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Making small steps to protect my health

Other than sharing about my financial journey, at the end of it, what I want is to have a healthy body and mind to enjoy my fruits of labour.

I'm not just financially conscious, but health conscious as well. I used to not care about what I eat since I wasn't fat. But, I would always have bad stomachaches and cramps. Furthermore, I don't exercise. After a few painful episodes, and after visiting the TCMs, I knew I had to do something to improve my health.

One of my New Year Resolutions is to eat better. I am trying to cut down on my fast food intake, and raw food such as salad and sashimi. People tout salads as a healthy choice, and I wont' disagree depending on what sauces you add, but I don't think my body suits cold food like salad and sashimi. I still indulge in my hawker food such as hokkien mee, char kway teow, but usually eat less oily food such as fish porridge, fish soup bee hoon, ban mian etc. I have also cut down on my cold drinks intake as my body constitution is weak. I've been having a tonic soup for women for the past 2 months. Hope to see improvements in my health.

Next, it is not just what I eat that affects my health. The everyday products such as shampoo, shower gel, lotion, makeup etc affects my health too. I love reading magazines and newspapers, and watching videos particularly on health and financial related matters. I chanced upon articles and this video that suggests that our daily cosmetic products contain a lot of harmful chemicals that might lead to cancer. We all know that cancer is one of the top killers in developed country. I have personally lost my grandma and relatives to cancer and seeing them suffer really makes me feel that the disease is a devil. We might never know the foolproof way to prevent cancer. But, I do agree that we should stop using chemical products on ourselves. For ladies especially, the amount of makeup they apply onto their face and body is a lot considering these are applied daily. I am quite fortunate to be blessed with good skin and don't have a habit of putting makeup cause I do not like having things stacked onto my face. But, recently, I've applying SPF UVA and UVB cream onto my face, mainly for fear of freckles la but it is to protect against skin cancer as well.


Reference to Body SOS S3 小毛病 大问题 3 - EP42 video, I've learnt that we should avoid cosmetics with paraben and sodium laureth sulphate. Ever since I watched the video, I've been consciously reading the ingredients in my products. Unfortunately, my shower gel and shampoo contains these harmful chemicals. No wonder, they are cheap toiletries....Talking about cheap, if you really want to rid yourself of all these chemical products, note that these are not going to come cheap. Organic products are expensive, and who knows if they are really organic. The same goes for "natural". How "natural" are mass-manufactured products? For example, a chemical-free deodorant that I wanted to purchase costs $20-30, compared to the cheapo chemical-loaded ones at $1-3? There are also other bad chemicals such as formaldehyde in shampoo, aluminium in deodorant and alcohol in mouthwash that we should avoid.

I'm not sure to what extend will I abstain from these chemicals, but I'm sure the habit of reading ingredients will go a long way.

Hope this article sparks your interest to take note of the ingredients in the products you use!

Comments

  1. Hi Cherry,

    A friend told me about your blog so here I am :) hello from a fellow 90s girl! It is heartening to know that there are like-minded females who care about budgeting and personal finance, I always seem to be one of the only few in among dozens of male financial bloggers.

    Commenting here as I feel the same about chemicals in skincare. Other than parabens and sodium laureth sulphate, I also wrote a post on some other harmful ingredients one should look out for and ideally avoid...
    http://sgbudgetbabe.blogspot.sg/2015/04/harmful-ingredients-to-avoid-in-your.html

    Unfortunately, the struggle between expensive organic products and cheap chemical ones are real! I've effectively hauled my facial routine to be organic now using Blended after a really bad experience with store-bought ones left me with chemical burns (link below) but have not been able to switch my makeup, hair and body products to be 100% organic yet because (i) it's difficult to find organic ones (ii) where they exist, they're far too expensive!

    http://sgbudgetbabe.blogspot.sg/2015/12/this-is-what-using-store-bought-facial.html

    The struggle is real man! :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, took long enough to reply. Love your posts and thank you for encouraging me! Let's jiayou!

      Delete

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