Archive for the ‘unhealthy’ Category

Finding Organic Makeup at Your Local Store – Part I

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

 

 

Many makeup and beauty products have toxins in them, such as parabens, which is why it is important to not only read the ingredient labels in your food, but also in your makeup and beauty products.

An excellent site that I recommend to all of my friends and family is Skin Deep.  It is a cosmetic safety database website that allows you to plug in the names of your products and evaluate what ingredients may be harmful to you.  Skin Deep also rates your products on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being the most toxic, and 0 being the least toxic).  After you evaluate your makeup and beauty products, you will probably decide to switch to organic and natural products because they pose little or no harm to your body and overall health.

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I switched to organic and natural products two years ago, and until recently, I was only able to locate organic and natural makeup and beauty products at health food stores, Wegmans, and online.  Products such as lotions, soaps, face cleansers, and lip gloss being the easiest to find.  While products such as mascara, eye liner, lip liner and eye shadow being the hardest to find.  I usually bought all of my organic bath and beauty products at the stores, and ordered all of my natural and organic makeup online.  As you know, ordering makeup online can be a bit of hassle and costly.  If your lip liner breaks and you have a big date, what do you do?  Well, you were kind of stuck, because you had to go online, place an order, pay for shipping, and then wait at least a week for your lip liner to arrive. 

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So, I was delighted and surprised the other day when I went into my local CVS, and realized the makeup companies are finally starting to put out organic makeup lines!  Finally, after two years of having to order all of my makeup online and pay shipping charges, etc., I can now go down the block and pick-up healthy and natural makeup with ease.

So, after you go to Skin Deep’s website and realize that your current makeup and beauty products are filled with harmful toxins and parabens, you may want to stop at your local CVS, Target, Ulta, or Wegmans to find healthy and natural alternatives to your current products.

 

Battling Acne – Part II

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

So, now that you’ve learned about products to help your treat your acne, I am going to share with you a few tips to help prevent acne. Some of these measures include:

1. Washing your face before going to bed, especially if you have makeup on;

2. Believe it or not, moisturize, even if you have oily skin. When skin is denied moisture, it over compensates by creating even more oil and clogging your pores;

3. As tempting as it is, don’t touch your face and acne. If you notice a blemish, place a warm compress on it, and then apply acne medicine. Hopefully within a few days, the blemish will clear up;

4. Wash your makeup brushes and pillow cases regularly. A lot of unhealthy dirt, oil and bacteria can build up on your makeup brushes and pillow cases;

5. Stay out of the sun. At first it will appear the sun is clearing up your skin, but the sun actually dries out and damages your skin; so your skin will once again over compensate for the loss of moisture and will create more oil causing acne flare-ups;

6. Don’t over cleanse and scrub your skin. While is it is important to cleanse your skin at night before bed and in the morning, don’t over-scrub your skin with harsh cleansers, this will only irritate your skin and possibly cause even more acne flare-ups.

7. Additionally, it hasn’t been proven, but I think eating a lot of unhealthy and fast foods contribute to acne. These types of food are filled with grease and fat, and it is hard for your body to process all of those unhealthy ingredients. I personally notice that when I don’t eat well, my acne flares up.

8. Also, taking Vitamin C has positive effects on your overall health, so I am sure it can help minimize the effects of acne as well.

By following all of these steps, I am not able to prevent my acne by 100%, but I am able to keep it under control a little bit; which is a lot better than doing nothing at all. I just keeping hoping that one day, someone will come up with a magic cream that prevents acne and wrinkles in one small and simple step.

Why You Shouldn’t Tan

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Tanning is a double-edge sword, it makes your skin look nice at the present moment, but it is slowly and surely killing your skin and its appearance for the future. Growing up as a redhead in a family of redheads, I was shunned from the sun by mother throughout my childhood and most of my teenage years. I remember the one time she forgot to slather on sun-block for a Father’s Day BBQ at the lake and I took home the lucky prize of sun poison on my forehead and shoulders. I was 10yrs old and still remember the teasing from other kids, the pain and the blisters. However, that didn’t stop my irresponsible tanning as a teenager and into my early 20s, which I now regret.

I still remember the first time I tanned at a tanning salon, without my mother’s knowledge of course. I was 16yrs old and it was right before my Junior Prom, all of my friends were tanning, including one of my redheaded friends, who was the darkest out of all of us (she was also 100% Italian). I convinced myself that if she could tan as a redhead, so could I; silly me. So, I snuck off to a local tanning salon for several quick sessions and to my surprise, I didn’t burn too much; but the key word and unhealthy word being, I burned. Then by next summer, I had my license and a car, so I began tanning every single day, Monday through Friday after work. Never mind the fact that I was a day camp counselor and was already out in the sun every day. Before I knew it, I was in my 20s and was not only tanning during the summer, but was also tanning every single day all year round. I didn’t want to tan every day, but being half Irish, if I missed a few days, my tan would start to disappear. I noticed that I lost my tan, even quicker then I burned.

Then came my “wake-up call.” I had just turned 25yrs old and was tanner than ever, due to the high pressure tanning beds that I discovered at my local tanning salon. During this time I was on a tanning mission, I had 3 weddings that were 3 months apart, and a Miami vacation to attend to. I attended all of the weddings and then went to Miami with my mother (who is a fair skinned, blue-eyed, redhead). I remember laying on the beach for about 20 minutes with not a single ounce of sun-block on, and then I looked over at my poor mother who was slathered head to toe in sun-block and about to break out in tears because her feet were burning; yes her feet. She quickly covered herself up in a blanket, but I couldn’t let her sit out in the sun and burn, so I suggested we go back to our hotel.

It was shortly after our Miami vacation that I realized I was getting premature wrinkles. I was shocked and mortified because my mother who is in her 50s doesn’t have any wrinkles and even my grandmother, who passed away in her late 70s, barely had any wrinkles. So, why was I getting wrinkles? Easy, unlike me and so many other women of my generation, my mother and grandmother stayed out of the sun. It was at that very moment that I realized being tan wasn’t worth the sacrifice of having unhealthy and wrinkled skin.

So now that I am in my late 20s, almost approaching 30, I find that I am paying for my tanning mistakes of the past. I use wrinkle creams daily and I am starting to look into chemical peels and other facials to help fight wrinkles and sun damage (which I wouldn’t need at the moment if I stayed out of the sun when I was younger). Now when summer comes each year and I am as pale as Casper the Ghost, I just laugh off the comments from my friends and family suggesting I should “get some sun.” Instead, I lay in the shade and wear sun-block.