“In the beginning before the world was light, Rangi the sky-father and Papa the earth-mother were bound together, their offspring caught in the darkness between them. Their strongest son, Tane Mahuta, put his shoulder to Papa and thrust upwards with his powerful legs, creating life and light.”
− Maori legend
And Tane Mahuta became the Maori God of the forests. Tane Mahuta married Tawake-toro, and together they had the Mānuka tree! This is how deep Mānuka’s roots are in New Zealand’s history and culture.
The Māori often say that Mānuka has “whakapapa”. Literally translated, whakapapa means “genealogy”. But, it is actually a deeply spiritual concept that is a fundamental principle in Māori culture. Your personal whakapapa places you in the context of your ancestors and the lands where they lived, and centers your identity in the context of your personal history.
So Mānuka has whakapapa, and this is why New Zealanders take everything that is Mānuka so seriously.
Tāne Mahuta doesn’t just exist in mythology, but is also a gigantic kauri tree alive today. Tāne Mahuta stands at an impressive 170 feet tall, and it’s trunk is 45 feet wide, and it may be over 2,000 years old. You can hug this kauri tree at the Waipoua Forest of Northland, New Zealand, and feel a surge of inner peace and deep respect for its ancient history.
At Koru Naturals we know that when we go through great lengths to ensure the purity and quality of our Mānuka Honey and Mānuka Oil, Tāne Mahuta is watching us approvingly!
Australia and New Zealand have a historically deep commitment to natural health. Traditions of native peoples were transferred to the European settlers and were subsequently adopted by people around the world.
The most famous natural health products of the Pacific are Manuka Honey and Manuka Oil from New Zealand, and Tea Tree Oil from Australia. At Koru Naturals we carry both Manuka Honey and Manuka Oil from Te Araroa, in the East Cape region of New Zealand.
As with any other natural product, an educated consumer is key to making informed purchase decisions and fighting adulteration and omissions of critical information (1).
Education
In the last few years we have seen a significant increase in the level of awareness of quality issues with Manuka Honey. Now most U.S. consumers know that they have to get UMF® certified honeys, and they have to ask pointed questions about storage conditions. For Manuka Oil, however, the awareness is lacking, mainly because it’s a fairly new product for the U.S. and there is quite a bit of chemistry involved in the understanding of quality. But, if you are interested in Manuka Oil, and you should be because it’s a wonderful product preferred by aromatherapists and natural health people, please bear with us as we tell you what questions to ask before buying.
Triketones tell the story
All essential oils contain compounds that serve as chemical markers for purity. For example, two chemical markers for peppermint are menthofuran and viridifloral, which can be used to detect adulteration (2). For Manuka Oil the markers are a family of compounds called triketones, primarily ß-triketones that are unique to Manuka oil, the main ones being leptospermone and isoleptospermone (1, 3, 4).
As with other essential oils, geography and climate make a difference. Although Manuka trees grow all over New Zealand, the type (known as chemotype) that grows in the East Cape has the highest triketone content, and is therefore the best for extracting Manuka Oil (4).
There are two main producers of Manuka Oil in the East Cape: Natural Solutions from Te Araroa, which supplies our oil, and the New Zealand Manuka Group from Gisborne, which sells under the brand Melora and also supplies oil in bulk to companies in the U.S. Both companies produce excellent oil and comply with the basic requirement of listing the triketone content on the label. Natural Solutions simply lists the minimum percentage on the label. For example, our current oil has at least 41% triketones, so it’s labeled 40%+. The New Zealand Manuka Group has developed a more complicated nomenclature to provide the same information: MβTK™, which stands for MANUKA OIL ßeta TRIKETONES. So, for example, a Manuka Oil produced by this firm with at least 10% triketones would be labeled MβTK™ 10+ (5).
Both the Natural Solutions and the Melora oils are bottled in New Zealand, which provides a high level of confidence on quality and integrity. The same cannot be said for Manuka Oils bottled in the U.S. Many U.S. sellers don’t even disclose the triketone content of their products or whether they have been diluted. For the Manuka Essential Oils that are imported in bulk and bottled in the U.S. there are some important questions to ask to avoid buying adulterated oils:
Is the oil bottled in facilities equipped to handle essential oils or it’s done in someone’s kitchen, basement, or garage?
Is the oil sent for analysis after bottling?
Is the equipment used appropriate for handling manuka oil?
What was the triketone content of the bulk oil, and what is the content after bottling?
Given the long history of adulteration of valuable essential oils, we recommend buying Manuka Oil exclusively from sources that can be trusted, with particular emphasis on transparency regarding the levels of triketones and the reliability of the bottling operation. Manuka Oils bottled at the source in New Zealand offer the best assurance of integrity.
Follow Kelly as she continues to simplify her life, this time tackling lip balms
Let’s get honest here
Right now, look into your handbag or cosmetic kit, and calculate how many lip balms you have. Over five, 10, even 20? If you are a lip balm lover, like I am, you probably have quite collection in your lip care arsenal. The problem with that is how good are the ingredients in each of your lip balms? They might be packed with fragrances, preservatives, and fillers you definitely don’t need. Some of them may even be irritating your lips! That’s exactly the opposite of what you want in a lip balm. Simplicity wins on this one again. It’s truly better to narrow down the ingredient list of what’s in your lip balm to one simple ingredient. Pure lanolin.
Pare Down Your Lip Balms
Don’t fall for all that cosmetic industry hype. Finding a lip balm that is simple, inexpensive, and effective is truly what your lips need. In my own life, I was finding that the more ingredients in my lip balms, glosses, and lipsticks, the more irritated my lips were all the time. I couldn’t get away from flaky, dry lips no matter how much lip product I continued to pile on them.
The Simple Solution Exists
The solution for me was Koru Naturals Pure Lanolin Lip Balm. I’m so glad that I’ve found them. Koru Naturals Pure Lanolin Lip Balm comes in sets of four tubes or pots, or you can also get it in one larger single pot.
I have a few pots in strategic places around my home to slick on my lips anytime I like. Here’s a tip I’ve found to wake up to silky lips: leave a pot by your bedside to put on a layer at night. That’s it! The feeling of having soft smooth lips just can’t be beat. All because I’ve found the single most effective lip soother, pure lanolin.
Research shows that 81% of people born between 1980 and 2000 like to sing in the shower, versus only 53% for the rest of the population. Why? Nobody knows. But what’s clear is that getting clean is only part of showering, and for all ages.
Believe it or not, shower statistics is a very active field. More numbers that apply to all people in the U.S.: 50% like to start the day with a shower, and for 60% showering is the only way to feel awake and refreshed. More than 75% of respondents like to brainstorm in the shower, with many claiming to have their best ideas under the running water.
Researchers have speculated that creativity works through an incubation period that eventually leads to a clear idea (1). Maybe the hot water pries open the thinking cage? But, clearly, if you are singing you are not thinking. So perhaps, if you are dealing with something difficult you should sing less and brainstorm more while showering!
From crystallizing thoughts, helping people face the day, and nurturing fantasies of singing careers, shower habits go well beyond personal hygiene. As an addict to long hot showers, I’m not going to tell you to shower less frequently and make it shorter. But, as a skin care company, we have a few reminders and recommendations to avoid the skin damage that may result from the frequent running of hot water over your body:
1. Use gentle moisturizing soaps or body washes. For soaps, we recommend the emu oil soap or the lanolin soaps.
Emu Oil SoapLanolin Soap
2. For body washes, Manuka honey does an excellent job.
3. Hair and scalp may also suffer, so we recommend our sulfate-free keratin emu oil shampoo, followed by direct application of emu oil to the scalp.
4. Pat your skin with a towel rather than rubbing vigorously, which can cause irritation.
5. You must moisturize your skin after showering. In a hurry, running late, or just being lazy, this is easily neglected. But remember that hot water may strip critical oils from your skin, so moisturizing is critical.
The question is how to make it easy so it gets incorporated into the daily routine. From what our customers tell us moisturizers in pump dispensers are easier to incorporate into the after-shower routine than creams or lotions in tubes or jars. Our favorites are the two On the Lamb Dry Skin pumps and the Wild Ferns Lanolin Lotion. Just take an extra few seconds to apply a moisturizer all over to seal in the moisture and replenish the natural oils that keep your skin healthy.
Rotorua Mud Bath
And what happened to the old soak in the tub for hours bath? It seems to have gone down the drain, together with so many other relaxing and fun things erased by hectic lives. But, baths are still a treat, and the Rotorua Mud Bath is just wonderful. Maybe on a weekend or holiday you’ll find the time to relax in a tub with Rotorua Mud.
So go ahead, enjoy your long showers, but please keep our recommendations in mind.
Beauty can be overwhelming at times. This is especially true of skin care. With so many different products to choose from, it can be hard to narrow down exactly what’s right for your own skin type. Plus, when you are using too much on your skin, those fine layers can become confused giving you all sorts of problems to deal with.
Issues that might show up in your skin are aging fine lines, deeper wrinkles, dryness or dehydration, and even sensitivity problems with redness and inflammation thrown in for bad measure. All you want is beautiful skin, right? It’s not too much to ask for, we’re happy to say. Here’s the real deal on skin care: when simplicity wins, your skin will win too. It’s just that simple. Koru Naturals has been bringing simple skin care solutions with natural and organic ingredients to people everywhere since 2002. Here’s a few ways to pare down your skin care routine to more effective products that truly work wonders for your skin.
When Simple Is Best
Paring down your skin care routine is going to be a great first step to start with on the road to better behaving skin. If you have a whole litany of skin care items you use in your routine, it’s time to cut out the ones that aren’t absolutely necessary. You are probably overdoing it if you have over ten skin care items on your vanity shelves.
The goal here is to get your skin to perform better with fewer products. You don’t really need multiple cleansers, exfoliators, and serums all cluttering up your life. Break it down to four items that are actually going to work for your skin. Your skin can only absorb and change so much that when you are overwhelming it with products it’s going to react, and not in the way you want it to. Radiant, youthful skin can be yours when you figure out that simple is best.
Try To Pick Four Products You Need
When looking to simplify your skin care routine, get it down to four products at first. Those four products are a cleanser with makeup remover, a targeted facial oil, a moisturizer, and an eye cream. You want clean skin that is well hydrated and protected, especially if you have to heal some damage in your skin from over-exfoliation or too harsh chemicals in all of your products. Stress on your skin can be reversed if you can commit to subjecting it to less skin care trauma, which means getting rid of unnecessary products.
The Beauty Of Pure Oils
When talking about facial oils, it’s important to choose ones that will have the active ingredients you need to pamper and hydrate your skin. Two perfect ones to look at are
Rose Hip Seed Oil is pure and cold pressed to help heal that top layer of dehydrated skin. This “extra virgin” oil from NZ Fusion Botanicals is extracted using a single simple press to get out all that natural oil from the seeds of the wild rose bush. A gorgeous oil which when patted on gently morning and night will give you the smooth, soft skin you crave. Vitamin E, which is found in naturally high amounts in the rosehip seeds, is going to help minimize the appearance of wrinkles, fade old acne or eczema marks, and even helps with sun damage and sensitive skin.
Pure olive squalane
Pure Olive Squalane is another winning singular oil to try on your face. This type of oil is a natural skin antioxidant because it’s able to lock moisture into the skin, strengthen the skin’s tissue, and even calm irritation. The harvest is straight from olives of the highest quality to get that all important squalane into the bottle. This kind of beneficial oil is suitable for all skin types, but aging skin and even people with psoriasis or rosacea can truly benefit from the moisturizing power of pure Olive Squalane Oil added to their skin care routine.
Above all when you use high quality skin care that is truly targeting your skin’s needs, you won’t have to buy all those excess products. The effective part of skin care comes from having a simple routine that works. Incorporating pure oils along with the right cleansing routine is going to give your skin the simple care it really needs.
New Zealand is a small country with a big global impact. Nestled deep in the South pacific is the archipelago of islands that make up New Zealand. The main North and South Islands are home to about 4 million people, and feature wide open spaces, dramatic scenery, and a diverse culture.
Creativity and innovation are the main drivers of the Kiwi export economy, and family businesses have a dominant presence. Today we are covering the history of the Parrs family, manufacturers of the popular Wild Ferns line we represent.
Parrs products started in Auckland in 1951 when Des and Margaret Parr first manufactured dolls dressed in traditional Maori costumes under the brand name Maori Reflections. In the 1980’s Greg and Janet Parr were the first ones to make soap bars with the famous Therapeutic Thermal Mud from Rotorua. These soaps were such a success that the operation was expanded to making a broad range of skin care products with the most famous natural ingredients from New Zealand: Manuka Honey, Bee Venom, Lanolin, Rotorua Mud, Kiwifruit, and Native Flowers.
After the initial success of the Rotorua Mud soaps, Maori Reflections merged with the incipient skin care operation. The resulting company retained the deep interest in New Zealand culture and traditions, and these values were maintained and strengthened as the company grew exponentially.
Today, Wild Ferns products are sold throughout the world and are immensely popular in countries as diverse as Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, the U.K., Poland, and the U.S. There are six product lines that correspond to these basic ingredients:
Manuka Honey
Manuka is a flowering tree native to New Zealand. The honey that is collected from its flowers has long been renowned for its remarkable beneficial properties. A number of natural components in Manuka Honey combine to nourish, soothe, and heal sensitive skin.
Purified Bee Venom from New Zealand combined with Manuka Honey results in a younger looking complexion and healthier, firmer skin. The VENZ Purified Bee Venom used in these products is harvested without harming the bees.
Lanolin has long been renowned for its extremely beneficial moisturizing and nourishing properties and therefore is ideal as key ingredient in skin care. Lanolin is readily absorbed into the skin making it look younger and softer while improving the suppleness and elasticity associated with healthy, youthful skin. Proof of this is in the hands of shearers and wool workers around the world – they are known for having particularly soft hands that retain their youthful look due to their constant handling of lanolin-rich sheep’s wool.
In Rotorua the inner heat of the earth has found its way to the surface bringing with it Rotorua’s earth magic geothermal mud. Rich in rejuvenating minerals this mud has natural cleansing, healing, and rebalancing properties. Rotorua Mud is excellent for use in skin care and has a very strong affinity for moisture. On drying, Rotorua Mud generates heat which helps in eliminating toxins and pollution particles. It easily absorbs excess oils from within the pores, detoxifying and purifying the skin. Unlike the environmental devastation caused by the mining of Dead Sea Mud, Rotorua Mud comes from a sustainable source and is collected in an environmentally sound way.
New Zealand is the home of the finest kiwifruit. Not only are kiwifruits attractive in appearance but they are naturally high in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and Omega 3, all beneficial for the health and enhancement of your skin.
A collection of luxurious pampering products created with nourishing Manuka Honey and botanical extracts of New Zealand’s beautiful native flowers. These flowers are not only beautiful but they also have properties to assist in the health and wellbeing of the skin.
It’s so much fun to dream about the beautiful places our products come from! Like the Te Araroa Mānuka products (yes, in Māori there is a funny accent on the “a”). Te Araroa is the Eastern-most tip of New Zealand, and part of the East Cape region. Even by New Zealand standards, the region is wild and rugged, full of fields of purple lupine and golden grasses. No crowds here: population about 600, mostly Māori.
The Mānuka Tree is deeply intertwined with the history of Te Araroa. The Māori used every part of the tree for an amazing range of products: medicine, weapons, tools, canoes, and firewood.
Captain Cook was the first Westerner to use Mānuka for health, brewing Mānuka leaves to treat the serious stomach problems of his crew. Later, European settlers adopted some of the uses but they mostly saw the Mānuka tree as a noxious weed that made development difficult. Little did they know that decades later products of the Mānuka tree, mostly oil and honey, would become one of New Zealand’s main export industries!
Mānuka trees are everywhere in the East Cape Te Araroa landscape. As trees, they don’t look like much. They are low, bushy, scraggly little trees. But they are survivors that can grow and prosper everywhere, regardless of conditions. You can see why they were seen as weeds. They definitely act like weeds! All weeds have a secret to prosper, and the Mānuka
East Cape Te Araroa Manuka Oil
secret is the oil that accumulates in the leaves and stems. This Mānuka oil is the most powerful antibacterial and antifungal oil in nature and it helps protect the plants against microbial invaders. And specially the East Cape Te Araroa Mānuka Oil, which is the most powerful available. Natural Solutions, our Te Araroa partner, uses spring water from the area to extract this oil by distillation, making it the best Mānuka Oil available.
At flowering time the Mānuka trees become a symphony of colors that lasts about six weeks. This explosion of color dramatically changes the landscape of the East Cape, and this is the signal to the bees to get really busy producing what will become the famous and rare East Cape Te Araroa Mānuka Honey.
East Cape Manuka Honey
So the next time you hold a bottle of our Mānuka Oil or a jar of our honey, remember this beautiful, rugged, wild area in the spring bursting with color, flowers, and bees – all combining to produce some of the most powerful, natural oils and honeys that Mother Nature ever produced – elixirs of health!
The original Tui Bee Balme was created in New Zealand by Colin Isles in the early 80’s. The recipe was donated to the Tui Community, where the operation remains to this day. The brand is named after the Tui, a beautiful bird endemic to New Zealand.
Tui Balms is dedicated to the creation of all-natural and safe balms in the tradition of balms made by ancient cultures. The word “balm” denotes a fragrant, healing or soothing lotion. Derived from the earlier word “balsam” – a fragrant, aromatic, often resinous substance oozing from various plants, balms are synonymous with gentle healing of the skin. Prior to modern technologies to emulsify water and preserve skin care creams and lotions, almost all skin care products were balms. These balms were made by shamans, elders and the wise women of tribes or cultures who had a long-standing relationship with natural ingredients, especially plants. It is in this tradition that Tui Balms has come to make massage balms, Bee Balm and other natural balms.
Tui Balms rely greatly upon pure essential oils for their active and fragrant properties. Tui makes balms using only natural source ingredients. The Coop grows its own food organically, using the principles of Permaculture, which members feel provide a practical connection to the balm makers of days gone by.
Traditional balms are different to modern medicines. They can be equally effective and in some cases more so. But they often need to be worked with differently. Balms may need to be applied more frequently than heavy-handed synthetic equivalents. Similarly, it is important to keep in mind that a balm is a gentle healing substance and might need to be applied over a longer period of time than say, modern immune response suppressors, like hydrocortisones.
Balms generally are positive healers. In this sense, they nurture and nourish the skin to health rather than negatively suppressing symptoms or killing off organisms, including those that are beneficial. This is not to say that the balms are devoid of any antiseptic properties The bee balm for instance contains Propolis, which has anti-bacterial qualities. Balms soothe and nurture while being gentle and safe, enhancing and assisting the body’s own natural pathways to health. The essential oils and waxes used are often targeted towards overall effects like relaxation rather than acting as broad spectrum “cure all” silver bullets. The effects these balms have are therefore beneficial holistically. In the same vein, the certified organic NZ beeswax and pure vegetable oils used are ideal carriers of the other active ingredients. They moisten and nourish the skin also, rather than being extra unnecessary material that serves no good purpose. This is in stark contrast to many products that can contain a wide range of ingredients unnecessary to healing and even potentially damaging to health.
Poor Mugsy suffers from a painful skin condition that causes pieces of his nose to dry out and fall off. After the expensive creams prescribed by his vet failed miserably, Mugsy used his Amazon Prime account to buy a set of four Koru Naturals lanolin pots. Life is so much better now! No more flaking and painful irritation, and he even gets to lick the remaining lanolin off his nose! Mugsy has discovered what other dogs, horses, and humans have also discovered since we started our company in 2001: nothing beats the simple, natural power of our pure pharmaceutical grade lanolin.
I remember watching sheep in Australia during a torrential rain, and feeling like a fool because my new Burberry didn’t even come close to the natural waterproofing of the sheep’s coat. Lanolin forms a layer on the skin that helps retain moisture for many hours after application, resulting in an average 50% decrease in roughness and irritation, far better than either glycerin or petrolatum. Nothing is better than lanolin for skin cracks, abrasions, minor wounds, pain, extreme dryness, and itch. Available from Koru Naturals in 2 oz pots and lip balm tubes.
Our new Flowers and Fire Solid Fragrance contains an extract from very rare coffee flowers. The fragrance of coffee flowers is just wonderfully deep and with none of the overly sweet tones of other fragrances like gardenias. But, when looking for people to test the new fragrance we ran into an unexpected problem: people just don’t believe that coffee flowers don’t smell like coffee beans. “No, thanks, I don’t want to smell like my morning cup of java”. Truth is that coffee flowers don’t smell like coffee at all. But, there was no choice but to change the name to Flowers and Fire from Coffee Flowers and Fire!
image Coffee flowers Uploaded by AlbertHerring) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Tāne Mahuta doesn’t just exist in mythology, but is also a gigantic kauri tree alive today. Tāne Mahuta stands at an impressive 170 feet tall, and it’s trunk is 45 feet wide, and it may be over 2,000 years old. You can hug this kauri tree at the Waipoua Forest of Northland, New Zealand, and feel a surge of inner peace and deep respect for its ancient history.
Our new