Parabens are all the talk in the health community right now, so we thought we would right a post about it.

In general, all women should avoid using paraben products as much as possible – especially those with endometriosis.

What are parabens?

A compound widely used as an anti-microbial preservative in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics products.

What is the concern with paraben?
Well, paraben mimics estrogen in the body and this is not what you need.  If you have endometriosis, using products with paraben will increase the estrogen in your body and make more painful symptoms for you.  As for all other women, increasing levels of estrogen increases your chances of breast cancer.

There are actually four different types of paraben: butylparaben, ethylparaben, methylparaben, propylparaben.  Most commonly I find methylparaben written on the ingredients list.

After hearing about how paraben mimics estrogen I immediately went through all of my beauty products looking for this ingredient.  Guess what?  It was everywhere! It was in my shampoos, body washes, lotions, hair styling products, perfumes, face cleansers, and my makeup.  Then I started thinking about my daily routine.  I wash and condition my hair, wash my body, style my hair, apply lotion, use face cleansers, apply makeup, and spray on perfume.  ALL of these had paraben in it.  Wow!

The thing about methylparaben is that it is directly absorbed by your skin and gastrointestinal tract.  On top of that, any of my face cleansers (Clearasil, Proactiv, etc) had multiple types of paraben on the ingredient list.

Your Beauty Products
So now what?  Well, a place to start is pulling out all of your beauty products and search the ingredients. Be sure to check all of your hair products, body washes, perfumes, lotions, makeup, cleansers, nail polish and even your toothpaste!  Create a pile of all of your products that contain paraben.  Now here is the hard part, look over what you have left and decide what you really need from the pile of paraben.

For me I wanted everything but realized I didn’t need everything.  Now this is not to say that you cannot find paraben free products anywhere (I’ll get into that in a bit).  I just recommend reevaluating what you really need because it can be expensive to fully stock up all of your products again.

Some of the big name products that use paraben in most of their products are Revlon, Avon, Aveda, L’Oreal, Pantene, Proactive, and St. Ives.

Also, here is a handy site that aims to list out all of the products containing methylparaben.  They even rank the products on a scale of 1 to 10 for risk.

Paraben Free Products
Now, paraben free products.  These can sometimes be hard and frustrating to find.

Arbonne is a company that sells all paraben free products.  If you want to see the international website you can go here:  http://www.arbonne.ca

Other alternatives are Tea Tree Oil and Hemp products (both can be found at your local health food or Body Shop store.  Body Shop is also a good place to look for paraben free products. I do know that not ALL of their products are paraben free, so ask one of the sales people or check the labels before buying.

If you know of any other products that should be avoided or products that are paraben free, please leave a comment!  :)