I usually focus on wellness, from the inside out, but today, we are focusing from the OUTSIDE, IN! Yes, beauty and self-care so makeup, skincare , lotions..

My goal is to empower you to take better control of your health and wellbeing, to rid the toxins in, on and around our bodies to reduce risk of many cancers, diabetes and heart disease.

Why change up our beauty routines? The average American woman uses an average of 12 personal care products a day, containing 168 different chemicals in just makeup, lotions, and hair products.

Most major brands, including many smaller labels, contain harmful ingredients that are carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, neurotoxins and allergens.

Once a chemical ingredient enters body, it’s absorbed in bloodstream and distributed throughout your body. At the very least, beyond possible future harmful health outcome… here are some subtle signs of these toxins in your body:

• Brain fog

• Low energy

• Constipation

• Physical aches and pains

• New skin issues

Begin to reduce your own toxic beauty routine, or improve it, by swapping out harmful makeup, skin and body care, and other personal care items with options that are from brands that are:

· transparent about their ingredients

· Eliminate contaminants and toxins

· do 3rd party testing to ensure what they say on the bottle, is what you are truly getting

· Work and give you the results you desire

So, what do you look out for?

The EU bans more than 1300 ingredients from ANY products sold in the EU. In the USA , the FDA only bans abut 30.

Here’s what to watch out for (partial list):

Parabens, phthalates, coal tar, formaldehyde, aluminum, fragrance (if not disclosing practices and/or ingredients as most do not), oxybenzone, 1,4 dioxane, PEGs, SLSs…the list goes on.

In order not to overwhelm you, here are some great resources and some of my fave go-to’s for info and for having done the legwork:

Environmental Working Group— EWG.org – is a non-profit that rates ingredients and products on a 1-10 scale (1 being the cleanest and safest to 10 being the most toxic). One note – check to see how limited or robust the rating is (it will tell you). Shaklee products are in the prices of being added to this site since we are compliant and product requirements

Naturally Savvy – naturallysavvy.com – helps to guide us with purchases.

Follain, Detox Market and Credo Beauty are online retailers that have very strict standards for keeping the toxins out of any brand they allow to be sold on their websites.

Shaklee – is Beyond Organic and bans more than 2500 chemicals from its ingredients (vs 30 by RDA ) . I LOVE the BB Cream SPF 30 and use it daily.

Popular makeup brands for foundation, eye shadows, eyeliners and lip gloss: Crunchi, Ilia, RMS, MineralFusion, Jones Road, Hype.