There’s a lot of work today’s women put into looking good. Even a basic makeup work wastes more than a couple of minutes each day and a lot more when it comes to money. But whereas cosmetics will make you look good on the outside, ever wonder what they do on the inside? A new research points out chemicals in cosmetics are linked to diabetes.
Recent data outlines a grim conclusion: about 25.8 million Americans have diabetes. The disease impacts 8.3 percent of the U.S. total population but despite treatments and awareness campaigns, the diversity of factors that trigger it is enough to spike the rates. A new study comes to identify another factor, one that had many think it was safe.
Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital have analyzed data from 2,350 women in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Their analysis showed some chemicals found in day-to-day cosmetics are in fact linked to diabetes. Phthalates is a chemical ordinary found in most of your cosmetics: nail polish, soaps, moisturizes, hair sprays and even perfumes.
For the most part, researchers managed only to find an association between Phthalates exposure and diabetes, but couldn’t explain exactly what the trigger was. Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, associate epidemiologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, believes it’s because Phthalates “can bind to natural cell receptors” and thus disturbing “normal function”.
On the overall, women exposed to high levels of Phthalates were ruled to be facing a diabetes risk, two times higher than women exposed to low levels of the chemical. Although researchers have a lot more work to do before they can prove the exact association between diabetes and chemicals in cosmetics, consumers should start reading labels with more scrutiny.
The Food and Drug Administration does not require cosmetic companies to put Phthalates on the label. They can easily hide the chemical under a generic term, such as “fragrance”, without necessarily disclosing more details about its exact origin. Researcher James-Todd recommends consumers could start looking for cosmetics labeled “Phthalate-free”. But she added the packaging could still contain it.
“There’s not much we can do as consumers. Hopefully, these findings will spur additional research” said James-Todd.
