Tag: hormone disruptor

::4 Steps to a Cleaner Lifestyle::

beautycounter

“Nicole, I want to switch to non-toxic products, but I don’t know where to start. It’s so overwhelming.”

I feel ya sister!

Once you start to learn about all the environmental toxins we are exposed to in our daily life it can be almost paralyzing. The information is confusing, misleading and definitely overwhelming. When I first realized that the products I was putting on my skin were known to cause hormone issues and infertility, I almost burned the house down. But then we would have been homeless so…

So, I gave myself grace and started to switch products one by one. I spent countless hours researching safer products and learning…quite frankly I am still learning. I like to say I live by the 80/20 rule: live clean and healthy 80% of the time. I can’t control everything and I most definitely can’t be perfect. If you pressure yourself to be perfect you will get discouraged really fast and if you’re anything like me, give up.

Here are my top tips for starting the switch to a cleaner lifestyle:

clean living, nontoxic, health, wellness, beautycounter, clean beauty

1. Start with products that go on or in your body. Think about it, you use lotion every day all over your body. You use cleaning spray once a week and you don’t really touch it. Food and personal care products go directly into your bloodstream, so I think they have the most potential to impact our health. Study after study indicate that even small changes can have a big impact on our health.

2. Change one product at a time. As tempting as it is to just switch everything all at once, most families don’t have the budget for that. If you do, amazing! I recommend starting with a Beautycounter regimen and Flawless in Five to get your beauty products under control. But if you’re like me, you don’t. So as you run out of a product, replace it with a safer product. Again, give yourself grace.

3. Know your resources. Switching to a clean lifestyle is hard because it’s confusing! Since it’s largely unregulated, companies can say whatever they want about their products even if it is untrue or misleading. We call is greenwashing and it’s rampant. The Environmental Working Group is a good place to start. They have an app that will scan products and give you a safety rating. I like to look at the individual ingredients and their respective rating because sometimes a product with a bad ingredient can get a decent score overall. And I carry the Beautycounter Never List in my wallet so I can always reference it. Now that I have my go-to brands I don’t need to research that much anymore. Beautycounter takes care of almost all my personal care products. One stop shopping! And here’s my Guide to Safer Cleaning .

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The Beautycounter Never List: a list of over 1,500 harmful or potentially harmful ingredients they will never use in their products

4.Start with things that are free! My friend Misty from Beautiful Clean Simple put together this list of five ways to clean up your home for free!

I hope these tips help make the process seem a little less daunting! If you want more tips, product recommendations and info on living a cleaner lifestyle, be sure to follow me on social media! I’m always happy to answer questions via e-mail too.

XO, Nicole

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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/