Rethink Your Personal Care Products

February 4, 2019

Many of us are willing to clean up parts of our diets, but our personal care products?!? Those are sacred! We don't even think about the ingredients because, through a lifetime of trial and error, we've finally found our favorites. But it has been said that if you wouldn't eat it, you shouldn't put it on your skin -- our skin is, after all, our largest organ. I'm not saying we need to go nuts and switch out everything in our medicine cabinets, but there are plenty of easy exchanges that will help to lighten the load of toxic compounds we're exposed to on a daily basis.

Of the utmost importance is to limit our exposure to parabens. Parabens are compounds commonly used as preservatives in a wide range of beauty and personal care products (you'll know they're in your product if you see a big word ending in "paraben" on the ingredient list) -- their addition prevents the growth of microbes. But, while small amounts of parabens in individual products have been declared safe by the FDA, the cumulative effect of parabens in several products used daily could have a harmful effect on our bodies. "Parabens are known to disrupt hormone function, an effect that is linked to increased risk of breast cancer and reproductive toxicity,” reports the non-profit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC).

Some easy switches? Plain ol' coconut oil is a great makeup remover and moisturizer -- you can use it on your whole self, too (I especially like to use it at this time of year since my skin is so dry). A bar soap like Kiss My Face with just 3 ingredients you'd recognize is a good replacement for Dove, which has 16 mostly unrecognizable ones. The Environmental Working Group's "Skin Deep" section allows you to search for non-toxic versions of pretty much anything you want (shampoos, deodorants, make-up, etc.), and here are a bunch of things you can easily make yourself.