An All Natural Treatment for Your Dog’s Hot Spots

Is there anything more heartbreaking than a dog that’s sick or in pain? In particular, hot spots can be devastating to watch. They are often extremely sensitive and painful, and your pet’s own instincts — to lick, chew and scratch the area — only make things worse.

Worse yet, many common treatments for hot spots include harsh chemicals, invasive antibiotics, and painkillers with lots of potential side effects. Talk to your vet and use those treatments if absolutely necessary, but you may be able to treat hot spots with a much more gentle, organic solution: noni!

What Are Hot Spots?

First, some information about what exactly your pet is going through. Hot spots, also known as moist dermatitis or superficial canine pyoderma, are inflamed, infected sores on the skin, often resulting from bacterial infection on the skin. Hot spots can also be caused by allergic reactions, poor grooming, and bites from insects or arachnids.

Anything that irritates your dog’s skin and causes him or her to start licking, chewing, and scratching the area can turn into a hot spot. In particular, the combination of an open wound, moisture, and continued irritation is a recipe for painful hot spots. They’re most likely to form on the dog’s head, chest, or hips, but can form elsewhere as well.

Hot spots usually redden, accompanied by wet scabbing, oozing, and increased inflammation and itching. There may even be an odor resulting from the infection. The area will most likely become sensitive to the touch, so be very gentle with your furry friend when treating the spots.

Treatment involves soothing the spots and protecting them from further damage. Most importantly, however, you and your vet will need to determine the root cause of the hot spots so they don’t just come right back.

You can learn more about hot spots by clicking here, but remember that you may be able to avoid some of the harsh treatments listed there!

Learn the First Steps to Healing Hot Spots on the original blog!

Noni: Treating Hot Spots on Two Fronts

Many of the topical treatments for hot spots are full of potentially harmful chemicals, including excessive antibiotics, steroids, and painkillers. These treatments may have side effects which could harm your pet, especially if your pet manages to lick some!

Luckily, nature has provided us with an unusual fruit that works both from the outside in and the inside out to heal skin conditions like this. It works for humans, and it works for your furry friends, too! Raw noni fruit is powerful, and has stood the test of time as a natural remedy for thousands of years.

But how does it work?

From the Outside: Soothes and Heals

Raw pulp from the noni fruit includes 165+ beneficial compounds, including a powerful painkilling, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial compound called scopoletin. One study said that noni’s painkilling power was comparable to hydrocortisone, but without any side effects or toxic level.

Other compounds in noni help resist parasites and treat infection. Click here to learn about the top 4 most beneficial compounds in noni fruit.

To treat hot spots topically, we recommend our Pets Lavender Noni Lotion. This gentle formula is made of pure, organic, raw noni pulp, mixed with water, grapefruit seed extract, and organic lavender oil. It’s the same formula as we sell for humans, but in a bottle with cute animals and an easy animal-friendly applicator tip.

You can apply this topical treatment multiple times per day. The best part is, even if your pet does lick off some of this lotion, it’s actually beneficial! Of course, you’ll want to prevent your dog from licking the hot spots as much as possible, whether with a plastic cone collar, bandage, or t-shirt.

From the Inside: Repairs and Prevents

Unless you also treat the underlying cause of the hot spots, whether it’s parasites, underlying infection, stress, or an allergic reaction, you’ll have a hard time completely healing them and preventing a resurgence.

That’s why we recommend also giving your pet a daily dose of Pets Noni Fruit Leather! This raw food has a wide variety of benefits for pets, including many that may help eliminate and prevent hot spots.

• Boosts Immunity: Good for regulating allergic reactions and infection
• Kills/Repels Parasites: Worst enemy of insects, arachnids, & worms — learn more!
• Prevents Infection: Strong antimicrobial properties
• Relieves Inflammation: Reduces pain and allows infection to heal
• Improves Mood: Lowers stress levels and helps with anxious habits

If you’d like to read more about the benefits of Noni Fruit Leather for pets, click here!

For larger dogs, we recommend about two 2x2 inch pieces per day while the hot spots are healing, spread out throughout the course of the day. For smaller dogs, start with one piece per day and move up to two if symptoms do not improve.

Once you get those hot spots under control, continue giving a 2x2 inch piece per day for preventative care and to continue reaping the many benefits of this powerful healing fruit!

Have you used noni to treat hot spots? Let us know in the comments!

An All Natural Cure for Your Dog’s Hot Spots

Is there anything more heartbreaking than a dog that’s sick or in pain? In particular, hot spots can be devastating to watch. They are often extremely sensitive and painful, and your pet’s own instincts — to lick, chew and scratch the area — only make things worse.

Worse yet, many common treatments for hot spots include harsh chemicals, invasive antibiotics, and painkillers with lots of potential side effects. Talk to your vet and use those treatments if absolutely necessary, but you may be able to treat hot spots with a much more gentle, organic solution: noni!

What Are Hot Spots?

First, some information about what exactly your pet is going through. Hot spots, also known as moist dermatitis or superficial canine pyoderma, are inflamed, infected sores on the skin, often resulting from bacterial infection on the skin. Hot spots can also be caused by allergic reactions, poor grooming, and bites from insects or arachnids.

Anything that irritates your dog’s skin and causes him or her to start licking, chewing, and scratching the area can turn into a hot spot. In particular, the combination of an open wound, moisture, and continued irritation is a recipe for painful hot spots. They’re most likely to form on the dog’s head, chest, or hips, but can form elsewhere as well.

Hot spots usually redden, accompanied by wet scabbing, oozing, and increased inflammation and itching. There may even be an odor resulting from the infection. The area will most likely become sensitive to the touch, so be very gentle with your furry friend when treating the spots.

Treatment involves soothing the spots and protecting them from further damage. Most importantly, however, you and your vet will need to determine the root cause of the hot spots so they don’t just come right back.

You can learn more about hot spots by clicking here, but remember that you may be able to avoid some of the harsh treatments listed there!

Learn the First Steps to Healing Hot Spots on the original blog!

Noni: Treating Hot Spots on Two Fronts

Many of the topical treatments for hot spots are full of potentially harmful chemicals, including excessive antibiotics, steroids, and painkillers. These treatments may have side effects which could harm your pet, especially if your pet manages to lick some!

Luckily, nature has provided us with an unusual fruit that works both from the outside in and the inside out to heal skin conditions like this. It works for humans, and it works for your furry friends, too! Raw noni fruit is powerful, and has stood the test of time as a natural remedy for thousands of years.

But how does it work?

From the Outside: Soothes and Heals

Raw pulp from the noni fruit includes 165+ beneficial compounds, including a powerful painkilling, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial compound called scopoletin. One study said that noni’s painkilling power was comparable to hydrocortisone, but without any side effects or toxic level.

Other compounds in noni help resist parasites and treat infection. Click here to learn about the top 4 most beneficial compounds in noni fruit.

To treat hot spots topically, we recommend our Pets Lavender Noni Lotion. This gentle formula is made of pure, organic, raw noni pulp, mixed with water, grapefruit seed extract, and organic lavender oil. It’s the same formula as we sell for humans, but in a bottle with cute animals and an easy animal-friendly applicator tip.

You can apply this topical treatment multiple times per day. The best part is, even if your pet does lick off some of this lotion, it’s actually beneficial! Of course, you’ll want to prevent your dog from licking the hot spots as much as possible, whether with a plastic cone collar, bandage, or t-shirt.

From the Inside: Repairs and Prevents

Unless you also treat the underlying cause of the hot spots, whether it’s parasites, underlying infection, stress, or an allergic reaction, you’ll have a hard time completely healing them and preventing a resurgence.

That’s why we recommend also giving your pet a daily dose of Pets Noni Fruit Leather! This raw food has a wide variety of benefits for pets, including many that may help eliminate and prevent hot spots.

• Boosts Immunity: Good for regulating allergic reactions and infection
• Kills/Repels Parasites: Worst enemy of insects, arachnids, & worms — learn more!
• Prevents Infection: Strong antimicrobial properties
• Relieves Inflammation: Reduces pain and allows infection to heal
• Improves Mood: Lowers stress levels and helps with anxious habits

If you’d like to read more about the benefits of Noni Fruit Leather for pets, click here!

For larger dogs, we recommend about two 2x2 inch pieces per day while the hot spots are healing, spread out throughout the course of the day. For smaller dogs, start with one piece per day and move up to two if symptoms do not improve.

Once you get those hot spots under control, continue giving a 2x2 inch piece per day for preventative care and to continue reaping the many benefits of this powerful healing fruit!

Have you used noni to treat hot spots? Let us know in the comments!

How Noni Fruit Leather Naturally Brightens Your Mood

Do you suffer from frequent cases of the blues? Have trouble getting out of bed in the morning or motivating yourself to keep going through the afternoon? These symptoms don’t mean you’re weak — in fact, they mean that you’re persevering against incredible adversity from within your very own body.

Scientists still only have a tenuous understanding of the human mind and how it impacts well-being. What we do know is that the mind is closely linked with the body. Chemical levels in your brain impact how your body feels, and the nutrition you take into your body impacts brain function. A tiny imbalance can have huge impacts on your mood, energy levels, physical symptoms, and more.

We can’t stress enough the importance of food in this equation. In today’s pharmaceutical-driven society, we’re told that the only way to adjust mood is through strong medications with many known common side effects.

But food is nature’s true medicine, and the earth has provided us with many ways to take control of our own mental and physical health — including noni, an unusual tropical fruit that has been used for healing over thousands of years. Modern science is only just starting to unlock noni fruit’s potential to positively impact both mind and body. Here’s what we’ve learned so far!

How Does Food Affect Mood?

Most experts now agree that food is much, much more than a simple equation of input/output, calories in versus calories out. The specific nutrients in food, whether it’s whole, raw food, highly-processed junk, or somewhere in between, impact how your body and brain work together. The effect can be positive or negative, depending on the specific food, your natural brain chemistry, and your context.

Here are some of the known ways that food and mood interact:

Depression

We’ve always known that mental states, depression in particular, impact the way we eat. Sometimes depression causes overeating, sometimes under eating, sometimes a craving for specific foods. But did you know that the foods you eat likewise impact depression?

An unhealthy diet (high in sugar & processed foods) is a major risk factor for depression, according to this study. That means, when you’re depressed, you very well might crave foods that could make your depression worse.

Turning a pattern like this around can be a big challenge, especially because your mind and body will most likely be fighting you. But introducing a simple mood-boosting raw food into your diet, like Noni Fruit Leather, is a low-effort way to start reversing that momentum!

Sugar Addiction

Simple, processed carbohydrates convert very quickly into glucose in the bloodstream, which your body turns into energy. Because those foods convert so quickly and all at once, they put serious strain on your body’s systems for processing sugar.

All that extra sugar might feel good while it lasts (or you might feel shaky, jittery, or manic), but there are some harmful things going on. Particularly if you frequently have a lot of sugar, you’re increasing your risk for the following:

• Type 2 diabetes
• Addiction to sugar
• Increased numbers of “bad” gut bacteria
• Weakened immune response
• Inflammation-related diseases

Plus, when the crash inevitably does come, you’re likely to wind up feeling even worse. If you reach for sugar for another mood and energy boost, you keep that addictive cycle going.

Brain Food

Then, of course, there are the many nutrients that actually have a positive impact on mood. In particular, omega-3 fatty acids are linked to reduction in anxiety and depression. They’re also widely known to be brain food.

Another nutrient you may have heard less about is selenium. A study from Texas Tech University showed that selenium supplementation of 200 micrograms a day for seven weeks improved mild and moderate depression in 16 elderly participants. Other studies have reported an association between low selenium intakes and poorer moods. Did you know noni fruit is a good source of selenium?

In general, if you eat foods that are more nutritionally dense, varied, and complete, your body will have more reserves of beneficial nutrients to send to your brain. Whatever specific nutrients future scientists link to brain health are certainly found in whole, raw foods like noni!

Noni

One of the first benefits many new Noni users notice is a mood and energy boost. I’ve been taking noni every day for many years, and I still love the pick-me-up it gives me. It’s perfect before a workout. But what is it about noni fruit that makes this mood lift possible?

Scopoletin & Serotonin

One of the compounds in noni of interest to modern science is scopoletin. Scopoletin is a phytochemical, a biologically active compound that is being studied primarily for its ability to relieve pain.

But scopoletin has another property: mood elevation. The compound is believed to improve mood and provide a little energy lift by binding with serotonin to keep levels elevated. You can learn more about this compound by clicking here.

Blood Sugar Regulation

One of noni’s other widely tested effects is its ability to regulate and stabilize blood sugar levels, even in diabetics. This is likely due in part to its high soluble fiber content. Just don’t make the mistake of taking noni juice, assuming it’s as healthy as Noni Fruit Leather! Besides the fermentation process used to make noni juice which destroys the beneficial nutrients, most noni juice products have added sweet juices and sugars to help improve the foul taste of the rotten and fermented juice. Independent Lab Research has shown our Noni Fruit Leather to be 14x more potent than noni juice.

Want to learn more about how noni fights diabetes? Click here.

Learn how to use noni to brighten your mood and other tips in the original blog!

How do you boost your mood when you’re feeling depressed, stressed, or anxious? Do you use noni? Let us know in the comments.

Get Your Body Beach-Ready with Noni

Summer is in the air, and hopefully you’ve all got a beach vacation somewhere on the horizon! But are you stressing about getting your skin and body beach-ready in time? Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. Hawaiian Organic Noni is here to help you look your best and drop years off your body.

Sound too good to be true? Keep reading!

Skin

Noni is packed full of all the compounds your body needs to repair and regenerate healthy, youthful skin. For best results, we recommend both applying Noni Lavender Lotion to affected areas, and eating Noni Fruit Leather daily to get to the underlying problem causing the symptom.

Saggy Skin

Saggy skin can be a major insecurity when you’re wearing a swimsuit, adding the illusion of extra pounds and extra years. Using noni both topically and internally addresses the various causes of loose skin, including sun damage, buildup of dead skin, dry skin, and poor nutrition.

We go over how noni addresses all these symptoms in a past blog post — click here to check it out!

Stretch Marks & Scars

Stretch marks can be an especially persistent skin concern, and one which is not likely to make you feel very confident sunning yourself out on the beach! Luckily, those beneficial compounds in noni can help fill in the scar and replace it with a new finish.

Click here to find out how it works!

Age Spots & Skin Discoloration

Age spots are an indicator that you might have spent too much unprotected time out in the sun earlier in your life. They definitely age you, and they can be very difficult to clear up — without noni’s help, that is! Click here to learn how noni turns back the clock on your age spots!

Using noni regularly before and after sun exposure can even put you at a lower risk for further skin discoloration and complications due to overexposure. It may even reduce your risk of cancer. Click here to learn more about how noni helps you fight off those harmful rays.

NOTE: Noni is NOT a substitute for sunscreen, and you should always wear sunscreen and/or cover up and/or seek shade when out in the sun!

Waistline

There’s still time to slim down a little bit before pulling on that swimsuit. Noni is not a weight loss supplement, but it does have some properties that might be able to help you shed the pounds naturally. Also, as a raw food Noni Fruit Leather might satisfy your hunger while feeding the cells fo the body. The end result is your desire for more food diminishes.

Learn the three things you can do to get your waistline beach-ready in the original article.

If you want to learn more about how noni supports a pain-free active lifestyle, click here!

Noni can help you get your body all ready for the beach, both in terms of your skin and your waistline. Plus that little energy kick will ensure you have lots of fuel in the tank to have lots of fun at the beach!

Has noni helped you transform your body? Let us know in the comments!

How Noni Fruit Supports a Thriving Immune System

When I look back at my overall health before I started eating noni fruit every day, and then compare it to my health today, one benefit that really sticks out is the effect it’s had on my immune system. And I’m not alone! Many people report that after taking noni for a few weeks, they “just don’t get sick anymore.”

If you’ve been sideswiped by one too many colds this year, if you suffer from persistent allergies, or if you eat a diet that promotes inflammation in the body (a diet high in grains, sugars, and processed foods), consider giving noni a try!

First, What’s Noni?

Noni is a tree, also known as Morinda Citrifolia, that produces a very unusual fruit, packed full of beneficial enzymes, vitamins, minerals, phenols, and other micronutrients the body needs for optimum health. Over 165 compounds in the pulp of noni are believed to have benefits for the human body. As raw food, noni pulp feeds the cells of the body promoting overall good health.

One of these benefits is its impact on inflammation and the immune response.

How Your Immune System Works

First, a fact that you might not be aware of: the vast majority of your immune system is in your gut. That’s because most of the harmful bacteria, viruses, and other microbes come to us along with our food. Some of these bad guys are killed by the harsh environment of the stomach, and still more are repelled and killed in the intestines, with the help of beneficial bacteria that coexist happily.

But occasionally, a harmful microbe makes it through your semi-permeable intestinal lining and into your bloodstream — where only nutrients are supposed to go. At that time, it’s your immune system’s job to hunt down, isolate, and neutralize the microbe, then memorize it’s description so similar microbes can be killed more quickly in the future.

Learn how the food you eat affects your immunity.

Enter Noni

Noni fruit has a number of benefits for your immune system, due to the large number of anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and nutritious compounds found in the raw pulp of the fruit.

Remember: You can only get access to these beneficial compounds if you eat the noni pulp raw. That means either as fresh unfermented fruit, or as Noni Fruit Leather (a raw, organic product that keeps all the nutrients intact while increasing shelf-life). Noni juice is not raw — it’s fermented and pasteurized, and usually diluted and sweetened as well.

Gut Biota

Noni helps ensure the populations of bad bacteria taking up residence in your gut don’t get out of hand. The fruit contains damnacanthal and scopoletin, two compounds which have been shown to repel microbial parasites, including infectious bacterias like E. coli and Salmonella.

It also provides lots of support for the good bacteria in your gut, due to the high dietary fiber content.

Relieve Inflammation

Chronic inflammation is essentially an immune system that never gets a chance to turn off. When that happens, the immune system becomes fatigued, and therefore less able to do its job. This can lead to more frequent illness, development or worsening of allergies, and even autoimmune disease.

Noni’s high levels of scopoletin reduce inflammation in the body. Scopoletin is also anti-hypertensive, an antihistamine, and a painkiller.

Has noni helped your immune system become stronger and more resilient? Let us know in the comments!

An Intro to Vermicomposting

Waste is a tricky part of the sustainability puzzle, but it’s one we need to get a handle on as we continue to deplete our planet of finite resources. We all know we’re supposed to recycle metal, glass, paper, plastic, and cardboard. But what about kitchen scraps?

Many people don’t worry about that kind of waste. After all, it’s a “renewable” resource, right? It breaks down quickly and safely in the landfill, right? There’s no harm in throwing it out or tossing it down the garbage disposal, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. But there’s a fun, sustainable way you can do your part: vermicomposting. Vermicomposting is composting using worms, which makes the process faster, creates rich compost, and gives you a really fun family project!

Why Kitchen & Yard Scraps Matter

Our nation’s problem of throwing out food scraps dislocates nutrients from the places they’re needed most: farms, gardens, and wilderness land.

When nutrients are instead concentrated in landfills, they release huge amounts of methane gas, a major agent of climate change. Click here to learn more about this phenomenon. Plus, we lose the chance to put those nutrients to work growing plants, animals, and people!

So...Vermicomposting?

If you’re worried about composting at home, you’re in good company. People are afraid to compost for a variety of reasons, including:

• Perceived difficulty to set up
• Fear of bad smells, microbes, and pests
• Long time to create compost

Vermicomposting eliminates many of these concerns. Worms are incredibly efficient at breaking down organic waste into nutrients, so they do it quickly and with very little smell. Worms are also very forgiving, and there are easy ways to get started.

We do lots of vermicomposting on our organic noni farm, collecting worms in the Worm Hotel and feeding them our kitchen and farm scraps. They reward us by helping us keep our soil incredibly fertile. We believe they’re a big part of the reason our noni trees produce fruit year-round.

Learn more about the amazing benefits of Vermicomposting here.

How Do I Get Started?

I’d recommend starting with this very complete resource provided by the Canadian government —click here — which provides all the information you need for happy, healthy, productive worms. They cover everything from feed and moisture preferences to light sensitivity to composting timelines.

If you’re looking for an easy system you can buy and set up, check out this option from Nature’s Footprint. Ask around at your local farmer’s market for worms, which may be better suited to the unique environmental challenges where you live. If you strike out, buying worms online should be fine.

Once your bins are all set up, it’s time to start feeding! Worms love most fruits, vegetables and coffee grounds, but they have a few favorites (pumpkin, leftover corn cobs, melon rinds) and a few foods they just tolerate (citrus, onions, garlic). Make sure to keep bones, meat, dairy, salty foods, oils, and anything inorganic out!

One key to success with your worms is making sure to include some gritty foods, like coffee grounds. Worms don’t have teeth, so this grit actually helps worms fully digest their food. Also, you will find that worms love to lay eggs (for new worms) in coffee grounds.

Before you know it, you’ll be using up your kitchen scraps while also creating awesome fertilizer for your garden!

Let us know if you have any questions about vermicomposting! We’d be delighted to share our decades of experience with you.

Easy Ways You Can Do Your Part For Sustainability

Earth Day is tomorrow, and to celebrate we’ve been sharing lots of information about sustainability and organic farming on the blog this month. Today we turn it back around to you. What can you do to preserve and protect our beautiful, bountiful, endangered planet?

Here are just a few ideas:

Eat More Plants

There are countless reasons why all of us should be eating less meat, particularly less meat raised in our modern industrial agricultural system. First of all, those animals are mightily abused, kept in cramped quarters, fed substandard feed, and weaned inhumanely early.

In addition, new research from the journal PNAS shows that a huge worldwide dietary shift to a vegetarian or vegan diet would save millions of lives by 2050. Doing so would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60-70%, as well as save up to $1 trillion annually in terms of healthcare and lost productivity.

If you’re interested in reducing your meat consumption, check out our tips to incorporate more plants into your diet.

Grow a Plant or Two

One of the most fun ways to increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables is to grow them yourself. It’s possible to start gardening no matter how little space you have. Even apartment-dwellers can grow potted plants on balconies or windowsills.

Start small with a few herbs, then expand to a couple of your favorite fruits and veggies. For even your most small-scale efforts, make sure to adhere to organic principles and focus on improving the quality of your soil. That will ensure the most nutritious fruits and vegetables for you and your family.Click here for some tips to get your organic garden started!

Get Composting

As we mentioned, soil fertility is key to producing maximally-nutritious food. That’s why we prioritize composting and other methods of returning nutrients to the soil so heavily on our farm. You can read more about the importance of soil fertility here.

Getting started with composting yourself isn’t hard, but it takes some preparation and willingness to change your habits. As with any project, start small with just one small compost bin. You might even want to try vermicomposting (composting with worms) if you want to generate compost more quickly! The key to making good potent compost is oxygen. Turning your compost every other day injects oxygen and promotes good bacterium to make the best compost.

Add Sustainability to Your Social Feeds

Be honest — how much time do you spend each day on social media? For most of us, it’s a lot more than we’re totally comfortable with! One way you can make that time more productive is by being intentional about who you follow on social media.

If you fill your news feeds with organizations, thought leaders, and brands who post about sustainability, organics, and natural health, you’re likely to make more of those healthy, green choices in your day-to-day life. We recommend the Cornucopia Institute in particular, but there are lots of other great sites like Rodale’s Organic Life and Mother Earth News. Of course, you can also follow us!

Learn about the last thing you can do in our original article!

What are you doing this Earth Day to make your lifestyle more sustainable? Let us know in the comments!