Wednesday, January 30, 2008 ~
In keeping with my desire to promote ‘conscious living,’ today I would like to challenge you to examine the products in your bathroom that you likely use everyday. From soap, to shampoo and conditioner, to shaving cream, deodorant, lotion, and cosmetics…. these items are being absorbed into your body’s largest organ. You may as well be eating them. In many cases, if you did eat them, it would be toxic or at least might make you sick.
The list of bad ingredients is lengthy… from parabens, to fragrances, artificial colors, sodium laureth sulfate, polysorbate, alcohols, talc, and on and on. These ingredients have known health risks, some VERY serious ones. Parabens tend to mimic estrogen in the body and are linked to certain reproductive problems and cancers. I often look at a label and see how much there is that I have trouble pronouncing. Although some natural ingredients also have lengthy names. But smart companies who care will put what it really is in parenthesis after the word so you know that it is just something derived from the coconut!
The Safe Cosmetics Campaign is working to get companies that produce health and beauty products to sign a pledge that they will remove all toxic chemicals and replace them with safer alternatives. You can see their progress by going to www.safecosmetics.org. One part of their site offers a very useful database where you can search by a specific product or ingredient. Each product in their database will have a score based upon any hazardous ingredients and each score is explained in detail. You can go directly to the database by going to www.cosmeticsdatabase.com. See how your bathroom cabinet scores!
Even when products boast that they are “natural” or even “organic,” you still must check the ingredients to see what is really in the product. A product can be labeled organic if a certain percentage of the ingredients are organic. However, the rest of the ingredients may not be so good.
The risk that these ingredients pose is not just to us… they also impact the workers in these manufacturing plants AND OUR EARTH. AND I must mention here that looking for ANIMAL friendly brands is also my practice. ‘No animal testing’ is a phrase frequently found on environmentally and health-conscious brands. In fact, many other techniques are now available that enable companies to test products without needing to do it on an animal. L’Oreal has developed a product called Episkin, which is grown in petri dishes from human skin cells for cruelty-free testing. L’Oreal is just one of the companies preparing for the 2009 European Union ban on animal testing of cosmetics. For a list of companies that do not test on animals, go to www.caringconsumer.com. Pure mineral-based make-ups are gaining attention because they are vegan and are made of naturally occurring rocks and pigments, with no artificial colors, talc, fragrances, or preservatives. They let your skin breathe and protect it from the sun too. (see Alima Cosmetics)
I encourage you to really scrutinize what you are feeding your skin, hair, nails… today. It might seem overwhelming and expensive to replace everything all at once, but you can start gradually. Health food stores and even some grocery stores now offer ‘healthier’ health and beauty products. And places like Vitamin Shoppe and some online stores like Vitacost.com, ihealthtree.com, etc. offer some great brands at a lower cost. Just shop carefully!
Happy Conscious Living…. your body will love you for it!
~ Cindi
