Short List for Safe Skin
The end of summer is a good time for thinking about your skin.
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Healthy Skin
On a medical level, our skin may be our largest organ, but who thinks about that? We think about how our skin and others' looks and how our own skin feels.
We learn a lot about someone by the health of their skin. We notice if a woman's cheeks are rosy, if a man's skin looks nourished or ravaged by the sun, and we are aware of the fragrance of the lotion someone is applying. For every lotion and in fact every kind of skin product available, Your HealthWorks encourages you to choose one that feeds your skin and keeps it healthy. Other factors (water, sun, even the foods we eat) affect our skin's vitality. Having the information to allow us to make the right choices keeps our skin feeling good, looking good, and staying healthy.
Beyond just the health of our skin, Your HealthWorks will cover topics of vital interest to women at risk for breast cancer, looking at which name brands and artificial ingredients must be avoided. YHW will look at shampoos for children, helping you sort out which ones are safe for the whole person, not just adding to the hair's shine.
Men's body care products deserve attention as well, as the endocrine disruptors found in some men's products jeopardize their health. We all put concoctions on our skin every day and we can better enjoy the results we get when we are only using ingredients on our skin that are safe for us.
Cosmetics, Skin, and Body Care
The biggest open secret in the cosmetics industry today is that human skin is porous and can absorb at least some of the ingredients in makeup and body care products. If the cosmetics industry would concede this small fact, cosmetics would have to be classified as drugs and would therefore be subject to regulation.
As it stands in the US, the cosmetic industry is self-regulating and is not even required to list all of the ingredients on the packaging. Terms such as "natural," "herbal," and "organic" are often meaningless at best and deceptive at worst, as there is no control over their use. Since 1938, only 8 of the more than 12,000 ingredients found in cosmetics have been banned by the FDA. It is a veritable Pandora's Box few seem willing to open.
