As a survivor of multiple bouts with cancer, Eagle Point oncology nurse Lona Gabree thinks she’s found a major culprit in not only cancer but many other diseases, skin disorders and allergies: the chemical-filled stuff we lavish trustingly on our skin, hair, teeth, lips and babies’ bottoms.

With her family as helpers, Gabree has researched the world of natural oils, plants, herbs and flowers. She’s created gardens of them around her home and learned how to make lotion, soap, cream, shampoo, lip balm – even dog shampoo – for sale at local growers’ markets and under the name Hummingbird Skin Products on her Web site.

The inspiration for her natural skin-care ventures came four years ago from her cancer patients in Grants Pass who found that, during chemotherapy, their skin was so sensitive that available commercial skin products seemed to increase the irritation.

"Cancer accelerates the normal aging process," Gabree said. "As we age, our immune system breaks down and what was tolerable to our skin becomes toxic. Much of the dry, scaly nature of older skin is toxic petrochemicals breaking down our skin. The white, silky, good-smelling eye cream, selling for $200 a bottle, if you read the ingredients, is plain old toxins."

Gabree researched natural products, going back to the Roman physician Galen in the second century A.D., and learned how to cook them up in her kitchen, bottling and labeling them in sterile conditions and trying to operate at a moderate volume to keep quality high.

She said that for many centuries, skin creams, cosmetics and shampoos were made of healthy, natural compounds such as olive oil, beeswax, rose oil, herbs, flowers, pure water and borax (to keep oil and water from separating).

Cheap, mass-produced petrochemicals changed all that. Now we find shampoo with such synthetic chemicals as ammonium lauryl sulfate ("inflammatory detergent"), cocamidopropyl betaine, cocamide DEA, animal elastin, quaternium-22 and fragrance oils, which are laboratory chemicals.

One of the most widely used petrochemicals is mineral oil, which has replaced olive oil in skin care products. "It’s photo-toxic, which means it makes skin burn in sunlight, allergenic and closes pores," she said. "It’s in baby oil and is one of the nastiest chemicals you can put on your skin."

Instead of lab-produced fragrance oils, Gabree uses essential oils, which are distilled extracts from leaves, bark, stems, roots, fruits, seeds and petals of aromatic plants. Examples are tea tree oil, lavender and rosemary.

For her shampoo, Gabree mixes horse tail, nettle and bear’s paw, "all of which have a long history of leaving hair soft and shiny and stimulating hair growth."

For skin cream, Gabree blends arnica and chamomile, which are traditional remedies for wounds, burns, rashes and which stimulate new cell growth, she said. These go in a base of olive oil, distilled water, beeswax and borax.

In lectures at such venues as master gardeners’ classes, the Bureau of Land Management and the Crater High School Carnival of Learning, Gabree teaches how to shop for natural products containing such ingredients as jojoba, macadamia nut oil, apricot kernel oil, kukui nut oil, shea butter (from the karet tree nut), sweet almond oil, hazelnut oil, avocado oil and cocoa butter.

BLM rangers wanted to know how to make sun block that didn’t contain the carcinogens BHT and EDTA or the pore-clogging zinc oxide. She introduced a sunscreen with emu oil, a skin treatment substance from the fat of the flightless emu bird.

At Crater High, she warned teen girls off chemical-laden lipstick and lip gloss, showing them how to make these from red and orange colored beet root powder, annatto and sandalwood powder.

When teens asked for something to treat acne, Gabree cautioned against "highly corrosive alcohol" and created a cream with natural moisturizers and witch hazel (an astringent herb).

Her hand soap contains comfrey and Klamath Lake blue-green algae, with palm oil to make it hard and castor oil to make it foam. A soap for athlete’s foot has cinnamon and rosemary, which she said are anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory.

Her "Tender Touch" skin cream, created for her cancer patients, may also be used for ulcers, herpes, bed sores, laser peels, scars and as a sun block (factor 15), she said.

Gabree, who is also a camel trainer and has walked Australian deserts with the animals, believes she banished her cancer with a sheer will to live – and plenty of natural remedies.

She is aware that any claims for healing violate Food and Drug Administration rules, so she uses testimonials or refers to "traditional beliefs and practices of healers through the ages."

She observes, "These products of nature have been found to work. The skin is the largest organ of the body and it breathes, sweats and absorbs. It actually ‘eats’ what we put on it and sends it into the blood stream, so it matters that we give it good, natural food and medicine."

On the Internet: www.hummingbirdsoap.com Gabree may be reached at 826-4470.

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.