fragrance, endocrine-disrupt0rs, & hormones - oh my!
What I am sharing is not new information. I hope you have heard all of this before. I am sharing again on this platform in case someone in my network doesn’t know.
I have always thought it is enough if I can just plant a seed for someone; a thought, a piece of information or education. I am revisiting these topics because, I don’t really feel like when I look around, people are doing better. I think there are still a majority of people who don’t realize what many modern day normalcies and conveniences are actually doing to our bodies and our health.
Maybe it’s our rural environment? Maybe it’s the economy? Maybe people only have the capacity to do what’s easy or convenient? But either way, when I look around, people do not seem happier and healthier today, sadly. I look around and I see a lot of people who are doing the best they can, and I love that. But I also see a lot of people who are suffering with their health, and I believe there are some core and foundational choices that benefits lifestyles and health in a profound way.
Food is #1. Always. I believe that the quality of the food we eat has the most profound effect on our physical, mental, and emotional health of anything we do. Shop for your food with love. If you don’t love going to the grocery store, shop from home and do a grocery pick up. Prepare your food with love. Ingest & digest your food with love. I loved learning that in other cultures and countries, meals are considered sacred quiet time because it is so important for the body to be in a state of rest and digest. Think about America - we eat on the go, we eat on the couch, we eat food that doesn’t decompose. I believe our culture has a long ways yet to go to treat our food as sacred.
There have been so many times, since learning about sacred quiet meal times, that I have been spoken to while eating, and in trying to respond between bites, I aspirated what I was eating and had a choking fit. NOT a good look. Not great for digestion.
Ingredients are #2. Ingredients in food, products, fragrance – anything and everything that you as a human being come in contact with. I profoundly believe that our divinely intelligent bodies do not know what to do with artificial ingredients and that’s where problems start.
To make things simple, try to be as natural as possible, as close to nature as possible, we want real natural ingredients so the body knows what to do with them.
Synthetic ingredients – like chemicals, fragrance, preservatives, parabens – confuse the body, confuse the signals in the body – and long story short – that is how your hormones and endocrine system gets disrupted. Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) are chemicals that interfere with the body’s natural hormone system. These chemicals, such as phthalates, parabens, and synthetic musks and fragrances, heavy metals, BPAs in plastics , non-stick cookware, antibacterial soaps & hand sanitizers, candles, plug-ins, soy- can interfere with hormone production, transport, and how hormones bind to receptors, potentially leading to imbalances and adverse health effects.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals can mimic hormones and block their action, or alter hormone levels in the blood. Fragrances often contain EDCs.
The problems that EDCs cause include:
reproductive issues
developmental problems
increased cancer risk
metabolic disorders
thyroid problems
nervous system disorders
immune system dysfunction
In addition to EDCs, many fragrances also contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can have other endocrine-disrupting effects.
So, what are hormones? You may think you know what hormones are – estrogen, progesterone, testosterone…..and yes these are TYPES of hormones. But hormones, in general, are chemical messengers produced by the body’s endocrine glands that travel through the bloodstream to target cells and organs, regulating various bodily functions. They act as signals, or messages - telling cells and organs what to do and when to do it. Hormones play a crucial role in growth, development, metabolism, sexual function, reproduction, and mood, among other processes.
I will continue by saying this….consider – if common ingredients in beauty/body/cleaning products are so toxic that they can negatively affect our immune system, our nervous system, our endocrine system, our hormone balance, metabolism, and cause cancer – what do you think that products and ingredients labeled as NEUROTOXINS can do?
Next time, we are going to dive into the world of NEUROTOXINS…..can’t wait ;)