New year’s is usually a great time to give your bathroom cabinet a makeover. If you didn’t get a chance to do a New Year’s Makeover, it’s not too late to start. You can make it part of your spring-cleaning ritual instead. Start now by taking a closer look at what’s inside your bathroom medicine cabinet as well as what may be lurking under the sink or in an adjacent closet. Even the most seemingly innocuous items can contain a veritable of soup of chemicals that may be doing you more harm than good.
Read the labels and familiarize yourself with the ingredients. Start by sorting products into two bins or groups: products you use daily vs. products that you use occasionally. The ones you use daily are the ones you should be examining very carefully and these typically include but are not limited to, toothpaste, mouthwash, antiperspirants or deodorants, talcum powder, face creams, lotions, cleansers, over-the-counter cold and pain medications, “anti-bacterial” soaps, shampoos, conditioners, hair styling products, and traditional cosmetics.
After all, these are products you routinely apply to your skin or your teeth and gums –both the fastest routes for substances to be absorbed into the bloodstream. When substances are absorbed into the body this way they often by-pass the liver –your body’s principle detoxifying organ– or worse, clog and congest it. That means many toxic substances aren’t properly eliminated and often take up residence in the fatty tissue of our organs where they build up over time, turning into a virtual “thorn in your side” that can compromise your immune system and leave you susceptible to a host of health problems. A congested liver is also one of the fastest routes to inflammation in the body, and inflammation is the foundation for most degenerative diseases.
Ironically, many of the chemical ingredients in personal care products are there to improve the texture and consistency, appearance, or shelf-life stability of the product and have no functional purpose. To add insult to injury, many are primarily there to speed up or enhance the penetration of the other ingredients into the skin; increase the thickness and intensity of the lather (making it harder to rinse off); or make the product more visually appealing.
And while it may seem hard to believe, new evidence has recently surfaced suggesting that exposure to some of these ingredients may even lead to pre-mature childhood obesity! There’s a lot we don’t know yet about how routine and repeated exposures to these substances can affect our health. Given all the alarming information that’s floating around, it seems foolish to wait until there’s proof positive that these substances are indeed harmful. Take a cue from your mom … better safe than sorry!
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