Category — General Information

Today I’m featuring a guest post by Joshua Landon from Mesothelioma.com. It discusses nanotechnology and how it can potentially affect our health. As far as I’m concerned, it is another great reason to go for purely organic skin care!

Do You Know What’s in Your Makeup and Skincare Products?

Most women cannot answer “yes” to the question above. But consider this, ladies: what you don’t know could hurt you!

We all want to have beautiful, healthy skin, and most of us are committed to a skincare and makeup regimen that utilizes our favorite products. That’s great, but have you ever read the label on your favorite cleanser or eye cream? Do you know what your favorite anti-wrinkle cream is made of? If not, it is imperative that you do some digging.

Consider sunscreen – we should all be wearing it! However, it is important to use the right sunscreen to avoid potential health and safety issues. Sunscreen is a perfect example of a skincare product that may contain carbon nanotubes, or small particles that are manufactured using nanotechnology, which allows them to deeply penetrate the skin. In other words, skincare products that utilize nanotechnology can deliver active ingredients into the skin much faster than other products. In a society where faster is better, nanotechnology-based skincare products are the latest and greatest.

But did you know that carbon nanotubes – the single-walled version of super-tiny mechanisms that deliver active ingredients deep into your skin – have been found to cause mesothelioma cancer in laboratory testing? Dr. Andrew Maynard, who is considered to be one of the foremost experts on nanotechnology, stated that there is no immediate danger for individuals who use products (including sunscreens and makeup) containing carbon nanotubes, but that further research into a possible connection between nanotubes and mesothelioma cancer is definitely necessary.

Nanotechnology is an emerging area of science that produces compounds known as nanomaterials, which are developed with specific targeting properties. Carbon nanotubes, for instance, are extremely tiny – often less than 100 nanometers, or less than 0.00001 centimeters – and are said to be stronger than steel. Nanomaterials are highly reactive, which indicates an increased likelihood of potential side effects from using a product that was manufactured using nanotechnology.

Products such as refrigerators, golf clubs, tennis rackets, air conditioners, cleaning products, skin care products, makeup and nail polish, chemotherapy drugs, and hearing aids may contain carbon nanotubes or other nanomaterials. One specific skin care company, Beyond Skin Science, utilizes a technology in their Eternalis Anti-Aging line that they have coined “NanoChem,” which allows the product’s active ingredients to reach the skin’s cells quicker than other products, thus rendering a faster and more effective result.

As a general rule when choosing skincare products, it’s a smart idea to consult the label. If you can’t pronounce it, you probably don’t want to put it on your skin! Now that the “green living” craze has swept the nation, most skincare companies offer products that meet green standards – that is, they contain organic ingredients that are easily pronounceable and are all hyper-allergenic, not tested on animals, etc. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require manufacturers to include a label on their products that indicates that the product was manufactured using nanotechnology, but because consumer awareness of this technology is quite low, several consumer activist groups are pressing the FDA to reconsider.

If you’re stuck on a particular brand of skincare product, you may also want to call the manufacturer (there is probably a telephone number on the package) and ask them to explain the product ingredients. This way, you’ll feel good knowing that what you are putting on your skin is safe and will not present any health or safety issues in the long run.

For additional information about carbon nanotube exposure and the potential connection to mesothelioma cancer, please visit “Mesothelioma.com News| Study Says Effects of Nanotubes May Lead to Cancer.”

Is there such a beast as organic makeup? Why is it so hard to find?

Once you decide to take steps towards consuming natural products inside and out, it doesn’t take long to realize that while there is a whole plethora of quality organic skin care products, the field seriously thins out when it comes to organic makeup. Suspicious ingredients pop up even in the most respected brands. And in general, there are just far fewer choices.

Why is that?

The most important reason why organic skin care dominates and makeup lags is because of their intrinsic purposes. Think about it. The goal of any skin care is to nourish the skin from inside and out to reach its naturally healthiest potential. So ideally, if your skin maintains an equilibrium of required vitamins, minerals and other building components it will look good. Thus organic skin care aims to find the best ingredients in nature that provide these building/nourishing materials. And since nature is where we as humans get the building material for our bodies, it is not so difficult to find the right combinations of ingredients, to grow them organically and then make the skin care products.

But with makeup the goals are diametrically opposite. More often than not we are not looking to enhance a natural quality of our skins. There is nothing natural in purple lips, grey eye shadows or tinted eyebrows. With makeup we are not looking for ingredients that the skin will absorb. We are looking for ingredients that will stay on top, preferably in the place we designated.

So there is the dilemma. Finding the right combination so that the part that absorbs is natural and safe for the skin, while the pigmented part remains on the top in proper consistency/shininess/matte levels. Not to mention that the pigment itself has to be just the right shade. And of course, there is always the fact that after so many years of exposure to the beauty industry, the consumers have a very clear expectations of the products they need and the format they should come in (lipstick in a tube, powdered eye shadows, pencils for the liners).

And this is a much harder task. Far fewer companies are up to it. We all have expectations on how mascara has to “behave” and color expectations for shadows, foundations and lipsticks. Meeting these expectations with all-natural ingredients is a hard task for many. So synthetics, questionable ingredients and technology slip in here and there… But it’s our job as consumers to keep pressing these companies to come up with better and safer solutions. Continuous improvement needs to be a motto of all companies that have the potential to affect human health.

Taking bold risks is an option too. Consider SukiColor. That’s one company that totally rethought the idea of what makeup is. They don’t even have conventional powders or lipstick tubes. But they have a variety of creamy pigments that can work on your eyes, your cheeks and lips. For example
suki triple cream eye definer – sandalwood
can serve as an eyeliner, a brow liner and a shadow. While something like
suki pure cream stain lip/cheek – opal
can serve as a lip color and a cheek highlighter, creating automatic coordination in colors and completely defying expectations on what lipstick and rouge can be. It goes back to basics – makeup is color for the face. Here is color. Here is a brush. Apply anywhere.

Bold. Innovative. Natural. And since they work with creamy textures, they don’t have to worry about finding natural ways to create powdered shadows and the like. Hence no need to worry about whether talc is safe or not.

Perhaps that’s what organic makeup should be about. Defying expectations. Going back to the basics. Enhancing natural beauty with natural means. Maybe the task of finding organic solutions will be easier if preconceptions of what makeup needs to look and feel like can be stripped. When it all becomes simply about colors blending with our skin thinking out of the box could produce many more truly safe and healthy options for our faces.

After all, take a good look at nature. With such an abandunce of color around it’s hard to believe that there is no way for us to harmoniously work it into our own beauty system.

PS: For those new to this site, I do have a list of natural makeup manufacturers here. They may not always be 100% perfect, but at least they are trying. And they are definetly safer for you then the mainstream brands.