I see and hear it everyday. This product reduces lines! Reverses aging! Removes brown spots! Smoothes skin! and so on and so on. But at what price? Women are lining up by the thousands to purchase department store, direct sell and drug store branded skincare. The issue is that they don't care for your skin at ALL.
Many anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, firming and smoothing products contain dangerous and harmful chemicals that actually age the skin long term. As a account manager, educator and trainer for some major beauty brands, I've been in the beauty and skincare industry for almost 17 years now and I've become a walking ingredient dictionary for products as I trained thousands of spa employees, makeup artists and estheticians on various brands, and I assure you the short term benefits of some of these products are not worth the long term side effects like skin cancer. Many studies are also proving that these chemicals are being absorbed into the blood and disrupting endocrine function, which can lead to cancer. The campaign for safe cosmetics has a great website where you can plug in your brand and see just how toxic the ingredients are, an a scale from 1 to 10.
To research your products, visit the Environmental Working Group – Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database at http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.org/. “Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group.” It allows you to search for a product, ingredient or company – offering information along with the toxicity level rating.The goal is a product that rates 2 or less. A rating of 0 or 1 is best.
Many of my friends and associates that have ignored my warnings about their products finally listened after going to this site and realizing that almost all of the products they were using on a daily basis - up to 15 a day, (makeup, lotions, soaps and skincare) were exposing them to dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals, over 200 a day in fact.
I say this because women ask me everyday how I keep my skin so "young-looking". It isn't by using these toxic products that cause deep cellular inflammation, which leads to aging. Just like inflammatory and acidic foods cause disease, inflammation and pre-mature aging in the body, so does inflammatory skin care products. Anti-aging starts with reducing inflammation in the skin and using products that actually penetrate the skin with ingredients that deliver messages to the cells to increase elastin and collagen production, or to turn off the melanocyte to reduce pigmentation, not kill the melanocyte like most harmful skincare works to lighten the skin. You don't have to give up results either. I use a vegan, chemical free, paraben free, cruelty free line developed by Physicians that is pharmaceutical grade - meaning it penetrates to deliver the plant based peptides, hyaluronic acid, botanical extracts like green tea or others, and actually reverses aging by working in unison with the cell. It's called Hylunia. It's my secret weapon. There are many others out there too, brands like Mychelle, Derma E and many more than deliver results without chemicals.
The top anti-aging ingredients you should look for in clean and organic products are:
- Pycnogenol
- Resveratrol
- Hyaluronate or Hyaluronic Acid
- Plant peptides
- Ester C - magnesium ascorbyl phosphate
- Green tea - camellia sinensis
- Natural BHA and AHA's
- Licorice, Rose and Calendula - for sensitive skin
- Pumpkin peptides
- Natural coconut based cleansing agents
- Grapeseed
- Natural Vitamin A - Retinyl Palmitate
These are just a few. You want to avoid products with:
- sulfates
- parabens
- fragrance - can hide toxic phthalates
- EDTA’s
- triethanolamine
- propylene glycol - a.k.a anti-freeze
- acrylimides and acrylic copolymers
- PEG Esters
- BHT & BHA (Butylated hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene)
More info in my article:
The Science Fiction of Beauty Ingredients
http://planetmikki.blogspot.com/2010/03/science-fiction-of-beauty-ingredients.html
In conclusion, anti-aging can not occur where inflammatory and toxic chemicals are present. Replace your toxic products one at a time and you will see a lot of the inflammation, sensitivity, skin allergies and wrinkles disappear.
Yours In Health,
Mikki Douglas
for more information on Mikki, her book, Diet for Life or her consulting services, pelase visit: www.planetmikki.com
