Our skin is our biggest organ and what we put on it can have ramifications for different aspects of our health. If you’re thinking more about the impact of the makeup, skincare and personal care products you use, my guest on today’s episode of Period Story shares a lot of great information. Sjaniël Turrell is a holistic makeup artist, nutritional therapist and conscious consultant and focuses on a natural and sustainable approach to beauty.
In this episode, Sjaniël shares:
- How the intensity of lockdown exacerbated the perimenopause symptoms she was experiencing
- How perimenopause made her get clear on what she does and doesn’t have capacity for
- The direction her nutritional therapy qualification took her work as a makeup artist
- Why we need to think differently about the makeup, skincare and personal care products we use
- Why fragranced products, including cleaning products and menstrual products are the number thing in your home you should consider switching
- The natural and organic brands she recommends, including RMS Beauty, Ilia Beauty, Madara, Kosas and Ere Perez
- Natural and organic makeup brands (and tips!) for dark-skinned and mixed race women
- And of course, the story of her first period
Sjaniël says that if you’re looking at switching to natural, organic and sustainable versions of the products you use, do the best you can afford in that moment and do the best you can with what you have.
Thank you, Sjaniël!
Get in touch with Sjaniël:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much, Sjäniel, for coming onto the show today. I am really excited to speak to you to tap into all of your amazing knowledge of beauty and skincare, but let’s kick off with the question that I ask all of my guests to start with, which is tell us the story of your very first period.
Sjaniël Turrell: Hi Le’Nise.
Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, this is something I’ve never really thought about much to be fair. I was a late bloomer. I got my period when I was 14, which felt like, I think the last out of all my friend group.
But basically I was in a youth camp, away from home. And I woke up this morning after, obviously was sleeping in kind of like these little bungalows, four girls in a room. But I was a youth leader at the time in our church youth camp. And so they were boys in the house as well, like the youth leaders sleeping together.
But I just woke up and I was like, my underwear was wet and cold. And I, I suddenly was like, did I wet myself? And then when I woke up, my underwear was covered in blood. And obviously I’m sleeping in a, in a bed, in a public bed, you know, in a public space. And I, I think the first thing was the fear that the bed was covered in blood.
And by some miracle, I don’t know how, because my underwear was soaked through, there was no blood anywhere on the sheets, which I just in itself is miraculous. But I think for me, my first feeling and response was just this thing of, oh my gosh. Okay. Well, I mean, obviously I knew that all my friends had their periods and it’s not like, it was, wasn’t like a shock to my, to what it was, but my main concern was just getting into the shower without anyone noticing, being in there, washing my underwear, and then asking my friend that was there with me, like if she had any, you know, sanitary products, which at that time for your first period, she, they only had tampons, which I think I didn’t even know how to use.
But yeah, so that was my first period. It just came kind of in that situation where I wasn’t at home, I wasn’t, but yeah, so I think the only thing I felt around that, on that moment was more like, uh, logistics, control, you know, of the situation.
Le’Nise Brothers: And once you got a handle on the logistics, so after you left the youth camp, went back home, did you speak to anyone about it?
Sjaniël Turrell: Yeah, so I grew up in, um, a home with a single mom. And I grew up in a very conservative Christian kind of upbringing and these things were hardly ever discussed at all. I don’t think my mom ever discussed periods with me, but I think because I was so late in getting my period, everyone around me already had theirs
And I think I just came home from the camp and she was there to pick me up and then I think, I can’t remember how long I waited, but I just said, oh, I started my period. And she just kind of went like, oh yeah, I’ve been wondering if that was going to happen sometime soon. And that was literally it. And then I guess some subsequent conversations around maybe what sanitary products to use or you know, but I don’t think I had like a massive emotional thing about it.
I think it was my, any emotional feelings around it was much more around the fact that everyone else had their period and I didn’t, I kind of felt like, why? What’s wrong with me? Kind of thing.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. And what was your experience of your period like as you went through your teenage years?
Sjaniël Turrell: I feel that I’ve been very fortunate with my period and just my cycle in general through my life that I’ve always had regular periods pretty much.
I’ve never had really awful kind of cramping or as a general thing. I’ve had moments of that through my life when I guess cycles have, um, you know, just through different periods. I’m in my late forties, so I’ve, you know, gone through a lot of different cycles. But I would say for the most part, I have not had a problematic period.
It’s not something that I’ve hated in my life. Yes, I’ve certainly have very sensitive hormones, like I feel the changes in my hormones really deeply, like I’m very sensitive to changes in my hormones and I used like contraception, like the contraceptive pill maybe in my early twenties and realised pretty soon that my body does not like synthetic hormones.
It doesn’t do not good for my mental health, but around my physical period, although now I’m in this perimenopausal phase of life, almost feel like this is much, much worse or much more challenging than, um, yeah, puberty for me, I think.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you say a bit more about your experience of perimenopause?
Sjaniël Turrell: Well, there’s a lot.
I think. I think what people, there’s a lot of talk about perimenopause now. I think especially in the UK, it’s a massive focus topic, which I think my theory about it is just that Gen X is in menopause now, and we’re a very different generation to the generations from before. But I also think it’s suddenly people are like, oh, but everyone’s having such a hard time.
And I’m like, yeah, but we are the first society of women going through menopause with the technological influence that has taken over the world. And I don’t think that’s a natural process. And I almost said this to the friend, the other said, if they took a thousand women and removed their, their took their phones away completely for six months, they probably wouldn’t have any perimenopause symptoms, is what I, you know, and I think that’s a valid, I just don’t think our brains are made to focus on this many things.
But my personal experience is more that when I think it kind of, it really came to an intensity in COVID because I was 43 at that time. There was a lot of, it was just a very intense time for everyone, no matter what you were experiencing. There was a lot of anxiety, there was a lot of unknowns, there was a lot of questions.
Nobody knew what was happening in the future. And I experienced a lot of physiological anxiety, which definitely was also influenced by the subconscious tone of the time. But I was having severe panic attacks at random times at like two o’clock in the morning or 10 o’clock in the morning when I wasn’t particularly worried or stressed about something specific.
Having a lot of this, well, extreme insomnia, which I guess kind of followed on from having my second child just before I turned 40. And I think it’s kind of that hormonal fluctuation when you have babies in your early forties where you come out of the postpartum hormones and almost immediately go flow into the perimenopausal hormones.
Your hormones never quite get to a good kind of back to young baseline. And I think at the time it was much more me just coping with the anxiety, the insomnia, and I mean, and I say insomnia. I’d go four days with no sleep and then maybe sleep three hours one night, and then another three, four days, no sleep.
Like insane for months on end. I was losing my mind. But I think coming out of COVID. I started realising, oh, wait a minute, this is hormonal. Because people would be say to me all the time, what are you worrying about? And I’d be like, this is not mental worry. It’s a physiological state. I can feel it. It’s like heart palpitations, just constantly feeling in a physical state of not being able to control your body.
And so I fortunately for the most part, moved out of that state of the anxiety, which I think carried on for about, on and off for like five years, quite intensely or maybe three or four years. Yeah. And now I’m just kind of in these spaces of dealing with, well, I had a year of, almost a year of good sleep, and then in the last couple of months it started to evade me.
And I really understand now that it’s so much to do with whether your progesterone is suddenly dropping or your estrogen is suddenly dropping. Most possibly, yeah, the testosterone’s been low for a while, but yeah, so I find specifically for me around the week before my period starts, I really struggle with sleep at that time.
And I know that that’s naturally, obviously a time when estrogen drops down. Yeah. And so I think for me, the biggest issue has been insomnia but also just a lot of strange physical symptoms at this time when I was having this kind of anxiety, I was having a lot of chest pain, unexplained, very sensitive, like, you know, and then you get into a cycle where you’re like, oh, what’s happening? Am I, am I having a heart attack? And then you get into like, you know, because you’re just in, you have these, you’re in these weird aches and pains and you can become quite hypochondriac about these things. And I think it becomes a vicious cycle because the anxiety almost makes you think, but I’m, at the moment, I’m out of that cycle and I’m so grateful because I realise that it really is physiologically driven.
And I think a lot of people think that they’re just anxious from a mental space and it really, it’s hormones or hormones have such a massive impact on that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you say a little bit more about what you were able to do to help yourself come out of this state that you’ve been describing?
Sjaniël Turrell: I’m going to be honest, I don’t have an answer because, look, my journey. I’ve, I’m a qualified nutritional therapist. I, I, I studied to become a nutritional therapist in 2012 after 15 year modeling career and being a makeup artist as well for many, many years because I have had kind of chronic health issues in the sense of gut issues, IBS and really energy and adrenal issues for years and years and years.
And so this, and I think my profile physicality is that I just I’m very much not often in my parasympathetic state and I, I run on cortisol and adrenaline a lot, and that is just kind of my genetic, I guess, predisposition. And so yes, because of the knowledge I have around, you know, chronic unwellness and adrenal fatigue and all these things that I’ve experienced.
There’s a lot you can do. But I do remember at the time when I was really, really unwell, which I was about 34 at the time I was so desperate to feel better that when I finally found a practitioner that kind of could tell me what was going on, and I just did everything they told me with regards to eating the right way, which was what spurred me on to go and study nutritional therapy because it was so life altering, just eating at the right time for what my body needed.
And I was so dedicated. And what I found when it got 10 years later to the perimenopause is that your resources from a I guess a drive maybe, or just like you, you just have so much less to tap into to say, okay, I’m going to make the change. Like you could be like, yes, I know I have to get up early and get the sun in my eyes, or I know I shouldn’t go on my phone when I’ve been lying awake for six hours, but sometimes you’re just like, I don’t, you don’t have the capacity.
That’s the word. I think it’s lack of capacity. And then obviously so many of us have young children in this phase too. And I remember specifically a massive difference for me was kind of getting to that 2-year-old phase where you are, he’s getting up and coming to our room and with my first one, which I had 10 years earlier, I would be so much more disciplined about saying, okay, like doing this kind of getting up in the night, going and making sure like we get into a routine.
I did not have the capacity for that. I was like, it’s fine, whatever. And I said to my husband, can you please deal? And then he couldn’t be bothered to deal. So like I had now have an 8-year-old who’s literally been in my room because I’m like, I don’t have the capacity and it doesn’t really matter loads.
I think it’s fine. You know, whatever. I’m like, do what you can cope with. I think that is the massive difference. It’s just the resource for capacity to make the right choices. And yes, obviously I think for me, and I think for most women, what they don’t realise is the number one thing I think anyone can do is balance their blood sugar levels.
This is an untapped miracle for people because it’s such a basic thing, that helps all hormones in your body function better. And it’s the simplest, easy as well. I wouldn’t say easy in theory, or it’s easy in theory, but not easy in practice thing to do. But for me it’s always the baseline thing where I would start, where I’d go like, okay, whereas in the initial kind of illness, years of my life, I’d be like, okay, I’m not even, I wasn’t even eating red and orange vegetables because I just had to have nothing that was spiking my blood sugar. I don’t have the capacity to be that extreme for a time, and now I’d just be like, okay, I’m just not eating anything that’s like added sugar sweet. Yes, I’m going to have some toast and bread and I’m not going to go completely OTT. I do it in a manageable way, but I make a conscious decision to say, look, just give your body a bit of space, you know, to improve and something like that. I think people underestimate, they’re like, you know, having that biscuit before bed or for most people is actually going to give you an adrenaline rush and how, and make you not sleep.
You know, it’s simple little things like that. But I don’t think any one thing is a cure all. I’ve taken all the supplements, I’ve done all the, you know, the things you were supposed to do, and sometimes you still don’t sleep. No matter what you do. And I, that’s why I’ve realised it really is down to how sensitive you are to the fluctuations in your body.
And I’m not taking hormones. I take, I try, I have tried many different kinds of supplements and sometimes things help for a time, but they don’t help consistently. And so I don’t have an answer for, um, like the fix. But I think it’s about just figuring out what your, where you can help yourself.
Le’Nise Brothers: I, but I think that’s actually a really valuable thing to point out because when in the conversations around perimenopause this, these days, there’s this dominant theme of HRT is going to solve everything.
And what you’ve said is really interesting in that you’ve tried lots of different things and that’s kind of fundamental as a nutritional therapist as well, things work differently for different people. We all have different physiology. What we just, we operate differently and what works for one person isn’t going to work for another.
But these basics that you have the capacity for, that word capacity is so interesting because I think it’s so right. What you can do in your thirties isn’t necessarily what you can do in your forties, especially when you have more demands on you, whether it’s children, whether it’s work, whether it’s aging parents or siblings and so on and so forth.
So
Sjaniël Turrell: hundred percent.
Le’Nise Brothers: That capacity, that word capacity, is so interesting and I really like when I work with women who are in perimenopause. I’m always talking about, let’s talk about what we can add in rather than what we’re taking out. Because I think mentally it’s easier to think, okay, well I just have to add this.
Rather than think, okay, I need to take this out and take that out. It’s like going back to balancing blood sugar levels to help manage cortisol. Let’s talk about what we’re adding in for breakfast. You know,
Sjaniël Turrell: One hundred percent,
Le’Nise Brothers: it’s just what are these little tweaks that we can make that are aligned with what you have capacity for?
I love that word capacity. It’s so interesting.
Sjaniël Turrell: I think that most sums up. Do you know what I mean? The space that you get into, it’s not that you don’t want to, it’s not that you don’t know necessarily what you should be doing
Le’Nise Brothers: mm-hmm.
Sjaniël Turrell: But you just have so much less resource internally to draw from that’s outside of being in maybe a bad physical or emotional state.
It’s a different kind of resource, and it does come down to capacity within the whole of yourself, which I find, Yeah, and it’s, I think too when you’ve, when you’re going through the cycle and you are already exhausted ’cause of the cycle, and it’s like almost, you have to almost build up a to a point where you’re so fed up that you’re like, okay, I’m going to make the decision to, I’m going to get to the decision where I’m like, okay, I’m just going to make a change.
But like you say, I think the mistake would be to try and fix everything or do it everything, right? And, um, I do find that for many of, I’m a quite an all or nothing kind of person which is not great because I’m just like, you know, I can’t just have one block of chocolate to scratch the itch. I need to have that whole slab.
And there was a time where I was eating a slab of chocolate every single day. And yes, I would buy the better versions of the chocolate. So I’m not buying a dairy milk. I’m maybe buying like a HU chocolate or something that has way less sugar in it, but that’s still not good for you in any way, shape or form.
Where now I’ve just like put a thing from, I’m like, you don’t buy, you just don’t buy chocolate to be in your house. You simply don’t. That doesn’t mean that if I’m out and I’m like, oh, I’m having a coffee, and I’m like, fine, I’m going to have, you know, like a pain au chocolate today. I will do that. I’ve become much less, military or I think, well, 10, 15, well it’s almost 15 years ago now. Time flies so quickly. It is 15 years ago that I studied nutritional therapy. And you come out of that and you become so regimented about what should be, what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. And I’m like, yeah, when you’re young you have like, again, you have the capacity for that.
And I think some personality types of people, they’re so good at sticking to things that make them feel good, but some of us are not wired that way. And so with perimenopause, I just think is the fact that nothing stays the same. And I think what you pointed about that what’s working for one person is not going to work for everyone.
And I think what happens a lot with nutritional or health gurus is like, they’ve had this incredible experience in their life by doing something that completely changed their life and they suddenly believe this is like the miracle cure for everyone. It 100% will not be. And I mean, I know what worked for me.
And what, and yes, that will work for some people, but I think what the most important lesson to learn is our physiology is transient and it changes so much that what’s working for you in this time period won’t work for you the entire time. But I think in perimenopause specifically, those transient times are much more often it happens, you know, you’re like, oh, I’ve been sleeping well for six months, and then suddenly you haven’t changed anything and you’re like, oh, I haven’t slept for three nights.
So I think that is, for me, the, the most frustrating thing about it is like, you don’t know when you feel like you’ve found something. That’s what you, don’t don’t know how long that’s going to last.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Keep an open mind and just think, okay, well there’s always other things that I can try. Speaking of other things, what I also really want to get into is your work as a makeup artist, because I think that evolution that you’ve, you’ve had in terms of careers, really interesting. You studied as an to be a nutritional therapist.
You were already working as a makeup artist. How did you then combine the two? So what, what are the principles that you’ve taken from your study in nutritional therapy you now apply in your work as a makeup artist?
Sjaniël Turrell: Yes, thank you. I think it can often be confusing for people when they say, what do you do?
And I’m like, well, I’m a nutritional therapist and I’m a makeup artist. And they were like, those things have nothing to do with one another. And I’m like, actually, they have very much to do with one another. Obviously going into studying nutritional therapy and having been really interested in health for at least intensive or a decade before I went to study, I was very much about reading all my food ingredient lists and you know, what you put in your body is so important.
And I think a lot of people are on that journey with health. You know, they pick up every, I don’t, I mean, I don’t know I think 15 years ago that was a very common thing. I feel like we’re in a new generation where people don’t always do it that much. And I think we, it’s a reeducation for people. But yes, you read the ingredients list on whatever products you buy to eat because you’re like, okay, what’s going into my body?
And then when I went to study nutritional therapy and I started thinking about the body as a whole organ, and your skin is an organ and it’s um, you know, it absorbs your environment. And I just kind of felt a bit like an idiot ’cause I was like, I’ve always kind of judged people who didn’t put mental and physical wellbeing together with what the food they eat.
To me, that was common sense. And I was like, how have I not understood that the ingredients in the products that I use on my skin and on my body are affecting me as much as the food that I’m eating? So I was like, oh, wait I’m like this doing the same thing. I’m not realising that I’m using ingredients in products every single day that affect my wellbeing.
And so that is kind of where I changed my entire professional makeup kit and the products that I use. All my beauty products, skincare, makeup to natural, organic versions. And so I exclusively use. As far as possible, the best natural brands and products I can find because the, your skin is an organ that interacts with your environment everywhere you go.
And women especially, but men, more so now than ever before are we are using so many care products on our bodies, our skin, everything from what we wash, our hair, our faces, our deodorants, our, you know, our body washes our makeup for sure. All of that affects our wellbeing in some way. It’s exposing us to what’s in there.
And so it is, it’s a very important part of the puzzle.
Le’Nise Brothers: We had a, a call beforehand to prepare for our conversation today, and you talked a little bit about the semantics of the language in this space. Toxins and toxic and clean. I want to talk a little bit about this because you’ll have, you have these naysayers who talk about natural and organic products saying, they’re just a waste of money, they’re not effective.
And that, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of weight behind these words saying things are toxic, saying things are clean. What’s your take on this?
Sjaniël Turrell: Yes. I think one of the points I did make about it was culturally, I’m South African and other South Africans will understand, and not just other South Africans, but cultures that have a more straightforward way of speaking is that we just say things the way we think they are.
You say a word like, oh, that’s toxic and you don’t think of it in terms of the fact that people in some places will immediately interpret that as being like a poison that’s going to kill you. Uh, and I think this is where a hundred percent semantics are so important in these conversations because it really depends on what these words mean to you personally.
In the UK specifically, there is a real consciousness about words people use. I think this is a cultural thing. There’s a larger sensitivity around being really meaningful or understanding what you are busy saying from, I guess illegal and a technical perspective or just whether that’s emotionally emotive.
And so I’ve really had to learn, and this is both when you’re studying nutritional therapy as when you is like if you’re doing how being a healthcare provider and in the space where there’s a lot of conversation about whether things are good or bad for you. And also ’cause I think a lot of health gurus maybe on the American platforms have a similar way of speaking to the South African thing.
We like things that are like, sound a bit extreme or you know, like a sound exciting or you just want to make a point so you kind of over, you over, what’s the word? Like, make that point really hard. And then in the UK in the in Britain specifically, people are a bit sensitive. They’re like, oh, what does that mean?
And so I think it’s really important for us to understand that when you’re thinking about, especially in the space of natural beauty, which can mean a million things by the way. There is no definitive definition. But nothing is, that is in your beauty product is going to be toxic in that way that it’s going, it’s a poison that’s going to kill you today.
But I think the point is that our environments are so full of synthetic elements that our natural bodies are not used to. And the culmination of all these synthetic things that are almost new to the human physiology are having an unknown impact on us over long periods of time. And so I say to people, first of all, you’re never going to find the perfect product or the perfectly inverted comma clean thing to use.
If you want a perfectly clean makeup brand, don’t wear makeup because you’re not born to wear makeup. This is not a natural thing in, in, in and of itself. And there are people who make that choice for themselves. And I think this is what it comes down to is what is important to you personally and what is your personal point of compromise.
For a lot of people, it’s more that they just not educated in understanding that yes, over time, if you are using, I would say an average, and there are differing, I guess there’s a consensus of differing amounts, but let’s say between 80 and 160 different synthetic chemicals on your body every single day of your life in care products only.
So that’s eliminating food, eliminating, um, household things, eliminating the pollution that you’re being exposed to outside or you know, all these things. So just on your care products, and it’s an unregulated use of a lot of synthetic things. That doesn’t mean that the ingredients themselves are unregulated.
There are things that are unregulated in kind of a long term, having studied the impacts long term, that are now being found out. And so there is truth to the fact that we have been for 50, 100 years using things that impact us really, really negatively in the name of beauty. And I say 10 years ago everyone was poo-pooing natural things.
But now in the whole, in France, they’ve completely banned gel nails because they’ve now seen that the impact on health is so negative that this should not be in the public sphere. The UK has not yet banned that, and you can still choose to have that, and you won’t see that immediately. But the reality is that when you go and have these kinds of things put on your nails.
Those, some of the elements in those products are measurable in your urine within 30 minutes of using those products.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow.
Sjaniël Turrell: The same with synthetic sunscreens. Synthetic sunscreens absorb into your skin. They’re designed to do that. They have a reaction with your skin and the way they absorb or reflect rays of the sun, but some of those things are measurable in your urine within literally an hour of putting it on your body.
So a hundred percent your body does absorb some things that you’re using and this affects your liver. This affects just kind of long-term how your health functions. We, there’s a big thing now about hormone disrupting synthetic chemicals in products that I think is the kind of newer, bigger awareness that people are cottoning onto.
Le’Nise Brothers: I think it’s really interesting from a, a hormone perspective where people don’t realise that our, as you say, our skin is our biggest organ. It’s so absorbent. That’s why, when you take HRT, one of the most effective ways of taking it is by using a gel or a patch, because it goes straight into the bloodstream.
Sjaniël Turrell: Exactly.
Le’Nise Brothers: And of course the dosages will be different, but if you’re putting all of these different synthetic chemicals on your skin, they’re being absorbed by the skin, going into the bloodstream, and the body treats that, like when it’s trying to process it in the liver, like a synthetic form of estrogen.
Sjaniël Turrell: Hundred percent.
Le’Nise Brothers: And if you have a condition like fibroids, for example, where the growth of fibroids is estrogen dependent. You are adding in another estrogen source to fuel the growth of fibroids. This is a problem and I think this is where we have this disconnect with people saying that, natural beauty and clean beauty and conscious beauty, it’s not a thing.
These chemicals, they don’t affect our health. It’s a lot like a disconnect between the understanding of how absorbent the skin actually is and the effects of what these things do actually do in our body.
Sjaniël Turrell: 100%. And I think too, I think the one statement I would like to make about this is in order for anything with regards to health and wellness to be accepted into mainstream thinking, there has to be a lot of studies and research done.
Often the type of research we need is not well funded and it doesn’t come to light. But even when it is, it takes 20 years for any form of research to really become adopted by the mainstream. And so with regards to an ingredient like parabens, which we’ve most of us have heard about as a hormone disrupting thing, and so many brands, whether they’re identifiers, natural or clean or not, will say paraben free because this is a big thing in the industry that is known to be a hormone disrupting ingredient.
But there are still companies, ones that claim to be very sustainable, that because it’s not, inverted commas as a proven fact on paper, they, you know, they don’t have enough trials to prove that this is really happening will still say that science says, it’s fine. And so we still use parabens and you’ll be shocked at the people who still use parabens in their products.
I don’t want to poo poo brands and so, I don’t know if I should say any names, but the point is you really should look still on your ingredients list for, uh, some really well-known French pharmacy brands that people love. I, you know, and because I use natural brands, I automatically, you know, at this time in my life, I know which brands are I use that 100% don’t have those things in. So I don’t even look at the mainstream things that everyone says, oh, I use this, I use this. And I’m like, okay. But I don’t ever look at those things as I don’t use them. And then when I see the ingredients, when clients come to me to say, oh, this is the skincare they use, and I looked at the ingredients, I’m in shock.
I’m like, parabens, almost all the teenage girls I know are using these brands. And I guess my argument with that is like, okay, you can come with this very logical science mind and go, well, it’s not proven. It’s what? It was proven safe and it hasn’t. And I was like, why do we want to wait around to find out in another 10 years that actually it has been like detrimental?
If there’s some smoke signal going off around something saying this might not be good for you, let’s just not use it because I don’t want to find out in 10 years or 15 or 20 years time that, oh, I’ve been using this and this is like really attributed to some cancer. Or like you say, some hormonal issue that so many of us have.
We live in a world where the food, we eat, the water, we have to drink the, everything is contaminated with some form of synthetic kind of byproduct that shouldn’t be in there naturally. Our bodies are incredible. Oh my goodness. Our bodies filter out so much stuff. But why are we not doing the due diligence to just help our bodies lighten that load because, and yes, you might be, this is the other thing that people forget is, like you said, every human has a genetic difference in how they process information that comes into their body.
And some people are way more sensitive to what’s coming in than other people. I know those people who’ve been smoking and drinking nonstop their entire lives and they’re like a hundred years old and they look like they’re never going to die. And they’re like, yeah, but they have like these liver enzymes that are like superpower or something.
I can’t touch caffeine or alcohol or any of these things. I just feel awful. And I always thought I was just like a weakling until I did some DNA testing. I was like, oh, wait a minute. This is literally my genetic code is not allowing me to do these things. It really will affect different people differently.
But that doesn’t make it good for anybody. It just means some of you, some people have more resilience, I guess. I wouldn’t sit around and wait around and be like we’ll wait for science to tell us because there is enough evidence and enough anecdotal evidence to, for us to say that these things are not great.
Having said that, though, there are definite I’m not saying all synthetics are bad, and this is another kind of touch point in natural beauty is that there’s a lot of talk about chemicals are bad and yes, we, those of us who know every single thing that you use on Earth is a chemical. Water is a chemical.
The plants are made of chemicals. So I want to make clear that, to be scientifically or semantically correct? Of course. It’s not about everything is bad. Some synthetic ingredients are better than using the natural versions. But overall, I, if you understand health and wellness, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are kind of quite focused on that.
I related to this thing of the difference between using a synthetic supplement versus a food state supplement. We know that your body understands how to use the food state so much better than the synthetic. Like the synthetic will plug the holes if your body’s really desperate for something. But when you give it the food state, your body just knows how to use that so much better.
It’s like, oh, okay. It’s giving me what I understand. On paper, those two things may look the same, but in your body they really do have a different outcome. And so this is my view on natural beauty and natural skincare and makeup is that you’re giving your body something that it understands better on a molecular level.
It’s nourishing, you know, it’s plant-based. It comes from nature for the most part. But yes, it also is very complicated in the sense that it’s not that straightforward, but it’s just about understanding how to make better decisions and know what you want from it.
Le’Nise Brothers: You’ve just said understanding how to make better decisions.
So if someone’s listening to this and they’re kind of doing a mental inventory of their makeup bag, what are some easy switches that you would typically recommend people make that are just starting to become interested in, in this space?
Sjaniël Turrell: I think the very first thing and the most important thing, and I think if you an expert on hormones specifically, this will have come up loads, is that fragrance is the number one thing in your home, in your care products that you should switch out.
And the thing is, people think about this in sense of, oh, perfume or body spray or deodorant or like my skincare products that smell nice. This has got to do with your fabric softener, your, your washing powder. The candles that you burn in your house. Anything that has a nice smell.
And I do find that for some people, this is really hard because we are so emotionally attached to fragrances. Like I smell things and I’m like, oh my gosh, that reminds me of when I lived in America when I was 18. Gosh, that’s crazy when you, you know, you smell a certain perfume or you remember your perfume, the first perfume you ever had.
I would like Revlon Charlie Red. Like that used to be like when I was like 13, you know. And so we have these really nostalgic emotional connections. And I think especially I find with things like fabric softener, people really love that smell of their washing. It reminds them of their mom and it reminds, but this does so much untold damage overall because we’re exposed to so much of it.
And interestingly because I’ve not done any synthetic fragrance for about 10 years, I really struggle with anything now that’s, and I used to love perfume, like all kinds of perfume. I really struggle with anything that’s synthetic. I’m so sensitive, I can smell it straight away that I know, oh, this is synthetic.
That doesn’t mean I don’t still love like the thought of some of these nice things. But you know, when you go into those airports things and you just like walk through where everyone’s smelling and it’s just like, I can’t breathe. And I think especially if you’re somebody who gets easy as easily nauseous around environments with lots of smells, your liver is really sensitive to these things and you should stay away from synthetic fragrance.
That’s not to say that something like essential oils is the answer to all of that. Because some people are really sensitive to essential oils. They can be highly irritant for some people, and I’m not a someone who proposes that. You’d be like, oh, you know, I’m I cannot stand burning incense. I do not like it.
It’s not a direct swap for everybody. Some people like it, some people don’t. I try as much as I can to go fragrance free wherever I’m able, with regards to kind of cleaning products and washing products and um, yeah. And then I’m, I’ve gone to a lot of effort to seek out like natural perfume brands.
There are some amazing ones ’cause I do not love kind of these essential oil fragrances myself. But yeah, I think it takes some getting used to getting, but you are doing your body a favor massively and I would like to say, especially if you have neurodivergent or children with SEN issues, this is really adding a massive load to what their bodies have to siphon out every day.
And just also things like ingredients or chemicals that are on new clothes and new bedding. Always wash that stuff. Always, always wash that stuff before you wear them because people forget that that’s gone through so many factories, so many hands, so many, like it’s got to be, you know, hygienically cleaned or antibacterial. But that stuff is not good for you.
That’s the other thing. Antibacterial is also one of the biggest issues for hormone disrupting things with regards to makeup. Sorry, I know it’s like a, there’s so much you could talk about. It’s a lot with regards to makeup, I think. Yes. And, and skincare, parabens number one thing to try and say and phthalates are the things in fragrances, they are the antibacterial elements and things that can be really considered hormone disrupting.
I think the hard thing is starting to read the ingredients is it may is very confusing. There’s a lot. I’m just looking at my list of things here. And then there’s PEGs. They are also synthetic ingredients that I try to avoid, but not, not all of them are as bad as the other, but I would say your number one thing is fragrance.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay. So fragrance in cleaning products, in laundry. Even things like scented tampons, scent pads, things
Sjaniël Turrell: Oh gosh.
Le’Nise Brothers: Like that. When I talk to clients about this sort of thing, two things I always say to stop using straightaway if they’re using Febreze or those like plugin
Sjaniël Turrell: hundred percent,
Le’Nise Brothers: take, stop using that right away and then stop using scented menstrual products because of just the vagina and the vulva is so, so absorbent and it’s that scent, that fragrance and just having wreaking havoc on hormones and the liver and liver’s ability to metabolise those hormones. I want to just talk a little bit about makeup. What are some brands that you would love to highlight?
Because you do do this on your Instagram, I’ve seen you highlighting interesting makeup brands, interesting skincare brands. What are some brands that you’re loving right now?
Sjaniël Turrell: Okay, I’m going to get to that, but I just say quickly the fact that you mentioned fragrance. Um. What, what do you call it? Like period products.
I, I’m actually a bit in shock because I forgot that existed because it’s so outside of my frame of reference. And so I would say if you’re use, if you’re even considering that, like get rid, like you say, because not only is it the most absorbent area in your body, but most absorbent for estrogen. Um, so I just wanted to, and also the fact that I, we now have natural period products available in most grocery stores.
What people forget too is that your, your basic Tampax and, uh, those brands, they also are made with non-organic, non-organic cottons that are covered in pesticides and you’re basically putting that in one of the most vulnerable areas of your entire body. And so, yes, I think. Buy the best you can afford because we’re in a cost of living crisis.
100%. But if you can afford to go and buy an, like an organic cotton brand for feminine care products, please do that because it is a huge, it is a huge thing. Sorry, I just wanted to say, because I was like, oh my gosh, that that happens. Yes. I forgot about that. So there are so many incredible natural makeup brands and skincare brands, and I think access to natural skincare is amazing.
And yes, there is this, this idea maybe for some people that natural doesn’t work as well. Look, it really depends what you want out of it. And there are brands that are very natural, only used to natural colours, only used natural ingredients. Even organic certified. Getting an organic certified makeup brand is very difficult because you can’t certify things like minerals or water.
These are just naturally occurring kind of elements in the world, so you can’t farm them and make them organic. But there are some requirements that there has to be a certain amount of organic ingredients. I would say your number one point of frame of reference is Cosmos, which is the certification for brands that are safe, have safe ingredients, that could be Cosmos Natural or Cosmos Organic.
And yes, they, they have a very small kind of amount of synthetic ingredients that they allowed in people’s ingredient list. That’s not to say that brands that are not certified are not necessarily good because certifications are also a loop jumping system where you have to do so many tick box things and it’s very expensive for small brands to do.
But if you’re unsure something like Cosmos or Eco Cert, these are ways to know that you’re buying a brand that’s vetted. With regards to makeup and I think the most easily accessible brands, I would say the number one brand that you would find that you can trust and know is good is RMS Beauty. It’s an American brand.
You may have heard of it. Kosas is another one, which is great. Ilia. I would say Ere Perez, uh, these four brands are, I think, the most widely available in the UK. Like you can buy them from SpaceNK, you can buy them from Cult Beauty. And so it’s great now that you can find natural brands on mainstream sites.
There are so many other brands that I use. One of my absolute favorite natural brands is called Madara. And a lot of people have not heard of that brand, but it’s a Latvian brand, but now available on a lot of natural platforms. And I think one of the hardest products to find that kind of rival the mainstream is a good foundation and a good concealer because at the end of the day, they’re trying to create a product without using the same silicones as a base that the mainstream brands do.
And getting that same kind of texture is very, very difficult. If people understood how hard it was to formulate a really effective and good product like that without using those kind of cheap, easy, synthetic ingredients, it’s really hard. And so I would say Madara for that is really great for foundations is one of my favorite ones.
And then I would say my number one go-to place to buy products would be Content Beauty, which is a local kind of natural beauty store in the UK online. The reason I like sending people there is you can go onto that website and every single product that you buy on that website has been vetted for their ingredients and whether or not that is going to be, good or bad for you.
For some people there might be some product ingredients still in there that they want to avoid. Like I said, some are a bit more, you have a point of compromise. So if, I would say, if you’re somebody who’s really interested in just really clean no synthetic colours, because the reality is getting like a nice bright coral or a beautiful pink or bright red, these things do not come from nature.
Natural minerals cannot make these colours. And so they use synthetic colours often. They try their best to use food grade synthetic colours wherever they can, but some of them still, that is the compromise that they make because people want those products to be effective. If you want to avoid all of that, there’s a brand called Inika Organic, and they’re an Australian brand.
And I would say as far as efficacy and clean, they are probably one of the best ones for that. And then something like Tropic, which is a UK kind of brand that a lot of people know about, is also a really good place. They’re unbelievably sustainable company and they also are really good with their ingredients.
So. I don’t think there’s one brand to me that ticks all the boxes. It’s having to pick and choose from different ones. And then coming in with this thing of knowing what you want from it, you sometimes have to say, well, do I care more about the ingredients or do I care more about the efficacy of what I’m using?
Some people just want a little bit of something to make themselves look natural and feel nice, and so they prefer to have the more natural kind of ingredients and they don’t mind reapplying their cream blush after a couple of hours. Other people just wanted to look super effective. And so that’s going to depend what you choose at the end of the day.
Some people really, it’s important that everything’s vegan. Um, other people much, you know, they go, oh, I’d rather use lanolin and honey because these things, or bees wax ’cause these things on, they like the textures and, you know, so it just depends what it is that you want from the products.
Le’Nise Brothers: It is amazing seeing how much the, this space has evolved. I remember 15 years ago going into Planet Organic and they had a small little beauty section and I just remember thinking like, I could really never use, use these products to now, like Content Beauty, a site that I love. I remember Naturismo, RIP, it was such a great, great website, similar to Content Beauty, everything vetted, but it’s now been bought by a French brand.
But you really have a lot to choose from these days. I think the one sticking point is that the colour range for things like foundations and concealers isn’t quite there yet, especially if for darker, darker skin tones. But I think that’s probably a similar issue across the entire beauty industry where there’s still a long way to go in that space.
Sjaniël Turrell: I think it’s, it’s true. And I think my, my number one kind of mission or passion since 12 years ago, 15 years ago, was that I really wanted a all inclusive foundation range that really was good because that didn’t exist at all. Like you say, you know, if you just had access to a couple of brands. And I think the other problem is, unfortunately, is that there are brands that are trying really hard to do the right thing with regards to inclusivity.
But if you’re looking at brands like out of Australia. Small brands out of Scandinavia, they want to cater to everyone, but because the mass of their customer base is not as diverse as maybe other parts of the world, it becomes financially unviable. Because if you only, you know, if only 1% of your clients are buying the right colours or the colours that they need, and you’re an independent brand trying to kind of compete with these massive conglomerates, it becomes almost impossible to continue.
And I’ve sadly seen so many of these smaller brands discontinue their ranges after trying really hard to be inclusive. But I will say as a makeup artist, I’m just going to say this is a general rule for natural makeup because it’s an educational point. A lot of the natural brands are come out of France and they have factories there, but a lot of things are white labeled, so it means that they choose a formula that’s already being made by these factories.
And so the formulation techniques for a lot of brands that come out of France, for example, undertones way too pink for you. If you have darker skin tones, and I’m so this, I’m just putting out there for all the women with darker skin tones who really want to do natural, but they really struggling to find what works for them.
I would say the number one brands you want to go for RMS Beauty is excellent for dark skin tones. Their undertones are the right amount of yellow and red, which is so lacking. In most of these brands, I would say even brands like Madara, which is really inclusive across the board, like they have a really great colour range.
But if you have a golden undertone, a lot of mixed race women have a really golden undertone and it’s almost so yellow that nobody makes that colour if you are quite pale, because a lot of the formulations are kind of focused on the paler, the pinker. And I love now when we are seeing in all the brands where they’re going, okay, it’s like it’s a warm, it’s a neutral, it’s a cool, do you know what I mean?
They’re starting to try really hard to give everyone an option. So I’m going to say RMS really, really good for darker skin tones. Kosas, which is another LA brand. Their undertones have a good amount of yellow and reds and they really are good across the board. And Ere Perez is the other one, Australian brand.
But originally the formula, uh, the founder, she’s Mexican, and I would say out of all the brands she has the most yellow, the yellow is undertones. Especially if you’re looking for concealers. Really hard to find good concealers for dark undertones. And so I’m going to give a shout out to those three brands as kind of like your go-to as a darker skin tone girl.
If you have a skin tone where you’re a bit mixed race, and it’s almost like I find a lot of Middle East, like the, or like I would say like if you’re like a Greek heritage, maybe often some kind of south Asian heritage, you almost have like a dark skin tone with a pink undertone that is also really, really difficult to find.
But I love those three brands for doing really well at finding. But I think also a lot of times, even as a makeup artist, I often have to mix. I have to blend colours together. I have to go, okay, I need this product and I have to add a bit of this to get the right skin tone. Unfortunately it’s impossible to cater to all the incredible amounts of skin tones they are, but from a natural beauty point of view, those are your go-tos.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s amazing. Ere Perez. I haven’t heard of them, but I’ll definitely be checking them out.
Sjaniël Turrell: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s one thing that I struggle with because in the winter my skin changes across the year. When we met earlier this year, that was probably, so February is probably the palest I would be across the year. So now December I still have like residual,
Sjaniël Turrell: A bit of tan.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like I have to have three different, um, almost, yeah, three different, I use tinted, um, a tinted moisturiser, three different ones across the air. Yeah.
Sjaniël Turrell: And a tinted moisturiser is a really good fit if you struggle with the right skin tone.
Because if your own skin tone can still kind of reflect through the product, the match doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s just making sure you’re not graying your skin, which is a number one problem I think with dark skin tones is this thing, this kind of tone that just makes you look quite gray if you put it on your face.
I think too, what I say to a lot of women, especially with darker skin tones, a lot of my personal clients, is I was like, actually no one, no person has one skin tone. You have many different tones on your face, and I think the darker your skin is, the more obvious those changes are. So often your chin and your forehead, much darker than your cheeks.
And so the mistake a lot of people make is they try to match the colour of their cheeks to the rest of their face. And then your forehead and your chin area looks so gray because you’re trying to make it all one colour. And my tip is to find something in the middle of those two colourways that’s more sheer.
Make sure you have the right amount of yellow underneath because you’re always going to look less gray with a bit of yellow and the right amount of red, not pink to kind of just be light much lighter on those areas of your face so that it looks more even toned rather than blanked out and perfect because, well, my way of doing makeup is, that is not the objective, but yes, it’s just, that’s, those are just little practical things because it is harder.
And then obviously for some women, a hundred percent, you do need more than one colour to either blend in different ways as time goes through, you know, as your skin changes through the year. But I do think it is kind of, it’s unrealistic to think that there’s ever going to be any makeup brand that’s going to find your perfect skin tone if you struggle to find a match, because there are as many skin tones as there are humans on the planet.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Sjaniël Turrell: So, you know, no one brand can get to all of that. Yeah. And to, and to be mindful that beauty brands, especially natural beauty brands. I have met so many natural beauty brand founders and they’re so passionate about what they do and their mission is to change the world for the better, to help women for the better.
All of them really want to cater to everyone. But running those businesses in the kind of business models of the world with massive, you know, L’Oreal owned brands and you know, whatever, these corporations who literally create the cheapest products and charge so much money for them. But they have also with using the access to as many synthetic ingredients as they want, trying to.
Spend a lot more money on creating your products, having much smaller margins to work with, and then try and have a viable business. They are all trying really hard to do the right thing. And I think you know, it’s just about having patience and being like seeing who you can support as much as possible.
Because if you want brands like these to cater to your needs, they’re going to need you as their clients. If you’re not their client, if you don’t, if you’re not their customers, they can’t, you know, they’re going to have to stop supporting people because they can only do that much. And that’s why sometimes with the right type of sale, like I, I think this is another topic where a lot of natural beauty brands become kind of cult-like, and then they get sold to bigger corporations and then suddenly the ingredients just change and their ethos changes because it then becomes a moneymaking thing.
But I do want to say with companies like RMS Beauty, where Rose Marie Swift, who was the, is the own, you know, the creative director, the owner managed to sell her company to a very like-minded kind of, I guess, investor. And that has helped her brand for the better because now she can really invest in formulating and creating the products that cater to people in the right way and be able to continue doing that.
Yeah. I’m always blown away by these new formulations that are coming out with brands like that. So yeah, it, it’s a complicated thing, but I think if people start thinking of natural brands and natural beauty in this holistic way where it’s not just about skincare and beauty, it’s about sustainability and how, you know, it’s about communities.
It’s about the impact on the earth overall and about whether we as communities who know about these things are going to continue putting our money into these businesses to help them grow and become yeah, make it. It’s the same with organic and natural food. It’s like if the people who can afford it don’t do it, then it’s not going to become viable for the people who can’t afford it.
Mm. Similar kind of concept. It’s such an in-depth topic. It’s, there’s so much to talk about and discuss. I could do it for, you know, days on end. This is why I do a lot of one-on-one clients. I spend time with individuals. I help them find what works for them personally because I think it’s very overwhelming.
Le’Nise Brothers: So we’ve talked about a lot of different things today. We’ve talked about hormones, we’ve talked about perimenopause, skincare, makeup, sustainability. What’s the one thought that you’d love to leave listeners with today?
Sjaniël Turrell: Can I ever just have one thought that’s really, that’s really hard. No. Do you know what I think, I think this is a very important thought. I was like, all of us individually or on a journey, do not beat yourself up for where you are on your journey. There is no perfect. And for those who vehemently get to a point in their life where like this is the only way you may change your mind, you may get to a place in your life where you actually cannot sustain this very perfect way of living, have grace for the people who don’t get it or are going through things that you know, that they don’t necessarily have again, the capacity to be where you’re at or understand what you’re telling them. And I think this is a lesson I’ve learned, as I’ve gotten older and over the years, is that there may be a better or a right way to do things, but that’s not necessarily possible at all times for everyone.
And so don’t be overwhelmed. Do what you can. And I always say to people, do the best you can afford in the moment. Because yes, trying to do things better is really expensive. And this has, for me, being one of the most financially challenging years I’ve ever had in this country. Do you know what? I’m going to give you one tip.
If you want natural beauty and you cannot afford anything, just buy yourself a bottle of natural, organic jojoba oil because that is your makeup remover. That is your moisturiser, that’s your kids’ moisturiser. That’s your husband’s moisturiser. It’s like you can use it on your body, you can use it on your face, and you will have really good skin.
My point is it, it doesn’t have to be fancy. You just need to understand that going for something created by nature as much as possible is just always going to be better for you and your body. You just do the best you can with what you have.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, I love that. Do the best you can with what you have. Where can people find you?
Sjaniël Turrell: I mean, I’m on Instagram. That’s about it. I’ve I don’t have the capacity for TikTok live. And yes, you can email me, which will, that is also in my bio on Instagram. It’s @sjaniel. You’ll have to put that up somewhere because my name is very difficult to remember or spell. It’s spelled S-J-A-N-I-E-L.
It’s an Afrikaans name. It’s, um, the j If you put the make the j and h in your mind, it’s easier to remember, but it’s Sjaniël and yeah, if you message me on there or you email me, I will get back to you or my website, sjanielturrell.com. But yeah. I’m that is how you find me.
Le’Nise Brothers: Great. Thank you so much.
All of the links will be in the show notes, including places to find you.
Sjaniël Turrell: Thank you.
Le’Nise Brothers: And the beauty brands that you’ve mentioned. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom.
Sjaniël Turrell: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it. It was really, really lovely talking to you about all these things.