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Getting the Skinny from Heidi Roizen

I'm a frequent reader of Kara Swisher's blog BoomTown, which is part of the All Things D Web site. On Wednesday, Kara wrote about a music project that Heidi Roizen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has embarked upon.

This project is not funding and launching the next big music platform or player, as one might think given Roizen’s background. No, it's a project that's unique and quite personal to Roizen.

In Roizen's own pursuit to lose weight, she wanted to listen to great music to help her stay motivated as she took off the pounds and got in shape, but when she wasn't unable to find any, the entrepreneur in her kicked in and she set out to create it.

Not being a musician herself, Roizen teamed with veteran music industry exec George Daly and songwriter and producer David Malloy, along with some very talented artists. Together they took Roizen's idea and turned it into a well-produced CD, or as Roizen puts it, "first class, radio-hit-quality music," which includes 10 songs.

Roizen wrote the lyrics for the CD, which is titled Skinny Songs and is available at iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, and SnoCap. You can also listen to Skinny Songs and read about it at MySpace and the Skinny Songs Web site.

LESSON TO ALL: Teen dies from excessive muscle cream use

This tragic story about the New York teen who died from excessive use of a muscle cream that contained the anti-inflammatory ingredient methyl salicylate may be a rare incident, but it is a reminder to us all about the importance of knowing your ingredients and not using any product to excess.

I'm an obsessive label reader and try to do my best to know the good from the bad ingredients. It's not always easy, especially with so many new skin care products flooding the market these days. We live in an era of information overload, so keeping up with product ingredients is a difficult task.

For those of you who are like me and are a bit obsessive about skin care ingredients, you’ll want to bookmark the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Skin Deep database Web site.

EWG is a non-profit public interest watchdog group and environmental research organization. The organization covers a wide variety of public safety concerns from toxins in food and water to harmful chemicals in skin care products.

The Skin Deep database allows readers to look up different skin care brands to see the exact ingredients in each product and the safety rating of the ingredients. It will point out which ingredients are linked to cancer; developmental/reproductive toxicity; violations, restrictions and warnings; allergies/immunotoxicity; and other concerns associated with the ingredient. The Skin Deep database covers 25,000 personal care products and is quite extensive and a wealth of knowledge.

However, keep in mind that there are two camps to some of these ingredient studies; and for some ingredients, such as the parabens, there is much disagreement between the two sides on how damaging they actually are to our health when used in small amounts. As with any research study, you have to read the research from all sides and decide for yourself.

It's a balancing act, but one worth pursuing. After all, you are responsible for your own health and no one, not even the FDA or your doctors, is going to look out for your health and longevity they way you can. The best way to take control over your health is to be proactive and educated.

UPDATE (06/12/07): Better labels urged for sports creams