Why I try to avoid chemical products on the skin

All my treatments are done using completely natural ingredients that you could eat! I am a strong believer in using as few synthetic products on our skin as possible.. as you will have read in my tag lines in the website.

The reason for this is the skin is an organ and is our body’s largest organ. And it absorbs what ever we put on it. Think nicotine patches & HRT patches. Absorbtion is one of the skins 7 functions. Along with heat regulation, sensation, protection, excretion, secretion & Vitamin D synthesis.

Once these products are in our body the liver has to process it & in the mean time our bodies can clog up. Now the liver might just have a few other things to process like alcohol… Well we’re not all saints are we?  These chemicals with scents can also be endocrine or hormone disrupters. Ie they literally mess with our equilibrium! This is such an easy change we can look at making to our lifestyle.

Imagine finding out those migraines were caused by our shampoo.. Worth a thought isn’t it?

Where & how we can make changes.

Firstly

Always read the label. Like with food! Because we are still consuming it right. Just through our pores not in our mouth.

Next rule

If it sounds like a load of chemical names you can’t pronounce it’s probably something you don’t want to put on your skin

Look out for greenwashing this is where our delightful factories are realising people are looking to make a shift to more eco, more healthier, greener & plant derived ingredients, so they stick a few palm fronds on the bottle in the hope that we won’t read the label with the cheap chemicals that are still in the bottle.

As a happy accident what you will see happening is a reduction of plastic waste in your bathroom as the companies that realise the importance of toxic free also care about the environment so Deodorants & soaps come in less damaging packaging!

Showering

Think soap bars with olive oil, coconut oil or shea butter all naturally moisturising instead of bottles of synthetic shower gels with that list of ingredients we have no idea how to pronounce. Think how much they might strip the skin of our natural oils. You won’t need body lotion once you remove these types of shower gels. Double win.

Shampooing / conditioning

Ok there is a movement called no poo! And no obviously it doesn’t mean ‘that’ it means no shampoo. This almost needs a post of its own but I will touch on it here. 2 years ago on 12 April I stopped washing my hair COMPLETELY. We were in lockdown and I grabbed my time in private for ‘the transition’ as it’s known, away from synthetic chemicals. This is where the magic happens & where our natural oils -Sebum take over and coats the hair instead of silicone that’s in conditioner. The transition process can take some weeks.

I now am what’s known as low poo. This means we look for hair products that do not use parabens, sulfates or silicone. Sulphates strips the hair and silicone coats the hair. A whole cycle we can do without. It’s all just marketing tools right!! And parabens are added to preserve the life of these sort of products but can irritate the scalp, dry it and in some cases lead to hair loss.

And being no poo for 2 years let my hair get rid of all the harsh chemicals and now I only need to wash it every couple of weeks. Annoyingly though the hard water in London is also a problem. But more on that another time. But in the mean time there’s a whole 40,000 of us that seek alternative methods.. My hair even made the cover photo.

Deodorant

Again harsh chemicals going into the skin & our delicate bodies. Look for aluminium & of course paraben free. I use Crystal deodorants these kill the bacteria but are not anti perspirant. They last well over a year!

So do you think you could make any small changes and buck the trend? There really are some beautiful natural products out there and guess what they are small businesses so we are not lining the likes of Unilever’s pockets.

Less spend, less plastic waste and less gunk going into my body via my skin. All of this helps towards our overall health.

Amen xx