Seen on TV, Now Seen at Home

Everyone recognizes the blue screen with yellow lettering on TV. Every time you see those infomercials, about a thousand things go through your head simultaneously.

“Whoever thought of that is a genius!”

“Do they really make a living out of these things?”

“Who would buy that?”

“I want on

e, but does it really work?”

“That guy is so annoying.”

That is just some of what is going through your head. We, smart consumers, are always skeptical about the products. “It’s too good to be true.” It usually is, but I have a handful of products with the red “As Seen on TV” label and they work pretty well. Not all infomercial products are scams.

Billy Mays, pitchman for OxiClean, said “[I] never endorse a product [I] didn't believe in. “

I never call the 800 number listed on TV. I’ve read testimonies online complaining about the operators hustling additional services and offers until the advertised $19.99 became $69.99. I buy my products either at a brick-and-mortar As Seen on TV store or Walgreens. Then, I’d have my product in hand for the advertised price, even though I don’t have the extra set they promised “if you call within the next 10 minutes.”

A friend got me a version of the Snuggie Fleece Blanket for Christmas. I should’ve gotten a patent for this. I’m always reading on the couch and I’m always cold. It’s such a hassle to turn the page and then adjust the blanket again and again every 2 minutes. Before I got this, I usually have a fleece blanket and safety pin two corners around my neck so I’m actually wearing the blanket and have another one covering my legs.

I bought the Iron Gym at Bed, Bath & Beyond so I can keep up with my upper body conditioning. I used to do gymnastics and play tennis on a regular basis, where I get all my upper body strength. I’ve used it a few times but is now just sitting on my closet door frame. I’m afraid I’m going to break my door frame.

Space Bags was also a gift and this is my second favorite infomercial product. I found these puffy jackets that I want to donate, but I have to wait until the Christmas season to donate them to the coat drives. They are taking up so much space so I stuffed them all in an extra-large space bag and vacuumed out the air. Voila! They’re so flat; I slipped it between some boxes under my bed. I don’t like using suitcases and I don’t have enough duffle bags to put all my clothes in. I hope my clothes won’t be too wrinkled when I take them out of the Space Bag.

My recent purchase is Smooth Away I bought at Walgreens. Honestly, I’m too lazy to shave. Even during skirt season in Stockton. I probably shave only 3 times a year and only during the months of July and August. Sometimes I try to get away not shaving by lathering my legs with lotion. I’m too cheap to buy replacement blades and shaving cream. I’m too lazy to take the time to shave so I try to do it in the shower, but even then I’m still too lazy. With Smooth Away, I just take out the pad and “gently buff the area in circular motions with slight pressure” while I watch TV. Again, I’m too lazy to shave so I haven’t used it yet.

Purifying my Shower Water

I just bought a really expensive Brita filter for my shower. Well, a Jonathan Product Shower purification system, and it wasn’t really that expensive since I bought it from the Bath & Body Works semi-annual sale for 75% off. But basically, it’s just a filter for your shower water.

This purchase is part of my obsession for improving my well-being. Just like Brita, it eliminates metals and chlorine and other harsh chemicals from your water. Jonathan goes one step further to replace the heavy metals with healthy potassium ions to balance pH and pre-condition the water with neutralizing oxidants. Supposedly, showering and washing your hair with pure water will soften hair and skin, and helps preserve hair color. I will have to try it before I can testify that claim.

Upon speculation, it might work. Typically, we shower in hot water, thus opening the pores on our skin and our hair cuticles. They become more vulnerable to its surrounding environment and moisture loss will also occur.

When you go to salons to color your hair, they usually apply hair softeners to open up the cuticles for more effective penetration of the coloring. Chlorine is a bleaching agent, so following logic, removing chlorine helps preserve hair color. Metals and other harsh chemicals can get trapped in the hair shaft preventing the cuticles from closing properly, thus moisture will be lost causing hair to be dull. On a side note, there is a test to determine if your cuticles are healthy or not.

I don’t know what this whole business of “pre-conditioning the water with neutralizing oxidants” and adding “healthy potassium ions to balance pH” is about. According to a homemade experiment done by some homebrewers, the pH of tap water and Brita filtered water is ~8.0 and ~5.5, respectively. Human skin has a pH value between 4.5 and 6. The results of this experiment are pretty interesting. You can see the full results here.

Depending on where you live, water quality varies. Water in polluted areas may contain Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. VOCs are gases or vapors emitted by various solids or liquids. Inhaling these gases may have adverse health effects.

I still can’t determine if this was a good buy or if I just got suckered into their marketing scheme.

I Like Natural Handmade Soap Just Because

For the past year, I’ve been slowly exchanging my chemical-filled body creams and shampoos for more natural products. Many people who know me would probably think my obsession started with Lush, a handmade cosmetics company, coming to San Francisco. To straighten things out, it actually started when I was taking my Physical Chemistry course.

Awhile before I took the course, I somehow began to be concerned with parabens in my body creams. One of our assignments in class was to write a term paper on a topic related to physical chemistry and I chose to write about absorption of parabens into our skin and paraben run-offs from our showering products.

Parabens are a group of chemicals widely used as preservatives in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Common parabens include methylparaben, ethylparaben and butylparaben. If you look at the list of ingredients of your shampoo/conditioner, lotion, shaving cream, toothpaste, etc, you’ll see at least one of the paraben’s family members embedded in the list. Parabens, in the most part, are considered safe. A small percentage of the general population may be allergic to paraben, which causes irritation or contact dermatitis. What really concern me are the new studies that say parabens are endocrine disruptors and have estrogenic activities. One scientific study reports that parabens were found in samples of breast tumors. Speculation linking paraben to tumor growth is based on the fact that the molecular structure resembles that of estrogen.

The estrogenic activity of parabens increase with the length of the alkyl group, denoted from their prefixes. Animal experiments have shown that the estrogenic activity of parabens is much weaker than estradiol. In an in vivo study, the effect of butylparaben was determined to be approximately 100,000 times weaker than estradiol, although this effect was only observed when employing a dose level which was 25,000 times higher than is actually used to preserve products. There is still not enough research to show that parabens to pose a health risk.

Parabens aren’t the only synthetics I’m trying to avoid. There is also dimethicone (usually in hair products), said to leave build-up in your hair, and new to the list, sodium lauryl sulfates.

Getting back to the point, I’ve been sucked too deep into the ‘natural’ realm that I’ve lost sight of why I’m really changing my lifestyle. In the beginning, I was doing it for my well-being and for the environment. Now I don’t buy any product without looking at the ingredients beforehand. I’ve become so mind-boggled by all the debates about the naturalness and effectiveness and the cost benefit analysis of the products that I feel like I’m not doing anything for the environment or for myself.