The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances (3 page)

acknowledgments

t
his book was unknowingly inspired by Harriet Hubbard Ayer, the nineteenth-century author of
Bath and Body Splash
. It was her idea to use apple cider vinegar for bathing, bay rum for conditioning hair, and oatmeal for washing hands. Her collection of age-old beauty wisdom is the time-tested foundation of homemade, edible beauty recipes in this book. This probably explains why many beauty recipes in this book are good enough to eat. After all, your skin is what you feed it.

I must thank the people who believed that my sincere passion can become a reality. My deepest thanks go to Adina Kahn of Dystel &Goderich for her faith in me and her nonstop support. Deepest thanks to Andrea Gold of HCI Books for her stellar professionalism, warm encouragements, and kind patience. I am grateful to Stacy Malkan of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Dr. Zoltan Rona, M.D., Bianca Presto of Modus Dowal Walker, Melissa Amerian, Lisa Blau, Amanda Freeman, Susie Fairgrieve, Nikki Gersten, Morgan Dub, Richard Isbel, and Katheline St. Fort. Thank you so much. Without you, this book wouldn’t have happened.

I am extremely grateful to my husband and daughter for their suffering without a normally functioning mom and wife all these months. Masha, thank you so much for being such a self-contained, happy baby. You are the most beautiful girl in the world. And Mama, maybe now you’ll listen and let go of your awful synthetic face creams. I care because I love you.

introduction

f
or nearly fifteen years, I have been writing about fashion and beauty. I helped women and men make sense of the latest products while declaring some shimmery nail polish an absolute must-have. I witnessed exciting moments when fashion and beauty trends were born as they crystallized in the electric air backstage of fashion shows, during glitzy, glamorous, celebrity-studded events, or in the hectic rush of a fashion shoot. And I am guilty of heralding fashion fads that were forgotten the week after the magazine hit the newsstands. I have interviewed, reviewed, analyzed, and criticized.

My true love is homemade “edible” beauty. Dieting and the subtle, yet powerful ways it shapes our looks fascinates me and makes me search for delicious cures to wrinkles and pimples. As a nutritionist, I have fallen in love with natural ways to improve the skin’s clarity, tone, and vitality. When it was time to write this book, I could not resist sharing everything I have learned in those years about skin care and offering you dozens of yummy recipes that bear a very close resemblance to those you cook for dinner. In addition, there is a hefty dose of science. You will learn many things that will never be published in glossy magazines, but this essential knowledge will form the foundation that allows you to become your own beauty expert and organic lifestyle guru.

As you read this book, you will learn how your skin absorbs nutritive and toxic substances, what certain chemicals can do to your body, where to look for them, and how to avoid the most obnoxious ones. You will learn about the dangers of synthetic fragrances and paraben preservatives, and you will understand why they cause allergies and increase your risk of cancer and other devastating diseases. I strongly believe that when you know what is going on in your skin, you will understand why certain ingredients work and others do not. You will be able to follow my recipes for organic, homemade skin care more consciously and will shop for ready-made beauty products with more insight. Cosmetic products are food for our skin, and each chemical ends up in thousands of hungry mouths covering our skin—pores, that is.

Whenever we buy the latest lotion or potion, we assume that people who make it have only good intentions in mind. We assume that our governments regulate cosmetic makers and demand vigorous safety testing. We assume that cosmetic makers consciously avoid making products that contain ingredients with questionable safety records. Perhaps it is time to stop assuming anything. The chemical industry works nonstop. The amount of synthetic chemicals in use all over the world has increased twofold over the last ten years. Today, we have more than 100,000 chemicals in use in different areas of our lives, and less than 5 percent of these chemicals have been thoroughly tested for their long-term impact on human health. Even proven toxins, such as lead and mercury, were presumed innocent for years—until dozens of well-documented cases of serious adverse health effects piled up, thus prohibiting the use of these chemicals in paints, household items, and cosmetics. Which chemical will be next to get the boot? Phthalates? Or maybe parabens?

Every day we learn about recalls of toys contaminated with lead, yet no one has ever recalled toxic cosmetics. Cosmetics, unlike drugs, are not regulated by governmental agencies. The safety of skin care, hair care, and makeup are determined by the cosmetic manufacturers themselves. No one is questioning their practices or watching over their shoulders, so they make their own rules about what to use in products we rub onto (and put into) our bodies.

At the same time, no one has ever disputed the safety of a product containing coconut oil, aloe vera extract, chamomile infusion, or green tea. As of today, none of these ingredients has ever been linked to the elevated risk of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, allergies, or asthma. Plant extracts, juices, and essential oils have been a part of human lifestyles for ages, and their safety has been vetted by millions of users down through the centuries.

We have all ingested our share of carcinogenic substances, such as parabens, formaldehyde, resorcinol, and paraffin, during our lifetimes. Chronic diseases develop over decades of toxic living. Cancer researcher and avid promoter of holistic approach to woman’s health, Dr. Tamara Vishnievskaya, Ph.D., told me in an interview for
Fashion Monitor
in 2004 that most women have minuscule lumps in their breasts since their teens, and nearly all women in their eighties and nineties have cancerous formations in their breasts. However, these lumps may not become malignant for many years until the toxic load in the body tips the scale toward illness.

Environment, consumer habits, lifestyle, and diet all matter when it comes to chronic diseases that may or may not become acute. It’s plain stupid to start smoking, drinking, and gorging on junk food just because there is a high chance for us to develop cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s disease at some point in our lives.

The human body is an amazing, complex system with incredible powers of self-regeneration. All it needs is a little helping hand. Medical science has remarkable examples how lifestyle changes helped reverse diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. Many naturally derived powerful antioxidants can prevent and reverse sun damage and even halt the progression of skin tumors. Organic eating habits and diligent use of nontoxic cosmetic and household products will greatly diminish the toxic burden that jeopardizes our health.

Instead of continuing the old, toxic ways of treating our skin and other vital body parts, let’s try to do our best to
reduce our chances of developing
devastating diseases
. It’s never too late, and every little bit helps.

chapter
1

the
nature
of
skin

m
ost people unconsciously treat their skin as a high-tech fabric—silky yet waterproof, glowing yet warm, silky and sexy yet resilient. The fabric benefits from regular laundering in the shower, occasional dry cleaning in a salon, and some ironing before special occasions. Many people believe that the luxurious fabric we are born in should always be spotless and fresh, no matter what it takes. We would rather bake in a tanning booth and add a glazing of shimmery lotion to hide imperfections than scrub our assets with sea salt and self-massage with virgin olive oil. We use “mattifying” lotions when our skin gets oily, hydrating creams when our skin feels dry, and battle blemishes when they become red, swollen, and very visible. When it comes to skin care, we tend to be reactive rather than proactive. Whenever possible, we opt for quick results and convenience. We are so busy fighting the consequences of the skin’s imbalance that no one remembers how it feels to have normal skin.

Anything but Normal

Normal skin does not exist anymore. Cosmetic companies invented “combination oily,” “combination dry,” and “dehydrated oily” skin types that require complex regimens and dozens of bottles to make skin look healthy and normal. However, a slight dryness and shiny T-zone are perfectly normal, no matter how hard the industry tries to convince us that we need to address these issues.

We are so obsessed with all the new lotions and potions that promise to make our skin appear healthy that we don’t try to make it truly healthy. We are so eager to make these magic concoctions work that we do not ask ourselves whether this chemical cocktail is actually making our skin younger or any healthier. “Healthy skin isn’t a quick fix,” says Susan West Kurz, a holistic skin care expert and the president of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care. “If you apply a cortisone cream, the blemish will go away, but the problem still exists within the system.” To support the normal functioning of your skin and naturally maintain its youthful looks, you need to first know how skin works.

Our skin is an incredibly large and complex organ. The average square inch of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes (pigment skin cells), and more than a thousand nerve endings. Being only 2 millimeters thick, skin does a great job protecting us from the outside world, keeping a constant body temperature, absorbing the sun’s energy and converting it into vitamins while shielding us from UV radiation, storing fats and water, getting rid of waste, and sending sensations.

Skin is made up of three main layers: an epidermis, with the important top layer, stratum corneum (“horny layer”), and a dermis. Every layer of the skin works in harmony with the others. The skin is constantly renewing itself, and anything that throws its functions off balance affects all skin layers at the same time.

Keeping Skin Moist

For most people, proper skin care starts with adequate hydration. But as shocking as it sounds, healthy skin doesn’t really need any additional moisture. Our skin is perfectly able to keep itself hydrated. Its surface is kept soft and moist by sebum and a natural moisturizing factor (NMF).

Sebum, a clear waxy substance made of lipids, acts as a natural emollient and barrier. It helps protect and waterproof hair and skin and keep them from becoming dry and cracked. It can also inhibit the growth of microorganisms on the skin. Sebum, which in Latin means “fat” or “tallow,” is made of wax esters, triglycerides, fatty acids, and squalene. The amount of sebum we produce varies from season to season and can be predetermined genetically, but in fact, the amount of sebum needed to keep skin moist and healthy is very small. People who are “blessed” with oily skin think their skin is dripping oil, but they produce only 2 grams of sebum a year!

For some reason, sebum became public enemy number one in the fight for clearer skin. It is just as absurd as saying that tears should be blamed for smudged mascara! Skin experts claim that sebum combines with dead skin cells and bacteria to form small plugs in the skin’s pores. The only way to keep skin clean, they insist, is to completely stop the production of sebum. Instead of promoting good skin care habits that would eliminate dead skin cells and bacteria buildup, these “experts” recommend stripping skin of its vital fluid with the drug isotretinoin or “deep” cleansers that wreak havoc on the skin’s nature-given abilities to cleanse and revitalize itself through cellular turnover and natural moisturizing.

Sometimes your skin may feel tight and scaly. This is when your skin’s oil barrier loses its effectiveness, most often due to a cold and dry environment during the winter. Instead of letting skin readjust itself by producing more sebum, we cover it with a synthetic, oily film that physically blocks water loss. On top of this film, we may put an additional layer of waxes, petrochemicals, talc, and dyes in the form of makeup. To remove this airtight layer cake, we treat our skin with ionic surfactants and detergents that destroy the natural moisturizing factor, leaving the skin more vulnerable than before. Squeaky-clean is good for kitchen sinks, but not for human skin!

While sebum locks moisture in skin, the natural moisturizing factor (NMF) keeps skin hydrated. NMF is a mixture of water, free amino acids, lactic acid, and urea, as well as sodium, potassium, chloride, phosphate, calcium, and magnesium salts that keep the skin moist and supple by attracting and holding water. The water content of the skin’s outer layer is normally about 30 percent; it rises after the skin has been treated with certain humectants, such as hyaluronic acid, that boost the skin’s ability to retain moisture. To help preserve water, skin cells contain fats and fatty acids, which trap water molecules and provide a waterproof barrier that prevents transepidermal water loss (TEWL).