Organic Skin Care
Substances can pass through the skin and many nutrients are absorbed into the body through the skin. Stop taking your skin for granted, and begin your routine with new organic skin care techiniques that are healthy and flourishing. Most would rather bake in a tanning bed and add a polish of shimmery lotion to conceal flaws than buff our assets with sea salt and self-massage with virgin olive oil. We use "mattifying" lotions when our skin gets oily, hydrating creams when our skin feels moistureless, and fight blemishes when they become red, swollen, and visible. When it comes to skin care, we are more apt to be reactive rather than proactive. Anytime possible, we choose for speedy results and availability. We are so busy actively attacking the consequences of the skin's imbalance that no one keeps in mind how it feels to have normal skin.
We are so eager to make these powerful concoctions work that we do not question ourselves whether this chemical cocktail is actually assembling our skin younger or any healthier. Though the skin on the body is thicker and harder than facial skin, it, too, demands attention. Every layer of the skin works in harmony with the others. The skin is constantly renewwing itself, and anything that throws its functions off balance influences all skin layers at the same time. There are three main elements to healthy organic skin care: cleansing, exfoliating, and moisturizing. These should all be a part of your organic skin care routine!
Squeaky-clean is good for windows, but not for human skin! While sebum locks moisture in skin, the natural moisturizing factor keeps skin hydrated, this is a mixture of water, free amino acids, lactic acid, and urea, as well as sodium, potassium, chloride, phosphate, calcium, and magnesium salts that keep the skin moist and supple by attracting and holding water. It is important to use organic skin care and feed aging skin with substances that resemble the skin's own oils. Advocates of synthetic skin care claim that our skin is virtually waterrtight. Many say skin can be scrubbed, steamed, and washed, and nothing enetrates it deep enough to cause any damage. At the same time, many common cosmetics declair they carry collagen, vitamins, and minnerals to give nourishment in our skin. So do cosmetics really "get under our skin"? Beauty is skin deep. Human skin is a strong absorption organ that seems to be continually hungry for everything that embraces its surface.
1) If the concentration of a certain ingredient is extreme, then it has a greater chance of secreting though the skin's protective walls. For example, the skin will be open to more retinoic acid from a potent prescription-only cream than from an over-the-counter lotion that includes the same ingredient.
2) The amount of time the product sits on the skin's surface, the more of its ingredients will be absorbed. Our skin will absorb more paraben preservatives from a moisturizer that remains on the skin for hours than from a cleanser that is immidiatly washed off, but if you rub the cleanser actively, the absorption rate will raise.
3) It was once assumed that oil-based skin care products penetrate the skin more rapidly than those that include water. Today, we know that well-hydrated skin absorbs chemicals at a much greater rate. Besides, hydration can be increased by paraffin, oils, and waxes. Parafffin, oils, and waxes as components of skin creams, ointments, and water-in-oil emulsions-basically anything that prevents transepidermal water loss-can advance the amount of chemicals absorbed by skin. Water acts as a wonderful natural penetration booster. That's why your skin can soak up more chemicals when you soak in synthetic bath foam for long time.
4) Unharmed, strong skin can protect us from many toxic substances and germs, but even a slight gash or cut becomes a welcome sign for anything we do not want inside our bodies. Even something as innocuuous as the removal of outer layers of skin with a facial scrub or a peeling mask can effectively increase dermal absorption. Inflamed, swollen acne pimples soak up more benzoyl peroxide than the healthy skin just a millimeter away. .
According to recent estimates, our skin can absorb up to 60 percent of substances applied to its exterior. Unfortunately, along with water, vitaamins, minerals, and oxygen, skin soaks up potentially carcinogenic ingreedients that increase our risk of having cancer at some point in our lives-as if breathing polluted air and eating chemicals was not enough! What happens when a potentially toxic substance passes the skin's barrriers? It ends up in blood vessels and lymph ducts located in the 
epidermis and dermis layers. As chemicals are absorbed, they enter the bloodstream and travel with lymph across the body, to be eventually filtered out by the liver and flushed away by the kidneys. However, some substances remain inside the body, adding to the systemic load that can accumulate for decades. Since the skin is the largest organ in our body, it soaks up contaminants in much larger amounts than the intestines or lungs.
Most skin care products on the market contain hundreds of synthetic additives whose safety is based on animal, not human, studies. These studies usuually analyze the action of separate ingredients applied on an animal's skin in enormous doses for short periods of time. Granted, humans are unlikely to encounter such doses. But many of us are loyal to cosmetic products. As a result, we are exposed to small doses of the same toxic chemicals for decades. Chemical industry insiders say that only small amounts of potentially toxic ingredients are used in cosmetics, from 1 to 10 percent, or just a few micrograms. Although, now medical researchers are concerned about the longterm, snowballing effect of small doses of questionable chemicals.
