Good.
Better. Best. When I worked for a window
treatment company we had three grades for our products. The discount, big box stores bought and sold
"good", department stores offered better...but the premium stores and design houses
offered the BEST.
As we wrap
up 30 days of clean eating in our home I thought I should digress from the
clean food topic for a bit, and bring up another subject that affects our
health - that would be our skincare. As
I have discussed in my cancer prevention workshops, when it comes to toxic food
- thankfully our bodies have a liver to filter the toxins. When it comes to what we put on the
largest organ of our body, our skin, there is no filter. Everything we put on our skin is absorbed
into our system, and per the EPA reaches our bloodstream and organs in less
than 30 seconds. So why should
we be concerned about our lotions and shampoos?
Toxins in -
does not necessarily mean toxins out (unless you are on some sort of regular
detox program). Toxins store up inside -
a little toxin a day multiplied by 365 days a year multiplied by..... get the picture? It creates a hormone imbalance, interupts our
divinely created endocrine system.
Consider that for a moment...and then - be on guard. Just because a label states "all
natural" or "organic" does not mean it is toxin free.
Truth of
the matter is - organic farmers have a hard time keeping their produce pure, in
some parts of the world more so than others.
I learned a while back from my chiropractor, Dr. Joe Teff, also a highly
respected nutritionist, that the fall out of radiation from Japan has affected
organic food crops. Where, you might
ask? Well, California, Hawaii and another friend tells me the fall out has
reached much further north. To help the organic farmers of California, the
state simply raised the allowance of radiation in order to label a product
organic. If you would like to be your
own personal watchdog on this topic - check out www.enviroreporter.com or
www.compassnaturalmarketing.com and look for the effects of the Fukushima
disaster. It is affecting much more than
I could have imagined.
This is not to say you should not eat organic - you can obtain 40% more nutrients from organic than traditionally grown produce, but for certain -wash it! Small organic farms adjacent to Monsanto's huge, chemical laden farms also fall victim to chemical fall out from their genetically modified crop farm/corporation.
So my point
here is the ORGANIC label on skin care.
Unless you are growing it yourself - I feel you need to have a higher
standard than organic.
PURITY bests organic. For
myself and my own family - we look for purity standards, and frankly, the
European cosmetic industry has standards that far exceed any skin care
products made here in the U.S. Having
said that - watch out for foreign sounding names on your product labels. They
may sound French, Swiss, or whatever, but may actually be formulated here in the
U.S. I remember a friend telling me her
mother uses a high end French sounding product from a fancy department
store...and when I researched the ingredient labels the product contained
petrolatum (a derivitive of crude oil) and parabens. It turns out the product line is simply a
more expensive offshoot of the Big L in cosmetics.
Know the
company from whom you purchase products.
What is their ingredient policy? Are raw materials tested for purity on
a regular batch-tested basis? Even
organic soy beans contain naturally occuring toxins such as formaldehyde and
trace metals from the soil. Just one
example of why PURITY is the standard by which skin care products are
chosen for our family.
Labeling is
what labeling does - MARKET. I think about the irony of products who wash their
labels PINK in October to support the Komen foundation...when the products
themselves have cancer causing ingredients.
All I am saying is be a WISE consumer, and do your research.
Check out
those web sites I offered above, and become a SMART consumer about the truth of the nuclear
disaster. Mainstream's media coverage,
or lack of it, is rather disturbing. How would
you like to apply a skin lotion made with organic ingredients that contain
radiation? Think about that. The thought makes me shudder.
European
standards, specifically the European Union Cosmetics Directive and the European
chemicals agency known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and
Restriction of Chemicals) are two watch dog agencies that I trust more than any
U.S. resource. Therefore, the products we use in our family, adhere to these
European standards - and I feel very very good about the safe approach to skin
care that my family is using. The company has been formulating with green science and offering pure and safe products for 33 years, before organic was a popular word.
Many of my
readers may be familiar with Safe Cosmetics.org - and I will leave you with a
link to their article which points out the level of excellence that is
established by the European cosmetics directive:
www.safecosmetics.org/article.php?id=346
May you
feel great, look great and live great as you make wise decisions, not only in
your food choices, but in your skin care as well!
To your
health,
Rita S.
