What’s really in your bathroom cabinet?

You’re shopping for a new moisturiser and you care about the substances you put on your body, but when you turn the product over you’re faced with a list of over 50 chemicals. There are over 10,000 ingredients approved for use in personal care products, and most products contain anywhere from 20 to 60, so someone who uses 12 products a day will apply over 500 different chemicals every day. Deciphering an ingredient list is challenging. My advice is to put the buzzwords and promises aside and check out exactly what’s in the product through the ingredients list. Don’t be seduced by misleading statements about a certain active ingredient that will create a visible change in the skin – an active ingredient needs to be at an effective dosage to work. Many companies put a whiff of an ingredient in so they can use it in their marketing. Then there’s the terms ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ – when only a few ingredients are actually organic! And what’s ‘natural’ anyway? Almost every cosmetic ingredient needs to be slightly modified to be fit for adding to a skincare product, so it’s hardly ever exactly the same as the ingredient that was originally picked from a tree.