Getting and keeping healthy skin involves a lot more than washing your face. It’s about protecting your skin from the sun, dryness, dirt, cuts and scratches, rashes, and maybe even the wrong foods.

Though summertime puts a focus on the need for the right sunscreen, you really should focus on healthy skin all year long. Here are the best non-toxic ways to get healthy skin, some of which may surprise you.

1) Wear sunscreen in the winter as well as summer. Most of us consider sunscreen a summertime skin treatment. Not so. Our skin can suffer sun damage every month of the year, which is why doctors and skin care specialists recommend applying sunscreen every day.

Don’t miss this helpful post! ⇓

2) Give yourself a skin self-exam. These American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) videos show people how to spot skin cancer and give themselves a skin self-exam. Most family care doctors could spot an obvious unusual skin growth, but if you or your immediate family have a history of skin cancer, get a regular check-up by a dermatologist who can tell the difference between a harmless mole and something more serious.

3) Moisturize acne-prone skin. It seems counter-intuitive to add moisture if you think your skin is already oily. But when acne-prone skin gets dry, it overproduces oil to compensate and that leads to even more acne. Ironically, acne treatments can often leave skin dry.  Use a “sandwiching” technique to apply an oil-free moisturizer before and after acne treatment. If you use a face mask, make it one that moisturizes, not dries skin out.

4) Turn down the shower temp and keep it short. A hot shower might feel great at the time, but the hotter the water, the drier your skin may feel afterwards. Keep temps warm rather than hot, and keep your shower short. Get in, soap up, get out. You’ll save energy and water, too.

5) Moisturize when you’re still wet. Don’t completely dry your body when you get out of the shower or a bath. Adding lotion to skin when it’s still damp rather than completely dry amps up the moisture quotient. Give moisturizer at least 2 minutes to work its magic before adding anything on top of it.

6) Replace tanning salons with non toxic but fake tanning solutions. Like the sun, tanning beds can cause skin cancer and wrinkled skin, warns AAD. If you want the tan look, try a spray-on tanning product or use bronzer and blush. With winter coming (or having arrived in many parts of the country), take advantage of lowered expectations for a “sun glow” and break free of the notion that “tan is glam” altogether. Look for brands free of parabens, oxybenzone, diaolidinyl urea and DMDM hydrantoin, which can release formaldehyde as they break down.

7) Drink more water. “Drinking water is one of the best things you can do to keep your skin in shape,” reports WebMD. “It keeps your skin moist – and that makes fine lines and wrinkles less noticeable.” The group says that water helps cells absorb nutrients and shed toxins, too. The common advice is to drink 8 glasses of water a day, but you can get by with less if your diet includes fruits, vegetables, juices and tea.

8) Eat more beets. Antioxidants are the compounds found in colorful fruits and vegetables that appear to play an important role in slowing and preventing the kind of “free-radical” damage that can cause cancer. Skip the chips and eat berries, tomatoes, apricots, beets, squash, spinach, sweet potatoes and other colorful foods instead.

9) Skimp on perfume, scented lotions and products made with toxic ingredients. Fragrances in perfume and skin-care products can cause the collagen in the skin to break down, leading to allergic reactions, acne and skin rash. Plus, commercial lotions and moisturizers may contain ingredients like formaldehyde or nickel sulfate, power powerful chemical preservatives. Some botanical ingredients may cause problems as well, especially Tolu balsam, which can trigger additional sensitivities to cinnamon oil, lemon oil, orange peel or oil of cloves. Find the simplest, cleanest moisturizer that works for you, and stick with it. I personally use organic coconut oil for almost all my skin needs. It is light, effective and harmless.

10) Stay away from poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac. The key word here is “poison.” These plants can cause severe and painful skin rashes that, at their worst, may need to be treated with steroids. Most people think poison ivy and its cousins are only a threat in summer, but that’s not so. My daughter got a terrible poison ivy rash one winter when she brushed up against a tree that was covered with poison ivy vines. If you do encounter poison ivy, scrub your skin immediately, including under your fingernails and avoid using your hands to spread the rash to other parts of your body after you scratch or itch. Wash clothes, gloves, shoelaces and tools that came in touch with poison ivy, as the urushiol compound that is so toxic in the plant can remain potent for years.

11) Bandage booboos. If you get scraped up, don’t wait to clean out the dirt. Wash the wound well with warm water and soap, and bandage if warranted. There’s no need to use something like hydrogen peroxide or iodine for most minor injuries. On the other hand, ignoring them could lead to a serious infection and potentially scars. If you can’t use an adhesive strip or butterfly tape to hold a minor cut together, see your doctor as soon as possible. The sooner you get stitches, the faster the wound will heal, and you’ll increase the likelihood that any scarring will be less noticeable.

The post The Best 11 Non-Toxic Ways to Get Healthy Skin appeared first on Big Green Purse.

While there’s no specific link between any one product and breast cancer, scientific evidence is growing that women face some risk of contracting the disease due to their cumulative exposure to the chemicals in cosmetics and personal-care products.

“Is there a direct connection we can make between the use of these products and breast cancer?” asks Dr. Julia Smith, the director of breast cancer screening and prevention at the Lynne Cohen Breast Cancer Preventive Care Program at the NYU Cancer Institute and Bellevue Medical Center, in New York City.  “No. But there are strong scientific suspicions that some of the chemicals found in the environment, including those used in cosmetics and other personal-care items, might increase the risk, especially if there is heavy exposure before the age of twenty-five.”

That’s because these are the years when breast tissue is developing and most susceptible to outside influences. It is possible that multiple exposures to common cosmetics could create a cumulative or “domino effect” that could ultimately result in the disease.

Why aren’t we safe?

Despite these concerns, lipstick, eye liner, nail polish, shampoo, perfume, deodorant and the other concoctions we liberally apply to our faces, lips, eyes, noses, nails, heads, necks, legs, armpits and vaginas are among the least-regulated substances in the marketplace.

It’s true. The makers of cosmetics and personal-care products are not required to meet specific federal standards that guarantee our personal health and safety. The fedral Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires manufacturers to put a warning statement on the front of products that have not been tested that reads, “WARNING — The safety of this product has not been determined.” But not many of them follow the rules.

Cosmetics companies are not held responsible for the environmental consequences their products have once they escape down the drain, either. Only one state, California, requires cosmetics manufacturers to disclose any product ingredient that is on state or federal lists of chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects.

According to the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors, which oversees the industry, “a cosmetic manufacturer may use almost any raw material as a cosmetic ingredient and market the product without an approval from the FDA.”

That really makes you want to put your lipstick on, doesn’t it?

The cosmetics industry claims to regulate itself through a board called the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel. But a report titled “Skin Deep” by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit research institute based in Washington, D.C. showed that 89 percent of 10,500 ingredients used in lipstick, nail polish, hair coloring, soap, and other personal-care products have not been evaluated for safety…89 percent. The new video, “The Story of Cosmetics: The Ugly Truth of Toxins In, Toxins Out,” really drives the point home.

What Can You Do? Three things…

1) Shift your spending to safer, healthier products. Fortunately, you’re not completely at the mercy of the cosmetics companies. Every year, consumers (mostly women) spend $50 billion on cosmetics and personal-care products. Individually, that amounts to between five hundred dollars and fifteen hundred dollars that each of us could shift to beauty products and toiletries that are healthier for us and better for the planet.

How do you know what’s healthier? You can compare what you currently use to safer products listed on  the Skin Deep data base.

And as a general rule of thumb, you can avoid products that contain parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances, and triclosan, while choosing plant-based compounds whose names you can actually pronounce!

Remember that the way you spend your money is your first line of defense. If you don’t buy it, you will be far less exposed to it.

2) Cut back the number of products you use by at least three. Most people use an average of 10 personal care products every day, and some of us apply many more. We do it without thinking: soap and shower gel, shaving cream and aftershave, eye cream, face cream, hand cream, body lotion, foundation, blush, bronzer, lip liner, lip gloss, eye liner, mascara, eye brow pencil, deodorant, nail polish… Do you really need soap AND shower gel? Would an “au naturel” look be just as attractive as one that is more glamourous – and more make-up intensive? Try reducing your beauty regimen by at least three products daily and see if anyone notices. I bet you could take a complete beauty breather once or twice a month with it never registering on the “OMG meter.” If you still need convincing, read this article Nena Baker, author of The Body Toxic, wrote on the Huffington Post.

3) Support passage of a strong Safe Chemicals Act. Versions of legislation to protect consumers from dangerous chemicals have been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The bill would require testing for synthetic chemicals to stay on the market. It would shift the burden for proof of safety to the chemical companies, not consumers. The bill would limit companies’ ability to hide information about toxic chemicals. And it would reduce the public’s exposure to the most dangerous chemicals.

Environmental Defense Fund has launched the “I Am Not a Guinea Pig” campaign to mobilize people like you to urge their member of Congress to support a strong Safe Chemicals Act. You can send your representative and senator a quick e-mail with the click of this button.

There’s no excuse for the threats we face in products we use every day. We’re trading minimal beauty for a beastly outcome. Change can happen, but not unless you act. Do so today.

For more ideas on what you can do, read this month’s Green Mom’s Carnival posts, hosted at OrganicMania by Lynn Miller.

The post Beauty…or the Beast? Depends on the Safe Chemicals Act. appeared first on Big Green Purse.