By Lisa Petty
Trust me, a discussion of hormones is relevant to your choice of beauty products. Hormones are substances released from a gland or organ into the bloodstream and they work as chemical messengers in your body. Tiny quantities of a hormone can cause huge changes in the body, and they operate by altering cellular function by binding to a cell at the hormone-receptor site.
Natural hormones are composed of amino acid chains, steroids, or fatty substances derived from cholesterol, and play very important roles in all aspects of your health. Unfortunately, un-natural or foreign hormones (xenoestrogens – pronounced zeeno-estrogens) can also enter your body via petrochemical compounds found in adhesives, herbicides, pesticides, plastics, solvents – and personal-care products.
These false estrogens bind with estrogen-receptor sites on our cells. When this occurs, cellular functions can change, and hormonal balance shifts in favor of estrogen. This can lead to all sorts of complications, up to and including reproductive (breast, ovarian, uterine) cancers.
Although these foreign substances can enter our systems in many ways, one of the largest ports of entry is our skin: skin, of course, is permeable. Since the 1960’s, scientists have known that all chemicals penetrate the skin to some degree. Think about medicinal patches used for nausea or hormone therapy, and you’ll realize how modern medicine has taken full advantage of this knowledge. Unfortunately, the skin cannot discriminate between beneficial substances and toxic ones, and welcomes them all with open pores.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that cancer rates have increased lock-step with our use of lipstick and deodorant.
About this Guest Blogger
Stay tuned for the next edition in the series If Looks Could Kill for practical tips to help you boost your healthy, natural beauty.
Exerpted from Living Beauty: Feel Great, Look Fabulous & Live Well (©2006 Fitzhenry & Whiteside) by Lisa Petty. www.LiveVibrantly.ca
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