[SKIN TRUTH] Botox is okay, but parabens aren’t?

How do you respond when you hear words like “chemical,” “artificial,” or “synthetic”? Most people feel that they indicate harmfulness or that they otherwise should to be avoided. Then what about words like “natural” or “organic”? You’re likely to envision purity, safety, nature. There’s been a recent trend in makeup brands marketing their products with this kind of lingo. But are organic ingredients actually safe and beneficial for our health?

Botox is a natural toxic substance called Botulinum Toxin. This is a neurotoxin produced by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium otulinum. When a person is exposed to this toxin, his muscles become paralyzed by the secretion of acetylcholine, which acts as a neurotransmitter. A paralysis of the heart muscle can lead to fatal consequences. Some ingredients derived from nature can thus be toxic to humans— not all are as gentle and safe as we might be led to think.

All drugs are toxic. Depending on how we use them, they can act as medicine or as poison for our bodies. Botox is a powerful drug that can even be fatal, and yet we seem to have no problem using it for common cosmetic procedures. Diluted botox can be injected into the skin and temporarily retain the skin’s elasticity through muscular paralysis. Whether a drug is beneficial or harmful is contingent on its level of concentration.

Take parabens or sulfates for example. While preservatives and surfactants in cosmetics would be delivered to the body through the digestive tract and blood vessels if ingested directly, no one eats cosmetics. Cosmetics are instead applied externally to the skin, so the issue of effectively delivering ingredients deep into the skin is something that developers are constantly concerned about.

Moreover, parabens are preservatives that have been used for a long time whose effectiveness and safety have both been proven. In other words, there is an abundance of verified data on the specific levels of paraben concentration necessary for the drug to be both safe and effective. The Food and Drug Administration has set specific standards and cosmetic companies produce and sell products that follow these standards.

Isn’t it ironic that we don’t seem to have a problem with injecting potentially deadly toxins into our bodies during cosmetic procedures, but consider the application of a solely external, strictly controlled substance harmful?

Consumers’ blind faith in words like “organic” and “natural” can incite cosmetic companies to use ingredients whose safety and effectiveness have not been sufficiently tested. We need to remember that the health risks and price hikes that come with the incorporation of these new “natural” substances will fall to the consumer alone.