Hair Products & Hormone Health
Where do you buy your hair products?
Do you know what the ingredients are?
The EWG - Environmental Working Group - exists for one reason. That reason is to empower you with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment.
And since most studies that are currently done to determine the health effects of chemicals in products largely leave out the specified health of Black women, such an organization is not just necessary - it is crucial.
Side note. It still stands that we need to point out the disservice our government is doing us by allowing it to be acceptable that the last time legislation was passed concerning the regulation of the personal care products industry was in the 1930s.
At any rate. Among all the products the EWG tested in their study of products marketed to Black women, hair products were glaringly worse by comparison.
Guess what?
This category of products is also something we use and buy more of than our white counterparts.
To recap. Ingredients are worse & more harmful. We buy & use more of such harmful products.
Can we just take a breath and sit with the ugly truth that is sitting underneath these facts? This is internalized & intentional racism.
I said what I said.
The hair products with some of the worst offenders in the ingredient world are hair relaxers, hair colors and bleaching products.
Why are these marketed so hard to Black women? Why to Black women buy more of them?
Westernized beauty standards.
Are you starting to see why this may (kinda, sorta) be intentional?
One more layer to peel back. These ingredients/chemicals cause: cancer, hormone disruption, developmental damage and reproductive damage.
Are your eyebrows raised yet?
We’ve all learned by now (I hope) that lye is tragic if it touches our heads. But what about all the other ingredients?
And how about how the larger brands are marketing hard to “natural” heads because more Black women are embracing their natural textures?
The word natural (or any other word for that matter) is regulated by no one as it stands right now. So “natural” shampoo, conditioner, lotion can be a blatant lie just to get you to buy a product.
No consequences.
Ladies. This matters. A lot of these ingredients mess with our hormones, including mimicking estrogen & throwing some very important body sensors off.
I’ll also remind you that Black women are 2-3x more likely to develop fibroids. Fibroids are a hormone dependent disease.
Are you connecting the dots yet?
If so, please (please) avoid these ingredients:
Parabens
Retinyl Palmitate
Formaldehyde releasing preservatives
Methylisothiazolinone
Fragrance
Bookmark this blog post.
Screenshot the above list.
Download the EWG Healving LIving app and scan your products before purchase & use.
Donate to our organization so we can continue educating our communities & developing programs/services to push for better protection.
Choose you, boo.
Choose safer.