Going Organic

In recent months, I have been considering making some dramatic changes to my diet and beauty regimes, in order to move towards eating and using more natural products.  After reading Deepak Chopra's book, 'What Are You Hungry For?' whilst we were away, I have become more and more convinced that this is a road that I want to venture down at this point in my life.

I have flirted with eco and organic products at various times in my life, usually for very brief spells, but have never been fully committed to the idea, mainly on cost grounds and a cynical belief that such products can't really be significantly better than normal products, to justify the additional costs. More recently, however, I'm finding myself actually starting to think that perhaps they just might be.

When I look at the ingredients of normal cosmetic brands and the multitude of chemicals they contain, I am frankly amazed and somewhat disturbed. Do we really need so many of these chemicals in our skincare and beauty products?  I've recently started looking at the ingredients when buying products and have decided that I'm going to try to buy products which are either organic or as natural as possible.

Today, I was out and about running errands and needed a new facial wash, as I'm virtually out of it completely.  I took a look in Boots at the Witch Hazel products they had in there, which I've looked at before. (I'm a superfan of witch hazel) I was almost tempted to buy a couple of the products in the range. They were on sale at half price, meaning a facial wash was less than £2.  I then took a look at the ingredients and I just couldn't bring myself to buy them, even at such a reasonable cost.

Instead, I decided to take a look in the Health Food Shop a few doors down, where I found this Organic Tea Tree Face Wash by Dr Organic.  It is infused with mandarin, lemon and witch hazel and when I looked at the ingredients they didn't completely overwhelm me.  Yes, there are still chemicals in there, but it is Paraben free, SLS free and contains no artificial colours, fragrances or harsh preservatives.  That was enough for me and at £6.49, although way more expensive than any usual purchases, I thought it was reasonable for an organic product, which I expected to cost much more. It is also a 200ml tube, so should last an age. I have tried it out and find it works perfectly well for my needs and leaves my skin feeling fresh, so I am very happy with my purchase.

I took a look at the rest of the Dr Organic range and there were a couple of other products that I might try such as a Manuka Honey Face Cream and a Rose Otto Day Cream.  These were a little more expensive, but it is perhaps time I start to think more about the implications of using more chemical laden products on my skin and on the environment and stop worrying so much about the financial cost.

I do already have another product by this brand, that I received free with a copy of Healthy magazine, that I bought whilst we were in Yorkshire.  The product in question was their Organic Snail Gel Hand and Nail Elixir and I have tried this product and found it to have a lovely consistency and smell. There has been rather a lot of hype about this product range, and more especially the face cream, which I don't take too seriously, but I don't rule out using it in the future if I find it suitable for my skin.

I flicked through this magazine after photographing it and found a 20% off voucher for Holland and Barrett, where I purchased the face wash, so I will definitely be using this when I return to purchase a face cream, as it will make it much more affordable.  At the moment I've been using up various samples from beauty boxes and magazines, but to be honest I'm not finding that any of them hit the spot and leave my skin feeling good.

I took a look at some online reviews of the above products that I'm considering and think I might actually try the Rose Otto Day Cream as there were some very positive reviews of it on the website.

Has anyone else tried these products?  How did you find them?