Namaste, everybody! I’m delighted that you’re joining me today at Namaste Nutritionist, as we drop love nuggets and wisdom bombs. The health wizards I interview help crack up insider secrets for creating a strong and lean body, a brilliant mind, and a thriving spirit. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Our goal here is to help everyone, you, me, your family, your friends, and even your pet goldfish. Brighten health and enliven spirits everyday.
For those of you who don’t know me yet, I am Francis, the creator of Namaste Nutritionist. I’m a registered dietitian and a long-time yoga instructor. Of course, I wouldn’t be doing this podcast without the support of my groovy husband, Michael. And you can find us at namastenutritionist.com. I’m very excited about this interview today because my guest, Marilene Richardson, is talented at many traits, like growing food, natural healing, and living cooperatively with nature. SHe’s one of the happiest and most loving people that I know. Marilene is a trained esthetician, a food producer in the perma-culture tradition, and a co-founder of Songcroft Naturals and Songcroft Farms. Her favorite quote is that “Love is the answer”, and if she could claim any super-power, it would be to help everyone feel loved. So, let’s welcome Marilene.
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Francis:Thank you so much for joining us today! How are you?
Marilene: I’m great, thank you! What a sweet introduction, Francis!
F: And it’s well-deserved. I know you’re humble, but it’s very well-deserved. So, I, you have, like so much going on, it’s kind of amazing when people learn of your story, so I want to give you the floor to just share for a few minutes your background and your story.
M: Wow. Well, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and so, you know, if you can picture scenes from the movie, snow falling on the cedars, and being in the middle of cedar trees, and running through forests with ferns larger than you are, that would be parts in a little glimpse of my childhood. I grew up in a bountiful, beautiful area in the Pacific Northwest, with a Japanese mother who grew up in the countryside of Japan, and with her she brought home remedies, and, you know, the cultural things of her childhood, and so those are very engrained in who I am. I spent an awful lot of time on the coast, living in a very rural community, where sustenance fishing and wild food and wild plant and medicinals were part of our life, and so, that is very much part of who I am and where I come from. I moved to the city to go to college, and I did indeed go to college, and to earn a little extra money through college, I became an esthetician and studied with at the Paul Mitchell academy and learned all about skin care and about aromatherapy and body care products and back then, being an esthetician was different than it is now, it included a lot more than skin, it was skin, and nails, and actually not quite a massage license, but it did include massage, and went from there to deep in my studies of herbs and horticulture, and started up our farms, Songcroft Farm and Snohomish where I began taking interns and apprentices, and teaching them how to grow food organically, teaching about herbal medicine and homesteading, and self-sufficiency skills, and then I started Songcroft Naturals, which is what we’re talking about today.
F: Yeah, and I’m really, really excited, I don’t think I emphasized at the beginning like I wanted to, but today we get to talk about the importance of natural skin care, and just how much of a difference the types of skin care can make, because a lot of them are filled with toxins and chemicals that we don’t know about or understand how they act on our body, but then there’s a lot of great products, and yours are some of them. But before we get into that, can we just kind of briefly, will you just kind of paint a picture for, you know, thirty seconds to a minute or something, about your family because you have this cool story about how you came to have a farm and you started it from I think, scratch, and then raising your family. So go ahead.
M: Well we moved to the Snohomish area, and we based that on an area that tested really well for good air, and wonderful libraries, because we have homeschooled our children, and libraries are a wonderful resources and we thought it was a good reflection of what community values. So we moved to this area onto a piece of land that was completely pristine and beautiful and had never been built on before, but part of it had been cleared. And it had been cleared a good ten years before we moved here, and we called it a “stump farm”. So there was a good part of the land that still had forest and was just beautiful with cedar trees and ferns and hemlocks, and all these wonderful native plants from the Pacific Northwest, but there was one are that had been cleared because the folks had wanted to build a house, and that’s the area we called a stump farm. So our family moved here originally with no water, no electricity, with just plans and good skills and patience and love, and we moved out here and lived for two years in a little travel trailer, collecting materials, because we planned to build our house from scratch ourselves, and to use as much recycled and reclaimed material and also just, you know, environmentally kind materials as we could. And so, we did that for a year and a half, almost two years, then we built a small cabin that we moved into, and spent a couple more years doing the same, observing the land, putting in our fruit trees and our gardens, and collecting more materials, and then we started to build. So we’ve been in our home for three years now, we did indeed build it ourselves, our son who was at the time eight, wired his own bedroom, we had the kids in there with us doing things as they were able, and it was actually a community project, as we had a lot of friends come by and pitch in, whether it was bringing by a dinner or picking up a roller and helping us out that way, so that was beautiful. And we now have a very warm, super insulated, passive solar home, and it’s very efficient. We grow a great deal of our food here, from fruits and vegetables to eggs, and we raise dairy goats and turkeys, and we also collect and raise a lot of medicinal herbs and flowers which are used in our Songcroft Natural products.
F: I just think that’s so cool! All of it, especially that part where your actually growing a lot of the materials, the raw goods that go into your products, and that’s how I came to know you, because you were teaching a workshop on fermentation that I attended, and you were selling your products. So let’s go into that, and first we’ll start with the background about why it’s important to pay attention to the ingredients in our products, and why it’s sometimes really hard to know just what’s in our products.
M: Oh my. Well yeah, this is a huge topic. I mean first of all, ingredient labels can be so hard to read. Companies, most companies, don’t make it any easier, either. And quite frankly, we do not have legal protection in our country to mandate that companies disclose all of the ingredients in their products. So we have several different things going on here. First of all there’s a lot of harmful ingredients out there on the market. There’s not enough disclosure on the ingredients in products. The ingredients can have more than one name, which can make it incredibly confusing, and there is no legal enforcement to make companies do this. And so, there’s…
F: To make them disclose, there’s no legal recourse?…
M: Exactly. The cosmetic industry is one of the least regulated industries in our countries. And it’s just awful, it’s absolutely awful. So people need to educate themselves, and not leave it up to the laws and the regulations because although those are changing, we are not there yet. So in the meantime, we need to educate ourselves, know what’s in our products, know what we don’t want in our products, and understand how to read the labels.
F: That was a good way to just succinctly explain that question, because it is a big topic, so. You know, and I think it’s really confusing for people because we try to be self-educated, but it’s overwhelming, first of all, and second of all, it’s, when you look at labels, they’re really deceptive. So a lot of products that I find at stores, you can go to like the natural section, and they’ll say like, 98% organic, or some of the more conventional will say it’s all natural, and so you think, “Oh, well this is good, ” but tell us, is that really good enough, to just trust that label?
M: Absolutely not, and in fact, this is exactly why on our Songcroft Naturals labels, although we use organic ingredients, although we are, you know, we could put 99% organic on our products and all of these things, those are all methods of brainwashing with this industry, and we just refused to participate in that. So, you know, sure you could have 99% natural ingredients, or 99% organic ingredients, but that 1% of, you know, oh, propylethanol, or whatever it is, could be the deal breaker for most of us, right? But because they put that in big lettering across the front of the package, people don’t realize that that does not mean that this is a safe product. And so, we decided from the beginning, we would not participate in that, and we would probably up our sales a thousand-fold if we did, but to us it’s just wrong. And people need to understand and actually take a moment and read the ingredients and understand them.
F: But, are all the ingredients on the label, or is there a certain amount of ability to put, you know, kind of not mention, not disclose.
M: Well, that’s a whole other situation, because it’s true, there are so many ways to not disclose ingredients. So if you have under, I don’t even remember the percentage right now, it’s like 3% or less, you don’t have to disclose it. If it says “fragrance” it can be one of four thousand different ingredients, it’s proprietary, they don’t have to tell you what they are. If you created a product using a substance say, like, lye and hydrochloric acid, and it’s dissolved, you don’t have to disclose that you used that in the process. There’s all kinds of different ways to get around disclosing all the ingredients that have went in to making a product.
F: So I wanted, I actually want to dig into this a little bit more, because we hear about our cosmetics being dangerous, containing lead or mercury or other cancer-causing agents, and I suspect, well two things, number one, I know that that stuff isn’t labeled, like in my makeup, I don’t, there just are almost no ingredients listed, it’s very few that are actually on the label for my makeup, so I have to go and do extra research to find out what’s good makeup, and I use EWG website, the Environmental Working Group, because they actually grade each brand, or a lot of brands. But what I want to dig into is the 3%, because it doesn’t sound like it’s a lot, but I’m wondering if you can tell us about that, because 3%, if it’s a poison can be really harmful, and we do absorb it in our skin.
M: Absolutely, and a lot of them are accumulated in the body, held within the liver, some of them are hormone-disrupters, which lead to cancer, I mean, you know, a little bit of lead, a little bit of mercury, they’re all important to stay away from. And, yeah, certainly, just having a small portion doesn’t sound so harmful, but, you know, when they’re accumulated in our body, and especially distributed between so many different products our there, like sodium lauryl sulfates, and all those, I mean, those are in all kinds of products. So yeah, this one product may have less than 1% even, but that doesn’t mean the next product you use doesn’t have it, and the next, and the next, and all of that builds up in the body. It’s really an issue.
F: Yeah, and that’s the thing, is that it does add up over time, because you aren’t just using that one product, you’re using, you know, maybe dozens of products, and even in shampoos and soaps and lotions and makeups, and so, it does really and up. And I just want to really anchor that point with listeners, because it’s easy to just ignore it because it’s hard to pay attention and to actually do the extra step of researching your product. So, do it. It’s worth it, because you don’t want that stuff to end up in your body and effect your DNA, and manipulate, damage your DNA, which could potentially effect your children, your unborn children, or even your potential for cancer or autoimmune diseases. So let’s talk about how your products are different, because you said that you don’t participate in the greenwashing, so tell us what you do that’s different.
M: So, in the U.S., as I said, there are very little regulations on any products in the cosmetic industry, personal care products, any of those. So, you don’t have to list, for example, the Latin name for a botanical ingredient. This is a real dangerous situation because, you know, you can use the name, the common name, of a plant, and it can mean one of any ten, twenty different plants. And if a person has an allergy to that plant, then they need to have the information. Sometimes, there are plants that are known to be common, you know, allergic, or allergens, and they don’t get listed under the name that people know them, so that they won’t be flagged. So that’s one issue. Another issue is, in this country, we don’t have to avoid certain ingredients that are banned in other countries, and obviously that’s wrong, so one company that sells a product in this country will actually have a different formulation say in Europe or Japan, or you know, wherever the more expensive ingredients are used, and we get the really cheap, awful ingredients that are hazardous to our health. So we don’t use any ingredients that are banned in other countries, and we use a labeling system which is approved in Europe, it follows European standards, we use the INCI names, which is the International Nomenclature names, which means that we are using the Latin name and the common name, and we have full disclosure of every ingredient, and it doesn’t matter how small of a percentage.
F: And, so, I guess we did talk a little bit about how the personal care products impact our health, is there anything else you want to say about that before I move on?
M: Well, I mean, we want to think about our health, of course, because our skin is going to absorb so much, but so do our lungs, and a lot of people don’t think about the fact that a lot of the asthma and respiratory issues going on have to do with exposure to different chemicals in products, particularly fragrances and chlorine and things like that, which are even in our water, for most folks. So all of those play into it, but we also, and I know you may be getting to this, Francis, but I want to just remind people, let’s not forget about what we’re also putting down our drains. So, although we may not be reacting to it at that moment ourselves, if we’re putting it into our waterways, and it’s something that’s harmful, this also a problem. So, I just wanted to mention that.
F: Yeah, I think that’s a great point that’s frequently overlooked, because it’s again, such small amounts going down the drain, you don’t think about what impact it’s having on the environment, so that’s a good point. And speaking about fragrance, I do want to ask about that, because, you know, I noticed that I get headaches if I’m around a lot of chemical fragrances, and I have some office mates who always complain about their migraines, and they also have the entire office filled with like really scent-y, wonderful, yummy fragrances that are, you know, from like the typical Target aisle, that just, you don’t know what the ingredients are – they’re not disclosed. And so, I think it’s safe to say that the fragrances follow the same line that the cosmetics do, that you’re breathing in these fumes, and you’re exposing yourself to a lot of stuff that you don’t know what it is, right?
M: Absolutely, I mean that goes for the room air fresheners, that goes for the fabric softeners, the fragrances in shampoos, the hand soaps, all of these things, and, you know, people don’t realize how many layers of fragrance that they are around, and it definitely is showing up with causing a lot of people asthma issues, headaches and migraines, nausea, there’s a lot of reactions that people have, and I’m one of those, so, definitely it’s a real big problem, and in fact, in certain states, they are not able to mail magazines with fragrance in them anymore, because the mail carriers were getting ill.
F: Oh, wow! I had no idea about that. Yeah, well, do you have any recommendations for safe fragrance alternatives, so that we can still enjoy a pretty-smelling world without all the obnoxious results.
M: Sure. One of my favorite things is simply a citrus fruit. Just cutting open a lemon, or peeling a lemon, having, you know how there’s the little potpourri candle heater things, where you put the little oil in the top and light a votive candle inside…?
F: Oh yeah!
M: …below? Well, peeling an orange, and instead of putting oil on top, just letting the orange sit there, that releases lovely scent. Or lemon, or lime, especially this time of year in the Northwest where it’s grey and dark, just to have a little lemon in the room is so very nice.
F: Oh my gosh, good mood lifter there.
M: Yeah, and those are, that’s a really nice one. Another thing for inside air are the salt candles. So, just lighting a salt candle will help to freshen the air and you don’t actually need a fragrance, but people really notice the difference in the lightness of the air, because of the negative ions that happen, that the, I guess you’d say the attraction to the salt candle, and it really cleanses the air, and a lot of people really comment on that.
F: So, how do you feel about essential oils?
M: Essential oils can be wonderful, and I work with them often. But depending on how sensitive a person is, they certainly can also be irritating when people are over-exposed. There’s different grades of essential oils, to be sure, you know, therapeutic essential oils being a much higher quality than many others. And having those on the little balsam sticks can be a nice thing, but they, you know, for some people, they can be overwhelming, but for most people, they’re very nice. And they don’t put particulates in the air like incense and other things do.
F: Okay, I’m a big fan of essential oils. I have the little cigarette lighter oil, I don’t know what it’s called, but it plugs into the cigarette lighter in your car, and I put little essential oils in there, I do a lot of peppermint and a lot of orange-y blends, and it just lifts my mood right up, and I do that everyday in my office, too.
M: Well, I have a muslin teabag that I keep full of herbs on my dashboard, and I tell you, people comment when they smell it, all the time. I mean, if I pull up to, say, a coffee stand, which, by the way, I get tea at, they’ll go, “What is that scent in your car, it’s beautiful!” And it’s just the little bag sitting on the heater vent in my car, and as I turn the heat on, it blows through, and it’s nice.
F: That’s clever!
M: Well, and those can be on heater vents around the house too, it’s just really nice.
F: So what herbs do you stick in there?
M: Well, sometimes I put lavender in, but I’m finding that some people are sensitive to lavender, so I don’t always put that in. I really like cedar and sage, they’re really nice for women that are in their fifties, they’re hormone regulating and quite nice. I like bergamot an awful lot, too. So, bergamot, sage, and cedar are probably my favorite at the moment.
F: Oh, I like that. Well, before we move on from the fragrance topic, I just wanted to say about the citrus fruit, I like peeling citrus, and then squeezing the skin, because it squirts the essential oils of the skin when you pinch it, and I like squeezing it on my skin, because then it’s like a fragrance straight from the peel, that just, you can feel it and see it squirt onto your skin, and there’s your essential oil with your snack.
M: And it so, just so fresh and uplifting, I just love it. It’s just so wonderful. And then you get to eat the orange!
F: Oh, I know, that’s just great this time of year for our moods!
M: Yes, it really is.
F: That’s great. Well, let’s move on to safety, because, you know, I’m in healthcare and I was trained a ton in safety, and I noticed that safety is a big deal in people’s minds, especially folks who have been, you know, I think there’s some conditioning that things aren’t safe unless it’s in a package and FDA approved and regulated, so, really what I want to actually talk about is the argument for animal testing, because a lot products out there today are tested on animals, and I know a lot of people are worried about that from an ethical standpoint. I’m not a proponent of animal testing, especially, well, in anything, but I know that in our personal care products, this argument, there’s a strong side to it, being that our products are safer when they’ve been rigorously tested on animals. So, what would you say to counter this argument about products that aren’t tested on animals, and their safety?
M: Well, several things. I mean, and, the one, to me, being the most important, if there are ingredients in there that are questionable, then let’s not worry. And, you’ve heard the joke about my products, where I’ve had naturopaths say, “These products are so clean, you can practically spread them on your toast.” I mean, you know, you want products that have ingredients that are practically edible. I mean, they’re going on your skin, they’re being absorbed into your body. If any ingredient on the label says ethyl anything or -ene, you know, propylene, or any, it’s like, no, these are not okay! Just avoid the product in itself. So, there’s that side of it, I mean first, just, you know, we all need to back up to the point of, well why are we even needing to research that deeply into ingredients or, well yeah, ingredients, but to have to test. I mean, a lot of my ingredients have beeswax, well, that’s edible, and we’re beekeepers, we know where a lot of our beeswax comes from. They have olive oil, or grape oil, or avocado oil, or almond oil, these are all edible oils. A few of them have coconut oil in them, and then there’s others that have things that cleanse your lungs, paprika, cayenne. You know, different herbs that we grow, and/or, you know, source fair trade, and these are all edible. So if you are sticking with a company where you can understand the ingredients, and to me that’s so key, you can understand their labels, and you can understand the ingredients, then why would we need to animal test?
F: I love it, I love it. And especially the point about it being good enough that you could practically it eat. That’s actually been my standard for a long time, and I think your products are the, I don’t think, I know, that they are the cleanest personal care product I have come across, and I’ve explored a lot, high and low, and what I love about yours is that they’re also affordable, so that’s why I continue to use them. I do think it’s important to have products that are that good, that I could actually go and make them in my kitchen, like, you know, an avocado mask. One that I bought from you that I really loved is the paprika…
M: Oh, exfoliant!
F:…exfoliant with poppy seed. And when I taste it, it’s really delicious, I mean, I’m not literally trying to eat it, but sometimes it just goes into my mouth, and it’s like, “This is yummy!”
M: And it’s perfectly safe!
F: I know, so it’s just a reminder, but thank you, that’s a great answer just about keeping it simple and natural. So, you know, along the lines of this safety topic, how have you continued to achieve an environmentally friendly product that is safe for the environment and it still manages to be affordable. Because I know you’ve put a lot of thought into your packaging, your processing, and the final result being good for people and good for the environment?
M: Well, there’s, well, can we back up for just a minute, Francis?
F: Oh sure!
M: Something really important that I want to interject here, thinking of safety is please be on the watch out for products that are made with very healthy ingredients, but don’t have any type of preservative in them. And this will come down to understanding your ingredients. But, I do want to through in there that it is essential to have a preservative in products, especially if they have any water in them, but even oil-based products, so that you don’t open yourself up to, you know, bacterias and fungus and things like that. And, we do use a very safe preservative in our product, it actually is from the ferment from kimchi, and it actually is separated from a lab, so it’s a lacto-ferment from radish, and it is separated in a lab, and isolated so that it can be used as a cosmetic preservative. And it once again goes back to something that’s edible and safe for our bodies, but it will kill bacteria and fungus. So I just want to through that out there, because there are a lot of products out there that are being made, and that are safe, that can be made in your own kitchen, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to grow something on there that’s going to be undesirable.
F: Wow, I had no idea. That’s really fascinating.
M: Yeah, so, well, that’s an important thing to be [unclear]
F: Mmmmhmmm, oh, I am.
M: Because I do occasionally see this products around, and I’m like, “Oh, my goodness.”
F: So you can’t just go and put like, some sauerkraut juice in your face wash and call it preserved, you actually have to get the kind that’s lacto-ferment, it’s an isolate.
M: Well yeah, they actually isolate the constituent in there that will work, and then it’s very concentrated, because it’s only that constituent that you’re adding to your product, whereas if it was diluted down, it won’t work.
F: That’s so interesting. Great, yeah, thank you for putting that out. There’s more to think about, I’m glad that you’re making these products and not me. Okay, so, tell us then about the safety aspect as far as the environment and how you’ve managed to keep it healthy for the environment.
M: Sure. Well, first of all, we grow using organic practices on our farm. So, you know, I have children here, I have animals here, I’m a chemically sensitive person, so if it can’t be around our family, then I don’t it to be around your family. So, you know, we live also on land, a piece of land, where we have a well, and if we were to put anything toxic here, it would end up in our well water, and it would end up down at the lake that we swim in, so guarantee that we’re not going to do anything that’s harmful to the earth, and so what do we do to help make sure these ingredients are safe? We grow them, we wild-harvest them in areas that we know are pristine, and the ones we purchase, we source through very reputable suppliers that have been in business long-term, that have a very strong record of supporting only sustainably-sourced, fair-trade, organic ingredients. So that’s how we do it. And then, you know, we work really hard to come up with a packaging system that was better for the environment than using plastic bottles and thing like that, which infuse products with the chemicals from the bottles. We take all of our products back, or all of our packaging back, and we will make sure they stay out of the landfill and they’ll be recycled, and most of them will be reused.
F: And then, you even have considered the shipping method, trying to find the most sustainable, which I think is cool.
M: Oh absolutely, because the whole thought, we ship all over the country, and the whole that of our company putting more shipping trucks on the road to meet our business needs to us, was just wrong, we couldn’t bear it. So we realized that if we used the United States Postal Service, all of those little trucks were going to all those mailboxes all over the country already, and we would not be adding to more fuel waste. And so, we ship USPS, and, you know, your mail carrier comes to your mailbox anyway, and they just come carrying our boxes with them.
F: I think that’s great. Very good, Marilene. I can tell that you have a big heart for this.
M: This is a passion, for sure. You know, this is really a personal issue for me on so many levels, I mean one, I got really sick being in the industry, I was so sick being exposed to products, I couldn’t even go into other stores, because if someone walked by me wearing fragrance, I would be home with a big, big migraine, and you know, I have kids, and I want my kids to have better chances and better choices than I did growing up, as most of parents do, and even those who aren’t parents, who want the next generation to have more choices, and better ones. And you know, I also have a female daughter, and when she really started getting more into the idea of hair care products and things like that, she’s got beautiful curly hair, I started looking at that industry also, and felt very passionate about expanding my line to include products for thick, curly hair, so this, yeah, this is definitely a, I wouldn’t say a labor, but it definitely a love of mine.
F: So, you mentioned the personal products that you grew up on, and I’m wondering if you would just share with us a few of the common brands that are available in the mainstream world, which ones you think are the most dangerous. Like, if you could give a list of the top five or so.
M: Well, it would be hard to say brands, it’s more about ingredients, because, here’s the tricky thing: there are certain companies out there, one that uses bees a lot in their advertising and in their name that is no longer a family-owned business, and there’s another one in Maine that is no longer privately owned, and, you know, those two companies are owned by Clorox and Colgate-Palmolive, and what happens is they start out as sweet little family companies like ours, and they get bought out by large corporations, and then ingredients start changing. So, once again, it goes back to knowing your ingredients, and knowing at least the biggest things to avoid in ingredients.
F: Okay. Do you have any resources that we could look at, or that you might recommend for learning about those ingredients?
M: Absolutely. The Environmental Working Group is fabulous, and they have some really good resources. Actually, I’m going to send you a list for your blog that has the ten most unwanted ingredients, and it’s only ten, but it’s a good start, you know, because my goal is to give folks, you know, your listeners, something that they can carry with them, or go through their cupboard and look at that, the ingredients, and go, “Okay, this is why this isn’t okay for my family.” So, it’s a good start. I want to mention the Environmental Working Group is a non-profit, they need support, they’re a wonderful group, and same with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, but there are a few things to know about them, and you don’t mind me mentioning them, Francis?
F: Oh, please do! Please!
M: Okay, so, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a non-profit, and they’re a wonderful non-profit, and their heart is in the right place, but they had their window of opportunity for companies to list open for a very short time, and companies were self-monitoring, so not every company that is listed there is actually a safe company, so you need to do your research, there’s a lot of company that even the distributors of the products, because some of them are not actually the companies who listed their, like they’re multi-level companies and that sort of thing, the distributors didn’t even realize what the ingredients were, some of the products that were listed on there. And so, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics could not monitor the listing, and so they closed it. And so, companies are not able to list anymore, and it’s really up to the consumer to check those companies out, and not just trust that because they’re on that list, that it’s safe and they’re okay.
F: Okay. And so that’s safecosmetics.org. And then the Environmental Working Group is ewg.org/skindeep. And we’ll put all of that on the website, too.
M: Okay, great!
F: Thank you. Okay, so, can you just take us through a routine, you know, being that you have all this background and knowledge about taking care of skin, can you just help recommend a skin care routine, like, daily or weekly?
M: Sure. For the average person, and, you know, there is going to be some variation depending on our skin type and our lifestyle and that sort of thing. But for most people, using a very gentle, nice, fragrance-free face wash is very important, fragrances can irritate the skin, and cleansers that are too harsh, often aimed at people with oily skin and acne, send our skin the signal to create more oil, and it actually stimulates the oil glands, and the people end up with more acne and more oil on their face. So have a very well-balanced, pH-balanced, gentle, fragrance-free face wash is the first starting point. And then a moisturizer that, I say weight, meaning the density, or thickness, or richness being appropriate for your skin type, and that’s going to vary with each person. We have four different weights, starting with the Skin Repair Complex being the lightest, the Daily Moisturizer being the second heaviest, or lightest, the Frankincense-Rose Collagen Cream being middle-weight, and the Nourishing Night Cream being a very traditional, rich, nourishing night cream that’s heaviest. So, you would want to moisturize. Oh, I’m sorry, cleanse, and then tone, and then moisturizer. And a toner helps to do several things, it can help take redness out of the skin, it can help to de-sensitize the skin, it can help to clarify pores and to shrink pores, and to stimulate collagen, depending on the ingredients, and frankincense is known for that, so we use that in one of our toners. Or, an astringent if you have oily skin, which is drawing, meaning to pull, so it will help to pull impurities out of the skin, yet, it will also help to nourish the skin, because ours has several different herbs in there that help to tonify and nourish the skin, and help it deal with excess oil and infection from things like acne.
F: And so, is that the Herbal Astringent that you were just mentioning?
M: Yes.
F: Because, it’s just so cool to see the ingredients, like apple cider vinegar, lemon balm, chamomile, rose, rosemary sage, and yarrow, and, of course, vitamin E, I don’t know if I missed any, but I just think those are, they just sound so gentle and loving, to me, when I look at those ingredients.
M: Well, my philosophy has always been that we need to nourish our bodies. We need to help our bodies do what they were made to do. We have these beautiful machines, temples…
F: That’s beautiful!
M: …our bodies are amazing! Sometimes they need some support, and sometimes we need to help them with some things, but really if we nourish our body, our bodies will do it all for us.
F: Well said, working with the body. Okay, and, so, I’m the kind of person that probably is, shouldn’t be doing sometimes the things that I do, like going into my kitchen and just making a face product, but I do it anyways. One that I use, and I’m curious what you think of this, is I’ll just take some simple vegetable oil, and I rotate it, so sometimes it’s almond oil, sometimes it’s safflower, or no, wait, sorry, sunflower, I’ve stopped using grapeseed recently, but you know, just, I mean, in the summertime when it’s hot, I’ll do coconut oil, and I usually end up adding some essential oils, and I put it all over my skin, and it’s on a daily basis, and then I’ll take the plain version, without the essential oils, and I use that as a makeup remover, so I guess that’s not too dangerous or anything like that, I mean….
M: No, that’s great!
F:…they’re probably not introducing any bacteria and fungus in that. I’m curious what you think.
M: As long as you’re not dipping your hand in there, you know, you’re fine. So, putting it in a pump bottle or something is much better, because it’s when we’re putting our hands in products that we’re introducing more bacteria, or opportunity for things to grow. But, you know, using your own oils is a wonderful thing, be careful with your essential oils, you want to make sure you have a good therapeutic grade, you want to make sure that you’re not using any that would make you photosensitive, and, you know, because, you might like the scent of the essential oil, but you want to think about the way it’s going to work in your body. And then, there’s also the whole spectrum of, you know, Ayurveda and thinking about cooling and the energetics of the plants. So, you want to be careful there.
F: Yeah, you’re right. And I had a friend, he used to take freshly harvested sage, and he’d crush it and mix it with coconut oil, and, to me, it smelled terrible, but he was such a fan, to me, he smelled like an olive, and he loved it, but I don’t know if it was just the manufacturing, but anyways, this whole interview has helped me really take a step back to appreciate just how much goes into creating these products. How much knowledge has to be behind it. So, with all of this, do you have any thought that you’d like to share in closing?
M: Well, you mean thoughts and looking for products out there in the world, or…?
F: So, I would say, well, we can back up and first of all, mention where people can find you, because I definitely want them to be able to know how to find you outside of my website, where this podcast will be posted.
M: Okay. So, they can find us at songcroftnaturals.com. That’s song as in music, croft as in a small family farm, naturals dot com. And we’re also on Facebook, of course, and Twitter, but all of our products with all the ingredients are listed on our website, and you’ll find that, you’ll find the instructions on how to use them, and how to group them together, and we have products, you know, skin care is what we mostly spoke about today, but there’s also body care products, and I do have an herbal line that is on there, too.
F: Yeah, speaking of the body care, I, just for the audience, I bought a couple things, I bought for my sister the Baby Bum’s Body Butter, is that what it’s called?
F: She’s so careful about the ingredients she puts on her baby’s bum, so I bought her your wonderful cream, and then I just bought my dad a gift certificate, so that he could just select for himself which product he wants, and I think guys don’t get enough attention, they don’t think about their skin, they haven’t really been trained, and maybe they need to be given permission, but my dad’s pretty cool about taking care of his skin, and I’m getting my husband into it, so we actually share your products. And I like the Headache Remedy that you have, too. That’s a really nice one.
M: It is, it’s very soothing.
F: Is that like an herbal formula?
M: That is, and actually, part of, I forgot to mention that part of my background is an herbalist, I am an herbalist, and I’m just finishing my professional herbalist certification, and then I’ll be finishing my masters, and I do have an herbal line which is mostly sold just to health care providers, and it’s not on my website, well bits of it are on my website, but I do have a large herbal apothecary, so if there are health care providers that are interested, they can contact me directly through my website.
F: Wow. See? Yet another talent you just pulled out of your sleeve. You keep doing this Marilene, you’re just full of fun surprises! Great, okay, so is there anything else that we didn’t cover that we want to today?
M: Well, I just want to encourage people to just look at those ingredients out there, and make sure that they can understand those labels, because if you can’t understand the labels, don’t buy the product. And also to look at our website, and also look at our ethics page on our website, because that’ll tell a lot about who we are and why we make the choices that we do, and if nothing else, it will help you decide on what to look for with other companies, if you purchase from them.
F: And, about the ethics, I just want to jump in and just kind of share, because I think that your ethics are admirable. You practice truth in labeling, you mentioned your organic ingredients and your sustainable processes, you know, fair-trade, I think that that’s excellent and beautiful, you also care about people’s health, so you think about your ingredients being, how they effect people’s health, and also the environment’s health, and that you’re family owned, I love that, I think it’s so important to support small businesses, and zero waste, no animal testing, you take great care in your packaging, I love that they’re glass, because they don’t leach BPA, and who knows, you know, whatever else might be in plastic. So, yeah, anyways, obviously I’m a fan.
M: And we consider good personal care products to be a national health care issue, so, it’s really important to us to help educate people, but also make the products affordable, because, you know, the folks that need the most health care are the ones who need help affording them.
F: Very true, okay. Yes, well, thank you! I’m just grateful that I could do this interview with you today, because, for me, skin care is a huge deal, and I’ve written blog posts about this in the past, how important it is to use products that support your health and don’t destroy your health, and how easy it is to not realize how much a product is effecting you, fortunately, we’ve moved almost entirely to really healthy products, we still have a few things that we haven’t worked out, like our hair gel, I heard you can make hair gel out of flax seed, but other than that.
M: Yeah, but it spoils really fast, so keep it in the fridge, and only keep it for a few days.
F: Okay, yeah, I’m going to have to research, let me know if you get some hair gel going on in your product line. And, you know, I’ve got my mom, she’s moving a lot towards natural, which is great, and, so, anyways, it’s just really, really important to me, this is an issue that I care about deeply too, so I’m glad that we could bring this to the audience together, and I think it’s clear that I’m a big fan of your products, because I’m like, you know, promoting them, but, you know, of course, people will now have resources to, if they go back to the website, you guys can get resources for some of the links that Marilene mentioned, and learn about the ingredients for when you are shopping, wherever you decide to go, you’ll be empowered with some good consumer knowledge, we all need the right consumer knowledge. So, yeah, so, thank you so much, Marilene, I really appreciate it!
M: Well thank you, Francis, this was really great and fun, and I really appreciate it too! And thanks to everyone who listened.
F: Yes. You help to make a healthier world, one good product at a time. Yes, and thanks to everyone who listened. So, Marilene, have a wonderful day!
M: Okay, you also!
F: Thank you! Bye bye!
M: Bye for now!
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So how was that? Isn’t Marilene a sweetie? You can tell that she has a lot of heart and passion for both people and the planet, and I definitely admire that quality. And, I do believe that the products that we use in our personal care definitely support or damage our health. It’s kind of one of those things that if you want the healthy products, you’re going to pay a little more now so that you can have better health later, but if you refuse to paying now, and you buy the cheap stuff, well then, you end up paying, because inevitably, it does effect your health and, that shows up later on in your life. So, I’m more of a pay now, enjoy later kind of gal.
And I just want you to know, I don’t actually receive any kickbacks for promoting this brand and interviewing Marilene today, I just happen to believe in it 100%, and I use it myself, I use these products, and I buy them for my family, and, of course, the big point of this interview was to share with you the value of using healthy products, even if you pay a little bit more now, that it’s so important that you kind of can’t put a price tag on your health, so, I definitely hope that we helped convey that message to you, my friends, and, as promised, Marilene did provide a guide for the top ten ingredients to avoid. And, I’ll be posting those at namastenutritionist.com/avoidtoxicskincare, and that’s the blog post where this interview will be linked. And, we’re also providing the links that we mentioned in the interview to help you evaluate your personal care products and so you can just, again, go to namastenutritionist.com/avoidtoxicskincare. And, it’s, yeah, it definitely going to be wonderful for you to use those resources to learn how your current products stack up, some of them may be really good, and then others you might be disheartened to learn that they’re not great, but then you can replace them with something that is great, and if you have products that are really good, I’d love it if you’d tell me because I always am interested in learning what great brands are out there. And of course, if you aren’t on my newsletter, please do come to namastenutritionist.com and jump on board with us, and if you liked this interview and you feel like you learned something from this podcast, please do share the love on Facebook or Twitter, you can also rate on iTunes, I think it’s really important to share powerful knowledge with people, because it helps, it helps everybody, I mean, we just can’t deny that, and I’m just so grateful that this is an information age where we don’t have to be in the dark anymore. Isn’t that just beautiful? So do share it, and I hope that you join the newsletter list, and I look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks so much! Take care!
