Is Natural Skin Care Always Better?
Do skin care products that are NOT viewed as natural or organic have a place in the spas of the future?
There are going to be two major sectors driving the marketplace. The green movement, comprising of wellness, organic and whole-body lifestyle trends will appeal to one consumer group with a focus on sustainability. Science and medical results-driven products and services will appeal to more of the aging population.
This has been on my mind as well. Is natural skin care always the best choice?
There’s a couple of different issues going on here. First, there’s the issue of chemicals that leach into the environment and find their way into our bodies. I’ve talked before about harm endocrine disruptors can do. You know by now that chemicals don’t stay on the surface of our skin, but circulate throughout our bodies. Check the statistics on women and autoimmune illnesses and you’ll see women suffer things like fibromyalgia, Lupus, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at far greater rates than men–who use far fewer health and beauty products than women.
The second issue is skin care products that contain synthetic chemicals. People are often slow to give up a favorite product that works well even if it has some dodgy names on the ingredients label. The problem is that a product that works well in the lab has to be preserved so that it will still be effective by the time it reaches the consumer. Even many organic product manufacturers have to fall back on synthetic chemicals to act as preservatives. This is not always a bad thing. There are synthetic preservatives that are relatively safe to use. You have to weigh your particular set of problems against chemical exposure.
One of the skin conditions that shows better results with synthetic products is acne. I’m not talking mild acne. I’m talking chronic, inflamed, cystic acne. If you buy a product that says it’s 80 percent organic but uses some preservatives that ensure the active ingredients are still active when you open the bottle, I’d say that’s a fair trade off.
