Nutrition & Lifestyle
The Skin
You're In
What Are They Really Saying?
I wish you love and peace as you begin to read this article. The focus chakra for this issue is the second chakra, Svadhisthana. This is where change and motion begin to take place as opposed to the first chakra which is all about grounding and stillness. The Svadhisthana chakra is located in the low sacral area and represents pleasure, emotions, and sexuality. It is represented by the color orange. What possibly could this chakra have to do with our skin?
Here are a few tips to think about when you hear or see an ad by a skin care company.
Products are made with functional ingredients and performance ingredients. Functional ingredients make up most of a product and are responsible for giving a product its body, texture and glide. These can be natural or synthetic. One example used most commonly is water. Performance ingredients are those that will cause the skin to change in appearance. One example is alphahydroxy acids used for exfoliation.
Why are these important to know? When promoting a product, most cosmetics companies usually pick one special performance ingredient in a product to promote which usually is the ingredient that will deliver the results. Beware: There isn’t enough regulation in the industry to dispute claims of authenticity so some products may only have 1% of this special performance ingredient they are promoting. Thus, it really may not be enough to make a difference in your skin and you may be paying for something you actually aren’t getting.
Here are some marketing terms to look out for:
“Fade the appearance of or Diminish the look of”: Over the counter products can claim to hide the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles but can’t claim to get rid of them. But the wording makes it sound to us as if they will be banished from our skin forever.
“Can penetrate many layers of the skin”: Most over the counter products can only sit on top or penetrate through the top layer only of the skin. Most over the counter products cannot penetrate beyond these layers because the molecules of the ingredients are too small.
by Jennifer Coakley
Last issue’s article referred to the heart chakra and was all about how important the act of touch is in our lives and how it opens our hearts and allows emotions to flow. This article will spotlight how skin care companies use marketing and advertising to entice us to buy their products they claim can assist to ignite our second sacral chakra by giving us smooth, perfect, wonderfully smelling skin.
The skin is the largest organ of our body. There are all kinds of washes, lotions, potions, creams, concoctions, perfumes and cosmetics we can use to make our skin look, smell, and feel great. There are supplements, vitamins, juices, pills and more to assist the beauty of our skin from the inside. There are food, plants, and herbs we can eat and put on our skin to garnish their benefits. How does this all connect with desire, sexuality, and pleasure?