What I learned transitioning into a cleaner product lifestyle
Alright, so if you are friends with me on social media you may have seen my post about selling my beauty products because I was switching to a more organic lifestyle. I have officially transitioned to 80% organic eating, and 60% in my beauty and lifestyle products! I will eventually get to 100% :D It has been quite a process and I learned so much in transitioning so I wanted to share in case any of you out there want to learn more.
So back track.... a lot of people asked me why I was doing this and the biggest reason is a close family member to me was diagnosed with breast cancer this past year. It was sort of an eye opener for me that this stuff is very real and very detrimental to ones health, obvious, but still when it happens to someone you know things change. Never in a million years would I imagine this to happen to someone so close to me, but it did and it has twice now within my family. It's scary and awful and i'm just so thankful she is doing pretty well all things considered and definitely going to KICK CANCERS BUTT!!! So now knowing that cervical and potentially breast cancer can run in my family I decided to take steps to expose myself to as little as possible harm in potential causes.
To start, I want to make it clear that I know basically everything in this world can potentially lead to cancer, i'm not an idiot, but because a lot of people have given me grief with the blanket statement "Well everything causes cancer are you going to live in a bubble type of attitude." I want to say that I know I can't control everything I am exposed to, but I can control what I put in and on my body as well as what I use in my household. So that's where my journey begins...
When I began my research on the ingredients to avoid there was SO MUCH I was literally overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin. Thankfully there are amazing bloggers out there who took the time to share their journey and that's how I got started transitioning. Amanda from The Organic Bunny blog was a huge help in how to begin switching to natural or organic makeup and you can find that post here. There is also Janny Organically blog that I reference to a lot as well. They have a lot of good recommendations for clean brands to use!!
After my research I downloaded the EWG skin deep app and the think dirty app which are two huge data bases of products and their ranking on the dirty scale for ingredients used. I made the effort to scan everything I owned and anything that had potential carcinogens I threw out and replaced, I wish I could do it with anything that ranked high, but I am on a budget so in time I plan to replace everything else as I use it up! After my beauty products I started scanning household items and this is where I learned about being Green Washed. This means that companies market themselves as natural and healthier to use vs. conventional products, BUT still contain synthetic ingredients that can lead to all sorts of health issues down the line.
That being said I was sad to know that companies like Method, Seventh Generation, Neutrogena naturals, Tarte make-up etc. were all companies that said they were natural but still in a lot of their products used synthetic fragrances, or ingredients like Cocamide DEA, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Methylisothiazolinone, and more that can cause hormone disruptions or are known carcinogens. It's a straight up LIE and until someone pointed it out to me to really look at the ingredients not just the label did I realize how many things companies get away with via marketing and labeling. So rule of thumb to avoid being green washed... make sure you read all the ingredients because some stuff may be non-toxic but others definitely are!
To sum it up if you are using items that are more natural or organic scan them through the think dirty or EWG app to ensure there are no hidden ingredients that cause harm! I would hate for anyone to think they were using something good if it wasn't. At the bottom of this post I will link all the websites I use to reference ingredients to avoid because there's a lot. Download the apps I mentioned they're easy to use and very handy for quick references. I hope this post taught you something, and at the very least made you maybe think twice about what you use. I certainly am not the person to tell someone how to live their life so be organic or natural if you'd like! It's actually really fun learning about these new brands and trying them out, but I do wish I had someone could have opened my eyes sooner to the truth behind the products we use. I think if more of us were educated on what's really in these products as a whole we'd be able to fight for and get a cleaner way of living.
Thanks for reading!
xo,
Shay
Links:
http://organicbeautytalk.com/ingredients-to-avoid/
http://www.womensvoices.org/avoid-toxic-chemicals/15-toxic-trespassers/
http://gurlgonegreen.com/2014/02/24/skincare-ingredients-to-avoid/
Green beauty lifestyle blogs I reference:
http://www.theorganicbunny.com/
http://www.jannyorganically.com/
http://gurlgonegreen.com/
http://www.thegreenproductjunkie.com/
