Be Paraben Free!
In the past years, fewer people have been exempt from hearing about the darker side of our day to day personal care products. Over at Conatural, we got the memo early and have since our inception only created paraben free products. Parabens as a result, have been picked up as controversial additives that potentially cause harm to everyday users who until very recently had been completely oblivious to the alarming truth about the seemingly harmless ingredient.
Parabens are chemicals which have preservative qualities. They are able to effectively stop your favourite everyday products from ruin by stopping bacteria and types of mould and fungi in their tracks. Having been employed in skin care, cosmetics and other over-the-counter beauty and health care products such as shampoos and toothpastes since as early as the 1920’s, the inclusion of parabens is a cheap and effective way to maintain the freshness of your beauty regimen even in the steamy dampness of your bathroom. They are found in about 85% of all cosmetics worldwide and 75% of other skin and hair care products and toothpastes. They are especially pet ingredients for large cosmetic skin care manufacturers and retailers who can as a result of using different types of parabens, boast long expiration dates and risk averse and retail friendly shelf lives.
Today, there is a product for almost everything and for everywhere your body is ailing, products that make your hair straighter, your legs smoother, your ankles less flaky, and your skin less porous and so on. Not many women will own up to having 10-15 products on the shelf or the edge of their bathtub, yet most do! If even three quarters of these contain parabens as their primary preservatives and since parabens are absorbed by your body and then metabolized, the accruing effect with the consistent use of paraben friendly products is what is disturbing. Where are they accruing you might ask? Of the various tests run on malignant breast cancer tumors, almost everywhere have they been found to contain in them substantive amounts of yes, parabens.
The biggest scare about parabens is just that: they mimic estrogen upon entering your body and play havoc with your body’s hormonal balance. Parabens have been aptly labeled by healthcare practitioners as endocrine disruptors, alien substances that tip over the healthy natural balance of your body’s endocrine (hormone) system. Disruption to the harmony of your hormones is one of the most commonly identified causes for cancers and the buildup of malignant tumors. This is especially true of women and in the case of breast cancer. Of the malignant breast cancer tumors that were tested, the parabens were found concentrated in the upper area of the breast, closest to the underarm, leading many specialists to investigate further the claim that parabens in deodorants and underarm sprays are directly linked to malignancy in breast cancer tumors. Not just cancer: elevated estrogen levels, in spite of being mimicked and disguised parabens have been a leading cause for inducing early puberty in young girls.
Beauty and skin care junkies and aficionados that just can’t get enough of looking, smelling and feeling good and who care at all about their endocrine systems are now being able to pick and choose from a slowly yet steadily growing range of products from a growing range of brands that are categorically and proudly paraben-free. All Conatural products are totally and absolutely paraben free and use natural, harm-free preservatives instead so that your products stay fresh even in the steamy confines of your shower.