Are our sanitary products as safe as we think they are?
This is going to be one of the most important things you read today without question, even if you aren’t having periods anymore or have never had a period in your life you will know someone who does and they need to read this.
On average we use in the region of 10,000 pads or tampons in our lifetime. Which is quite a lot when you think about it, and when you really think about it there are a lot of women and that number doesn’t take long to get into astronomical figures.
Not only do the pads and tampons we buy at the supermarket take about a billion years to break down after we have thrown them away they don’t really do a huge amount for us when we are using them, but most of us have absolutely no idea about that at all – because the manufacturers aren’t obliged to tell us the ingredients or process the product has gone through.
Why am I getting all up in your face about this? Well because it was one of the first things I did on my road to healing my hormones and it made one of the biggest impressions on me I can tell you. When I started using reusable pads my pain drastically reduced and my periods started to become a lot more regular, and it was all I did, just stopped using the shit they sell us.
I started to read up on what was in these little plastic parcels and it didn’t make for great reading I can tell you. Then I started to sell the pads I use and the results started speaking for themselves. No one has asked for a refund, they are all amazed at the difference it makes to their periods.
I know not every woman is ready to jump on the reusable train, but there are so many options out there now, you could take a little peek at it. There is a tone of different pad options ranging in styles and colours, there are menstrual cups and now the pants that are leak proof and you don’t need anything else but them. I really implore you to at least look, and do a bit of research it isn’t nearly as disgusting or gross as a trillion pads in landfill or tampons in our sewers. Our environment needs us to at least think about it and our bodies most certainly do.
With that said if it makes you screw your face up and shout fuck off Gem I just can’t then my compromise is you jump on your phone or computer and you order yourselves some organic cotton no fragrance disposable alternatives. JUST DO IT already! Here is why I care so much about what you are putting in and on your precious vajayjays….
Rayon is a synthetic product that is generally mixed with the cotton in our bog-standard tampons, this stuff is super absorbent but in the very nature of that, it comes with its drawbacks. A very serious one of those is toxic shock syndrome because of the super absorbency these products are left in for longer, just where bacteria like to hang out on something that has been loitering for too long in a warm moist environment. Its good to change your goods often, who wants a pad with 96hours protection? It’s like the deodorant adverts it’s just wrong we are meant to be letting this out of our body not plugging it up for eternity bluegh!
Fragrance – right this really grips my shitter because it is an ambiguous umbrella term for basically a toxic cocktail of harm. Fragrance is added to simply hide the smells of all the other garbage in our products, and I’m talking all beauty products here too. When you look at the back of the ingredients and read all the things we can’t pronounce to you think they smell nice? there can be hundreds and thousands of fragrances is a single product just to make the original smells, none of which are even remotely natural. A synthetic smorgasbord of nasty, I mean you can smell the packets of pads from a mile away – we just don’t need perfume in our pads AT ALL. it makes it smell even worse if you ask me. These are disruptive to hormones and quite frankly an offense to think we need our vaginas perfumed ever, changing regularly all you need to do not mask it with fake.
Dioxin a chemical compound released from the bleaching process there is no safe level of this chemical according to the FDA, it is attributed to hormone and immune disruption. bleach can also be found on your products to because well they have been bleached. A big fat NO THANK YOU from me.
BPA – we all know about not having this in our water bottles don’t we, the chemical leaked from plastic, yet most plastic applicators aren’t BPA free, and they are plastic just NO. Please, ladies, get a grip here we don’t need a bloody aplicator we have 8 of them on our hands pick one of them!!
Why organic cotton? because it hasn’t been sprayed with a spectacular array of chemicals and it won’t be genetically modified either. It will also just be cotton and not mixed with any other synthetic material, making them much better for our bods.
Although these chemicals are present in small amounts in these products, one think how long they are used for consistently in the region of 4 to 5 days on average for 24/7 every month till we have chewed through 11,000 of the fuckers.
Do yourself a favour and just open your eyes to the difference changing your sanitary products could do for you. If you hate it you can always go back there, but I would put my life savings on the fact you will see a change. If you don’t have any issues with your period then take one for the team anyway, your body will be grateful and so will our planet.