Luminous Heart Reiki & Massage

I’m a big fan of aromatherapy. I use essential oils daily, both therapeutically and for the simple pleasure of smelling yummy smells.

Yet I avoid all products with “fragrance” or “perfume” listed as an ingredient. Especially air fresheners.

Why? First of all, they are not even remotely the same thing as essential oils. It’s like butter and margarine- one is real food and the other resembles plastic.

Secondly, fragrances often give me a headache. That’s reason enough for me, but if you want more: they are generally synthetic chemicals, often petrochemicals. As in made from petroleum. Which is a hot topic all on its own.

Minimizing my exposure to toxins is a big part of my healthy aging plan. Yes, the body can adapt to many things, but the amount of toxins most of us are inundated with on a daily basis is staggering. My liver has other things to do than detox self-inflicted toxins.

As a middle-aged woman going through the delightful transformation of perimenopause, I fiercely protect my precarious hormonal balance. Many of these chemicals are known endocrine disrupters. No thanks!

Lisa Bronner, granddaughter of the founder of Dr. Bronners, the castile soap maker, has laid it all out brilliantly in this article. She has done the research, translated it into language for us non-chemists, and offers some simple, doable steps to create distance, bit by bit.

If you’re not up for diving all in, I’ll suggest two relatively easy shifts you can make.

One: lotion. You slather it all over your body and your skin absorbs it all. Fragrance-free options are widely available and usually not more expensive.

But… have you ever read the list of ingredients on a bottle of lotion? Generally it starts with water. Then some oil. Followed by fifteen different chemicals to get these two famously incompatible liquids to bind together into a smooth, creamy texture.

I ditched all lotion decades ago. Even the so-called “natural” ones tend to have some organic ingredients PLUS some chemical ones. Plus a hefty price tag.

(Instead, I dry brush to exfoliate a few times a week. And I mix up a combo of aloe vera gel and rose hip oil in my palm each day for moisturizing. Plain oil can be too, well, oily. The addition of the aloe gel helps mitigate that. This exact recipe might not be right for you, but I believe you can find something that is much better than water, oil, chemicals, and endocrine disruptors. I use pure organic MCT coconut oil for massage and it works brilliantly.)

I’ve digressed. This is supposed to be about fragrance. But really, all my posts are about holistic health and wellness, and I sometimes can’t help myself from sharing the things the marketplace would rather I didn’t.

The second easy swap is laundry products. Fresh linen scent? Gentle rain aroma? Read instead: supposedly nice smells made from toxic chemicals that saturate your clothing and bedsheets and which you will be inhaling and absorbing. All day (and night) long.

Many brands offer a fragrance-free option. And truly, fabric softener is not necessary. I stopped buying it a long time ago for budget reasons, and haven’t missed it once.

If you want to go farther, poke around Lisa’s website. She has very thorough guides for how to clean up household cleaners. I like their concentrated detergent, called Sal Suds. I dilute it in a repurposed spray bottle. That and a couple of rags, baking soda, and vinegar and I can clean pretty much everything in my world with minimal cost, clutter, and effort. My lungs, hormones, and skin benefit as do all visitors with chemical sensitivities, asthma, or allergies.

Here’s the fragrance guide again. This is not an affiliate link; I have no financial motivation here. Just a genuine desire to promote health for you and the planet.