You know as a kid how you had your talent show party trick you did with your sibling that your parents made you do when they had guests over? Well, Michael and I performed this commercial. In fact, I was a bit weirded out just now when I found it that I till know all the words.
That leads me to this.
This Sunday, I am, once again, offering my Natural Body Care Workshop (which you should come to from 11-1) and in this workshop I go over the toxic waste that is hiding in our cupboards-and of course offer super fun home-made solutions. So we are all on the same page come Monday- whether you can join in person or not- here is some of what I think you need to know.
I spent hours of time researching, testing recipes, researching more, testing more recipes and seriously freaking myself out with what I was learning and am now bursting at the seams to offer you the important nuggets.
Is it possible that the products we are using on our body might be causing more harm to our long term health than what we are eating? Oh YES I say YES.
This is scary to me personally because, despite my hip hip hoorah for whole, unprocessed foods, I have wicked curly frizz ball hair and so there lies a bottle of L’Oreal’s Curl Enhancer. I went through three bottles when I was living in St. Lucia for three months. There very few contraband things kicking around my cosmetic cabinet at this point, but wow I was a product whore (can I say whore?). In no particular order these are the things I regret most from my past
- Obsessive use of Gucci Rush perfume
- Regular dying of my hair to dark brown because regular dark brown wasn’t brown enough
- Allowing the dentist to talk me in to getting flouride treatments
- A total addiction to Nars lip gloss
- 12 years or so of Conventional Tampon use
- Using antiperspirant for 15 years
Why does this matter? Because these things are toxic. Can you imagine pouring all the CK One you wore throughout high school into a glass (or 5 litre jug as the case may be) and sucking it back with a straw. How about even a dribble of that fruity tutti Salon Selectives going into your mouth- or even your eyes! Zest fully clean? I don’t think so. What about that Hawaiin Tropics tanning oil? How do they make it smell like that?!?! On your skin or into your mouth- the toxins get in and make a comfy happy home in our fat cells.
Check this:
Top Ten Chemicals Used in Conventional Deodorant
(sourced from official government and chemical databases. These include CDC (Center for Disease Control), FDA (Food & Drug Admin.), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and Scorecard.org (Pollution information).
- ALCOHOL DENATURED: Known or suspected teratogen (Birth defects)
- EUGENOLI: Immune toxicant
- BHT: Immune toxicant
- TRIETHANOLAMINE: Possible human carcinogen
- PARABENS: Reproductive system toxicity
- ETHANOLAMINE: Known human carcinogen
- PROPYLENE GLYCOL: Immune toxicant
- LACTIC ACID: Immune toxicant
- FRAGRANCE: Immune toxicant
- DISODIUM EDTA: Penetration enhancer (I know this one sounds fun, but it actually means that it helps all of these other chemicals get deeper into us.)
If you wouldn’t eat it, do you really want it on your skin? Just because you may not taste it when it goes on your skin, you are eating it! Well, your skin is and that stuff- those ingredients that take the frizz out of my hair, make the perfume last forever on my skin and clothes, the pristine white tampons…. That’s all achieved with chemicals. Bad ones!
Due to the excitement and demand, I am bumping up the release date of my brand shiny new Natural Body Care Tutorial. The 45 lucky peeps who pre-ordered received their copy yesterday. You can get yours next week! A substantial portion of the sales in the tutorial’s first week will be donated to support the amazing work of the Environmental Working Group.
In the meantime, your homework for the weekend is to do these three things.
1. Start poking around your cosmetic cabinet, cleaning products, make-up bag, bath-tub ledge and look at the ingredient labels.
2. Get lost in the abundance of information on the Environmental Working Group‘s website. In particular- the Skin Deep Cosmetic Database is fascinating and terrifying!
3. Watch these videos!
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Great info and so true. If I could add… a great resource for checking out the toxicity of certain brands and products is the skindeep website: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/. I hope you don’t mind me posting a link on the blog for them Meghan, they have just proved invaluable to me the past couple years since I have started weaning out all chemicals in my daily routine.
I was about to scold you Ami for not doing your homework!
lol nevermind I missed your last point with the skindeep database link :s Sorry pregnancy brain.
Another related area is of course cleaning products (for the home rather than the body). Women’s Voices for the Earth has some good resources for that one.
Meghan,
is that seriously what DISODIUM EDTA does? Blech.
Do you know it’s practically in every can of beans? I usually try to buy beans without it because I had no clue what it was (I know I should used dried beans but sometimes convenience takes over good sense). I was able to find some at Food Basics in one of the ethnic food sections but conventionally they ALL have it.
great info. thanks for this!
I try to use all natural products but find it really hard to find a natural sunscreen that is not overly greasy. Any suggestions? Do we even need to be wearing sunscreen? I live in NZ so the sun tends to burn due to the lack of ozone.
the fluoride treatment!! I was surprised when we were waiting for the insurance process to go through when visited the dentist a couple of months ago. it said fluoride treatment.. .we were never once asked about it …and they did it to my 3 yr old too without asking. I was so upset. I still am. we buy these no-fluoride toothpaste to brush everyday and go out of our way to avoid it and here they did it without our knowledge and were billing for it.
I haven’t gone back there since then.