Food: Drink Yo Tea! Kampai to Skin and Overall Health

I LOVE TEA.

It is calming, steadfast and comforting. This is a post about all my adventures in drinking.

I have been drinking cups and cups of tea in different types and tea sets and situations. You can drink commercialized, pre-packaged or coffeeshop-prepared tea all you want but nothing really beats boiling water and steeping the tea bags yourself.

Sure, there are benefits of drinking tea, we all know that somehow these little packets do a lot of good to the body, but few know that it is excellent for the SKIN. You wouldn't mind a good boost in elasticity and firmness to your skin, would you? But more than that, there is a longer list of benefits when you drink tea everyday!

Tea with Le Kareshi

Aside from the benefits of tea, one of my favorite things is completing the tea prep. Above is my matching tea set. I use this on weekends or when I have people to have tea with. It is a 6-piece pot and cup flowery, spring-love thing and I adore it very much.The porcelain is perfect to keep the liquid scalding and it is very good with light brews!

Excerpts of "Tea Benefits" from TeaMuse.com

Aging
In a recent experiment carried out jointly by researchers from the US, Taiwan and Japan, mice which were fed tea displayed fewer signs of aging than mice that were fed water.

Bone Strength
Compared with nonhabitual tea drinkers, tea regulars had higher bone mineral densities, even after exercise and calcium-which strengthen bones-were taken into account. 

Cancer
A compound called EGCG, a powerful antioxidant in tea, inhibited an enzyme that cancer cells need in order to grow. The cancer cells that couldn't grow big enough to divide self-destructed.

Cholesterol
Levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol dropped 10 percent among the test subjects who drank tea. Vegetarian Times, Jan 2003

Weight Loss
Recent evidence shows that in the battle of fat loss, green tea may be superior to plain caffeine. According to a new study, green tea appears to accelerate calorie burning - including fat calories. Researchers suggest compounds in green tea called flavonoids may change how the body uses a hormone called norepinephrine, which then speeds the rate calories are burned. Joe Weider's Muscle & Fitness, April 2000

Tea is certainly something, isn't it?! I feel so relaxed when I drink it, even when I drink it at night and I finish a pot for myself, I somehow sleep very well! Because I work two jobs, there are also those stressful days... To combat it with a flourish, I use my Giovanni Valentino set to drink my tea with!:

Berry Tea: A whole day when I was working on pretty much EVERYTHING.

Milk Tea: When I stayed up very late to finish some workload and I was terribly lonely...

The Valentino is a beautiful blue china with blue flowers with gold lining. Nothing really cheers me up when this little thing is filled with tea! It's SOOOO pretty. I feel prettier when I drink from this. It makes me feel like I'm a princess (well, clearly I'm not but the tea cup looks like it's used only for royalty!) or I'm a character in one of my favorite shows, Downton Abbey. :D

Finished some stressful work just in time for the last drop of Earl Grey! Winding down with books...

Chilled apple, Barquillos and weak Milk Tea for DINNER, foo'!

 Tea is the second most drunk liquid in the WHOLE PLANET EARTH. So you don't have to feel "Oh I drink tea, I'm such a hipster." Wrong! Hipster drink is warm ginger ale. Tea makes you belong to the world as millions of people drink it every minute. Even in sickness, tea makes you feel better faster!

Playing around with a Nendoroid Miku when I was sick

Some of my boxes of tea that I like: My favorite is Yellow Label (when I have a lot of things on my mind) and Earl Grey (when I need that certain sophistication and the feeling that I can take over the world)... Fruit-infused teas are usually only prepared as requested by others, but I like them also!

Yellow Label (Hirameki), White tea (Strawberry and Vanilla Infused), Earl Grey, Wild Berry Herbal

One of my good friends gave me a packet of pure love: Rotbusch Tee in Vanilla. HOLY CRAP IT WAS SOO GOOD. WHAT. But I can't find it anywhhhheeerrrreeeee....

Sometimes when I can't be at home to fix myself a pot, I rely in various booths and establishments for my daily cup!

good old Hirameki Cup

Yellow Tea!

Random cold tea... This was Oolong, I think

Obviously a fruit-infused type...

I usually drink my tea straight/plain except when I am deeply depressed that I need milk in it. Fresh milk from the carton seems good enough, it makes the tea smell like a freshly-washed pillow and you just want to sleep in it.

I'm glad that malls and shops are offering a wider variety of tea nowadays, and even people are into the Bubble Tea craze. Still, I'd rather prefer to fix my own, but the world is so on-the-go...

Are you drinking tea? Tell me your fave! Keep healthy!

BAD Review: Quick FX Eyelift Cream + Vaseline Lip Therapy

I have a silly nighttime routine. Every night after taking a quick bath---Because who goes to bed all gross from the dirty things that stuck to the body throughout the day? Well, you shouldn't!--- I tend to put something on, like a bit of cream to tone down a streak of bumps in the cheeks, lotions to sooth a drying patch of skin, etc, and all these products I use to take care and nourish my skin...

And the products below are NOT one of those!

Well I used to use them before I realized they did pretty much nothing and sometimes they feel like they are not even helping at all and they don't even feel good! Or smell good! Not even that?! What the gunk.

Here are the products I tried before but I hate now. Ugh. Good thing they weren't the most expensive things in the world.

Quick FX Eyelift Cream - A little packet I bought at Watsons for about P40.00, and this is why people who know things about products would tell you not depend always on cheap things. This product is testament to that: this is pretty much wonky.

At first I had the impression that this was pretty o.k. since it was light, seemed pretty moisturizing and though did not dry as well as I would like, I thought it was good enough as an eye cream...

What I didn't like about this:
I felt like it didn't do anything for me. I had droopy eyebags whenever I stay up too late consecutively, or have weird sleeping patterns when I wake up at 2AM for no apparent reason and I have trouble sleeping again. So when I use this whenever I KNOW I'm going to stay up late and in the succeeding days after it for good measure, I see virtually no 'lifting' of my eyebags at all. Not even at least a de-puffing for all its Ellagic Acid and Niacinamide powers. It also smelled horrible!!!! I dunno how them chemists achieved a good balance between the smell of being plasticky and fishy but believe me, they made this perfect... perfectly icky!

Vaseline Lip Therapy in Cherry - Another supposed night time application for me that I thought would be a nice addition. Costs about P70.00 in local drugstores.

This one I had actual high hopes for. I used this on my lips to soften my fish scales lips in time for tomorrow. Below is a normal swipe of the product I use. I distribute it as evenly as possible.

What I didn't like about this:
When I first used this I liked it because... well it was just what you would expect of petroleum jelly!!!! Nothing more, nothing less, although conveniently packed in a pretty little tube that costs more than when you buy the big tub of the original one. Even after some weeks of usage, I still had dry, flaky parts. Not really good, I had better find another lip creme.And because of my current routine, something as chemical as petroleum has no place in my drawer.

I don't know if you've used as crappy a product as this; All I have is the consolation that you can't always have what you like, and life is an ongoing process of trial and error.

Have a good weekend! :)
Thanks for reading!

Review: Eskinol Ageless Night Cream

Hello! I've just dropped in this little blog to continue my recent "responsible blogger streak" which I post (--what a miracle!) in a relatively more frequent manner (yes subjectivity disclaimer but let me have my way!)

Today I'm going to share to you a product that has been on my drawer for the past couple of months now. Specifically, it's been two months since I used this item and I am getting really good results! I would like to share to you this skincare that I think will become a staple in my night time routine (though it only has some limited use in my current skin care steps.)

What I have here is the ESKINOL Ageless Night Cream. What it promises: "Firms skin. Reduces lines and wrinkles. Repairs while you sleep." Like we haven't heard of that before. But as all things go, let's not overly depend on the product description too much.

Because as a user, I can tell you that this is the bomb. :D

Eskinol is a local product and therefore bear the burden of being a popular household-name brand yet remains a disregarded and looked-down product. This is because most people almost always carry the presumption that when it's local, it is LOKAL or inferior than its more high-end counterpart, or that people who use Eskinol are the 'can't-affords'. I won't comment much on that except to say that Eskinol has changed ship, bringing a bigger force and a prettier presence in the local skincare industry.

With its Ageless series, you can definitely see the improvements of the packaging and the streamlined and better aesthetic design on the bottle. During the testing period, I used to just buy the sachet versions of this one (Priced at about P20.00) but after liking it so much, I finally bought the big pot (About P200.00).

More information on the product box right below. Noting the ingredients is always the foremost thing you should do once you pickup a skincare product. It is purported to have "Peptide Plus and Soy Protein" to promote firmness in the skin and lessening of fine lines. In the ingredients list, I am glad to see Niacinamide, Hydrolized Soy Protein, Xanthan Gum, Allantonin, Soluble Collagen on the ingredients list.

Directions to use: Clean your face with soap and water (wiping off with wipes is not enough!) and apply a small amount to the face (or in my case, in the areas of the face where we usually get fine lines.)

Maybe not a lot of people my age would be totally into anti-aging, but the wave of products, advertisements, and even higher overall usage or product consumption are a good indication of rising interest. I personally think that the more we know about our options in skin care, the more it will help us balance on what we want, what we need and what is good for us.

The product itself has the consistency of a cream. It's not runny, but it isn't completely thick either. The best thing for me is that it's not the sticky kind, and it even has the gel kind of feel, but it spreads very, very easily on the face and leaves little to no film which is amazing.

Below I got a dollop to spread out on my hand:

Look ma, no oily film: It has a matte finish!

And from the time that I used this, about early February, I can see that somehow it has contributed to a smoother-looking face, ridding of the little bumps! I love that this is a preventive product, but when push comes to shove, it works in no time.

Eskinol as an addition to my nighttime routine:

I use this ONCE OR TWICE A WEEK. And only during Mondays and/or Fridays. I am just using this for preventive measures, I don't entirely have a lot of lines except for minor ones so it's not a very big deal. I mainly get a lot for my neck area because I have a bad habit of scrunching my neck downwards when I sleep. Lines form though temporarily, but if left alone, the lines can get nasty by becoming PERMANENT. Eskinol Ageless has definitely given me a good chance of fighting those nasty lines away if ever they seem to appear quite frequently.

I follow an entirely different skincare routine for night time now, in accordance to my desire to go natural/organic. So long as I don't have an organic skincare product replacement for my non-organic ones, I keep it. I don't see any inexpensive organic product to give me the same results I got from Eskinol Ageless, so in the meantime, it sits cozy on my shelf!

Thanks for reading!
Keep healthy today~