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Welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast! I’m your host, Naomi Nakamura.

If you’ve been listening to the show for awhile, then you know that I have pillar topics that I talk about, each one a critical component to addressing stress, burnout, and ultimately, adrenal fatigue. And every episode is tied back to one of these pillar topics:

Nutrition Gut Health Lifestyle which includes things like sleep and movement and exercise Our work because we spend so much time at work, and I’m using “at” in quote marks because many of you are now working remotely, but we spend so much time on our work, that how we approach it has a direct impact on our health Self-development which the longer I do this work, the more I’m understanding how working on personal and self-development makes the most impact on our ability to practice healthy habits And lastly, one topic we haven’t talked about for a while, clean living, namely to reduce our exposure to toxins and reduce our toxic loads

One question that I’m often asked is what does my beauty products have to do with my health? Why does it matter?

I get it - because when I first heard there was a connection, back in 2015, I was confused too.

As I’ve shared many times, I started my healing journey from overtraining, burnout and adrenal fatigue back in 2013. For two years I worked diligently with a functional medicine doctor, focusing on healing through whole foods, supplementation, and de stressing practices like yoga, meditation and simply rest (which for someone who’s as driven as I am, is one of the hardest things to do).

And while I made huge improvements over the next two years, my health wasn’t where I expected it to be in the Spring of 2015. I remember the specific day, sitting in my doctors office, almost in tears because I had been working so hard, yet still frustrated that certain aspects of my health weren’t improving.

And that was when my doctor talked to me about toxins that were exposed daily, often inside of our homes, that impact our health.

Up until then, whenever I’d hear “toxins” I thought of pollution, exhaust, outside things that harm our environment.

But what she meant were things like potential toxins in our drinking water, the pots and pans that we cook our food in, and the personal hygiene and beauty products that we put on our skin.

I guess I knew that water could be problematic? But cookware and beauty products - well I’d never heard of that before.

Desperate to do anything and everything to feel better again, I came home and threw out all of my department store beauty products from MAC, Smashbox, Urban Decay - mostly cosmetics because at that time, I still didn’t understand that I could improve my skin so that I didn’t have to hide it under heavy makeup.

And I did so without a backup plan on what to use instead. So I started googling, and asking friends who are professional makeup artists, and couldn’t find alternative products that had the same quality and performance as the products I had been using, and couldn’t tell what was safe or not!

I remember going to Sephora and asking for safer products and being shown products that were vegan or cruelty free - important, but says nothing about being safe for humans.

So for a while I used things like coconut and apple cider vinegar for skincare - and even for someone like me, who hadn’t really invested in skincare prior, knew I needed products with higher performance. And I used Tarte for makeup, which I was told was safer, but…

I had no idea how to verify if it was true Hated the quality of the products, particularly their powders

And as I continued to research this, I learned that the multi-billion dollar beauty industry, particularly in the United States is highly unregulated. It's really the wild, wild, west, meaning beauty brands had carte blanche to put whatever they wanted in their products. And much of it contains ingredients that cause irritations, imagine that - skincare products that actually irritate the skin versus soothing it as is their purpose, and they also contain ingredients that are endocrine disruptors.

I know this term “endocrine disruptors” is one that we toss around a lot, but what exactly does it mean?

Well, endocrine disruptors are things that disrupt how your endocrine system functions. Your endocrine system is like an orchestra that is made up of glands, cells and communicators. One of its major functions is to maintain homeostasis, or balance in your body, and it regulates things like growth and development. One way it does this is by balancing your hormones.

So how does this relate to stress, fatigue and burnout?

Well when we’re experiencing stress, adrenal fatigue and burnout, the first thing we look at are cortisol, which is a stress hormone that’s produced in your adrenal glands. It plays a key role in your body, in things like metabolism, managing inflammation, balancing your blood sugar, regulating your circadian rhythm (your sleep).

So when it becomes disrupted, those key functions - like your fight or flight response; ie your ability to manage stress, regulate your metabolism; ie your weight, minimize inflammation, balance blood sugar, sleep - when cortisol is disrupted, those things become disrupted too.

And if not addressed, could impact other parts of your endocrine system and can result in things like diabetes, which involves the hormones insulin and glucagon, hyperthyroidism / hypothyroidism / Hashimoto’s which involves the various hormones related to your thyroid gland, etc, etc.

Like I said, it's like an orchestra and when one part is out of tune, then the whole system becomes out of tune.

So what do toxins have to do this?

Well, toxins that we’re exposed to through things like the air quality inside of our homes - are you using air fresheners with toxic ingredients? Tap water, cookware, personal hygiene and beauty products, just to name a few, these are things that we use daily. Over and over and over again. Its chronic exposure. And while it may not have an immediate effect, continued exposure over prolonged periods will have an impact.

When it comes to our beauty products, when I talk about this with some of my clients, or even friends, they laugh and say, “well I don’t wear a lot of makeup so I don’t have to worry about it.”

But we all use shampoos, conditioners and body soaps, we all use deodorants (hopefully), we all wash our face and use body lotion, and sunscreen.

So even if you don’t wear makeup a lot, and I mean, none of us really are during this mask-wearing, socially-distant, spends-most-the-time-at-home pandemic, it’s still something that you need to be aware of, and hopefully do something about.

Because paying attention to these things and making simple changes to use safer products can go a long way.

I always like to tell my clients, when it comes to diet, exercise, sleep - those things will always be in flux, right? My last two episodes were on how our nutritional needs shift with different phases of our lives, but here’s the thing - once you make a switch to safer products, whether they be kitchen, cleaning or beauty products - its done. You’ve taken care of it, and if you’ve done your research and switched to transparent brands that truly demonstrate their safety, you’re done. You don’t have to worry about it anymore!

I do want to address one question that I’ve gotten a number of times - and its, “So are you telling me that if I switch to clean beauty products, I’m going to lose weight?

If you’ve been listening to me for a while, you know that I’m not the coach to preach or market myself as a weightloss coach. That’s not my goal of helping my clients. Because weightloss doesn’t always mean healthy, and healthy doesn’t always mean weight loss.

And there are so many things that impact weight, as I outlined earlier when I talked about how hormone disruption and dysfunction impacts our metabolism.

So no, exclusively using clean beauty products is not going to help you lose weight.

But what it is going to do is lower your toxic load.

We all have toxins that our body battles daily. It’s just a fact of this modern world that we live in.

But we can influence and manage how much of it we expose ourselves to through the food that we eat, the choice to move and exercise, to manage our stress, to sleep, and by the products that we expose ourselves to - especially daily.

By using cleaner products, and especially for women, cleaner beauty products, that’s just one, or three, or twelve less things that your body has to battle and by simply removing things that are toxic, you’re doing something that can have a positive impact on your health.

So I made the switch in 2015, floundered for a year searching for high-performing products to use, and finally found what I was looking for in 2016. And I can tell you that using cleaner, high quality products has improved the health of my skin. I’m 45, almost 46 and my skin is the best its been ever. Sure I still have sun spots and acne scars, and unfortunately, short of laser treatments, there’s no unicorn product that’s going to make those things magically disappear completely, but my skin looks healthy, feels healthy, it feels radiant, like it glows, and, because of this, I no longer feel like I need to hide and cover it up with heavy makeup, like I used to when I used MAC, Smashbox and Urban Decay.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love makeup, but I’m perfectly comfortable going out in public or being on camera with no makeup on, whereas beforehand, that would have never happened.

So if clean beauty is something new to you and you don’t quite know where to start I’ve done a few other episodes, but they were a while ago, but I’ll link them over on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/150 for Episode 150. I’ll also link to some of my favorite products that I use daily. Full disclosure, I do work with one specific brand, Beautycounter, as an independent consultant. And I chose to do so because I love the products, but I also love the mission, the social advocacy work, and the community.

But I also use a few other products from other brands so I’ll link to those as well.

I hope this has helped you understand why product selection, especially beauty product selection is so important for your health, and how it's often overlooked, and not talked about enough aspects to our health and well-being that we actually have so much power to take action on, and to do something about!

Very simple and specific action steps you can take, that can have a direct impact on your well-being and your family’s health, and the people that you love.

It’s important to me, and such a big part of my health journey, and I hope its, or will soon become part of yours.

Thanks for listening this week - again if you have any questions about this come on over to the show notes and drop a comment or question, or come on over and find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithNaomi.

Thanks for listening - bye!