Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser contains just eight ingredients: water, cetyl alcohol, propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, stearyl alcohol, methylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben.
All but the water are chemically manufactured (let’s hope), and propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, and the three parabens have a seat on the dirty dozen, a list of cosmetic ingredients to avoid as potentially toxic.
One look at the label and you’ve got to go “Wait a minute! What?” says Spirit Demerson, who analyzes skin-care ingredients for Spirit Beauty Lounge, her online natural beauty store. “Cetaphil does not contain even one single beneficial ingredient and what it does contain is the equivalent of toxic sludge. Whether you think it’s keeping your skin healthy or not, it is absorbed into your bloodstream and research has proven almost all of the few ingredients in it are carcinogenic. I know it’s hard to imagine that washing your face can give you cancer but it’s worth consideration.”
The ingredients in this popular Gentle Skin Cleanser don’t support the name!
Julia March, a top NYC facialist, says that so many New Yorkers believe that Cetaphil is healthy, they tend ignore the ingredients completely. “Cetyl alcohol, an emollient used in many cosmetics, is essentially a wax,” says March. “Propylene glycol is a common humectant (meaning it brings moisture from the air to the skin), but it also enhances product and chemical penetration into the skin and blood stream. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a foaming agent, and skin and eye irritant, that disturbs the healthy lipid barrier of the skin, and parabens are a group of preservatives being phased out for potential health risks.”
Given that there’s actually nothing clean about this cleanser, it’s rather amazing that millions of women think their skin will freak out if they use anything else. “It may not irritate skin very much, but it probably won’t help it much either,” says Nicole Yih, Assistant Spa Director at the Mandarin Oriental New York. That’s because there’s nothing in Cetaphil that nurtures skin. No antioxidants that help fight free radical damage; not a dribble of omega-rich plant seed oils that fortify the skin barrier; and not a drop of skin-calming botanicals.
A cleanser that you use twice a day should be judged on what it gives your skin. Consider this your new cleanser criterion.
Mic drop! Why would anyone put this kind of crap on their face? Well, because of the misinformation so widely spread out of greed – and pure lack of education. ALWAYS read the ingredients of what you put on your face. If you don’t know what the ingredients are GOOGLE them. What you put on your skin should be nourishing (feed it), contain antioxidants, and sooth it.
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Do you find yourself rushing as wash your hands, or brushing your teeth in a mindless trance, or drying your hair as quickly as you can, and barely notice the face looking back at you as you stand in front of the mirror?
Sadly, the weeks and months and years go by so quickly that you might not remember the last time you stopped and REALLY looked into the eyes of the face starring back at you.
Let’s face it, we demand a lot from our skin. Having access to high performance products and high-tech devices is fantastic but if we get carried away, and don’t work in some rest periods, skin can start rebelling.
With pretty much anything, too much can be not-so-great for us. Using too many skincare products too frequently and/or too enthusiastically can overwork your skin, aging it more, not less, and looking worse instead of better.
