What the beauty industry doesn’t want you to know!

We assume the beauty products we use are safe enough to put on our bodies but what do we really know about the array of products we slap on everyday?

Still today, the cosmetics and personal care industry is self-regulated, meaning that there is almost no control as to what is written on labels and what actually goes into products as long as the officially banned ingredients are not used.

Only the most dangerous ingredients that have long term medical evidence against them up have been banned, so just because an ingredient has not been banned yet does not mean that it is harmless, and although many of these ingredients may be fairly harmless in small doses, what happens when we apply them again and again, day after day, year after year and worse still, we combine them with other beauty products that also contain an array of dubious and potentially unsafe ingredients? The cocktail becomes silently lethal.
The truth is that many synthetic chemicals still being used can cause skin irritations and even worse hormone imbalance and cancer.

As a woman who had suffered minor skin problems her whole life until I became a skincare expert and healed myself, I have hacked the contents of thousands of beauty products to understand what works to rejuvenate and protect skin and what causes skin problems and illness and today I accept it as part of my responsibility and mission to inform women of the dangers lurking in their products and how to avoid them.

The truth is that, contrary to belief, the beauty industry generally does not care whether your skin stays young and you stay healthy. Although things are starting to change its  540 billion industry and money talks. Although our beauty products are a whole lot cleaner in Switzerland than, for example the US, that does not mean they are faultless and we need to start opening our eyes to the truth.

In Switzerland and Europe there are 1,380 banned ingredients in cosmetics and skincare, which is already pretty good, compared to, (wait for it), only 11 banned ingredients in the US.  As incredible as it seems, this is the reality and I see more and more women from the US coming to me here in Switzerland, with long term skin problems originating from products they have been using and believing to be safe as they were bought from supposedly reputable brands who claim amazing ingredients and results.

We need to become aware of what is in our products and once we start avoiding products with dangerous ingredients, the beauty industry will have to stop adding them and only then can our beauty products start to become safe and better for our skin.

And how are these potentially dangerous ingredients beneficial for our skin anyway? They’re not! They are added solely to increase shelf life, to enhance the texture of the product or add foam if it’s a cleanser or shampoo, to bind the ingredients, to add a delightful fragrance and worst of all, to bulk them up. Many dubious ingredients are added to make your skin appear smoother, brighter or more lifted by providing a temporary effect but what they are actually doing is stripping the protective layer to provide a temporary effect while doing long term damage.

What if you used products that actually contained genuine skin food ingredients that treated the cells deep down to regenerate and repair themselves? So what should we look for?

I could provide you with a list of ingredients to avoid and you could spend the next few weeks trying to decipher every skincare label on the shelf but who has time for that right? So here is the easy two-step guide to acquiring healthy beauty products.
Firstly, choose brands that are organic and ethical, take the time to visit their website to check that they are genuine and not just using marketing language as there are literally thousands of brands out there who claim on their packaging, to be natural and pure but are far from it and this is still, all totally legal!

Secondly, price is another clue. You get what you pay for! This old saying is often so true.
With the exception of some high end brands where we are paying mainly for the exclusive name, glamorous world wide advertising campaigns, masses of glossy packaging and huge celebrity sponsorships, there is no way we can buy good quality, healthy and effective beauty products at low prices. Quality cosmetic ingredients are expensive to buy and formulate, so if you’re finding products that are cheap to buy, you can be sure there is nothing very valuable to your skin in them and they probably contain plenty of nasties.

The good news is that although effective and health beauty products are more expensive, we only need to use a little. Most existing beauty products contain 80% to 90% water or cheap fillers so a lot of the product is needed to be applied and often to obtain any result. When using something entirely natural, a little goes a lot further so do a little homework, find a brand you can trust and treat your skin with the proper skin food it needs. The results are priceless in the long term.

And incase you’re a woman with spare time on her hand and who likes to dabble at making things, you are honestly better off buying a few bottles of oil such as rosehip, argan and jojoba and mixing them yourself. They’ll be better for your skin than anything commercial containing chemicals and that’s highly diluted but only choose organic versions and try to find raw, unfiltered versions if you want best results.

Written by: Fiona Nicholls Botanical formulator at Swiss Toniq

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