Sun Lotions - Are they doing you more harm than good?

 

 

 

Most of you know, I ventured into formulating my own organic skin care range due to the fact I discovered the health & beauty industry wasn't all its cranked up to be. I was more than shocked to find (through my own initiative to research) that the big brand names in cosmetics have been formulating their 'beauty' products with harsh chemicals that cause various health problems such as disrupting hormones, causing skin allergens and even cancer.

So how do they get away with it? Excellent question, however not one that I can easily answer. But If I gambled, I'd be betting it has something to do with money of course.  Okay, so let's take a look at some of the biggest cosmetic companies like Revlon, L'Oreal and even Avon. Their products have been tested with a definite moderate-serious 'hazardous' outcome (See EWG's Cosmetic Data Base) but are still sold to consumers as 'safe' for external use. Here's where it gets concerning....... These companies also all have annual events which promotes that a certain amount of monies from products sold for such and such event will go to........... (Drum roll)........  the Cancer Council? Or even the Skin & Cancer Foundation? Yes!

How much money do you think the Cancer Council and Skin & Cancer Foundations are making? Oh sorry, of course there's no profits because it all goes to research. Yer right! Am I the only one who feels these organisations are full of it? (Crap, that is). I know many of you think the same.

You need to understand that the big businesses selling/supporting these products get a lot of money in return. This article is not to bring down these big companies and organisations. It's about raising the awareness of the ingredients used to formulate many products, in particular to this article, sunscreen lotions.

I've always believed that a little sun exposure without sunscreen is good. Mainly for Vitamin D absorption.  I strongly believe my ethnicity and genetics plus foods I consumed from a child and now, play a huge role in my body' natural  concentration of melanin. I've never had issues with extreme burning (unless I've been stupid and spent a long time in direct and hot sunlight in summer); and this brings me to the main focus of this article

Sunscreens are filters of UV energy. They are used to filter a PROPORTION ONLY of UV rays. By definition, all types of sunscreen will include active ingredients which either absorb or scatter and reflect UV energy which would otherwise enter the skin and cause severe damage.

Myth: If you wear sunscreen you are fully protected from UV absorption and the suns harmful rays UVA and UVB and will not burn.

Not true! Sunscreens are a means to REDUCE ONLY a dose of sunburn you will get if you don’t wear it. Hence, as sunscreen is used to delay this burning affect and to filter the penetration of Ultra Violet activity.

Sunscreens are filters, not “blocks”. All of them will let some UV through at varying rates indicated by the SPF number. An SPF 30 product will permit 1/30th of the sunburning energy through it in the same time as it would take to suffer a minimal sunburn without any protection at all.

The whole of this definition is important to understanding how they work. It is because the sunburning dose accumulates at 1/30 of the rate that it takes 30 times as long to see the skin reddening sign that damage has occurred and repair and recovery is underway.

Sunburn may take hours to actually appear on the skin. and once you receive a dose of sunburn, no sunscreen or re-application is going to prevent this effect. This is why it is necessary to apply your sunscreen BEFORE sun exposure.Re-application of sunscreen is MAINTENANCE of the very first application.It does not prolong your time in the sun; it merely gives the first application a boost, enhancing its effectiveness.

Of course other factors such as the Country you live in, ethnicity and the strength of the sun as well as nutritional intake, do play  key roles in the impact of skin burning and repair. But this article is solely to discuss the topic of sunscreens alone  and if their ingredients effect our health in a negative way.

The reality is I could write pages on my findings, but to get you all up and doing some of your own digging around here is a link I encourage you all to have a look. Here you can track down products you currently use or thinking of using and see how the testing of these products rate in safety. Also if you have a mobile device, you download their app to and all you do is scan the barcode which will look up the product for you. Check it out,  EWG's Skin Deep Cosmetic Data Base www.ewg.org/skindeep

I personally tested 4 sunscreen products. One supported by the Skin & Cancer Foundation, two natural and one certified organic. I looked at each and every single ingredient and percentages used. I was astounded to conclude the only product I would never use again, is in fact the sun lotion support by the Skin & Cancer Foundation. Every single ingredient is synthetic in this product (which are also found  in most other well known brands) but claimed as a 'safe' enough product to sell direct to public.

I am not a professional toxicologist so am in no way qualified to dispute people who are. The question of safety is different from the question of whether something is an allergen.  There are lots of 'safe' ingredients that are used in cosmetics which also happen to be allergens that some people should avoid.

For example; A brief search through published literature shows that Octocrylene had 2 reported cases of being an allergen in 2003 but according to an article published in the Contact Dermatitis journal, reports of positive patch testing have been increasing.  According to this more recent review in Archives of Dermatology more cases have been identified.  Their conclusion is interesting…

"Octocrylene appears to be a strong allergen leading to contact dermatitis in children and mostly photoallergic contact dermatitis in adults with an often-associated history of photoallergy from ketoprofen. Patients with photoallergy from ketoprofen frequently have positive photopatch test reactions to octocrylene. These patients need to be informed of sunscreen products not containing octocrylene, benzophenone-3, or fragrances."

The all natural and organic products I used and researched had just as good protection from the sun and were indeed all natural and contained no synthetics and no harsh chemicals. If I had children, these would be choice of sun protection.

 

I cant tell you which products you should or shouldn't buy. But let's look at it this way - If you had a choice to pick an apple to eat from a non chemically treated environment or to pick and eat an apple from a tree that has been sprayed with pesticides and chemicals added to the soil, which would you choose? Its pretty obvious. So why should the choices of what we put on our skin be any different? Especially when what we do put on our skin is absorbed straight into the blood stream.

 

 

The products I tested are:

Neutrogena's Beach Defense (supported by the Skin & Cancer Foundation) - A BIG NO NO

Invisible Zinc Face sun lotion - GOOD

Invisable Zinc Body sun lotion - GOOD

Wot Not Face & Body sun lotion - MY FAVOURITE

 

Eat well

Make better household and skin care product choices

Live well.

 

Please share this and your new found knowledge with your loved ones!

 

Georgia






The 'C' Word

Let's talk about cellulite...Not in vanity but from a health perspective....

Gaining understanding about cellulite -

Imagine walking around telling people "I accept the toxic build up in my cells and blood stream and will never rid of them". Would you? Maybe not intentionally but unintentionally those who have curves, cellulite and even thin girls with cellulite that claim to be happy with their bodies need to understand what cellulite is, what it harbours and how unhealthy this is.

What is it?


Cellulite is a lumpy fat deposit that commonly manifests on thighs, buttocks, hips and waist. It is almost exclusively a condition that affects women, occurring in 85% to 98% of women after puberty.

Since cellulite is the visible manifestation of multiple pathologic processes, one cannot reasonably expect a single agent to effectively treat this disease. These lumps are actually collections of fat that are pushing against the connective tissue under the skin, as a result, the dermis (the layer of skin beneath the outermost layer) weakens in cellulite-prone areas, paving the way for swollen fat cells to protrude to the surface.

This causes the surface of the skin to have an unattractive appearance. The longer it sits there, the harder it is to remove. A lot of people suffer from "cellulite build-up" which is really a toxic build-up, manifested in orange peel skin and cottage cheese thighs and buttocks.

No, you don't even need to be overweight or obese to have cellulite - thin and slender people suffer as much from cellulite, as their heftier counterparts. I’m here to say (although you don’t want to hear it) that no matter how perfect or sexy your body - cellulite is unattractive on anybody and it does not contribute to the health of the collagen, elastin, connective tissues or adipocytes in your skin.

The main remedy for fighting cellulite is to detoxify the body. But not with medications or the latest detox celebrities rave about and definitely not even proclaimed cellulite targeting body creams......

“The truth is getting rid of and fighting cellulite can be easy, but needs dedication and consistent work.”

What causes it?


Cellulite is mainly caused by toxin build-up in your body, with the body not getting rid of the toxins, and causing cellulite. Miracle cures are offered from many sources to fight it, but there is NO miracle - yet it can be removed. In my years of research there are some topical and oral treatments that can aid in the removal/break down of toxins but not alone.

There are many factors when it comes to cellulite but it all comes down to diet (not in terms of restricting calories but rather what you are eating) and digestion.

Let us talk more on ‘toxins’


Our body was designed to continuously and naturally remove cancer and disease causing toxins. There are two kinds of toxins; water soluble and fat soluble. Water soluble toxins are easily flushed out of the body via the blood and kidneys, but the fat soluble toxins are a challenge for the body to remove. These fat soluble toxins are man-made toxins like heavy metals, parasites, pesticides, preservatives, food additives, pollutants, plastics and other environmental chemicals.   If our digestive and detox pathways are not functioning optimally, these toxins find their way to the liver, blood, fat cells and brain where they store indefinitely and cause disease.

For example, in one study done on a fat soluble, aggressive, cancer causing chemical called dioxin was removed from human fat cells where it had been stored for 25 years. Storing toxins is unacceptable!

Diseases related to these ingested toxins are almost impossible to calculate because they are so vast and insidious. Even so, according to the Center of Children’s Health and the Environment, an average of 54.9 billion dollars a year is spent researching toxicity’s relation to four diseases in children; asthma, lead poisoning, cancer and neurobehavioral disorders. Imagine the cost if every toxin-related disease for both children and adults were being addressed. The costs would be astronomical.

 So how do you release toxins?

Primarily digestion.  I believe that if we keep our digestion, stress levels and detoxification pathways balanced, we can prevent dangerous chemicals and toxins from storing in our bodies.

When we digest a meal, the nutritional and toxic fats are shuffled through the stomach into the small intestine where bile secreted from the liver and gall bladder emulsifies them.   In the small intestine, millions of small villi and lacteals, which are little finger-like grasses that sweep the gut, help absorb nutritional fats and remove dangerous toxic fats.   If this detoxification pathway is not working the body absorbs the toxic fats, rather than removing them.

The very beginning of the body’s lymphatic system is The Gut Associated Lymphatic Tissues (GALT), which surrounds the entire intestinal tract.  It is here that lacteals help absorb and process nutritional and toxic fats.  The inside of the gut wall must have those villi and lacteals functioning well and the inch on the outside of the gut (which is that lymph tissue) must not be congested.

Other detoxification pathways such as sweating and urinating are critical in regaining balance and eliminating toxins. An other article on the detoxification pathways will be up soon.

To help capture some key points on cellulite lets reverse our outlook. Let us take a look at the most  researched and factual contributors of cellulite:

In general cellulite arises from a number of age-related physiological changes in women:

Poor diet
Slow metabolism
Lack of physical activity
Exhaustive dieting
Dehydration
Total body fat
Thickness and color of skin
Poor circulation
Lymphatic drainage

Most of you will be able to identify a couple or many of these factors as contributing to your cellulite.

So the best way forward is to implement change with the above you do have immediate control of, such as increasing physical activity and drinking more water (I suggest filtered).  Already you'll have introduced two new habits that will become part of your lifestyle for life.

Factors such as emotional well being, stress and environment are changeable with consistency in working through issues (not masking them) and changing the amount of environment toxicity we expose ourselves to, such products around the home like fly spray,  house cleaners, pesticides in the garden and products we use on our skin and pets. This again will be an entirely separate article available soon.

Now, if you are a 'yo yo' dieter, this must stop immediately. The body will send messages to the brain if it feels deprived of nutrients. Most 'yo yo' dieters will deplete the body of essential nutrients and are uneducated in understanding that 'weight loss' (on the scales) doesn't necessarily mean fat loss. In fact 2/3 of what is lost in 'yo yo' dieters and crash dieting is in fact muscle. And muscle does indeed weigh more than fat!

Which brings us to the all important factor of diet and digestion. I bet the majority of you reading this have issue with constipation or diarrhea, 'IBS', gluten intolerance, allergies, bloating.... Shall I go on?

You need to know both constipation and loose stools store toxins

There are many factors that could irritate the intestinal villi and compromise their function. A history of constipation will dry out these villi (grass-like mucus membranes) and force them to produce a reactive mucus. If this mucus is excessive, the stools could appear normal (2-3 regular bowel movements a day) but you could still be unhealthy and bloated or carrying that extra belly weight. If the mucus is even more excessive, the stools can become looser, diarrhea-like and more frequent.  If you EVER see mucus in your stool, this should be addressed right away.

Basically, the villi become stuck and cannot function in the excess mucus.This means that even if the bile successfully broke down the fat soluble toxins in the small intestine, the GALT will not be able to remove them from the body.  Normally, white blood cells in your immune system and 500+ lymph nodes will attack these toxins and naturally neutralize them.  But if mucus is excessive, this may not  happen.

Some of the other causes for irritation that compromise the intestinal villi are stress, worry, anxiety, food additives, processed food, coffee, soft drinks and hyper acidity  - to name just a few.

So what now?

The aim of this article is to encourage women to get out there and research cellulite and toxins. This is not to leave you feeling you need to be a 'size 0' at all either. It's about understanding that by living a life as natural as possible, eating clean, exercising and minimising toxins going into the body and your immediate environment, your body will slowly flush out years of toxic build up which will also contribute to shedding fat, thus improving physical appearance: not in vanity but by respecting your body.

We should all be proud of our bodies but having been in the health & fitness industries plus having started my new venture in organic skin care products, I see all too often women are being victimized and forced to believe forces of nature are to blame to the majority of our issues, therefor the only cure is pharmaceutical. I say no no no no no ...........

I am simply here to advocate that while our bodies may change with age, injuries, being exposed to environmental toxins and so on...we as women... as human beings have every single resource available to us to feed and nourish our bodies with organic produce and natural products, being active and seeking help through difficult emotional times. We are capable of finding balance and being in control!

If knowing what you've gained some more insight to now doesn't make you want to change the appearance of your cellulite based on a health perspective, not just vanity.... that is your choice.

Subscribe to Ultimate-Women for more articles relating to detox and emotional well being  published soon...



Useful herbs that can help flush toxins from the liver, cells and blood

Ginger Ginger, or Zingiber officinale. It promotes circulation.

Ocimum Sanctum Holy Basil Tulsi, botanically identified as Ocimum sanctum, and also described as holy basil. Its qualities are laghu (light)–and Ruksha (dry) which makes it useful in restraining fat.

Tribulus Errestris Prevents water retention.

Centella Asiatica Improves circulation.

Glycirhiza Glabra (Liqorice) and Guggul or Commiphora Mukul are also useful for cellulite.

Beauty from within to skin-
Georgia 

About Georganics

Founded by Georgia Holton, Georganics is a brand that stands up for your right to live a non toxic and healthy lifestyle.

After a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease Georgia refused to follow medical advices of using medications to ease symptoms. Georgia was informed by doctors and specialists that there would be no cure of her diagnosis, Lupus.

Seeking a holistic approach in healing her body from this autoimmune disease through a switch to organic eating, changing household cleaning products as well as health & beauty products used daily, Georgia was not only able to treat her symptoms without the use of medications, but successfully reversed her condition and is now living a completely autoimmune disease free life.

Georgia says, 'My body, mind & spirit are in harmony. I feel strong, confident and super healthy. Why wouldn't I share what I have learned through my journey if it means helping another out of a dark time? I've been in the darkness but now I'm in the light. This is my calling.... I am here to help others.'

Through her journey (which was not easy), Georgia extensively  researched the many hundreds of harmful and toxic chemicals which are hidden in cleaning, health & beauty products amongst other. Georgia believes all autoimmune diseases can be significantly improved through a change of diet and reducing toxic exposure. This challenging experience is what motivated her to formulate the product range which you know branded today as Georganics.

'Beauty from within to skin'