HEALTHY GIFT IDEAS

JEANETTE MORGAN looks at a gift ideas for the more health-inclined person, whether for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, mothers day or fathers day ...

“... In these health-conscious and eco-aware times, the old days of giving Dad a bottle of vodka or crate of beer for his birthday or Fathers Day are over. If you love your parents and want them to stick around for as long as possible, then it's your honour to look after them not just externally but internally too. Get them on the spirulina, get them on the fish oils, and get them juicing fresh fruit and vegetables and even, if you're looking to treat them at a luxury level, get them into an infrared sauna ..."

What's a Healthy Gift?

A healthy gift is not just something that will appeal to a health freak, or mild health fanatic, or something which is appropriate for someone who has a health challenge or health crisis, it's also a gift of love and caring which can give a person a much-needed boost, get them out of a rut, even change their life.

When's the best time to give a healthy gift?

The best time to give a healthy gift is when someone is already healthy - when they are into natural health as a way of life - and you're reaffirming their interest in staying on top of things, inviting them in a sense to administer their own preventative medicine - and living the best life possible.

When's the WORST time to give a healthy gift?

The worst time is when someone has been diagnosed with a serious or life-threatening illness, eg cancer. The gift has come along late in the piece as a response to their grave condition, and they may still be in shock, deep fear or grief. It's a shame that the gift didn't appear before as part of a prevention strategy. However, as much as this is the worst time to give such a gift, it is
the best of the worst - necessary to give it more than ever.

What's the best kind of healthy gift?

If they don't have it, a juicing machine is a perfect gift. It can make a big difference to their life. It's ideal for mum or dad, or brother or sister, or a husband or wife.

The Best Time to Give

Not just a birthday or at Christmas, if you want your gift to really stand out, it's best made out of the blue, as a gift showing how much you care. With juicers for instance, it's best also to set it up for them and then have some fresh fruits and vegetables with you, and make the first few batches of juice for them. This will get them into the flow of how it operates. If you don't do this, it's quite possible that next time you see them, the beautiful juicer present you gave will be in their cupboard or pantry, completely un-used.

Healthy gift ideas as available
on the To Health By Choice website:

Shower them with Gifts: The Vitashower
Contains an in-built vitamin which dechlorinates the water, attaches easily to any shower head - improves the condition of skin and the texture of hair.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/vitashower.html

Healthstart Far Infrared Home Saunas
Come in a range of sizes. If you don't know much about the benefits of infra red technology then well worth exploring how health-giving a sauna can be.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/saunas.html

The Auto-Sprouter
Sprouts have the greatest nutrition activity of any raw food. This is because sprouts are still in the process of growing and at a very chimerical early stage of their life.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/auto_sprouters.html

The Ion70 Air Purifier - Great Gift for Mothers Day
My mum rang the other day, holidaying in Denmark, Western Australia, and complaining she was reacting to the pollution in the main street! From all of 4 cars!! Yet many more people are becoming hyper-sensitive, asthmatic & allergic like her.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/hybrid_ion-70.html

The Elanra Air Ionisers
A range of medical ionisers which produce thousands of small biologically ingestible ions. Australian-made, these ionizers won silver at the Swiss inventors conference.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/elanra_ioniser.html

Therapeutic Magnetic Bracelets
Look good feel great - be fashionable and energetically fit. The finest quality in Australia, made from Finnish stainless steel and Japanese Black Magnets.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/magnetic_bracelets.html

The Hydros Water Distiller
Distillation has been shown to remove heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, particles and other harmful compounds including fluoride. Great funky design & gives us back the perfect water we are meant to drink.
http://www.tohealth.com.au/distiller.html

To Give or Not to Give - a Healthy Gift?

It's 2011 folks and we human beings are meant to be getting just a little bit spiritually evolved.

It may not mean that high roller types will stop giving their spoilt daughter a convertible for her 21st birthday. The capitalistic vice of rampant materialism will not die out entirely despite the economic downturn. Yet the holistic message is getting through - we're not just what we eat, but what we breathe, absorb and believe.

Ushering in a New Era of Gift-Giving?

One of the greatest impediments to giving a gift which has life-affirming properties is the cheeseball factor. A voucher for an hour-long shiatsu massage is a pretty easy thing to give - still, despite the rise of the metrosexual, a more difficult gift for men to give to men - but woman-to-woman that one's a cinch. However should the giving of healthy presents just be confined to that? It's time to make an art-form out of giving with the deepest care - unashamedly.

Try it - See if they Like it

The Compact Juicer is a very popular upmarket quality-looking and profoundly health-oriented gift - with over 12,000 having been sold into Australia but mainly in the natural health field - if the experts and practitioners are buying it, that's a sound endorsement. It's also officially endorsed by Dr Sandra Cabot who wrote the Liver Cleansing Diet book and whose more recent book is titled Raw Juices Can Save Your Life. It is only 4.5kg, but looks impressive and is a solid product with reliable long-lasting parts. It makes a statement of caring and love and is therefore perfect for Mothers Day, birthdays, Christmas, a wedding present or anniversary gift between spouses or from close family friends. I haven't yet heard of it being given on Fathers Day, so if you have given a juicing machine to your Dad or brother or male friend or relative I want to hear from you - please give us
the full story as to whether they went on to use it regularly or not? Email me directly via reviews@freshmag.com.au

Beyond Juicing - A Versatile All-purpose Kitchen Appliance

Where the Compact Juicer works for men is not just because they're a gym junkie or health fanatic - it's where they're into their cooking, especially if they're interested in progressive "gourmus hominus" cuisine. Like making their family or friends some gluten-free sausages, or proudly announcing
that they minced their own mince. The male home cook is a prime target for such a gift. Likewise it's in the enthusiastic gourmet universe of the kitchen that the Compact Juicer gift transcends gender bias. You can give it to a female or male of any age if they're into home cheffery because it works excellently (and simply) making noodles or pastas, mincing meat, creating meat patties or vegetarian or vegan patties, making nut butters (we recommend stunning people by producing a macadamia butter), making frozen fruit desserts, sorbet or even dips, dressings, sauces and salsas. Barbecue fans will love the genius of being able to make their own sausages - which again blends back into the blokey dimension.

Other healthy gift ideas: a therapeutic massage; a bottle of organic wine; essential oils; aromatherapy products; quality natural soaps with a certain home-made look about them but which smell divine; a weekend in a day spa; a week long detox retreat (you're definitely conveying a message there); soy chocolate is okay at Christmas or Easter, or organic chocolate also;
sessions with a fitness coach. Another option is genuinely certified organic shampoos and conditioners and skincare creams. Very hard to find but read the labels! For those whose tastes and wallets extend to the extremes of the up-market realm, then how about giving your kid / spouse / mistress an eco-friendly car - that is if you haven't already gone for the very sophisticated infra-red sauna for the home described above.

Healthy Gift Ideas that you Can't Give: a big tub of spirulina powder or tablets (where's the romance, healthy though such a product is); a pack of vitamins especially not horny goat weed; natural hair restorer; a membership at Jenny Craig or other weight loss centres (unless this person has specifically requested this); a weekend at a new age healing workshop that promises to bore its attendees senseless (or in a lot of cases, no-one but them attends
and they have to spend the weekend meditating and listening to esoteric concepts alone) - the only worse example of this is a workshop eg rebirthing where most of the attendees spend the weekend offloading their emotional baggage bawling their eyes out so that by the Sunday afternoon the workshop space becomes a cacophany of weeping neurotic willows.
Another one is non-aluminium or organic deodorants - fantastic products but conveying quite the wrong message.

A great gift for the metrosexual dad - the Compact Juicer. Forget something for the shed, increasingly men don't have sheds, they want to be in the kitchen.

Though mum will probably get into it too.

There are a number of suppliers where you can get the Compact Juicer. The best one is www.tohealth.com.au

Also check them out for Far Infra Red Saunas: www.tohealth.com.au

Julian MacEvoy is a Perth-based writer specialising in natural health, email him via: reviews@freshmag.com.au

More Quotes on Infrared Saunas:

“An infrared sauna is a sauna that heats a person or people using heaters that emit far infrared radiant heat. They are different to a normal sauna in that they do not use steam to heat the air. Rather, they use infrared radiation to directly heat the person. The infrared waves penetrate into the body, raising the body temperature. This causes sweating which in turns eliminates wastes from the body. The infrared heat penetrates deep into pores and cleans out dirt and debris, as well as clearing the organs of toxins, and strengthening the immune system."

“... I stumbled across a Cedar Wood website which had articles entirely set up to SEO-optimise such spelling versions as “saunen”, “souna”, “saunna”, “suana”. Each article had its own page, and was surprisingly ok written – the objects of such pages is entirely to get the mis-spelling searcher to land on their page. Life's pretty good if you can sell a sauna to someone who spells it “souna”."