Friday, February 22, 2013

Let's Talk About Hormones and Mothering


Hello and welcome!! Thank you for checking out my blog! I am so grateful to be able to share with you solutions to the everyday challenges that face mothers and the "tools" I use for keeping my family healthy and happy.

OK, let's get down to brass tacks, here. If you are a woman, mother or not, I imagine you can agree with me that hormones are a big part of our daily lives.  We can not escape their daily influence on our bodily functions, our desires and cravings, our skin health and our emotions. To put it lightly, a woman's understanding of hormones and whether or not they are functioning properly, improperly or at all in our bodies is pretty darn important because they affect pretty much every aspect of our quality of life.  Now, I do not claim to be any expert or even a novice when it comes to understanding hormones, their regulation and/or their proper function in the female body. I will say this, though, something has changed in the last 30 or so years of our lives that is effecting many people's ability to live healthy and harmonious lives. That something has been highlighted by some as hormone dysfunction and the cause of this dysfunction is being attributed to hormone disruptors that some have called a perfect storm for creating an imbalance of hormones in the human body from infants to the elderly.

Some have pegged the culprit of the dysfunction as the food supply, an example being processed food canned and packaged in plastic that has the known hormone disruptor BPA in them.  Some call the culprit the mass of under-regulated chemicals, such as dioxins, being spewed into our environment by incinerators and certain manufacturing processes. Another source of exposure is atrizine, a chemical used in some of the most common herbicides (think weedkillers). The truly scary fact is that most of theses chemicals are loosely regulated or not regulated at all!

For women, this lax or lack of regulation is of special concern because one of the most common, and unsuspecting sources of chemicals that mess with our hormones are in skin care or personal care products.

"Right now, cosmetics companies can put almost any ingredient they want into personal care products without having to prove that it's safe. EWG's [Environmental Working Group] research has found everything from hormone disruptors to carcinogens in products we use every day, such as shampoos and moisturizers."

Scary, huh? (If you want to read more on this topic, click here)  Now, what if I were to tell you that the largest organ of the body is the skin? Many of you might say: "Yeah, I learned that in 10th grade biology." Well, this being the case, it seems logical to me that I want to treat my skin with the same kind of care that I would give my heart, brain, and/or lungs. In other words,  I would not knowingly expose these organs to chemicals that could potentially cause significant problems. Why would I treat my skin, the largest organ of my body, any differently? Thus, my new motto, for me and my family, has become "If I am not willing to eat it, I will not put it on my skin." I can imagine some of you may have gone to the image of a mother slathering herself and three children with olive oil instead of using chemical-laden body lotion. Nope, I have found a more practical, and less messy, mothering solution.

Enter Young Living's personal care products. This is the solution.  I have tried so many "natural" products to replace the panthenyl-based shampoo and conditioner I used prior to learning the above information.  None of the all-natural products provided me with the results I had with the old shampoo and conditioner.  This was discouraging and even tempted me back a couple of times.  Then I discovered the personal care products from Young Living. I am so grateful because, now, I get the results I used to get from the old, unregulated shampoos and conditioners with none of the harmful possibilities.  For those of you that read my previous blog: An Acne Protocol That Works! (Just ask my 13 year-old), you will notice that all the skin care products mentioned by our daughter are made by Young Living.  That is because they are safe, non-toxic and they work! Now, our whole family can have our proverbial cake and eat it, too!


P.S. Oh, and there is also a wonderful line of personal products for kids. All three of our children have graduated from the kid's products, however, I know one person who still uses the kid's toothpaste because she likes it's flavor the best!

Enjoy :)

Would you like a simple mothering solution offered to you? Leave a comment and let me know what you need :)






No comments:

Post a Comment