How Do You Know If A Product Is Natural?

I was really mad when I found the following information out. Like you might be, I was wondering how people who manufacture lotions and creams can get away with putting cancer causing agents in it. How can they get away with it? Especially with a kid's product?

The answer is very simple.

There is no legally agreed definition of what is and what is not natural when it comes to skin care products, beauty treatments, soaps, lotions and the like.

There is therefore nothing to stop a product manufacturer highlighting the use of a fragrance without suggesting that it is completely artificial.

For instance, you will see products on the drug store shelf that contain ‘fragrance' that has a picture of flowers or a summer meadow on the container, clearly implying the fragrance is entirely natural.

However, even though nothing could be further from the truth, product manufacturers know that consumers buy cosmetic and skincare products based on the smell. Hence, they make sure that they smell nice even though the fragrance is completely artificial.

You must therefore be extremely careful when buying commercial products and you need to know what to look out for.

Another argument that is sometimes put forward for including chemicals of these types in cosmetic and skin care products is that in tiny doses, they are harmless. This may be the case but it takes no account of the cumulative effect of using a product that contains these chemicals over a long period of time.

Furthermore, you should remember that make up or moisturizer that is applied before retiring for the night is going to stay on your skin for many hours giving your skin every opportunity to absorb as much of the potentially harmful chemicals as possible.

You might also have heard it suggested that people have been using skin care and cosmetic products that contained the same substances for many generations and that it never did them any harm, but do the facts support this? If you consider the statistics for the prevalence of cancer and other similar problems back in those days, the answer is, probably not.

Similarly, you have already seen that some of these chemicals cause headaches, dizziness, chest pains and depression and there can't be many people who don't know someone who suffers from some of these problems from time to time.

Of course, people suffer from these problems for many reasons but chemicals could potentially be one of the reasons.

Anyway, the bottom line is very clear. If you are going to use commercially produced skin care products, make absolutely certain that you know exactly what the ingredients are before buying, and if there is any doubt, put it back on the shelf. Do it for the safety of your kids!

Parenting Tips
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Keeping Your Skin Super Healthy!

Keeping Your Skin Beautiful
If you are a busy mom you want your skin to look beautiful but natural. Here is the four step regimen you should follow to have beautiful skin.

The basic four step skin care program goes like this:

1 – Cleansing. The secret when you are cleansing your skin is to be gentle and to use mild cleaning ingredients. If possible, you should avoid using soap (even herbal versions) as soap dries your skin which is why many beauty experts recommend that you should never use soap on your face.

Instead, use a cleanser that is suited to your skin type. For example, you might use a creamy cleanser if you have dry skin or a drier cleanser if your problem is overly oily skin.

One thing that you should avoid is the temptation to clean your skin too regularly. Doing so may in fact make your skin problems worse rather than better, so it is not something that you should be doing.

You should avoid any cleanser that contains strong astringents or alcohol as these will strip away most of the protective oils that your skin needs as well.
For most people, all that is needed is to wash your face at night before retiring and of course, women should remove all traces of cosmetics too.

Wash with warm water – not too hot or too cold as both can damage the capillaries just beneath the skin – and then splash warm water on your face in the morning.

Just splashing your face before dabbing your skin dry is a great way of removing excess oils (either natural or caused by your nightly moisturizer) and this should be all you need to do in the morning.

2 – Exfoliate. This is a crucial step in any properly effective skincare regime and yet it is the step that most women tend to ignore.

There are many ways of exfoliating your skin ranging from specialist dermatological treatment to completely natural exfoliants, with many very expensive branded products in between. We will of course focus on natural exfoliants when we look at specific natural skin care solutions.

3 – Moisturize. No matter what your skin type, skincare experts and dermatologists recommend that you should moisturize your skin regularly, doing so before going to bed being the most popularly recommended option.

When moisturizing at night, you should focus on making sure that the skin around your eyes is properly moisturized. The lack of fatty tissue in this particular area of your face makes this area of skin prone to wrinkles, hence applying moisturizer helps to ‘plump up' the skin and thereby reduce the tendency to wrinkling.

Lastly don't forget the sunscreen. Most of the damage that your skin suffers over the years will be caused by exposure to the sun. Furthermore, this is something that starts happening at a very young age (even though you don't notice it) and even on cloudy and overcast days.

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