Beauty & Makeup

When you ask a group of people what the largest organ in the human body is, most will guess liver, brain, or heart but you might be surprised to find out its your skin! An average adult human has approximately 20 square feet of skin on their body. That is roughly 6 pounds! Having said that what are you doing to maintain the health of this important, protective, and largest organ of your body? Or in other words, what are you feeding your skin?

This month we will be discussing the importance of nourishing your skin, the harmful things we are regularly putting on our skin without even knowing it, and the choices we can make to help our skin be more vibrant, and wrinkle free.
Now that summer is here most of us will try to take advantage of the sun! I know I will surely try my best! The reason we tend to crave the sun much more during this season is because we hardly get a chance to bathe in the sun during the long cold winters so our body looks for the sun to help make vitamin D. This sunshine vitamin helps reduce heart disease, osteoporosis, and has lots of other benefits as well. But and this is a big BUT, you cant get carried away and have too much exposure to the sun as well! If you stay out too long not only will you possibly burn to a crisp but the excess ultraviolet radiation you absorb can damage your skin. Let me give you a common scenario. Did I ever tell you the story about Shawna and Jawana? Well these two young woman went to a beach one sunny day, fell asleep on the sand with their skin bare, and Jawana ended up in the hospital. Yes this is a true story and sadly this happens every summer. This type of exposure can lead to irreversible wrinkles in your skin as well as sun spots and artificial freckles as I like to call them. But this can all be avoided by slapping on some good ol’ sunscreen right? Yes, because Shawna was smart and had sunscreen on and no because Shawna also ended up in the hospital a year later after being diagnosed with skin cancer due to the chemicals that were in the sunscreen she was using. Now we are getting into the ugly truth about the harm we constantly do to our bodies without even knowing it. For those of us who take showers, put on lotions, or even makeup everyday should read this carefully.

There are over 400 ingredients found in your everyday bodycare products that can cause harm to your body. Ingredients like polyethylene glycol, parabens, sodium lauryl and laureth sulfates are just a few of the most common ones. Go ahead and grab your shampoo or lotion and read the ingredients yourself. The problem here is our government does not yet require health studies or pre-market testing for personal care products so anyone can make a product and label it whatever they want and sell it with whatever ingredients they want. This is what over 200 cosmetic and bodycare companies have been doing for decades. But dont just take my word for it, do your own research. Empower yourself to make the right decisions and select the healthier choices that will maintain your optimum health and well being. I can only help steer you somewhat but the ultimate decision is yours.
There are companies out there that make products that are truly safe and very effective to use. A personal favorite is a company called Alaffia. This company was created to help West African communities become sustainable through fair trade of their resources. Not only does their company use some of the best organic ingredients in their products, but they have moral. Alaffia gives back to the community and helps sustain the environment and the people living in it by building the infrastructure and providing the resources to help fight poverty in the region.
The good news is you can find their products locally by visiting a Wholefoods Market near you. Wholefoods also has a great selection of sunscreen and other personal care products that are truly safe and healthy for your skin and bodies. The good thing is that choices are out there but sadly not many people know about them. Now having read this article I challenge you to take this information and run with it. Its about time to feed your skin the food it deserves. I would like to end with a personal quote of mine “As we live we learn, and as we learn we live”. Have a great summer!