Personal Care 101

Last time I gave you a healthy alternative to deodorant.  Today, the topic will be natural soap.

 

This is an area that I splurge a little on.  Natural soap will cost you more than the store-bought fare.  This is because the soap you buy at the store is made with cheap ingredients and chemicals.  (But you might save on lotion if you switch to natural soap, read on.)

 

The truth is that the soap you buy at the store isn’t really soap, it’s detergent–none of them, not Ivory, not Dove, none!  Detergent is much harsher on your skin.  It strips your skin of its natural oils.  This is why I pay more for natural soap now.  My skin would get so dry and itchy in the winter, but that changed when I switched to natural soap.

 

Detergent bars found in the local grocery store and drug stores are made from petroleum.  In the process, the glycerin is removed.  Glycerin is a humectant, meaning it will pull moisture from the air into your skin.  The detergent maker’s remove the glycerin to sell separately.  Without glycerin in the bar, your skin is much drier.

 

Detergent bars also contain sodium laureth sulfate and/or sodium lauryl sulfate.  They are added to make the bar lather well, but there is debate on whether they are safe.

 

Check out this article on chemical levels in our kids.

 

Natural soap will not lather as well as detergent bars, but they clean just as well.  And your skin will thank you.  Another benefit is that the ingredients are from renewable resources.  We can grow more coconut and olive trees to produce their oil, but we can’t create more petroleum.

 

Soap made with coconut oil will produce the best lather, but it can be a bit more drying to the skin (not as much as detergent bars, though).  Soap made with olive oil will moisturize the skin better, but it will hardly lather.  You just have to find a bar that you like and you may have to get used to the idea of less lather.

 

There are a lot of great natural soaps available, at your local health food store and online.  You can support your local economy by finding a soapmaker in your area.  (Just ask them if they make their soap or if they melt and pour–meaning they bought a pre-made soap base and just added color and fragrance.)  If you are in Oklahoma, you can buy a range of natural personal care items through the Oklahoma Food Coop.

 

I use Kiss My Face brand Olive and Aloe bar.  (I use it as a body bar.  I will detail what I use on my face in a later post.)  It is primarily made with olive oil, so it moisturizes, and it was the most economically priced bar at my health food store.  The price on this bar is almost the same at Whole Foods, here in Oklahoma, and on Vitamin Shoppe.com.

I have also used Dr. Bronner’s Lavender bar.  This is a bar made primarily of coconut oil and so it does lather better, but it doesn’t moisturize as well as the Kiss My Face bar.  And it is a little more expensive than the Kiss My Face bar.

I like to keep foam pump dispensers in my kitchen and bathrooms for hand washing.  I really like to use Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds.  Sal Suds is a super concentrated liquid soap.  It is all-natural–no harmful ingredients, fragrances, or colors.  It is gentle on your skin.  

 

I switched to the foam pump dispensers when I had cracks on my hands and dermatitis.  Turns out the dermatitis was caused by stress, but switching to foam soap also helped.  Washing with full-strength soap was too harsh and was stressing my skin by drying it out.  The foam pumps dilute the soap, saving you money in the long run.

 

When my kids were babies, I used Sal Suds to wash their laundry, instead of Dreft.

I would like to try my hand at making some soap this year.  If I do, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

 

Stay tuned for more personal care alternatives, coming soon!

I Had NO Idea!

I have heard that most honey sold in the stores is cut with corn syrup, but I had NO idea that olive oil is often adulterated, too!

 

I read this post by Cheeseslave, that details how olive oil manufacturers are cutting their oil with other oils, possibly soybean oil, hazelnut oil, and who knows what other oils.

 

One way to test your oil is to place it in the refrigerator and see if it solidifies.  A true olive oil should become solid.  If your olive oil doesn’t solidify, it could mean that it has been cut with other oils, OR had the waxy portions of the olive oil removed.  Read the post by Cheeseslave and also the comments, too.  Someone mentioned that Bragg brand didn’t solidify when cold.  I think that Bragg is a great brand overall and they are probably selling pure olive oil, but they are just removing the waxy portion of the oil.  (I personally want my oil as unadulterated as possible, including all the components of the first pressing.)

 

I started buying Star brand from Walmart because it was labeled “organic”.  Well, I put it in the refrigerator and it did not solidify.  I knew it had to be too good to be true.  It was such a great price.  I will be looking elsewhere now.

This is Ridiculous

I am making caramel sauce this weekend.  I buy raw milk, cream and cheese from a local dairy, but I wasn’t sure that I needed anything this week so I didn’t order.  Then I realized I needed cream for this caramel sauce.  I thought pasteurized cream wouldn’t make a difference since the sauce is cooked anyway, so I went to my local Walmart to buy some.  I picked up three different brands and was very disappointed to find that none were pure cream–they all had additives.  Here is the listing of ingredients that I found–cream, skim milk, less than 1% of each of the following: mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 80, and carrageenan.  I thought this was ridiculous that I couldn’t just buy plain cream, so I told myself I would go to our local Braum’s (local dairy and ice cream shop).  I thought SURELY they would carry pure cream.  They do advertise that their products are hormone-free.  Well, sad to say, their cream was the exact same as all the others.  So, lesson learned, If I can at all help it, I will never buy cream at the grocery store again.  Only pure unadulterated cream for my family, especially after researching those ingredients!

Peripherals

I decided to tackle a project this summer.  My son’s room hadn’t been painted in almost 9 years.  It was in bad need of a new look.  He needed a boy room, rather than a baby room.  He went away to camp for the first time this year (he loved it), so I thought that would be the perfect time to redecorate.

 

As I was planning my painting project, I learned that latex paint contains mercury.  This freaked me out and for a split second I had hesitation about the painting job.  But then I remembered something I read in a fabulous book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.  This book is a must-read for anyone dealing with Candida infection, skin disorders (eczema, psoriasis), autism, dyslexia, depression, ADD, ADHD, dyspraxia (extreme clumsiness), allergies of any kind, asthma, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, OCD, IBS, constipation, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, acne, migraines, PMS, yeast infections, chronic ear or sinus infections, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromialgia, multiple sclerosis, and much more, but these particular items were mentioned in the book.  This book is worth tracking down from a library if you don’t want to buy it outright.  Check out www.worldcat.org to see if it is available at a library near you and if its not, ask your local librarians if they can borrow books from other libraries.

 

Dr. Campbell-McBride points out in her book (pg. 201-202) that our bodies are equipped with a detoxification system.  She says this is, “a system which until recently we did not know much about.  It has got its headquarters in the liver and departments in every cell of the body.  The sophistication and complexity of this system is staggering to even the most knowledgeable biochemists and there is a lot we still don’t know about how it works so efficiently.”  (Emphasis mine.  I personally am not surprised at the complexity and sophistication that God designed!)  She goes on to describe in the chapter how this detoxification system works properly when our bodies get the proper nutrients, telling me that it really comes down to how we EAT!

 

So the lightbulb went on in my head and I began to realize that ALL these things the doctors, media, environmentalists, and even nutritionists are focusing on are PERIPHERALS.  They are not at the core; they are not the cause, but rather symptoms.  Rather than solve issues from the outside in, we need to first start inside and the outside will take care of itself.  The CORE issue here is DIET.  You may have heard me say it before, but I will say it again, MOST health issues can be resolved with proper diet.  This may sound extreme, but I believe it with all my heart.

 

As the lightbulb was going on in my head, this scripture came to my mind, II Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  These peripheral things that we hear we should stay away from, just bring fear into our lives.  Fear does NOT come from God; we are NOT to be motivated by fear.  It is the devil that brings fear and if we give in to this and focus all our time, energy and money on ridding our lives of these PERIPHERAL things, we won’t have time, energy and money left over to do the work of God.

 

Our PRIMARY purpose in life, as Christians, is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.  If we are isolating ourselves from the toxic, busy world, or trying to build ourselves a little Shangri-La/Utopia within the toxic world, how much time, energy, and money are we putting into furthering the gospel?  Probably not much!  You may not identify with these types, but I have read of people that pour thousands of dollars into a new home or office to make it so environmentally friendly and therefore much less toxic to the human body, or others that pull away from society and go live a pioneer life in remote places like the mountains of Colorado or Alaska, in the name of purity.  When I first read about a certain doctor that is building a new such office, my thought was one of helplessness; I don’t have the money to build a new home!  Then thoughts fill my mind of all the toxins that are in my home!  Or when I hear of people living in the pure mountain air, drinking pure mountain spring water, far away from the busy city life filled with toxins, I have to say I have a twinge of envy.  Then I ask myself, “What is my purpose here?”  Those things are not God’s will for me at this time.  People that are living the remote pioneer life are at a disadvantage of spreading the gospel.  I’m not saying it’s impossible for them, but they are limited.  Most of them are not thinking about how they can help others, but rather how they can help themselves or our earth.

 

We do NOT live in an ideal world, BUT we do NOT have to live in fear of this world because God made provision in our bodies to filter out the harmful toxins.  Our Creator is all knowing.  He knows the end from the beginning because He is outside our dimension of time.  He actually sees time as one thing, where we see things in a sequence of events.  I love this analogy I heard once.  Think of yourself watching a parade go by, you see things one at a time, in a linear manner, a float, a marching band, etc.  Now imagine you are in a helicopter above the city, looking down on the parade.  You see the beginning and the end all as one.  This is how it is with God; He sees it all at once.  He KNEW, when He created the universe, that we would be living in a world one day that was overloaded with toxins!  And so He created our bodies with a detoxification system to handle whatever is thrown at it.  Dr. Campbell-McBride spoke recently at a Weston A. Price Foundation Conference and said that if our gut health is in order (this comes from eating right), our detoxification system will even remove heavy metals from our bodies.  (Want to know more about how God is outside our dimension of time?  I encourage you to check out Cosmic Codes by Dr. Chuck Missler.)

 

Now you may be saying to yourself, “But I am VERY allergic to mold (or other various things)”.  By all means, if you are suffering, you will need to remove certain things from your diet or environment, BUT focus on the inside, healing your body so that your body can do its job.  Allergies to things like pollen, dust, toxic mold, wheat and dairy are all symptoms that something is not right inside.  I urge you to read Dr. Campbell-McBride’s book and deal with the CORE issue.

 

For those that don’t suffer from these issues, take your babysteps to remove toxins from your life, BUT don’t live in fear of these toxins and DON’T spend large amounts of money and energy trying to be rid of them.  That money and energy would be better spent helping out less fortunate people in our world.  Examples of things our society wants us to fear are germs, mold, gases from carpet and padding, mercury in paint, cell phones, computers, anything electromagnetic, pollen, dust, plastics, and personal care products to name just a few.  In the coming months I will detail some easy ways to get rid of some of these things from your life, but PLEASE know that they are peripherals.

 

I promise NEVER to use fear as a motivator in any of my articles!  I have seen that from other writers in the health community and it bothers me.  I am NOT going to live in fear and worry.  I am not going to hide myself away.  I am not going to dream of the pioneer days.  God has me in this particular time for a specific purpose.  I AM going to do what I can do, remove what toxins I can.  I WILL focus more energy on eating right.  And I DID paint my son’s room (will post pictures soon).

 

I hope this helps someone.  Remember what your purpose is here and don’t let ANYTHING get in the way of fulfilling that purpose!