Product Description

Go green and get gorgeous

The promise of beauty is as close as the drugstore aisle—shampoo that gives your hair more body, lotions that smooth away wrinkles, makeup that makes your skin look flawless, and potions that take it all off again. But while conventional products say they'll make you more beautiful, they contain toxins and preservatives that are both bad for the environment and bad for your body—including synthetic fragrances, petrochemicals, and even formaldehyde. In the end, they damage your natural vitality and good looks.

Fortunately, fashion writer, nutritionist, and beauty maven Julie Gabriel helps you find the true path to natural, healthy, green beauty. She helps you decipher labels on every cosmetic product you pick up and avoid toxic and damaging chemicals with her detailed Toxic Ingredients List. You'll learn valuable tips on what your skin really needs to be healthy, glowing, and youthful.

Julie goes one-step further—and shows you how to make your own beauty products that feed your skin, save your bank account, and are healthy for your body and the environment, such as:

• Cleansing creams and oils • toners • facials • under eye circle remedies • anti-aging serums • lip balms • scrubs • exfoliators • clay and cleansing masks
• moisturizers • acne treatments • makeup remover • teeth whiteners • shampoos, conditioners • fragrances • sun protection • bug repellants • baby products • and much more!

With her friendly, thorough, and helpful advice; fabulous beauty recipes; product recommendations and ratings; Toxic Ingredients List; and a complete appendix of online resources, Julie Gabriel gives you all the information you need to go green without going broke and become a more natural, healthy, and beautiful you.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15757 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780757307478
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this thorough, practical guide, writer and registered nutrition specialist Gabriel (Clear Skin) recommends subjecting everyday cosmetics to the same scrutiny with which we subject our food: "each cosmetic chemical ends up in thousands of hungry mouths covering our skin-pores." Navigating labels is a true problem, because cosmetics come under no government regulation, unlike food and drugs; as such, skin products sold as "natural" or "organic" may contain numerous unsafe chemicals, with a few token ingredients to justify their claims. Gabriel provides a list of dangerous ingredients to watch out for (and why), identifies the safest products on the market (free from "synthetic dyes, fragrances, preservatives or detergents"), and takes readers step-by-step through cleansers, toners, facials, moisturizers, sunscreen, hair care and baby care. Her sophisticated daily regimen (two daily cleansings, exfoliation, toning, moisturizing and sun screen) may be too much for some readers, but those with the wherewithal will also find some useful, surprising tips for home-brewed cosmetics (eggs for masks, lemon and sour cream for exfoliants, organic mayonnaise for a moisturizer and foot mask). Though aimed at women, Gabriel also covers products used by men and children, including shaving cream, soap, shampoo and powders.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Julie Gabriel is a registered nutrition specialist (RHN) educated at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. She launched a series of workshops titled 'New Mom's Diet' in Toronto. She is in the process of launching her own organic skincare line called Petite Marie Organics. Julie has been writing and editing fashion and beauty for about 15 years. In 1992 she worked in production at CNN's Style with Elsa Klensch. She was the associate beauty editor in Harper's Bazaar (Eastern European editions, 1998-2000), beauty editor in Atmospheres (2001-2001) and has written over five hundred articles and features on fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

chapter 1

the nature of skin

 

Most 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.

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.

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).

TEWL is the constant movement of water through the epidermis. Water evaporates through the epidermis to the surrounding atmosphere. Environmental factors such as humidity, temperature, season, and the moisture content of the skin can all affect TEWL.

Our skin gets drier as we get older because it loses some of its intercellular lipids after age forty. It is important to feed aging skin with substances that resemble the skin's own oils. These moisturizers should become oilier, but not necessarily heavier, as our skin ages. Essential fatty acids can greatly help skin retain moisture, and since they are natural, our skin accepts them more happily, which means less irritation.

Advocates of synthetic skin care insist that our skin is virtually watertight. Many say skin can be scrubbed, steamed, and washed, and nothing penetrates it deep enough to cause any damage. At the same time, many conventional cosmetics claim they deliver collagen, vitamins, and minerals to feed our skin. So do cosmetics really 'get under our skin'?

In fact, beauty is skin deep. Human skin is a powerful absorption organ that seems to be constantly hungry for anything that touches its surface. Just like a curious toddler, our skin grabs every available molecule, every single drop of water, every lick of makeup, and every whiff of fragrance and takes it to its cellular 'mouth' to taste, chew on, and, most likely, ingest.

Oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, as well as toxic pollutants, enter our skin via three doors: sweat ducts, hair follicles and sebaceous glands, or directly across the stratum corneum. This ability of skin to absorb chemical substances so they can be spread throughout the body is widely used in medicine. Transdermal delivery drugs for motion sickness, cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, smoking cessation, and birth control are already widely used.

According to new estimates, our skin can absorb up to 60 percent of substances applied to its surface. Unfortunately, along with water, vitamins, minerals, and oxygen, skin soaks up potentially carcinogenic ingredients that increase our risk of having cancer at some point in our lives—as if breathing polluted air and eating chemicals was not enough!

To perform their magic, many cosmetic products need to push active ingredients deeper beyond the stratum corneum, the uppermost layer of skin comprised of dead skin cells. Traditionally, it was thought that hydrophilic (water bonding, or dissolvable in water rather than oil) chemicals do not penetrate deep into skin, while lipophilic chemicals (oils or oil-in-water emulsions) diffuse deeper inside the dermis.

Today, scientists know that the process is much more complicated. Various substances can penetrate the skin using different vehicles, sometimes as simple as water. This is when penetration enhancers, also called sorption promoters or accelerants, come into play. To deliver active ingredients, they decrease the resistance of skin's barrier. Some dissolve intercellular matrix, some change the skin's metabolism, and some ­damage or alter the physical and chemical nature of the top skin layer.

Most common penetration enhancers include alcohols (ethanol), glycols (propylene glycol), and surfactants. Liposomes, biomolecular spheres that encapsulate various chemicals from drugs to active components of cosmetic products, also serve as penetration enhancers. The most common liposome is phosphatidylcholine from soybean or egg yolk, sometimes with added cholesterol. Nanoparticles, currently used to deliver sunscreens and vitamins A and E, can boost the skin's permeability by up to 30 percent. Some penetration enhancers, such as transferomes, which are made of surfactants and ethanol, are able to deliver up to 100 percent of the drug applied topically! The greater its alcohol content, the deeper the solution is able to penetrate. Many essential oils have been reported to be gentle yet effective penetration enhancers.

What happens when a potentially toxic substance passes the skin's barriers? It ends up in blood vessels and lymph ducts located in the epidermis and ...

---

Customer Reviews

Self-contradicting and full of impractical recipes
This book is somewhat enlightening -- it includes a dictionary of beneficial and potentially harmful cosmetic ingredients -- but the writer seems to be schizophrenic or to have not done her research about many brands, which, as a journalist myself, is highly concerning. I was disappointed with her recommendations of products by Avalon Organics, JASON Naturals, and Kiss My Face. These lines are hardly superior or clean and were, in fact, sued by Dr. Bronner's last year for using the word "organic" deceptively and containing petro ingredients.

In the book, Julie Gabriel raves about nearly every Dr. Hauschka product made. I respect Dr. Hauschka's biodynamic farming and clean ingredients, but they use a TON of alcohol as preservative. Combined with their heavy plant oils, their pricey products are infamous for breaking people out in tiny bumps on their cheeks and forehead. Further, a soap-based shampoo by Aubrey Organics that Ms. Gabriel praised left my hair like tangled straw. She recommends bismuth oxychloride-containing powders by Bare Escentuals in the book but later tells us on her blog to that bismuth oxychloride can "irritate sensitive skin like mad." Many people who've used Bare Escentuals can tell you this. She spends an entire page on avoiding toners with alcohol (duh), then recommends an alcohol- and witch hazel-based toner by Dr. Hauschka. By the end of the book one suspects her of having too-close relations with the Hauschka folks.

My last critique about the book is that the book is packed with DIY recipes that require impractical and costly ingredients, like rose oil, elderflower water, and dried calendula blossoms. What full-time working woman with kids has the time or money? And tips like "shampoo your hair with plain egg"? Are you nuts?

UPDATE: A final critique about the writer, in addition to her very questionable expertise, is that she has begun using her embarrassment of a blog to bash other organic brands with the hope (most likely) of selling more of her own line.

A few issues.
I found this book to be a bit trendy. Do American women really have the time to mix their own beauty products? No one I know does. Page 57 warns of celebrity endorsements, yet page 75 refers to all the celebrities who use Suki Naturals. She consistently quotes opinions from the makers of natural products, but they are stated like facts. Conventional products do this too, and it is wrong. She loves Dr. Hauschka mascara in the book, but says it runs on her website. Little things like this bugged me. I did learn about ingredients to avoid so all was not lost.

Outstanding information.
From the founder and owner of the organic skin-care line, Petite Marie, comes a revealing look at cosmetics and skin care that the most of the beauty industry would love to keep secret. For instance, all that a product needs to be labeled as "Organic" is a drop of organic essential oil. This is called greenwashing and most greenwashers spend more money on promoting themselves as environmentally friendly than they do on formulating toxin-free, environmentally sound products.

With The Green Beauty Guide, Julie Gabriel starts with the basics of learning all about your skin and guides you through what you should look for in all your beauty products. She teaches you the how tell the difference between a good marketing campaign and truly organic products. You'll also find The Ten Commandments of Green Beauty, How to Go Green Without Going Broke and even recipes for your own organic beauty products such as cleansers, toners, facial masks, moisturizers and even acne zappers with simple easy to find ingredients.

For me, a not so environmentally conscious consumer, the realization what most of us are doing to our skin and the environment was initially a bit intimidating and scary really but Gabriel's information makes it easy to make the green switch. I've already been through my cabinets checking labels and packaging. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in making a difference.