organic living

7.10.2007

Lately I have been growing more and more interested in living organically. It actually started about two years ago when the skin below my eyes started itching and turning red. I had no idea what was wrong and it really bothered me. After getting so fed up with it, I decided to remove all my makeup and see if I could find out what the problem was. It's not as if I wear that much in the first place, but I did and do wear the basics which include mascara, eyeshadow and a little concealer for those nasty blemishes that seem to want to pop out every now and then. So to make a long story short, I ended up finding out that the Ponds Cleansing Towelettes seemed to be the culprit. Either those and/or the concealer stick. I have no idea what was in these products and it never really occurred to me at the time that it was necessary to check out the ingredients to see if there would be anything harmful to my body. The fact is that there is a lot of crap put into cosmetics these days and the majority of people out there have no idea how harmful these are.

Ever since that little incident with my skin, I decided to look for healthy more natural products that I could use. Of course the easiest thing to do would be to go without make-up, but although I don't always find it terribly necessary to slap on a little face, I still get a little self conscious when I go out in public without even a little mascara on my lashes. And then even if I did go cold turkey and swore off all cosmetics, I'd still have to deal with shampoos and conditioners for my hair. Now there's something you don't think about every day, even if you are the type who relies totally on your hairdresser to pick out your hair products for you. (If you have a hairdresser, that is, which I do not...) Do you really trust everything they tell you? Wouldn't it be safer to know for yourself what all is in these products before plunking down the money for something that could potentially cause you harm? I admit, I haven't always been good at reading the labels and finding out what the ingredients mean on the back of a shampoo bottle. But I'd like to start getting better at that.

Today I found this site: Skin Deep, that seems to be very helpful in finding out all that info. You can type in the product you are currently using and find out how good/bad it is and what types of ingredients it's got. Pretty cool, eh? I typed in a few of the products I used and found some of them weren't bad, others could probably be a potential hazard to my body. You can't always rely on the label. Just because it says it's "organic" or has some organic ingredients, does not mean it's OK to use on your body. I recently got some conditioner that had henna in it that I thought would be cool. Last year I dyed my hair with henna and it seriously was the best conditioning treatment I'd ever used. Not only did it dye my hair a bright red (it's already red, but this red was pretty dang bright, which is what I was going for) but it also gave my hair a lot of moisture and to top it all off, it's totally natural. Ever since then I have been looking for a similar treatment, so when I came upon a conditioner with henna at the local organic food store, I thought it would be OK. Well, turns out it's not the best option I could have chosen and it looks like it has ingredients that are linked to cancer. YIKES! Not cool! Later on when I have a little more time, I'm going to go through all of the products I use and see just how good I've been. Or bad... ;)

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