Natural Skincare Recipes

Try this experiment:

Collect five random skin-care products in your home and find the list of ingredients. Read each list ALOUD as quickly as you can. You may have trouble pronouncing such tongue twisters as: cinoxate, ethylhexyl, p-methoxycinnamate, ethylhexyl salicyclate, homosalate, octyl salicyclate, digalloyl trioleate, menthyl anthranilate, and propylene glycol, but do your best.

Now make a thorough shopping list of unprocessed foods. Yes…a shopping list. Now read IT aloud. It might include items such as: Honey, tomatoes, oatmeal, apples, tea, cucumbers, avocados, eggs…you get the idea.

(For extra fun, you might try looking up the health hazards of each of the numerous synthetic chemicals found in the commercial skin-care products you use every day.)

For thousands of years, people have used ordinary everyday foods as healthy organic ingredients to natural skincare recipes. The early Greeks rubbed olive oil on their skin to protect against chaffing from the rough coastal winds of the Mediterranean. The ancient Egyptians used honey to treat burns, lesions, and as a facial mask for maintaining youthful skin.

The skin is the largest organ in (or on) the body. It is the body’s first layer of defense against both physical damage and microbial intrusion. Skin is also water-resistant, and helps the body maintain homeostasis (body/environment balance). It helps keep blood and body tissue in, and dirt and germs out. On the molecular level, however, skin is relatively porous. Skin readily absorbs many chemical molecules with which it comes in contact. Chemists wear rubber gloves when handling samples not only because of the physical damage they might do, but because many chemicals can be absorbed through the skin and are transmitted directly into the bloodstream.

This is bad news when applying synthetically created chemicals directly to your precious skin, you’re causing yourself damage. The chemicals found in common commercial skin-care products may be as toxic (albeit in smaller doses) as oven cleaner. From a biochemical-nutrition point of view, the common warning: ‘For topical use only. Harmful or fatal if swallowed.’ makes little sense. In other words: if it’s not safe to put in your mouth, it’s probably not safe to put on your skin.

A little research will reveal a wealth of healthful and effective natural skincare recipes that have been time-tested and proven to be as safe as eating lunch.

The advantage to natural skincare recipes is they are quick, cost effective, and easy to assess the risks of their ingredients.

If you maintain a kitchen well-stocked with nutritious foods, it is likely that many ingredients for natural skincare recipes are at arms’ length.

While it is healthy to be skeptical of new fads, it is important to remember that the recent ‘all natural’ craze is not new at all. Prepackaged, animal-tested, synthetically created products with unpronounceable ingredients and indefinite shelf life are the “new” thing. And time has proven the toxic chemicals used to create them cause more harm than good.

Natural skincare recipes have been passed down, not because they are “in” or because of brand loyalty, but rather because they are safe, easy, and effective.