“You are what you eat” is a phrase most are familiar with. With the increased understanding about the benefits of using organic health and beauty products, people are realizing that it’s time to join the clean beauty movement.
Clean beauty, also known as organic skincare, natural beauty products, and raw beauty, is defined as products that are created and produced without any toxic ingredients, both proven and suspected. The ingredients in these products are ethically sourced and created with the health of both our bodies and the environment in mind.
I suffered from acne as a teenager. My mom took me to the doctor, to various estheticians, and even to one who left a glycolic acid peel on my face so long that I thought my face would have permanent scarring. It wasn’t until I met a chiropractor in San Francisco who was helping me with my dairy allergy, that I was introduced to a holistic esthetician and subsequently, the clean beauty industry.
Why Is Clean Beauty Important?
Using clean beauty products is vital for our health. Do you know what our body’s largest organ is? It might surprise you to know that it is not our liver or our brain: it is our skin. It is our body’s first line of defense and up to 60 percent of what you put onto your skin makes it into your bloodstream. That means that if we are using products that have toxic chemicals and carcinogenic (cancer-causing) properties, we are poisoning our blood with these ingredients. And since many cosmetic companies do not require FDA approval, it is imperative that we take our health and beauty products into our own hands. In fact, there are currently only 11 cosmetic ingredients that the FDA banned in the United States. In the EU, there are 1,300 banned ingredients.
For me, clean beauty literally changed my life. Yes, my scarring eventually went away. My acne cleared up and for the first time in my life, my skin constantly glowed with health and radiance. But clean beauty really changed my life because I finally understood the connection between what we put on our face (or our bodies) and its direct relationship to our health. It was the Aha! moment that forever changed the way I viewed how I treated my body’s largest organ.
But the clean beauty industry went much deeper than the epidermis for me. You see, that holistic esthetician I was introduced to became one of my greatest mentors. She taught me everything I know about holistic skincare, or what we both liked to call “skin food.” She often made her own tonics out of dried herbs from the local health food store. She concocted deeply purifying masks from raw goat yogurt and local honey. And she layered my skin with some of the most delectable scents and sensations with the nearly edible products she used during her treatments.
I was hooked. I could never go back to Clinique, or ProActiv, or even Lancome after that first treatment. There was no way I would ever trade the smell of synthetic fragrance over the purity of blue tansy, bee cream, and blueberry cleansers. Can you blame a girl?
How Do You Know If Your Products Are Clean?
The first way to know if products are clean is to actually read the ingredient list. Do you know what the ingredients are just by reading them or do you need good old Google nearby to read (and pronounce) the names? For a beauty product to be clean, the ingredient list should be names of plants, herbs, essential oils, even mushrooms that you can find in nature, not a laboratory. Clean products do not have a list of ingredients linked to harmful health effects, ranging from hormone disruptors to cancer to skin irritations.
Some Clean Beauty No-No’s
Some of the most common beauty product offenders to avoid are:
- Parabens
- Phthalates
- Formaldehyde (and its several hidden names)
- Triclosan
- PEGs
- Ethanolamines
- Chemical sunscreens
- Oxybenzone
- Synthetic fragrance
- Parfum
- BHT
- BHA
Unfortunately, many if not most of these ingredients have other names that they disguise themselves with, so it is important to research all of the names these offenders can fall under.
Why I Made the Forever Switch to Clean Beauty
Once I was introduced to clean beauty, I became an obsessive researcher. I wanted to know every clean beauty product that I could. I wanted to know everything from where they were manufactured (the more local, the better for me!) to whether they were a small-batch making company to a large-scale corporation. I wanted to understand how they were giving back to their communities or to the environment, and I wanted to know why these companies got started in the first place. Because for something to be truly holistic, which was extremely important to me, all of these answers mattered. The closer I felt to the product, its mission, and its contribution, the more I connected to its value in my life—and on my skin! And because of that, I felt like the product worked better because I believed it did. On top of that, these products actually did work wonders!
Unfortunately, my esthetician and mentor of over 15 years passed away on Christmas morning 2017. Her death came as a complete shock, as she had hidden her cancer from all of us. I don’t know why she didn’t allow her loved ones to care or be there for her during her final months and days, but I do know that my life will never be the same. She taught me so much about loving—truly nourishing—my body, especially my skin. She ignited a passion in me for holistic skincare that grows deeper and stronger as I learn more about my skin’s needs on my own, without her guidance and care.
It’s a lonely skincare road at times, as she had always been my facial guru, guiding me toward the products that were perfect for my skin during specific seasons, hormone changes, even postpartum breakouts. But she instilled in me the knowledge to know my skin, listen to what it needs, change skin care regimes as the seasons change, and be diligent about treating my body’s largest organ with the utmost TLC.
I am grateful to the clean beauty industry for unveiling the ugly truth about the toxic health and beauty products that sit on the shelves of America’s most popular stores. I am appalled that cancer-causing ingredients can share space with certain products touting “all natural.” By the way, there is no scientific test to deem something as “all natural,” which is why some of the most unnatural items can boast that claim. So do your homework when it comes to your health and beauty products. Your skin needs the ultimate protection because it is the first line of defense against everything that surrounds us. So treat it well, nourish it with truly healthy products, and remember, if you don’t know what it is, it’s probably not good for you.
