly has many sexual benefits.

Kegel exercise generally consists of voluntarily and repetitively contracting and relaxing the PC muscles. Many associate kegel exercise with a tighter vagina, but that is just one perk of toned PC muscles. Regular kegel exercise can have a variety of pleasurable effects, such as heightened sexual sensitivity, stronger orgasms, and greater response to G-spot stimulation. The more the PC muscles are toned, the more they can relax, so kegels are great for those wanting to have anal sex, or for anyone experiencing difficulty with penetration. With kegel practice and repetition, some female-bodied people can even learn to ejaculate/squirt.

For male-bodied people, toned PC muscles can result in improved ejaculatory control, somewhat firmer erections, and a shorter refractory period (the span of time between ejaculations).

Kegel excercises can be extremely helpful during pregnancy and after birth as well. Kegels are well-known for facilitating excellent bladder control, so they can ease problems with urinary incontinence. Strengthened PC muscles can also prepare the pelvic floor for childbirth, and may help prevent tearing and episiotomy. After birth, regular exercise of the PC muscles can accelerate postpartum healing, restoring tightness and muscle tone in the vagina.

Read the rest of this entry and learn more about toning your kegel muscles on the SheBop blog!

Leslie of Cycle Technologies joins us for a guest post with answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about CycleBeads. We love this all-natural family planning method, and hope you’ll consider giving CycleBeads a try!

What are CycleBeads? When were they invented?

CycleBeads (www.CycleBeads.com) is a visual tool that helps a woman plan or prevent pregnancy naturally. Specifically, CycleBeads is a color-coded string of beads that represents the days of a woman’s menstrual cycle. It helps a woman track her cycle and know if she is on a day when pregnancy is likely or not. CycleBeads and the family planning method on which it is based, the Standard Days Method , were invented by the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University (irh.org). The Institute tested the Standard Days Method using CycleBeads in large-scale clinical trials and found CycleBeads to be more than 95% effective at preventing pregnancy and very easy to use.

My company, Cycle Technologies, launched CycleBeads in late 2002 once the efficacy results were published.

How do you use CycleBeads?

A nice thing about CycleBeads is that it is very visual. In fact it might be easier to just show you a picture than to try and explain it in detail.

As you can see it’s a lot of information when you try to explain it someone. I think that’s one of the reasons why CycleBeads is such a cool tool – it provides a wealth of information in a very simple way so you don’t have to keep track of a lot of numbers or do any calculations.

I should note that to use CycleBeads a woman’s cycles must be between 26 and 32 days long. This is the one medical criteria for using this family planning option. Most women’s cycles are in this range, but it’s important to know this before using CycleBeads especially if you are using them to prevent pregnancy. Of course, if you are unsure if your cycles are in this range, CycleBeads can also be used to help you figure this out.

Why would someone choose to use CycleBeads?

Most women tell us that they choose to use CycleBeads because they don’t like the side effects of hormonal contraception. A lot of women just like the simplicity of it. It’s a very intuitive family planning tool. It’s also useful both to plan and prevent pregnancy so many women like to use it as birth control and then switch over to using it to help them get pregnant when the time comes. Most importantly is the fact that it’s a natural family planning method that is highly effective. CycleBeads is more than 95% effective at preventing pregnancy which puts it on par with or better than other user-directed family planning options such as condoms in terms of effectiveness.

What are the benefits of using CycleBeads?

Well the primary benefit is that it’s an easy way to use an effective natural family planning method. As a natural family planning method there are no side effects, it helps a woman get in touch with her body, and it’s inexpensive. And since it’s easy, it means a woman will actually use it correctly.

You recently launched iCycleBeads, a smartphone app. How does it differ from other fertility/period tracking apps on the market?

Right now iCycleBeads is available on iPhone and Android devices and we plan to make it available through other interactive technologies soon. iCycleBeads differs from other fertility/period tracking apps on the market in a number of ways.

While there are a number of fertility and period tracking apps on the market, there are only a handful of apps that help a woman plan AND prevent pregnancy by tracking her cycle. Most of the apps that claim to identify the fertile days based on just your period dates are unclear about their methodology and cannot be used to prevent pregnancy. iCycleBeads is the only app based on the Standard Days Method of family planning so it’s methodology is very clear and well researched; it has been designed to be used as birth control as well as to plan a pregnancy..

There are also apps that are based on FAM or the symptothermal method of family planning. These apps can be quite effective at planning and preventing pregnancy. However, they require a woman to track a lot of information about fertility signs such as cervical mucus and temperature. If a woman already knows how to use these methods and is comfortable doing so, these apps can be very useful. But for women not familiar with these methods, they can be challenging to use.

One feature of theiCycleBeads app that I also really like and differentiates it from a lot of apps is that it proactively sends you alerts when you are key days in your cycle. So even if a woman doesn’t open the app and check it every day, she’ll get a message letting her know when her fertile window starts, when it ends, and when a new cycle is likely to come. It also proactively alerts a woman if she has had a cycle out of range and reminds her to input her cycle data if she forgets.

Tell me about your efforts to make family planning tools accessible to women in developing countries.

We are really proud of the impact that CycleBeads has had in the developing world and we work hard to make this family planning tool available to all kinds of health programs in developing countries at an extremely low cost. CycleBeads is being used in many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia and has been made available in over 50 countries total.

CycleBeads is a good fit for developing countries because it addresses a lot of issues. Issues that are particularly acute in developing countries which CycleBeads help address include:

1) concerns about side effects – many women in developing countries, like women in the US, are concerned about side effects and unwilling to use a family planning method that they perceive might cause health concerns,

2) costs – CycleBeads are low cost and can be used indefinitely – one study showed that CycleBeads is the most economical family planning option for programs to offer, and given that they are one time purchase, we know that they are extremely economical to the end user,

3 ) ease of use – because CycleBeads is visual and intuitive, it can be used by women who have very little education,

4) access – CycleBeads can be offered in a variety of settings such as retailers and through local programs; it doesn’t require a highly skilled health practitioner to offer it. Also, unlike most other family planning options, it doesn’t require re-supply, break down over time, or need special storage so it’s easy for a program to keep them in stock and make them available. And since a woman only needs to learn about it one time, she doesn’t need to constantly go back to her health provider for refills.

5) couple communication – in many developing countries, couples may not be able to talk openly with each other about family planning or a woman’s cycle. CycleBeads have been shown to be a great tool for helping couples communicate.

We also donate a portion of proceeds to programs that help expand women’s family planning options and to empowerment programs for women.

We first met Helen in her guest post about the Female Hygiene program she’s working on in Kenya as part of her Peace Corps Volunteer position. Below is an update on how the project is going!

Hello GladRags readers! We’ve started our sanitary pads educational program this week here in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. We started with a small group of ten girls from Omiro Mixed Secondary School. This school was priority number one due to the girl’s daily interactions with the opposite sex (some schools in our location are female only). The schools has 110 females enrolled, so we are planning on 4 more groups of 25 girls before the term ends in August.

We discussed the high cost of disposable pads and then I explained about the donations made so they could have the materials to make their own re-usable pads, they are very grateful. Here is an online album that I will update regularly with photos of the project: https://picasaweb.google.com/mcguirkhelen/FemaleHygeine . The girls were so excited to work on this project and began asking many questions relevant to the subject. More to come soon, as the project is quickly gaining momentum!

Helen

Want to help other women in Africa gain access to reusable pads? Click here to learn how you can donate GladRags to women and girls in Zimbabwe!

Rebecca H., a Community Advisor at the University of Stevens Point, recently led a program for her female residents on eco-friendly menstrual products. We think she was super brave to organize and lead this program, and we hope she’ll inspire you to do the same! Here’s her story:

I had my program on green feminine products last night at seven, and it went over really well. I spent the first half talking about the benefits of reusable cloth pads and talking about a few different brands that differ slightly in their construction and absorption.

I know a lot of my residents use tampons and are also extremely active in the outdoors, so I spent the next half of the program telling the girls about menstrual cups and how convenient they can be because you don’t have to worry if you packed enough tampons for your trip and there is no waste to pack out when camping.

I was a bit nervous going into the program because I didn’t know how my residents would react, but they asked tons of questions and were very responsive. I had given my friend John who is a nursing major a booklet to be funny and he ended up reading it all. Before the program HE was telling ME all the benefits and money you can save from using cloth pads. A lot of people know John and love him, so he actually sat in during the program and when I was done talking, he filled in areas I forgot about! The girls thought it was great to see a guy their age actually taking an interest in their health.

I bought some organic tampons and a few cloth pads at our local Co-Op and had a raffle drawing at the end for all who attended. The girls who won were really excited to try cloth pads. Two of the girls even asked me if I would please do the program again next year! It was great and I am so glad it went over well.

I’m in China, where no one leaves home without their own small package of toilet paper because it is not supplied in public toilets anywhere, and where most of the toilets are the hole-in-the-floor Asian kind. I’m also in my 60s, so squatting to go is not something I can do very well. That’s where my GladRags pads come into play. Just like the Chinese don’t leave home without their toilet paper, I never leave home without wearing my GladRag to keep leaks from ruining my long days teaching and standing on my feet, and to keep me from having to run up and down five flights of stairs (no elevators in my school) between the ten-minute class breaks. GladRags are indispensible to my life here in China!

Thanks to Linda C. for sharing her GladRags story! Send us yours at orders@gladrags.com.

Hello fellow bloggers of GladRags! I’m a US Peace Corps Public Health Volunteer serving in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. My home is a small village on the Kisii-Kisumu road called Mikai. After two months of in-country training I was partnered with a small community based organization called Kakelo Based Integrated Support Project. We focus on supporting those community members affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including those living positive, widows, orphans, and caretakers of these people. I love working with my organization, and feel blessed everyday that I’ve been given this wonderful opportunity.

Upon arriving at my site 9 months ago I was questioned by members with an urgent need for our girls to stay in school. We immediately identified the main reasons why girls drop out of school, menstruation being one and early pregnancy being another, and set forth to correct it. We found that girls miss an average of five days of school per month due to menstruation, and early pregnancy is a shocking epidemic.

The Female Hygiene program consists of teaching each in-school girl at menstruation age in our Kakelo Location how to easily and cheaply make her own re-useable sanitary pads using locally available materials. We will also supplement each activity with correct information about how to track menstruation, what is physically happening to a woman’s body during puberty, and healthy sexual education. The sustainable and most important aspect of this project is I’ll be working with female community health workers who will help me develop the educational aspect and insure the continuance of the program well after my service is over.

The project has recently received all the donations needed to start, which is a wonderful surprise for everyone at my organization! Our next step is to buy the materials and I’ll start teaching the women I’m working with how to make the pads. We’ll then develop the education program together and start visiting schools one at a time, with groups of 10 girls at a time. Even though the project has been fully funded we still want the word to get out that hundreds of thousands of girls don’t have the proper hygiene and sexual health education to keep themselves safe from early pregnancy and continue their education. We want to thank GladRags and the readers of this blog for listening to our story. I’ll be sending updates as the project starts to keep everyone informed, so please stay tuned!

Asanteni sana tena,

Helen McGuirk

Blog: http://mcguirkhelen.blogspot.com/

Web Album: https://picasaweb.google.com/mcguirkhelen/Kenya#

Want to help other women in Africa gain access to reusable pads? Click here to learn how you can donate GladRags to women and girls in Uganda!

Okay, so maybe we’re not dummies. After all, how many of us remember what we learned in 6th grade health class. Sure, they separated the boys from the girls (was that really such a great idea?) but there was still all that giggling. And the embarrassment! And that sweating, droning health teacher who acted as though she held all the secrets to the mysteries of our bodies. As if we could let on that she really did know more than us…

At any rate, now we are all adults, and this calls for a refresher. Some of you are old pros. Some have just learned that the vagina (where menstrual flow and babies come from, also the organ/muscle that is utilized in sexual intercourse) is different from the urethra (the hole between the vagina and the clitoris, where urine exits the body). That’s all okay. After all, this doesn’t often come up in polite conversation. Especially the part about how the clitoris is analogous to the head of a man’s penis and is responsible for 70% of women’s orgasms. But moving right along…
One of my services is to explain to young women about their bodies and how they grow and change as we get older. It’s a heavy subject, so I try to make it fun and lively, which is why I bring the pear…and the walnuts.

Picture an upside-down pear. That little, green fruit filled with succulent juices. Yum. This is your uterus. Or at least the approximate size and shape of your uterus. Now the uterus is rounded on the top and narrow on the bottom, just like the pear. That narrow part of the pear is much like your cervix. About where the stem on the pear would be is where one would find the cervical os. It’s pronounced “ahsss,” which is sort of how a British English speaker might pronounce “ass” if they weren’t so busy saying “arse” all the time. Ug, I’m reverting to 6th grade humor again.

To continue, at the “top” of the upside-down pear (or the widest part of the pear) we would find the fallopian tubes. One on each side and both completely connected to the uterus. The fallopian tubes, by the way, are about the width of a strand of hair. So now you’ve got your upside-down pear with two strands of hair sticking out of it. Good. We’re making progress.

Now here is where the walnuts come in. You see, the walnuts are the ovaries. Well at least they are about the same size and shape as your ovaries. And you have two of those also. One on each side, slightly below where the hair ends. Yes, unlike what most textbooks seem to demonstrate, the fallopian tubes are NOT also connected to your ovaries. Only the uterus. Those ovaries are filled with millions of tiny eggs. These eggs were in your body before you were even born. All little baby girls (barring unusual circumstance) are born with all of their eggs already inside their ovaries. Each egg is about the size of a grain of sand.

So now that we’ve got the reproductive system down, how do we end up with a period?

Since women’s body rhythm’s are cycular, it’s impossible to have a beginning and end, since the cycle continually perpetuates itself, but for our purposes (and because we need to start the explanation) let’s begin with day 1 of the cycle, which is the first day of bright, red menstrual flow. Notice I am not using the term “bleeding.” Bleeding is just a part of the menstrual flow, which also involves tissue and other components of the endometrium. So we begin bleeding with a bright, red menstrual flow (not spotting). A woman might even notice feeling a bit colder around this time. This is because her temperature is dropping. It’s a slight drop, but a drop nonetheless. And it will not come back up into the same higher range until after the woman has ovulated. This is very important when trying to understand our fertility and why you may have heard about women taking their temperatures when trying to conceive (TTC).

Once the menstrual flow begins (and even in the few days leading up to this event), the pituitary gland (located in the base of the brain…that’s quite a distance from the vagina!) has begun secreting a hormone called FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). This hormone is…you guessed it…causing the eggs in your ovaries to become mature. This process of maturity actually causes a cyst to form within the ovary and then a race begins. The many cysts, or follicles, begin to grow until at least one begins to actually press out of the ovary, so that, in western medicine, it is visible on an ultrasound. This is usually the point where a doctor trained in the western medical model will begin to speak about “cysts on the ovaries” or “poly cystic ovarian syndrome/disease” (PCOS). But, having follicles on the ovaries is the keynote sign of a normal, healthy, functioning reproductive system. At least at this point in the cycle. At any rate, as these cyst/follicles are growing right up and out of the ovary, the body is also releasing another hormone called LH (luteinizing hormone) which further assists in “ripening” the follicles.

Now this is the cool part that I never really “got” until I had deeply studied the reproductive system, but both the estrogen and, later, the progesterone in a woman’s cycle actually comes from these follicles, albeit at different stages of their “lifetime.”

It is when these follicles are maturing that they begin secreting estrogen into the woman’s body. At this point, a whole host of biofeedback occurrences take place, which are not completely understood by modern science, but basically, one follicle begins to become dominate while the other ripening follicles begin to recede and deteriorate back within the ovary. Sometimes more than one follicle continues to develop and this would cause the ovulation of multiple eggs, potentially leading to fraternal twins, triplets, or more, should the woman become pregnant. Of course, this is also what is being done to the body when Clomid and injectibles are being used to hyper-stimulate the ovaries.

The estrogen released by these follicles are causing our fertility signs to materialize. (These are the signs I will teach you how to read at our first appointment, or you can get a head start by reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health ) It is also causing the lining of the inside of the uterus to grow, so that it is blood rich and ready to support and nourish a forthcoming embryo.

Eventually, a follicle becomes fully grown and the body reaches an “estrogen threshold.” At this point the pituitary gland signals a surge of first LH and then FSH, which causes the body to ovulate.
Now what is ovulation? Well, picture a volcano erupting. That is exactly what it looks like. The egg just shoots right out of the ovarian wall right out of it’s fluid filled cyst/follicle. This fluid now becomes the corpus luteum and begins producing progesterone! It is here that the temperatures of the woman rise. Some actually noticeably feel warmer at this time in their cycle.

But wait! We now have an egg floating around freely in the pelvic cavity. Thankfully the hairs on the end of the fallopian tubes are doing their job of drawing the egg into the tubes where it must already have a sperm waiting in the outer 1/3rd of the tube to fertilize it, if we are to have a live, healthy baby. (I, personally, think this is the biggest miracle of the entire process.)

Sperm, meet egg. Egg, meet sperm. Sperm penetrates the egg, and the resulting embryo begins to divide as it continues in it’s travels down the fallopian tube and into the uterus where the cushy, plush uterine lining (aka, the endometrium) is waiting to provide it’s home. Embryo enters uterus and burrows itself into the endometrium and begins to secrete HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) causing the corpus luteum to extend their lives of progesterone production. Or there is no growing baby. In which case the natural life of the corpus luteum comes to an end, signaling the all time cycular low of both estrogen and progesterone and causing the woman to have a “period.”

This is where the endometrium sheds off of the walls of the interior uterus and slides down into the cervix and through the cervical os, which is the little hole leading from the cervix into the vagina. Down the endometrium goes, through the vagina and exiting the body in the form of a menstrual flow.

Menstruation for Dummies was originally published on the Wise Woman Fertility blog.

J. Rivkah Asoulin is a self taught “Medicine Woman” who began her journey as a healer over 15 years ago. It was at that time that, despite years of medical treatment with specialists representing various facets of the western medical model, she alone was able to diagnose and treat her women’s health issues with success. J. Rivkah feels that it is each woman’s right to know her own body and each woman’s responsibility to become an empowered consumer and to take an active role in her healing.

Connect with J. Rivkah Asoulin at the Wise Woman Fertility website or Facebook page.

It seems we’re all striving for simple, frugal living these days. And we’re always looking for ways to save time and money, decrease our stress, and protect our health.

We all know we can recycle, drink tap water and stop using chemical cleaning products Those are the basics. But what about the feminine issues that we often have a hard time making changes with; the things we put off because it seems like a hassle or too expensive?

Just like switching to cloth or reusable feminine products took a few minor adjustments, it can be just as easy to adopt these following simple, frugal living ideas, as well:

Hair Care

Normal shampoo and hair care products are full of chemicals and additives we can’t even name, many of which have been linked to cancers and various other health or environmental problems. But organic shampoo can be expensive. And the resources involved in producing, packaging, and shipping organic shampoo is still extensive.

The solution is actually very simple. First, women can adopt an easy-to-manage cut or style that requires fewer or no products. Next, we can transition into washing our hair less often – remember the days when women only washed once a week? It worked because they weren’t stripping their hair of its natural oils, which causes the scalp to produce even more. This also keeps the scalp and hair follicles healthier, just as nature intended.

And we can switch out our regular products for simple, natural products instead. Many women have great success with “no poo” – washing with water only, or water and baking soda. Others use small amounts of liquid castile soap (at about 1-2 drops per ounce of water a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s will last ages). And try rinsing with watered-down apple cider vinegar (approx. 2 parts water to 1 part ACV) as an alternative to conditioner.

Lastly, when you must use products opt for those organic versions but use them in smaller amounts.

Skin Care

This is perhaps the easiest area to adopt simple, frugal living practices. Skin care should not be a big messy affair! There are four essentials to healthy skin: a healthy lifestyle with well-managed stress and plenty of sleep, a healthy diet full of lots of fresh fruits and veggies and plenty of water, gentle cleansing and gentle moisturizing as necessary.

My favorite product for moisturizing: Coconut oil! It’s rich in the same vitamins and minerals found in expensive wrinkle creams, is well-absorbed by your skin, and is even reported to help with things like age spots and healing. And it smells good! Use organic virgin coconut oil in small amounts under your makeup or before bed at night.

And hands-down the best thing to use to clean your skin is warm water and a wash cloth. Gentle washing with a cloth increases circulation and removes dirt and excess oil. If you feel it’s necessary, baking soda is a fantastic way to gently exfoliate and leave your skin feeling clean and fresh. As for removing eye makeup, use the same organic virgin coconut oil described above to remove makeup and moisturize around the eyes.

Natural Deodorant

The ingredients in conventional antiperspirants are often called into question, and rightfully so. But least often spoken of is whether it’s a good idea to stop our body from sweating in the first place; it is after all a very important way to eliminate toxins from our lymphatic system and being that those lymph nodes are so close to our breast tissue, quite possibly putting us at risk for cancer.

Whenever possible (at least once a week), skip the antiperspirant and allow your body to do its job. If you don’t sweat often or much, or you’re going to be in a cooler climate (such as during winter or in an air conditioned office) choose a natural deodorant to mask odors instead. Freshening up throughout the day or using cloth shirt guards for excess sweat is also an option.

And when an antiperspirant is a must, choose one that uses mineral salts or alum instead of one that lists any form of “aluminum.” And especially avoid conventional aluminum-based antiperspirants after shaving, as small unnoticeable nicks may allow more chemicals into the bloodstream than normal.

Natural Fertility

This topic is a biggie, but probably most important. Birth control pills have been linked to breast, ovarian and uterine cancer, stroke, heart disease, and so much more. There is also the dangerous affect of synthetic hormones making their way into the water supply simply by flushing the toilet.

Unfortunately the topic is way to big to cover in a few paragraphs. I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of the book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health. Knowledge and awareness are important parts of this area of simple, frugal living.

Feminine Products

And you ladies already have this covered, right? Choosing non-disposable feminine products, such as GladRags or the Moon Cup, supports your simple, frugal living efforts by reducing your waste and saving you money. And by avoiding synthetic and dangerous products and ingredients you’ll be decreasing your risk of infections and allergic reactions.

Of course all of this is just the beginning. If you’re interested in more ideas, click here for additional ways to incorporate simple, frugal living ideas into your life.

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Tara Wagner writes SustainableBabySteps.com, an online resource for people wishing to go green one step at a time. Visit the site for ideas and articles for every area of your life and subscribe to Going Green for updates and additional information and inspiration on simple, frugal living.