Should You Buy 'Natural' Makeup?

For Phoebe Lapine, the rash was as predictable as a rent hike with a lease renewal: It came once a year, was dealt with swiftly (albeit uncomfortably) and went largely ignored until the next year when the cycle repeated.

But one year, Lapine’s rash – a red, bumpy patch around her nose and mouth diagnosed as perioral dermatitis – didn’t disappear with any of her previously tried-and-true treatments, including steroid injections, medicated creams or antibiotics.

So she tried something new: As part of her year-long project to live healthfully and happily with Hashimoto's disease by experimenting with different areas of her health one month at a time, she traded many of her conventional skin care products and cosmetics for “greener” varieties.

“Vanity was my most powerful motivator,” admits Lapine, a 31-year-old gluten-free chef in New York City who documents her journey in the book, “The Wellness Project.”

But overhauling her makeup cabinet was financially straining and “a bit emotionally jarring,” Lapine says, since it meant kissing goodbye many of the products she’d grown to rely on. It also meant foregoing frugality since one small tube of natural foundation made with ingredients like macadamia nut oil, for instance, cost more than three times her go-to drugstore pick.

But slowly, along with diet changes, Lapine's efforts paid off. Within a few months of trading some of her conventional products for more natural varieties found at beauty boutiques and stores like Whole Foods, her skin stopped fighting back. She hasn’t had a perioral dermatitis breakout in the nearly two years since.

“My whole complexion changed,” Lapine says. “It was so much brighter and there was more color in my skin, despite any imperfections.”

Consumers increasingly seek organic, natural and other skin care and cosmetic products with fewer synthetic ingredients, says Cia Tucci, vice president of store brands and quality assurance at CVS Health, which recently announced that it’s removing certain chemicals from 600 of its store brand’s beauty and personal care products. “We listened when [consumers] asked for safe, efficacious options in every aisle,” Tucci wrote to U.S. News.

Some proponents go as far as to say that putting any ingredients on your skin that you can't pronounce or wouldn't eat is playing with fire since the skin is a permeable organ that absorbs some of what it's exposed to. Others point out that treating your skin in a way that promotes its health – rather than a way that masks its lack of health – can help it do its job to protect the rest of your body systems.

“I think it’s philosophically [about] treating your skin just like you would any other organ in your body, which is: What is the optimal diet for it?” says Dr. Roshini Raj, a gastroenterologist in New York City whose line of skin care products includes some natural ingredients including probiotics.

But medical support for such products is mixed. On the one hand, certain chemicals – namely parabens and phthalates, which Raj’s products lack and CVS is removing – are known to be endocrine disruptors, which can negatively affect people with endocrine diseases like Lapine and may even increase the risk of some cancers in others. “It has been proven that they disrupt your hormones; it hasn’t been proven what long-term effects they have,” Raj says.

On the other hand, some synthetic ingredients are important for products’ shelf stability, while others have been shown to improve skin health. “There’s some very proven non-natural ingredients that seem to be very effective and work, so you shouldn’t be terrified of using anything that’s not 100 percent natural,” Raj says.

What's more, comparing the skin's ability to absorb harmful ingredients to the digestive system's ability to do so overlooks the systems' purposes: Skin is designed to keep toxins out; your mouth is designed to get nutrients in. Skin is "very limiting," says Dr. Ranella Hirsch, a cosmetic and laser dermatologist in Boston.

Plus, there’s no consensus on what “natural,” “green” or even “organic” cosmetics means, so it’s difficult to generalize how they affect health. It's also difficult to find strong support for organic or natural products from sources without a product to sell, Hirsch says. “I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a marketing ploy,” she says. “I will say, though, there’s a lot of success to be had in appealing to the unknown.”

What is agreed upon is that everybody’s skin, priorities and values are different – and that consumers should base their decisions accordingly. “You have to manage these things, and you have to make judicious product choices and not make yourself completely insane at the same time,” Hirsch says. Here’s how:

1. Simplify.

When Lapine purged much of her makeup cabinet – often using the Environmental Working Group’s database that evaluates personal care products’ potential hazards and health concerns – she reaped benefits outside of eventually improved skin. She also reduced clutter and waste – without taking a financial hit in the long run since her more natural products' formulas were more condensed, lasted longer and improved her skin enough to require less makeup overall. “The irony,” she found, "is that skin that could benefit most from not being covered up all the time is the skin that we feel the most embarrassed to show to the world."

2. Pick your non-poison.

Just like food choices, labeling cosmetics as “good” or “bad,” or approaching purchases with an all-or-nothing mentality can be dangerous, experts say. Instead of tossing all conventional products and buying only 100-percent organic substitutes, consider what ingredients are most concerning to you, as well as which products you use most frequently on the most surface area of your body. Then, adjust accordingly.

“A lot of the products that we’re talking about are used on … the eye creases of your eye – and that’s just not a very large portion of your body, which would absorb it,” Hirsch says. “If this is a product you’re going to coat your body in head to toe, then that’s a whole different matter.”

3. Manage expectations.

No skin care product alone is going to completely transform your appearance, health and, most importantly, happiness. What you put in your body and how else you treat it matter just as much, if not more. “You have to look at your entire body and lifestyle if you’re looking to improve your skin,” including your sleep patterns, diet and stress management techniques, Raj says.

That was the case for Lapine, who has a severe gluten intolerance but didn’t take avoiding gluten and other pro-inflammatory ingredients seriously until beginning her project. “I didn’t really understand that [eating healthfully] would have a benefit other than what was happening beneath the surface,” she says. “That it would actually – for lack of a better word – make me prettier.”