My guest is Donya Fahmy, CEO, Founder, and Formulator for Dropwise Essentials—a health and wellness company specializing in premium aromatherapy and natural solutions for personal care. She is the author of author of Aromatherapy and the Expectant Mom: A Woman’s Guide to the Best Essential Oils for a Holistic Pregnancy. We’ll be talking about how to recognize toxic and natural ingredients on product labels and how natural products can improve health conditions. Inspired by her avid interest in alternative medicine and her personal experience using essential oils and herbs to successfully treat what doctors and traditional medicine couldn’t, Donya created the formulations that make up the Dropwise product line as a practical way to share the simple yet amazing benefits of “flower power.” 
By incorporating synergistic blends into everyday personal care products, that make people feel and smell great, she helps consumers recognize plants as a safe, effective, and environmentally sound alternative to pharmaceuticals, Over-the-Counter (OTC) medications, and mass-produced and potentially toxic personal care products. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/dropwise-essentials
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How To Read Labels on Personal Care Products & Use Natural Products to Benefit Your Health
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Donya Fahmy
Date of Broadcast: September 16, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world.
And we do need to learn how to thrive in a toxic world because there are many, many, many toxic chemicals. We live in an industrial society where most of what is created by it is toxic. And there’s a way of thinking that goes along with that. And we need to step out of that and see that there are other options, things that support health instead of destroying it.
And that’s what we talk about on this show. We talk about how to recognize what is being harmful to your health, what’s toxic, and how to become familiar with many of the other wonderful options there are that are life-supporting and enjoyable to participate in.
So, today is Monday, September 16, 2013. The sun is shining, so we won’t have any problems with thunderstorms today. But I am having this little computer glitch going on. And if we run into it during the show, just hold on because I’ll be right back. I’ll do my best to not have it be a problem during the show.
I just wanted to mention too, something came up last week with one of my clients who wrote to me a question about choosing a safer product and wanted my opinion about which was the best. And then she said to me, “Well, I’m not going to be able to do anything about this” because she had to have this particular thing done to her house and that was the only way to do it.
And I wrote back to her because there are many things that we can do things about and there are many things that we can’t do things about. But the point is not to be 100% eliminating all the toxic chemicals that you might encounter. That’s actually not even necessary.
What is necessary is to eliminate as many toxic exposures as you can, a significant portion of your toxic exposures, so that your body has the opportunity to do its own regenerative processes and stay healthy. And it can tolerate a certain amount of toxic chemicals. But most people can’t tolerate the amount of toxic chemicals that they’re exposed to if they did nothing to control or eliminate them.
There are also many things that you can do to support your body in being able to be more tolerant of toxic chemicals and help your body process toxic chemicals out.
So, if you think you can’t do everything, that’s okay. It’s okay. Just do what you can do. Do the things that are most important to do. And then, don’t sweat it because you just want to just be gradually, at your own pace, moving into a life that has less toxic exposure to it.
Some people do it all at once like I did. But just every time you make a choice, if you can make a choice that’s less toxic, that actually helps. If you hear something on one of my radio shows that sounds interesting to you, pursue it. And one by one, you’ll make this transition from living in a toxic world to living at toxic-free life.
Today, we’re going to be talking about personal care products and about how natural products can benefit your health. You don’t have to be using toxic drugs. You don’t have to be using expensive medical interventions because your body can heal itself given the right things.
So, we’re going to be talking about some of that today, and also, how you can tell what is toxic and what’s not toxic when you’re choosing personal care products.
My guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And I see there’s a typo on my website where it says that she’s a chemist. That’s not correct. And we’re going to fix that. I’m going to e-mail, during the break, I’ll e-mail my assistant and she’ll fix that.
But Donya, she does know what she’s doing with aromatherapy. Dropwise Essentials is a health and wellness company specializing in premium aromatherapy and natural solutions for personal care.
Welcome, Donya.
DONYA FAHMY: Hi, Debra. Thanks for having me here.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. How are you this morning?
DONYA FAHMY: I’m good, thank you.
DEBRA: Good! So tell us how you got interested in all the natural things that you do.
DONYA FAHMY: I ended up starting Dropwise Essentials in much the same way that a lot of entrepreneurs do, which is they end up having a personal need in their life, and they can’t find a good solution for it, so then they decided they want to come up with the solution for it themselves.
So, my story began about almost 20 year ago—maybe a little bit more actually at this point, I’ve lost track. But I was having some recurring health challenges. And the worst of them, of course, for me, was these recurring bouts of eczema. And this went on for about seven years. So I’d get them usually once a year, sometimes twice a year. And to this day, I still don’t know exactly what cause them. I just know that when it happened, I would be absolutely miserable. Sometimes the itching was so intense, I’d scratch myself in my sleep until I bled.
And during that period, a seven-year period, I went to a parade of dermatologists and doctors, looking for answers and solutions, using traditional medicine—which is what I was raised with. But none of them were able to help me to get through the bottom of the problem to figure out what was causing it. And they all pretty much prescribed the same thing, the same medicines, and none of them really worked.
So, I began to worry that I was headed down a dangerous path of depending on harsh medicine—and in this particular case, it was cortisone—and not making any progress really towards identifying and eliminating the cause of the problem and healing, getting over it.
So I finally got really fed up and frustrated. I just hit a wall at one point. I was like, “This is not working for me. There’s just got to be another way.”
And at that point in time, I had a little bit of an epiphany. I was like, “I’m just going to take matters into my own hands here.”
And I can’t honestly say at that time that I really knew what I was doing, but I was determined to find a way.
And so, at that time, I’ve already been dabbling in aromatherapy just as a hobby for personal pleasure. I had acquired a small collection of essential oils and a variety of books on the subject. So I just delved in and started researching, which essential oils are good for the skin, as well as other types of oils, and which ones are good for reducing inflammation.
And I said, “What the hell?” I jumped in and made my own little blend. I diluted it in a base of certified organic jojoba oil. And some people don’t know what that is. Jojoba is spelled J-O-J-O-B-A. And the reason I did that is because when you’re working on essential oils, you should never just apply them straight to your skin. You always want to dilute them first. And jojoba is an excellent skin care oil. And it’s also very widely used in aromatherapy. So I read that in many of my books.
So, I took my blend, and I applied it topically all over several times a day for a couple of days. And I was just amazed at how quickly it got my itching and inflammation under control. And we’re talking a couple of days here after years and years of doing calamine lotion and hydrocortisone creams and all these things, over-the-counter and prescription things, and anti-histamines that didn’t work.
And so, for the first time—in retrospect, I can say this now—the first time, my skin and my body had a fighting chance to heal itself without all this interference from the prescription and all the over-the-counter medications.
And so, once that cleared up, I had one more recurring episode. And of course, instead of going to the doctor, I just pulled up my little blend, and applied it. And then this time, I added an herbal tincture for liver support because I read in a book about Chinese medicine that conditions of the skin are often tied to problems with your liver or your lungs. And I was convinced at that point I time that it was the liver.
And so, when that episode cleared up, I was completely free of eczema for seven years after that. I don’t know if there’s any significance to the numbers. I had this condition for seven years. It just dogged me without any resolution. And then, it completely disappeared for seven years after I adopted this new holistic approach to dealing with it. And that too is an epiphany for me.
So, I suddenly became extremely interested in herbs, in flowers, and plants as medicine. And I started my research on how I could use these ingredients to create every day products that would help other people achieve optimal health and wellness.
By the way, the blend I just described eventually became the first product in the Dropwise Essentials product line. It’s our certified organic body oil in a blend called Soothe.
DEBRA: We need to take a break, but we’re going to hear more about everything that you have to tell us when we come back from the break. And I also want to tell our listeners about an experience I had with clearing up eczema, so we’ll do that when we come back.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. And she’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And that’s at Dropwise.com
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here today with my guest, Donya Fahmy.
She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And she makes some wonderful aromatherapy products.
Before the break, I mentioned that I wanted to just tell my experience with eczema—and not with me personally. But many, many years ago—many years ago, like 30 years ago—I was very sensitive to chemicals. And I used to faint when I would take a shower from the chlorine fumes. It’s actually what’s coming out of your shower if you don’t have a shower filter—chloroform.
That stuff is very toxic, it’ll knock you out. They pour it on a cloth and put it over your nose. That’s in those old movies when they would do that and knock people out. And that’s what’s coming out of your shower. I would faint when I took a shower.
And so, my father decided that he would rig up a shower filter. This is before. Nobody had a shower filter at that time. And so he went down to the hardware store and got a carbon filter, and rigged it up. And it was very ugly because it was designed to go under the sink. But it did the job, and I didn’t faint. And there was no more chloroform coming through.
I started telling my friends about this. One of my friends had eczema very much all over her body and was putting cortisone on it—and that didn’t even help. About three days after showering with no chlorine or chloroform or any of that coming out of the shower water, she had absolutely no eczema.
And I mentioned this because, so many times, I see this over and over and over where there are all these consumer products that make you sick, and then our industrial system has a remedy for the illness that has been caused by the consumer product. For example, you wash your hair, and you strip out all the natural oils, and then you have to put conditioner on it. It just goes down the list. I could just give you many, many examples of this.
But it’s the same thing too. I don’t know what was causing your eczema, Donya. And I am very happy that your aromatherapy healed it up, but it would have been interesting to me to see if there was some consumer product irritating it. And I think that the aromatherapy did its job beautifully. That’s what I wanted to say.
DONYA FAHMY: That’s so interesting. I have not heard that about the filtering the shower. I mean, I know now that’s a really common thing. I’m sure back then, it was still a foreign concept.
DEBRA: It was! You wouldn’t have known that 20 years ago. The point here being is that there are many ways to clear up any health condition. And it can have many causes. And that was just another interesting one related to toxic exposure.
DONYA FAHMY: Absolutely! We’re not all one size fits all. We’re all unique individuals with our own unique genetic imprints and our different environmental situations. And I think one of the, I would say, “failings” of the western medical approach is it tries to be too cookie cutter and too one-size-fits-all in terms of the prescription and the chemicals that they recommend.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you.
DONYA FAHMY: And I think that may be part of the issue there too, is that when you don’t take into account those differences, then in many situations, it might work, and in other situations, it’s created more harm than doing good.
And unfortunately, that’s not something that we have enough knowledge about or control over. But I was just listening to you talk a little while ago, and you’re sort of echoing some of the things that are the philosophy behind what I adopted after this experience.
So, two things happened, which is, first, I became a fanatic label reader. I just became a fanatic, learning about what are all these ingredients in these products that I’m using, and what’s their purpose, and what’s their function. I became really aware suddenly of all chemicals and synthetic ingredients and everything in the marketplace and then all the products that I had been using up until that time. I couldn’t help but wonder if this played a role.
I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that it actually caused it, but it certainly could have played a role in creating the problem.
And if not, it might have played a role in, otherwise, somehow interfering with my body’s own natural ability to resolve it and heal it.
DEBRA: Toxic chemicals can do all kinds of things to bodies.
So, I know you’ve done a lot of research about reading labels. So you wanted to tell us about some of the ingredients to watch out for when you’re reading labels.
DONYA FAHMY: Actually, what I’d like to do, if it’s okay with you, is to share some tips on understanding how to read a label because I think that’s—
DEBRA: Sure, yes.
DONYA FAHMY: Basically, what I wanted to say is when I myself started my own research, and I was reading labels—and it was not just personal care, it’s everything like food—I just was overwhelmed. There’s just tens of thousands of chemicals in these products. It’s really frightening the way they do it.
And it became like a fool’s errand to try to understand what all that was. So I needed to come up with my own system for filtering and understanding and simplifying so I could decide. I made a decision at that point. I’d set some ground rules for myself about what I was going to allow into my life going forward and what I was not. And I think of a wise way to do it.
The first thing I want to share is I have something that I call my 5-7 rule. And so, something important to know—if people don’t already know this—is that the FDA requires companies to list ingredients in their products in the descending order of prevalence, the concentration. And so, I always tell people, look at the first five to seven ingredients because, 9 out of 10 times, those are going to be most prevalent in the product.
And that’s where you want to start. You want to make sure that those first five to seven ingredients don’t have any really toxic or questionable ingredients in there.
So, for example, if you’re talking about moisturizers—lotions, creams. At the end of the day, the moisturizer is mostly just water and oil with some kind of agent to emulsify (because water and oil don’t mix, so it need something to help it stay together), and then a preservative to inhibit the growth of mold and bacteria because there’s water in the product.
So, when you’re looking at a lotion, for example, the first ingredient on that label should be water. Aqua-something is what they call it. And if it’s not, then I would just steer clear from that because some of these companies are making these products with all sorts of chemicals.
DEBRA: We want to hear more about this after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator of Dropwise Essentials. And she makes wonderful aromatherapy products. We’ll be back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy, CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. They make aromatherapy products.
Before the break, we were talking about reading labels. Donya, what are the top five ingredients that you would recommend people never use?
DONYA FAHMY: My top five, without getting too much into it—because obviously, we don’t have a lot of time here today—sulfates are on the top of my list. And those are commonly found in liquid soap products, shampoos, body washes, and that sort of thing.
DEBRA: So, that would be like sodium lauryl sulfate?
DONYA FAHMY: Yes, absolutely. SLS is the most common one that people are familiar with. And there are variations on it like ammonium lauryl sulfate and ammonium laureth sulfate. These are cousins of the same ingredients.
Those are all synthetic. And they’re all very harsh. And they’re not just found in shampoos, by the way. They’re also found in toothpastes and mouthwashes. They’re extremely cheap, but they’re also quite harmful. So, that’s near the top of my list.
The next one, people have probably already heard this, which is parabens. Those are most commonly used as preservatives.
But the problems is they’re so widely used. But typically, there will in 2% or less concentration in any products, but they’re in almost every product. And so, the danger comes from the constant, repetitive exposure and cumulative. So, if you’re using these products, like several of them several times a day, and all of them are preserved with types of ingredient, that’s also definitely one I would eliminate as much as humanly possible.
And then, the third one I talk about that not too many people talk about is triclosan. It’s commonly found in antibacterial soaps and washes and the hand sanitizers. This is a derivative of Agent Orange. It’s highly, highly, highly toxic. Not only is not good for you, it’s also really bad for the environment. It gets washed down the drain into landfills and streams. And it’s leading to something called a phenomenon called super bugs which is new, more virulent bacterial strains that are becoming more highly resistant to antibiotics. So, those are three.
The other one that I dislike intensely is something called propylene glycol. And that is used in antifreeze actually. It’s one of the main ingredients in [unintelligible 20:16]. It’s used in products to help moderate them, so they don’t get widely altered in high or low temperature situations. That’s one of its functions. But that one too is one of the sneaky ones that is showing up.
And it shows up in food products too. If you eat packaged and processed food—and I highly recommend that you don’t. But if you do, sometimes, you’ll find that ingredient in there too.
DEBRA: I’ve seen it in food products. And I recommend that people just eliminate all packaged and processed food products, and just eat fresh food and learn how to cook—just like we should be putting fresh ingredients on our skin, real natural stuff.
DONYA FAHMY: Ideally, yes. And then the last of these, this is a nebulous one too, it’s called phthalates. I know it’s a tongue twister there. Phthalates are unidentified compounds that are normally found and put on the label as fragrance or parfum (which his the French term for perfume).
And the problem with that is that because they’re components of fragrance, and not the actual ingredient, there’s no regulation around that. The FDA doesn’t require companies that use those to disclose that.
And so, fragrances are these complex […] chemicals. And they often contain these phthalates. Phthalates are industrial chemicals that are used as plasticizers. That means they’re used to soften plastics. So you can just imagine if it can soften a plastic, what might it be doing inside your body, especially if it ends up getting lodged in your body, and it can’t work its way out. So, that is a big no-no on my list.
And of course, essential oils—being the aromatherapy lady, I’d say essential oils are far superior alternatives or substitutes to anything with that term fragrance.
So, be aware when you’re reading labels. If it says fragrance on it, question mark.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything that’s made with fragrance has that in there. But there’s just really no way of knowing just by reading the label.
DEBRA: There’s no way of knowing. And if it says fragrance, you can be sure that it is synthetic fragrance, and it’s made with thousands of synthetic chemicals. But if it says essential oil as an ingredient, and that means it’s a natural essential oil, yes?
DONYA FAHMY: Yes. So, there’s a little bit of a twist there in that what happens is—you know, everything has a chemical structure to it, including plants and natural substances. And what happens with these synthetics is they’re designed to mimic these natural substances because they have different chemical structures. And it’s the difference on the structure of the chemical composition that wreaks havoc to their bodies.
Like likes likes. Nature understands nature which is why our bodies respond to essential oils and herbs and plants because they both exist in nature.
Chemicals now are different. So when they come into your body, they’re almost like foreign objects in there. Your body doesn’t really understand what they are or how to metabolize them.
And there’s even some thinking right now in the scientific community that there’s a link between these chemicals and obesity because what happens is your body starts to create fat and then envelopes these toxins with fat to protect you. That’s what’s protecting you from harm. So it envelopes the toxins with fat. And then they get locked up, and then you can’t burn the fat off.
A lot of these people who diet, but they never seem to get anywhere, it’s something to think about. There could be a link there.
And if they start to really focus on eliminating toxins from their life, they might have more success with that.
DEBRA: I totally, totally agree with that.
So, when we come back from the break, which is going to be pretty soon—not quite yet, but very soon—when we come back from the break, I want you to tell us about your products and aromatherapy and what you have to offer. Especially, you said to me that you’ve created these formulations to be a practical way to share this simple, yet amazing benefits of flower power in people’s everyday lives.
And so, there are things that you can do to support your health and support your body functioning the way it is supposed to function by using these simple elements from nature.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy. She’s the CEO, founder and formulator for Dropwise Essentials. And we will be back in just a few minutes.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Donya Fahmy from Dropwise Essentials. Donya, tell us about your products.
DONYA FAHMY: So basically, from the very start when I was researching ingredients and trying to learn about them, I adopted a philosophy, so to speak, or a motto, which is if it’s not safe to put in your mouth, it’s not safe to put on your skin.
DEBRA: I agree.
DONYA FAHMY: Obviously, when you’re talking about personal care cosmetics, you can’t eat them, even ones that are made with natural ingredients. But you want to strive for a finish product that’s as close to something that you might be able to eat.
Of course, there are many companies out there, skin care companies, that make products with food and all that stuff. But with food, you need preservatives or it doesn’t have a very long shelf life or you need a refrigerator. So, I try to be as practical as possible.
I’ve researched ingredients. I wanted to find out which of these plant-based oils, nut oils, and coconut, things like that, that were hardy in and of themselves—that were hardy with a long shelf life. We could use a higher concentration of these oils that would minimize the need for additional preservatives and that sort of thing.
So, we use primarily certified organic and raw or very minimally processed plant-based ingredients. And of course, no synthetic or petroleum ingredients.
It makes sense if you think about it. It’s really a simple concept. If you use all plant-based and primarily organically farmed bio-based raw materials, that not only ensures the integrity and safety of products for everyday use, but it also supports and promotes sustainable farming and agricultural practices.
So, we are a green business, and that’s a really important part of what we do because, in turn, what that does is it reduces the overall amount of toxic pesticides that are used and it reduces the farming pollution. So, of course, organic farming is a whole big topic in and of itself, but it’s definitely connected to our philosophy of creating products.
The other piece is that a lot of aromatherapy products that are on the market, typically, they have what I call single note or double note, meaning one essential oil or primary essential oil—like lavender, of course, is really popular, or it might have a mint in it—or two oils, or maybe even three that go together. But they’re more designed for scent purposes, oils that go together that smell good as opposed to having some kind of synergistic or therapeutic application.
So, in my case, I really wanted to create synergistic blends. And so, that’s what ours are. Blends typically have anywhere from four to seven different essential oils, carefully selected to work together to create a synergy that’s uplifting and improve your mood and make you happy or a blend that will give you a little boost of energy, increase your circulation and help you get going, or one that calms and balances and grounds you when you’re feeling really anxious or stressed. So, that’s the approach.
And then, the thinking behind that is that, if you put these in everyday personal care products like lotions and body washes, et cetera, then you can just be using these products on a daily basis, and have the amazing benefits, the healing properties of the oil going to work for you.
So, if you lead a very stressful life now, for example, you can use one of our calming soothing blends like what I mentioned earlier. Use it in the shower in the morning, have a bottle of lotion in your purse or at your desk. And you just re-applying small amounts (because you really don’t need a lot, a little goes a long way), and you just inhale that and take that in. It just totally alters your mindset and how you’re feeling. And it calms your heart rate and your blood pressure. You can have these very subtle therapeutic effects.
Of course, we’re talking about personal care products. So we’re not using therapeutic concentrations at all because there are therapeutic concentrations in aromatherapy. But we, of course, don’t do that with our products because that would not be a wise choice. We need to make it in a way that’s usable for the widest possible audience.
DEBRA: I just like to point out something that I think some listeners might be confused about. You mentioned sodium lauryl sulfate earlier. And many, many, many years ago, one of the first things that I did like you is I just looked up all the ingredients.
I wanted to know what they were made from and I wanted to know which ones were toxic and which ones were made from petrochemicals.
And when I got to sodium lauryl sulfate, most of what I read was it’s made from coconut oil. And so I thought, “Oh, coconut oil, that’s fine. That’s not toxic. That’s not petrochemicals.” And a lot of websites now still will say, “Oh, we use sodium lauryl sulfate. It’s made from coconut oil.”
But what I learned was that it may start out as coconut oil, but it’s a processed, petrochemical, industrial—by the time they get done with it, it doesn’t resemble coconut oil at all. It’s just coconut oil just maybe the raw material, but then it’s mixed with other petroleum ingredients, and what I, at one point, decided to call a hybrid ingredient because it may start out natural, but it doesn’t end up being natural.
And I think that it’s really important to distinguish between those particularly in the natural products industry. They say, “Oh, it comes from coconut oil,” but that’s not the same as actual coconut oil that you use.
When you’re using an oil, you’re using a whole oil. It’s a whole food versus a fractionated food. You’re using these whole plant ingredients that come from nature. And that’s part of what makes it so wonderful.
I know you do a lot of education. So tell us about what you have to offer in that area.
DONYA FAHMY: I’ve been on a mission lately to educate and help pregnant women or women who are planning to become pregnant to adopt and get into this holistic lifestyle from early on and to protect themselves and their babies from these hidden health risks, from all these toxins.
So, I do a free one-hour training. I’m doing one actually tomorrow night at 5:30 Pacific time, 8:30 eastern, where I go into more detail about these top 10 worst toxic ingredients and what are some of the other statistics and research studies showing about how these ingredients are harming us, why it’s important to be aware of this, why it’s important to eliminate them.
And then, I do a little bit about essential oils, especially essential oils during pregnancy. There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation about what’s safe to use during pregnancy and what isn’t. And so I try to help clear that up for people and bust some of those common myths.
And so, that’s called How to Look Your Best without Compromising Your Baby’s Health.
And I also teach a teleclass where I go into some of this information much, much deeper. So, the paid class is designed to teach people to become expert label readers and learn how to compare product labels and know which chemical and toxic or what’s potentially toxic and what’s natural; and then, within the natural products world, learning how to navigate that minefield.
There are so many choices and options there, it’s really hard for someone who doesn’t know how to distinguish, “Am I getting what I’m paying for? I’m paying more for a higher quality product, but am I getting my money’s worth?”
And so, I teach a little bit about how to understand whether you’re overpaying for something that you don’t need to be overpaying for.
It’s expensive. It’s important that we take care of ourselves, and we have to look at that as an investment in our long-term health. But you also want to know what you’re getting. And what I tell people, there are all these fields, but what do all these fields mean—organic, natural, made with organic […] And at the end of the day, what I have to say is, if you just become an educated consumer, and you understand how to read labels, you don’t have to rely on those fields to guide you. Your knowledge is what will help you distinguish between things that are absolutely no-no, “I’m not going to touch that,” to the things that are, “Oh, this is really good for me? I’m going to go here,” or everything in between, which is, “Well, this has some ingredients in it that I’m not crazy about, but I’m willing to make that compromise.”
You mentioned that at the top of the hour which you can’t necessarily eliminate everything. But know what’s your enemy, what’s your worst enemy and your worst offenders, and make sure you can eliminate those.
DEBRA: For example, I think it’s really important for people to eliminate triclosan—period. They should eliminate lead—period.
There are just some chemicals that should not be in products. They should not be on the planet. Nobody should be anywhere near them, especially pregnant women, especially women who want to get pregnant. And it’s just important that we know what those are.
And then, there’s another list after that that’s like if you can do something about it, then do something about it. But there are some things that’s just—triclosan, it’s just so toxic that we just need to do the best we can.
So, we’ve just got about a minute left. So are there any closing words you’d like to give?
DONYA FAHMY: Well, I’d like to share the URL for people who might like to jump onto the free call, which is happening tomorrow, as I mentioned. So you can go to www.AromatherapyforPregnancy.com/Preview, and you can register for the call.
And I encourage anyone who’s interested to do that because, even if you can’t make it to the call, you’ll be able to listen to a replay of it through the end of the week.
And if you already know you want to learn more, then you can actually go register for my class. We’re doing a $100 discount tuition. And that’s just www.AromaTherapyForPregnancy.com. It will take you to that page.
DEBRA: And your website at Dropwise is just Dropwise.com. I’m looking here at different things. I’m looking at your website right now. And you’ve got some tabs across the top—one is Bath & Body. And that’s where you go to find all the personal care products that you’ve been talking about.
But you also have natural remedy blends and various aromatherapy things, essential oils, and all the things that go with that.
And you have some items for using natural aromatherapy in the home and for travel.
And that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much for being here with me. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk.
DONYA FAHMY: Thank you.
