What pregnant momma's need for baby safe skincare: Belli Skincare

Hi ya Gorgeous!

This post is a guest blog review of the Belli skincare system that is a great fit for any lady who is pregnant, about to be pregnant, nursing or has a baby shower to go to and needs a gift idea!

Please say hello and welcome Michelle Ullman, who is expecting a beautiful and healthy baby in a matter of weeks! Congratluations to her! Special thanks to Michelle for testing the products and doing a review.



Now for some details about the Belli Brand and products! You can get your own at Amazon and on the
 Belli website!

Teratology Screening - A higher prenatal safety standard
For decades, medical science has known that small amounts of skin care ingredients are absorbed into the bloodstream. This natural process explains why so many medications are now prescribed as topical creams or patches. The total absorption of a topical ingredient depends on various factors such as surface area covered, duration of exposure, frequency of reapplication, skin thickness, temperature/humidity levels, etc. During pregnancy, most absorbed chemicals will pass directly into the fetal circulation where they can potentially affect the baby's development.

The average woman puts over 200 ingredients on her skin each day as part of her cleansing and beauty routine, and it is difficult to know which may be harmful to the fetus or at what dose. Due to ethical concerns, few prospective studies of non-medicinal chemicals are done on pregnant women. Instead, researchers look at animal studies and retrospective human studies for indirect clues about their prenatal safety. As a result, there is now a large body of "teratology" (birth defect) research with uncertain implications for pregnant women and their growing babies.
The FDA states that a cosmetic manufacturer must ensure the safety of their own products but they do not offer any specific guidelines. Many skin care companies simply assume that their products are not absorbed and therefore neglect to examine the teratology studies. At Belli, we believe that pregnancy deserves a higher safety standard-one that carefully monitors the published medical literature and errs on the side of caution. We call that standard teratology screening.
Simply stated, teratology screening guards against questionable ingredients during pregnancy.
The teratology screening process begins with a comprehensive search of the published medical literature to see if an ingredient has ever been linked to a birth defect, miscarriage, or other harmful effect during pregnancy. Searches are repeated on an ongoing basis to capture all the latest information. A list of the databases and reference books used includes:
MEDLINE is the premiere biomedical database produced by the National Library of Medicine and contains over 16 million articles from 5000 international biomedical journals, from 1950 to the present.
TOXLINE is a comprehensive database produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and contains more than two million records that cover adverse drug reactions, carcinogenesis, drug evaluation, mutagenesis, pollution, pesticides, herbicides, radiation, teratogenesis, and all other aspects of toxicology from pre-1950 to the present.
DART (Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology) is a bibliographic database on the National Library of Medicine's Toxicology Data Network, which covers teratology and other aspects of developmental and reproductive toxicology and contains over 100,000 published references.
TERIS (Teratogen Information System) is a database of chemical agent summaries based on a thorough review of published clinical and experimental literature. Each summary includes a risk assessment derived by consensus of an Advisory Board comprising nationally-recognized authorities in clinical teratology.
LACTMED, part of the National Library of Medicine's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET), is a database of drugs and other chemicals to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed. It includes information on the levels of such substances in breast milk and infant blood, and the possible adverse effects in the nursing infant.
REPROTOX is an information system developed by the Reproductive Toxicology Center which contains summaries on the effects of medications, chemicals, infections, and physical agents on pregnancy, reproduction, and development. Catalog of Teratogenic Agents- Eleventh Edition (Shepard, 2004) is a comprehensive reference work that presents information on teratogenic agents, emphasizing human data and covering pharmaceuticals, chemicals, environmental pollutants, food additives, household products, and viruses. Also included are overviews of recent literature on clinical and experimental teratology, including important Japanese literature not easily available to English-language researchers.
Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation: A Reference Guide to Fetal and Neonatal Risks- Eighth Edition (Briggs et al., 2008) provides practical, reliable information on more than 1,000 drugs that may be used by pregnant and lactating women. The recommendations help readers interpret animal and human pregnancy data to assess potential human risk when there are human data or the human data are limited or not available.
Chemically Induced Birth Defects- Third Edition (Schardein, 2000) addresses over 4100 drugs and chemicals in current use that cause malformations and congenital anomalies in the human fetus-- comprehensively reviewing experimental studies in animals and clinical data on human development, primarily in the organogenesis period.
Once the search process is complete, we then have to decide which screening criteria to use. For example, what if 3 studies show a harmful effect during pregnancy but 5 show no evidence of harm? What if some of the studies were done on humans and others on animals? High versus low doses? Topical versus oral absorption?

Remember: you are beautiful! Thank you for visiting the blog and check back for promotions and beauty giveaways!