Guys: We don’t need to smell you coming

The biggest ad in the Walgreens cosmetics aisle these days isn’t the airbrushed model hawking L’Oreal, but the huge cardboard archway with the Axe logo leading like a beacon to an aisle stuffed with flashy cans of body spray. This is where the boys come to be cool, to man up, to make the ladies swoon at their feet – or so the ads make them believe.

As the New York Times reported, male body products are all the rage among teenagers and even the pre-teen crowd. One mom counted 18 different products in the bathroom of her 13- and 14-year old boys – the body washes, exfoliators, body hydrators, body sprays, deodorant, shaving cream and hair products they think they can’t live without.

This is the beauty industry’s wet dream: to finally have the other 50% of adolescents churning with anxiety, desperate to own products that promise to make them attractive and acceptable (but always fall short). The marketing machine is selling such anxieties in a myriad of subtle ways – book tie-ins, gaming sites, endorsements from hip-hop stars and extreme athletes. A Kardashian sister was reportedly paid six figures to tweet about loving the smell of Axe. (In reality, most girls are holding their noses behind the guy’s back.)

The irony of this story, which the Times missed entirely, is that the ads promise virility and masculinity, yet the products may have the exact opposite effect on the bodies of developing boys. Most fragranced products contain diethyl phthalate, a chemical that has been linked to sperm damage and feminized genitals. Many of the products, from body spray to shampoo, also contain parabens, a chemical that acts like estrogen in the body.

In all, the 18 body-care products used by the above-mentioned teenagers contain roughly 200 synthetic chemicals that the boys are putting on their bodies each day before breakfast. This daily dose includes dozens of chemicals linked to cancer, skin problems, allergies and hormone disruption, according to an analysis of a typical suite of these products on the Skin Deep database.

How’s that for an ick factor?

By this point in the story, you may be shaking your head in disbelief. But the ugly truth is that companies are allowed to put nearly any chemical into beauty products in unlimited amounts, without conducting safety assessments and without listing all the chemicals on labels. Toxic products are often marketed as “pure,” “gentle,” “hypo-allergenic” and even “organic,” since there are no legal standards for these terms on personal care products.

The beauty industry is in desperate need of a safety makeover. The broken regulatory system keeps consumers in the dark about what they’re really buying and holds the industry back from innovating the next generation of non-toxic products. Why make safer products if they don’t have to? To help change the laws, join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at www.safecosmetics.org.

In the meantime, what’s the parent or girlfriend of an over-anxious body-spraying teenage boy to do? Showing him a Skin Deep analysis of his products, along with information about how phthalates may be impacting masculinity, may make a lasting impression. (Keep in mind that phthalates aren’t listed on product labels; avoid them by avoiding products with fragrance.)

Some honest feedback about what it’s like to smell them coming also wouldn’t hurt. As Stephenie Mullen, the mom quoted in the NYT story, wrote on her blog: “being in a car with my Axe covered boys (is) like going for a jog behind a mosquito truck.”

As it turns out, that image of the noxious spray cloud isn’t far off the mark from what’s happening in the bathroom each morning.

Before you Kiss for the Cause: What’s in that pink ribbon product?

It’s that time of year again, when you can’t walk five steps without finding some new opportunity to spend money for breast cancer. We can “Kiss for the Cause” with Revlon lipstick, “shower for the cure” with Philosophy Pink Ribbon Gel, dust our cheeks with “Hint of a Cure” blush by Ramy, and “Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer” with Avon products.

Before I rush out for a pink-ribbon makeover, I have some questions for these companies: How much money are they actually contributing to breast cancer charities, and what is the money being used for? And most importantly, are they willing to stop using chemicals linked to cancer?

The big beauty companies don’t want such questions raining on their pink parade. After all, Revlon reaps a lot of good will and positive press from its pink-branded products and efforts to raise money for breast cancer charities through the Revlon 5K Run/Walk.

Yet ironically – outrageously – many Revlon products contain chemicals linked to cancer. In fact, Revlon’s Colorsilk brand is ranked as the most toxic brand of all in the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep database, with an average toxicity score of 8.6 (with 10 being the worst).

Pink ribbon giants Avon and Estee Lauder don’t fare much better; each company makes more than 100 products with a toxicity of score of 8 or above, according to Skin Deep, and many of the products contain chemicals linked to cancer. (You can check the score of your favorite products at www.cosmeticdatabase.org.)

This is unacceptable – to say the least! As leaders in the pink-ribbon parade, Revlon, Avon and Estee Lauder have a special responsibility to be champions for women’s health by refusing to buy carcinogens from the chemical companies. As major (and influential) customers of the chemical industry, these companies have the power to shift the market away from harmful chemicals, and toward safer, non-toxic alternatives.

Instead, what we get from these companies are lots of cute pink-ribbon products, with an undisclosed portion of proceeds going to breast cancer research, almost none of which is focused on environmental causes of the disease such as cancer-causing chemicals and pollution. They want us to “hope for the cure” and get our mammograms, rather than having a serious discussion about how to prevent breast cancer, because prevention requires changes to the status quo.

For more about the not-so-cute history of the pink ribbon (which was co-opted by a beauty magazine) and Breast Cancer Awareness Month (which was started by a pharmaceutical/chemical company), see chapter 6 of my book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.”

After these stories, trust me, you’ll never look at a pink ribbon in quite the same way again. So then what? The good news is, we have a lot of power too, because we get to decide which companies we support with our money and which products we put on our bodies. We can educate ourselves and our friends about what’s really going on, and take meaningful action for change. Here are four things you can do today:

Think Before you Pink: Share this website by Breast Cancer Action with friends and encourage them to ask critical questions about pink ribbon promotions. Another great resource on this topic is the book and film No Family History, by Sabrina McCormick.

Just say No to Toxic Beauty Products: Choose products that are free of carcinogens and other harmful chemicals by using the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database. Spend your money on companies with products consistently in the green zone (0-3 toxicity score).

Donate to Breast Cancer Prevention: Support The Breast Cancer Fund, the only national non-profit organization focused solely on prevention of the disease. Also check out BCF’s annual report, The State of the Evidence, a compilation of science about the environmental links to breast cancer.

Help Give the Beauty Industry a Makeover: The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is working to pass legislation that will require cosmetics companies to eliminate chemicals suspected of causing cancer, birth defects and other health problems. Visit our website and join our email list to get involved.

What are you surviving?

Imagine you are a human being thousands of years ago, when there were no cities, no streets, no refrigerators, and no stores. None of the things we consider to be the basic aspects of modern life. Just you, naked under the sun, with a bunch of others, naked as well, wherever on the planet you were born, eating your environment, and spending most of the waking day looking for those parts of your environment that were edible. Whenever you found food, you would eat it, right then and there. Within a day and it may be spoiled.

Whatever we eat will be digested, that is, broken into little pieces, the building blocks of which everything is made of. The main building blocks: proteins, carbohydrates and fats are combined with many ’toppings’ (vitamins, minerals, herbs, tonics, phytonutrients). These are absorbed from the intestinal lumen into our blood. Food is broken down into simple nutrients that will be used by our cells to make more cells and all the hormones and other chemicals of which we are made.

These nutrients that circulate in the blood serve another purpose that is less talked about than the fact that we ARE what we eat, which means that we are made of the food we eat. The nutrients we absorb are supposed to be parts of our environment. The reason this matters is because we are discovering now that our genes are analyzing our blood constantly. Depending on the combination of nutrients, our genes respond by turning some on and others off. Nutrients are our genes periscope to ‘see’ the environment they are living in. At times perhaps the combination of nutrients was so ideal that genes governing sexual behavior and reproduction were activated and genes that would support migration were turned off. For example, a good nutrient content meant that the pregnancy would have a better chance of producing a healthy baby.

The new science of Nutrigenomics studies which nutrients affect what genes.

Our genes, for thousand of years, detected subtle changes in our environment by eating it, breaking it into little pieces and analyzing it in the most complex chemical laboratory, our body. In that way it would turn on and off the genes that would influence behavior and cellular expression to maximize chances of survival. Changes would be subtle. Fruits and vegetables varied according to the seasons. Maybe the autumn nutrients turned on genes for hair production, and winter nutrients turned on the genes for hair thickness. The sun, constantly hitting our skin, provided enough vitamin D. Nature living in nature, eating nature; the design functioning as the designer manifested it. Our cells are always, permanently, constantly, all doing whatever they are doing for one and one purpose only, to survive. This has occurred for thousands of years.

And suddenly, within a time period that has not allowed our genes to respond, we are living in very different conditions. We are no longer naked under the sun. In fact, we invented all kind of chemicals that we dissolve in creams and spread on our skin to prevent the rays of the sun to touch our skin. The boxes we live in are loaded with chemicals that we use to wax our hardwood floors or to retard fire from burning our mattresses like a match in case of a fire. The gases that are released as fumes have been pointed out to be one of the triggers of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Tonight, as I was writing this blog in my flatiron district apartment in Manhattan, I walked to the corner deli and got bananas from Mexico, blueberries from Argentina, a pineapple from Hawaii and kiwis from New Zealand. I wonder what my genes are thinking. I bet they are confused. Should I settle and mate or migrate south where our ancestors always found greater sources of magnesium, or should we turn off those genes and grow hair because the winter seems to have come all of a sudden. Oops, wrong, it was the summer after all. Wait a minute!

Our genes don’t see that we now live in cement buildings, and that we grab our food from fridges. Our genes still analyze chemicals, nutrients (and the lack of them) to get a reading that will reflect the environment.

The chemicals in our food and the combination of nutrients, as well as the quantity and frequency with which we eat, are turning genes on and off to maximize survival. These genes are blind to what it is that they are trying to survive. What we consider ‘disease’, mostly seen as the body being defective in some way or function, is really the result of the highest intelligence attempting to survive. What is ‘diseased’ is that which created the confusion of our genes, our modern lifestyle.

For example, coronary artery disease is the accumulation of plaque inside the coronary arteries blocking the normal passage of blood. Initially, our body, detecting irritation in the arterial wall and inflammation, patches the damage. If things work as they usually do in nature, the irritation would pass because the same chemicals that turned on the genes that directed the deposit of cholesterol also turn on genes that would make the person reject certain foods and move to another location. When the nutrients finally get better, the irritation would stop and the cholesterol patch would be reabsorbed. But modern man stays doing the same thing for years and the plaque keeps growing, until the mechanism of survival, as perfect as it was designed, turns out to be the cause of the worse problems and death.

What is diseased is not the heart. Coronary artery plaque is actually the perfect response of your arteries to try and survive the way you eat and live.

My burning question is, ‘what did humans eat when they were in their original wild habitat, only guided by instinct, geography and season’? Whatever that diet looked like, let’s call it “Instinct Diet’. Since our genes are so slow to change, they still think that the nutrient analysis when eating the Instinct Diet is the most optimal one, and it also should be the diet that contains everything needed for all the body functions to operate at their best. The more we can approximate the nutrient mixture that we expose our genes to, to what they would have been exposed to if they were still living in those times, in the original environment they were designed by nature to live in, the better chances you will have of restoring your body’s natural ability to heal itself. Food and supplements are the tools we have to make that happen. Yes, supplements may be not as you find food in nature, but fridges, boxes, jars and cans ain’t either. Supplements are a less natural tool that may eventually allow us to live in such an unnatural environment as an apartment in NYC.

Don’t ask your doctor if you have any diseases. Instead, ask your doctor “What Is My Body Trying to Survive?”. The answer is not only more likely to show you the truth but also could save your life…

To Color or Not to Color…

I’m now choosing NOT to color my hair… not anymore. For the past year or so, I’ve begun cleaning out every possible source of toxin in my world, in order to create an ideal body and environment for getting pregnant. I switched to all organic bedding. I threw out chemical-laden cosmetics and body care products. I bought the best-rated water purifier I could afford. I eat an extremely healthy organic, all vegan, high raw diet. I even had my amalgam fillings removed! The last thing was coming face-to-face with the most challenging change yet — don’t laugh, but it was my hair color!

Until now, neither the world nor I had known my true color since I was, seriously, eleven years old. I was a blonde for so long that it had been inseparable with my self-identity. But no more. That’s right, I’ve gone all natural in the hair department. Not only are the harsh chemicals for color-treating hair potential toxins for pregnant and nursing mothers, but — more significantly — those same chemicals do so much damage to hair that you must use even MORE chemicals (polymers, basically) to make color-treated hair soft and silky. There’s more truth to the Barbie metaphor than people realize… I literally had blonde, plastic hair!

So as a big part of my going green, I went brown! Haha! When I decided to go natural, one of the defining moments for me came after spending a lot of time on Kris Carr’s forum, MyCrazySexyLife. It absolutely broke my heart to see so many young women with health challenges. It was at that point I realized a clean diet is not enough. All stressors have a cumulative effect on the immune system; I want to do as much as I can to reduce that accumulation. A little here, a little there — it all adds up, and then leaps into the stratosphere when you make a dramatic change like going vegan or stopping the monthly chemical bath required to change hair color.

I realize that reducing total environmental toxicity (internal and external) can never guarantee I won’t get cancer, but I can’t help but feel that it helps — it’s a numbers game, after all. I know there are toxins out there that I cannot really control (most notably, air pollution — not just from cars, but outgassing from toxic chemicals in carpet, paint, adhesives, and other construction materials that are all around us). So to combat all these things I can’t control, I’ve gone total mad-dog against all the things I CAN control. I’m eating an ultra-healthy diet, getting lots of exercise, making sure I rest and have good quality sleep, and using the healthiest hair and beauty products. It might not be an issue you hear about very often right now, but I expect we’ll all be hearing about it more as time goes by and data come in about the additive effects of toxins on the body.

I am avoiding as many synthetic chemicals as possible, not only because it’s bad for my health, but also because they are bad for the environment. Many people forget that the environment suffers, not only when coloring products wash down the drain and into our water supply, but also from the impact of all the other products needed to maintain the colored hair so it doesn’t look processed (shampoos, conditioners, hair balm, gel, etc). All of these have a detrimental environmental impact. So, for me, coloring my hair was more than just a little procedure every few weeks. I can no longer rationalize what I was doing using that logic.

The fact that some hair treatment processes don’t touch my scalp doesn’t let me off the hook either… it still damages the shaft of my hair. Bleach-damaged hair is so porous that it requires a chemical soup of products to make it appear healthy. My hair feels so amazing now. Gone now are the days of seeing so many frizzed-out rogue hairs flying around my face. No more breakage! No more brittle ends snapping off (hair isn’t supposed to do that)! My hair is now fuller, beautifully soft and shiny and healthy — my husband calls it “luxurious.” It now feels right, both literally and figuratively.

What’s funny (and was unexpected) is that, since going back to my true brunette self, I feel more natural overall than I have in 20 years. My overall attitude and aura are noticeably different. I now walk by a mirror and I feel beautiful. It’s still quite new to me even though I’ve been working on this transition for over a year. And, even though it’s not my ideal length, I’m proud of it and I know it’ll get there eventually.

I should mention that I DO believe there is a natural, sustainable way to color your hair, and that is with henna, which is generally used for coloring hair darker brown, black, or red. I’ve not experimented with it yet because I’m happy with my natural color. But, as I age, when I start getting a lot of grays, I might give henna a try. We’re also starting to see specialized hair salons cropping up that offer organic and less toxic alternatives to traditional treatments. It would be great if these innovative green businesses really caught on, so look in your area and consider giving one of them a try.

So how about all of you out there? If you color your hair, or have ever considered doing so, did toxicity play any role in your thinking? Please share your story!

What’s Really in Your Beauty Products?

Penis deformation? I don’t like those two words together. It’s not easy to make fun of deformed genitalia, but Stephen Colbert gave it a valiant try when he interviewed NYT columnist Nick Kristof about the bizarre plight of fish in the Potomac River (and the humans that drink it).

As Kristof explained, hormone-disrupting chemicals are causing strange genital malformations in the wild kingdom — frogs, fish and salamanders with mixed-up sex organs. In the Potomac, 100% of male small-mouth bass are growing eggs. You read that right: their testicles are growing eggs instead of sperm.

All is not well with male genitalia in the human kingdom either. An increasing number of boys are being born with undescended testicles and deformed penises. A quarter of American women are already contaminated with high enough levels of phthalates – a plastic-softening chemical — to cause malformations in their male offspring.

Years ago, when the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics broke the story that phthalates are also found in most beauty products , I was asked a funny question. More than a few people asked me: If phthalates are harmful to boys, why should we worry if they’re in products used by women?

I thought, seriously? But when the question kept coming, I learned that you actually have to answer it: Um, because boys come from the bodies of women.

So yes, we need to worry about beauty products laced with gender-bending chemicals. If we want to protect boys and girls and fish and frogs, we need to keep these chemicals away from females who are, might be, or might someday want to become pregnant. We need to keep these chemicals off our bodies and out of products that run down our drains. In other words, we need to keep these chemicals out of commerce.

That’s why the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is working to pass laws to ban hazardous chemicals, and to pressure the $50-billion beauty industry to clean up its act. Please help give the beauty industry a safety makeover by joining our action list.

In the meantime, here’s what you can do to protect yourself, your loved ones and the salamanders from exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals:

-Avoid products with synthetic fragrance: Phthalates are used to make fragrances last longer. Our study found phthalates in more than 70% of fragrance-containing products, including shampoos, hair gels, lotions and deodorants. None of the products listed phthalates on the label. Until we get better laws, it’s best to avoid ALL synthetic fragrance-containing products.
-Just say no to cologne and perfumes: There are better ways to say “I love you” than spraying gender-bending chemicals on your body!
-Check labels carefully: Even “fragrance-free” products may contain masking fragrances, which are chemicals used to cover up the odor of other chemicals. -Choose products with no added fragrance, or with natural fragrance.
-Also avoid parabens: These chemicals, which act like estrogen in the body, are used as preservatives in a wide array of lotions, shaving cream, make-up and shower products. Avoid products that list the word “parabens” on the label.
-Use EWG’s Skin Deep: The free database is a great way to find safer products with no parabens and no added fragrance; try the advanced search function.
-Remember that less is better than more: Avoiding fragrance and parabens is not easy – the chemicals are in everything from cleaning products, to laundry detergent, candles and even toothpaste. So just remember the “less is better” rule. Avoid and reduce exposures wherever you can and there will be fewer hazardous chemicals in your home, your body and the fish. Future generations will thank you!

Stacy Malkan is a co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of the award-winning book, “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.” Join Stacy on August 25 for the first Safe Cosmetics Book Club Webinar.