Tag: endocrine disruptor

Maybe it’s not the bacon?

Your frying pan is making you fat. But I’m not talking about the bacon.

Have you heard of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs)? If you’ve hung around me long enough, I know you have. Well, recently I got the chance to hear Dr. Leo Trasande speak to us Beautycounter consultants all about his work researching EDCs and their impact on our bodies. Let me tell you, it’s mind blowing and a little scary.

Real quick. If you don’t know Dr. Trasande, he is a pediatrician and world renowned expert in environmental health. He has all sorts of amazing credentials that you can check out along with much of his published research here. He has an incredible book out Sicker, Fatter, Poorer that lays all of his research out for us normal folks to understand. Suffice it to say, the man knows his stuff. 

If you didn’t know, the endocrine system is SUPER DUPER important to almost all of our bodily functions. It is responsible for regulating a range of bodily functions through the release of hormones.

Examples of things the endocrine system regulates include:

  • metabolism
  • growth and development
  • sexual function and reproduction
  • heart rate
  • blood pressure
  • appetite
  • sleeping and waking cycles
  • body temperature

Pretty important stuff, eh?

So, when we are exposed to these Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals what happens? The way Dr. Trasande put it: they scramble our hormones and contribute to disease. There are countless chemicals that are considered EDCs and honestly, they are still working to identify all of them. Each works a little differently. Some change our gene expression, some mimic hormones in the body, some trigger dormant issues. Regardless, they have been found to have an impact on our health at LOW levels of exposure. 

This is all relatively new data. My jaw dropped when he told us that the FIRST report on EDCs was published in 2009. That’s only 11 years ago. By 2015 studies had identified 15 chronic conditions linked to exposure to EDCs. Recent studies have increased that number to THIRTY TWO! — imagine what a few more years of research will reveal!

We’re talking about conditions like:

  • Cancers
  • Diabetes
  • Reproductive dysfunction and infertility
  • Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
  • Learning disabilities
  • Asthma

…and obesity.  

Mhmmm, EDC’s are obesogens. Meaning they mess up your body’s ability to regulate your weight. Where do we find EDC’s … well, one place is that non stick frying pan you’ve got. Hence the bacon reference above. Studies show that exposure to the PFAS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) that makeup the non-stick coating you love slows your metabolism. The higher the PFAS levels found in study participants, the slower the metabolism. PFAS are forever chemicals meaning they do not degrade over time. They stick around. 

Where else are these suckers hiding? Everywhere, kinda. Plastics. Food. Food packaging. Personal care products & cosmetics. Furniture. Pharmaceuticals. Pesticides. Water. Soil.

See what I mean. I don’t want to sound doom and gloom because there are things you can do to reduce exposure (we will get to that). But, I also think it’s really important that we understand just how critical and invasive this problem is. 

Dr. Trasande’s research estimates (underestimates actually) that EDCs cost us over $340 billion in health care costs each year. This isn’t just a health issue. It’s an economic one, too. 

Our food supply is where we see the strongest data about the effects of EDCs. Plastics like phthalates and bisphenols are used throughout the supply chain and are the main source of packaging for our foods. Phthalates leach into our food even without being exposed to heat! So really, the plastic tupperware you are keeping your leftovers in can be exposing you to EDCs even if you use a ceramic plate to heat it back up when it’s lunch time. 

Critical question: what are the top EDCs to avoid and where do we find them?

PFAS

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances are synthetic chemicals found in many products, including food packaging, household cleaners and nonstick cookware. They are known as forever chemicals because they do not degrade much over time. 

Bisphenols

You’ve heard of BPA in plastic, but did you know the other bisphenols they are replacing it with are just as bad. Avoid plastic as much as possible for food, drinks or other items you might put in your mouth (think baby toys). I love stainless steel, glass and silicone and there are so many great options out there now. 

Phthalates

Phthalates are chemicals commonly added to plastics to increase their flexibility and durability. They are quite literally in everything. Food packings, beauty products, perfumes, cleaning supplies and detergents, pharmaceutical pills, glue! That’s just a sampling. In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma, ADHD, breast cancer, obesity and type II diabetes, low IQ, neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. YEESH!

Parabens.

These chemicals are widely used as artificial preservatives in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, foods, and beverages. Common parabens are methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben. Often more than one paraben is used in a single product. Personal care products are the greatest contributors to paraben exposure. They are suspected to contribute to reproductive issues and breast cancer.

Flame Retardants

Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are used in many household products like electronics, clothing, furniture and mattresses to reduce flammability. BFRs often migrate out of their products over time where they may contaminate household dust and food. 

This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s definitely the place to start. 

So what do we do? Change starts with us. The way we shop influences the market and the products that companies make. In just a few years we’ve seen the clean beauty industry EXPLODE. And that is because you vote with your dollar every time you buy a clean lipstick and companies notice. When you go to make a purchase, ask yourself if there is a way to reduce your exposure to EDC’s with the choice you make. There probably is!

  1. Scan your personal care products for paraben and phthalates and start swapping them.

2. Start converting your kitchenware to non-plastic options. And definitely get rid of the teflon and nonstick cookware ASAP.

3. Shop local and fresh and organic whenever possible. Farmers Markets are a great option for this. When and where you can, reduce the use of plastic packaging. 

4. If you can’t shop organic all the time (I mean who has the budget really?) Focus on the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 from EWG.

5. Make sure your canned goods are BPA free or pick things packed in glass or TetraPaks. Dr. Trasande couldn’t say definitively that tetrapaks were 100% safe, but he said they are absolutely safer than BPA.

6. Next time you are making a big purchase for your household like a couch or mattress, look for options that do not contain flame retardants. 

AND:: Be on the lookout for my list of favorite safer swaps to avoid EDC’s coming soon!

There is hope! California just passed AB 2762, the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act (shameless plug for Beautycounter because our advocacy efforts played a huge role in making this happen!) It will explicitly prohibit the use of the 12 of the most harmful chemicals and contaminants in cosmetics including: mercury, three types of formaldehyde, some of the most toxic parabens and phthalates, and the fluorinated compounds known as PFAS.

See any familiar EDCs in that list? It’s a massive victory for the whole country because companies will need to reformulate if they want to sell in CA (which they do) so the rest of the country will get the new formulas, too. It makes me do my happy dance just thinking about it!

We are also advocating for more oversight and better beauty laws in Washington DC. Want to help? Just text BETTERBEAUTY to 52886 and follow the steps. You’ll be telling congress you support bipartisan legislation to get harmful ingredients out of our products. Look at you go, you activist, you!

Last MOST IMPORTANT point:

Dr. Trasande really emphasized PROGRESS over perfection in this. Even a small reduction in our exposure can have significant short term and long term health benefits. Do what you can when you can and don’t lose sleep over the rest. 

What products do you most want to know safer swaps for? Let me know in the comments.

xo, Nicole

Is your man’s body wash hurting his fertility?

male infertility, sperm, infertility, ivf

Probably.

I wrote a few weeks ago about women’s beauty products and how they are impacting our fertility. Well, I wanted to dig in a little deeper on men and how their products might be impacting them. We often think about infertility as a women’s issue. I’m not sure how that came about because men are 50% of the equation…but alas, our society still looks mainly to women as the ones responsible for making (or not making) babies. The truth is, somewhere between 40-50% of infertility cases are due to male factor infertility.

Here is some alarming fertility news: male sperm count in Western men has decreased by over 50% since the 1970’s! More than that, over 90% of sperm in typical young men are misshapen, which means that have two heads or two tails.

Quick fertility lesson: a two headed sperm cannot fertilize an egg.

I have a son. I have younger brothers. I have a hunky husband. I have friends who are raising boys. This is a HUGE issue. One in 8 couples struggle with infertility and that percentage is rising.

Many scientists are pointing to endocrine disrupting chemicals as a culprit. These chemicals mimic estrogen in the body, confusing the processes responsible for sex organs, hormone regulation…and yes, sperm. Exposure to these chemicals starts even when a baby is in utero!

If you want a breakdown of what these chemicals are all about and how to identify them check out this post.

Men need safer skincare, too! Their skin has different needs than women so we really shouldn’t just hand them our safer face cream and call it a day. Did you know:

  • Men’s skin is 25% thicker than women’s.
  • They have tougher skin due to slower cell turnover and frequent shaving.
  • Men have oilier skin than women because they produce more sebum.
  • Men’s pore size is larger, leaving skin more vulnerable to blackheads

Not to mention, most men won’t touch any product that is marketed as a woman’s product… (insert eye roll).

I was having a skincare convo with my little brother over the holidays and he mentioned really liking a brand of men’s skincare that promotes themselves as “natural” and “green”. He wanted to know my opinion so I looked them up… hello greenwashing! That stuff was full of harmful ingredients. But, I know very few men who are thinking deeply about their skincare. If I wasn’t in my brother’s ear about safer products he would not have given it a second thought. If I didn’t throw away all the junk my husband buys, he would not be asking me to find him a safer shaving cream. Ladies, we need to share this information with the men in our lives! We might even have to take matters into our own hands and toss their old junk and give them better products!

Okay, so here is the exciting news – there is a new line of men’s skincare that has NO endocrine disrupting chemicals (among other things, check out the list) and works and smells fantastic.

Introducing COUNTERMAN by Beautycounter!

male infertility, sperm, infertility, ivf, clean skincare

Counterman is a line of safer, results-driven skin care designed specifically for men. It features Sequoia Stem Cell Complex, all Counterman formulas help protect skin from every day stress. Plant stem cells have the properties and ability to self- renew; they never undergo an aging process, but instead perpetually divide to produce new cells. How cool is that?

Let’s check out the collection:

Do me a favor, go grab your man’s face wash and flip it over… do you see parabens on the list? What about methylisothiazolinone? EDTA? PEG? Or how about fragrance/parfum? …That’s what I thought. Toss it! You can always double check your products with the EWG Skin Deep Database too!

Save the sperm – shop safer 😉

XO, Nicole

A few informative resources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/health/male-sperm-count-problem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/opinion/sunday/are-your-sperm-in-trouble.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043754/

ARE YOUR BEAUTY PRODUCTS FERTILITY-FRIENDLY?

beauty products fertility friendly infertility pregnancy safe

Infertility changed my life. Yeah yeah, in all the obvious ways- but really, if it wasn’t for infertility I wouldn’t have learned about the harmful ingredients our beauty products, I wouldn’t have searched for and found amazing safer products or joined a company with a mission to educate people about this issue. And I would 100% not be writing a blog. My whole world looks so different now- my makeup bag does too!

We don’t know what we don’t know, right? And back in 2014, I didn’t know. But there is nothing quite like a good medical issue – ahhmmm infertility– to send me into research mode. In the face of our repeated failure to get pregnant, I started to research the crap out of all things fertility. What boosts fertility? What hurts it? What should I eat, and not eat? Terms like luteal phase, mucus, ovulation and sperm morphology started to become regular vocab words in my house.

Eventually, I couldn’t ignore that fact that article after article told me I should also be looking at the products lining my bathroom counter. The words nontoxic, hormone disruptor, parabens and phthalates popped up so much that I had to dig a little deeper. And there it was: many of the common ingredients in my personal care products are known to disrupt our delicate hormone system and are linked to many things, among them, infertility. 

I almost took a gas can and a lighter to all the products in my house right then and there, but practically speaking, I couldn’t afford to replace it all at once. So, little by little, one product at a time I searched for a fertility-friendly alternative. That process is a whole other blog post in itself.  For the purposes of this post, I want to highlight a few key ingredients for you to look for to make it a little easier to spot a fertility-friendly product on the shelves. 

Now you might be thinking, “Nicole, I am a fertile myrtle, so this doesn’t apply to me”. To you my friend, I say, “yes, it does”. Did you know that when your grandma was pregnant with your mom, you were forming as an egg in your mom’s ovaries. Let that sink in for a minute. On a cellular level, the things your grandma ate, drank and was exposed to had influence on your developing DNA. Talk about passing things down for generations.

So, you might not be on the same infertility journey as I am, but your choices impact future generations. What you put on yourself, your kids and your husband impacts THEIR hormone systems. And really it’s not just about fertility, these ingredients are linked to a whole host of other issues that we won’t get into today. 

Fertility is a growing issue. One in eight couples struggle with infertility. Doctors are sounding the alarm- why? Because infertility is on the rise and male sperm count and quality is diminishing at an alarmingly quick rate. We don’t have all the information yet. They really haven’t studied the impact of these chemicals thoroughly, but there is enough data to cause concern.

So what are endocrine distrupting chemicals (EDCs) and why should we avoid them? Simply put, they are any chemical that can mess with your hormone function. Many of them mimic hormones, like estrogen, in your body and cause confusion in the way your hormones and cells communicate. Others, like phthalates, have been found to be destructive in nature. EDC’s have been linked to cancer, infertility, thyroid issues, depression, learning disabilities and more. (See resources listed at the end for more information.)

Let’s get to the ingredients. There are many places that we find EDC’s- our food, furniture, plastic bottles, flame retardants etc. Today, I am looking at our beauty products, specifically-things like moisturizer, shampoo, lipstick, foundation and soap.

Here’s my top tip: become a label reader. Yes, they will make you go cross-eyed, but if you know a few key things to look for it will take you a LONG way. You can also turn to resources like the EWG Skin Deep database to find easy to understand information. In fact, I encourage you to go to EWG, search for one of your current personal care products and check out the ingredients and their ratings. It’s eye opening! Here is an example comparing body butters:


Top 3 Ingredients That Hurt Your Fertility

infertility harmful fertility chemical endocrine distrupor

At minimum, learn these three ingredients to look for. If you can find a product that is free from these three ingredients you’re going to be looking at a significantly better product for your fertility. 

1) Parabens– a common, inexpensive preservative that mimics estrogen in the body. They have been shown to accumulate in our hormone-regulating organs. Among many things, studies suggest this EDC can impact a woman’s egg production, ability to become pregnant and maintain pregnancy. They also suggest a negative effect on male sperm quality. (Parabens have also been strongly linked to breast cancer)

You will find parabens listed on the ingredient list under these names. Basically if it ends with “paraben” then you don’t want it.

  • Methylparaben
  • Butylparaben
  • Propylparaben
  • Ethylparaben
  • Isobutylparaben
  • Benzylparaben

2) Phthalates– these are a little tricker because they aren’t usually listed as “phthalate” on the label. They are considered reproductive toxicants and are found on labels under these names: phthalate, DEP, DBP, DEHP and fragrance. These EDCs have been linked to a decrease in male fertility and altered sex organ development. Yikes! 

3) Fragrance/Parfum– nothing frustrates me more than seeing a product marketed as safe and natural and then reading the label to find “fragrance” or “parfum” listed as an ingredient. Synthetic fragrance is basically a cover-all term for all the ingredients that make up that “fragrance”. A huge loophole in the federal law allows phthalates (and many other harmful chemicals) to be added to fragrances without disclosing those ingredients to consumers. So basically, companies can (and do) hide endocrine disrupting chemicals- like parabens and phthalates- in “fragrance”. The Environmental Working Group found that about 75% of products that listed “fragrance” as an ingredient contains phthalates.  The average fragance contains 14 secret chemicals that aren’t listed on the label. There is a really great documentary called Stink! that takes a deep dive into fragrance and this loophole. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t wear something that smells yummy ever again. There are great products that use natural and safe fragrances, but generally the term “fragrance” or “parfum” is a red flag.

Bonus ingredient- BISPHENOL A or “BPA”- BPA is used to harden plastics and has been banned from baby products because of it’s hormone disrupting properties, however you can still widely find it in other plastic packaging. Look for BPA-free packing, or even better, glass packaging for your beauty products. Glass is hard to find, but any company promoting themselves as clean SHOULD be using BPA-free packaging at the very least. 

I am a huge advocate for being an informed consumer. Greenwashing is a real problem in the “nontoxic” and “natural” product world right now, so I don’t really trust what any company says about their products until I research it myself. That being said, I feel confident in Beautycounter’s mission, ingredient selection process, Never List and foundational value of transparency. Beautycounter is actively advocating for more health protective laws- like closing that fragrance loophole- so that everyone will have access to safer products. Switching to these products has made it so easy to feel good about what I’m using on my skin and has significantly reduced the number of headaches I get from going cross-eyed while reading labels.

High performing and significantly safer for my family and my fertility- sign me up! 

I love love love helping people find safer products- even if they don’t want to try Beautycounter. For real, message me and I will help you figure out how to start switching to safer. But avoiding these three ingredients is a great first step!

XO, Nicole

Resources:

Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database

The Never List– over 1500 harmful or potentially harmful ingredients to avoid.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a fantastic resource with links to studies and a breakdown of concerning chemicals. 

Study on EDCs and Infertility

Male Fertility Study

Study on EDCs and Cancer