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Personal Care Products or Pretty Poisons?

Posted on October 5, 2009 | 3 comments

Recently I have been reading Big Green Purse by Diane MacEachern. It’s a book of advice on environmental advocacy via responsible consumerism. I didn’t read it cover to cover because a lot of the information in it is kind of second nature to me (and I hope most people!) at this point. For example: biking as opposed to purchasing fossil fuel (duh). One of the striking chapters for me was the one about personal care products. I guess that I was aware, on an intuitive level, that many personal care products are not good for the environment (or our bodies) because they often come in un-recycleable or unnecessary packaging, and contain chemical ingredients that are toxic in some way. However, I never really got into the specifics of what the toxins in so many of our personal care products actually do. I found this user-friendly list of common toxins in personal care products on Green-blog.org. It is pretty comparable to the list found in Big Green Purse. Once you get down to the nitty-gritty of what these toxins do to us (and to the animals and plant life that are affected by run-off from our showers), it’s pretty horrifying that manufacturers are allowed to use these ingredients at all.

MacEachern indicates in her book that there is very little government regulation over the ingredients in personal care products. To find out more, I checked out the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website and found these clif notes to FDA Authority Over Cosmetics (the inclusion of other personal care products is implied). Basically, the FDA says that manufacturers are responsible for guaranteeing the safety of their own product and for providing consumers with a list of ingredients. The implication is that if consumers don’t want to absorb harmful toxins into their skin, they have to do their homework. Obviously manufacturers are typically more concerned with their bottom line than they are with the well-being of their consumers; therefore they are going to keep their definitions of “safety” pretty loose, and are going to make their labels as indecipherable as possible.

I am a general advocate of personal responsibility. I think that people should have the right, and the responsibility, to choose how to live their lives. I’m not big on government regulation. However, I think that if that’s the way we’re going to play it in this country, then there needs to be some guidelines around transparency. If we’re going to allow people to choose whether or not they would like to risk cancer to keep their skin smooth, there should be warning labels attached to these products that let people know the risks. It shouldn’t be so difficult to figure out what is or isn’t “safe.” This is the whole argument surrounding the warnings attached to packs of cigarettes. Why isn’t this extended to other arenas? Because most people probably won’t relate their breast cancer back to their deodorant?

The issue of financial ability to buy safer products could begin to be addressed by warning labels, too. If people know that a product is bad for them, and why, they are less likely to buy it, and more likely to spend their money on a safer alternative. The more people spend money on safe products, the more the price is going to drop until it’s affordable enough for everyone. Until there are better regulations on personal care products, there are organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that are working to bring easy access to information to the masses. I highly recommend checking out their website!

Anyhow, before I get all foaming-at-the-mouth-ranty; I did what MacEachern suggested and took inventory of the products that I use. Her suggestion was to either cut your total number of products used by three, or decrease the number of days each week that you use all of your personal care products. By not using as many products, or by not using them as much, you can then afford to start replacing the products that you do use with safer, toxin-free products. Here’s all the products I currently use each day. Next to each one is a toxicity rating from the EWG (go here for a quick and easy toxicity rating for the products you use, plus suggestions for safer ones!):

Toxicity Rating Scale: 0-2 Low Hazard, 3-6 Moderate Hazard, 7-10 High Hazard

  1. Herbal Essences Shampoo for Wavy and Curly Hair –5
  2. Herbal Essences Conditioner for Wavy and Curly Hair – 5
  3. Dove Soap – 3
  4. Tom’s of Maine Apricot Deodorant – 4 –This one surprised me. It must have something to do with the fragrance, since the unscented formula is only a 2.
  5. Sensodyne Toothpaste – 4
  6. Aveeno Naturals Radiance Face Lotion – 6
  7. Covergirl Smoothers Concealer – 2
  8. L’oreal Perfect Match Foundation – 5
  9. Rimmel Translucent Powder – not in the database
  10. Covergirl Blush – 9
  11. Maybelline Stilletto Mascara – 6
  12. Burt’s Bees Lip balm – 2
  13. Burts Bees Face Wash – 2
  14. Coppertone Sport Sunscreen 70+ – 4

The first thing I noticed is that I am kind of surprised by the overall number of products I use. I generally consider myself pretty low-maintenance. I don’t use hair products or a million different facial products. I don’t use a lot of make-up. But 14 items still feels pretty big. I don’t really see myself cutting down on the number right now, but I will cut down on the number of times I use each product each week (with the exceptions of soap, deodorant, and toothpaste – those have daily significance!).

I am actually somewhat surprised by how few of the cheap-o products I use are really bad. I wish that I was surprised that one of the higher numbers on my list, Aveeno face lotion, is greenwashed to make it seem better for you than it really is (the addition of  some natural ingredients justifies them calling their mostly-chemical lotion “natural”) . As a result of this inventory, I will be getting rid of that Covergirl blush immediately. I will be working on finding replacements for the Shampoo and Conditioner first, as those are things that are rinsed down the drain and more immediately affect the environment. Then comes the face lotion and the mascara. Etc.

It could be a learning curve to replace my toxic products with safer, more enviro-friendly products.  Though they are really bad for us and the environment, I can’t deny the power of parabens.  When I happen upon a good replacement product, I’ll post it here! In the mean time, I leave you with 3 questions: 1. How many products do you use each day? 2. What are your favorite low-toxin products, and why? 3. How do you think toxins in personal products should be regulated, and why? Please share your thoughts!

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Just a Little Patience

Posted on October 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted as much this week as I normally do. This is because I have had kind of a crappy week this week, particularly at work, but also at home. I’ve been overwhelmingly busy for most of the week, and little frustrations have been cropping up all over the place and have been piling up into a big mound of angry-cranky-exhaustion. Things have calmed down, so I’m feeling much better now, and have the presence of mind to notice that a theme is developing. Basically what I’ve realized is, in the immortal words of Axl Rose, I “need a little patience.”

The topic first came up in relation to this post, when my friend Jessica commented that yoga is the only way in which she is patient with herself. To which I say “right on, sister.” I have found that I have good yoga patience as well, though I also tend to be impatient with myself in every other way. The topic came up between she and I again last night, and it got me thinking. First, that people who get impatient for results need to just keep working. Keep plodding onward. This is because if you keep working, it is probable that you’ll get some results sometime, even if they don’t come as quickly as you want them to. Whereas, if you do what I often do and quit working because results aren’t coming fast enough, you will never get any results. Pretty simple, right? Sometimes these big breakthroughs are so easy I could just smack myself for not getting them before!

The next thing that I got to thinking in relation to patience is that maybe I am not just impatient with myself. I’ve written before about how bottled anger is one of my personal roadblocks in life. In the last year I’ve realized that a lot of that anger has been due to living too much of my life based on other people’s ideas for me. In the past year I’ve made a lot of progress on taking back my life from the constructs that were built for me when I was a kid. It has done A LOT for my general well-being. I don’t carry around an internal fountain of hurt and outrage any more. However, I am still prone to flashes of temper that can spoil days at a time. These little tantrums don’t seem based in ongoing adversity like they used to be. They’re not pity parties. Since I was thinking about patience anyhow, I thought , “huh, maybe a big chunk of anger in my life has to do with a general lack of patience.” Hmmm…let’s examine this.

I thought about all the things that pissed me off in the last week; the things that made this a bad week. Lo and behold, all items had to do with impatience, mostly impatience with other people’s quirks. Don’t get me wrong; I think there’s a fine line of respect that people need to walk when working together or co-creating anything in this world, whether it’s a project for work, or a lifetime together. Everyone has their own style, and partnerships of any kind move along more smoothly when each person respects the other one’s style. However, there are also some resources involved that each person brings to the table. Time, money, energy, etc. One needs to have respect for the other person’s resources as well. Respect for style and respect for resources needs to be balanced, and all players need to contribute to that balance.

I’ve been realizing this week that maybe my scale for this type of balance is a little wonky. There are some situations where I think annoyance, AKA impatience, is valid. When a person’s personal style is quickly draining my resources, usually time, that person is not respecting me. In that case, the imbalance is on them. I am thinking here about projects that take twice as long as they should due to some lack of skill on another person’s part. In those cases, if my partner is not acknowledging the problem, it’s probably more constructive for me to do the hard thing and point it out to them than it is to just be passive aggressive and get pissed off. That way we can make a plan to compensate for it in the future. Or, I can acknowledge that the person’s style is just different than mine and set limitations; such as, “I can spend this much time on this;” and then stick to it.

On the other had, I know that I also need to be more reasonable about what is an actual drain on my resources. For example, my personal expectations aren’t necessarily the same as a deadline. If I ask my husband to do a load of laundry, just to get it done, it’s not the end of the world if, for some reason, he doesn’t do it right away. This is not a valid reason for me to get pissed off; if I do, I’m just irritated about his general way of doing things. It’s not cool to get mad at people just because they don’t do things how I would do them. However, if I say “Honey, can you please do this, it needs to get done by this time for this reason,” and it still doesn’t happen, that is probably a valid reason to get annoyed (unless there was a really good reason why he couldn’t do it). In either case, I’ve been realizing that even if it seems like an issue is primarily the other person’s fault, there are always things that I can do to avoid frustration. My first response shouldn’t always be to get angry.

So, in short, patience is a virtue that does not come naturally to me. It’s just one more thing that I need to keep noticing and working on in order to clear up more space in my being for the good stuff in life!

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Can Yoga Help Fix My Brain?

Posted on September 24, 2009 | 2 comments

Many moons ago, one of my best friends and I attempted to take a Yoga class together. We were both 24 at the time, and we were both pretty hyperactive. Neither of us was able to gather up the focus needed to really get into it. We would goof off through the whole class, and then we’d both infallibly fall asleep during the closing meditation. Both of us decided after our 10 sessions that we were not the Yoga types. My friend and I both remain fairly high-energy, but have mellowed out quite a bit in our “old age.” Both of us have grown in our ability to focus. She practices T’ai Chi. I have tried that (my husband loves it, and has been in touch on and off with a master since he was 16), but it really wasn’t my cup of tea (that pun was intended – if you know how much tea is drank in conjunction with T’ai Chi!).

In recent years I have been feeling a pull again towards yoga. I’ve had little tastes of it when I’ve been in belly dance classes (my attempts to learn belly dance keep getting thwarted – first by my grad school class schedule, and then by breaking my ankle). It seemed like maybe I might like it now that I’m more of a grown-up. Two things sealed the deal on trying it again: 1. David has been doing it as part of his coursework for school, and has been encouraging me to take it up as something we could practice together, 2. Another dear friend of mine mentioned to me, while I was in the middle of a meltdown, that yoga has played a key role in helping her to love her body. She said that she loves it because it helps her to be more “in” her body, and builds the mind-body connection.

My mind-body connection is broken. Well, maybe not broken in the sense that it doesn’t exist, but it is sick in a way that has to be hurting my attempts to get healthier. I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog that I have been through treatment for eating disorders. Part of what causes eating disorders is body dysmorphia. This means that when you look in the mirror, you don’t see what is really there. You see yourself as being distorted somehow – too fat, too ugly, etc. Here’s the description from MayoClinic.com:

Body dysmorphic disorder is a type of chronic mental illness in which you can’t stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw either that is minor or that you imagine. But to you, your appearance seems so shameful and distressing that you don’t want to be seen by anyone. Body dysmorphic disorder has sometimes been called “imagined ugliness.”

For info on causes, go here.

As stated above, body dysmorphic is a chronic disorder. The behaviors surrounding it can be cured, but the disorder itself is ongoing (though it can go into remission!). Therefore, one needs to learn good self-care and coping mechanisms. Some doctors want to try to treat this with meds. I disagree with that approach, particularly because there aren’t any medications that are approved for specifically treating this disorder. What you’re actually treating is the related depression, anxiety, etc. I’m not necessarily depressed or anxious in a clinical sense, so I think that behavioral therapy is the way to go. Obviously I learned how to stop starvation and purge behaviors. I’m still working on the binge part; but that is getting progressively better. Otherwise, I am doing a pretty good job on the physically self-destructive behaviors front.

The more internal symptoms are the hard part. Especially since I actually am on the heavier side at the moment. Here is a list of symptoms, hand-picked from MayoClinic.com, that I struggle with:

  • Preoccupation with your physical appearance
  • Strong belief that you have an abnormality or defect in your appearance that makes you ugly
  • Frequently examining yourself in the mirror or, conversely, avoiding mirrors altogether (I avoid)
  • Believing that others take special notice of your appearance in a negative way
  • Feeling extremely self-conscious
  • Refusing to appear in pictures (I don’t mind this if I am not overweight. If I am, I will still do it, but it makes me feel miserable)
  • Comparing your appearance with that of others (the funny part about this is that though I am very hard on myself, most other people look lovely to me. Therefore, inside my brain, almost everyone is better looking than I am)
  • Avoiding social situations (only when I’m heavy. If I am, I will try to avoid situations where we are going “out,” or where there are a lot of people I don’t know).
  • Wearing excessive makeup or clothing to camouflage perceived flaws (I have relaxed on this front. I will now go some places without makeup on, but for a long time, even though I don’t wear a lot of makeup, I wouldn’t leave the house without the minimal amount I do wear).

These symptoms all appear as minor behaviors that other people may or may not notice.  The bigger part is inside my head. I know rationally that all of these things are extremely self-centered and/or untrue. However, the whole reason that it is a disorder is because it is irrational. These symptoms, at certain times, will keep me from doing things that I love to do.

When my friend mentioned yoga to me as a form of body-love, I was crying because I didn’t want to go out dancing. I didn’t want to go because I was embarrassed of my body. Usually I can hide the real reason that I don’t want to go, but she had kept pressing me about it until I had to be honest. I LOVE to dance. But at the moment it is hard for me to do it. Obviously I am getting more and more comfortable with being honest about what’s going on in my head. I attribute this to being less and less lazy about self-care.  Meditation  helps a lot to re-program my thinking-keeps out the automatic negative thoughts (ANTS). Exercise helps a lot with endorphins and just getting rid of energy that I might use against myself. Massage helps dissolve issues with being seen.

On Monday night I finally started a yoga class. I have practiced it every day this week, and I already know that I love it. I am looking into doing another weekly class. It is so good; it is so good because it is something that I feel good doing right now. Not when I am thinner or in better shape. I don’t feel self conscious or judged in the studio, which I think must have something to do with the spiritual aspect of yoga. I don’t think when I’m doing it, I just feel. It is the first thing that I have done that feels like it is addressing all of my broken pieces at once.

Anyhow, if you are a person that has body image issues, and aren’t already doing yoga, I highly recommend starting!

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Where Do We Go From Here?:Perspectives on Afterlife

Posted on September 22, 2009 | 5 comments

I don’t mean to get too morbid, having two death-related posts in a row. But the topic of life after death seems appropriate in the wake of a funeral. A recent article in Newsweek indicates that though a majority of us still self-identify as Christian, many Americans are swinging towards Hindu ideals when it comes to perspectives on religion and the afterlife, with 24% of Americans now believing in reincarnation. Though different faiths or perspectives have different definitions and ideas about these categories, the major categories of belief for the afterlife seem to be heaven/hell, reincarnation, some kind of a “spirit world,” or nothing at all.

One thing about the Newsweek article definitely applies to me: I think all religions are basically the same thing. I think they have the same goals, just different ways of getting there. And, apparently like the majority of Americans, I still self-identify as Christian, or sometimes even as Catholic. This is primarily because I was raised Christian and have been educated in Christianity, and it was easier for me to do a comparison of the religion I know to the other religions than it was to switch all together based on the details of each religion, which I probably wouldn’t subscribe to anyhow. Also, I consider myself a “cultural” Catholic, meaning that Catholicism is such a part of my family history and my being that I couldn’t extract it if I tried. And obviously, there are elements of Catholicism that I still believe. I guess I just figure that if it is all the same to me, why should I waste my time fighting it? Anyhow, I’m not going to get any more into the nuts and bolts of my personal faith; I simply provide the above as a basic background for my beliefs.

Another disclosure of belief: I believe in ghosts. Call me crazy, but I can’t not believe in them. Well, if I didn’t believe in them, then I would just have to believe that I am, in fact, crazy (I’m not gonna argue that this could be true!). I have never seen a ghost, and don’t know if I really care to start. However, there have been numerous occasions where I have heard them. Again, I won’t go into this right now, but just know that it is something I believe.

As a Catholic, I was raised to believe in Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. Even as a kid, the idea of Hell didn’t jive with the image of the just and loving God described by Jesus. So, I guess you could say that I never did believe in Hell. I believe that we metaphorically “put ourselves through hell.” I kind of still believe in Heaven and Purgatory. I think that Heaven is simply another plane of existence. I think that people can have glimpses of it while they are still here. I think that some people (Christ, Buddha, Yogis, etc.) spiritually live there while they are physically alive. This concept of Heaven is not really a locality but a state of being. People that have reached that state don’t really leave this planet, they are just invisible to us. So, I guess that I think that some “ghosts” are really just visions into that other plane. Purgatory might be another explanation for ghosts. Maybe some people aren’t ready to move on to the “Heaven” plane at the time of their physical deaths, so they just hang around here, on the physical plane of existence, until they are ready.

Though my concept of Heaven jives pretty well with faiths that subscribe to reincarnation, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I have read some pretty compelling evidence for reincarnation; particularly the trials that potential reincarnates of the Dali Lama pass. However, I wonder how or why we would get into new bodies. Do we get to pick? Why would we do that? Are we being punished? Are ghosts just people who chose not to get reincarnated, but aren’t yet enlightened? I’m not sure what to think. Maybe this is an idea that my Christian upbringing just won’t let me get my mind around. Or maybe, though I love life, I just really want to believe that I won’t have to come back here when I’m done. Maybe I’m worried I’ll get bored.

After all, I am a child of a scientific era. The society that I have grown up in is technologically advanced and grounded in scientific method. Everything must be proved before it can really be believed. I have also spent a significant amount of time in academia, which I think inadvertently tends to promote skepticism. Though I have already disclosed that I believe in a god of some kind, because of the era I’ve grown up in, I am still naturally skeptical. Being a creative type, it’s easy for me to paint all sorts of colorful pictures of what could happen when I kick the bucket. It is harder for me to subscribe to them. It takes a big leap of faith for me to…well, you know. Have faith. Sometimes it takes considerable faith for me not worry that when we die we just…die. And overall, sometimes it is just easier for me to believe that I really am nuts for thinking any of this.

I am interested to know what you think: Am I crazy? What do you think happens to our souls when we die? Do you even believe in souls?

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Life or Death; You Decide

Posted on September 21, 2009 | 3 comments

David’s grandmother passed away last week, and was laid to rest on Saturday. I didn’t know her very well because she was a victim of Alzheimer’s, and it was fairly advanced by the time David and I started dating. Despite not really knowing her, I cried through the entire funeral service. The first reason is that I cry almost any time I see someone I love crying; and I have the insane good luck of not only loving my husband deeply, but also loving his whole extended family. I’m a big empathetic crier. Also, any time that I read or listen to the story of someone’s life, I can’t help but put myself in that person’s place. In the case of David’s grandma, she did a really good job at life. She was someone who lived life with grace and joy despite an abundance of adversity. I didn’t cry because it was sad that she had adversity in her life; I cried because I was happy that she was still so happy. I wish I had felt the same thing at all of the funerals I’ve attended.

Adversity in life is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. It’s been on my mind because my family is one of the many families that has been hit very hard by the economic problems in this country. With five adults (my parents, my brother, my husband and myself) living under one roof, and with each of us having our own fully-developed and separate problems, the house is a veritable petri dish for the many ways that people deal with adversity. I’ve been closely observing everyone’s different responses in my family and outside of it. There are almost as many difficult circumstances and ways of dealing with them as there are different people in the world, but I think that they can all be simplified into two sources and two ways of responding. The following is what I have observed so far.

I think there are two basic sources of adversity. The first source are things that people can’t help, and had no part in bringing on themselves. Things that just “happen” to people that have nothing to do with their choices. Some examples are disease, floods, child abuse, tornadoes, and other disasters. Cases in which the victims are completely innocent. Some might put the economic downturn in this category. The other source is based in human choice. For example, I chose to go to college for writing, even though I knew it would make it harder for me to make money. I guess you could call this category the category of difficult decisions: you weigh the pros and cons of a decision and decide what you think is best, and sometimes you end up being wrong.

Sometimes the line between the two categories is blurred. Often people will do everything they can to be sure that an event is whittled down to the finest point of fault. After hurricane Katrina, for example, a lot of people said those people somehow deserved what happened because they chose to live in a city that is at risk for flooding. This whittling becomes especially true when you bring God into the discussion. People don’t want to think about the possibility that God would just let something like that happen, so they find ways to make disasters the fault of the victims. More often it’s the other way around, where people don’t want to accept responsibility for their problems, and play the victim of a tyrannical God when a problem is really the result of their own poor choices.

One thing that is universally true about adversity is that everybody has it (and if you can’t see someone’s problems it just means that they’re really good at hiding them). A second thing that is almost as true is that the severity of each person’s problems are completely in the context of that person. For example, when we hear celebrities whining to the press we all harden our hearts, because we think “yeah, right. I would LOVE to trade my problems for her problems!.” But if the worst thing that ever happens to that celebrity is that she gets her picture taken too much, it is going to feel just as bad for that person as it would feel for the average joe to lose his house. We can’t really compare our problems to anyone else’s, because no two people are the same inside their heads and in terms of what they are emotionally equipped to handle.

Like I implied in my opening paragraph about David’s grandma: some people respond to adversity as a fact of life. They might be sad for a little while, or mad, but they deal with it and move on. Others respond as if they are always a victim. In other words, they get angry about the problems life presents, no matter how huge or how minor, and then never even try to get over it. And what is the point of staying angry? It does nothing but destroy a person’s ability to see the ways that they are blessed. I think that these two ways of responding represent two basic ways of viewing life: you can either view it as a trial or a gift. A blessing or a curse. And I’ve been learning that so much depends on choice.

It isn’t always easy; especially when I feel like life is throwing curve-balls at my head on a daily basis, and I still have my fair share of days where I don’t want to get out of bed; but I have been trying to choose the perspective of life as a gift. The way I see it is that no matter what happens, no matter how bad things suck, I still have this life, and I try to be grateful for it. I could have never been alive at all. I don’t want to waste my time on this amazing planet being angry all the time about things that I couldn’t help, or about times that I made the wrong choice. It’s a gift to have the capacity to make any choice at all. I have to say, the more I can bring myself to think this way, the less big problems seem, and the more happy and alive I feel.

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