Do you know what your cosmetics are made of?

I was raised in a family with an "organic mum". A mum that insisted on eating healthy and using natural alternatives to conventional products. Of course, I always felt a bit left out when I attended school and my school mates were given "fruit roll-ups" (an artificially fruit flavored candy) with their lunches. Funny enough, today, I feel lucky to have been brought up to eat well.

And now that I work in the natural products industry, I feel like the tables have turned, and I am checking on what mum is using in the bathroom. In the last five years, mum had developed psoriasis and eczema. She went to many doctors, both conventional and holistic, neither seemed to be effective.

I have been learning about natural remedies and came across many relating to treating eczema. I am going home to visit my parents next week and will be bringing natural products for them to use. So I had been shopping for products to help my mum cope with eczema. It eventually dawned on me that it was not enough to simply treat the eczema with a cream or ointment, but to also consider what other products she might have been using. I had been reading about sodium lauryl sulphate and Sodium laureth sulphate. They are known skin irritants that are known to cause eczema in children and babies.

I talked to mum and asked her to check for these ingredients in her shower gel and shampoo. It turned out that they did, and we realised that before she used these products, she did not have these skin irritations. She had been using shampoos that she bought at natural food stores before that. Suddenly, it seemed to make sense, despite all the natural remedies she had been taking, neither seemed to fully heal her skin condition. But just think logically, how could it have helped her if what she was using to wash her hair was causing it?

This is why I think it is so important for everyone to understand what they use on their skin, not just what they eat. The skin is the largest organ on the body, and it absorbs whatever we put on it. We need to be aware of the ingredients in the products we use.

In the following weeks, I will be posting about the synthetic chemical ingredients that you need to be aware of when choosing a body care product. It is going to seem hard to find safe alternatives to conventional products, and nearly all conventional products contain the same harmful ingredients, but I will also post my recommendations for safe personal care products. It is in genuine hope that the information will help everyone to make informed choices about skin and body care.