The Wrong Way to Wash Your Hands

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Environmental Working Group's Cosmetic Database

Ann Shippy MD website

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Did you know there's actually a wrong way to wash your hands? At a bare minimum, you should be washing your hands so you don't get sick or pass things on to others, but you can actually really make yourself sick with what you wash your hands with. So a lot of the soaps now have the parabens and the phthalates and the things like triclosan taken out of them, but there are still lots of chemicals that can build up in your body and make you sick when you're exposed to them on a regular basis. So one of the things that I want you to understand, too, is that hand sanitizers usually have a lot of chemicals in them that are not good. There are some that are better or worse. There's a website that you can you can look at called CosmeticDatabase.org that is put together by Environmental Working Group so you can actually see the scores on the things that you wash your hands with. So interestingly, Purell can have a good rating, a one to three, or it can have a bad rating. So it's not just what brands do you look for, but their particular products. And now there are actually a lot of hand sanitizers that when you're on the run and you can't get to a sink that actually have a good rating, as well. One of them that I really like actually has essential oils in it. It's EO hand sanitizers, and then they use essential oils to actually make them smell good. So you can keep one of these in your car or in your purse to help you use it. The ultimate thing, though, is actually washing your hands at the sink. You get a better result, and you can choose soaps that are very, very good for you. So here's one that I like, A La Maison, that really only has a few things in it and will not be adding chemicals to your body. One of the things that I wanna explain are some of the side effects that you can have from things like triclosan. It's super important for women that are thinking about getting pregnant or who are pregnant to avoid these because they can have pretty drastic effects on the health of the baby as it's growing. It can actually impair how well it grows, both the size of its head and the length and weight. Then as adults and for our children, it can really disrupt things like our thyroid hormones and start to impair how well our body can manage those hormones. And then it can also cause increased risk for asthma and allergy, and we've got a diagram that can show you some of those risks so that you start to really understand how important it is to avoid these chemicals in your environment. What you're putting on your skin goes right in, and then what you're using for mouthwash and toothpaste can get absorbed just in your mouth even though you're spitting it out. If you found this information helpful, please share it with people you love, your family and friends, to help me on my mission to make Every Life Well®. See you next time.