Month: October 2018

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month so here are some of the tips I’ve found that can help decrease your cancer risk. Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP) provided some of the following tips regarding Safer Food Packaging, Cleaning Products, Cosmetics and Beauty Products. I’ve added a few of my own based on my research and experience as a Beautycounter Consultant.
1) Choose fresh, frozen or dried food to avoid eating food from cans. Most canned food companies continue to use BPA an estrogenic chemical. It can also disrupt your insulin response and is considered an “obesegen.”  BPA Insulin Article
2) Choose glass, ceramic and stainless steel food storage to avoid leaching of BPA and phthalates into your food and beverages. For an interesting lesson on how dangerous some plastics can be listen to this podcast by Dr. Anthony Jay Robb Wolf Podcast Estrogenics It changed forever how I look at water bottles, most food packaging and even fleece fabric.
3) Cook in cast iron, glass and anodized aluminum cookware whenever possible. Ditch Teflon pots and pans.
4) Watch your soy intake as too much can increase your breast cancer risk. I eat none, but that’s mostly due to it being a legume and well, Montsanto.
5) Use the EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning to find safer cleaning products that don’t contain harmful chemicals that can be cancer causing or endocrine disrupting. EWG Cleaning Guide
6) If you don’t know what is in it don’t use it. Companies should be transparent with their ingredients so we can avoid possible exposure to harmful chemicals.
7) FRAGRANCE is a NO in cleaning and personal care products! Unless the companies list the ingredients. “Fragrance” can be a mix of dozens of potentially harmful chemicals. Companies don’t have to list the ingredients in fragrance due to proprietary information. Many are petroleum based. Dangers of Fragrance
8) Use baking soda, white vinegar, and essential oils for cleaning and freshening. I use a TBLS of white vinegar instead of fabric softener to avoid chemicals and ‘fragrance.’ More vinegar can be used to brighten whites, lift stains and odors.
9) READ INGREDIENT LABELS and expect full transparency regarding ingredients and the ingredient selection process when it comes to anything you or your family use on your bodies. Sad fact, the U.S. only bans 30 ingredients from use in personal care products and that legislation was passed in 1938. To compare the E.U. has a list of 1400 banned ingredients, and Canada 600 banned ingredients. Use the EWG Skin Deep Database EWG Skin Deep Database to find companies that that adhere to higher safety standards than is required by law.
10) Don’t be fooled by incomplete ingredient lists, claims of “natural” or “organic.” These labels can be achieved even if only 1 out multiple ingredients is natural or organic. FULL TRANSPARENCY is what your want! (Yes, those are shouting caps 🙂 )  Some companies like Beautycounter, and other’s you can find on EWG’s Skin Deep database, go above and beyond to achieve a “Verified” status so you can know effort has gone into vetting the ingredients and their safety. Beautycounter has a Never List that has 1500 banned ingredients Beautycounter’s Never List and they push at the federal & state level to get safer legislation for all of us.

My hope is that this list will help you make changes that improve your life and lower your exposure to potential cancer causing toxic chemicals and other harmful ingredients. If you are interested in using Beautycounter to help clean up your personal care products, here is the link to my website Heather’s Beautycounter Website or just go to Beautycounter.com if you prefer to shop without a consultant.