With the approach of the New Year, even if you’ve sworn off easily forgotten resolutions, I think it’s still human to want to start anew and try something that is better for us spiritually, emotionally, physically, or financially. For some people, it may be starting a healthier, less toxic regimen with their personal and beauty care products.
Start by eliminating artificial fragrances
One of the most important first steps you can take in making your body care, hair care and personal care products healthier is to eliminate anything that shows artificial fragrances in the ingredient list. Artificial fragrances are rated one of the highest risk ingredients for personal and beauty products because they can be made with any number of chemicals that are toxic to the human body and/or the environment.
Because fragrances can be considered a trade secret, they are not required to individually list out each chemical component of a fragrances on the label. This may explain why so many people these days have allergies and sensitivities to artificial scents.
It may feel like a chore at first to avoid artificial fragrances since they are so pervasive, however once you become used to not using these potently fragranced products, you actually will start to prefer the unscented or naturally scented products. Artificially scented products will begin to smell overwhelming and strange to you once you’ve eliminated them for a while.
Elminating parabens and other hormone-altering preservatives
The second step you can take to getting a more healthy bathroom cabinet is to eliminate products that contain various types of parabens, the most well known hormone-altering preservative. Different types of parabens are often used to dramatically extend the shelf life of products that often sit on store shelves for a while before they are purchased, and then can sit longer at a person’s home as well.
This is why we make smaller batches of products here at AuraSensory.com, and we also only sell our products directly online, so we skip the vast warehouses where products for mass sale are stored, as well as store shelves where they can sit much longer. This way, we reduced the need for a super-long shelf life, and we pass the nontoxic benefits of this model to our customers.
The preservatives are often listed as some of the last ingredients on the list provided on the back of a product’s label. Carefully review the names of these, and you can always plug them into EWG’s helpful database “Skin Deep” to see what the toxicity and safety rating is before you decide to buy it.
The reason some of these chemical preservatives are so effective is that they end up turning into formaldehyde over time, which kills off bacteria, fungus and other pathogens that lead to spoilage. Formaldehyde is highly toxic to the human body, and expsoure should be extremely limited to this chemical.
If you’re avoiding the preservatives that are known as “formaldehyde donors” you are already greatly reducing you and your family’s exposure to these potentially toxic chemicals.
These are just two very large steps you can take to make your products safer for application to the skin. There are, of course, many more, which I think we’ll explore a little more in the first month of the new year. No matter what your resolution this year, I hope you’re enjoying it so far, and wish you and your family peace, happiness and prosperity in the New Year!