9 Beauty Tips for Gorgeous Skin and Hair

Good skin and hair is a result of a combination of factors

 Highlights

.A gorgeous skin is everybody's dream

.Black, healthy, lustrous locks cannot be achieved in a day

.You can do plenty at home to give yourself fab skin and hair

Could your skin be more clear and smoother than it is? Could your hair be any silkier, stronger, and voluminous? All of this without having to spend thousands of rupees are your next-door salon? Yes, absolutely! I come across hundreds of young women looking for desperate solutions to their skin and hair problems and expecting me to wave my magic wand and tackle their issues overnight and transform them. I would love to oblige but the truth is that nature doesn't bloom overnight. The smallest seed of a plant also needs to be planted, nurtured and cared for before it can blossom and show its magnificence. Though we live in a world of "insta" or instant options, some things cannot be played around with. Turns out, that there is plenty that you can do to give yourself a gift of healthy skin and hair. We often tend to forget that the solutions to most of our skin and beauty concerns are right around, but we are often too busy to find quick fixes in chemical products and high-end brands. It is now, perhaps, finally time to look around you. In this article, I have conjured up some INSTA recipes (both magical and natural) that are guaranteed to work and give some fabulous results to dead-looking skin and hair. So wake up and imbibe these spells into your glam look.

1. For dull, oily, and combination skin.
Massage the skin with iced yogurt and sprinkle some sugar along with it. Now take orange halves and scrub gently until the granules melt. Wash the face with iced water and see the difference
2. For dull, tired, and dry skin.
Massage the skin with papaya. Then make a scrub by mixing oats and honey along with a little cold milk and scrub the skin. Wash off with ice-cold milk and water and pat dry.

Some fruits could help you regain that glow

3.Suffering from frizzy hair?
Try this simple, quick, and easy-to-make spray. Take slices of two lemons and simmer in two cups of water until it reduces to half the amount. Pour the liquid into a spritz bottle and spray it on your hair. Not only will there be a wonderful natural sheen but static and fly-away hair will be gone!
4. For natural hair color
if you have a brownish tinge in your hair and don't have the time to henna or color it, then take a few sprigs of rosemary from the kitchen shelf and simmer them in 2 cups of water along with 2 tsp black tea until it reduces to half the quantity. Mix with 1/4cup of shampoo and every time you shampoo, use this mixture. Leave the shampoo in your hair for about 15 minutes and see the difference it makes.

You thought tea is only good to rejuvenate you from within?

5. For a smooth back 
planning to wear a low back blouse, backless dress, or choli, but have no time to go in for a body scrub to show off a smooth back? Here's a quick home remedy. Take 1 cup of sea salt and mix it with half a cup of olive oil. Add 5 drops of sandalwood oil and mix well. Store in a jar and scrub the areas of your body you want to flaunt. Wipe off with a wet towel.
6. Dealing with under-eye bags and dark circles
Take used chamomile tea bags and store them in the freezer. Grate half a cucumber and massage around the eye area and then lie down with the tea bags on your eyes for 10 minutes. You will find an instant difference in the way your eyes look and feel.
7. Instant facelift
Wash your face with ice water or simply rub an ice cube with a tsp of honey on the face. Beat an egg white until it peaks and brush onto your skin and let dry. You will feel the stretch in the skin. wash face with icy cold water.
8. Tired eyes?
Long hours at work, then shopping, and getting things organized for the festive season can be tiring. I would suggest you make this wonderful eye wash which will make you feel refreshed instantly. Take iced spring water in a bowl and add a few drops of rose water, 2-3 drops of honey and immerse one eye into it. You can also open your eye a little and then close it. Throw away the liquid and make the same water for the other eye and repeat the process. After this, splash the eyes with cold mineral water. There may be slight redness for some time but it will go away soon and your eyes will feel refreshed in minutes.
9. Quick Hair Care
Don't have the time to shampoo and blow-dry your hair even though it is oily? Well, sweat not. Sprinkle talcum and amla powder onto your hairbrush and overturn the hair over your head and brush from the nape of the neck to the tips. Now throw your hair back and voila you have bouncy oil-free hair in minutes! So these are just a few of my secret 'insta' beauty recipes. Use them and enjoy but never substitute them for a regular skin and hair care regime.

Dry and damaged hair could be treated at home

Try these tips and tricks and make sure you do not forget to share your experience in the comments section below. Make sure your diet and lifestyle habits are also dealt with with immense care and attention, for good skin and hair are a result of a combination of factors.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. HAMZA is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts, or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of HAMZA and HAMZA does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
(This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for a qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. HAMZA does not claim responsibility for this information.)#beautyskin #healthandbeauty #haircare #

Which is the poorest city in the world?

Ranking hardship is not a simple, or happy, task – but as the world urbanizes, city poverty becomes ever more important. Here are the places that struggle most.

For most of history, and despite the stereotype of urban squalor, it has been the countryside where poverty has particularly thrived. But as the world urbanizes, poverty is moving with it. Over the past decade, the share of poverty in the developing world blighting cities rather than rural areas has jumped from 17% to 28%. In sub-Saharan Africa, almost a quarter of all poverty is urban. In east Asia, half.

You know it when you see it, of course, but modeling poverty is a complicated business, and ranking hardship not a simple, or happy, task. One thing is certain, though: given that China has so effectively hauled much of its population out of pauperism, and with North Korea statistically dark, sub-Saharan Africa has the most extreme examples of urban impoverishment.

There are supranational forces that take a strong interest in these things: the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank chief among them. (The CIA is pretty hot on this stuff, too.) The World Bank and IMF use an array of statistical criteria to quantify poverty. There’s a gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita, or GDP (PPP) per capita, which adjusts for comparative costs of living and inflation. There are complex models of income inequality. And there’s the more easily comprehensible headcount of people who live on less than $1.25 a day. Although they don’t break down these figures on a citywide basis, the stats make clear the desperate straits of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the IMF, the poorest countries in 2013 were Eritrea, Liberia, Burundi, Zimbabwe, and, taking the bottom spot, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2012, though, the UN decided to get to grips with poverty stats city by city. It launched what it called the City Prosperity Index [pdf], featuring an add-on conceptual aid, the Wheel of Prosperity.

The index uses a more complex model of privation, which takes into account productivity, quality of life, infrastructure development, and environmental sustainability, as well as equity and social inclusion. Each city gets a score between zero and one. The UN hopes the index provides a fuller picture of poverty in these cities and therefore can be a more useful tool for putting together development strategies. There are certainly common trajectories to these cities’ woes, and seemingly intractable problems, from post-colonial re-constitution to bloody conflict, corruption to water shortages, lack of health care to disease.

Addis Ababa and Dakar, which come in at No 10 and 9, have some positive developments to note, says the UN. They are both investing in infrastructure and manufacturing and striving to overcome what is their key problem: the instability of Ethiopia and Senegal’s immediate neighbors.

Harare, at No 8, however, is a city in steep decline. Once a key economic motor in Zimbabwe with cityscape and infrastructure to match, the city is crumbling, and more people than ever live in makeshift slums. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, can only dream of Harare’s slum levels: a full 70% of the city’s population lives in informal settlements. Like other cities on the list, though, Dar is a victim of its own “success”: the population had doubled in the last two decades to 4 million. In Zambia, a mineral-rich country that is Africa’s largest producer of copper, life expectancy is just 56, and the capital, Lusaka – the fifth poorest in the world – struggles to cope with high levels of HIV and Aids.

West African capitals dominate the bottom five, and for similar reasons. Niamey in Niger, Bamako in Mali, Antananarivo in Madagascar (in southeast Africa) and Conakry in Guinea are all victims of conflict, terrorism, political instability, and ethnic tensions, which stifle their potential for growth. And these conditions are exemplified by what the UN has identified as the poorest city in the world, Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

Liberia was founded in the early 19th century by free African Americans (not by freed slaves, as is often presumed, though many freed slaves followed). The capital was named after the US president James Monroe, and you can still see something of the antebellum south in Monrovia’s older architecture

What’s left of it, that is. Monrovia was devastated by the civil war and Charles Taylor’s child soldiers in the 1990s. Supplies of fresh water and electricity are still unreliable. So are public transport and healthcare. Only a third of the one million or so citizens have access to a functioning toilet. In the huge shantytowns, many use poorly built latrines that collapse during the rainy season, or they use the beach or the narrow spaces between houses, and the failing sewerage system pumps raw waste into the streets. And last year, to add insult to injury, Monrovia was hit with an Ebola outbreak.

What is so frustrating about Monrovia’s plight is that Liberia is rich with gold and diamond mines – the profits from which rarely end up in the public purse.

Of course, these are pockets of misery in a huge continent. There are as many stories of new wealth and emergent middle classes in Africa as there are of civic dysfunction. The cities continue to mushroom at a pace outstripped nowhere else on Earth. Addressing their urban poverty is more important than ever.

Cities

Extreme cities

Liberia

Africa

Poverty

Cities and development

Economics

resources