How Proper Skin Caring Can Protect Your Child From Environmental Pollutants
 
"I didn't inhale"
 
Bill Clinton's famous remark is the perfect lead-in to the unseen dangers of toxins that don't have to be inhaled to cause biological damage to your child's body.  Chemicals, including heavy metals, in second-hand smoke, air pollution, car exhaust, industrial fumes, pesticides, as well as airborne microbes can penetrate the skin.

For children, this can lead to a lowered immune response, and impair their ability to fight off diseases and illnesses throughout their lifetime.

Where environmental pollutants are concerned, second-hand smoke ranks as one of the worst, followed by toxins, particulate matter, and ozone found in air pollution.

Clinical studies show that cell death in the basal layer -- the deepest layer of the epidermis -- increases by 30% after the skin is exposed to tobacco smoke for only 15 minutes.  Necrosis (death of tissue in the body) provoked by this exposure is irreversible, and can lead to impaired immune function of one of the body's primary immune organs.  The decrease in cellular viability continues to cascade 24 hours after the initial exposure.

What this means to you, as a parent, is that even short bursts of exposure to smoke-filled or highly-polluted environments will have long term effects on the health of your child.

The skin is one of the most important and hard-working organs of our immune system.  For babies this is even more so because several primary organs aren't fully functional until months following birth.

Its most obvious immune function is to act as a barrier, but less well-known is the fact that within the layers of the skin, an entire immune network is hard at work identifying, coding, and destroying foreign invaders that have made their way past the stratum corneum (the skin's outmost layer which, in adults, is the width of a human hair; in children, it is 20% thinner).

From birth, it is essential that you optimize your child's skin's ability to protect itself against environmental invaders with 5 easy steps:

Step 1:  Gently cleanse with soaps that won't strip the skin of its naturally occurring protective lipids (a water and oil-soluble sort of glue that holds skin cells tightly together).  Use bath soaps and wipes that don't contain sulfates, fragrances, SD alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, or propylene glycol.  All of these will destroy the skin's protective lipid barrier, allowing harmful chemicals to penetrate and cause irritation as well as cellular damage below the surface.  As a general rule, also avoid giving your child bubble baths.

Step 2:  Restore the lipid barrier immediately after bathing by slathering their little bodies with a moisturizer that is free of potential irritants such as: heavy fragrances, stearates, formaldehyde-donors (Quaternium-15, Bronopol, Imidazolidinyl or Diazolidinyl Urea, Germall II or 115, DMDM Hydantoin) and parabens.

Step 3:  Shield their skin from environmental toxins with an anti-pollution serum that contains gentle, yet powerful, marine and botanical complexes (white tea, green tea, algin or algae extract, Laminaria digitata, aloe vera, matricaria or chamomile, or tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate (stabilized vitamin C) that can neutralize toxic compounds before they can penetrate the skin, and/or help repair free radical damage that they cause below the surface.

Step 4:  Protect baby skin against future damage caused by UV with a safe zinc oxide-based sunscreen that will protect against both UVA and UVB without penetrating the skin -- in a baby-safe SPF15.  For school-aged children, teach them to apply and use sunscreen everyday, not just on outdoor-heavy days.  This simple routine will protect them against 80% of the skin damage that unprotected kids will experience in their lifetime.

Step 5:  Heal skin irritations like diaper rash, burns, minor cuts, scrapes, or bug bites with medicine-free solutions, such as mineral and botanical based ointments that utilize plant extracts and essential oils which calm and support the skin, as well as heal it.  Natural ingredients promote healing by providing the skin with what it needs to heal itself, thereby strengthening its own immune response in a way that drug ingredients will not.  Look for zinc oxide ointments enhanced with therapeutic grade (pharmaceutical grade) calendula, lavender, tea tree, linden, or chamomile.

Protect your child from the outside in, by setting the stage for a lifetime of skin health.