"Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by Dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your inner voice.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become."
- Steve Jobs

Friday, March 24, 2006

GO NATURAL!

Having become a label-freak with my food I'm now applying it to the things I smear on my face every morning. I recently went to Boots to buy a new moisturiser, and I looked at the ingredients.

Good Lord, I am only now realising what a cocktail of chemicals we smear on ourselves every morning as we get ready. Hair wash, face wash, deodorant, cleanse tone moisturise, concealer, foundation, hair gel, hairspray....the combined list of impossible-to-spell words that our skin absorbs as we get ready for work is very scary!

I'm no scientist and I don't know the full danger of these things, but if you look at a microwave spag bol and see it's full of unpronounceable chemicals and think "I'm not eating that!", then the same should apply to your cosmetics.

Face cream is now more expensive per ounce than GOLD. This can't be right! For example: Clinique Repairwear SPF 15 Lotion costs £45 - Price per 100 ml: £ 116.67. FOR SUN BLOCK???

A VERY useful website to check out the safety of what you smear over yourself is http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/. Just enter in the name of what you use and it gives it a safety rating, tells you the ingredients, and then warns you if there's anything dodgy about the product. Let's look at the Clinique SPF lotion, this is what the report says:

Hazards of one or more ingredients - Cancer hazard, Unsafe for use in cosmetics, Potential for harmful impurities, Estrogenic chemicals and other endocrine disruptors, Immune system toxicants (allergies, sensitization), Ingredient(s) not assessed for safety ...

And the list goes on. The actual list of ingredients was just too much to list here, it was massive! Overall, this product scores 4.2 which is at the "very bad for yoU" level, according to EWG. And all this for a cream that costs £116 PER 100ML.

Of course, the industry recognises that we are all now more aware of organic this and that, and natural products this and that, so they jump on the bandwagon. And we fall for it! But READ THE LABEL.
Clairol Herbal Essences Fruit Fusions Moisturizing Body Wash with Kumquat, Tamarillo & Green Apple sounds lovely, and indeed smells lovely, and that silly woman in the advert groans and yelps as she massages the following soup of toxins into her hair:

Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate, Fragrance, Glycerin, Cyphomandra Betacea (Tamarillo) Extract, Fortunella Margarita (Kumquat) Fruit Extract, Pyrus Malus (Apple) Fruit Extract, PEG-150 Pentaerythityl Tetrastearate, PEG-6 Caprylic/Capric Glycerides, Polyquaternium-10, Methyl Gluceth 10, Sodium Chloride, Sodium PCA, Disodium EDTA, Diazolidinyl Urea, Propylene Glycol, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate, Orange 4, Red 4, Red 33.
This product is also tested on animals, and some ingredients are Unsafe for use in cosmetics, Classified as toxic, and Illegal for use in food!

We need to move over to the REAL natural hair & beauty products, not the ones that "pretend" to be natural, still use the same old chemicals, and charge us the earth for doing so. I have switched over to the www.lush.co.uk range of solid shampoo bars. They are fab! They aren't packaged in plastic so you're not contributing to landfills, they work, and they are packed with PROPER natural ingredients.

They do cost a bit more than your average £2.50 bottle of Fructis but the choice is yours - save money and drown your skin in chemicals, or spend a bit more and give your body a break! And if you already spend £30 on that Clinique moisturiser then a £17 organic one will be a price break for you!

www.safecosmetics.org
www.lush.co.uk
www.greenpeople-organic-health.co.uk/Links_Other.htm
http://shop.earthbound.co.uk/acatalog/organicskincareMoisturisers.html
www.beebeauty.com/

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