Endocrine disruptors, in cosmetics or elsewhere, are ingredients that interact with your body’s natural hormones or hormone receptors. The endocrine system is the system in your body that regulates your hormones, from cortisol and melatonin to estrogen and testosterone. Your hormones are constantly working together—trying to achieve harmony.

When this class of ingredients interacts with and are absorbed by the body, they can harm your hormones in a few ways. The first way is that they may simply increase or decrease the levels of a hormone you have naturally. The second is that they mimic your own hormones, thereby leaching onto your hormone receptors, so your actual hormones have no place to go. The third is they mask your hormones, essentially blocking them from reaching the receptors or doing their unique job in the body.

And so your body will start to do the things it’s supposed to do when you have those high levels of an hormone in the body. Things like producing growth hormones. Once those extra growth hormones are produced in the body, there’s a lot of negative things that can happen.