The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances (42 page)

Making Your Own Hand
and Foot Treatments

Many of these recipes work just as well as ready-made treatments, but I hope you never wish to delete spa services from your list of priorities. No matter how down-to-earth you strive to be, there is nothing quite like having someone else give your feet a massage!

Green Cuticle
Softener

¹
/
3
ounce soy wax

2 teaspoons sweet almond oil

10 drops beta-carotene

1,000 IU vitamin E

2 teaspoons lemon juice

¼ teaspoon sodium hydroxide (available at most home improvement stores)

Yield:
4 ounces

This blend was inspired by my all-time favorite, Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme, but with added mild cuticle dissolvers. One batch will last you at least six months.

Warm the soy wax in a pan and add the oil and other ingredients. Thoroughly blend and transfer to a pump bottle.

Green
Cuticle Oil

½ ounce rape seed oil

½ ounce sweet almond oil

3 drops lavender essential oil

3 drops chamomile essential oil

3 drops tea tree essential oil

Yield
:
4 ounces

This makes a three-month supply of moisturizing and mildly antiseptic oil. It can be massaged into nails morning and night to prevent them from peeling and breaking.

Simply blend all ingredients in a pump bottle. You can use an old bottle from eye or face serum, but make sure to wash and rinse it well to prevent any leftover product from messing up your efforts.

Hand
Rescue Cream

½ ounce beeswax

Juice of one freshly squeezed lemon

1 tablespoon sweet almond oil

5 drops lemon essential oil

2 drops lavender essential oil

Yield
:
5 ounces

There are some wonderful all-natural hand creams on the market. Weleda, Jurlique, Logona, Dr. Hauschka, Suki Naturals and many more make excellent, entirely natural creams and balms, but here is an inexpensive alternative that will do the same job minus the price tag.

1. Melt beeswax in a pan.

2. Add the lemon juice and oils and stir with a wooden spoon until blended.

3. Transfer to a jar. Shake occasionally until the cream is cooled and uniform.

Manicure
in a Jar

½ cup organic brown sugar

½ cup grape seed oil

5 drops vanilla extract

2 drops lavender essential oil

1 drop sandalwood essential oil

Yield
:
4 ounces

This is my personal hand savior when I need my hands to look freshly manicured in two minutes.

Combine the ingredients in a small bowl and transfer to a wide-necked jar so you can dip your fingers into the mix. Do just that: one by one, dip your fingertips into the jar, massaging the sugary mixture gently into cuticles and knuckles, wave hands gently to please your senses (the scent is lovely!), and briskly immerse your hands in warm water to remove excess oil. Dry your hands and apply Hand Rescue Cream.

Green Feet
Fizzy

1 cup baking soda

½ cup cornstarch

¼ cup Epsom salt

½ cup citric acid

½ cup purified water

5 drops peppermint essential oil

5 drops tea tree essential oil

Yield:
4 ounces

This is a green duplicate of LUSH Bath Bombs but without any preservatives or synthetic perfumes. You can also use your favorite essential oils to make as many different bath soaks as you want.

Mix all the ingredients in a china bowl. Stuff the mixture into ice cube trays or form small balls and let dry. For a foot soak, use one apricot-size cube. For bubbly bath, use three cubes. Store the tablets in a plastic container with a lid or in a decorative bottle or jar.

Green Feet
Reviving Spray

1 cup purified water

½ cup witch hazel

½ ounce white clay (kaolin)

5 drops peppermint essential oil

5 drops tea tree essential oil

Yield
:
5 ounces

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle and store in the refrigerator. Shake well before use.

Green Wax
Hand and
Foot Treatment

7 ounces soybean wax

½ ounce sweet almond or jojoba oil

5 drops rose essential oil

Yield
:
4 ounces

Remember how good it feels to wrap your hands in warm, pliable wax and let nutrients penetrate the skin as it gets softer? You can treat your hands to this decadent procedure at home using completely natural ingredients instead of petrochemicals.

1. Melt wax in a microwave oven according to the instructions on the package. Add the jojoba or sweet almond oil and rose essential oil. Remove from heat and pour mixture into a shallow glass container with a lid. Let cool about five minutes.

2. When the wax mixture is still hot but not burning, apply a thick coating of jojoba oil or heavy all-natural hand balm to your hands, and dip them into the wax bath. Leave your hands in the wax for at least five minutes, then remove hands from the container and peel off the hardened wax. Save the remaining wax for the next time.

What to Eat for Healthy Nails

A common cause of brittle nails is thought to be iron deficiency. Too little vitaminA, zinc, and calcium also cause nail discolorations, dryness, and brittleness, while an inadequate intake of vitamin B2 may cause the slow growth of nails.

So what should we eat to keep our nails strong? Vitamin A is contained in raw and dried apricots, carrots, papaya, mango, watermelons, egg yolk, tuna, and salmon. Zinc is contained in Brazil nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, and coconuts, as well as in currants, figs, and salmon. Calcium in its natural form is contained in dairy products, broccoli, raisins, oranges, kiwis, and mandarins, while dried plums, dried figs, tamarind, and egg yolk are especially rich in biotin, a natural form of vitamin B2.

The Nail Polish Dilemma

To color or not to color? This is a burning question. If you want to be truly green, not just greenwashed, you must ditch your toxic nail polishes completely. Wes, even that pretty shimmery pink. I know it cost you a fortune, but it seems like nail polishes are real toxic bombs loaded with more carcinogens than any other beauty product I have reviewed so far.

A truly nontoxic nail polish doesn’t exist in nature. While many brands remove some of the harmful ingredients, the nail polishes become less toxic but not completely harmless. Let’s discuss nail polishes in more detail.

The most abundant toxin in conventional nail polish is solvent formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin. Formaldehyde is a proven carcinogen, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 2006, the International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized formaldehyde as a substance carcinogenic to humans. Formaldehyde was linked to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia (Bosetti et al. 2008), as well as severe allergic reactions (Sainio et al. 1997) in European studies, but the link is strongly disputed in the U.S. Today, the use of formaldehyde in cosmetics is strictly limited in the European Union and Japan, but last time I checked, this chemical was found in the majority of nail polishes and other nail products sold in the U.S.

Small amounts of formaldehyde can be absorbed through skin and the nail bed, but the worst thing is that you also inhale formaldehyde when someone else does your manicure or pedicure. Many manicurists today wear protective masks that give them some sort of air filtration. But too many times I have seen a very pregnant lady practically bathing in a cloud of formaldehyde as she was having her nails painted bright red. To me, women who have their nails painted during pregnancy are no better than pregnant smokers or drinkers.

To make the polish cover the nail smoothly, the pretty goo also contains plasticizer dibutyl phthalate, a known hormone disruptor. Little is known about health effects of phthalates, but about one thing science is pretty certain: phthalates are linked to the worsening state of the male reproductive system, including sexual dysfunctions, decreasing sperm count, low production of testosterone, as well as various abnormalities in male reproductive organs (Lottrup et al. 2006). Recent epidemiological evidence shows that boys born to women exposed to phthalates during pregnancy “have an increased incidence of cryptorchidism (
absence of one or both testes from the scrotum
), hypospadias (
a birth defect of the urethra that involves an abnormally placed urinary openining
), testicular cancer and spermatogenic dysfunction,” say Chinese pathologists who studied the effects of phthalate exposure in 2007 (Chen et al. 2007). Researchers from Denmark found that contamination of human breast milk with phthalates “has direct influence on the postnatal surge of reproductive hormones in newborn boys” (Main et al. 2006). Many cosmetic companies agreed to remove phthalates from their nail products. For example, most L’Oreal, Estée Lauder,Milani, Lumene, and Revlon nail polishes today do not contain formaldehyde or dibutyl phthalate. Yet there are many, many more popular nail products that proudly display phthalates in the ingredients list.

The rest of the ingredients of your average nail polish are not that safe, either. Solvent acetone smells ghastly, but its hidden effects are even worse: in 2008, scientists of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York found that animals who inhaled acetone were slower and less agile (Lee et al. 2008). Reports about acetone intoxication date back to the 1990s (Kechijian 1991), and recently Hong Kong researchers found that there’s more to acetone than its ability to irritate skin and make rats high: acetone is often contaminated with another toxin, formaldehyde (Huang et al. 2007). It’s another reason to use nonacetone nail polish remover—if you decide to use nail polish after all you now know.

Are there any natural, nontoxic nail polishes available? Yes, but don’t expect them to be as pretty and long-lasting as their synthetic counterparts. They would still contain nitrocellulose, ethyl acetate, and isopropyl alcohol, but at least there would be no formaldehyde, toluene, or phthalates. HoneyBee Gardens, No Miss, Sante, and Suncoat make natural-looking polishes that come in a sophisticated palette of colors. Safer conventional nail products include top coats by Revlon, Estée Lauder, and Mary Kay that give your nails a natural groomed look without formaldehyde, toluene, phthalates, or FD&C dyes.

But if you are pregnant or are trying to be completely green in your beauty routine, consider avoiding nail polishes altogether. Until science comes up with something truly nontoxic, the only option to keep our tips and toes groomed is buffing and lots of cuticle oil. When you are having a manicure or a pedicure, ask the manicurist to buff your nails with a special buffing pad and buy your own buffer for use at home. Apply a coat of nourishing cuticle oil every night and regularly exfoliate your cuticles with a homemade sugar scrub. I stopped wearing nail polish three years ago, and my nails today look healthier than ever.

chapter
12

green
hair
care

T
he human hair is stronger than nylon, aluminum, or copper fiber of the same size, yet it often behaves as a fussy, ill-tempered toddler after too much chocolate. The manes of many of us seem to live lives of their own, and it’s now our turn to teach our locks the benefits of green living.

Our hair has structure similar to skin, but unlike skin, all the layers of hair follicles are dead. Outside, the hair is composed of thick, horny cells known as cuticle. These cells are made of keratin, a protein held together by amino acids, most importantly cysteine and methionine. Keratin fibers shield
medulla
, an inner layer of cells containing fat granules, oxygen, and pigments. One end of the hair reaches the sky, or at least peaks some place where our hairstyle allows it; another end roots in the skin. There, a small onion-shaped hair papilla is producing new keratin cells while being continuously nourished by blood vessels. Each follicle can only grow about twenty hairs in a person’s lifetime. Separate sebum glands running along the hair follicle provide shine and protection to the new cuticle cells of the hair. This is why it’s vitally important to feed your hair with sufficient amounts of good proteins and essential fatty acids.