Surprisingly, I am one of the last people I thought would ever talk about clean beauty. Historically speaking, I’ve literally never checked the labels for any chemicals because I would think, how much damage could this really do? Ah silly old me. The answer is: a lot. Cue Sephora bringing in their ‘Clean at Sephora’ green labels and at long last it piqued my interest. What’s so special about these products that they get this seemingly prestigious vibe over the other ones? So that’s where I started myself a few short months ago…I tried to figure out what is clean beauty and why do I need to know more about it?
What is Clean Beauty
Essentially, clean beauty products are those formulated without a bunch of super annoyingly crazy harmful chemicals and ingredients that can, over time, mess with your personal health in scary ways. I was knee deep in learning about general hormonal health where this information started to pop up. All the makeup, skincare and hair products that I lather on myself on a daily basis were potentially massively contributing to my overall health through skin absorption. Clean beauty is meant to not include all the bad ingredients in the daily products making it, and you know it, ‘clean’.
Why is Clean Beauty Important
Hormone Disruption
There are a lot of reasons to avoid heavy chemical and non clean beauty and skincare products but one of the biggest ones is the havoc it wreaks on your hormones. To be honest, reading about this scared the shit out of me. These chemicals in the products manage to mimic or interfere in the body’s natural production of hormones and disrupt the natural flow. Think of all the hormones disrupting your mood, gut health, reproductive health). Examples of these chemicals which you might have famously heard of are: phthalates, parabens, fragrance (sneakily masked chemicals), formaldehyde, hydroquinone and BPA (lots of it found in plastics). It doesn’t seem like a very big deal, but if your routine is fairly bad chemical product heavy, it will eventually seep into your overall health and sneak up on you in some really crazy ways (more on another blog post later).
Carcinogens and Cancer Causing Elements
Another thing I read which is as unbelievable as it sounds. Including carcinogenic ingredients are totally still allowed and prevalent in beauty products. The main ingredients to watch out for being famously carcinogenic are formaldehyde and fragrance. Although fragrance seems pretty harmless, it’s actually just another bunch of harmful ingredients hidden under this label. But imagine all these ingredients being pumped in your favourite deodorant which you lather on yourself twice a day, every single day for years and years. It’s impossible for it to not damage your health in really bad ways. This was actually the first item I switched out. Moving to an organic deodorant free of aluminum, parabens and all the other baddies because the dangers of breast cancer are all too real a few years from now if I didn’t make this switch. Another switch I made was to skin mists and funnily enough, liquid eyeshadows. The skin around your eyes is crazy thin and delicate so it’s important to make sure it gets the right products even if its makeup. And especially if it’s liquids.
Ingredients to Avoid in Skincare and Beauty Products
- Parabens
- Phthalates
- Formaldehyde
- Hydroquinone
- Petroleum
- Talc
- Silica
- Aluminum Compounds
- BPA (famously found in all sorts of plastics)
- Fragrance (doesn’t seem bad at first, but just a disguise name used by companies for more harmful stuff)
What’s Next?
By no means am I the poster child for using all things clean beauty but all the information dump my brain got during the research of but it definitely had me switching out my vanity for a lot more clean beauty and skincare stuff. Personally, my approach has been to stick with brands that seem reasonably safe. Personal favourites of mine include Bare Minerals, Drunk Elephant, Ole Henriksen, Farmacy and Caudalie. I would start with making sure to switch out products you use every single day that contain really harmful ingredients. The rest will come naturally as you make the switch…
