I know we guys are partly to blame for this. After all, we do enjoy our eye candy! But it can come at a high price! I received this letter from someone who has done more than the usual amount of looking into it…
Hello-
I’ve been a girly girl for most of my life. I started carrying around a purse when I was three, loved dressing up in fancy outfits for school dances, and used to drape myself in my mom’s and aunt’s “treasures and jewelry.” When I came to the United States at age nine, my proudest possession was my first real Barbie doll (they were hard to get in Poland), and I got my first “kid” make-up set at age ten — complete with pink lipstick and neon blue and purple eyeshadows!
My fascination with fashion trends continued throughout my teenage years. I loved reading beauty magazines and raiding the cosmetic aisles of Walgreens, where I worked as a pharmacy technician during high school, undergrad and pharmacy school.
By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had caboodles of makeup, perfumes, lotions, hair styling products, and every other type of beauty “enhancing” potion. I dyed my hair numerous different colors, trying to determine whether blondes, brunettes or redheads had the most fun.
After I finished pharmacy school, I dabbled in cosmetic chemistry and experimented with creating my own highly effective (read: highly chemical) antiperspirant. I developed the formulation and experimented with raw ingredients in my apartment kitchen. My fiancé, Michael, (now my husband), was in business school at the time, and even wrote up a business plan for my antiperspirant. We had a mini “Shark-Tank” moment, presenting our product in front of venture capitalists that came to the class.
I never thought being a girly girl would be so detrimental to my health… until I started doing research for the “Toxins” chapter of my first book, Hashimoto’s: The Root Cause. Learning about the hundreds of chemicals that we, as women, put on our bodies every day — in the name of beauty — was a huge eye-opener for me. I had many “aha!” moments when I began to realize how harmful many of those ingredients are… and what they were doing to my body.
In this article, I’d like to share a little bit more of my personal journey with beauty products, including:
How the ingredients in personal beauty products can affect our health
Common toxic ingredients to avoid
How to find safer alternatives to conventional hair, skin, and makeup products
My favorite non-toxic beauty products