THE CLAY, MILLENNIAL MEDICINAL EARTH

An excellent product that helps to reestablish the general balance and to maintain the skin young. Due to their cosmetic properties help to eliminate toxins and to purify the skin.

What laboratory could claim the paternity of an usable remedy, at the same time in the treatment of the sinusitis, otitis, ulcer or the abscesses that become so effective in a fracture consolidation as to invigotate a faulty spinal column, to purify the skin or to limit the extension of a feverish attack, allowing the organism to defend himself better?.

The use of the clay goes back to the humanity's beginnings. Old documents, some of them millennary, before our era, manifest that the Egyptian doctors of the time already used this medicinal earth against the inflammations and they applied the Nile hot mires to treat rheumatic deformations.

Due to their antiseptic properties, the embalmers applied it for the mummification of the bodies. First they macerated the corpse during 70 days in a salt bath, after having retired the bowels and the brain. Then impregnated the corpse with an special clay and antiseptic oils and drapped with fine cloth bands.

Along the centuries, Avicena, Dioscórides, Physician, among other, also praised the clay in therapy. In Greece, the famous Hipócrates didn't scorn it as remedy, either to cure or to alleviate the pain. Even Plinio "the old" dedicated a chapter of their work The Natural History to this matter.

It was their use by the celebrated Abbot Sebastián Kneipp who, in the XIX century, after having applied clay on animals, particularly horses suffering foot-and-mounth desease, he used the clay in human therapy with a lot of wisdom. In the face of the obtained successes, using "some water, some earth and some grasses" Kneipp dedicated its life to alleviate and to cure the human beings. In Europe, he had faithful followers, among the most outstanding was Luis Khüne, Adolfo Just, Julious Stumpf in Germany and Dextreit, in France.

At the moment, the preventions against the clay use are vanishing little by little and the number of those that still ignore it falls day by day. The clay is today's remedy, of tomorrow and for ever, as old as the world, very well-known by the animals and equally beneficial for the vegetables and with a future assured as cosmetic product.

One can not speak of big modern remedies without having appreciated this natural benefit before, always at the dissposal of who makes an effort to discover it and to admit their proven effectiveness and, also, to experience it.

IN COSMETIC

From the antiquity it has been one of the products more used due to their cosmetic properties. The clay commercialized for therapeutic and cosmetic use is extracted from non polluted land and then exposed outdoors to be dried and "revitalized" in contact with the sun.

After have been purified and milled, is packed and commercialized in herboristerías and dietetic shops. There are also capsules, for sale in pharmacies which ingested before the meals, they help to eliminate the gases consequence of the digestion. The milled clay, once used has to be discarded.

The powdered clay can be red, brown, white, rose, green, blue, gray and quarter note. The colors are determined by the chemical characteristics of the extraction land. The clay for healing and cosmetics aims is green, it is the most active and "young", in which the evolutional condition of the mineral is less advanced and it is the most suitable to be ingested: it contains bivalent iron, the only form of this mineral that can be absorb by the intestine. The trivalent iron of the red clay is not absorbible and, therefore, not profitable for the human body.

EXTERNAL USE

Clay mask. ? It is prepared in a wooden or glass recipient. Spill some spoonfuls of milled green clay and some water and mixe until getting a creamy compound. Then extends it on the face allowing to rest until it has dried. Clean it with lukewarm water; the skin will appear more soft, flat and uniform, since the clay eliminates the superficial layer of dead cells of the skin and it provides it with minerals salts and oligoelementos.

According to the skin type, it is possible to add other ingredients; with the natural yogurt, the mask attenuates the wrinkles; with juice of carrots it prolongs the suntanning ; and with the egg yolk and the cucumber juice, it is moisturizing and nutritious.

Clay can be very effective as cosmetic product, because it purifies the skin, eliminates the superficial layer of dead cells and it stimulates the regeneration of the cells.

Bath. - In a bathtub full of water to add half kilo of milled green clay, thick or fine. Mix it and become inmersed. During the bath is recommended to move the legs and arms to mantain the clay in suspension in the water. After 15 to 20 minutes, leave the bathtub and dry off without clarifying. The Baths should be done at least 2 or 3 times a week, during a season.

The bath is particularly useful to purify the skin, to give him a flat and uniform aspect and, mainly, to relax and to recharge positive energy. It also attenuates the hydric retention and, therefore, it helps the tissues to get rid of the accumulated toxins.

IN AESTHETICS

The clay is composed mainly of aluminum silicates mixed with iron oxide, calcic carbonate and magnesium. The aluminum silicate favours the tissue regeneration and due to this reason is used to improve the scaring, allow to close the wounds and ulcers more quickly. In the same way that acts as filter in the watery means, when enters in contact with the blood it acts as filter that purifies it.

The clay has a very important interest in the aesthetic treatments where their particular properties get surprising results.

Depurative action in the tissues:

For their high content in minerals, he/she helps to absorb the edema of the fatty fabric, cellulitis generator. Power the effect of drainage lymphatic manual.

Exfoliative action:

Due to their exfoliative action on the horny layer, it favours the absorption of the cosmetic products that will be applied later on.

Purify the skin from sludges accumulated in the surface, reoxigena, strengthens and normalizes its texture.

Clearing action:

Their components degrade the melanina molecules and hemoglobin that can favor the appearance of stains. It is an important help in the reabsorption of the hematomas and it clarifies the hipercrómicas stains due to the action of the sodium, the potassium and the sulfur that it contains.

Action aesthetics:

Revitalizing the biological processes, improves the aspect of the skin, it stimulates the blood circulation, it causes an ionizing effect, it eliminates the toxins of the epidermis, fortifies the tissues and attenuates the depth of the wrinkles.

In the cases of acne, we obtain advantaje of the microbial action of the clay and their astringent power.

The phenomenon of cellular hiperoxidation fight against the free radicals and consequently, acts as anti-aging product.

The clays in Cosmetic are employees due to their remineralizing, slimming, revitalizing and absorbent powers. We have to bear in mind that the silicon, is a mineral that restructures the conjunctive tissues and it fights particularly against the orange skin, the fibrosis and the sclerosis of fatty tissues.

The clay is, also, a very versatile remedy. Even though to achieve a successful cure cure, it is necessary to lean on in other natural means as the exercise, sunbaths, hydrotherapy, lactic-vegetarian feeding, among others. The cure by the clay is one of the most powerful means to recover the health, although it is not very habitual its use, mainly by ignorance.

We know that one of the main causes of all illness is the unnatural feeding that for different causes fatigue the organism and produces toxins. Therefore It is important, the cleaning of the body from all these these sludges through natural means as the clay, the natural baths, the fruits cure, the exercise, massage, grasses.

Obviouslly, to seek to cure employing exclusively clay should be non reasonable. Its use as medicament rise up again favoured by the well educated people, thirsty of soft and effective therapies.

MAYTE SUAREZ SANTOS.
Journalist specialized in Medicine