Over the last few weeks I haven’t been
feeling my best emotionally. I’ve been feeling very depressed and unmotivated
and I do feel that my blog has suffered from this as I haven’t put in as much
focus as I normally do because I just couldn’t concentrate.
After a visit from Mother Nature late last
week, the s**t hit the fan!!! I was feeling very dizzy and nauseated. I
couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop crying. I could be laughing one minute and
threatening to stab you with a spoon the next, Absolutely anything would set me
off and it got to a point that the giant got very worried because in the 5
years he’s known me, he has never seen my emotions change so rapidly in a short
space of time looool he just couldn’t say or do ANYTHING right.
Anyway long story short, I found out over
the weekend that my mood swings were brought on by an iron deficiency . . . no
seriously . . . that’s all it was. The lack of iron in my diet made me anemic,
which in turn caused my moodswings. I am now on Iron supplements (which taste HORRIBLE)
but in light of my iron revelation, I have decided to base today’s Know Your Ingredient on Iron Oxide and its use in cosmetics.
Iron is necessary for our bodies to
function. It promotes blood oxygenation (aka helps your blood carry oxygen
around your body). Iron Oxide aka Oxidized Iron aka Rust is is commonly
used as a colourant and can be found in foundations, concealers, blushes, eye
shadows etc. There are 3 colour ranges achieved by using iron oxides:-
Yellow – Ferric Oxide Hydrate
Black – Ferric Ferrous Oxide
Red – Ferric Oxide/Colcothar
You can get different shades of brown using
Titanium
Dioxide (oxidized Titanium) but that’s going off topic
Iron Oxide has been used in cosmetics for a
long time! There is evidence to it being used in ancient festivals as pigments
or inks for tribal tattoos, so if there is such a long history of its use in
cosmetics, why is there so much caution over its use?
I will tell you why!
While Iron Oxides are a naturally occurring
mineral, the oxides used in cosmetics are actually chemically constructed
because natural iron can be contaminated with used other ingredients which can
be very unhealthy or toxic to skin (so if you ever see a natural product that lists iron
oxides in their ingredient list, someone is telling a porky!!) and
even more if you find a naturally company that boasts using natural iron oxides
in its makeup BE
ON YOUR GUARD!!!!!! What these companies are actually doing is tweaking
some of the natural properties in iron which can be very harmful to skin. You
might be asking but why would they do this? Tweaking iron properties would give
you hypo allergic, high grade mineral makeup which is why I am probably overly
cautious over mineral makeup and will prefer to avoid it if I can
Is It Safe?
Depends . . .
Synthetic Iron Oxide does NOT
cause any suspected or recognized health effects to your body and can’t be
detected in human tissue BUT if it is contaminated with another
material or ‘tweaked’ then it could
potentially harm you.
