Somehow ageing has made me become more aware of what is going into my body. While the outer appearance may be deceitful and look youthful to some, internally most of us can feel a shift when we become tired easily, and notice changes in our physical performance level. Like with any machine if you don’t take care of it and maintain it will not function as well as expected.
During mid last year I decided to start visiting the gym and to try my best to eat a balanced diet daily. I now have heightened energy levels, and to be honest I feel more mentally adjusted. It has motivated me to want to live a more holistic, healthy life. According to the Economist, 2019 was declared ‘the year of the vegan.’ It reported that a quarter of millennials identify as vegan or vegetarian. In 2018, according to another report, the vegan food industry recorded 20 percent growth in comparison to the previous year. Some say it’s a fad, that will soon disappear but those who have reaped its benefits know how difficult it is to switch back. There is a strong sense of guilt, it feels as if you are doing something wrong.
Choosing to lead a holistic, healthy live may be done for several reasons like personal health or for the environment, but an interesting factor to consider is race. I have always had a weird relationship with skincare; beauty advertisements have a peculiar power over me. It always feels like I need to buy into every suggested potion they concoct to help to sort out my beauty woes. The factor I have never considered is that genetically darker skin tones are built differently and this should inform the type of products we should be using.
According to Dr Barbara Sturm, darker skin tones present a paradox in which the additional melanin protects against photo-aging and cancer, and the skin generally has greater elasticity. However, “darker skin tones also have an Achilles’ heel: heightened sensitivity to an inflammation cascade — or a cascade of biological events involving blood vessels, the immune system and various cells within the injured tissue — that leads to problems like post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation.”
Furthermore, according to another skin expert Benjamin Puckey, “There is no typical skin type for black skin, but because it reflects light differently, people seem to assume it’s oilier.” Puckey also claims that most skin care products marketed to women of colour often contains “potentially irritating ingredients like fragrant oils and pore-clogging emollients.”
Women of colour need to come to terms with the fact that whether or not we chose to live organic lives, we don’t have a one-size-fits-all type of skin.
I understand that it may be tiring to read labels and to find and prove every purchase as it relates to ingredients, but maintaining a natural outlook is a starting point until you find what works best for you.
Founder of the brand Tata Harper, also stresses that “Beauty follows food because we use a lot of the same ingredients and in most cases if they’re good to ingest, then they’re typically great to apply topically.”
I can hear my late grandmother calling everything I put on my face ‘garbage’ in my mind. Though it may come off as blunt, to be honest, it’s quite true.
Behind the glamorous packaging, many skin care products contain the most gross ingredients. Common animal-derived ingredients that can be found in beauty products are honey, beeswax, lanolin (wool grease), squalene (shark liver oil), carmine (crushed-up beetles), gelatin (cow or pig bones, tendons or ligaments), allantoin (cow urine), ambergris (whale vomit) and placenta (sheep organs). This just makes you wonder what else is in your products and diet that is probably not allowing you to get the results you so desire. While it is said that most of the above ingredients are harmless, knowing what they are serves as a mental deterrent.
A good start would be to try keeping away from anything that is too harsh and while I know it seems as if we live where we can’t step outside with a full face of makeup, try to do a make-up detox cleanse and let your pores breathe.
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