What's Really In Your Beauty Products
By Cris Greer

Have you ever seen a commercial for shampoo that told you what the ingredients were? Do you ever see corporate marketing VPs discussing drying agents or skin irritation or carcinogens? These corporate bath and beauty executives don't really want you to know what makes up the wonderful shower gel you just bought or the moisturizer cream in your bathroom cabinet.

Consider this commercial. You see a woman with long blond hair under a showerhead. Her facial expression shows she's thoroughly enjoying the rich, sensuous lather she's making with the shampoo. The voice over says, "You're gonna love our shampoo. It's chocked full of laurel sulfate, methylchloroisthiazolinone, and coal tar. These synthetic chemicals will cause your hair and skin to dry out. Keep you eyes closed and enjoy the moment…because if you open your eyes, this shampoo will burn." Would you go out and buy a bottle of that?

Of course not, so large manufacturers try to market their products with a much different spin. They want you to see the beautiful woman's hair after using the shampoo. They make sure that the camera angles and airbrushing are just right, so you feel like you've got to have hair like that too. They throw in some great scents as well to throw you off the track. If it smells good, it can't be bad for you, right?

Wrong. Many shampoos and other bath products that smell good are made from synthetic fragrances. That means more chemicals. If you look at your shampoo bottle right now, you might see one of the ingredients listed as "fragrance." It's true. They put fragrance in these products, but what they don't tell you is that the fragrance can be made up of nearly 200 other chemicals.

Also consider this. When you go to a large bath and beauty products store, what do you do? You look at all the colors, and you're drawn, at first, by the color of the item. You might move closer to a peach-colored bottle, or you might be more interested in the pale green bottle. Take a look at that shampoo bottle again. Do you see some ingredients like Yellow 6 and Red 40? Those are synthetic chemicals, scientifically engineered to produce a certain color. Oh yeah, and they're usually made from coal tar.

These companies spend millions of dollars a year to develop products that will be appealing to women. They have large marketing departments and hold focus groups and make commercials. They want you to disregard the chemicals in their products, so they play on your emotions. They don't tell you that it would be practically impossible for them to make a product with all natural ingredients that would be profitable. These chemicals can be made in huge quantities at very little cost.

The fact of the matter is that if you buy your bath and beauty products from a large company, you are almost guaranteed to be using toxic chemicals. Have you ever tried a product that made you sneeze or itch, and you just stopped using that particular product? It wasn't that you were allergic to the apple or the peach scent. It was more likely the chemicals used to make that product.

Look in your bathroom at all the products you have. There are shampoos, lotions, shower gels, hair gels, moisturizers. Now see if you find any ingredients like diazolidinyl urea, which is a commonly used preservative and is well known for causing contact dermatitis. How about methylparaben? This chemical is used to inhibit microbial growth and extend the shelf life of the product. Another common chemical found in these products is tetrasodium ethylenediamine tratraacetic acid. This chemical is a sequestering agent and is on the FDA's list of food additives to be studied for toxicity.

These are the kinds of things those corporate executives don't really want to talk about. They might have a difficult time explaining why everything they sell has nothing but synthetic chemicals as ingredients or what those chemicals can actually do to the body. So, they'll keep pushing the commercials that try to convince you that by buying their products you can have the hair and skin and "natural" glow that the women on TV have. They'll keep coming out with new fragrances to entice you. Just remember that no matter how good it smells, you are ingesting toxic chemicals made in test tubes.

Be wary of products that claim to be "natural"and good for you. Look on the label. There's the proof, and until you see a shampoo ad that tells you what methylchloroisthiazolinone actually does to your skin, stay away from it.

Cris Greer, founder and owner of Something Herbal, has researched and tested dozens of essential oil formulas since 1996 to create herbal remedies as well as natural alternatives for personal and household products. Visit www.somethingherbal.us and call Cris at 336 209-2740.