Don’t Forget Your Skin Needs Love

Many synthetic skin care fans seem to insist that our beautiful skin is watertight! They say that it can be scrubbed, washed, steamed, and NOT one thing will penetrate it deep enough to cause any type of damage! Just doesn’t sound right! While at the same time cosmetic companies (commercial ones) will state their product will boost your collagen, vitamins, and minerals that our skin needs to eat. So the main question is do these cosmetics get into and under our beautiful skin?

We know that beauty is skin deep. Human skin is an extremely absorbent organ and it also seems to be constantly 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. We all know that oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide along with bad pollutants will enter our skin through means. They are sweat ducts, follicles, and sebaceous glands. The ability of the skin to absorb these substances is widely used in medicine. Patches are a common way to get the drug into our system, and are widely used in today’s practices.

We all know that our skin can absorb up to 60% of anything applied to it. So along with the water, vitamins, minerals, and oxygen our beautiful skin will also soak up some scary stuff, too, things that may cause cancer! Carcinogenic ingredients we are exposed to everyday. SO we must watch what we are putting on our skin, its important. The cosmetic companies want us to buy their magic product to slather our skin with and hope we use it long enough to actually work. We know they can cause harm!! This is where all these chemicals can come into play. The cosmetic companies need these chemicals as penetration enhancers. They 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.

Some of the most popular penetration enhancers can be alcohols, glycols, and sufactants. Liposomes, these will activate a compound may also serve as penetration enhancers, too. One of the most common liposomes is called phosphatidylcholine, whew, 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 stuff!!! Remember the stronger or higher the alcohol content the deeper the penetration. So beware read read labels and remember Essential Oils are reported to be safe and gentle enhancers.

So that last blog I talked about how bad enhancers were and that our skin is very absorbent. I am going to continue on and talk about some other important skin factors we don’t realize or know about. How the chemicals soak into our skin and how it can affect us and what else we need to look out for. Why we should use organic natural skin care products.

So what do you think can happen when a potentially dangerous chemical pass through our skin? Well 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 its what it needs and excretes what it doesn’t through circulation of blood and lymph. Lymph is 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. Of course some of those substances will stay in our body, because our skin is so large it soaks up so much, and may possibly accumulate for a long time…

Since most skin care products on the market today contain a ton, well like hundreds, of synthetic additives. Which have been tested on animals not humans. So while they expose the animals to the chemicals and see what happens to them, they really do not know it will affect humans. That’s pretty scary. Because we all know that some people are very loyal to certain products and continued usage may be hazardous and harm them. For example sunscreens have not been around that long and they are still studying the effects it will have on us. They’ve studied it but it does not cover a long period of time. We need to be concerned about long term use of these chemicals in our cosmetics.

If you are using a commercial smelly shampoo that contains DEA- diethanolamine- which is a surfactant that gives and stabilizes the foam we think is good, for 7 years. Then you switch every now and then to one with shine enhancers, body, or conditioning for another 5 years. You are adding even more chemicals and just think of pouring all those chemicals all over your body, do you really think it will make you any more prettier? I don’t really think so. I think it means more bad stuff and that can not possibly make me healthy or be healthy for me let alone make me prettier than I already am.

Here’s an example, there have done studies and found that mice that were exposed to undiluted DEA had a slower cell growth and where their memory is, it showed cell death. EEWW!! So basically the mice were smaller and not as smart as a untouched mice would be. Why you ask? Because DEA’s structure is similar to choline, which is needed to help with normal brain development. Isn’t this enough to freak you out? It does me.

When and if all these different potentially cancer causing poisonous chemicals get absorbed by our beautiful skin they are carried in our blood all throughout our beautiful bodies. Sometimes they 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- highly carcinogenic, that was long and hard to spell. 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 may make your acne worse or cause a reaction that looks like acne. The terrible chemicals found in 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 your planet. This is why it is so important to buy and use organic natural skin care products.