Does your body need a chemical clean up?

Be it slapping on your mattifying, shine-reducing, complexion-enhancing, foundation; rubbing in your skin-firming, nice-smelling, light-reflecting, moisturiser, or, giving your hair a soapy, strengthening, gloss-inducing, lather; we all love a good pamper.

Last year, in the UK alone, we each spent on average £3000 on beauty products and toiletries, while the UK cosmetics industry raked in a whopping £1 billion – making us Brit’s the biggest beauty bingers in Europe. Cosmetics have become every girl’s favourite essential, and the quick answer to any beauty or body dilemma, but have you ever stopped to consider what’s actually in those products you use so loyally? What is it that makes them so effective? And why there’s such a fuss all of a sudden about new-age natural and organic products?

In their new book, The Green Beauty Bible, Sarah Stacey and Jo Fairley, authors of cult beauty reads The 21st Century Beauty Bible, and Feel Fab Forever, have launched a full-scale mission to seek out an alternative to every chemically based beauty product known to even them. Coining ‘chic-ology’ (the idea that you can go easy on the planet, chemicals and still look amazingly gorgeous ), the beauty buffs have joined the forage into the depths of natural ingredients and alternative remedies, attempting to wipe those chemical nasties clean off our faces.

According to scientists, in the course of one year the average make-up wearing, product-buying woman will absorb nearly 5lbs worth of chemical cocktails through her skin, directly into her body. That’s the equivalent of three large wine bottles, filled with any number of toxic, harmful and even some untested, chemicals. But what exactly are these chemicals we should be so fervently avoiding?

Paraben Paranoia
Parabens such as methyl-paraben, propyl-paraben and butyl-paraben, are used in cosmetics as preservatives, to extend the shelf-life of a product. The need for preservatives is justified, since we all want a product to last as long as possible and remain as fresh as ever, despite leaving the lid off it for days and regularly dunking unwashed fingers into it. However, the risk associated with synthetic parabens is definitely a worry, especially when (albeit slightly more expensive) natural alternatives exist. Renowned for their high toxicity and known to cause cancerous tumours in animal tests, parabens mimic the production of oestrogen in our bodies. The excess of this hormone is what experts have recently linked to the trigger, and onset, of breast cancer. While the direct cause between paraben’s and breast cancer has not yet been resolutely proven, there have been numerous cases where traces of paraben molecules have been found, intact, amongst breast cancer tissue. Present in 99% of leave on products like moisturisers and make-up, and 77% of rinse off products like shower gel and shampoo, avoiding parabens can be extremely tricky.

Phthalates for thought
The “tha-lates” collection of chemicals is what makes plastic flexible. They can be found in hairsprays to prevent stiffness, and nail varnish to prevent chipping, as well as shampoos, moisturisers, and deodorants, where they act as solvents to increase spreadability, and enhance fragrance and absorption into the body (so that the smell of a product stays on the skin longer). Phthalates are regularly linked to reproductive damage, affecting the fertility rates of new-born males, and putting adult males at risk of low sperm counts. Dubbed the ‘gender benders’ phthalates are almost everywhere in our day-to-day lives, and can creep directly into our bloodstreams through their extensive use in cosmetics.

Sodium-lauryl-sulphate (SLS)
Originally an industrial degreasing agent used to scrub oil off of engines and garage floors, sodium-lauryl-sulphate helps soapy products like shampoo, shower gel, and bubble-bath produce more foam. SLS is renowned to have a drying effect on human skin, inflaming conditions like eczema and dermatitis, as well as being linked to eye damage, depression, central nervous system damage, and diarrhoea. Quite the darlings of the chemical world, no?

Petroleum, Petrolatum, or Paraffin Oil?
The mineral oil group, all derivatives of petroleum, are considered by many to be an amazing source of moisture for dry, parched skin. But the reality is that by coating the skin with a plastic-like film, products such as Vaseline, baby oil, and make-up claiming to ‘moisturise’ or ‘condition’, actually clog pores, slow down cell development and skin functions, and so delay the release of toxins from the body. These can all result in acne, sallow complexion, and premature aging.

Fragrance Fret
The big qualm over ‘fragrance’ and ‘parfum’ on product labels is that due to gaping loopholes in labelling regulations, these words can be used as umbrella terms to represent up to 4,000 separate ingredients. Many of which could be toxic, harmful, or likely to trigger allergies. Apart from the obvious irresponsibility of this practice, the main problem here is that consumers just do not know what it is they are buying and putting on to their skin.
Cosmetic companies claim that the evidence to suggest chemical ingredients can have harmful side effects, cause health problems and be linked to cancer, is too limited, and conducted on too small a scale to be taken seriously. Branding theories of the chemical cocktail effect an ‘urban myth’.

Yet, while it is partly true that research regarding the long-term effect of these chemicals on humans is yet to be conducted with the magnitude that is urgently necessary, this argument does not go far in defending the use of them. Companies, experts, and consumers alike, just do not know what prolonged, repetitive use of chemical ingredients will do to our bodies and health in the long-term, and that fact should be enough to worry people.

“Some enlightened cancer specialists now suggest to patients that they seek out natural and organic cosmetics, because of the as-yet unknown impact of some chemical ingredients” say Sarah and Jo “it makes no sense to slap a cocktail of synthetic chemicals on your skin.”

Testing of chemicals rarely takes into account the fact that we use a series of products each day, often on top of one another, inevitably mixing chemicals that perhaps were not intended to be combined.
While it’s widely accepted now, albeit after proven research, that processed, chemically treated foods are just not good for our bodies, the same mentality has yet to be adopted towards our skincare and beauty regimes.

Natural Order
Like Sarah and Jo, eco-entrepreneur Claire ‘Lula’ Lewis, founder of online organic apothecary, LoveLula.com, has been seeking out the best in natural, and organic beauty products for years now. A trained naturopath and beauty expert, Lula (as she prefers to be called) has combined her well of experience and extensive knowledge of the natural beauty industry, with some of the best producers of natural cosmetics around, to create the online haven that is LoveLula. For a worry-free cosmetics binge, it really is the place to go. With over 750 beautifiers to choose from, you can place your natural pampering order online, then sit back and await its beautifully presented delivery.

“For millennia natural ingredients have formed the basis of women’s beauty rituals and it is only in the post war period that chemicals crept in to replace these natural and luxurious beauty basics” says Lula. “After a lifetime’s passion for nature and interest in the relationship between nature and our bodies, I simply believe that these natural products are better!”