It looks like putting away the chocolate and hopping on the treadmill may not be enough to keep the weight off. According to a new study at the at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, if you’re having trouble shedding that extra fat despite your current weight loss efforts, your shampoo could be to blame.
Yes, you read that correctly. New evidence suggests that phthalates, an ingredient found in 70 percent of cosmetics and household cleaning products can throw the body’s natural weight control system off kilter by disrupting your hormones. Thus, exposure to these “chemical calories,” which can occur from just putting on makeup, washing your hair, cleaning your kitchen or even drinking from a plastic bottle, could be linked to weight issues in adults as well as childhood obesity.
Doctors at Mount Sinai performed a long-term study on girls living in East Harlem, measuring the group’s exposure to phthalates by examining their urine concentration. They found that the heaviest girls have the highest levels of the chemical calories in their urine.
In a separate study examing the effect of “endocrine disruptors” such as phthalates affected mice, the mice that were exposed to the chemicals became obese. Other studies on animals showed that the chemicals lowered testosterone levels and imitated the effects of oestrogen, both of which are connected to weight gain.
