Contributor Corner Archive
I would like to welcome my long-time friend and guest contributor, Andrea Watkins, to our Contributor Corner. What follows is an insightful and educating article you won't want to pass up reading.
- Debbie
It’s the beginning of March and it has been 2 months since many of us set great goals for 2018! Goals to exercise more, eat better, drink less, etc. Unfortunately right about now many of us are either starting to get really tired of it all or we’re realizing that we never really got started in the first place. Diet and exercise are obviously incredibly important to our overall health, but I want to talk today about something you may never have thought about that is affecting your health. Personal care products! This is everything from shampoo to deodorant, body lotion to cosmetics, hand soap to toothpaste, baby wipes to tampons, and so much more. The reality is that society in general has grown a lot in knowing what food is good and what food is bad (that doesn’t mean we always eat what we should eat and avoid what we should avoid, but there’s a base level of knowledge). The thing is, most of us have never given a thought to what we put on our bodies. The assumption is that if a product is sitting on the shelf in Target that someone did the work to make sure it is safe enough to be there. Sadly, that is not the case.
The FDA governs the industry through the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 (yes you read that correctly, the last time a major law was passed to regulate the industry was in 1938!) Under that law the FDA does not require any testing of products before they go to market and they do not have the authority to issue a product recall. The European Union has banned 1,400 ingredients because they are known or strongly believed to be harmful to human health, meanwhile the U.S. has only banned or restricted 30. This means that are lots of ingredients in our products that are known to be harmful that are still legally allowed to be there.
So what you ask? Why does it matter if there are small amounts of harmful ingredients in our products? The short answer is that everything we put on our bodies gets in our bodies. Ingredients absorb differently and at different rates based on many factors, but the fact is that everything we put on our body gets into our body to one degree or another and when harmful ingredients are being used in all of our products the exposure adds up! Just think for a minute about how many products you use each day – shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, hand soap, lotion, perfume, face wash, face lotion, all the different cosmetic items, etc. It was truly eye opening when I first started researching and learning on this subject to realize that I routinely used upwards of 20 products a day!
I want to get real for a minute (and this may be difficult to read) but many diseases and disorders are on the rise. Childhood cancers have increased by 21% since 1980 and cancer is now the second leading cause of death in children ages 5-9 with death from injury being the only greater cause. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Researchers found an average of 200 toxins in the umbilical cord blood of infants, with most of them being known carcinogens, neurotoxins, and chemicals that cause birth defects and abnormal development. Reproductive difficulty doubled in women ages 18-25 between the years of 1982-1995. Girls are entering puberty earlier than just one generation ago. And research estimates that our healthcare system is hit with an annual number of $80 billion in health care costs related to exposure to toxic chemicals.
I know all of this information is overwhelming and scary and trust me there are more unsettling statistics I could share. But there is good news! The good news is that with knowledge we can change! If you don’t know there is a problem with your products you’re never going to stop using them, but with knowledge you can make better, more empowered choices. And through these choices and the laws of supply and demand, hopefully the market will change and companies will be forced to make safer products.
Another very hopeful piece in this is that studies have shown that you can see change quickly when switching to safer products. One such study showed that the concentration of harmful chemicals like phthalates, parabens, and triclosan dropped dramatically (25-45%) in the urine of teenage girls after just 3 days of switching to safer products. This means that we can drastically reduce the burden placed on our body in a short amount of time through making more informed decisions!
Switching to safer products is also an easy fix. When you are working to change your diet, every meal can be a struggle to make a good choice. With safer products once you buy a safer soap, lotion, or mascara that’s just what you have, you don’t stand in front of the mirror trying to talk yourself into making the right choice every day, you just put on the lotion you have and use the soap that’s in the shower.
So now what? How do we know what is safe and what is not? Unfortunately companies are catching on that consumers increasingly want safer products and while there are some amazing companies doing great things to provide safe products and in some cases advocate for increased regulation across the industry (see the company I am affiliated with below), there are many companies who have resorted to changing their packaging to look better instead of changing their formulas to be better.
One of my favorite resources to help sift through the B.S. is a non-profit called the Environmental Working Group. Their mission is to “empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment.” They have research and education tools about the safety of food, cleaning products, tap water, and personal care products. You can click here to visit their Skin Deep Database or you can download their Healthy Living App where you can scan your products. Both tools will give you a rating for each product as well as very detailed information on why each ingredient in the product rates the way it does – cancer, developmental and reproductive toxicity, allergies and immunotoxicty. This is a great way to evaluate the products you already have and, if need be, find safer products.
I could write another entire article on the worst offenders in personal care products, what they do in your body and why you should avoid them, but for the sake of space I’ll just give you 5 to start avoiding today!
Fragrance, Parfum, and Flavoring
Parabens (methylparaben, isobutylparaben, propylparaben, and more)
Phthalates (DBP, DEHP, DEP and more)
Triclosan and Triclocarban
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS and SLES)
If you’re looking for more information, here is a link to an EWG resource with more tips on how to shop – what to avoid and what to look for. Also here is a resource with more ingredients to avoid and a little bit of information on why they should be avoided.
I am by no means an expert in this whole thing, I’ve just been on the journey for a few years now and like to think I’m a bit further down the road than when I started. Trust me when I say that I have tried so many safe and natural products! But the other thing to consider with personal care products is performance. The entire industry is run off the idea that we all want to look good, smell good, and feel good – and I’m not just talking about women. We want to use products that are going to effectively accomplish these goals and sometimes entirely natural/food grade products just don’t cut it. I don’t want people to know that I have “crunchy” tendencies just by looking at me and smelling me! So a big part of my journey has been searching for products that are both safe/safer as well as high performing. Through my journey I discovered that it is possible and found an amazing company called Beautycounter. Full disclosure I am a consultant and I do earn commission, however I was a very satisfied customer before I became a consultant. If you are interested to learn more about their products, their advocacy work, or their mission please send me an email (or view our products using the link below in my bio). I would love to help you find products that work and that you can feel good about using!
As I said before I know this can feel overwhelming. My goal is not to be an alarmist but an educator. Obviously personal care products are not the only culprits behind those awful statistics I cited, but I believe they play a big role and they are something we can easily change. My goal is to reduce the toxic load on my family’s bodies and help educate others to do the same, so our bodies can better process all of the toxins we encounter that we cannot control.
Andrea Watkins
I am a wife, mother, Beautycounter consultant, Holistic Health Practitioner student and I am passionate about all things healthy living!
Find me at: Instagram - @healthwithdre, email – andreawatkins@yahoo.com website - www.beautycounter.com/andreawatkins
