Are fragrances making you fragile?

Summary

To have good health in such a toxic- synthetic- environment we now live in, we must be proactive about what we consume. Not only what we eat, but also what we inhale, look at, absorb through our skin, etc. Fragrances entering our nose, mouth, skin, all negatively influence our hormones, immune function, and overall health. Our bodies have not evolved interacting with a synthetic environment, but a natural one. Seek out natural products for your laundry detergents. Replace perfumes/colognes with natural essential oils or ditch the scents altogether.

In the last blog post - Top 3 Ways To Holistically Improve Your Life - I spoke about how lighting influences our hormones. Light entering your retina has an immediate hormonal and physiological response. Through technological advances we’ve been able to produce artificial light throughout the night, tricking our body into thinking it’s daytime. If you want to understand more as to how that works check out the last blog HERE.

So what about the things we breathe into our nose and mouth?

The nose and mouth are entrances really close to our brain. If we smell something… that means it’s inside of our body… So when we walk through the laundry aisle or next to the person wearing perfume; we are consuming these chemicals.

We have all been bombarded with an intense scent from things such as laundry detergent, cologne, perfume, lotion, plug-in air scents, and anything with synthetic fragrances essentially. When we interact with that, we are shifting our hormones and immune function… and not towards better functionality.

I know for myself, the awkward teenage years included the newfound - raging impulse to attract women and something I kept with me on a date was cologne. I remember rocking the Gucci guilty for years, spraying myself down, holding that scent all day.

Our skin is a living organ and absorbs everything we put onto it. So what if by wearing cologne/perfume, to attract someone… or at least not repulse them… we are actually going to repulse them as a direct effect of the fragrances (and many other toxic interactions we have), as we start to break down from the toxicity in and around our body.

So with this understanding, what we breathe and absorb through our skin directly influences our hormones and overall health. Our environment has a direct effect on our health. Synthetic chemicals disconnect us from nature and our inability to connect with nature creates dis-ease.

So what are some Alternatives to Chemical Fragrances?

We are naturally attracted to people’s scent they give off, we don’t even consciously realize it but pheromones really drive attraction. We lose our ability to send and receive these pheromones when we mask them with artificial scents.

If our body is producing a harsh smell we feel the need to mask, we should be looking into what we are consuming food-wise and self-care-wise. If we wear deodorant we want to make sure it does not have aluminum or crap chemicals in them. If we want to have a scent, opting into natural scents from real essential oils - I like the smell of peppermint, and this brand does third party testing on all their products so you know you’re getting good quality oils.

Instead of a chemical concoction for skincare, we can use coconut oil. Regardless of what we are looking to put on and in our body, we should seek natural ingredients because our body has evolved through interacting with nature, not synthetic chemicals.