by keira-anne ?

Natural and Organic Skincare Products and What They Can Do For You

Once upon a time the business of shopping was very simple, but now it seems that purchasing even the most everyday of products requires a long period of squinting at a big list printed in small font, trying to remember whether parabens were good or bad, essential oils to be avoided or welcomed, ginger extract suitable for muscle cramps or not.

Unlike natural and organic skincare products, many of the intensively branded, expensively marketed, high profile products subsidise their marketing budgets by using liberal quantities of chemicals and synthetics, often to extent a products lifespan (allowing the shipping between factory and shop shelf to be unhurried) or to perfume a product that would otherwise smell of burning plastic or chemical death.

Whilst analogies between the food industry and the skin care industry are not perfect – after all, one does not have to be a incurable cynic to suggest that some of the big brand food manufactures out there use more dubious ingredients than we might like – what is certainly true is that the privileging of organic, or at least relatively additive free foods has not entirely crossed over in consumer’s attitudes toward skincare.

This is crazy, because our body absorbs around sixty percent of everything that we place on our skin, meaning that ingredients in our creams and lotions become just as cosy to us as the food we eat.

For this reason more and more people are turning their attention away from the well advertised, but not entirely beneficially constructed, big brands and taking the time to find out about the benefits of various natural and organic ingredients. Whereas a couple of years there was the assumption that the more ingredients a product had contained within it the better it was for us, now the tide is shifting, and many of us are aware that a well produced and packaged product consisting of a few genuinely beneficial natural or organic products can far better meet the needs of our skin than it’s chemically cousins.

An example of a fantastic natural skin product is Scin Boutique’s very own This Works Deep Calm Bath and Shower Gel. Rather than other, non natural shower gels that we can choose to lather onto our body, our This Works products work their magic thanks to the fantastic natural properties of the plants that we use as ingredients. In the case of our Deep Calm shower gel, lavender – grown at high altitude in France – is used for its antibacterial properties, as well as for its calming and relaxing scent.

In addition wild camomile, grown in Morocco, is used in combination with vetivert for their calming and soothing properties (anyone who has ever enjoyed a cup of camomile tea will attest to its relaxing properties).
Another great body wash on the market which utilizes the power of natural ingredients is the Green People Nourishing Body Wash.

This product uses ylang ylang and ginger for their natural uplifting properties, and avoids parabens and other artificial fragrances that can lead to the ‘chemical cocktail’ – the unpleasant thought of many different chemicals penetrating and remaining in our bodies.

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by keira-anne ?

Why Choose Natural and Organic Skincare Products?

Organic and natural skincare products are becoming staple purchases for an increasing proportion for people. Everyone has their own reason for making their change, but perhaps two main areas of concern can be located explaining why organic and natural skincare products are taking the place of traditional, often far more extensively marketed, non-organic cosmetics.

The first of the reasons is the concern over what affect synthetic products have on the environment, both in terms of their disposal once they have been used, as certain chemicals found in skincare products can wreak havoc on the ecosystems that they eventually end up in once they have passed down the drain. Triclosan, which is found in soaps, along with toothpastes and deodorants, is an antibacterial which has been discovered concentrated in marine life, to which it is known to be toxic, and also in human breast milk. A quick mention should also be made to products that actually appear, or are, entirely natural and organic, but which are owned by companies that manufacture other, environmentally harmful products. Such an example came recently with the selling out of natural favourite Burt’s Bees to a leading bleach manufacturer.

The second issue which has caused many consumers to make the change from non-organic to organic skincare products is the concern over the effect that the chemicals they contain might have on our bodies. Here we should place a subdivision between ingredients that have been proven to be harmful under testing – which we shall discuss below – and ingredients that have been identified as potentially harmful, and which have not been proven to be otherwise, ingredients such as parabens (which have been linked to cancers, causing many companies to explicitly list their skincare product ‘Paraben Free’) and Genetically Modified ingredients, which people, quite frankly, just do not trust.

One pair of ingredients that you might want to stay alert for if you are still buying non natural cosmetic products – and one that you can be assured you are avoiding by picking those organic skincare products – is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and its brother in trouble Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate. These two ingredients are used in industrial and mechanical processes that might not initially appear to have much to do with the activities we normally associate with skincare and cosmetics, namely in car washes, for degreasing automobile engines and as floor cleaners. Yet, they are also found in over nine out of ten of all products that foam.

Of course, just because these two ingredients are used for industrial processes does not, in itself, mean that they are unsuitable for rubbing into our hair and skin. The fact that animals placed into contact with Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate experience massive damage to the central nervous system, to their respiratory system along with chronic eye damage, diarrhea, sever skin irritation and, in a sizable proportion of instances, death, might be slightly more convincing argument for avoiding these chemical ingredients and going for organic or natural products – ignoring, of course, those that try to sweeten its appearance on their ingredients list by adding the information that is a ‘coconut extract.’

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