Well, after last weeks blog post, I’ve been pondering the idea about products sold in stores and how much people don’t realize about the safety of their personal care products. Because I was one of those people. I had no idea the damage I was doing to my own body by wandering through stores, deeply inhaling the testers and buying my favorite scents and using those products every single day.

When I was 15 years old, I started getting headaches. They never got better, and in fact they got worse and worse. Eventually, I had a headache 24/7 with no relief. I was never much of a complainer so it was a while before my parents realized what a problem this was. I started taking Advil, Ibuprofen, anything over the counter that was in our house. Eventually the regular dose wasn’t working anymore and before long I was taking triple the recommended dose. I started to feel woozy and drugged and STILL had headaches, so I quit taking the OTC meds and went back to living in pain. At least now I could function and pay attention again.

Right after I graduated high school, I moved from my hometown of Chicago to San Antonio with my family. My mom suddenly realized that I’d been having constant headaches for 3 years and started taking me to doctors. We went to so many different doctors that summer that I lost count. I had x rays and scans and kept diaries tracking my food intake, water intake, stressful experiences, and so on. I saw psychologists who evaluated me for depression and anxiety, thinking the headaches might be psychosomatic. The outcome was… nothing. None of the doctors could identify what was triggering the headaches, no one had any recommendations to make as to what I could do differently. In the end, a neurologist slapped a diagnosis of Daily Chronic Headache in my file, handed me a prescription and tried to send me on my way. The conversation went a little like this-

How long do I have to take this?

As long as you don’t want to have a headache.

Like…. does that mean forever?

Yes. Unless you want to live in pain.

So there’s nothing else you can do for me?

*deep sigh* No. You either take the prescription or you live in pain. It’s up to you. *shrugs shoulders*

The prescription he’d given me was for Topamax. It’s an anti seizure medication that researchers discovered during clinical trials was also quite effective against migraines and headaches. It also has a slew of negative side effects, some of which I experienced.

The fact that I was taking a powerful anti seizure medication at the age of 18 never felt quite right to me. But I took it because the doctor said it was safe and what did I know? Plus, it helped at first. Until it didn’t. And the headaches came back worse than ever. I was getting migraines with much more frequency as well, all during my first year of college. Over the next summer, I gave up. I stopped taking the medication and honestly, I’m so lucky that I didn’t have any problems from quitting it cold turkey.

What does all this have to do with personal care products sold in stores? Trust me, I’m getting there!

Fast forward to when I was 34. 19 years since I first started getting headaches. I had a brand new little baby- my second child- and he was covered head to toe in a full body eczema rash that wouldn’t let up. No matter what I put on him, it wouldn’t go away. I started looking at the ingredients in his “clean and green” baby wash, baby lotion, laundry detergent and was HORRIFIED at what I discovered. Every single product INCLUDING the eczema creams I had been slathering on him all had skin irritants in them. All of them. So I started swapping everything out for actually clean, natural and healthy products from Young Living. I started with the baby and kid products and as my eyes opened to what exactly was in everything, I started swapping out my own products too. I stopped buying Pantene ProV and started buying Lavender Mint shampoo and conditioner. I stopped buying Bliss, Mac and Chanel skin care and makeup and started buying what I could from Young Living and searching high and low for low/no tox makeup options. I stopped wearing perfume entirely. I stopped buying Windex and Clorox and started using Thieves Household Cleaner. I even stopped using as much hairspray and products.

And what do you know? Not only did my baby’s eczema clear up…. but my headaches went away. It wasn’t until I walked into a freshly Clorox cleaned house one evening and the headache was overwhelming (and familiar) did the lightbulb go off. I remembered back to the summer of doctors, scans, tests and diaries and realized that not once did any doctor ever ask me what I was putting on my body. What my mom cleaned the house with. Did I burn candles or wear perfume? Of course I did. Every single day, all day long. I was a teen of the 90’s for God’s sake! Cucumber Melon was my JAM and those GAP body sprays?? I had them all!

Well, that was eye opening. I had legitimately never thought about that before. I assumed that if it was in the store, it was safe, right? Why would I ever question that? Well, as it turns out, it’s just not true. And not only is that not true, but in the years since learning this for myself I have actually NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND ANY TRULY CLEAN, NATURAL OR HEALTHY personal care products in the major stores we all shop at. Even the products that say “all natural” and whatnot. Why is this? Because companies aren’t required to list out ingredients of personal care products AND because there are very few regulations around what a label can and can not say. So instead they use lots of clever marketing to trick us into thinking that their product is safe when it’s not. Buzz words like “all natural”, “organic”, “fragrance free” on the label is one way of greenwashing products. Another greenwashing trick is having a vintage aesthetic for the label design!

Greenwashing? What is that? It’s the practice of covering up the toxicity of a product with tricks and gimmicks to make you think it’s a clean, natural product when it’s not. Ugh. When I learned about this, I was so mad. And of course, I had to verify for myself that this was true! I looked into ingredients. I googled all the sciencey names for things that I couldn’t pronounce and then googled further to figure out what it was and what it did to the body. You know what I learned? That the special eczema creams had skin soothing AND skin irritating ingredients. Do you know why? To initially soothe the skin, making you think the product was working, and then to make the problem come back so you buy more.

How infuriating is this? So if you’re like me a few years ago and you think that what you’re using is safe, I beg you to look a little deeper. Dig a little more and don’t be afraid to ask questions like I was. I thought these things were safe because they were on store shelves. I thought I was fine because I didn’t have any problems that I could directly link to the products. I had eczema, but so did my dad and sister. I thought it was genetic. I had headaches for years but the doctors said there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t lose weight and I thought it was because there was something wrong with me. Turns out that once I ditched the toxic products, 5 pounds just fell away. Thyroid issues run in my moms family, but suddenly my thyroid is under control. My hair was straight and now its curly. So many things changed for me when I changed the products I was using at home. You may think you’re ok, but chances are you could be much better. Think about it and ask yourself this key question- what kind of life do you want to live? One that is “fine” or one that is well?