Is Your Beauty Routine Causing Your Health Issues?

Did you know that every day women use an average of 12 personal care products that contain 168 different chemicals? And men use an average of 6 personal care products that contain 85 different chemicals.

You might be using these skincare products to improve your skin so you look and feel healthy. But what if these skincare products are giving you health issues instead? Would you stop using them, or would you find alternatives?

Let’s read on to find out more about the women’s health issues that could potentially crop up due to your daily beauty routine.

The U.S. Cosmetics Industry Is Mostly Self-Regulated

The cosmetics industry has grown rapidly in the United States since 1938. That was when the US Congress last enacted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act. At that time, only $1 billion in sales were reported by the cosmetics industry, whereas now it’s more than $169 billion.

But even so, the hundreds of chemicals that are used in cosmetics aren’t truly regulated by the FDA. This means that the US cosmetics industry is mostly self-regulated, and this can result in unsafe chemicals being added to skincare products, without any repercussions.

Many Chemicals in Skincare Products Are Unsafe for Human Consumption

Many of the chemicals used in women’s daily beauty routine have been linked to cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm, and other health issues. Some of these chemicals are:

• Formaldehyde
• Paraformaldehyde
• Methylene glycol
• Mercury
• Parabens
• Phthalates

The interesting thing is all these chemicals and more have been BANNED by the European Union and many other nations. They are slated to be removed from skincare products in other countries, which has prompted some retailers in the United States to remove them from their store brands.

These US retailers are:

• Target
• Rite Aid
• Walgreens
• CVS Health
• Whole Foods

Hopefully, a lot more US retailers will follow suit and start removing these dangerous chemicals from products that Americans are using every single day!

Your Body Has a Hard Time Detoxifying Itself of All These Chemicals

Why does it matter if your body is being inundated by all these dangerous chemicals? Well, the problem is that your body is getting a new influx of harsh chemicals every single day!

This means that your liver, kidneys, and other organs involved in cleaning up and detoxifying your body won’t have a chance to clean up your body before a new slew of chemicals is added to the mix. This results in your organs and biological systems being unable to function optimally.

The human body hasn’t evolved to deal with such a large array of harsh chemicals daily. Maybe your liver can remove a few chemicals every single day, but not 168!

And these are just the chemicals that are entering your body from your beauty self-care routine. What about the chemicals that enter your system from the polluted outdoor air, contaminated water, indoor air pollution, and all the other chemicals that are disseminated into the atmosphere?

At some point, you need to take a serious look at your daily beauty routine and see if it’s worth using all those skincare products. Is it so important to have pristine beautiful skin at the risk of other serious health issues?

Consider Many Natural Alternatives

The positive thing here is that you don’t have to give up your daily beauty routine completely. You can still have gorgeous skin or beautiful white teeth.

All you need to do is find suitable alternatives. For example, instead of using a kit from the pharmacy, you could go to your dentist for teeth whitening.

Or you could use natural oils like coconut or sesame oil instead to moisturize your dry skin.

Of course, you will need to experiment a little bit and find out the natural alternatives that work best for you and your skin type. But you need to make these choices with your wallet so US retailers understand that they need to clean up their skincare products.

You don’t want to pass on harmful genetics to your children, or deal with allergies in your children or other more serious ailments, because of all the skincare products you used in your youth.

Another thing to be wary of is greenwashing. Too many US retailers are creating ‘natural’ or ‘green’ products that seem like they are natural and good for you but are just the same as the original chemical-filled products.

Do not believe these retailers and their promises without doing a lot of research on your own. You can use this website from EWG to check your skincare products to see how harmful they are to your biological systems.

Also, make sure you are using as many natural products as possible when washing your children’s clothes and when putting products on your children or babies. It’s much harder for their little bodies to detoxify themselves, and they accumulate chemicals much faster than adults do.

Avoid Health Issues by Using More Natural Products

Not all skincare products cause women’s health issues, and also, not all health issues are caused by skincare products. But the important thing here is to start paying more attention to all products you put on your skin.

Your skin is the biggest organ of the body and it absorbs (drinks or eats up) everything you put on it. If a natural alternative works as well as a chemical one, why wouldn’t you use it?

Keep browsing through the myriad articles on our website on health & fitness to stay informed.