The Shocking Truth About Skincare Products (and What They Are Really Doing to Your Body)

Hi and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm really excited to introduce you to Trina Felber in this episode. She's an advanced practice nurse. She's also mother of the Clean beauty movement and founder of Primal Life Organics. What she does is she helps empower women to embrace natural beauty while achieving optimal health. And she does that by teaching women how to switch to skin skincare that's safe for your hormones. And so I'm really excited for you to be here with us today, Trina. Trina is the best selling author of the book Beauty's Dirty Secret and she is going to be telling us all about how to choose skincare products that help support your health instead of working against your health. So especially for fertility and perimenopause and menopause. Tell us more. Trina, I'm so glad you're here.

Hi, Dani. Thank you so much, first of all, for having me on. This is a really important topic, especially when you're talking about healing the body every single day. You're not really getting anywhere. You're on a hamster wheel because you have to keep detoxing as you're retoxing and hoping that you're detoxing faster than you're retoxing. One great term.

I like this term, retox. Right? It's like, right. You get to like and you're right. How do you stay ahead of it fast enough?

Yeah. Especially in this day and age where everything, I mean, we're even being.

Embarked by EMFs and things that we weren't 20 years ago weren't really a factor in our health. And today they play a huge factor, which will then affect the way your body detoxes and your detox pathways. So we have to be extra careful today because of all the new ways that we're being every day. So, you know, with skincare, it's really important to understand that, you know, you need to control what you can control. There are things that you can't control. Pollution, some of the emf, you know, with all of the different WI fi and, you know, networks out there. So there are some things that you just can't control, which is why it's really important that we control what we can control, which would be our food, water, and then what we're putting directly on our body. And that would be your skincare products.

I mean, that's the thing is, I know it can feel very overwhelming when people find out, when they start to realize, okay, wait a minute, I'm getting exposed to a Lot of toxins and even electromagnetic toxins every day. And then sometimes it just feels so overwhelming. We just, like, give up. We're like, I don't know. I don't know where to begin. I just give up. So I'm so glad that you're here helping women to say, no, don't just give up. There's a lot of things you can do and there's steps you can take that actually make a difference. Maybe we can talk more about, like, what health issues would you say it's really worth thinking about this and working on this?

I would say all of them. All of the above, if there is a checklist and even the ones that you don't have yet. So whether you're, you know, in your 20s and you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I don't have menopause, I don't have to worry about that for 20 more years. Well, yes, you do, because what you do today affects your health down the road. And fertility, for those ladies that are in their 20s and 30s, is a big thing. You know, infertility is on the rise, and a lot of that has to do with our food supply as well as our water and our skincare products that are affecting us. So even, you know, when we talk about menopause and infertility, those are big ones. But diabetes, any type of inflammatory diseases, these are all affected. Heart health is affected by personal care products, including especially your dental products that you're using, your mouthwash, your toothpaste and things like that. So it really is all of the above. Because your skin is your second gut. It absorbs about 60% of whatever you put on it. It will absorb it within about 30 seconds. But that's about where the similarities between ingesting your food and absorbing it through your skin ends. When you ingest food our normal way, when we think about eating, we think about a sandwich or a steak or whatever. The main difference is that when you ingest it through your mouth, your body has that pathway to detox you. So the hepatic vein will send your blood to your liver from your digestive system to get rid of the toxins. It'll convert those toxins from lipid soluble or fat loving to water soluble. So you can excrete them in your urine, in your feces and other, you know, your breath and things like that, your sweat. However, when you ingest through your skin.

The toxins will get into your venous blood. So it's venous blood that goes back to your Lungs, it's on its way back to your lungs to be reoxygenated, and then it goes directly to your heart. So that your heart pumps the blood everywhere in your body. So it's not going back to your liver, it's getting pumped throughout your body, including up your carotid to your brain. So that's why a lot of these toxins and they are able to pass the blood, brain barrier, cause brain fog and other issues with our brain and nervous system, but they also get pumped everywhere else. So your reproductive organs, your thyroid gland, and these toxins are overwhelming. When we look at skin care.

Wow. I mean, even just to remind us that we absorb through our skin, right. Like to start, just stop and realize, hey, if I put something on my skin or even in my mouth, it's being absorbed, like you're saying, straight into your bloodstream and not even going through the liver first, straight to your brain or straight circulating around your body. So it really does, like, give us extra. A bit of encouragement to pay attention to what we're putting on our skin and in our mouth. It's not just what we swallow. And then if we start to look at the ingredients and I think this is, I know for myself a lot of times on this packaging, the font is so tiny. Right. You just kind of think, and the marketing is so good. So it could be like, oh, this is going to, like, prevent aging. This is going to do all this good stuff. And so you just. We end up just put slathering it on our skin and we are not even really. It's not like even a food product where it's, you know, easier to see the ingredients. Right. Sometimes on these skincare products, it's hard to see what's in there.

Oh, sometimes it's extremely tiny. Yeah. And I always say, you know what? They're selling you. So they're selling you what you're talking about. They're selling you. You know, this is going to get rid of your fine lines and wrinkles and discolorations. It's going to protect you from the sun. This is what they're selling you. So when you're the consumer and you're looking at that beautiful little bottle or the print or the, you know, the marketing on the landing page on the website. Because so many people buy things online now, everything is geared towards what they're selling you. What you're really buying and paying for is in the fine print of the ingredients. So I always, you know, we have to get in the habit of reading the ingredient list, even if it's super tiny, take a picture of it and then make your font make it bigger on your screen so you can read it. And if you look at that ingredient list and you wouldn't put that in your mouth to eat it, you shouldn't put it on your skin. The problem today is that just like the food industry has evolved to be more chemical based or more toxin based or artificial based over the past 20 years. So is our skin care. I was looking at a product recently that was basically marketed as natural. And they use safe ingredients, clean ingredients. And I was looking. It was a deodorant. I was looking at it and they listed fragrance. And typically fragrance is a really bad thing. It always is a bad thing. They were listing that. They were actually listing. If you clicked on the word fragrance, it would open up what ingredients. And normally brands aren't doing this. They're not disclosing this because it's a trade secret. What's in there? But I was intrigued because they were claiming that they were healthy, a clean, healthy brand. So I clicked on fragrance. And one, that one word had, I think it was 72 chemicals in there. 72. They're calling them safe synthetics. But you have to remember your body's not synthetic. And anything synthetic is going to cause some sort of inflammation or irritation inside the body. And this one word, fragrance, had 72 chemicals in it. Now, if you're applying just that one product that's you've been exposed to 72 chemicals. But we gotta stop and consider what other ingredients are in that. So if there's 72 in fragrance, but you've got 20 other, you're look, you're looking at 90 ingredients that are toxic to the body in one single product that you use every day. On top of that, when the packaging is plastic, those plastic ingredients, the plasticizers, even if it's BPA free, will absorb into the product over time. Now you need to add even more chemicals to your toxic soup product. On top of that, if the very first ingredient is water, then water is also polluted. Most water used in skin care is tap water. So not only do you have drug waste, which includes birth control pills. Hello, anybody out there trying to get pregnant and can't, or hello, ladies out there going through menopause and wondering why your symptoms are so bad. Antidepressants, you know, you got to think about what people are taking. Heart medications, those types of things, thyroid medications. You know, you're still being exposed to that stuff. But heavy metals, environmental runoff. So even you know, pesticides, herbicides. That's all in tap water. So now you have to add probably 30, possibly 30 more ingredients that are toxic to that one single product. So the problem is we're overloaded with toxins in our body. And the body itself is made to protect the brain and the vital organs. And when your toxic level in your blood gets too high, that your liver can't filter it out fast enough. Here's an interesting thing for women out there that are trying to lose weight and can't lose weight. If your body has. If your bloodstream has too many toxins in it, your body will produce fat. Because the only other way besides getting rid of it, that it can make it healthy for your bloodstream and your brain and your vital organs, is to store it somewhere. And your body will produce fat. No matter what your diet is like, no matter how much you exercise, your body will produce fat to be able to store these toxins, because it has to get it out of your bloodstream.

Well, it's. It's really something. I mean, even. Because when you see water as an ingredient, you would think, oh, it's just water. But it's not just water. It's everything that's in this, like, tap water, because they're usually not using filtered water. So that's a whole different thing to be using water that's never been filtered.

Yeah.

And then we have the, like, you're saying that it's like, you know, you're. It has such an impact even in terms of weight now is the.

What I'm wondering is, can you help us connect? Like, okay, say we're getting exposed to these. These skin care products with toxins in them. What might women be noticing in terms of, I mean, fertility? Maybe that's kind of obvious if they're having a hard time getting pregnant. But tell us more. That connection between the skin care products and the toxins and then the hormone issues.

Okay, yeah, no problem. So a lot of these ingredients are hormone disruptors. They're neurotoxins, or they cause inflammation, including cancer. They're known to cause cancer. So when you're talking about what symptoms might you feel, it's all the symptoms that you're checking the box when you go to your doctor. Brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, inability to concentrate, inability to, you know, regulate your blood sugars. All of these types of things are symptoms. And, you know, women, you know, for infertility, irregular periods, and this could be even in your menopausal, perimenopausal stage, irregular Periods, mood swings, hot flashes, night sweats, Those are all things that, because these hormone disruptors will, you know, they either mimic the hormone that you're making, they block it, or they will affect the potency of it. So all of the symptoms that you're feeling, because I know we all are told, so we have to get out of the brain space. We've been brainwashed that we have to take a step back and go, okay, just because I'm, say, 45 or 50 doesn't mean I should be feeling this way. Because I remember when I was in my 40s and I had brain fog, or I was actually in my 30s and I had brain fog and fatigue. After I made the switch of skin, my skin care products, I no longer had those symptoms. And I flew through menopause. I caught my one day of menopause when I turned 50. I basically had one day of menopause when I was like, oh, interesting. I guess I'm in menopause. I didn't have a single night sweat. I've never had hot flashes. I've never had, like, my weight gain wasn't a problem. I. I didn't have any problems with weight. All of those things that most women suffer from, I didn't experience them. But I had detoxed and changed my personal care products for 10 years so my body wasn't being exposed or I say under the influence. It's just like drugs and alcohol when you're under the influence. Think about all of us drinking, okay? If you've ever had a beer, especially when you were younger, one beer when you first started drinking would make you drunk, you know, couple weeks, months, whatever it is, later, you now able to drink five beers. Oh, I cannot drink five beers. And, you know, so your body gets used to the effects of drugs, alcohol. But you have to look at these things in skincare as, like, drugs and alcohol. You're under the influence and you have no idea. And when you go to your health practitioner, you're checking the boxes and they're not looking and saying, okay, let's talk about your diet, or let's talk about your skin care, and let's see if we can manage some of these symptoms. Get rid of most of these symptoms just by. Because food is medicine. It's not just the food you eat, it's the food you put on your skin. So let's see if we can manage those symptoms and let's see what's really going on with your body when we get rid of the things that are causing them. And then we'll decide whether we need to put you on something, do blood work. But no, in our medical system, they don't, they don't address that. What they do is they go right to, okay, let's get some blood work, let's put you on this pill, let's put you on this cream, let's run these tests. And now you're just in this cycle of treating the symptoms without getting to the root cause. Anytime you detox the body and actually what I say is shut the faucet off. If you aren't going to shut the faucet off. And by that I mean get rid of the toxins you're putting on your body, then you're always going to have to detox. But if the easiest way to detox your body is to stop, shut the faucet off, stop putting those things in your body in the first place, that's way easier than trying to constantly detox.

I was thinking that, like, the only time that sometimes I hear a practitioner start to look at skin care products is when someone might be having like an allergic reaction, right? Like sometimes it gets to that point where someone's having like hives and itching and redness and then we start to think, oh, maybe it's something you put on your skin. But likely that's to the point where the toxic load is very high. You know, quite likely it's, it's some of these other symptoms you're mentioning first. And even then, when, even when someone might be having an allergic reaction to a skin care product, it, it's, it's likely like there, that's, that's only a small piece of it, right? There's an allergic reaction, but the allergic react happen because of the toxin. And so there is sort of like that's the only time we're ever even considering this, what we're putting on our skin. But that's not even really looking at the whole big picture with this. And so, yeah, just, you know, to remind everyone, like, it's not just about getting hives that you look at these skincare products. It's probably symptoms that are, you might not have anything showing up on your skin. It's more like what's showing up on the inside of your body, body. And then some people might start getting hives, but it's not just about the allergy, it's about the toxic load that's leading to the allergy. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. I have a client and I.