Lotus Guide
Holistic Resources
P.O. Box 135
Chico, California 95926
530-894-8433 (89-GUIDE)
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Your Horoscope
Alternative Health
There’s What in My Shampoo?
By Lynn M. Costa
Paradise Center for Healthy Living
Have you ever wondered what all those ingredients are in your shampoo, soap, lotion, deodorant, toothpaste, and so on? This is not to alarm you, but unless you are very diligent about shopping, it’s quite possible that the personal-care products you use contain industrial chemicals that are known to be hazardous.
Testing for these products is not mandatory. Nearly 90 percent of the thousands of ingredients in personal-care products have not been safety tested by any publicly accountable institution.
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) website www.ewg.org , almost all the ingredients in personal-care products can penetrate the skin and more than one-third of the products contain at least one ingredient that has been linked to cancer. Fifty percent of products on the market contain “fragrance,” which is a complex mix of chemicals, some of which are harmful to the brain and nervous system.
While the chemicals in any single product may not be of immediate concern, daily use for a period of time can be harmful to your health. An EWG study in 2004 found that in a day the average adult uses nine personal care products with a total of 126 chemical ingredients.
An example of a toxic buildup of chemicals was noted in the 2007 death of a 17-year-old female cross-country runner who had been using a sports cream containing methyl salicylate. This is a rare case, but it’s worth noting.
The good news is that there is a searchable online database, Skin Deep (www.cosmeticdatabase.com), set up by the EWG to help people choose better, safer products. It is very comprehensive, easy to use, and worth the time it takes to review companies, products, and ingredients. You might be surprised to see brands such as Revlon, St. Ives, Jergens, Avon, and Clairol (to name a few) listed in the top 20 brands with high hazard ratings.
To minimize your exposure to harmful chemicals, consider these shopping tips:
•Use fewer products and avoid products with “fragrance.”
•Read labels carefully to find evidence that claims of “organic, fragrance-free, natural, or hypoallergenic” are true.
•Use milder soaps to avoid stripping away the natural oils that protect your skin.
•Buy chemical-free products from a trusted holistic health center or natural-products store.
You may find that chemical-free products may cost a little more. That’s because many of them contain organic ingredients and exclude the cheap fillers that are potentially harmful to your health.
The way I see it, we can pay a little more at the store to buy the “good stuff,” or we can pay a lot more later should health problems arise. I encourage you to take the time to inform yourself so you can make healthy choices and buy safe products.
Lynn Costa is a certified massage therapist, health educator, member of the American Massage Therapy Association, and owner of the Paradise Center for Healthy Living. She can be reached at 530-872-4325 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Rebound Pain: Another Reason to Stop Using Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
By Michael Turk
The news spells out reasons not to use Cox-2 inhibitors, but there are compelling reasons not to use any anti-inflammatory drugs daily. Daily use increases the intensity and duration of pain. Yes, pain-relieving anti-inflammatory drugs cause pain in several ways. When used daily, they increase the intensity of chronic pain and when used to relieve pain after an injury, the pain lasts longer. Sometimes the prolonged pain hurts more than the original injury. The reason is simple: Anti-inflammatory drugs relieve pain by blocking the production of prostaglandin. Prostaglandin is necessary for rapid and complete healing. Unhealed tissue is hypersensitive and painful. Read the insert included with the drug or check the reference in the Physicians' Desk Reference. Pain and headaches can be side effects when anti-inflammatory drugs are used daily in the recommended doses.
Anti-inflammatory drugs relieve pain most effectively the first time they are taken. When taken daily, however, they lose their effectiveness. Continued use increases the pain, which becomes a type of chronic pain called rebound pain. Increasing the dosage or changing to stronger pain pills may bring temporary relief, but soon even these strategies fail. Even more cruelly, rebound pain from anti-inflammatory drugs means that other therapies will fail to give lasting relief from pain. As pain becomes chronic, it is often accompanied by stiffness and reduced range of motion. Few sufferers realize that this formula for failure they are experiencing results from their use of anti-inflammatory drugs.
People injure themselves every day while exercising, standing, sitting - even sleeping. These little injuries release prostaglandin and may cause pain. Even when we don't feel the pain, we react to it by turning in our sleep, shifting our weight while standing and sitting, and changing movements while exercising. When anti-inflammatory drugs are used daily, even little injuries fail to heal completely, leaving a residue of injured tissue in the body. Incomplete healing results in weaker tissue prone to reinjury. When damage accumulates it results in rebound pain.
To understand rebound pain, it is helpful to appreciate how anti-inflammatory drugs relieve pain and how injuries heal. Prostaglandin, one of the first chemicals released after an injury, begins the first stage of healing. This substance causes inflammation, which stimulates the immune system to attract platelets around the lesion, bring white blood cells to protect against infections, and clean up damaged tissue. Sometimes prostaglandin causes pain, both to warn us and to protect an injury from further damage. Anti-inflammatory drugs such as Cox-1 and Cox-2 inhibitors suppress the production of prostaglandin. When prostaglandin fails to initiate healing, injuries multiply and accumulate. You can have inflammation without healing, but you can't have healing without inflammation.
If not anti-inflammatory drugs, what then? The Lotus Guide can help you find alternative therapies to reduce and relieve pain. For example, millions of Americans credit therapeutic massage for reducing their pain. Massage increases the flow of lymph, which carries away metabolic waste and increases the circulation of blood, which brings fresh oxygen and nutrients to fuel the healing process. Regenerated tissue is stronger and more resilient to injury. Therapeutic massage promotes thorough healing and lasting relief from pain.
For more information on what is being offered at East/West Clinic by Michael Turk and others, call 
530-894-4066 or email
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