Why it Matters What You Put ON Your Body

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January 16, 2019     By Joyce Volant

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Just like what you put INTO your body, what you put ON your body can affect your health!

 

If you do a search for "chemicals in personal care products," you will come up with long lists of TONS of toxic chemicals that are commonly in the products you buy from the store. And even if you can remember all the chemical names to look for on the label (and avoid!), there's virtually no way to escape them all. That is, unless you know somebody who sells 100% ALL-NATURAL products (wink, wink). Just like what you eat can affect your health, so too, what you put on your skin can affect your health, because it gets absorbed into your body and can affect organs or even get into your blood stream. You wouldn't bathe in FORMALDEHYDE, would you? Well guess what - you might be!

 

So this post is to introduce you to some of the most common toxic chemicals found in self-care products, and why you should avoid them. Oh - and let me say this emphatically right up front - The FDA is NOT your friend! If it was, we'd all be buying and eating only true organic food (no GMOs) and have only organic skin care products, as well as SAFE pharmaceuticals! As it is, even though the "organic" label criteria is pretty strenuous, it still gives plenty of room to manufacturers to sneak harmful chemicals in there, as much as 30% of the ingredients! Therefore, unfortunately, trusting the "organic" label still does not keep you safe. The best products you can use are the ones that have the fewest ingredients, preferably all natural things you recognize that don't have long chemical names!

 

Aluminum: Aluminum has been linked to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It can be found in much of our cookware, medications, foods (as food additives), toothpaste, and antiperspirants. Ditch the antiperspirant and reach for an all-natural deodorant instead.

 

Mineral Oil: Many personal care products, especially moisturizers, contain mineral oil. There are many healthy oils, but this ain't one of 'em! It's obtained from petroleum products and can cause allergies and skin irritation. It also clogs pores. Do not use ANY petroleum-based products on your skin!

 

Parabens: Parabens mimic estrogen (female sex hormones) and are believed to be a major cause of breast cancer. They are found in makeup, body washes, deodorant, shampoos, and even food and soft drinks.

 

Artificial Colors: Artificial colors are derived from petroleum or coal tar sources. They can cause cancer, and are linked to ADHD. Look for "FD&C" or "D&C" on the label - that's them.

 

Artificial Fragrances: Synthetic fragrances can cause respiratory distress, allergies, and immunotoxicity.

 

Phthalates: These chemicals cause endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and cancer, and are found in nail polish, scented lotions and body washes, and hair products.

 

Formaldehyde: Formaldehyde is actually a flammable gas in the form of a water solution. It causes irritation, harms the immune system, and causes cancer. Formaldehyde can be found in nail polish, deodorant, makeup, soap, and shampoo.

 

Toluene: Toluene is a PAINT THINNER found in nail products and hair dyes. It is an irritant and affects the central nervous system. If used by pregnant women, it can cause babies to become brain-damaged.

 

These are just a few of the most common harmful ingredients you might find in your personal care products. Some of these chemicals will accumulate in the body and cause major health issues. Like I said earlier, it's almost impossible to find products at the store that don't contain these toxins, even if the label says the product is "organic." The best way to make sure you are putting the healthiest things on your body is to find someone you trust who knows how to formulate 100% natural products. I would like to be that person for you, and I guarantee that my products will work at least as good, if not better, than your current chemical-laden concoctions. What NATURAL product would you like to try today?

 

NOTE: Please use the "contact me" form if you have questions, or if you have a certain health or skin condition you would like help with, and I'll help you if I can. Is there a certain product you would like to see in an all-natural form?

 

#toxins #organic #skincare #personalcare #naturalproducts #cancer #chemicals #additives

 

Sources:

"22 Harmful Chemicals in Personal Care Products" by Kiran Patil

"10 Beauty Product Ingredients You Definitely Want to Avoid" by Saniya Alvi

"Avoid Aluminum - Locate the Unexpected Sources of Aluminum in Products" by Fleur Hupston

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Sunscreen Chemicals Soak All the Way into Your Bloodstream

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May 6, 2019    By Megan Molteni, Wired Magazine

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BY NOW, YOU’VE probably been taught to gird your sun-starved skin for battle with cancer-causing cosmic raysevery time you go outside. Choose a spray, choose a lotion, but by heavens, choose something! Legions of doctors, parents, and YouTube beauty influencers are unanimous on this point. But with sunscreen application evolving from a week or two at the beach every year to a constant daily slather, US health regulators want to know more about how all those photoprotective chemicals interact with people’s skin.

If they sink into tissues and get absorbed into the bloodstream, that could be a problem. Then, like other over-the-counter drugs the Food and Drug Administration oversees, sunscreens should be studied to make sure they don’t mess up people’s hormones, affect their reproductive systems, or cause cancer. Such safety testing has never been done on the active ingredients in sunscreen, because those chemicals were approved decades ago, before anyone suspected they could be absorbed into the body. Now we know it’s more than just a suspicion.

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Today, researchers at the FDA revealed the results of a small clinical trial designed to test how four of the most common sun-filtering molecules on the market behave after they’ve been sprayed on and rubbed in. The results, published in the journal JAMA, show that contrary to what sunscreen manufacturers have been saying, UV-blocking chemicals do seep into circulation. Now, don’t panic and toss your tubes. There’s no evidence yet that they’re doing anything harmful inside the body. But the revelation will have serious impacts on sunscreen manufacturers going forward, and may change what options you’ll find on drugstore shelves before the year is out.

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“Everyone had always thought that because these are intended to work on the surface of the skin that they wouldn’t be absorbed, but they are,” says Theresa Michele, director of the FDA’s division of nonprescription drug products, and coauthor on the FDA-funded study. Her team found that it took only a few hours after the application of sunscreen for the photoprotective chemicals to infiltrate the bloodstream and shoot up to concentrations above the FDA’s toxicology threshold that triggers further safety testing.

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The researchers saw the same patterns in all 24 of the volunteers they recruited—12 men and 12 women, who were randomly assigned to apply one of four commercially available sunscreens: two sprays, a lotion, and a cream. The participants applied their potions according to recommended labeling; four times a day for four days to 75 percent of their bodies, roughly the amount of skin you’d be showing in a bathing suit. For those four days, and three days after, the researchers collected blood every few hours to be analyzed for the presence of avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, and ecamsule, 30 samples in all. They discovered that while it took only a few hours for the UV-blocking chemicals to spike over the target, for three of the four formulations, those levels remained elevated through the end of the study—three days after participants had ceased spraying and smearing. Only the cream users saw their chemical concentrations tail off sooner.

The fact that these sun-filtering molecules do penetrate into the circulatory system does not on its own mean that such ingredients are unsafe. “There might be nothing, and that would be great,” says Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at UC San Francisco and editor in chief of JAMA Dermatology.“But the problem is that we just don’t know.” The bottom line, she says, is that although the evidence is irrefutable that the sun causes skin cancer, scientists know a lot less about sunscreen chemicals’ relative risks and benefits.

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To understand what, if any, effects such chemicals have on internal tissues will take more research. Particularly urgent is learning more about long-term exposure and how absorption rates differ in infants and children, with their smaller ratio of body surface to overall size. Then there’s the importance of real-world data; for example, assessing sunscreen’s effects on a hot, sandy beach, instead of in a clinical lab’s temperature- and humidity-controlled confines. Yet the trial’s results underscore the need for more data on sunscreen absorption, as the FDA has long demanded from manufacturers, without success.

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The history of sunscreen regulation is long and contentious, but the core of the conflict boils down to the fact that the US treats sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug, and the rest of the world considers it a cosmetic. When new research emerged in the late ’90s and early 2000s suggesting that UV-blocking ingredients in chemical-based sunscreens could be absorbed into the human body, the agency began to ask any companies bringing new molecules to market to include such data in their safety studies. Those corporations balked, and development stalled in the US. Meanwhile, Europe added at least eight new, more advanced photoprotective filters to its sun-shielding arsenal.

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In an effort to end the stalemate, Congress passed the Sunscreen Innovation Act in 2015. As part of that effort, in February the FDA announced it was overhauling the way the agency regulates sunscreens, to “keep pace with evolving science.” Chief among the proposed changes was subjecting the 16 UV-filtering chemicals currently on the US market to the same scrutiny as new molecules.

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To prove they’re safe and effective, the FDA is now asking US sunscreen makers to submit additional data measuring how these ingredients absorb into the bloodstream. If they don’t absorb above the toxicological threshold, no problem. But if they do, the FDA wants to see more tests—assessing cancer risk and harm to the reproductive and endocrine systems, standard drug safety stuff. The idea was to make it easier for new ingredients to compete against the legacy ones that hadn’t been assessed by the FDA in decades.

But the testing requirements could also end up giving Americans fewer choices, at least in the short run. If US manufacturers fail to conduct absorption studies and provide that data to the FDA by the time the agency’s new rules are finalized in November, it would mean (in theory) the removal of those products from shelves. Only two ingredients so far have been ruled safe and effective—zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. The FDA has said they will grant deferrals to companies willing to commit to undertaking the necessary studies for the remaining 12 molecules in question.