4 Reasons to Reduce Toxins In your personal Care products

Jun 1

environmental toxins and detoxification

When it comes to health and wellness, many people are concerned with what foods they eat and how that affects their health, but it's becoming increasingly popular to hear of people concerned for environmental toxins as well. While it’s less common to think of external factors as having an impact on our health, they absolutely do! Our skin is our biggest organ. It is a detox organ, just like our liver, kidneys, gut, and lungs. We need it to help remove things from our body that are not supposed to be there and provide protection to try to block “bad” things from coming in. Despite its bad reputation, sweat is the vehicle for all that nasty stuff to exit the body. I don’t know about you but I will welcome that natural detox mechanism (note: it’s not supposed to stink)!

Our skin will absorb everything we put on it, and our body will have to figure out what to do with it. Think of it like this- your body functions best when you fill it with whole foods, which contain the very raw materials our cells need to function. Filling your body with processed foods full of inflammatory oils, sugar, and synthetic ingredients provide no nutritional value, and even burden the body with figuring out how to process (or store) it all. What we put on our skin or breathe in our air is processed the same exact way. It can do so effectively and gracefully, or it can struggle with unknown ingredients. Considering the skin is a detox organ, the difference in filling your body with toxins rather than nutrients is clear in our skin- its that natural glow! Acne, eczema, and other skin irritation or conditions can all be signs that detoxification systems need support!

Of course we want to fuel our bodies with the nutrients they need to be their very best, but using toxic products also has some downfalls.

Here are 4 Reasons to Switch to Safer products today:

If a product made it onto store shelves, it must have passed some sort of rigorous testing to get there, right?? Wrong! The United States has not passed a major law regulating personal care products since 1938 (EWG, 2018). That was 83 years ago! During that time, there have been incredible advancements to science and technology- and over 80,000 new chemicals introduced to the market, and only about 1% of those brand new chemicals on the market have been tested for human safety (CNN, 2010). That means there are about tens of thousands of chemicals being used in our products that have no human safety data. Additionally, some with known safety risks are still included in products such as parabens, phthalates, lead, and formaldehyde which are known carcinogens (EWG 2019, EcoWatch 2015, ACOG 2013, ZeroBreastCancer)
Small doses add up! While it is not likely that one use of a product with harmful ingredients will drastically affect health, we typically use our products multiple times each day combined with many other products. Oftentimes if there is safety data that shows a chemical is safe for human use, the study only looks at one time use independent of any other products, so there is no data about repetitive daily use, or chemical reactions with other chemicals in our other products. The average woman uses 12 personal care products a day, with many using fewer, and many using far more. Next time you get ready for your day, take inventory of how many you use throughout the day. Include skincare, make up, tooth care, hair care, shower and bath products, hand and body lotions, lip products, deodorant, etc.
Your liver is responsible for filtering everything that comes into contact with your body, including what you eat, breathe, and absorb through the skin. The liver is not the most sexy organ to talk about, but listen up! The liver performs over 500 roles in our body. If it is consistently burdened with always having to filter out toxins, it dampens its ability to perform the other roles it has. Also, if it becomes too overburdened trying to filter toxins, it will begin to store them in fat tissue (Skidmore College, 2017). We rely on our livers to detox excess hormones, maintain blood sugar regulation, and ensure proper digestion. If you experience bloating, constipation, flatulence, skin issues like acne or eczema, cravings for salty or sweet foods, an afternoon energy slump, PMS symptoms, cramping, irregular periods, mood swings, nausea, morning sickness in pregnancy, or motion sickness you may need to give your liver some love. Cleaning up toxins in your personal care products is one big step you can take to support your liver!
Our endocrine system (aka our hormones) plays a role in every function of the body and is like a symphony orchestra. Every single hormone needs to be playing on tempo and in key, if even just one is off, the whole orchestra sounds terrible. Many products on the market today contain “endocrine disruptors” or EDs. EDs are chemicals that mimic hormones in the body and can cause some real havoc on our hormone systems and everything else. It is important to be thoughtful about our personal care products to care for our endocrine systems and hormones as these can have long-term and compounding effects. EDs are so pervasive in our society, it's hard to avoid them completely, so eliminating them in personal care products and wherever possible is so important to “lessen the load”. Some other places EDs are found are in plastics, children’s toys, food, cookware, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and even water and soil. Some endocrine disruptors commonly found in our personal care products are bisphenols, phthalates, triclosan, parabens, benzophenones, and more (NIH, 2021). If you have any hormonal issues such as imbalance thyroid, PMS symptoms, tender breasts, low libido, acne, mood swings, irregular periods, stubborn weight gain around the midsection or hips, bloating, eliminating endocrine disruptors could help bring improvement. The effects of endocrine disruptors are not generally immediately felt, but rather slowly build to wreak long-term havoc and even alter the way DNA is expressed (Science Direct, 2021). Babies, growing children, pre-teens, pregnant or nursing mamas, and peri-menopausal women are even more impacted by endocrine disruptors during these delicate times.

Getting Started

Now you know WHY using safer personal care products is worth being a priority, but it feels overwhelming. Where do you start? Here are some of my tips:

Go slow! You do not have to do everything at once! Every single step lessens the body burden and makes a difference in the compounded amount of toxins you are exposed to. There is grace in the process, sister!
Replace products when you run out of old ones! I like to keep things simple and I think this is as simple as it gets. Keep a list of non-toxic products you would like to replace your old ones with, and then when they run out, replace with the new one from your list.
Prioritize products you use the most often, products that stay on skin the longest, and products that cover the largest surface area. Examples; deodorant, lotion, foundation, sunscreen, or lip stick may be more impactful than something like mascara or face wash that covers a tiny surface area or is immediately washed off.
Use EWG Skin Deep website or Healthy Living app to get an idea of what products you have that may be more harmful than others. You can also use this as a resource to learn about different ingredients. (Remember to use the ingredient label, not just marketing terms. So many companies are advertising that they are a safe/clean product these days. Without much regulation, those marketing terms are up to the discretion of the seller.)
Find a trustworthy brand or two that you like and stick with it to eliminate the excessive options. It saves time on researching if you know, like, and trust one specific company rather than having to research every single product one-by-one. Important to remember here that sourcing plays a massive role in ingredient quality- so reading the label isn’t always enough. I would talk to the company about how they source their ingredients and make sure they test each batch after production to ensure they are giving you what they say they are. My favorite brand is Beautycounter and I also love Primally Pure!
Remember money talks- you contribute to the world you want to see by putting your money toward safer options. The industry recognizes where consumers are spending their dollars and they bend toward the trends! Continually buying safer products shows that companies should produce safer options and that we are not interested in green-washing or pretend non-toxic products!

My personal favorite choice for safer skincare, makeup, and other products is Beautycounter. I chose to align myself with this company because they truly go above and beyond in every aspect- safety, testing, sourcing, environmental, and even performance. They are not the only truly safer company on the market, but they are leading the market and are easily my favorite brand, so I became a consultant. I use mainly Beautycounter because I trust them so I don’t need to do the research every time. If you are interested in trying out Beautycounter, fill out my form here to get some free samples! You can also shop Beautycounter through my link here.