You already know that what you put into your body through food and drink and how you treat it (sleep, exercise, self-care) are the foundations for both health and beauty, not something you slather on your skin. Beauty, of course, doesn’t come from the perfect lipstick shade, but from that inner glow. Nevertheless, I don’t plan on ditching my beauty rituals any time soon. In fact, I probably need them more than ever! But how are these beauty rituals affecting our health? Not for good, unless we give them a makeover!
The amount of toxins women are exposed to each day, before even leaving the house is staggering. Consider your daily beauty routine and the number of products you use each morning that could be contributing to both your toxic load and your unwanted symptoms of fatigue, weight gain or weight loss resistance, mood swings, and brain fog. Not fun stuff.
It time to detox your beauty and personal care routine and ditch the products that are contributing to chronic and annoying symptoms.
I write all the time about detoxing our diets, but if we’re eating really clean, organic food and pasture raised meats but slathering toxins all over our bodies, we’re not doing enough to support vibrant health. Not to be all doom and gloom, but the truth is, in this toxic world of ours, even super healthy eaters are becoming more and more prone to symptoms which decrease quality of life, suffering from hormonal imbalances, metabolic issues, autoimmunity and more. We’re exposed to more and more toxins every day and this total burden is triggering rampant health and hormonal issues and disease. We all have a tipping point when it comes to toxic load and this ever-increasing load is causing growing numbers of us to reach our tipping point, and at younger ages, despite eating a healthy diet and living an active lifestyle. Just eating clean isn’t enough anymore. We have to tackle the other areas of toxicity in our lives as well. If you feel stuck in your health goals, this could be the missing piece of the puzzle!
Toxins damage every aspect of our physiological function and contribute to virtually any disease. Addressing our toxic overload must be bumped up to the top of the list of priorities when it comes to achieving optimal health.
So, let’s look at our beauty routines and how we can improve them to support our overall health!
Let’s ditch the hormone disruptors, carcinogens, neurotoxins, and heavy metals that are all too prevalent in our personal care routines. I started making small but impactful changes in this area years ago, but didn’t go far enough, because it seemed overwhelming to me. At this stage, I’m in a literal war against toxins to protect my immune and hormonal health. There are enough environmental factors influencing these systems that I can’t control, but I have complete control over the products I choose. Toxins are so pervasive that it may seem like you can’t win, but that’s not true! Small and simple changes can have a huge effect.
Obviously, your skin is not an impermeable barrier, but just the opposite. It’s your largest detox organ, but also an organ of digestion, absorbing toxins into the bloodstream. Because they are absorbed directly into the bloodstream, they can be deposited and stored throughout your cells before your liver has a chance to detoxify them. And that can wreak some havoc.
Most people assume the personal care products they buy are tested for safety before being put on the market. Not necessarily true.
The personal care industry is essentially unregulated in the U.S. which means these companies can basically put whatever they want into a bottle or a tube and no one is checking safety. Body care and cosmetic products contain thousands of untested and unregulated chemicals.This also means companies can use whatever adjectives they’d like when it comes to marketing their products, or “greenwashing” by using words like natural, organic, green etc. But these words are meaningless marketing hype in this unregulated industry. They have no connection at all to the ingredients listed.
Thyroid, adrenal, cortisol and other hormonal imbalances can all be made worse by our beauty products, which may correlate directly to your unwanted symptoms!
Chemicals that have the ability to mimic the body’s hormones are classified as endocrine disruptors and personal care products are full of them. I’m sure you’re familiar with the term parabens. They’re in about 85% of personal care products and because they mess with the endocrine system, they’re messing with the hormones that regulate our body’s essential rhythms (like our metabolism, mood, and reproductive processes).
Parabens are just one of the many toxins associated with personal care products. Phthalates, sulfates and heavy metals are some others and they all go under too many names to count. Another huge red flag? Beware of the ubiquitous catch all “ingredient” called fragrance (or parfum, perfume, flavor). Cosmetic companies are not required to list ingredients that are considered “trade secrets”, such as fragrance. This loophole means that cosmetic and skin care products can contain toxic ingredients without listing them, so long as they are considered part of the fragrance formula (scent or even color). This makes these trade-secret terms code for thousands of toxic ingredients.
The good news is that there are so many positive changes taking place in this industry, because we’re demanding it, and there are many safe products to choose from. Do your research and choose companies you can trust.
Taking an inventory on your personal care products is important, but I know it can be overwhelming. It was for me too, and I still don’t have the perfect personal care routine, but it’s a thousand times better than it was before!
This is a good time to just embrace the progress over perfection mentality and know that switching out even one product is better than switching out none. It’s not affordable or practical to try to replace everything all at once, so here are some tips.
Start by making simple swaps with easy replacements that don’t cost a lot of money , or take a lot of research on your part, but have a big impact.
Think about the products you use the most often and those which cover the most surface area, like moisturizer or body wash. These also happen to be the easiest and least expensive to replace and have a huge impact!
Here are the easy ones:
Swap moisturizers and facial cleansers for natural oils, like coconut oil, sesame oil (not toasted sesame oil or you’ll smell like a stir fry!), apricot seed oil, grapeseed oil, argan oil or marula oil. I use coconut oil on my body, a natural oil blend to cleanse my face (by Cocokind, which I love!), and marula, jojoba or argan oil to moisturize my face.
Swap body wash or soap for a natural liquid or bar soap such as Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap. It comes in many different scents (scented naturally with essential oils) and is also great for cleaning around the house. I pretty much use it for everything. It’s a great multi-purpose soap! The bottle is quite entertaining to read as well, if you need to pass the time.
Swap perfume for natural blends made with essential oils. There are brands out there like Ambre blends, or get creative and make your own.
Switch to an all natural toothpaste. I’m not going to tell you whether or not to use fluoride (which is a neurotoxin by the way) as I’m no expert in dental health, but my holistic dentist, (who is an expert) doesn’t recommend it, so I don’t. I realize it’s hard to let go of something we’ve been brainwashed our entire lives to believe is good for us, but seeing all these fluoride free toothpaste brands popping up everywhere leads me to believe people are getting it. Personally, fluoride toothpaste has never kept me from getting cavities, so I don’t see the benefit to it. You know what does keep us from getting cavities? Flossing! Which sadly is advice I mostly ignored for well over 40 years, until I finally found a dentist who could make me do it. Alas, I digress. My dentist recommends Earth Paste, but there are many brands out there to try, such as Tom’s of Maine, Dr. Bronner’s, Jason and even Trader Joe’s has a fluoride-free natural toothpaste.
Okay, let’s talk about the not so simple swaps.This is where I got hung up for a long time, because it takes a bit of trial and error.
Expect to try a few (or a lot!) of new products before finding the ones that you like.
Antiperspirant/Deodorant- This one’s big. And also, kind of scary. Because who wants to smell? If you’ve tried natural deodorants before, you know. Most of them don’t work, but it’s worth it to keep trying, since this is a product you use every single day. I tried many different deodorants before I found one that worked for me, but I finally found a winner, which, for me, is Schmidt’s brand with Charcoal and Magnesium.
Shampoo/conditioner. Again, a very personal choice, but look for products that are free from parabens, phthalate, sulfates, synthetic fragrances, etc. The brand I use is called Everyone (EO), because it’s also gluten free. I’ve also used Acure brand.
Cosmetics is my next frontier! For me, I don’t wear makeup every day, so this has been last on my list to tackle, but as I replace, I’ll replace with better options.
Check out the Safecosmetics.org or the Environmental Working Group’s Skin-Deep database to look up your current favorite products, or search for new ones! Ewg.org has over 70,000 products rated for safety.
Just like with conventional beauty products, not every product is going to work for you. Just embrace an open-minded outlook on the process and know that each time you make a better choice, you’ve taken one more huge step to reducing the toxins in your environment and sustaining your healthy lifestyle!
If you’ve gone through this process and have favorite products you’d like to share, or if this post has inspired you to take a closer look at your beauty routine, please share in the comments. I’d love to know!
