Home  Health Center  Food & Nutrition Center  ABCs of restful ZZZs  Alternative Sweeteners & Sugar  Chocolate Delights  Cleanse Your Body  Cold and Flu  Essential Fatty Acids  Digestion Help  Eating Well for Healthy Aging  Gluten Free Living  Joy of Soy  Kids' Health  Men's Wellness  Natural Beauty  Natural Weight Management  Non-Toxic Home  Nutrition News  Sports Nutrition  Pregnancy & Baby  Superfoods  Women's Wellness  Vitamins & Supplements  Wellness Fair  Climate Change Solutions  Whole Body Rehab  Farm Fresh Email      printer friendly version Nutrition News Natural Prescriptions for Your Skin By Janet Little CN The skin performs a multitude of tasks: Protects us from disease Cools us when we’re hot and warms us when we’re cold Heals wounds Absorbs sunlight for vitamin D production Keeps itself moist Renews and restores daily Nerve endings - ability to detect pain, hot, or cold Shedding Skin We humans shed and regrow about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin. Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days - almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime. The largest organ is the skin, with a surface area of about 25 square feet. Eating Right for Your Skin Vitamin A: Plays important role in skin tissue maintenance. Sweet potatoes Carrots Oranges Apricots Cantaloupe Spinach Tomatoes Mediterranean-type Diet: There appears to be a link between this type of diet and less skin wrinkling. High in vegetables, olive oil, fish, legumes Step-by-Step Skin Care: To maintain a healthy glow practice a daily skin care routine that includes cleansing, exfoliating, toning, and moisturizing. Every evening, use a natural botanical-based skin cleansing solution After cleansing, exfoliate to help remove dead skin cells A natural toner or astringent will help tighten skin. Avoid facial toners that contain alcohol. Instead, look for botanical waters. Don’t forget to moisturize. Choose products that are botanical-based ingredients and organic oils. Environmental Working Group Research Shows 22 Percent of All Cosmetics May Be Contaminated With Cancer-Causing Impurity Many of the cosmetic industry's chemical safety assessments reveal that common petroleum-based cosmetic ingredients can be contaminated with a cancer- causing impurity called 1,4-dioxane. Studies show that this chemical readily penetrates the skin. EPA classifies it as a probable human carcinogen, and the National Toxicology Program considers it a known animal carcinogen. Although companies can easily remove it from ingredients during manufacture, tests documenting its common presence in products show that they often don't, leaving their customers at risk for potential chronic and widespread exposures to this cancer-causing compound. FDA, the agency that regulates the safety of personal care products, cannot require safety testing of products before they are sold, and does not systematically assess the safety of ingredients. For more information:go to www.ewg.org How can I avoid 1,4-Dioxane exposure from personal care products? The US Centers for Disease Control Agency for Toxics Substances and Disease Registry recommends avoiding cosmetic products that contain ingredients that could be contaminated with 1,4-Dioxane, since there is no way to know the level of contaminants in the products. It may be in products that contain the following ingredients or partial ingredient names: “PEG,” “polyethylene,” “polyethylene glycol,” “polyoxyethylene,” “-eth- ” (such as sodium laureth sulfate), “oxynol” "ceteareth," or "oleth." Impurities are so ubiquitous that one of every five adults is potentially exposed every day to all of the top seven carcinogenic impurities common to personal care product ingredients — hydroquinone, ethylene dioxide, 1,4- dioxane, formaldehyde, nitrosamines, PAHs, and acrylamide. PAHs. PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are common contaminants in petrolatum, also called petroleum jelly and sold under well-known brand names like Vaseline. Petrolatum is found in one of every 14 products on the market (7.1 percent of the products assessed by EWG), including 15 percent of all lipstick and 40 percent of al baby lotions and oils. The top most common impurity ranked by number of people exposed is hydroquinone, which is a potential contaminant in products used daily by 94 percent of all women and 69 percent of all men, and which is the subject of a recent FDA proposal to regulate all products containing the chemical as drugs. EWG analyses show that 80 percent of all products may be contaminated with one or more of the two dozen recognized cosmetic impurities that are linked to cancer and other health concerns. These trace contaminants in petroleumbased ingredients often readily penetrate the skin according to government and industry studies, and their presence in products is not restricted by government safety standards — they are legal at any level. RELATED RESOURCES Search EWG's interactive product safety guide to find cosmetics free of cancer-causing impurities Read EWG's in-depth analysis of harmful impurities in everyday personal care products From Campaign for Safe Cosmetics - Read about Dr. David Steinman's new product tests for a cancer-causing impurity called 1,4-dioxane, including tests of children's products

|  careers  |  contact us  |  vendor submissions  |  terms of use  |  privacy policy  |   |  on sale  |  find your store  |  recipes  |  health  |  departments  |  about us  |  site map  |  site built by media karma