It takes a crap load of anything to shock me these days, but what I’m about to tell you, I’m pretty sure will shock you too. In fact it’s almost a health and safety announcement.  Now, before I go on, it needs to be said, this is indeed a sponsored post, but not of the regular variety.  I’m genuinely excited through to my knickers about this announcement. I’m the new brand Ambassador for the freshly relaunched Pure Papaya Care and I feel the absolute need, as if being pulled in a direction by the moon itself to share with you the story of Pure Papaya Care because, you’re health literally depends on it.

Given the opportunity I’ll sing praises of the things that I love. After all, we’re all trying to figure out what’s best, what works, what doesn’t and if we’re going to be regretful or harmed in the process – I get it.  But when the truth about most (in fact almost all) papaya ointments was revealed to me, I picked my jaw up off the floor – mostly because I had immediate ghastly images of people applying their beloved papaya ointment to their most sensitive and at times intimate (well at least for babies) parts of their body’s.

The western world is mad for a slather of papaya ointment.  We pop it on our lips, we use it for nappy rash, for healing wounds, cuts, grazes, dry areas, eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis. It’s a common household product we’ve come to love.  I have very early memories of a childhood friend’s Mother swearing by the stuff, she’d lather it every which way possible across the entire family. Dry nasal passages – tick; fell of your BMX and grazed your leg – tick.  Flaky eyelids – you guessed it, tick.  Whatever the skin problem, papaya seemed to be a wonder fix, and to this day it still is and wonderful skin healing ingredient.  Only issue is that most of the products we have come to love contain very little papaya and a whole lot of petroleum jelly or mineral oils which actually do very little to promote skin healing – but rather simply act as a barrier.  What’s worse, they do terrible things to our health and our hormones.  Eep.

The truth bomb that floored me the most, was that the leading papaya product we’ve all come to know and love was around 96% petroleum jelly.  Not only did my lip curl from despair because we are unknowingly smothering the stuff everywhere but also because I felt jibbed. It wasn’t as if the ingredients were being hidden, this was in fact easy for us all to read on the packaging, yet like a game of follow the leader, we weren’t thinking much about it.  I’m not into naming and shaming, I am however always into the facts and the facts generally speak for themselves.

Thankfully, we have options and I don’t know about you, but I like to advocate with my dollar, so naturally the switch to a more hormone friendly option was a no-brainer.

I shared this image on social media and asked “which is THE ONLY 100% certified natural papaya ointment?”  There was a LOT of confusion!

When I showed the above picture, the answers were wide and varied and rightly so.  Who would have thought our beloved ointments weren’t everything we had thought they were?  Even of the more ‘natural’ leading brands, most often were made with castor or mineral oils.  Castor seed oil is a known skin irritant that contains Ricin. There are reports of workers falling very ill when processing this oil by hand and whilst the poisonous element of Ricin is removed in it’s processing, it leaves many questioning it’s safety.  Castor oil is often an ingredient in cosmetic products it because it’s natural processing provides a 40% yield which is why commercial castor seed oil is chemically extracted using petroleum or chemical based ingredients.  For those that can tolerate castor seed oil, it is reported to have good moisturising properties.  Pure decided to include Shea butter instead of castor or mineral oils.  Shea butter takes things a step further – not only is it extremely nourishing and moisturising but contains the anti-inflammatory properties that these other don’t.

All of these (petroleum jelly, castor oil, mineral oil etc) are sadly endocrine disruptors, meaning they aren’t great news for your hormones and may contribute to a host of issues including fertility challenges, weight gain, anxiety, missing periods and more, all because they drive oestrogen wild, and not in a sexy way.  We’ve spoken about this before.  You can check it out here.

I did a little research on petroleum jelly and according to wikipedia I learnt that the raw material was first discovered in 1859 on some of the worlds first oil rigs in Pennsylvania.  Workers discovered paraffin like material forming on the rigs and found it a nuisance as it caused malfunction of the machinery, however what they began to do was apply the wax to cuts and wounds as they believed it promoted healing.  I’ve come to learn that the benefit of petroleum jelly in wound care is that it provides a barrier, effectively protecting the skin, but there is little research to suggest that it actually helps with healing.  Because of this barrier like benefit, it can often trap bacteria and cause infection of the wound or skin condition.

The Beautiful ingredients in Pure really are second to none. With Shea Butter, Calendula Flower, Macadamia and Jojoba Oils; an amazing combination to treat, protect, nourish and promote skin healing.  To me, the choice is clear and I hope that you too can see the benefit in choosing products that are supportive of our overall health.

I’m super excited say, I have a GIVEAWAY to celebrate my relationship with Pure Papaya Care.

To be in the running to get you and a friend 2 large tubes of Pure, head to my Facebook or Instagram and tag a friend into this post.  They need to be following both myself and Pure to be eligible.  The two lucky people will be announced Tuesday 30th May.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Papaya, ointments, mineral oil and all things personal care products in the comment section below.  Do you love them?  Let’s talk about it!