This is a wonderful and revealing contribution by a lovely lady I met through my website, Nell Stephenson. Read what she has to share for all us women of all ages, ageing or not and this is one you WILL want to read! Much of the world around us is absorbed through skin, especially cleansers and creams that we apply topically. These substances can damage or repair our inner cells, tissues and organs and the quality of skin itself.  The porosity of our skin plays a major role in how toxins can enter our bodily systems and on the other hand how successfully we can nourish skin to protect both our insides and the surface of our skin. So with that said, over to you Nell!

If you’re someone who has followed a real Paleo diet for a while, what’s the likelihood of you stopping into a grocery store and buying something labeled as an ‘energy bar’ and eating it without checking the label first? How about reaching for an unmarked bottle of salad dressing at a buffet luncheon and pouring it all over your veggies without checking to see if it had soy or dairy in it? Chances are slim to none, right?

Surprisingly though, while you may not take that haphazard approach to what you’re putting in your body, are you as tuned in to what you’re putting on it? I must confess: for years, I was not. Blog readers and clients would often write in and ask me for a recommendation for the ‘most Paleo moisturizer’ or the ‘best type of sunscreen’, to which I’d reply based on whatever I happened to be using at the time. My dermatologist recommended an 80 SPF, so I used it during my races.

The spa I went to for facials recommended an ‘essential oil based night balm’, so I used that faithfully each evening before bed. Yet I never checked to see what I was actually applying to my skin. Do you?

And just as we don’t necessarily question what we are told are healthy eating options, such as the idea that whole grains are a great source of fiber or that we need dairy for strong bones, we also, as a society, don’t tend to question the recommendations from a dermatologist or an aesthetician about what to put on our skin. Even beyond that, what about all the personal care products we choose ourselves from the health food store, our favorite online makeup supplier or the spa we’ve been going to for years? Do we really and truly know what they’re made of? I certainly didn’t.

A few months ago, however, I became aware of some shocking statistics which proved to be just the wakeup call I needed.

Did you know it has been nearly 80 years since the FDA has made any changes to the laws that govern what we can safely put into our personal care products?  In other words, there are no regulations as to what is deemed safe to put on our faces, our hair and even on our children’s skin. So how bad could this all really be? Worse than we all might think.

We’re not talking about the worst case scenario being a slight skin irritation, either.

We know from the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database that some of the ingredients we put on ourselves each and every day (the average American uses 126 chemicals before they leave the house each day; men included) are toxic.

What do you do when you find out the lotion you’ve used for years contains an ingredient which could cause cancer? Sure, you could switch to organic coconut oil, but what about some good options for makeup or even for personal care products we can’t necessarily find in nature? This is where finding companies that are reliable, trustworthy and that really can and do perform is key these days.

Beautycounter is more than just a company with safe skincare and make up; they’ve got a mission, to make safe skincare available to everyone and they’re even lobbying for change on Capitol Hill!  Just as much as we need to have better standards in place with more accurate information available to us in terms of what we eat, we also need to be able to know that the children’s sunscreen we put on our kids, or the body wash the whole family uses in the shower is safe.

With so much pollution around us and so little we can control, it makes it all the more important to proactively change everything we can to keep ourselves as safe and healthy as possible; both in the body and on it! – Nell Stephenson

Thank you Nell and we all can most definitely learn from this and now we can have another option to healthier products to put on our skin, one of the most amazing and multifaceted organs designed to protect and enhance our insides as well as our exterior.   

From my kitchen to yours,

Tina Turbin

If you have any questions or suggestions just email me at Tina (at) Paleomazing.com.