You know I'm a big fan of our skin. An extremely large - and therefore important - organ, by the way. Why important? Why big?
Because our entire body - and not just the face - is covered by skin. Neck down makes up 91% (!) of the entire skin surface.
And, another exciting fact: your skin absorbs around 60% of what we “feed” it with. Yes, exactly. Pretty crazy when you consider how indiscriminately and without hesitation we sometimes apply creams and ointments...
There are many facial care products that I don't like seeing on the beauty shelves because of their questionable ingredients (just one keyword: perfume*). I would prefer to start with body care when sorting them out.
Because: When trying to reduce the number of toxic and/or irritating active ingredients in daily use, the best and most effective way is to start with the products that cover most of the skin's surface. Makes sense, right?
So let's talk about the most popular body care product - body lotion:
+ All lotions consist of oil and water, which must be held together by an emulsifier. An emulsifier is usually a chemical created in a laboratory. Some newer ones are non-toxic and biodegradable, but many others are toxic and can contain carcinogens and more.
+ Most lotions are 65% water. A product containing water must be preserved, otherwise bacteria and mold would form. While there are already great natural preservatives and you no longer have to resort to parabens, the latest natural preservatives also have their limits - at least when it comes to shelf life. I don't know of any natural cosmetic product with a shelf life longer than six months after opening. Longer shelf life means chemical-synthetic preservatives and these are often heavily contaminated and allergenic.
+ Most lotions contain fragrance (listed as "perfume" on the ingredients list) and this ingredient, listed as a small, inconspicuous, pretty-sounding word, can contain - and now bear in mind - 3,059 possible chemicals, including "hormone disruptors" and petrochemicals .
The alternative? Body oils!
+ Body oils are made exclusively from plant oils and
Made without water components.
+ You don't need any emulsifiers.
+ You don't need any preservatives.
+ All body oils can be wonderfully scented with pure essential oils. You don't need synthetic fragrances. (I personally don't understand why something as beautiful and natural as a pure vegetable oil would be "contaminated" with something toxic like a synthetic perfume.)
And now the crucial question:
Why should you step out of the shower - freshly showered and with damp skin - only to dry off all the water from your skin and then apply a product with emulsifiers and preservatives, which in turn also contains 65% water? Exactly, totally stupid. Or?
So why not do this instead: After showering, the skin is wet (or rather damp, so it already has 100% moisture that just needs to be stored) and you spread a nice body oil on the still damp skin, creating a light Emulsion is created - without any additives. And you created your own lotion, so to speak, from water and oil.
Try it out...