Healthy Products Might Only Be "Skin Deep"

Posted by: The Balancing Center

The snow might be wet outside but the air is dry as a bone inside. I don’t know about you but my skin is about ready to revolt and head for warmer, more humid climates. If it weren't for buckets of lotion and conditioner, I’m sure I would have left a long time ago.

Of course, how do you find that perfect lotion in a literal ocean of choices? You have hundreds of different brands, formulas, and scents to consider and that’s even before you look at the label on the back of the bottles.

Why the back of the bottle? Because the increasingly important question that savvy consumers ask is: What’s in my product?

And for too many cosmetic products, including lotions, shampoos, cleansers, makeup, and more, the back label is a block of gibberish. You have multiple kinds of parabens, sulfates, dimethicones. There’s the vague word “fragrance,” which is a blanket term that covers a host of other troubling ingredients. Some of these long words refer to perfectly safe chemicals and others...not so much.

How are we supposed to know what’s in the products that are going on our faces, hands, eyes, and lips? Luckily for us, in this information age, finding safe products is a matter of a quick internet search. Even luckier, there is a fantastic directory called the EWG Skin Deep Cosmetics Database.

The EWG database is a fully searchable catalog of over 70,000 cosmetic products. They rate the products from Low to Moderate to High hazard and list how much scientific data are available about the individual ingredients in those products. Brands have their own ratings as well and you can search by brand, product, or even by ingredient!

This database is invaluable to the conscious consumer. Not every "organic" product is actually healthy and not every healthy product is easily identifiable. A product’s impact on the environment is also taken into consideration, (which can help you help the planet by, for instance, showing you how to prevent the negative effects of bioaccumulation).

Through this database, I was able to find a wonderful line of hair and skin care products that are vegan, cruelty free, paraben free, sustainable, and made from organic ingredients. (Carina Organics out of Canada, if you are interested!)

So hopefully you can beat winter fatigue by reinvigorating your hair and skin care collection with products that you can use in health!