Why I Care So Much about Personal Care Products

Here's an approximate snap shot into hub's and my conversation as we were laying in bed last night:

Me: Feel my hand it's SO soft from using that coconut oil on my skin.
Hub: Where'd you get it?
Me: It's that jar that I bought that's been in the kitchen. I have to warm it up but it's amazing--coats well and was great for a bit of self-massage. Roxi was licking my legs like crazy cause she thought it tasted good, so I put on pants.
Hub: (laughing) I bet she loves it! That's funny though cause I thought that jar is for cooking.
Me: Well, it IS for cooking but it can be used on the body....it even says so on the back of the jar! I'd been thinking about buying some and then K sent me a link on it out-of-the-blue and D added to it and it has all sorts of health benefits. Plus some schools of thought think that since our skin is so porous that we shouldn't put anything on it that we wouldn't eat anyway.

Hub: Definitely makes sense and I'm glad you're liking it!
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Now I've only been using it for two days folks, but so far I am AB-SO-LUTELY smitten. I slathered it on with that self-massage in place of my daily moisturizer last night. I applied a tiny bit as my face moisturizer after washing my face this morning, and I slathered up with it after my shower tonight. So far my skin feels great. I haven't decided if I'll stick with it as my morning routine too and it does take a bit of time cause I have to warm up the jar for it to melt into oil, but my skin feels and looks great!

So folks, I'm truly thinking that the coconut oil is here to stay as part of my increasingly more natural beauty routine:

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It dawned on me that as much as I've written about green living and my use of certain products, I don't know that I've ever really gone into some of the whys about it, so here ya go and get ready for a lil soapbox lecture, although some of you already know most of this.

A) I got into public health originally because my father was diagnosed with cancer due to environmental causes, which lead me to wonder what exactly in the environment could have led to his cancer development. What I didn't know was that the can of worms would so completely open and I'd learn more than I ever wanted to. Ignorance sometimes feels blissful, although the majority of the population has no clue about the harmful substances they are surrounded by...and many of us feel that there's not too much we can do about it even when the knowledge arrives....except to attempt improved personal choices.

B) What this means is that of the approximate 80,000 chemicals out on the market, only 200 of those have been tested by the government as to their health effects....and of those only a handful have been banned for negative health effects in the United States. For the most part industry determines what is "safe" and what is not, and they tend to operate on an "it's safe until its proven otherwise" rather than via the precautionary principle (until its proven to be safe then lets not have the public exposed to it). There are multiple other factors to consider about human exposure too. Some chemicals have been found to have worse effects in small amounts than large (which boggle the human mind, but the human body can also boggle the human mind). And most research that exists is based on a one-time exposure for a certain amount of time.....and does not include cross-contamination. What this means is this: if you apply your lip gloss frequently, then the estimated health effects via the original research is no longer valid. If you apply chap stick AND lip gloss there is a chemical interaction occurring that has not been researched either and any individual research done by the separate industries is no longer true.

C) This multiple exposure issue matters because how frequently are we ever exposed to just one chemical? Your carpet, furniture, car, etc are all off-gassing all the time. Your clothes are made of materials that were coated in chemicals. Your cookware has chemicals, your food is GMO and/or coated in pesticides, dishes & etc-- all are made up of various substances. And how many of you only use ONE personal care product? ALL of these exposures build up in our systems and have the capacity to negatively effect our health. Sure some of them break down quickly but others of them last in our systems and in our environment years beyond their common use. Case in point: recent body studies of individuals have found chemicals that were banned decades ago in the bodies of people born after the chemical was banned. (This can be due to exposure via the environment where the chemical has yet to break down in nature or via the following point....)

D) We're all carrying around hundreds (if not more) chemicals in our bodies that is known as our body burden. You add in the principle of bioaccumulation (think chemical gets eaten by little fish which gets eaten by bigger fish which gets eaten by even bigger fish which gets eaten by human which passes it on to its offspring, since infants are at the top of all food chains.....) and that means that each generation continues to pass its load onto the next. Scientists have measured cord blood in newborns and found that most babies born today have about 300 toxins at birth. Now just imagine the lifetime exposure to more chemicals....and welcome to the life experiment we're all in yet no one signed informed consent. (You can read more about this quickly here or via the books: Body Toxic by Nena Baker and Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber.)

E) And so because of all of THAT I have spent the last several years trying to cut down some of my exposures. There are some things that I can't do too much about---there's always going to be new carpet, new furniture, paint, etc somewhere. And there are some points where I need to do more (case in point: we have stainless steel & copper pots and a cast iron pan but we still use non-stick regularly, plus much of our food is not organic.....). However there are also other products that I use day in and day out.....and many of these are ones I have taken the time to try to find healthier options for. However the more I'm contemplating potentially having a bio baby in the next few years, the more I'm realizing I need to be even more mindful and do more to impact product choices across the board if possible.

F) The area I have probably done the best in over the years has been to reduce the harmful effects based on the ingredients in my personal care products. Generally speaking I use the Skin Deep database by EWG to check out my products. Before I knew about the database, I wrongly thought that anything in the "natural" aisle must be okay, so I used to use things like Nature's Gate shampoo, etc. Most our soap & shampoo got switched over to Burt's Bees after using the database, but in re-checking my products out for this post it appears that the sell-out of Burts to Clorox has increased their harmful health ratings one point on most my products. Now there is some controversy of course, as almost any ingredient could be argued to have potential negative health effects, but I like to check out what the actual ratings are and see what the ingredients have been tied to. Thus staying out of the cancer and reproductive toxicity categories are key for me, while I don't worry quite as much about the allergies category. Not all my products score in the low categories and after the discovery about Burts Bees I might be switching over to something else (Yes to Carrots Nourishing Shampoo & Face Cleanser scores better), but from what I can tell the majority of the other items I use score in the lower categories (minus deodorant, face moisturizer, and face scrub).

I've posted what most the low scoring items are before, but in case you're looking for safer alternatives, I'll recommend some of them again:
--Foundation, bronzer, blush, & eye shadow all come from Alima Mineral Make-up, which is also a local Portland company.
--Eye liner, mascara, & fingernail polish are from Honeybee Gardens.
--Lip gloss & balm are Burts Bees
--Listerine mouthwash scores fairly low and even my stand-by acne treatment scores low (Clean & Clear Persagel)
--Curel Ultra Healing body moisturizer (although this might get taken over by the coconut oil!)
--Basic castille soap bar (for body)

Tonight's research has made me realize I need to swap out the Burts Bees shampoo and face wash and I REALLY need to find a new facial scrub other than the St Ives (which scored 8 out of 10!! Goodness!).

And while we're STILL on this topic (sorry about the lengthy soapbox post tonight!), there was a great related blog post with suggestions for homemade options by Keeper of the Home:  5 Tips for Saving Money on Natural Skincare

What great alternatives can you share to decrease chemical exposure? Any great products or ideas?

Camp Lessons & Products

There were a few great items that got us by while on our travels, and the lack of facilities and light packing taught me some great lessons along the way too.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a shower-every-night type of gal. I hate going to bed without being clean. I "put my face on" almost every single day, even if I'm not going anywhere. I floss every.single.night. And much to my husband's dismay, I totally use "face stuff" aka a layer of protective zit cream before bed each night. BUT when you're camping in the woods with no mirror, no running water, a lack of desire to carry extra weight, not wanting to use products that might damage the environment, and in locations where it's luck to have an established hole in the ground to do one's business.....then you sort of throw your "normal" tendencies out the window.

I packed a small ziploc that stayed in the truck and contained the following: two bobby pins, a small bottle of face lotion, a small bottle of Burts Bees outdoor body & hair wash, a tiny packet of foundation and a foundation brush, a tube of chap stick, a tube of fix-all ointment, black eyeliner, floss, and my leftover nub of a cover-up stick. I also had a stick of deodorant and my Burts Bees facewash in my bag. However, in my hiking pack, I had more bobby pins, "natural" bug repellent, my toothbrush, and another tube of lip balm that I figured could be used for a couple functions.

So here's the irony, I packed almost nothing for this trip.....and it was rare that I even used what I brought. In fact, on the backpacking part I used basically none of it. I rinsed my face with running water from the stream morning and night and I washed my feet in the stream before bed. I did run my toothbrush over my teeth, but without paste because I didn't want to leave the paste behind in the woods.

Once we got to the second camp site and were camping out of the truck, I still didn't use anything extra, except this time I did floss and I did use toothpaste since I could deposit them into one of those holes in the ground (aka an established outhouse....).

In fact, thanks to the magnificence of baby wipes (again only deposited into the outhouse) used just to clean (TMI) my swimming suit region, I didn't even mind not showering for three days. Yea I was dirty and I'm pretty sure sweating into the same shorts for three days put off an odor, but it really wasn't all that bad. THANK GOD FOR BABY WIPES though! ;)

Even once we could shower again and were back in civilization, I only put on the little amount of make-up I had when we met friends and the dry mountain air actually seemed to be great for my skin.

The second irony of our trip is that I had only intended to not be camping for one day---meaning I packed all hiking clothes/shoes and only one pair of jeans, one regular wear Tshirt, and one pair of light-weight flip flops....so I ended up wearing the same jeans, shirt, and flops for three and a half days in a row. We washed our hiking clothes while at my parents, but somehow I actually didn't mind wearing the same outfit---definitely made choosing what to wear a whole lot easier...

Beyond the clothes and personal care products, I did get introduced to some great hiking and camping gear. (You have to understand that I didn't really grow up camping, before this I'm pretty sure I'd only legit tent camped maybe, maybe 5x.) Since hub spent the last two years pretty much camping and running around in the woods half of every month thanks to the Army, he's got some pretty neat stuff:

This is the Jetboil pot. Great for heating up water in a flash and great for backpacking since its small and lighter weight. Image found here. We used this to heat water for cocoa, to fill our kanteens for warmth in the foot of our sleeping bags at night, and to cook our meals. We did decide that we need to get a legit camp stove however for when we're cooking & camping out of the car.

Hub recently found a water purifying device apparently called the SteriPEN. It uses UV light to kill bacteria and viruses. Its light weight and is similar to a lighted wand you stir like a stick in a stream-filled water container. His bud and he used it on their longer backpacking trip without any illness, and we used it on this trip too. You can read about it here and the image was taken from here.

I had my first introduction to freeze dried food from a PNW company called MountainHouse. We ate the Macaroni & Cheese, which hub thought was amazing for freeze dried food and which tasted almost exactly like box mac n cheese. The more I thought about it, I'm pretty sure box mac n cheese must already be some sort of freeze dried. We also had the freeze dried ice cream sandwich which was A-MA-ZING! Image from here.

Two days before leaving on our trip we found a sleeping pad for me. We settled on a Thermarest Trail Scout that was on sale at our local Sports Authority. It was definitely comfortable (much more comfortable than hub's Ridgerest basic light weight!) and with enough padding to separate me from the cold ground. Image from here.

One item that we used at the second camp site which we also string up in our backyard is hub's camp hammock. It actually can be used for sleeping and its incredibly simple to hang up and take down. The whole thing stuffs into a tiny little sack and its also light weight. It's the ENO Doublenest Hammock and the image is from here.

Some of the other camping and hiking gear was stuff hub had from the Army, including a sleeping bag and backpack. As usual our Klean Kanteens were awesome, although hub did also use one of his old Nalgenes (hello BPA exposure.....).

One thing I do have to rave about were the Eddie Bauer shorts I recently found on sale that were fabulous. I'm not a huge shorts person, but these seemed great for hiking and have proved to be quick to dry and easy to move around in. They have great pockets on the sides to hold IDs, chapstick, and a thin camera without being weighed down. I'm pretty sure they are these, although they seem to hit me shorter than they appear in the picture.

Hub and I also snack along the trail when we need a burst of energy and while most of our snacks consist of apples or dried fruit & nuts (cranberries & almonds are a fav, but we've recently added another lil bag of dried apricots and cherries), we discovered Nature Valley's new Oats N Dark Chocolate granola bars on our last Costco trip. They were delicious, made the fastest breakfast possible, and provided great energy to get me through a few more miles. Hub also made white chocolate chip-cranberry-coconut oatmeal cookies that we ate while camping. Unfortunately I left our other great Costco hiking grub at home---peanut butter filled pretzel bites!

Some great gear, snacks, and camp lessons!

Some Favorite Kitchen Things:

Anyone that knows hub and I knows that hub is the primary chef in this house and I am kitchen side-kick, but I still have a few favorite things that reside in our kitchen that DO get use when I spend more time in there:

Hub's multicolored stacking mixing bowls: a color and size for everything you can imagine. Great for mixing, preparing, and for serving... (There's a red one not pictured.)

Freebies and spice! We got this from a hometown friend of his who no longer used/needed it. It rotates and almost none of the spices had been used. We love flavor, especially garlic salt. LOVE THIS!

BREW---this one especially. We love good wine and beer. Period.

I've already shared our love of spice but this one deserves its own picture. Tony's is our cajun go-to spice that energizes our breakfast burritos and just about ruined my love affair with the breakfast burrito when I thought we could not purchase it here---thanks to Winco, we found it!

My camp pot which now is our compost pot: coffee grounds, veg & fruit scraps get to hang out in here under the sink until we transport them out to the big compost bin in back. (PS Have I mentioned the dog's love affair with the compost bin and the fact that we have to block the door with heavy bricks?! The compost bin to them is like an outdoor accessible garbage can---full of wonderful scraps for them to eat!)

My insulated Klean Kanteen (here shown with cafe lid). One of many that accompanies me to work and on hikes. This one lives beside the kitchen sink 75% of the time where its easily accessible for water or coffee additions.

NOT PICTURED: My stainless-steel, copper-bottomed pots, the wire-strainer used as our fruit basket, the fridge covered in coupons and inspiration, and the stove-top espresso brewer you've already seen! ;)

Favorite Beauty Items

Burts Bees Products (at least the ones with lower product hazard scores), but especially their plain chapstick, shampoo, and this one:

 Alima (Portland-based mineral) Make-Up for their shadows, foundation, blush, and this item I usually can't go without (bronzer):

White fluffy cotton towels:

Preserve recyclable (and made from recycled plastic) toothbrushes:

My oh-so-not-natural-but-completely-standby-for-years body and face (unscented and w/ "fair" scores) lotions:

And the final make-up standbys: Honeybee Gardens products for eyeliners, mascara, and nail polish: