FITNESS
& BEAUTY
· AUGUST
2017
HEALTHY
KIDS · AUGUST
2017
You want to
hear something
ridiculous?
The U.S. government has not
passed a federal law to regulate
the safety of ingredients in
personal care products since
1938.*
CYANIDE,
PETROLEUM
AND COAL...
OH MY! WHAT'S
HIDING IN YOUR
BEAUTY & PERSONAL
CARE PRODUCTS?
Now, I know (believe me, I
know) how easy it can be to put
your fingers in your ears, close
your eyes and sing "lalalalala!"
Especially when you find out
your favorite fabulous lipstick
isn't so fabulous after all.
didn't give it much of a second
thought. That is until two
things happened - my mother
was diagnosed with stage four
cancer and my own health took
a major nosedive. me if I had ever looked at the
ingredients on my skin care
products - which just happened
to come from a store that
markets itself as a very "natural"
brand.
When someone close to you
has cancer, you start to pay a
bit more attention to things
like this. Particularly when
you yourself are dealing with a
"mysterious" condition as well -
in my case, adrenal fatigue. I kind of laughed on my way
to the medicine cabinet,
thinking she surely must be
over-reacting. Until I flipped
over my daily moisturizer and
saw the words... wheat protein.
Now in comparison to some
of the other ingredients we're
going to talk about, this was
still rather tame. But I had
been working hard for weeks
to go completely gluten-free in
my diet in an effort to heal my
damaged GI tract, and here I was
unknowingly slathering gluten all
over my body every day!
Yep, that's the truth. And if
that's not crazy enough... BUT... let's take a moment to
really consider the options. On
one hand, you can continue to
blindly buy products that wreak
havoc on your body and hope
it doesn't lead to something
serious like cancer. Or you can
purposefully and intentionally
choose to use healthier, non-
toxic products on your body
and give yourself a fighting
chance. The European Union has banned
over 1,300 ingredients, while the
U.S. has banned 30.* Dramatic? Maybe. But
that doesn't make it any
less true. Which means, you can NOT
automatically assume something
is safe for you to use just
because it is available for sale in
the store or on the internet. It
seems like that should be the
case, but unfortunately, that's
not the reality. Just a few years ago... I was
completely ignorant about
what ingredients went into
the products I was using. I
had never read an ingredient
label and pretty much, like a
lot of people, assumed that if
something was for sale, surely it
was safe enough to be using. In both cases, it's important to
make changes in all areas of your
life - diet, exercise, supplements,
products, even emotional health.
But even though I had already
begun down the road of cleaner
eating, I was still shocked at what
I found when I began to research
the products I was using.
I chose my products more on
price, friends' reviews, colors
and scents as opposed to how
healthy they were and honestly, I remember sitting in my living
room one night talking to a
friend (who was like my healthy
living "guru") and she asked
Want to hear something even
more ridiculous?
Many of the 80,000 chemicals
commonly found in beauty care
products today do not have
safety data.*
This is why it is up to US - you
and me - to be aware of what we
are putting on our bodies and
around our homes.
34 HEALTHY MAGAZINE
Why does this
matter?
Because what
you put on your
body, goes in
your body.