1Corinthians verses 19 and 20 (NIV) 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
These verses have been kind of an obsession of mine at least for the last 8 months, if not longer. Maybe not the actual words of the verses, meaning I haven't been walking around saying them or quoting them to people. But the idea, or point of the verses, treating our bodies the best that we know how because they are a gift from God and house his Holy Spirit, has been a daily thought. That is why I'm loving my essential oils, gluten-free diet based mostly on fresh fruits, veggies and meats. (Organic, hormone and anti-biotic free meats are expensive, so I don't use them much when I cook.) I feel like when I'm eating "right", I'm also intentionally not destroying God's house.
Recently I went to an essential oils class at which we were shown how to make "summer essentials" such as bug spray, sunscreen, lip balm, etc. I assumed that since we were making it, it worked well enough to use. It may have worked for some people, but not for my kids. However, since my husband is very fair skinned (his skin is either white or red, nothing between), my oldest daughter's skin is also very fair. My second daughter has skin more like mine and doesn't burn quite as easily. After putting the homemade sunscreen on them, both of them got sun burned (my oldest more severely than the second). When I double checked the ingredients, the maximum SPF was probably about 15. This was the second time this summer they had been out in the sun for any length of time, and they were still a little pink from the first time when we used a spray on commercial sunscreen. Needless to say, they both needed more than just SPF 15. I asked a few of the essential oil "experts" in the area and was told that had we added carrot seed oil, myrrh oil, or helichrysum oil, the SPF would be at least twice that of the original recipe. So, I added a little myrrh essential oil to the original mix and it seemed to work much better. I forgot to put some on the low back of my middle daughter because she was wearing one of those swimsuits with the t-shirt type top, not thinking that the skin between her top and bottom would be exposed. Anyway, she got burnt in that spot where I forgot to put the improved formula, but the rest of her was fine. The fair-skinned oldest seemed to have gotten a little pink, but not nearly as badly burnt as with the original blend. My brother, a skeptic and science minded man, decided to do an experiment on himself. He put my "new and improved sunscreen" on one forearm and a conventional/commercial sunscreen on his other arm. After playing in the water and being in the sun for at least an hour, there was no noticeable difference between my formula and his. From what I have been told, helichrysum has the highest SPF of all known essential oils. I guess that will be my next purchase, although very expensive, to add in my oldest daughter's personal sunscreen.
Another local mom is making hers with zinc oxide. Since I'm not too familiar with zinc oxide, I decided to do a google search. Everything you find using google is true, right? HA! There were "natural recipes" for sunscreen using them, and pages with statements saying that it is dangerous. One page said that zinc oxide is safe because it doesn't penetrate the skin, however, if you're making something with it, you should wear a mask so you don't breathe the powder in. Hmmm... This is the safety data for zinc oxide. In at least 2 places it says that it is a mutagen to mammalian somatic cells. When I looked up somatic cells, I found that they are basically all the cells in our bodies except the reproductive cells (ova and sperm). Skin cells, internal organ cells, blood cells, bone cells, etc. are all considered somatic cells. So then, lets say that zinc oxide doesn't penetrate your skin, and sits on your skin... skin cells are still "mammalian somatic cells" and can be mutated from zinc oxide. There is a study mentioned in this article about zinc oxide going through chemical reactions and significantly deteriorating human cells when exposed to UV rays (what it's supposed to be protecting us from). Admittedly, it is still in the beginning stages of research, but with the information given here, it's not looking good.
My mindset is often the "all or nothing". If I can't do it 100% correct, I'd just rather not do it. Now, I'm going to make a statement that could be extremely frustrating and overwhelming for a perfectionist such as myself. When I decided that I was going to go chemical free, all natural, healthy everything for my family, my doctor kind of burst my bubble. This is the statement that almost sent me off the deep end: "There are chemicals everywhere; you breathe them in the air. They are unavoidable". BAH!!! Unavoidable?!! I almost gave up, threw my hands in the air, and decided to go back to buying cheap things with coupons even if they had all kinds of bad stuff in them, just because they were cheap. Then I met Stacey Kimbrell. She has written a book about the different chemicals with which we come in contact. She, too, admitted that there are just some things you can't avoid, so you just do your best to avoid what you can. Usually your body recognizes toxic chemicals and flushes them out as waste product. However, if your body is overwhelmed with toxins (like if you eat foods packed with preservatives every day for every meal) then some of those toxins stay in your body and can cause havoc. Basically, I felt like I was given permission to mess up once in a while or use something with toxins in it when in a pinch. If I usually eat "chemical free" foods and use personal products that don't contain any (or many) toxins, then when I do accidentally eat something containing MSG or formaldehyde, my body will be able to send it out with the rest of the waste.
With that said, I am still undecided about using zinc oxide in my next sunscreen concoction. If it keeps my kid sunburn-free, is it worth the risk of exposing her to the mutagenic properties? Will her body flush out the zinc oxide before it is able to cause issues in her cells? Or, should I continue to experiment on her with the best essential oils can offer? Either way she is being experimented on. I guess this will be one of my prayer concerns tonight. Praying that God direct me, show me some kind of information, as to what is best for my family as I continue trying to treat our bodies as the temple God has told us it is.
