How Can I Be Sure My Beauty Care Products Are Safe and Truly Natural?
by Tera Warner
We’ve had a few generations of people that have been raised on the watermelon bubble gum smells and peach and rose, Glade fresheners. It’s so interesting, cause when I had a store on Queen Street in Toronto when I was 22 and we’d get people coming up. And they would be say, “Okay, I want to smell rose.” And then they’d smell it. And in that one drop are 40 roses. And they’re like, “That’s not rose.” Because we’ve been nose-washed so to speak.
Aromas are made for the food and flavor industry, so we’ve also been eating a lot of synthetic aromas. So it’s really gone into us deeply. We’ve become so used to strawberry and pear scented beauty care products, soaps and lotions, that we’ve forgotten pears and strawberries don’t really smell like that. Even vanilla is another one we’ve been nose-washed about! Most people would barely recognize the original thing.
Here are some guidelines to help you choose safe, quality beauty care products:
Start at the Health Food Store, But Don’t Stop There
Start at the health food store, but be warned that not everything there is gonna be great either. Organic ingredients are a good thing to look for, but the words “pure” and “natural” and “therapeutic grade” don’t mean one single thing.
No amount of pretty leaves or flowers painted on the outside of the bottle is proof that exclusively real plants and leaves are in it, either. Read the label and if you do not recognize the ingredients, then start becoming consumer conscious and do a bit of investigation! Look up the ingredients online and find out what that unidentifiable object really is.
There are other sources of real-to-the-feel beauty care products and ingredients, but you have to be willing to scratch the surface and start informing yourself a bit more so you know how to spot what you want when you find it.
Educate Yourself
You are the only person who can really take responsibility for what you put in your body and on your body. There are already so many factors that are difficult to control (the air quality, water quality, environmental toxins like radiation, etc.). Reduce the number of variables you have to battle by information yourself about what’s really inside these beauty care products.
Skin Deep is a fantastic resource that does extensive research on the safety of many brands of beauty care products. You can search from a collection of over 69,000 products in everything from hair care, make up, skin care, nails, eye care, fragrance and perfume, babies and moms and even cosmetics for men.
Another thing that can be helpful is to know a bit more about how the production for essential oils works! The only fruits that really can produce an essential oil are the ones with peels — orange, lime, grapefruit, etc. If you were to try and steam distill pears, you’d get an overcooked jam. 😉
Only about 2 to 5 percent of the world’s production of essential oils are worthy of being included in therapeutic beauty products. The rest of the market is really there just feeding the huge, huge multimillion dollar food and flavor industry.
And they’ll take things and then they’ll fold them and re-fractionate them and isolate them and do all these fancy things. So you’re not really left with anything real. You’re going to want to learn about more about the plants you’re using if you want to start accessing the intricate, medicinal and awe-inspiring molecules that are in each and every oil.
Your Nose Knows
Use your nose. Forget the words and research and intellectual data. Your nose will know. If you start smelling all different types of quality you know how to smell the real deal against ones that claim to be natural. Your nose will start to become educated.
You can start by going to smell pear and watermelon-scented beauty care products and then smelling real pears and watermelons and you’ll start to see the difference. Go smell drugstore rose-scented cream, and then stand over a bouquet of roses. There’s a little reaction that most people will get when their pineal gland will say, “Oh, that’s totally synthetic.” Then you’ll just get it.
You know that feeling you get when you’re walking through the aisle of cleaning products in your local grocery store? You kind of subconsciously hold your breath. That’s because your body knows it doesn’t want to breathe those in. The number of neurological and hormonal toxins in that aisle is more than your body wants to deal with!
Your nose has such great intelligence, and it will help guide you to finding the best ingredients.
Watch This “Crackdown on Natural Cosmetics” Video
For years I thought that products in the natural food stores were “natural.” But after taking a much, much deeper look at the research I discovered some rather uncomfortable truths about what was going on in the “natural” beauty industry. I managed to put most of that research into this video. If you’re willing to take the time, it is a rather surprising wake-up call to what’s really going on in your “natural” beauty products.
So much of this information is available for discovery IF you spend hundreds of hours peeling back the layers to find out what’s REALLY going on out there. Just spend one hour watching this video and you’ll know everything you need to know to make smart choices about your personal care products moving forward:
