Should You Worry About Your Skin Care Products?

Should You Fear Your Skin Care Products?

Do you use skin care products to slow the effects of aging on your face and improve your looks? Do you use regular mainstream skincare products that you get from the stores? Big name, brand name anti aging products?

If so I ask you the question. Do you have any reason to fear those products? And are there better skin care products, that aren't nasty to your health and work better?

Perhaps I could point out a couple more facts for you.



1. The manufacture of skincare products, or anti aging products, is an unregulated industry in the US. There is no requirement for a company producing products designed to improve your looks, slow or prevent wrinkles or lessen the visible effects of aging to submit those products to the FDA or any government regulatory body for testing to establish the safety of the products for use by people.

Here's a quote from the cosmetic safety database:

"Due to gaping loopholes in federal law, companies can put virtually any ingredient into personal care products. Even worse, the government does not require pre-market safety tests for any of them."

Therefore there is no regulatory regime that overseas the production of skincare products to ensure that they don't use ingredients in those products that are known to be unhealthy, or suspected to be unhealthy, or dangerous.

2. When you put a skincare product on your skin you are not just putting that product on your skin. You are taking it into your body. The skin is a particularly absorptive organ, and much of what we put on it ends up inside us in our system. It just soaks in. After all, when you rub it in it disappears, so where else does it go?

So if there are dangerous ingredients in our skincare products, and we put them on our face or anywhere else on our body, we have put those ingredients into our body just as if we had eaten them.

3. The history of big business is not a good one when it comes to protecting the health of it's customers. You can't go further than the tobacco industry to see that. Big business is prepared to make and sell a product that can, or is even likely, (in the case of cigarettes) to kill us.

They do this because there is lots of money to be made doing that, and that overrides any possibility that they will show any moral reservations at producing a dangerous product. And in the case of an industry like the tobacco industry, they will do everything in their power, both legally and in some cases illegally, to sell their product, even knowing it's dangerous.

4. The skincare and anti aging industry is a huge industry that makes hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

5. It is well known that there are chemicals in many mainstream and extremely popular skincare products that are extremely suspect from a health point of view. Some are even banned in some countries, and some are recognised as carcinogens.

Lets have a look at some of the chemicals found in mainstream skincare products.

Dioxane

This is a product that appears in cosmetic products as a result of the manufacturing process, it isn't deliberately added. Dioxane is suspected of causing damage to the central nervous system and is a known eye and respiratory irritant. It is classed by the International Agency For Research On Cancer as a Group 2B carcinogen as possibly carcinogenic to humans. In 1988 the State of California listed Dioxane as a chemical known to cause cancer.

Nitrosamines

These are found in some cosmetics. They are also found in some foodstuffs, such as some meat and fish products made with nitrite pickling salt, and the use of Nitrosamines in meat products is now limited by the US government to decrease the risk of cancer in the population.

Padimate-O

Used in many sunscreens but is, unfortunately, suspected of increasing the risk of skin cancer!

Diethanolamine, more commonly known as DEA.

Used in cosmetics and shampoos. Suspected of increasing the risk of cancer.

Parabens

Parabens are found in many anti aging skincare products. There is much dispute about the health effects of Parabens, however many believe that Parabens are not proven to be safe and at worst can be dangarous.

Parabens are a preservative that is widely used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. They can be found in shampoos, moisturizers and toothpaste, to name a few.

Whilst the pharmaceutical industry dispute the risks of using parabens, I for one would prefer to use products that are proven to be safe, rather than not proven to be unsafe. These companies are using products on the basis that it's fine to use them until someone else proves them to be unsafe (because of course the pharmaceutcical and cosmetic industries aren't interested in proving that they are unsafe).

Are you beginning to see my point? Are you beginning to see reasons to fear your mainstream and big brand skincare products?

Not all of them (and there's lots more than what I've listed here, this is just a sample) are known or proven to be dangerous. However as I said, where an ingredient is suspected to cause cancer I'd be pretty happy not to be putting it onto my body until it's proven safe. Much happier than knowing I WAS putting it on my body until someone out there proves it's dangerous.

Now of course you could just stop using skincare and anti aging products. That's one option and a perfectly valid one.

Or you could try Botox or anti aging cosmetic surgery. Neither of those are for me, in fact I wouldn't allow either Botox or a cosmetic surgeon anywhere near me. I'm sure you've seen those photos of the celebrities who've tried both, and seen the results.

Better yet is to understand that aging is a natural process, but that the visible (and health) effects of aging are a factor of our general health. And if we keep ourselves healthy generally then we also lessen or slow the visible effects of aging.

Things like good diet, regular exercise and a general health regime designed to improve our overall health all improve our skin and slow the visible effects of aging. Good health means looking better than if we're in poor health.

And there's more to good health than just eating and exercising. Good quality nutritional supplements are well worth considering too, because it's pretty hard to eat well enough to get all the nutrients we need just from our diet, particularly given the way the nutient levels of our foods are decreasing with modern farming practices.

And believe it or not there ARE good companies making ethical and quite organic skin care products that are safe to use on your skin, and in your body. The best of these companies has this statement on their website: "Most of our ingredients are derived from plants. They are naturally processed to enhance their effectiveness. And every ingredient we use is safe enough to ingest without harmful effects"

And theses skin care products WORK. And they're backed up by a 90 day money back guarantee. Best of all they're organic and, as it says, derived from plants.

And I'll bet you've never even heard of these small niche companies that are quietly making high quality skin care products and other natural and organic products for various health conditions. The best is X Tend Life, a New Zealand company.

Not only should you use a GOOD skin care product that works and is not applied at risk to your health, you should also use a high quality nutritional supplement for your general health. Aging isn't just about looks, it's also about your general health, and of course the two go together.

So in summary there ARE good reasons why you should fear your skin care products, unless of course you're already using X Tend Life products, in which case you don't need to fear them. And they'll work better.

And why not check out my website about Natural Skin Care, it's packed with tips about using natural and organic products, including nutritional supplements, for various health conditions. You'll be surprised at how much you can do for your health - naturally.