@StillRachB wrote:
This is an article copied from a website I follow called Well and Good. I'd post the link but don't want to get poofed. I'm not a fan of the product because to me it's not a cleanser. It didn't clean my bare face, let alone any makeup. Although I don't like it for myself, I'm not taking a side here, just sharing what I think is an interesting article. Just something to think about if you happen to use Cetaphil.
ARTICLE:
Cetaphil probably has the best PR of any facial soap. Beauty magazines gush over it as a no-frills $8 must-have. Dermatologists love to recommend it as a mild and non-irritating facial cleanser for two reasons: it doesn’t contain fragrance and, more tellingly, because MDs have a big Pharma love affair with the manufacturer, Galderma, the offspring of Nestlé and L’Oréal, which also makes acne drugs like Differin.
And yet there’s nothing healthy about this face-washing prescription.
Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser contains just eight ingredients: water, cetyl alcohol, propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, stearyl alcohol, methylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben.
All but the water are chemically manufactured (let’s hope), and propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, and the three parabens have a seat on the dirty dozen, a list of cosmetic ingredients to avoid as potentially toxic.
One look at the label and you’ve got to go “Wait a minute! What?” says Spirit Demerson, who analyzes skin-care ingredients for Spirit Beauty Lounge, her online natural beauty store. “Cetaphil does not contain even one single beneficial ingredient and what it does contain is the equivalent of toxic sludge. Whether you think it’s keeping your skin healthy or not, it is absorbed into your bloodstream and research has proven almost all of the few ingredients in it are carcinogenic. I know it’s hard to imagine that washing your face can give you cancer but it’s worth consideration.”
Julia March, a top NYC facialist, says that so many New Yorkers believe that Cetaphil is healthy, they tend ignore the ingredients completely. “Cetyl alcohol, an emollient used in many cosmetics, is essentially a wax,” says March. “Propylene glycol is a common humectant (meaning it brings moisture from the air to the skin), but it also enhances product and chemical penetration into the skin and blood stream. Sodium lauryl sulfateis a foaming agent, and skin and eye irritant, that disturbs the healthy lipid barrier of the skin, and parabens are a group of preservatives being phased out for potential health risks.”
Given that there’s actually nothing clean about this cleanser, it’s rather amazing that millions of women think their skin will freak out if they use anything else. “It may not irritate skin very much, but it probably won’t help it much either,” says Nicole Yih, Assistant Spa Director at the Mandarin Oriental New York. That’s because there’s nothing in Cetaphil that nurtures skin. No antioxidants that help fight free radical damage; not a dribble of omega-rich plant seed oils that fortify the skin barrier; and not a drop of skin-calming botanicals.
A cleanser that you use twice a day should be judged on what it gives your skin. Consider this your new cleanser criterion.
I had posted here already that Cetaphil cleanser had given me a nasty rash. But I hadn't really read this opening post carefully.
Yes, I don't want sodium lauryl sulfate in my cleanser because it is harsh, but I do not agree with the idea that it is the equivelent of "toxic sludge." The ingredients may not be up to what many of us want in terms of beneficial ingredients, but the ingredients that are in it are not toxic.
If you read carefully, you'll see that they make no definitive case against the ingredients, instead throwing around words like "potential" health risks without any citations of credible scientific studies.
In other words, the article is typical of so-called "natural" sites that tend to cast aspersion with abandon and with little regard for proof. This one, Well + Good, makes money from promoting products.
~Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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