Cartoon courtesy of greengenie.ca.

We feel good when our skin looks good and healthy. Sun damage can have the opposite effect. The good news is that no matter how much exposure your skin has endured, there are steps you can take to rejuvenate it.

With the basics of improved nutrition to create new healthier cells and some sunscreen, everyone’s skin can look improve. Briefly, for improved skin and overall health, the best advice is to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat, as well as whole grains, and less red meat. Limit processed foods. This is common sense advice, but it makes a world of difference.

When it comes to sunscreen, that’s a little more complicated. First, you have to understand what the sun does to different types of skin, then you can go about using the sunscreen that best meets your needs.

Yarrow is a natural astrigent and toner.

With the continuing movement to preserve our planet, many of us have also started to reawaken to something that people have known for millenniums - everything that we need (with few exceptions) for good health and beauty comes from nature.

This philosophy is nothing new to Lily Morgan, president and owner of Lily Organics skin care company, who believes that “the quality of a product is determined by its freshness. It’s all about the ingredients; what they do; how fresh they are; and where they are grown.  It’s what we have committed our company to.”

Creating a formula. Photo by Lily Organics.

Lily Organics’ skin care products are formulated using a combination of natural ingredients which the company purchases, and organic ingredients that are both purchased and grown on Lily Organics’ USDA certified organic farm.

“When we first started out, we couldn’t get many of the ingredients that we wanted certified organic, so we started growing our own,” said Ms. Morgan, who began formulating skin care products in the early 80’s for a very personal reason - her own severe acne.

“Having bad skin was such a motivator. I tried everything and nothing worked. I started to compare the ingredients in the products from the drug stores and the more expensive department stores, and started to notice that the ingredients were primarily the same. Besides that, when I looked up the definitions of the chemical ingredients, I couldn’t see how they would improve my skin,” she added.

Photo courtesy of Sciencedaily.com.

This post - like many others that I write - is about what’s in the things we buy, and how they might affect us, our families, or unborn children. As part of that, I came across a study which found that higher prenatal exposure to phthalates seems to contribute to behavior problems in children between the ages of four and nine.

The study, Prenatal Phthalate Exposure is Associated with Childhood Behavior and Executive Functioning, was conducted as collaboration between Mount Sinai, Cornell University, and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Phthalates are part of a group of chemicals that are known as endocrine disruptors that can interfere with the body’s hormone system. Phthalates are a family of compounds found in a wide variety of consumer products, such as nail polish to increase their durability and reduce chipping; and in cosmetics, perfumes, lotions, and shampoos to maintain fragrances.

Photo courtesy of vitamincskin.com

Everyone’s always looking for healthy ways to look better. Well, here’s some research that might make you consider increasing your citrus intake, and maybe adding some beauty products containing vitamin C to your regiment.

In a collaborative study, researchers from the University of Leicester in England and the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology in Portugal found a form of vitamin C that helps promote wound healing and also helps protect the DNA in skin cells from damage.

The findings were published in the journal of Free Radical Biology and Medicine. On a technical note (and I will try to keep the jargon to a minimum), a free radical in medicine is commonly defined as an atom or molecule that has at least one unpaired electron and is therefore unstable and highly reactive.

In animal tissues, free radicals can damage cells, and there are theories that they can contribute to the accelerated progression of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and age-related diseases.

In the vitamin C research, Dr. Tiago Duarte said the study analyzed how the human dermal fibroblasts (large flat cells in the connective tissue that secrete collagen and elastic fibers) are effected by “sustained exposure to a vitamin C derivative, ascorbic acid 2-phosphate.”

A researcher with the IMCB, Duarte added, “We investigated which genes are activated by vitamin C in these cells, which are responsible for skin regeneration. The results demonstrate that vitamin C may improve wound healing by stimulating fibroblasts to divide and by promoting their migration into wounded areas.

“Vitamin C could also protect the skin by increasing the capacity of fibroblasts to repair potentially mutagenic DNA lesions.”

Photo courtesy of islandteashop.com.

Many synthetic cosmetics try to cover up skin damage, but the truth is that the best way to give ourselves a clean youthful complexion is to feed our skin with the nutrients and anti-aging compounds that nature has already provided us with.

Mankind has yet to outdo Mother Nature in this department, as the scientists at the School of Life Sciences at Kingston University, London, found out at the end of a recently concluded study. It found that out of 23 plant extracts, white tea has the highest concentrations of antioxidants that minimize wrinkles.

“We’ve carried out our tests to identify plant extracts that protect the structural proteins of the skin, specifically elastin and collagen,” said Professor Declan Naughton, who led the university team that worked in conjunction with Neal’s Yard Remedies, a maker of natural and organic bath and beauty products, which provided the study with all of the plant materials that were tested.

Image courtesy of Healthinformer.net.

Dark or black henna tattoos are popular all over the world. They are beautiful and temporary, but recently a number of clinical reports have come out about cases of allergic reactions to the dye when containing Para-phenylenediamine or PPD. This chemical is often added into the product to make the color darker and speed up drying.

“PPD is a known skin sensitizer. This isn’t a huge concern when used in hair dyes because the material comes into contact with the skin only briefly. The real danger—many dermatologist are reporting patients with severe allergic reactions from dark henna (also known as mehndi) temporary tattoos,” said the Cosmetic Ingredient Review.

The CIR seven-member panel of experts (doctors and scientists) declares that its mission is to “reviews and assesses the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics in an open, unbiased, and expert manner, and publish the results in peer-reviewed scientific literature.”

In addition, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, cites several case studies of severe allergic reactions to PPD in temporary tattoos.

“We report here a 17-year-old girl with blisters over her hands of five-days duration that appeared within 72 hours of applying a temporary henna paint to her hands during a social occasion.

There is good news to report about some of the world’s leading personal care products. The Organic Consumers Association has released a study finding that 23 products from 16 major brands showed significant improvements from the last time they were examined a year ago, where the results showed potentially dangerous levels of the contaminant 1,4-dioxane.

The contaminant is generated as a byproduct of manufacturers using ethoxylation, a cheap shortcut process that provides mildness to harsh cleaning ingredients. In addition, since 1,4-dioxane is a byproduct, consumers won’t find it labeled on the ingredient lists of any products they buy.

The danger is that 1,4-dioxane is considered a possible carcinogen to humans by health agencies including the: International Agency for Research on Cancer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Courtesy of Jiade Organic Cosmetics.

PORT COQUITIAM, British Columbia- Jiade Organic Cosmetics Inc., a new company with the philosophy that cosmetics should be food for your skin, will be releasing two new serums this month.

“The serums are made only of organic compressed oils and essential oils,” said Eva Savova, the company’s vice president and chemist. The company’s president, Walter Dullemond, is also a microbiologist. The two develop and manufacture all of their products in their small laboratory.

Jiade is currently awaiting certification from Oregon TILTH, which provides a system that combines strict production standards, on-site inspections, and legally binding contracts to protect the producers and buyers of organic products.

“We make everything by hand. We don’t have any line equipment. Everything is made in very small batches and quality control of the products, the raw materials, and the way we do things is very high,” added Ms. Savova.

LOS ANGELES- As Hilary Orr’s two daughters got older, they became increasing less inclined to want to use natural or organic products. “They were always attracted to the really fun packaging from products that had all of these awful ingredients in them,” said Ms. Orr, who got together with her longtime friend, Darcy McMahon, to create Sparklehearts Co., a company with natural and organic products designed for kid appeal.

“There was nothing out there on the market that I could find that was fun and hip for the girls, and that was also natural and organic,” added Ms. Orr, who with Ms. McMahon went on a two-year journey of product development and culminated with the debut of Sparklehearts last month at the Natural Expo West tradeshow.

“We got a really great reaction. People really loved our products,” said Ms. Orr, talking about the company’s five product lines which consist of a shampoo, conditioner, hair detangler, body wash, and body lotion.

“With the Shine Shampoo, we wanted to put something a little different in, so we added a little pansy extract, which is a natural sun protectant. We kind of did that with all of our products, but for the shampoo I would like to add that it makes a really great lather, which is unlike a lot of other natural shampoos,” said Ms. Orr.

NFS personal care certification logo

National Sanitation Foundation International, an independent, not-for-profit organization which certifies products and labels for food, water, and consumer goods, has adopted the NFS/ANSI 305 ‘made with organic’ standard for personal care products as an American National Standard.

Products covered by the standard include rinse-off and leave-on personal care and cosmetic products, as well as oral care and personal hygiene products.

“This ‘made with organic’ ingredients standard reflects the dedicated efforts of the stakeholders’ work and provides the foundation for consistent national voluntary requirements for ‘made with organic’ personal care products,” said Jane Wilson, NSF Standards Director.