Toxin Free Skin Care: Finding Zen in your Moisturizer
As I mentioned in my post The Skin You’re In, I haven’t had a good luck with commercial facial products for cleansing or moisturizing my face. It can get pretty discouraging when you buy a product and get it home only to discover not only doesn’t it work but it causes you to break out in giant red splotches all across your face. Add that to the cystic acne I get across my cycles due to PCOS and I feel like my face is a train wreck sometimes.
About a year ago I kicked all commercial moisturizers to the curb. I threw every single last bottle out! My goodness I did WHAT??? Yep. Tossed it all. And started from scratch.
I looked around my kitchen and decided to use food as my moisturizer. I had coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, cacao butter, and shea butter in my pantry. So I pulled out the old school version of a double boiler, pyrex glass bowl over a pot of boiling water, and threw in a little of this and a little of that. In that moment of inspiration I found my moisturizer. I made my own toxin free skin care and my body loves me for it!
I use this stuff for EVERYTHING Body. I use it as my warm oil cleansing method, instead of using castor oil. I put it in my hair to protect it from the chlorine when we got to the pool in summer. I make a batch every 6-8 months. The last batch I made was last December. I’m just finishing the first batch. I also added some beeswax to make lip balm. And I’ve given at as gifts. The best part – you could eat and cook with it if you wanted to. If its good enough to go in my body its good enough to go on my body.
So I’ve found my moisturizer and my face cleanser. But I’m still trying to find a way to manage my cystic acne. I haven’t found a solution on that yet, and while most of my cystic acne is hormonally related, I think my current makeup might be contributing as well. Up until recently the product I’m currently using was the only makeup products on the market I could use.
However, when I started looking for other options out there I was disappointed. I became even more focused on being au natural with my makeup after reading up on SafeCosmetics.Org. There’s tons of stuff that’s going into our cosmetics, for women, men and kids, that really shouldn’t be there, yet we use it daily without thinking of the health implications.
There is a great online tool called Skin Deep which allows you to plug in your cosmetic products and see what toxins might be in them. I plugged in my current makeup and let me tell you my skin care products aren’t toxin free. So when I’m working face to face with my clients, I’m spending between 8-12 hours a day with these toxins sitting on my face. YUCK!
But I’ve got a line on a new product, Primal Life Organics, and its on my wish list of things to try and see how it works. I haven’t tried it yet, but If you have I’d love to hear from you. I’ll be letting you know how the Primals Colors works for me. They also have a product geared to reducing inflammation and cystic acne, I’m really looking forward to trying that as well. I’ll be giving it a 6 month test run to see if I run into any issues like I have with traditional commercial makeup products. Stay tuned for that!
As with everything health, a holistic approach will help you achieve successful results. Continue biohacking, and continue changing. Each little change will build bigger changes.
Pure Face, Pure Body, Pure Mind
Gretchen
