I am one who has struggled to keep my skincare products as natural as possible over the years. I’ve gone back and forth between healthy, chemical free products and some not so ideal, benzoil peroxide based options in hopes for acne solutions. Using benzoil peroxide based products for years left my skin extremely dry. I stuck with it in desperation as it seemed like the only ingredient that reduced my acne. Unfortunately, it was the only thing that was widely available due to mass production and mass marketing.
Benzoil peroxide worked for a few years as long as I used it twice per day, everyday. However, my body built up a tolerance for this awful chemical and after a few years, the usual 2.5% benzoil peroxide stopped reducing my acne. I was petrified! Anyone who’s had acne knows how unpleasant it is. It’s not just how it looks but the inflammation makes your face hurt, too. Not fun. I didn’t know what else to do but go out and buy something stronger. I tried 4% and 5% benzoil peroxide variations. It helped a little but I still broke out like a teenager. It did little more than suck all moisture out and leave my skin with dehydration lines. NOT PRETTY!
Finally, as a woman in my thirties, I felt I couldn’t afford to continue using products that dried out my skin. I so desperately needed something that would nourish and regenerate my now seemingly, prematurely aging skin. Moisturizers only seemed to produce more acne but I needed moisture so badly, I decided to take my chances and bought a new anti aging, antioxidant rich, paraben free cream. Much to my surprise, I felt relief as soon as I started to use it. And after a few days I noticed something even more surprising. In addition to my skin feeling moisturized, my acne actually seemed to be lessening. The inflamation was relieved after a couple of weeks and in addition to my skin feeling smooth and looking young, my acne had reduced by an astonishing 90%.
Oh thank you, antioxidants! Retinol, betinol, resveratrol, acai berry, carrot, glycolic acid, beta carotene, vitamin c and a. Look for these when finding a good anti aging cream and avoid parabens, fragrance, alcohol and mineral oils as they will only dry out your skin as well as produce nasty side effects. Talk about contradiction!
So why isn’t this common knowledge? Sadly, it seems that many of the major skincare manufacturers use preservatives like paraben because it’s cheap in spite of the now more conclusive research that suggests high risk side effects. Yes, paraben is an effective preservative. So effective, that they can mass produce without the worry of the expiry date coming before they get a chance to be sell out of the product at hand. The obvious motivation here is massive financial gain at the expense of consumer health. Other unnecessary ingredients are added for inviting scent and some others are just fillers. This is an issue we all need to be aware of and educate ourselves before we buy into fancy commercials and packaging.
My fight to keep adult acne away while keeping my face moisturized and young looking, forced me to do a whole lot of research on the subject. Stay tuned for further articles on this subject and feel free to comment on my blog listed below.
Natural anti aging skincare product enthusiast. Founder of anti aging skincare website; www.HealthfulBeauty.org. For more related articles, visit anti-aging-skincare.healthfulbeauty.org or my blog anti-aging-skincare-shop.blogspot.com
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Natural skin treatment is very important when trying to have healthy glowing skin. There are many synthetic commercial skin care fans that seem to insist that our beautiful skin is totally watertight! They say we can do anything to our skin. That it can be washed, scrubbed, steamed, and NOT one of those things will penetrate our skin deep enough to cause any type of damage! That just doesn’t sound right and is not right! While at the same time cosmetic companies the commercial ones will state their product will boost your collagen, add vitamins, and minerals that our skin needs to eat. So the big question is do these cosmetics get into and under our beautiful skin? YES they do!
We all know that beauty is skin deep. The human skin is an extremely absorbent organ and it also seems to be always hungry for anything that may touch its surface. Some of these things may be water, makeup, fragrance, anything; it wants to eat it all up and absorb it all. We know that oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide along with bad pollutants will enter our skin most certainly. There are sweat ducts, follicles, and sebaceous glands. The ability of the skin to absorb these substances is widely used in medicine. For example, patches are a common way to get the drug into our system, and are widely used in today’s practices.
We know that our skin can absorb 60% or more of anything applied to it. So along with the water, vitamins, minerals, and oxygen our beautiful glowing skin will also soak up some scary stuff, too, things that may cause cancer! Carcinogenic ingredients we are exposed to every single day. SO we must watch what we are putting on our skin, its important. These cosmetic companies want us to buy their magic product to slather our skin with and hope we use it long enough to actually work.It won’t and they can cause us harm!! This is where all these chemicals can come into play. The cosmetic companies need these chemicals as penetration enhancers. These penetration enhancers help deliver the active ingredient and decrease the resistance of the skin’s barrier. They can do anything from change your skins metabolism, do damage, and alter the physical and chemical nature of your top layer of skin. Scary!!
Some of the most popular penetration enhancers can be alcohols, glycols, and sufactants. Liposomes, these will activate a compound, and may also serve as penetration enhancers, too. One of the most common liposomes is called phosphatidylcholine, it is from egg or soy and may have added cholesterol. Nanoparticles which is used in sunscreens and vitamins E and A may help enhance the saturate the skin by up to and at least 30%. Other penetration enhancers like tranferomes, is made up of sufactants and ethanol, are able to be soaked up into the skin by 100% when applied topically. Scary scary stuff!!! Natural skin treatment is much safer. Remember the strong or higher the alcohol content the deeper the penetration. Essential oils make safe and healthy penetration enhancers.
So can happen when a potentially dangerous chemical passes through our skin? It ends up in a couple of places such as blood vessels and lymph ducts that are located in our epidermis and dermis layers. Our skin cells get what it needs and excretes what it doesn’t through circulation of blood and lymph. Lymph is very important, it helps provide drainage and white blood cells which produce antibodies to fight off infections. We know that as chemicals are absorbed they will enter our blood stream and travel throughout our body. They will end up getting flushed and filtered by our liver and kidneys and sometimes soaked up by our lungs and intestines or other organs. Of course some of these substances stay in our body, and because our skin is so large it will soak up most of this, and may possibly accumulate for a long time.
Most skin care products on the market today contain hundreds of synthetic additives. Which have been tested only on animals not humans. While they expose these animals to the chemicals and see what happens to them, they really do not know it will affect humans. That’s very scary,why? Because we all know that people are very loyal to certain products and continued usage may be hazardous and harm them. For example, sunscreens. They have not been around that long and they are still studying the effects it will have on us. They’ve done studies it but it does not cover a long period of time. We definitely need to be concerned about long term use of these chemicals in our cosmetics.
If you are using a commercial aromatic shampoo that contains DEA- diethanolamine- which is a surfactant that gives and stabilizes the foam we think is good, for 9 years. Then you switch every so often and then to one with shine enhancers, body, or conditioning for another 7 years. You are adding even more chemicals to your skin and just think you are of pouring all those chemicals all over your body, do you really think it will make you any more attractive? I DO NOT think so. It means more bad chemicals being absorbed into your skin and that can not possibly be healthy for you or make you any more attractive than you already are.
Here’s another example, there are studies and the results were found that mice that were exposed to undiluted DEA had a slower cell growth and memory problems, it also showed cell death. CELL DEATH!! Basically the mice were smaller and not as smart as a untouched mice would be. Why? Because DEA’s chemical structure is similar to choline, which is needed to help with normal brain development. Isn’t this enough to make you want to change? It does me.
When all these different potentially cancer causing poisonous chemicals gets absorbed by our beautiful skin, the chemicals are carried in our blood all throughout our beautiful bodies. Sometimes they may interact with other bad chemicals and who knows what can happen to our systems. DEA can mix with amines and make nitrosamines, notably N-nitrosodiethanolamine- very highly carcinogenic. These toxic ingredients found in commercial skin products may lead to some serious diseases such as, allergies, fertility problems, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. They also can make your acne worse or cause a reaction that looks like acne. These terrible chemicals found in commercial cosmetics and skin care products will make you sick and age you way before your time. Don’t be or remain a victim of this billion dollar industry. It is bad for both you and the planet. This is why it is so important to use and make your own organic natural skin care products. If you don’t make your own products be aware and the read labels. Till next time OrganicBeautyGirl…
Laleh Rodriguez
