5 Reasons To Find a Replacement for Your Morning Coffee

It’s hard to see the harm in a simple cup of coffee. But how often do you get those caffeine jitters? Or even more telling, how often are you late to work because you feel like you can’t function without getting your morning latte?

These are signs that you have become reliant on getting your energy from caffeine, an addiction not taken seriously enough. Coffee addiction might seem minor compared to, say, alcoholism, but it can do slow, steady damage to your body over time.

Here are five of the major risks of caffeine, and some tips to free yourself from a caffeine addiction while still being able to get your boost of energy every morning.

1. Your Addiction

Humans love coffee because of and in spite of its side effects. Over time, our bodies begin to think that these side effects, including pounding heart, racing thoughts, and excessive urination are not only normal, but needed. Suddenly, you’re barely functioning without that daily caffeine rush.

Our nervous system and hormones become used to the torture inflicted on them, and the withdrawal can be rough. Your productivity should not suffer because you didn’t get your coffee fix. You shouldn’t have to question whether your sleeplessness, anxiety, or upset stomach is from too much coffee or a sign of a serious health concern.

But the more coffee you drink, the more of it you need to get the same results, and the more damage is done to your body.

2. Effects on Your Central Nervous System

Because caffeine is a stimulant drug, your cup of coffee has a direct effect on your nervous system. This impacts things like our mental health and our natural sleep cycles.

Not everyone reacts the same way to caffeine. Some people experience restlessness, nervousness, and agitation from caffeine, but endure these effects in the name of energy. Take your mental health seriously. If you feel anxious after taking in caffeine, you need to find an alternate source of energy.

Similarly, caffeine usage can seriously damage your sleep cycle. Taken late in the day, it can delay the onset of sleep and make it necessary to drink even more caffeine to wake up in the morning. But even drinking coffee in the morning can confuse the delicate circadian rhythms that govern sleep. If you struggle to fall or stay asleep, or if you suffer from restless sleep, caffeine could be  a culprit.

3. Your Hormones

Caffeine stays in the body a lot longer than you think, during which time it can wreak havoc on hormone levels. Hormone levels are very sensitive to what you eat and drink, including caffeine. People who have too much caffeine in their diet find they’re more susceptible to mood swings and sleep struggles caused by hormonal imbalance.

Pregnant women and women looking to become pregnant should take extra precaution, as studies have shown caffeine directly relating to miscarriages and birth abnormalities in their children due to these hormone changes. This is why a healthcare provider will often tell women to lessen their caffeine intake during pregnancy.

4. Your Coffee’s Best Friends, Sugar, Fat, and Chemicals

Caffeine often has an accomplice, which worsens your addiction, nervous system struggles, and hormone changes. Many people drink their coffee or otherwise take in their caffeine accompanied by unhealthful additives.

Whether you use sugar, cream, or other artificial additives, you aren't doing your body any favors. Starbucks and energy drinks are perfect examples of caffeine forms that are loaded with fake sweeteners, flavoring chemicals, and preservatives.

5. See our original post to learn how quickly you can overdose.

An Alternate, All-Natural Energy Boost

We recognize that not drinking coffee in the morning is an insane request for some people, but there are other ways to get that energy boost in the morning. Noni Fruit Leather is a caffeine-free substitute that provides a natural energy boost as a raw food.

Rather than being packed with chemicals and sugar, Noni Fruit Leather made from from organic noni pulp is full of antioxidants, beneficial enzymes, and minerals. As it boosts energy, it also reduces inflammation, regulates blood sugar levels, and relieves pain.

Shop Our Fruit Leather now to get your mornings off to a healthier start! And read this blog post for more tips to start your morning off with high energy, totally naturally.

How do you boost your energy in the morning without resorting to caffeine? Let us know in the comments! 

How We Boost Soil Fertility on Our Organic Farm

My wife Richele and I have been organic farmers for over 40 years, first in California, then here on Kauai. As you can imagine, in that time we’ve tried a lot of farming techniques, perfecting some and putting others aside.

Most important to us are the techniques to keep our soil fertile, healthy, and full of nutrients!

Why Does Soil Fertility Matter?

Contrary to today’s ethics of interchangeability, commoditization, and globalization, not all produce is created equal. The fruits of two apple trees, even of the same varietal, can have widely different levels of key nutrients, depending on the soil each tree was grown in.

We firmly believe that the reason our noni trees produce fruit 12 months a year, rather than the usual 10 months per year, is because we have taken such pains to keep the soil on our farm highly fertile.

The care we take shows up in our fruits as well. When we sent our Noni Fruit Leather to an independent lab, it was found to have 6,024 ORAC units per serving. ORAC units are used by the USDA to measure antioxidant content. For comparison, an average apple has barely 300-500 ORAC units.

Preserving the potency of noni fruit is one of our passions — we want our customers to get the maximum healing benefits per serving!

Soil Fertility in Trouble

America’s soil fertility has been on the decline for decades because, as a society, we’ve stopped prioritizing soil health. Modern industrial agriculture uses large amounts of synthetic fertilizer, which boosts soil fertility in the short term. Unfortunately, this disincentivizes farmers from doing the techniques that boost soil fertility in the long term.

These long-term cycles of soil fertility are ultimately the ones that allow nature to stay ahead of the damage done by farming. Ignoring them means that farmers are taking out more than they’re putting back in.

That leads to depletion of topsoil, reduced nutrient content of food grown in the soil, increased problems with weeds and pests, and many other concerns.

Techniques to Enrich Soil Fertility

On our family farm, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do all we can to preserve and contribute to the soil fertility on our land. You can do the same in your garden. Especially if you grow any fruits or vegetables, soil fertility can make a big difference to how your produce looks, tastes, and nourishes you body.

Here are some of the techniques we use on our farm to keep our soil a living, healthy entity. We hope you’ll borrow some to use yourself! They’re easier than you imagine to set up.

If you’d like to see any of these techniques in action, and happen to be planning a trip up to Kauai, we encourage you to come visit us for a free farm tour! Click here for more details.

Mulching

Mulching is probably the easiest way to enrich soil fertility. You’re basically composting in place, right around the plants. We do this around all our noni trees, and get great results.

• Maintains more constant soil temperature
• Provides habitat for insects, microbes, and other animals, including beneficial worms
• Keeps moisture from evaporating
• Returns nutrients to the soil

In essence, mulching imitates the natural cycle of leaves, wood, and other plant matter building up on the ground to cover the soil.

How to Get Started:

You can start mulching very easily by gathering your yard waste, including fallen leaves and grass clippings. You can also add wood chips, sawdust, and shredded newsprint. Once you have a good amount collected, you can cover your soil.

You can either put your mulch all around individual plants, or you can evenly cover your soil.

Worm Castings

We have tons of wild worms on our farm, but we also cultivate our own special vermiculture (worm composting) worms. We simply put the worms in a closed environment and let them break down food scraps and other compostables by digesting them.

The “castings” (aka worm poop) that the worms produce as waste is extremely rich in nutrients. We gather the castings and spread them around the farm. "Black gold," another name for these worm castings, makes an amazingly effective fertilizer!

How to Get Started:

You can get inexpensive kits to start your own vermicomposting operation, or you can make your own “worm hotel” out of plastic bins or other materials. Just Google search for “worm bins.”

Basically, all you have to do is give the worms a damp, dark place with lots of compostable materials for them to eat!

Interested in traditional composting? Click here for our original post.

No Till System

One final way we keep our soil fertile is by never tilling our land. Tilling means turning the soil over to make it easier for farmers to dig into, start new plants, and weed. Unfortunately, tilling has a lot of negative consequences:

• Disturbs and kills living things in the soil
• Releases carbon, oxygen, and water that were locked into the soil into the air
• Gives weed seeds the chance to germinate

We don’t till the soil on our farm, to preserve the fertility of the land. It’s harder work sometimes, but fertile soil isn’t that difficult to work with, even without tilling.

You can bring all of these practices into your own home garden and greatly improve the fertility of your soil. We’ve seen the rewards firsthand here on our farm, as we continue to grow healthy noni trees that produce the most nutritious noni fruits out there.

How do you preserve soil fertility in your garden? Let us know in the comments!

Fight Aging with the Skin-Tightening Power of Noni

Looking for an all-natural way to keep your skin youthful and healthy as you age? Noni, a unique tropical fruit that contains over 165 beneficial compounds, is the superfood you’ve been looking for.

Eating noni fruit, as well as applying our noni formulas to the skin, helps your body create, protect, and renew youthful skin. Noni works over time by improving collagen levels, providing abundant antioxidants, and providing the micronutrients your skin needs to create healthy new cells.

In particular, the skin-tightening power of noni has the ability to reduce the appearance of fine lines while restoring a more healthy, youthful skin texture.

Why Skin Loosens As We Age

To understand why noni is so effective at tightening skin, you first have to understand why skin tends to loosen as we get older.

Collagen and elastin are the two compounds that keep your skin firm. As we age, our bodies slow down production of collagen and elastin in the skin. Genetics plays a big role, but even larger factors are related to your lifestyle.

Lifestyle Factors Contributing to Skin Sagging

• Loss of muscle tone due to lack of exercise
• Sun damage over your lifetime
• Buildup of dead skin cells
• Dry skin
• Poor diet and nutrition

How Noni Can Help

Noni, whether taken internally in the form of Noni Fruit Leather, or applied topically in the form of Noni Lavender Lotion, combats every one of those lifestyle factors mentioned above.

Inactivity

A major cause of sagging skin is loss of muscle tone. This often happens as we age, our daily activity level decreases and motivating ourselves to exercise becomes a struggle. This energy loss unfortunately coincides with reduced ability to build and maintain muscle tone.

The first effect most people notice when they start taking Noni Fruit Leather every day is an energy and mood boost. Don’t underestimate the power of a little extra energy when you’re trying to motivate yourself to build muscle! Just taking a long, brisk walk each day can firm up your skin with muscles.

Sun Damage

Over time, sun exposure does all kinds of damage to the skin. A common effect is leathery, discolored skin, covered with fine lines. The skin often loosens as the sun speeds the breakdown of collagen, which you need for firm skin.

Noni combats the damage of the sun because it’s so high in antioxidants, which can neutralize the free radicals unleashed by the radiation of the sun. Noni Fruit Leather scores higher in ORAC units (units used to measure antioxidants) per serving than apples, berries, and even other superfoods like acai. Published research has shown our Noni Fruit Leather has the the highest antioxidant levels per serving size.

Buildup of Dead Skin Cells

As we age, our bodies get less efficient about shedding and sloughing off dead skin cells. This can cause skin to look dull, can increase the appearance of fine lines, and can even cause skin to sag. Most exfoliants are too harsh for aging skin, and may actually make the problem worse.

Luckily, Noni Lavender Lotion is an extremely gentle but effective exfoliant. All you have to do is rub the lotion into the skin until small brown balls form on the surface. Those are balls of dead skin, being shed away without any harsh chemicals.

Dry Skin

Noni combats dry skin with tons of emollient ingredients that soothe the skin, without the need for the oils and waxes other lotions rely on.

Diet & Nutrition

Despite the fact that Americans are eating more and more calories, we’re getting less and less nutrition in our food, including antioxidants and other phytonutrients we need to hold aging at bay. In particular, the decrease in raw food we eat may be contributing to this problem.

Noni is such a powerful superfood because it contains over 165 vital beneficial compounds, including enzymes that can only survive in raw food. Our Noni Fruit Leather is a raw food, containing all the benefits of raw noni fruit fresh from the tree.

Restores Collagen Production

In research presented in the 2005 Journal of Medicinal Food, Coreana Skin Science Research Center found that noni extract actually increased production of collagen. The compound responsible is a plant chemical in the anthraquinone group. It works by reducing an enzyme that breaks down skin collagen, which is made of protein strands. Noni also contains selenium, which preserves skin elasticity.

According to the researchers, “noni extract is a good candidate for use as a new anti-wrinkle agent due to its strong induction of biosynthetic activity of extracellular matrix components.”

How to Get Noni

Because anti-aging is such a lucrative industry, we aren''t surprised that skincare product companies and many others have tried to jump on the noni bandwagon once the evidence started coming in to support the traditional wisdom.

Many products advertised today do contain noni, but they use such miniscule portions that it barely has any effect. Plus, many products use noni juice which is less than half as potent as Noni Fruit Leather. Don’t expect to receive great anti-aging or beautifying results for your skin where noni is only a minor component.

Noni is best used as a raw whole food, even when it’s used topically. That’s why our Noni Fruit Leather is made of 100% raw organic noni pulp, and our lotions contain over 90% Noni Fruit Leather. No other noni products are as pure or as effective at stopping aging in its tracks.

Noni just doesn’t lend itself well to fermentation, pasteurization, and other processing. Much of the noni products sold today are devoid of potent phytochemical activity because how they were processed. But not Hawaiian Organic Noni’s products.

See the original post to learn how to apply Noni as an anti-aging face and hand treatment.

Has noni helped you tighten your skin and fight aging? Let us know in the comments!

How to Use Instant Noni Aloe BioBandage

You may not have heard of one of our most potent topical noni products, ideal for concentrated treatment of skin conditions, bruises, joint or muscle pain, and many other injuries. Our Instant Noni Aloe BioBandage formula is powerful and all-organic.

Keep it on hand to speed the healing of life’s inevitable aches and pains!

What Is a BioBandage?

A BioBandage is a thick paste, which is applied to a specific area of skin to protect it. As a BioBandage dries, it hardens into a shell that keeps debris out while still allowing the skin to breathe. At the same time, a Noni BioBandage provides lots of nutrients that your body needs to repair the damage.

Built From Your Ideas

As you may know, for many years, the only product made by Hawaiian Organic Noni was Noni Fruit Leather. Our topical products only came later, once we learned how big of an impact topically applied noni makes on pain relief and healing.

We got the idea for our Instant Noni Aloe BioBandage from the many people who were calling in and letting us know that they had made their own biobandages by mixing the Noni Fruit Leather with water to make a paste, which they applied to their injuries to relieve pain and speed up healing.

We wanted to make things easier on you at home, so we decided to create our own version.

Our Formula

As with all of our products, we use only organic ingredients in our Noni BioBandage:

• Organic raw Noni Fruit Leather
• Organic aloe juice
• Organic oil of rosemary

The noni provides the bulk of the beneficial properties, protecting against infection, relieving inflammation, easing pain, and providing the nutrients to rebuild damaged tissues. The small amounts of aloe juice and oil of rosemary we add simply amplify the healing power of the noni.

You can learn more about how topical applications of noni heal by reading this article.

How to Heal With Noni BioBandage

1. Clean the skin area
2. Apply the Instant Noni BioBandage to cover the problem area completely, leaving the formula on in a thick layer, rather than rubbing it in
3. Smooth down the edges of the BioBandage so it stays on longer
4. Let the paste dry hard for about 10 minutes, like a natural band aid
5. The bandage will stay on until you peel it off or wash it off with warm water
6. Once the paste is dry, you may cover the area with athletic tape or a band aid, but this is not necessary
7. If the paste comes off or washes off in the shower, simply replace as often as needed until the affected skin is healed and restored

Try it today, and be ready for whatever injuries, aches, and pains life throws your way!

Noni BioBandage for Pets

We make an identical version of the BioBandage for your furry friends too! We just put some cute animals, including our farm dog Bhakti, on the label so you can see whose is whose!

Noni BioBandage is a great solution to treat your pets’ skin conditions and injuries, without having to resort to any harsh chemicals. Vets love using noni because it’s effective, organic, and won’t harm your pet if they lick it off.

Learn more about BioBandage for Pets!

View our original post to read success stories with the Aloe BioBandage!

Have you tried our Noni BioBandage? How have you found its use? Let us know in the comments! 

Noni Fruit Leather: Convenient, Abundant Antioxidants

Scientists have known for years that, while our bodies require oxygen to function, too much oxygen in the body’s cells is a ticking time bomb. Experts recommend getting a high daily dosage of antioxidants, to combat this damage over time.

But why is oxygen so damaging to our body’s cells? Why do antioxidants help? And what’s the best way to ensure you get enough antioxidants to keep yourself youthful, healthy, and fit?

Noni fruit leather, a superfood supplement made from the raw pulp of one of nature’s most powerful foods for healing, is the convenient solution you’ve been looking for.

Oxidation and Aging

For certain chemicals, including many in our bodies, exposure to oxygen and certain other oxidizing agents causes a process called oxidation. This is the same process that causes rusting and which turns cut apples brown.

Oxidation is one of the most basic chemical processes, and it results in the oxidized substance losing electrons. In the human body, atoms and molecules that have lost an electron are called free radicals.

What’s the Harm in Free Radicals?

In your body’s cells, free radicals cause aging. That’s because when an atom or molecule loses an electron, it becomes extremely reactive, looking for an electron to replace the lost one. It will tend to steal an electron from another molecule, often causing a chain reaction, or other complications.

We call these atoms and molecules free radicals. Particularly in the case of molecules in the body like proteins, lipids, and mitochondrial DNA, these free radicals can cause cancer, as well as all kinds of other chronic diseases, like heart disease and Alzheimer''s.

Today, the Free Radical Theory of Aging is one of the most likely explanations we have for aging, as well as these chronic diseases that are still shortening our lives today, despite all our medical and scientific advancements.

What Creates Free Radicals?

Just living your day-to-day life creates free radicals, as you take in oxygen and thousands of tiny chemical reactions occur every second. But certain lifestyle choices can increase your free radical count and possibly speed up aging and increase risk of chronic disease.

• Environmental toxins
• Stress
• Smoking
• Poor diet

The more free radical risk-factors you have in your lifestyle, (and we all have some!) the more antioxidants you need to combat the damage.

The Role of Antioxidants

Antioxidants are believed to help combat free radicals by donating electrons to make the free radical less reactive, without forming another free radical or triggering a chain reaction.

For that reason, many experts and health professionals recommend a high daily dose of foods high in antioxidants, to keep numbers of free radicals in check. It’s believed that this might lower your risk of chronic disease, help you fight off chronic diseases, and allow you to age more gracefully.

Antioxidants include vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and others. They can be found in many fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as in some other sources. In general, raw, whole plant foods are the best sources of antioxidants, but not all are created equal.

Measuring Antioxidant Levels

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have developed a way of measuring the antioxidant capacity of certain foods. They measure the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) of foods, which is just a fancy way of saying “how well a food can donate electrons to neutralize free radicals.”

You can learn more about ORAC values in this article from Healthy Living Magazine — click here!

For you, this means that eating foods with high ORAC values will help your body stay healthy, youthful, and fit! Eating foods with a high ORAC rating can also prevent the loss of long-term memory, preserve your brain’s ability to learn, protect blood vessels against oxygen damage, and prevent cancer and other chronic diseases.

How Many ORACs Do I Need?

US Department of Agriculture has determined that a person should consume at least 3,000 to 5,000 ORAC units per day, through foods and supplements. That’s quite a bit — about 14 apples, for scale!

It’s extremely important for everyone to find a daily source of antioxidants that’s simple and convenient enough to ensure you get your daily dose. Eating 14 apples per day isn’t practical, in terms of time, cost-effectiveness, or calories. So how can you get the antioxidants you need each day?

Noni Fruit Leather: Convenient, Abundant Antioxidants

Did you know that there’s a fruit out there that puts apples, blueberries, pomegranates, and acai berries to shame when it comes to antioxidants? It’s called noni fruit, and when the raw pulp of this unusual fruit is turned into Noni Fruit Leather, it’s more potent than apples by a 110x!

So why haven’t you heard of it?

When ORAC values were first being measured, and the idea of antioxidant “superfoods” came about, the only way that noni fruit was widely available was in the form of juice.

Noni juice doesn’t even begin to compare to Noni Fruit Leather in terms of potency, for two main reasons. First of all, to make noni juice, you have to completely ferment the noni, and then pasteurize it to create a stable product. Fermentation ruins the antioxidant levels of noni, and pasteurization finishes the job, changing the chemical composition of the fruit almost completely.

Second, noni juice is usually extremely diluted with water or sweetened juice. ORAC units go dramatically down when a food is diluted, for obvious reasons. They also rise dramatically when a fruit is dried or concentrated. So, for example, raisins have a higher ORAC rating per serving than grapes do.

Noni Fruit Leather is pure raw noni pulp, slow-dried at a temperature below 115 degrees. We do this to preserve all the beneficial compounds, including antioxidants, that can be found in the unprocessed fruit.

When we submitted a sample of our Noni Fruit Leather to UBE Analytical Laboratories in California, it scored 340,000 ORAC units per 100 grams, or 6,024 units per 2x2 inch square serving. We also sent a sample of commercial noni juice which scored 433 units per one ounce serving. Noni Fruit Leatherwas fourteen times as potent as noni juice.

As a reminder, the USDA recommends 3,000 as your minimum ORAC dose, so just one serving ofNoni Fruit Leather per day (that’s just a 2x2 inch square) carries you way beyond the minimum.

So, if you want a convenient way to get your daily dose of antioxidants, alongside countless other health benefits, give Noni Fruit Leather a try today!

What do you do to incorporate more antioxidants into your diet? Let me know in the comments!

Our Journey with Noni

When my wife and I moved to Kauai, back in 1982, we could never have imagined where we’d be today. We certainly didn’t realize that the noni trees that were everywhere in our valley would have such a big impact on our health, or that we would have the opportunity to share something so special with people all over the world. 

With a new year starting, I wanted to take some time to reflect on our journey with noni. Remember, it’s never too late to start the next phase in your own life journey, whether that means taking new steps to put your health and family first, or whether it’s starting an exciting new business!

Right Place, Right time

Moving to Kauai from our organic farm in California, we knew we were making a new beginning, but we didn’t know how big of a story we were starting!

When we arrived on our new land, there were no roads, no electricity, no running water, and no buildings. We truly were starting from scratch!

Fortunately, we were starting from scratch in a land of abundance. Not only was there plenty of sunshine, ample precipitation, and potential for wind power, but the valley was also full of noni trees.

The Proof is In the Pudding

You know the saying “the proof is in the pudding?” It just means that you have to try something to know for sure what it’s about. It’s true of pudding, and it’s certainly also true of noni fruit.

We didn’t come to Kauai to farm noni. When we first arrived, I didn’t know anything about noni, or its impact on health. As we talked with older Polynesians and Hawaiians, we heard over and over about the power of noni — specifically, the power of the raw noni pulp, not the noni juice that is commonly sold today. But just words have never been enough to convince me of anything — I needed proof!

I saw friends being healed from chronic conditions, and when I tried noni for myself, I noticed a change in my energy levels right away. Over time, I found that I simply didn’t get sick anymore. As I’ve aged, I’ve been so thankful for noni’s ability to help me stay looking and feeling younger.

But what’s truly proved the power of noni to me is seeing the testimonials that have come in from you, our family of customers. Need some evidence yourself? Check out our testimonial page!

The Body of Evidence

What I experienced and saw was enough to get me interested in noni, and the more I learned about the science behind the anecdotal evidence, the more impressed I was. Researchers at the University of Hawaii, at the University Clinic in Hamburg, Germany, and all over the world are bringing in new results all the time showing noni’s ability to heal the body, prevent illness and injury, and relieve pain.

Here are just a few of the studies that have been done recently:

• UBE Analytical Laboratories: Found Noni Fruit Leather contains 340,000 ORAC (antioxidant) units per 100 grams, beating out pomegranates, apples, and other antioxidant-high foods
• Researchers from University Clinic in Hamburg Germany: Reported that noni fruit “reduced the pain sensitivity comparably to the central analgesic drug tramadol.” When extracts of noni fruitpuree were applied, the “effect was comparable to hydrocortisone.”
• Acta Pharmacologica Sinica: Published a study showing noni is 75% as strong as morphine, as a central analgesic (pain-reliever), with no toxic level or side effects.

Building a Business

We realized that we wanted to share the power of noni with the rest of the world, but we needed a business model to do it. We knew we didn’t want to be like other companies that sell noni: multi-level marketing schemes, private labels, and other practices that take control away from the growers.

Today, Sunrise Organic Farm and Hawaiian Organic Noni are a 37 acre, family-owned and operated, certified organic farm, with an FDA certified organic Kitchen processing facility. We grow our own Noni, pick the fruit, process the products, package, and distribute ourselves.

We have maintained total control over every aspect of growing our organic trees, processing our fruit, and offering our products directly to you through our website, practitioners, or stores. This business model is very important to us. It protects us,the environment, and most importantly, you, our customers.

Noni Fruit Leather is Born

In the beginning of our journey with Noni, we only produced our Noni Fruit Leather, which is pure raw food from the non-fermented pulp of the fruit. Noni Fruit Leather was our solution to the major problem of distributing raw noni fruit: As soon as the fruit is picked it begins to ripen and within hours of ripening noni starts a rapid fermentation process.

Many people solve this problem either by letting the fruit ferment fully before distributing it, in the form of noni juice. Unfortunately, this destroys nearly all of the beneficial compounds in noni, and completely changes the chemical structure.

Through trial and error, we found that we could stop the fermentation process by simply removing the water from the raw noni pulp. This allowed us to preserve all those beneficial compounds.

We had to develop a unique dehydration system to accomplish this. Most fruit leathers or "fruit roll ups" are dried in just 10-12 hours, at a high heat above 140 degrees F. Our Noni Fruit Leather takes over 60 hours to dry, never going above 115 degrees F. Any higher heat than that destroys enzymes and beneficial compounds.

From our own personal experiences consuming the Noni Fruit Leather, we knew we had captured the potency of the pulp through our unique low heat dehydration system. We had our results confirmed by an independent lab, and found that our fruit leather is 14x more potent than noni juice.

Noni for Skin

We started making our Noni Lotions after receiving emails, letters, and calls from customers who had mixed our Noni Fruit Leather into water and applied it to the skin with amazing results. They found that it quickly got rid of pain and a variety of skin ailments.

It took several years of development to refine the lotion formulas, but the response has been fantastic. The lotions can relieve pain almost instantaneously and address skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

We now offer our Noni Lavender Lotion for skin conditions and pain relief (more general in use) or our IcyHeat Noni Lotion with menthol crystals and camphor oil specifically for pain relief or inflammation. For even faster pain relief, try our IcyHeat Sports Formula, which contains 1% more menthol and camphor.

Read about our promise for the future with our original post.

8 Easy Resolutions for Radical Health in 2016

It’s around this time each year that most of us start looking back on our New Year’s resolutions with some guilt. Especially if you made resolutions about your health and wellness, you might already be feeling discouraged about your progress.

That’s because health resolutions are hard! So many people just resolve to “be healthier” or “eat better,” without realizing those resolutions are too general to have any teeth.

When making resolutions for your health, there are so many factors you must take into account, and no two people have exactly the same needs. If you’re starting to feel that you didn’t set the “right” resolutions this year, or if yours were too general, these back-to-basics resolutions will get you on track.

1. Nourish Your Body

An unfortunate consequence of today’s modern food system is that much of our food is high on calories, low on nutrition. This contributes to the obesity epidemic in our nation today, as well as the rise in other chronic, inflammatory diseases.

The foods we eat also have an impact on our energy levels, sense of well-being, and mood. You really can’t afford to put in bad fuel!

We recommend filling your diet with as many whole, raw fruits and vegetables as possible for maximum nutritional benefit. In particular, try adding a raw noni fruit pulp!

Noni pulp, which we use to make our raw, organic Noni Fruit Leather, is one of the most nutritionally beneficial superfoods out there. It contains higher levels of antioxidants than even acai berries, along with countless other beneficial compounds — over 165!

2. Age Beautifully

Aging is inevitable, but we do have some control over how we age. Two major factors are skincare and diet, and both are related to antioxidants. Noni has antioxidants in abundance, so it can help you fight aging from two fronts. Published research has shown our Noni Fruit leather to contain 6024 ORAC units per two-by-two-inch serving size, making it one of the highest sources of antioxidants.

By applying noni topically to the skin, you protect and heal from the outside in. Incorporate our Noni Lavender Lotion into your daily skincare routine and watch fine lines smooth out, age spots fade, and skin texture improve.

Taking a daily supplement of Noni Fruit Leather improves your skin from the inside out, actually fighting aging at its source — internally.

3. Build Your Physical Endurance

I don’t think there’s much good in people setting resolutions to “lose weight” or “exercise more.” First of all, every body is so different that it’s hard to know what specific strategies will work to achieve those goals. More importantly, those goals are too broad!

Rather than just trying to “exercise more,” focus on a specific aspect you’d like to improve, such as endurance. Endurance will only continue to get more and more important throughout your life, especially into old age, preventing disease and keeping body fat at a healthy level.

You can improve your endurance by ramping up your aerobic exercise. Running, cycling, aerobics classes, swimming, dancing, and more can all improve endurance.

4. Care for Muscles and Joints

This is an important resolution to keep in mind, especially if you have other resolutions around exercise. Exercise is awesome for the health of your muscles and joints if you build up slowly and eat well to support them. But starting too fast (as many people do after making resolutions) can be very damaging.

Remember to keep your pace under control, and to never sacrifice form for a few extra reps or a little extra distance. Also, remember to warm up before vigorous exercise, and stretch afterwards.

In addition, taking Noni Fruit Leather internally and using our Noni Lotions topically can repair the damage that exercise inevitably does to those tissues, and prevent chronic inflammation from setting in.

5. Strengthen Your Immune System

Your ability to fight off and heal from disease is one of the most important aspects of your health, and one that doesn’t often get a lot of love in New Year’s resolutions. But the choices you make about your diet and exercise have a huge impact on your ability to fight off disease!

This year, resolve to eat and exercise in a way that reduces chronic inflammation, a major contributor to a weak immune response. Eating Noni Fruit Leather regularly is an awesome way to boost your immune response, especially when combined with exercise and a diet high in raw, organic whole fruits and vegetables.

6. Stress

Don’t forget your mental health when making your resolutions. Mental health not only impacts our sense of well-being, but has a big impact on the physical health of our bodies. High stress is linked to inflammation and disease in many of the body’s major organ systems.

Exercising and eating right can help combat stress, but the best way to tackle the problem is in your mind. Expressing gratitude daily, meditation, and positive mantras are all great ways to reduce your stress levels.

There’s also lots of evidence showing that looking at pictures and videos of cute animals can have a big impact on stress, so make sure to follow us on Facebook so you don’t miss any of our albatross pictures!

7. Retune Your Body’s Internal Clock

Lots of people prioritize waking up earlier or going to bed earlier as a New Year’s resolution, but evening out your sleep cycle can take a lot more than that. Your body’s energy levels are controlled by tons of factors, the result of which are your circadian rhythms.

You can shift your circadian rhythms to an earlier schedule by exposing yourself to sunlight early in the day, and reducing exposure to light in the evening. That means no screens before bed!

Your morning routine is another major factor in shifting your circadian rhythms. Check out this blog post for tips to create an energizing, healthy morning routine.

8. See the original post to help your pets too!

What are your resolutions to improve your health in 2016?