The Clean beauty movement has been on fire and with good reason. Nearly all of the skincare products we find on the shelves are layered with ingredients that our great grandparents have never seen before and we’re over it. It’s time for some natural products to grace our skin because what we’re using is determining what our skin feels + looks like now, and will inevitably set the course for how our skin will look + feel years from now, and that’s kind of important. Why? Our skin is the largest organ on our body, which only heightens the importance of why we need to do all the things to take care of it, but what does that look like?

We’ll Tell You What It Doesn’t Look Like
From parabens, phthalates, and sulfates to oxybenzone, triclosan, hydroquinone, and artificial fragrances, you can find all of these nasty ingredients and more in your skincare products. Is your head hurting from trying to read all of those harsh words, yet? Because ours is. All of these ingredients can be found in your makeup, nail polish, sunscreen, shampoos + conditioners, hair dyes, and the list goes on. We are sure some of you have experienced irritations from certain products, and what do we do? We throw it away and move onto something marked “sensitive skin,” which fixes the short-term effects, but what are these products doing to us long term? 

“Products are tested to make sure they don’t cause short-term problems, such as skin irritation. But they’re not tested for long-term safety,” says Dr. Kathryn M. Rexrode, associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School. The FDA only steps in when someone has made a claim against a product stating that it has caused damage, but other than that, the purity of a product is left to the hands of a money-hungry industry that doesn’t really care about the long term effects for us. It’s pretty upsetting, right? Well, let’s do something about it. How? Let’s take baby steps and then let’s take a plunge.

The Baby Steps
Obviously we all can’t afford to just throw away everything in our bathroom because so and so said so, but what we can do is start looking at the ingredients in the products that stay on our skin the longest. Body lotions, face lotion, body oils, face serums, primers, sunscreen, + makeup all seep into our skin and are there all day long. When you use products that aren’t natural, they have the potential to deplete your skin from its natural state, fill your body with harmful toxins, speed up aging, and some body lotions can even be the cause of weight gain because it’s interfering with your hormone production. So what do you do? Look at the ingredients. If you see any of the nasty words listed above in your products, start looking for an alternative.

Some alternatives for clean skincare are Primally Pure for facial cleansers, ILIA Makeup, The Organic Pharmacy for sunscreen and other options, + The Honest Company for body lotions, and for a list of Goops 2021 list of non-toxic favorites, check their picks out here.

Once you’ve found a clean alternative to the products that stay on your skin the longest, start throwing away the old products that have harmful toxins in them, and when you’re ready, start looking at other daily habits + products that are used on your skin, hair, and nails.

Take the Plunge
Taking the plunge could mean a lot of things, but really, we just want you to keep choosing better products that will help you step into a new you and start creating new daily habits that will benefit you, your future, and your skin. What daily, weekly, and monthly habits can you start incorporating? What shampoo + conditioner do you use? What about your soap, shaving cream, and nail polish? We have a snazzy new brand that you might have heard of called freecoat nails. What is it? It’s a non-toxic beauty bar that focuses on providing people with non-toxic options. They also have an organic sugar scrub that is made in-house + it feels like pure goodness on your skin (no lie). There aren’t too many non-toxic beauty bars out there, but we’re trying to change that so we can create the new norm.

Another change you should start to think about is your hair dye. If you dye your hair on your own or get it done professionally, you’re exposing yourself to 5,000 different chemicals including some known to disrupt the body’s natural hormone balance or to have cancer-causing effects in animals, according to studies. A study was published online on Dec. 3, 2019, by the International Journal of Cancer, which states that they found a link between hair dye and breast cancer. “Women in the study who used permanent hair dye at least once in the 12-month period leading up to the study had a 9% higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who didn’t use hair dye. And when the study authors broke the findings down by race, they found an even higher risk for African American women. Women in that group who used any permanent dye in the previous 12 months had a 45% higher risk of developing breast cancer compared with women who did not use hair dye. It didn’t seem to matter how often or for how many years the women had used the dye,” states Harvard Health Publishing.

Clean Beauty, It’s a Way of Life
There are so many different things you can do in order to incorporate new daily habits that will lead to a healthier you and a healthier future, but it’s all about what works for you. If you’ve found new, healthier + clean habits that work for you, what are they? If you use non-toxic skincare or hair products that you love, what are they? Leave it in the comments for our readers so we can all grow in this Clean Beauty movement together, because it shouldn’t be a movement, it should be a way of life, and we’re ready to live it. 

Glyphosate. What the heck is it and why do you need to stay away from it? Let’s talk about it for a hot minute, because it’s dirty, it’s disgusting, and it does not get our juices flowing.

According to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), “glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that can kill certain weeds and grasses. Glyphosate works by blocking an enzyme essential for plant growth. The product is used primarily in agriculture, but also in forestry and lawn and garden care,” and you want to know where else it can be found? In our food. Yep, you read that right, and it gets worse. The FDA also states that “certain trace amounts of pesticides, or pesticide chemical residues, may remain in or on some crops after they’re harvested. The FDA’s role is to ensure that pesticide chemical residues on or in domestic and imported foods do not exceed the limits established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” which means that as long as there isn’t “too much” glyphosate found in our food, then it is deemed “safe.” We don’t know about you, but we don’t want to ingest anything that has any amount of pesticides on or in it.

Save the bees. Save the humans.
The thing is, glyphosate isn’t just found in our lettuce or veggies, it’s also in our chips, meat, wheat, and it’s affecting the biomes of insects like bees, causing massive numbers of bees to die off and causing devastating effects to earthworms and biodiversity overall. Think about it, if it’s affecting these insects that live in pretty rough environments and can adapt quickly to changes, just imagine the type of damage it could do to your body that isn’t exposed to half of the things they are. We don’t only need to save the bees, we need to save ourselves from the pesticides that are finding their way into our homes- our bodies.

The C-word
If it wasn’t bad enough knowing that pesticides are in our food, it gets even worse. Glyphosate is also known to be a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. There have been several lawsuits against products like RoundUp for being the cause of cancer, which is one of the commonly used pesticides for farmers where nonorganic food is grown. Did you catch that? Not only are there pesticides in our food, but these pesticides are a common cause of cancer. Umm, how do we stay away from all things Glyphosate?

Choose organic
The EWG published a report on August 15th, 2018, which showed that 43 of 45 samples of products made with conventionally grown oats indicated that glyphosate was present. I know what you’re thinking… How am I supposed to eat anything that doesn’t have glyphosate in it?

Easy. Choose organic. 

Clean Juice has made it incredibly easy for everyone who walks through our doors. How? Because literally every product that is used in our stores is USDA certified organic and you never have to wonder where your food comes from, if there are any added sugars or additives, and you literally get to watch your food being made right in front of you. Does it get any more transparent than that? We don’t think so. 

But why organic?
When you stray away from organic food, you run into other labels using glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, which means that crops are harvested shortly after they are sprayed and long before the chemical can be broken down. Ok, what does that mean? When crops are harvested shortly after being sprayed, glyphosate is present at high levels in many common food crops, and these crops are often labeled as ‘natural’ and non-GMO, which triggers our brain to think it’s ‘healthy,’ but it isn’t. Scary, right? We know!

Some researchers have even raised concerns about the nutritional quality of food crops being reduced by the use of glyphosate, which is another reason to choose organic. Organic soybeans have been found to have higher nutritional value than genetically modified soybeans, and that’s not the only food that holds higher nutritional value when it isn’t genetically modified.

So, what are we saying??
We’re saying to eat Clean Juice morning, lunch, and dinner and choose all organic food when you’re grocery shopping. When you choose organic, you’re choosing foods that hold all of their nutritional value, aren’t loaded with extra preservatives or additives, and will leave you feeling clean, energized, and 100% yourself. At Clean Juice, all of our ingredients are USDA organic certified and they taste insanely delicious. We have locations all around the U.S. and you can even have your own Clean Juice in your back pocket when you download our app. We choose you, so choose us too and let’s save the bees, the planet, and ourselves.

Organic agriculture means using cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biological diversity.

Since the beginning, organic agriculture has been based on the principle of sustainability. This means that many farmers add organic matter, soil microbes, and soil invertebrates that will naturally increase over time and create rich healthy soil that will help their crops better fight off drought, diseases, and insects. No need for harmful pesticides!

NO HARMFUL PESTICIDES, NO PROBLEMS

There are a few other ways farmers protect against pests and diseases while avoiding harmful pesticides. Having a well-designed and healthy organic system that will naturally have fewer pest problems (by using crop rotation, intercropping, or resistant varieties) is their first go-to move. If pests are still a problem, their second line of defense is to use mechanical and physical practices (like burning crop residues, mulching, introducing insect predators) and non-synthetic/natural materials. The final line of defense against pest control is to use biologicals and botanicals to control pests.

Biologicals and botanicals are pesticides derived from natural materials or living organisms and are allowed in organic production as long as they do not contain synthetic additives or are not prohibited on the national list of unapproved pesticides. Think compounds derived from plants with unique bug-repelling properties, minerals (like sulfur, copper, clay), and pheromones.

BETTER FOR YOU & YOUR HEALTH

Not only are USDA-certified organic fruits & veggies better for the environment, they may also have a higher nutrient content than conventional produce!

With no harmful pesticides or fertilizers, plants boost their own natural production of phytochemicals in order to strengthen their resistance to bugs and weeds. Why does that matter? Because phytochemicals are the vitamins & antioxidants that our body needs!

The harmful pesticides and chemicals used on most conventional produce are extremely toxic and poisonous to the body. Long-term harmful pesticide exposure can have very serious and negative effects on our health! When you eat organic, you are reducing your risk of developing health problems and you’re also filling your body with the best, most nutritious food possible.

You can rest assured knowing that everything on our menu is USDA-certified organic and designed to give your body something truly healthy.

Coffee is the second most popular drink worldwide with over 400 million cups downed a day by Americans alone. The statistics on coffee obsession are staggering, but not surprising if you catch a glimpse of the local Starbucks line around 8 in the morning. Of all the things to be obsessed with, coffee seems to be a safer option. Most of us have not truly thought twice about the long term effects of our daily coffee run. However, most people would be shocked to know that the coffee bean is the most heavily sprayed bean in the produce market. It is loaded with toxic chemicals that affect not only the crop itself, but the environment and the people around it. Due to coffee being in such high demand, it is essential that this issue be addressed for both our own health and the sake of the environment around us. We sat down with an expert in coffee chemistry, Dr. Hendon, on the Be Organic Podcast to talk about the science behind coffee. Check it out here!

In today’s world, Starbucks and Dunkin’ (along with most other chain restaurants) serve coffee that is laden with pesticides, carcinogenic sweeteners and a surplus of calories making it about as good for you as curling up with a slice of cake. If this was something we indulged in on occasion, it would not be as destructive to our bodies, but because it is the second most consumed beverage next to water itself, the negative impacts are impossible to ignore. You can eat a perfectly healthy diet, but if you are ordering a large vanilla latte every day – you are going to find yourself dealing with brain fog and crashing hard within an hour or so – not to mention the long term health effects. All this to say, coffee is not all bad, but what our society has done with it today is. 

Coffee itself has so many benefits. It has been known to help combat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s certain forms of cancer and even oxidative stress.  Regular coffee consumption, in a safe amount, can improve cognitive function and support different organs in our bodies. Not to mention the simple, yet positive, aspects of caffeine on our mental health and ability to get up and go in the morning! This all plays a huge role in our lives, but as with so many other natural health foods, it has come a long way from being the original superfood of the past. Thankfully, there are still ways to cure your coffee cravings in a healthy way! Dr. Chopra, coffee expert, believes that drinking 4+ cups of pure organic coffee a day has amazing benefits. Listen to more here!

Purity coffee is our go-to coffee brand. It is clean, organic and good for the environment. Especially when buying decaf beans, non-organic is further washed with chemicals to get rid of the caffeine. Purity coffee is a great example of a brand that uses water instead. Clean Juice carries wellness lattes during the winter which are a blend of organic, natural ingredients designed to give you the same effect of a regular latte, but without the crash, dehydration, inflammation or brain fog. We include ingredients such as ginger, turmeric, lion’s mane, and coconut sugar to turn your afternoon pick-me-up into a superfood supplement! All year we serve up organic cold-brew coffee in several products. Our Cashew Milk Latte cold-pressed cashew milk, The Beauty Bowl acai bowl, and The Coffee One fan-favorite smoothie. If you are looking for health alternatives to your regular morning or afternoon coffee run try grabbing some organic coffee beans from the store and making it yourself or stop by Clean Juice and let us do the hard work for you!  

Coffee is an addiction for most of us and not something many are willing to compromise on, but give yourself a few weeks, make substitutions to use organic beans and natural sweeteners. You will feel so much better, there is a good chance you will not want to go back. 

TIPS FOR STAYING HEALTHY IN THE NEW YEAR

It’s the beginning of a new year and a fresh start so if you have not already, now is the time to set some new goals, specifically for your health. This past year was a tough one all around and most of us are feeling it physically just as much as we are mentally! While your goals should be specific to you and what works for your lifestyle the best, we have a few foundational tips that will help you eat well and live better as you step into 2021: 

Eat Real
Yes, that bag of popcorn you snack on at work is not necessarily going to hurt you – but is it helping you? Processed foods come in all shapes and sizes (cereals, frozen meals, chips, reconstituted meats, etc.) but they all have one thing in common: they are empty calories, creating a foundation to feed disease in your body and not much else. Snacking is not necessarily a bad thing, but watch what you are snacking on because that is when processed foods tend to sneak themselves into your otherwise healthy diet.

Switch to Organic
Here at Clean Juice – organic is a necessity. Yes, it is expensive, does not always look as pretty, and takes some extra planning and effort, but the long term effects of eating organic and using organic products far outweigh any alternative options. Many health issues ranging from hormonal imbalances to diseases can be a result of the harmful pesticides and growth hormones used in non-organic meat and produce. It can be hard to get into the swing of a full-on organic diet and lifestyle, so start small and switch up some of your favorite fruits and vegetables for organic next time you buy groceries. Your body will thank you!

Give your digestion a break
Our digestive systems are much more sensitive than you would imagine. If you don’t chew your food enough it can cause inflammation, or if you stress too much and it can cause a leaky gut or gastroparesis – and when our digestion is off, our entire body is affected. Every now and then it is extremely helpful to give your gut a break and either practice intermittent fasting and stick to water for a few hours or opt for a protein smoothie or juice (organic of course). This allows your body to cleanse itself of any backup in your digestive tract while also supplying the energy it once used to break down food to target other issues such as acne! 

Drink water
Of all the necessary elements, water is arguably the most essential. The list of positive side effects of drinking enough water is endless from glowing skin and healthy hair to stronger joints. Water is the essential building block of everything in our bodies and yet 80% of Americans claim to not be drinking enough. A simple way to drink enough water is to plan it out – carry a reusable water bottle with you throughout the day and plan to drink a certain number of ounces before bed. If you are having a hard time making yourself drink enough, putting a dash of organic, unsweetened fruit juice or lemon can help! Pretty soon your body will start to crave that water and it will be hard to go a day without having more than enough. 

Practice alternatives
After attempting to give up my love of baking due to its negative effect on my health, I stumbled upon a recipe for paleo brownies. I decided to give it a try and was instantly hooked. Now, baking with healthy, whole ingredients is second nature – I will never go back! Similarly, finding alternatives to snacks or drinks you love is essential to a lasting healthy lifestyle. The good news is that there is an alternative to just about everything! Cravings are a natural human instinct and while the alternative may not taste identical to the real thing it can help satisfy those cravings in a nourishing way. 

“Menopausal women have the ability to reduce their chance of breast cancer by 14% by walking 7 hours per week. That’s one hour per day.”
-Laura Renegar, Be Organic Podcast Ep. 47

This is a reassuring statistic. There are lots of ways we can reduce our risks and predispositions to diseases like Breast Cancer. We sought information from the experts – Dr. Chasse Bailey Dorton, oncologist, and Dr. Kat, a Thermography specialist. Family history and predispositions don’t have to be inevitable, so let’s talk about it. 

Hormonal Signs
Let’s start with getting in tune with your body. Notice how your periods feel, whether your breast size changes, and whether some months seem to be heavier than others. When we are stressed, our bodies lean towards the hormone estrogen during our cycles, and when we are relaxed we lean more towards progesterone during our cycles. It’s something to take note of in your body but there is no need to freak out about it! Figure out what makes your periods feel more comfortable and that will ultimately help you find that hormonal balance. Lowering stress, moving your body, and eating nutritious foods are going to be the best place to start for getting your estrogen/progesterone levels under control. Here are some of the top fruits & vegetables to help balance your hormones: (1)

1. Avocado – The healthy fats in avocados are the building blocks for important sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Filling your body with the healthy fat in avocados will give your body the fuel it needs to keep producing hormones.
2. Fresh Berries – Vitamin C may help regulate your progesterone levels during the PMS phase of your cycle, and blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries are all hormone balancing fruits packed with vitamin C. (2) It’s best to get your fill of these berries before your cycle starts, so we recommend The Berry Bowl or The Youthful One.
3. Lignan-rich seeds – Seed cycling has helped many people balance their hormones naturally. Check out our short podcast episode on it here. Flax & pumpkin seeds contain lignans, compounds that may help stimulate estrogen production when you’re a little low and get rid of excess estrogen. (3) Get your pumpkin seed dose with The Fall Bowl & The Autumn Crisp Bowl – two stars of our seasonal Fall menu!

Self Checkup
It’s good to feel your breast tissue for any new developments, no matter how old you are. Being in tune with small changes, whether it be fibroids or something else, it’s always good to get it checked out as a proactive step. It’s important to be your own advocate and address it when something just feels “off”. Learn how to do a self-examination here.

Nutrition
We talk about it all the time, but the food you put in your body has the ability to literally change your DNA- aka epigenetics. What does this mean? Well, if you have diseases that have been passed down from generation to generation, you don’t have to be stuck with the same outcome. The foods we eat have the capabilities of signaling inside the cells, turning on and off different genes. I know we just simplified this concept a lot, but your food goes way past being “just macronutrients”. Make sure to get fruits and vegetables in every day – and if you hate eating them, try drinking them! Cold-pressing pounds of fresh produce into each Clean Juice bottle will deliver your body key nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. We also have our Greenoa greens & grains bowls that are sure to give you your daily dose of fresh leafy greens. 

It is critical to make sure your fruits & vegetables are USDA-certified organic. They are sprayed with harmful pesticides and even after being washed, these pesticides remain and will be ingested when you eat non-organic produce. Filling your body with toxins and harmful pesticides will have adverse side effects, and choosing organic means you will have reduced exposure to synthetic pesticides, increased antioxidant levels, and a minimized chance of having heavy metal poisoning. One of the most common commercial pesticides, glyphosate (known by the brand name, Roundup) is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a probable human carcinogen. Experts warn that over time, repeated exposure to pesticides can lead to certain types of cancer. Looking for that USDA-organic seal when you shop and slowly switching over your household ingredients will help reduce your exposure to harmful pesticides.

Movement
We could talk all day about movement and its benefits, but one of the first things that come to mind is this quote, “stagnant pools breed disease.” This makes us think about our blood and lymph, two mechanisms that are used to excrete toxins out of the body. What happens when this fluid isn’t moved? It becomes stagnant and bad waste builds up. How do we get our lymph moving and toxins out? We workout out and sweat all those toxins out. So get that sweatband on and let’s move it! 

Recent podcast guest, Lisa Gainsley, taught us all about lymphatic massaging and lymphatic contouring. Massaging your lymph nodes (the correct way!) starts to move the toxins out. As Laura Renegar said at the beginning of this blog post, just walking for 1 hour a day is enough to get you started on your path towards breast cancer prevention. A great way to get your steps in AND support breast cancer research & programs would be to join a Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in your town! Walking and meeting other men and women passionate about eradicating breast cancer will leave you with lasting memories.  

(1) https://doctortaz.com/4-hormone-balancing-foods/

(2) Henmi, H., Endo, T., Kitajima, Y., Manase, K., Hata, H., & Kudo, R. (2003). Effects of ascorbic acid supplementation on serum progesterone levels in patients with a luteal phase defect. Fertility and sterility, 80(2), 459-461. https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(03)00657-5/fulltext

(3) Aehle, E., Müller, U., Eklund, P. C., Willför, S. M., Sippl, W., & Dräger, B. (2011). Lignans as food constituents with estrogen and antiestrogen activity. Phytochemistry, 72(18), 2396-2405.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21889775

If you’re struggling with acne or inflammation like eczema, it’s time to treat these skin problems as a symptom, not a condition. Stomach inflammation, chronic body inflammation, gut imbalances, and oxidative stress (which is essentially free radical damage) are all huge contributors to skin problems. The skin microbiome is also a complex part of your body that you probably have not heard about. Even if you don’t struggle with chronic skin symptoms, there are ways that you can take care of your skin to keep your microbiome in balance. Let’s dive into this bacteria ecosystem and talk about ways to help your skin.

The Skin Microbiome
The skin has a very special environment for good bacteria to thrive while warding off bad bacteria and other pathogens. In the world we live in, it is very easy for the skin microbiome to become imbalanced and overrun with bad bacteria as well as inflammatory responses that cause the tough situation to become worse. The food we consume can also wreak havoc on the skin microbiome. Trying to find the balance in the skin after toxin overload, hormonal chaos, and inflammatory response can be more than just eating some carrots and drinking a glass of water. 

Eating right will help keep your gut happy & ultimately your skin happy. Hydrating is an essential part of preventing acne or keeping your skin happy. Drinking water, lots of water, will help get rid of dead skin cells, transport antimicrobial proteins to the skin’s surface so that they can keep acne-causing bacteria in check, and keep the environment moist so that it can heal. Eating mineral-rich foods like dark leafy greens (spinach & kale), pumpkin seeds, avocados, and cacao. Don’t love eating pounds of spinach and kale? Drink them instead! Our cold-pressed juices are designed to deliver the minerals and nutrients you need in a convenient USDA-certified organic bottle.

Watching what you put on your skin is another way to lessen the absorption of chemicals that could lead to inflammation and trigger health problems. Take deodorant for example. A guest on our BeOrganic Podcast, Skyler Stein, talked about the harmful properties in traditional deodorant and antiperspirants.

“There are specific bacteria in armpits that cause body odor. When we use antiperspirants we are killing all of the bacteria in our armpits, all of the good and the bad. So we are completely burning down the forest every day that we use it.” -Skyler Stein

With deodorant, Skyler argues that not only is the bad bacteria being killed but the good along with it. When you go a few days without deodorant, that skin environment is more imbalanced than ever before, causing more odor, and then come full circle to you needing to apply deodorant once again (and maybe more throughout the day). It’s a feedback loop of the stinkiest kind. 

ENDOLYSINS
Endolysins are superheroes when it comes to policing bad bacteria and creating more of the good in the skin microbiome. Skyler Stein, a recent BeOrganic Podcast guest, works with endolysin technology with his product Gladskin that essentially creates a healthy environment for the skin microbiome to flourish without the help of steroids, sulfates, alcohol, fragrance, parabens, or preservatives. Traditional skin treatments contain harsh chemicals and steroids that often strip your skin and don’t give it the chance to heal itself. 

Endolysins have the unique ability to break through foreign pathogen cell walls and represent alternatives to conventional antibiotics. They also have something called “host specificity” meaning that they can effectively target the pathogen causing distress in your body, so they work more focused without the contraindications that some antibiotics can have. Even better yet, endolysins are naturally occurring all over the globe – experts are just now learning how to use endolysin technologies. Pretty cool right? If you like science, here’s a link on endolysins’ efficacy in treating Staph infections. These endolysins are powerful healing agents for skin conditions that extend beyond acne and have been particularly useful in healing eczema.

Want to learn more about the skin microbiome and Endolysins? Check out our BeOrganic podcast episode with Skyler Stein here!