If you won't eat it, don't put it on your skin.

Skin health and body funk are directly correlated to the things you put in and on your body. One of the many side-benefits of cleaning up your diet is a decreased need for superfluous body care products that only serve to cover up bad skin and bad smells. In fact, if you have either, it's a pretty good sign you could probably benefit from doing some cleanup on both the inside and the outside.

You see, while our liver, kidneys, and GI tract are typically amazingly efficient machines for detoxifying and eliminating the harmful substances that we encounter daily as a natural consequence of living, our modern lifestyles and environments have changed dramatically in the last several decades to such an extent that the number of harmful substances we're exposed to daily has increased exponentially - which overburdens our human machinery and keeps it riding on the strug bus.

And because the human body is so desperate to maintain balance and keep you alive, when this happens (and I see it on lab testing every day) the body is forced to turn to another route of elimination - the skin.

Your skin is your largest organ for detoxification and elimination. Both your skin and your gut act as the interface between you and the outside world, and like the microbiome in your gut, your skin is also covered in beneficial bacteria that help to protect you and keep you healthy. So just like poor food choices can destroy the good guys in your gut, toxic body care products on your skin can destroy the good guys inhabiting your skin's microbiome - allowing for opportunistic microbial overgrowths like acne, rashes, boils, fungus, etc. to pop up.

Also, keep in mind that things can both exit and enter through the skin, so anything you put on your skin goes into your body within seconds to minutes (think: hormone creams or nicotine patches) and anything that comes into the body via the skin also has to be detoxified and eliminated via the liver and kidneys...or at least it's supposed to.

But when your detoxification and elimination pathways are gummed up and inefficient, you can enter into a state of dis-ease - which can manifest as things like constipation, excessively stinky farts, body odor, bad breath, bad skin, bad hair, poor nail health, hormone imbalances, fertility problems, allergies, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and more. 

To make matters worse, cosmetic products and ingredients don't need FDA pre-market approval...nor are companies required to test their products for safety before selling them to you, and they can use any ingredient in their product without review or approval. It's also interesting to note that the EU has banned the use of over 1300 dangerous ingredients in cosmetics...the US - about 30, and the average woman puts 120 of these toxic ingredients on her body everyday...men - about 80.                       

Formaldehyde, parabens, pthalates, lead, aluminum, mercury, toluene...they're in there, and they're destroying your health day by day. If you don't know what these things are or do, then you should take the time to research them and seek out healthier options. These things matter as much as the food you eat...which is why one of my strategies is that I try to not put something on my body that I wouldn't eat.                                    

In general, I use just four ingredients on my body. Not four products...four ingredients - all of them edible. It's easier and costs way less than you think. And no, I don't smell or look like a dirty hippie - even though I've been using these four ingredients for nearly twenty years.                      

So what are they? Watch the video to find out.

Of course, using just four ingredients for total body care isn’t for everyone. So if you’d like to know how to find healthier body care product options, here are a couple of links to help you out.

The Yuka app

The Skin Deep database from EWG or their Healthy Living app

One more thing for anyone with breast cancer: A study published in Chemosphere involved healthy female participants who eliminated personal care products containing parabens and phthalates for 28 days. Analysis of breast tissue samples before and after this period revealed a significant reversal of cancer-associated phenotypes, including changes in the PI3K-AKT/mTOR pathway, autophagy, and apoptotic signaling networks.

These findings suggest that minimizing exposure to xenoestrogens - synthetic compounds that mimic estrogen - can potentially reduce breast cancer risk. Parabens and phthalates, often used as preservatives and fragrance enhancers in cosmetics and personal care products, are known xenoestrogens. By choosing products free from these chemicals, individuals may decrease the likelihood of developing cancer-related cellular changes. Read the paper here.