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Podcast 131: House and Skin Cleaning Products

Wars are never won by shooting bullets, they’re won by shutting off their supply. This is just a side-bar of How to Die Quickly, as Martin and Scott discuss the causes and end results of the wars in the 1900s. If you want to put an end to a war, turn off the taps that feed it.

The Podcast continues the theme of How to Die Slowly. Today they discuss skin care, this massive industry telling us that our skin is too wrinkly and our hair is too dark/light – and you can’t have a tan line!  We spend enormous amount of energy trying to look good, and it can put you in the ground early.

Click here to read “Toxic Skincare Ingredients to Avoid“.

For detailed information on things to avoid and where to find good alternatives, see these books “The Safe Shopper’s Bible” and “Diet for a Poisoned Planet“.

As for antibacterial soaps, most of them contain triclosan, which may be absorbed through the skin and pose a risk to the liver.

Podcast 131: House and Skin Cleaning Products

Scott: Welcome back everyone you are listening to Life Enthusiast co-op online radio network restoring vitality to you and the planet and today your skin. I am your co-host Scott Patton along with Martin Pytela, hey Martin how are you doing today?

Martin: A beautiful, smooth, pliable, plump, wrinkle free …

Scott: Warm day?

Martin: I wish.

Scott: Yeah wrinkle free, we all wish, we are at a point in our lives where if we just have little wrinkles we are happy let alone no wrinkles but for the last few weeks we have been talking about the other side of the alternative health thing like why should we be healthy so let’s get sick and what should we do to get sick well we have been talking about genetically modified foods and why it is important to make sure you have lots of frog genes in your tomatoes and we have also talked about some pretty interesting topics on traveling and immunization shots and why it is really important not to breast feed your baby and even things that are kind of funny like why showering everyday might not be a good idea and of course the benefits of fluoride toothpaste to giving you an illness and even taking mega vitamins and how they can help you get sick because we want to present a balanced.

Martin: This reminds me of CNN or Fox News or something like that because they always bring two sides like they have the guy with the story and then they have the counter story.

Scott: And no matter how bad the story is there is always a counter story to it. Yeah let’s go and get weapons of mass destruction in Iraq folks. Never mind the lies, we should have gone anyway, right?

Martin: I want to actually side-bar here because it has been on my mind a lot lately.

Scott: You know Martin why don’t we do a little side bar here because I think you have something on your mind.

Martin: Thank you and it’s about this I have been thinking about this war in Afghanistan and how there is this mysterious thing called the Taliban and this mysterious Taliban has weapons the one thing I am sure of is that there is no weapon factories in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, nowhere in sight so these Taliban are causing us trouble and they are causing us trouble because they have weapons and there are two ways to get weapons right.

Scott: And it is probably the poorest country in the world right I mean no one has any money there.

Martin: Well they are growing a lot of poppies and they have plenty of heroin to sell so the issue for me is this if you want to put an end to a war, wars are never won by shooting bullets they are won by choking off the supply you know like World war 2 in Germany was won by bombing the daylights out of German industry until it choked and couldn’t run anymore.

Scott: Yeah if you run out of fuel for your tanks and bullets for your guns you pretty well have to decide on another way of negotiating.

Martin: Because you are known as the sitting duck so anyway the Vietnam war couldn’t be won because there was no weapons factories in Vietnam, there was no way of bombing Vietnam factories because there aren’t any.

Scott: Yeah China probably supported.

Martin: China and Russia were supporting it and of course the Americans returned the favor to the Russians by supplying the weapons to the precursor of the Taliban in Afghanistan because Russia was going to I don’t know why they were going to Afghanistan they must have had a reason but anyway the Americans went and shipped weapons to these “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan so caused untold damage to the Russians. So the question is who is supplying money to the Taliban, and who is selling the weapons for the money because I am sure they are not doing it for free.

Scott: That is absolutely right and the interesting thing too when you talk about following the money and everything else when the Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan there was and I don’t know if it was a hundred acres or ten acres or a thousand acres but a very small number of acres was devoted to growing poppies and since they have been kicked out it is like ten thousand more.

Martin: Let the bells of freedom ring.

Scott: Yeah we are not getting enough drugs on the street of America so let’s take out the one government in the world that doesn’t believe you should be growing drugs even if we disagree with all the other things they are doing.

Martin: Well I am not sorry for them for being taken out of power I am certainly no supporter of Burqa and public beheadings and whatever I am sorry folks I am not a fundamentalist in any religion and I don’t believe in fundamentalism of any sort but anyway that’s getting political. I wanted to be economic whoever is interested in having this continue is allowing this to continue so the only thing that I am left thinking is that the management and by that I mean the congress, government, president or whoever is telling them what to do are actually enjoying this war because if they wanted to stop it they could stop it by snapping their fingers because all you have to do is choke off the money and choke off the weapons. So it must be either the Russians or the Chinese sticking it back to the Americans.

Scott: Or the British. Maybe the French. Maybe the Germans are getting revenge.

Martin: No they don’t have any weapons factories worth writing home about in Germany.

Scott: I sometimes wonder if this is just a way to one test out the latest weaponry with the guns and everything else and two just an outlet for young men to go some place and have an adventure. Who knows what they would do if they were all back here.

Martin: Anyway this was a sidebar into how to die quickly.

Scott: Yeah go to Afghanistan and step on a bomb.

Martin: Yeah I want to go back to the original theme which is how to die slowly.

Scott: And today we are going to talk about skin care because we are all concerned about wrinkles and dry skin and all this stuff and we have this huge massive industry telling us our hair is too grey and our skin is too wrinkly, it’s too light it needs to be darker.

Martin: Or it’s too dark and needs to be lighter and it’s too spotty.

Scott: Oh yeah and you can’t have freckles and forget about a tan line that’s no good.

Martin: And so on and there is all this pressure for perfection like you know perfection must be attained even though it is not attainable and we all have to try and we all spend an enormous amounts of money and energy on trying to look good.

Scott: This is all fine and good, unless it puts you in the grave early.

Martin: Yes exactly.

Scott: And that of course is what we have with skin care and the whole like rather than even calling it skin care should I say the beauty industry I mean skin care is one part and you have your skin and then the other part is we are all too fat and we need to be fit and have six pack abs and all that is the look-ism of our society like you can’t just talk to somebody and think wow he’s an interesting person with lots of experience but you have got to have this Beverly Hills 90210 or whatever it was. Which brings me to you know some people like when we talk about this skin deep beauty and everything else and there was a headline in the Associated Press just yesterday that we saw and it was a study on tanning beds and basically the experts are now saying that your tanning beds are as deadly as arsenic or mustard gas.

Martin: So that is like going into world war one and getting yourself exposed to mustard gas.

Scott: Yep and all the people who had all those problems when they came home and so they did an analysis of about twenty studies and they concluded that the risk of skin cancer jumped seventy-five percent when people start using tanning beds before the age of thirty. They also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof that radiation is carcinogenic.

Martin: Well we kind of already knew that because people who are exposed to all kinds of ultraviolet radiation tend to end up with skin trouble and they are visibly aging faster. Speaking of Afghanistan I saw a picture in the news and there was this nice looking guy, he was about seventy-five and he was the local caretaker of some sort of support like some sort of watchman and some sort of gopher that would go and fetch stuff for the managers of the military base you know a friendly local. Anyway he looked about seventy-five so the reporter says here is an interesting thing on what the lifestyle and climate does to people. How old do you think this fellow is? And of course a dramatic pause and she says fifty-two and this guy was honestly every bit as aged as the seventy five year old farmer from North America, so high altitude, outdoors, not very good food and lots of smoke.

Scott: Yeah lots of smoking. Cigarettes, hashish.

Martin: So anyway back to your UV radiation it really is demonstrably detrimental to your good looks and yet there is your tanning bed, how do we cause a skin to darken well we must expose it to UV radiation because that is how we get the melanin in the skin to pucker up and come to the surface so that the skin darkens.

Scott: Yeah it is funny because most tanning beds are used by people under thirty and so they have seen a parallel with young people getting skin cancer and the fact that more people are using tanning beds in England for example melanoma which is the deadliest form of skin cancer is the leading diagnosed cancer in women in their twenties now normally you would see that in people over seventy-five so we basically sped up our lives and we are getting stuff now in our twenties that we used to get at seventy-five.

Martin: There are further complication Scott and that’s this it is the sun block industry I mean this is the scariest thing when you use sun block you are increasing your chances of skin cancer this is the most insidious bizarre thing.

Scott: It is also counterintuitive when you think about it right you know it should stop the sun from hurting me but of course the sun block itself is probably doing more damage than the sun.

Martin: I don’t know what it is, I don’t have the science or mechanism of action but something happens when you put those things onto your skin that even though it is blocking the sun it is not blocking the carcinogenic effects somehow. It’s bizarre.

Scott: So we don’t get that red blistering skin that we get when we are out in the sun too long but we get the impact that it has on our skin.

Martin: It is possible like that but anyway one step back one of the most important vitamins that we need to have is vitamin D3 and is activated by sunlight.

Scott: So it is not about us not going in the sun.

Martin: No we are all supposed to be in the sun but it is possible that we are not supposed to be in a tanning bed. It is like refined sunlight is not good because refined sunlight is like refined salt and sugar which isn’t good either.

Scott: Well that is just one of the whole spectrum of light that comes from the sun the UV right so maybe the infra red counteracts it or whatever and we know that people have been in Africa forever and when was the last time you heard of someone in 3 AD dying from skin cancer. It didn’t happen.

Martin: Mind you it was because the rhinoceroses stabbed you.

Scott: Yeah there were other more pressing issues than that. I just want to do one last thing on the tanning beds, there was this article and a whole bunch of comments and one posted from age eighteen to twenty three I used a tanning bed three or more times a week and I got skin cancer on my abdomen when I was thirty-three so it was ten years after we have to assume she used it less after twenty-three.

Martin: Actually you are saying she but it was signed by Danny L.

Scott: I am assuming it’s a she but I could be wrong.

Martin: It could be a gay male.

Scott: Yeah well when I was twenty-seven I got stage two brain cancer now this is the part that we find fascinating and way to go Danny boy or girl I cured myself both times by fasting, nutrition and hydrogen peroxide therapy and when that happened he says it amazed my silly western doctors. Cancer is a big business in North America so beware many cures do exist I am living proof nevertheless I would suggest avoiding tanning booths.

Martin: Here you go Daniel I mean honestly that is a perfect comment in so many ways.

Scott: The other thing is our body’s are incredibly adaptive and resilient and if you stop putting garbage on your skin and in your mouth and exercising properly and getting enough sleep you would be amazed at the changes just from that.

Martin: So anyway speaking of cancer and I would repeat it to anyone cancer exists only in an environment that has oxygen in your tissues and oxygen presence in tissue is caused by the presence of toxins so get rid of toxins and increase the level of oxygen so this Daniel he fasted and increased oxygen by putting hydrogen peroxide into his system which is the source of the oxygen, smart kid. So let’s go back to the skin care, how do you get skin cancer you put toxins into your skin that’s the way to do it. So how about this list of commonly used toxic skin care ingredients and things that you probably want to do without or do with if you want skin cancer.

Scott: Yeah if you want to get skin cancer or problems with your skin and I think these toxins that you put on your skin impact your organs and things below your skin too.

Martin: Oh yeah here is my funny side bar beef you know we have this regulatory industry that says if it is a cosmetic meaning if it is applied to the skin it is not regulated as a natural supplement or a drug so you can smear some stuff on the outside of your cheek and it is not regulated but the moment you put it inside your mouth, the moment the manufacturer says put it inside your mouth than it is regulated. I wanted to mention sodium laurel sulphate and sodium laureth sulphate those are the foaming things you know that is the stuff that makes your shampoo foam and that is why your natural shampoos are so lousy and non-foaming. Like people say oh this shampoo is no good right just because it doesn’t foam.

Scott: Somehow we have got foam related to cleaning.

Martin: Well there was another genius in marketing who said rinse and repeat those were magical words in the world of shampoo because imagine that you wash your hair and it is perfectly clean so you rinse it and put more shampoo on and now it is really foaming fully right well when it is foaming like that it means there is nothing to clean anymore.

Scott: But you use twice as much.

Martin: Yes a marketing genius.

Scott: And you know the sodium laurel sulfate we see all the time in all the ingredients and in fact I would recommend pause this episode and get a few things from your bathroom cupboard and pull it out and see if you are sticking any of this stuff on you and I think you will be amazed so sodium laurel sulfate is really good stuff if you want to get ill quick.

Martin: You know this stuff is completely restricted in Europe but in the US it is still available this is DEA, MEA, TEA these are di-ethanol-amine, mono-ethanol-amine and tri-ethanol-amine. All of these ethanol amines deliver liver cancer, kidney cancer so just enjoy.

Scott: Yeah usually if you are shampooing you will find it there or if you are having a bubble bath you will find it there and they are basically hormone disrupting chemicals that form cancer causing nitrates so like you said you can’t get it in Europe for good reason but for some reason in the United States, no problem.

Martin: Well I guess we are still willing; America is still willing in the name of freedom to ingest more stuff I don’t know I am just being cynical today and so the next really cool one today is poly-ethylene-glycol.

Scott: That’s PEG.

Martin: That is stuff that is in antifreeze right well you know what happens to dogs that drink antifreeze right their kidneys fail and they die, it happens to both dogs and cats and that is why you are not supposed to leave antifreeze on the floor because it is sweet, it is irresistibly sweet. I actually remember a couple from a few years ago there was an affair where an Austrian wine manufacturer that was adding antifreeze – poly ethylene glycol – into their white wine to improve the taste.

Scott: Oh my god!

Martin: Just as good as the melamine from the Chinese dog food right.

Scott: Yeah wow I didn’t know that.

Martin: Yeah so anyway there is more of course and you can go to the Life Enthusiast website we have under education in skin care and we have the article that says avoid all toxic skin care ingredients, it’s a long list and the fun part was when I mentioned mineral oil and you were saying it should be a good mineral supplement.

Scott: A good way to get minerals into your body and you explained that it doesn’t work that way.

Martin: Well it is not that the minerals are in the oil but that the oil is a mineral origin but interestingly I found out about a woman recently that suffered from horrendous eczema and allergies and reactions on her feet you know it just kept on being red and problematic well some twenty years ago a doctor told her to use petroleum jelly on her feet and she has been using it all this time and she has been having all these horrendous reactions and not connecting one with the other.

Scott: That makes it hard sometimes for people to connect with doing this to that result. I think that is a major reason why we have some of the issues we have I mean

Martin: how would a decent pharmacist or doctor recommend petroleum jelly to be put on a baby’s bum or your girlfriend’s feet. I mean I am lost for words where is the logic you know like what school did you go to?

Scott: They don’t think too deeply that’s for sure.

Martin: And here is one of my favorite ones, fragrances. You know as I walk past people’s homes on my walks from time to time I get hit by this exhaust fume of fragrance and it could be some super weird smell of violets or a bouquet of something and it is usually coming out of the dryer vent and it is the smell of laundry out of some people’s homes is just nauseating. I don’t know have you experienced that?

Scott: I can’t say that I have.

Martin: I am kind of sensitive to smells anyway I keep thinking about these thousands of tons of aromatic hydrocarbons that are being pumped into the atmosphere of the planet. The point is they have no business being made and yet they are made by the barrelful and by people who are unaware, ignorant I guess we need to say they know not what they do. Well fragrances there are actually a rising number of people who are intolerant of fragrances you know like people who get instant headaches when exposed to something like oris root or some other bases used in common cosmetics. I would just like to appeal to people and be aware that you don’t need to use fragrances to cover your natural body smell. If your body smells badly it is because under your skin in your lymphatic system there is a rotting swamp that needs to be cleaned up.

Scott: Yeah so don’t cover up the problem. It is kind of like I haven’t taken out the garbage for about six weeks and it is sweltering hot in the summer time and oh it kind of smells.

Martin: Swollen explosively.

Scott: Yeah so maybe what we should is get some….

Martin: Christmas tree deodorizers no fragrance expellers.

Scott: Yeah and get some of that and put it around to cover the smell rather than saying I have a problem lets go fix the problem.

Martin: Yes so what else do we want to say here to get sick use artificial petroleum based… alkyl phenol ethyl cocomide

Scott: Anything that you can’t understand the words of.

Martin: Di-ethyl phenol amine, dimethylamine, formaldehyde or glycols urea how do you like that?

Scott: I like the description of mineral oil that we talked about earlier but I think it is another one that needs to be emphasized because baby oil is just mineral oil and we just plaster it all over the place thinking we are doing good things and it is a petroleum by-product so basically it would be garbage before they made gas except they figured out maybe we can get all these people to stick it on their skin and it is like saran wrapping your body and clogging up all your pores and now you can’t eliminate toxins so you have more of that stuff and you wonder why you have acne well hey the petroleum is clogging your pores so your body can’t do what it is supposed to do and away you go.

Martin: Yeah eczema, psoriasis and redness yep all of those ugly looking things.

Scott: Cool so there you go you need to well we talk a lot about making sure you put lots of French fries and onion rings you know fast food into your mouth if you want to get sick faster and so now make sure you put all these cheap skin care stuff on your skin full of all sorts of petroleum products so that you can wrinkle faster and get more toxic so the stuff you are putting into your body can’t come out of your body because you have sealed it off. That sounds like a perfect way to end this particular episode on how to make sure you get sick easily.

Martin: I think so, so support your local skin care industry and support your local drug store. Oh by the way if you want to avoid it just straight coconut oil is just fine on the skin you know. Anyway there are all natural non toxic personal care items out there you can find them. So if you want to read more about it you can find it at www.life-enthusiast.com or you can find listing for more podcasts like this one or if you feel like talking to one of us call us at 1-866-543-3388 this is Life Enthusiast co-op restoring vitality to you and to the planet.

Scott: Bye bye everybody.