What You Should Look for (and What You Shouldn’t Find) in the Best Moisturizer.

Could it be possible that the moisturizer that you may have used this morning is dangerous? How could a moisturizer possibly be dangerous? Isn’t it just a product intended to moisturize our skin?

Unfortunately there are many petrochemical and chemical ingredients found in many moisturizers as well is many other products such as bath and beauty products and cosmetics. 2 examples are sodium lauryl sulphate and mineral oil.

Many of these chemical ingredients are used in so many of our personal products such as moisturizers because they are extremely cheap. Many are manufactured in laboratories. Mineral oil is so cheap that it actually costs less to buy it than to dispose of it.

There is an organisation called the Environmental Working Group which maintains a database of ingredients used in these sorts of products. This is called the Cosmetic Safety Database and provides information on the massive range of chemical ingredients used in so many of our personal products, including moisturizers.

If you search for sodium lauryl sulphate in the Cosmetic Safety Database you’ll see that the results tell you that sodium lauryl sulphate is linked to cancer as well as developmental and reproductive toxicity, neurotoxicity, organ system toxicity, skin irritation and much much more. And you will get similar results if you search for mineral oil.

These results are backed up by scientific studies. For example a recent study that you can read in the Journal Of Investigative Dermatology was called “Tumorigenic Effect of Some Commonly Used Moisturizing Creams when Applied Topically to UVB-Pretreated High-Risk Mice”. Researchers in this study found that if they applied a moisturizer containing sodium lauryl sulphate and mineral oil to mice 5 times a day for 17 weeks this “increased significantly the rate of formation of tumors and the rate of increase in tumor size per mouse”.

The researchers were extremely surprised from this result because this was not what they were studying. They were actually studying to see if caffeine could cause skin cancer in mice. When confronted with this result the researchers requested that the manufacturer of the moisturizer in question manufacture another moisturizer without any mineral oil or sodium lauryl sulphate in it and when tested they discovered that using this moisturizer produced no effect at all on the growth of tumors in the mice.

If you examine the search results at the Cosmetic Safety Database when searching either of these chemicals, (or any other of a wide range of chemical ingredients found in modern anti aging products such as moisturizers), you will see all of the studies relied on in the results quoted are there for you to reference.

It may never have occurred to you that your moisturizer could be dangerous and that you could be exposed to the risk of, amongst other things, cancer simply by using a modern moisturizer. However it seems clear that this risk exists.

So should you decide never again to moisturize? Should you decide to avoid all anti aging skin care products because they contain dangerous chemical ingredients? No. There are alternatives.

There are excellent niche skin care companies which recognize this problem with the big brand skin care products and which take this as an opportunity to get into the anti aging market by manufacturing high quality anti aging skin care products such as natural moisturizers using only known safe and effective natural ingredients such as the oils from fruits and nuts.

But the skin care market is enormous with billions of dollars at stake and it is very difficult for small niche skin care companies to compete with the big brands in this market. Notwithstanding they do so successfully manufacturing excellent high quality natural skin care products that are highly effective and safe to use. The natural ingredients used in these products, though safe and effective, are too expensive for the big brand-name companies to use which choose to use chemical alternatives instead.

Whilst these products are not household names as so many others are you will be pleasantly surprised at the results you get if you track down these natural skin care products and try them. You won’t be putting your health at risk and you’ll find highly effective at serious skin care. But sometimes it’s difficult to find these natural skin care products because these small niche anti aging companies cannot compete with the big brand names on marketing budget and cannot afford to advertise on television.

So although it may come as a shock to you the bad news is that modern big brand in care products such as moisturizers may well contain dangerous ingredients but the good news is that there are excellent natural alternatives available. There are natural skin care products which use only known safe and highly effective ingredients and these work well without risking your health.

On my website about natural skin care I try to alert my readers to these problems and point them in the direction of safe are more natural alternatives such as natural moisturizers and other natural anti aging products. Visit my website to find out more.

Want to learn more about the best Natural Skin Care Products? Or more about the Best Moisturizer? Visit Peter’s Website Natural Health-Natural Skin Care.