My favorite skincare website is Skin Deep.
Skin Deep was created by members of the Environmental Working Group in order to help consumers learn more about the products they use every day and those they would like to use.
Why do consumers need the information? There are numerous loopholes in the laws concerning what ingredients can and cannot be included in cosmetics.
Many of the ingredients are known to be carcinogens, neurotoxins, mutagens and teratogens.
Carcinogens cause cancer.
There are long lists of them.
Some are known, probable or possible.
It is in our best interest to avoid as many of them as possible.
Benzene and its derivatives, oxybenzone, benzophenone and avobenzone, are examples of ingredients to avoid.
Neurotoxins are toxic to nerve cells.
Health problems they can cause include numbness, tingling, pain and emotional problems like depression.
Ethanol, horse chestnut, mercury and buckeye are examples.
Mutagens are compounds that cause mutations in normal healthy cells.
They may do so directly by damaging DNA strands or indirectly by causing an increased production of free radicals.
Examples include UV radiation, the carcinogens mentioned above and Psoralens.
Teratogens cause birth defects.
The acne drug isotretinoin is one example.
There are hundreds of others.
Although it is not solely a skincare website, Xtendlife.
com is another of my favorites.
Warren Matthews, the company CEO is a blogger like me.
He reviews some of the latest health stories and helps people make sense of them.
He also does something that few companies would be confident enough to do.
Customers are allowed to post comments on the blog.
Whether the comments are good or bad, they are published.
One of the recent posts had to do with dark brown spots on the face, something often referred to as age spots.
The customer was ecstatic about the results she had seen after just a few weeks of using the whitening day cream with Extrapone Nutgrass.
Age spots are something that many people struggle with.
But, most of the products designed to fade them are dangerous.
Xtendlife's products are completely safe.
As I mentioned, it is not exclusively a skincare website, but you might want to check out Xtendlife.
com.
You could learn a lot about natural skincare products that are good enough to eat.