Skin Care Exposed Part 1

People don’t realize the danger of some of the ingredients in their skin care products. Products using toxic ingredient’s will not fulfill their promise of keeping you looking beautiful and radiant, and can have devastating long-term effects on your skin, your health, and our environment.

You know I want you to read the label on everything and learn what foods are super foods and what foods are poisons to your chemistry. This concept is especially important to skin care as well. As a doctor, as a father of my children I know the frustrations we all share finding products we can rely on day in and day out. In skin care it is even harder to find products you can trust b/c regulations are not as tight on skin care products as they are in the food lines. Your skin is the largest organ of the body and it plays a vital role in our overall health. The function of your skin is to assist with detoxification, regulate temperature, protect us from external elements, and help our immune system fight off infection. The importance of our skin goes way beyond wrinkles and age spots.

Your skin is designed to be alive, dynamic, and changing. The life cycle of skin cells is about 28 days. By the time the cells make their way to the surface of the skin they have already died. New skin cells form in the lowest layer of the epidermis know as the base layer. When the cells are born, they are fluid-filed and plum, ready to make their journey upwards. These cells share space with elastin, the supportive fibers and protein that give skin its youthful elasticity. Age, the environment, our lifestyle, and many other factors can cause the production of collagen and elastin to decline, which can lead to sagging skin. As cells make their way to the surface of the skin, they become dehydrated and are ready to be rplaced by yourthful new cells formed in the base layer. The point is that in order to have radiant skin requires consistent production of bibrant new skin cells to replace the old ones.

Protecting the supportive fibers and protein cells is important. Preventing dehydration and encouraging proper respiration (oxygen usage) is critical to the process of healthy skin repair and rejuvenation. That being said you need to know that your skin is affected by anything it is exposed to. 60% of whatever it comes into contact with is absorbed. That is why knowing what we put on our skin, scalp, teeth, is so important. The average adult according to the Environmental Working Group (an organization spotlighting many of these toxic compounds found in skin care) uses nine personal care products each day. Each of these containing 126 unique and potentially dangerous chemicals. More than 25% of all women use at least 15 personal care products daily.

Would you put cancinogens (cancer-causing agents) on your skin everyday multiple times a day? One in five adults are exposed to all of the top cancer-causing impurities found in personal care products. Millions of people put these chemicals on the largest, most complex, and significant organs of the human body.