Hormone disruptors in our most intimate places

We’re taught to blame our bodies for hormonal chaos... our ovaries, our cycles, our “imbalances,” our “unlucky genes.” But the real disruption? It’s delivered daily, from the outside in, to the most sacred parts of our bodies.

The supermarket razor you glide across your bikini line. The tampon you reach for without thinking. The aftercare cream marketed to soothe your freshly shaved skin. All of these contain ingredients we rarely question. But they’re placed on the most absorbent areas of the female body,  areas with high blood flow, rich lymphatic tissue, no protective enzyme barrier, and open, permeable skin.

Here's what to do instead...

Shaving

Most women begin shaving before they’ve even understood the rhythms of their cycle. We’re handed plastic razors as teenagers, pastel pink, aloe vera striped, packaged like toys, and taught to view hair as a flaw to remove.

But what we’re not taught is that the razors themselves carry ingredients. That the moisture strips often contain synthetic estrogens. That the plastic glides across micro-abrasions invisible to the eye, while releasing parabens, phthalates, titanium dioxide, and synthetic fragrance.

When mixed with warm water and steam, these compounds absorb fast , especially in areas rich in hormone-regulating lymphatic tissue. Under the arms, a place rich in lymph nodes. Around the bikini line, where skin is thin and richly vascularised. Over thighs and calves, areas that absorb everything we put on them.

Skip the plastic. Use a simple, stainless steel safety razor, no strips, no colourants, no microplastics. Lather with something your great-grandmother might’ve used...olive oil soap, Aleppo soap, or just plain coconut oil. And after shaving, let the skin rest, or soothe it with tallow balm, shea butter, or raw calendula oil. 

Pads & tampons

The vaginal canal is one of the most sensitive and absorptive places in the female body. And yet, it’s where we insert bleached cotton, synthetic fragrance, super-absorbent polymers, and pesticide-laced fibre, month after month. Anything inserted into the vaginal canal bypasses the liver and goes straight to systemic circulation. That makes it more absorbent than your stomach.

Most tampons and pads are treated like sterile medical products. But they’re not. Cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world. Chlorine bleaching produces dioxins, which can disrupt the endocrine system. “Fragrance” can legally contain hundreds of unnamed chemicals.

Plastic linings block airflow. Synthetic materials disrupt vaginal flora. And all of this happens while your body is already working hard to release, because bleeding is a natural detox process. A time when the body clears what it no longer needs.

A better way to bleed

If you can, use organic, unbleached cotton pads or tampons, free from pesticides, fragrance, and chlorine-based bleach. Or try cloth pads made from natural fleece or wool backing. And if that feels like too big a leap? Even just swapping from scented to unscented is a powerful first step. Small changes add up. Many women notice shorter, lighter, less painful periods when they make the switch to natural fibres. Whether it’s the reduced chemical load, a drop in inflammation, or simply the body exhaling in relief, something shifts. You feel it. A little less resistance. A little more ease.

Why this matters so much 

All of these areas are hormonal centres, home to dense clusters of lymphatic tissue... the axillary nodes under the arms, the inguinal nodes at the groin, the mammary lymphatics around the chest, each part of a vital system responsible for filtering waste, regulating immune function, metabolising hormones.

The lymphatic system has no pump

It doesn’t circulate with force like the heart does with blood. It moves slowly, gently, through breath, muscle movement, gravity... and what we apply to the skin. Especially in these high-absorption zones. Hormones rely on lymph to clear. Steroid hormones like estrogen and progesterone are processed in the liver,  but they’re moved out through the lymph. If that flow slows down, hormones linger. They recirculate in their more potent, unbound forms. This is how estrogen dominance begins, not in the ovaries, but in stagnant lymph. Symptoms follow... breast tenderness, bloating, mood swings, heavy periods. The body whispers first. Then it starts shouting.

Endocrine disruptors are easily absorbed via skin

Many of the chemicals found in razors, deodorants, shaving creams and period products, are classified as xenoestrogens. These are synthetic compounds that mimic or interfere with natural estrogen activity. What’s applied in microdoses becomes a macro pattern. Not one product, but layers. Daily.

It’s at best mildly annoying, and at worst very damaging, how the female version of everything is the same tool...painted pastel, scented with synthetic florals, marked up, and made more toxic. We're sold femininity through fragrance and care through chemicals.

But real care feels like olive oil on bare skin. Cotton that breathes. Tallow that melts into your body. Simple, whole ingredients. The kind your great grandmother knew and the kind that don’t need a label to convince you they’re safe, because your body already recognises them.

And when you begin to swap the synthetics for the natural you don’t just get cleaner skin, calmer hormones, or fewer irritations (though you will). You genuinely begin to feel more connected and feminine, not in a way it's sold to us but a femininity that emerges from deep health.