Ecco Bella - All Natural Organic Beauty

Review by Lisa VanWilliams

Ecco Bella translates to "Behold Beautiful", and Sally Malanga started the whole company because of her disgust with the use of animals for product testing.  She now has a full line of organic & cruelty free beauty products and a percentage of profits is donated towards non-profit agencies like: Friends of Animals, Primarily Primates, Mylestone Equine Rescue, Bringing Awareness to the Suffering of Animals, and Animal Place. The line is mostly vegan (a few items contain carmine), paraben free, gluten free, and they use Flowercolor which is earth minerals infused with flower wax so it's suppose to last longer on your skin. If your looking to check out some chemical free cosmetics, here's a great place to start.

They have a great palette of eyeshadows, lipsticks, smoothers, glosses, & pencils. They also have wonderful little black refillable compacts so you can mix and match color combo's. The products do not come in cases, but it would be a one time purchase (the cases are around $10 each). Ecco Bella also offers skin care products, body care, hair care, and parfums.

They sent me a few products to check out for myself. My pick of the bunch is the Natural Blush in Wild Rose ($15.95 case not included). A little goes a long way, and it lasts for hours. It comes in seven shades total if you need something lighter or darker. It's a strong color that goes on easily. Normally, I have to go over my cheeks a few times to get my desired look, but this worked in one swipe.

My next pick is the Flowercolor Lipstick ($19.95). We tried Latte which is a medium brown. It goes on smoothly with no feathering and it lasts a while. Total of 17 different colors to pick from whatever colors would look best on you.

The Natural Eyeshadows ($14.95) in Clay and Fawn are great neutral colors for any base or daytime look. I applied one coat on in the morning and it did not last very long. So, I applied some more on thicker around noontime, and it held out for the rest of the day. Great colors, just go heavy for longevity. It you like very natural, one coat would be fine.

Lastly, we tried the Flowercolor Mascara ($19.95) which is a lightweight mascara. It comes in brown or black. We tried the black. It's great at not clumping, it provides great length, and it lasts all day. I could not achieve much volume, but the length is there. I like this for daytime wear as I prefer a more dramatic volumized look at night. It has a dainty little brush and it's easy to apply to every lash (even in the nooks).

Ecco Bella is available several locations, and you can search the store locator to find the one nearest you here: http://www.eccobella.com/store-locator/

You can also order all their products directly from their website here: http://www.eccobella.com/

More Liver

It's time to celebrate your liver. It's a hard-working organ and it deserves some credit.

One of the liver's most important overall functions is maintaining nutrient homeostasis. It controls the blood level of a number of macro- and micronutrients, and attempts to keep them all at optimal levels.

Here's a list of some of the liver's functions I'm aware of:

• Buffers blood glucose by taking it up or releasing it when needed
• A major storage site for glycogen (a glucose polymer)
  
• Clears insulin from the blood
• Synthesizes triglycerides
• Secretes and absorbs lipoprotein particles ("cholesterol")
• Stores important vitamins: B12, folate, A, D, E, K (that's why it's so nutritious to eat!)
• Stores minerals: copper and iron
  
• Detoxifies the blood
• Produces ketone bodies when glucose is running low
• Secretes blood proteins
• Secretes bile
• Converts thyroid hormones
• Converts vitamin D (D3 --> 25(OH)D3)
  

The liver is an all-purpose metabolic powerhouse and storage depot. In the next post, I'll give you a recipe for it...

The Liver: Your Metabolic Gatekeeper

As I've been learning more about the different blood markers of metabolic dysfunction, something suddenly occurred to me. Most of them reflect liver function! Elevated fasting glucose, low HDL cholesterol, high LDL cholesterol, high triglycerides and high fasting insulin all reflect (at least in part) liver function. The liver is the "Grand Central Station" of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism, to quote Philip A. Wood from How Fat Works. It's also critical for insulin and glucose control, as I'll explain shortly. When we look at our blood lipid profile, fasting glucose, or insulin, what we're seeing is largely a snapshot of our liver function. Does no one talk about this or am I just late to the party here?!

I read a paper today from the lab of C. Ronald Kahn that really drove home the point. They created a liver-specific insulin receptor knockout (LIRKO) mouse, which is a model of severe insulin resistance in the liver. The mouse ends up developing severe whole-body insulin resistance, dramatically elevated post-meal insulin levels (20-fold!), impaired glucose tolerance, and elevated post-meal and fasting glucose. Keep in mind that this all resulted from nothing more than an insulin resistant liver.

LIRKO mice had elevated post-meal blood glucose due to the liver's unresponsiveness to insulin's command to take up sugar. Apparently the liver can dispose of one third of the glucose from a meal, turning it into glycogen and triglycerides. The elevated fasting glucose was caused by insulin not suppressing gluconeogenesis (glucose synthesis) by the liver. In other words, the liver has no way to know that there's already enough glucose in the blood so it keeps on pumping it out. This is highly relevant to diabetics because fasting hyperglycemia comes mostly from increased glucose output by the liver. This can be due to liver insulin resistance or insufficient insulin production by the pancreas.

One of the interesting things about LIRKO mice is their dramatically elevated insulin level. Their pancreases are enlarged and swollen with insulin. It's as if the pancreas is screaming at the body to pick up the slack and take up the post-meal glucose the liver isn't disposing of. The elevated insulin isn't just due to increased output by the pancreas, however. It's also due to decreased disposal by the liver. According to the paper, the liver is responsible for 75% of insulin clearance from the blood in mice. The hyperinsulinemia they observed was both due to increased secretion and decreased clearance. Interestingly, they noted no decline in beta cell (the cells that secrete insulin) function even under such a high load.

Something that's interesting to note about these mice is they have very low blood triglyceride. It makes sense since insulin is what tells the liver to produce it. Could this have something to do with their lack of beta cell dysfunction?

The really strange thing about LIRKO mice is that their blood glucose becomes more normal with age. Strange until you see the reason: their livers are degenerating so they can't keep up glucose production!

LIRKO mice reproduce many of the characteristics of type II diabetes, without degenerating completely into beta cell death. So insulin resistance in the liver appears to reproduce some elements of diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, but the full-blown disorders require other tissues as well. As a side note, this group also has a skeletal muscle-specific insulin receptor knockout which is basically normal. Interesting considering muscle tissue seems to be one of the first tissues to become insulin resistant during diabetes onset.

So if you want to end up like your good pal LIRKO, remember to drink high-fructose corn syrup with every meal! You'll have fatty liver and insulin resistance in no time!

I have a lot more to say about the liver, but I'll continue it in another post.