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Essential Oils - Help or Hype?

9/23/2014

What's In Your Natural Body Products

Essential Oils in Bath and Body

In this 3rd in our 4 part series on ingredients in your soap, I’d like to talk about essential oils and their benefits in soap. Aromatherapy is an alternative medicine that uses aromatic plant compounds to effect health and well-being. Scientific evidence and opinion goes both ways on the effectiveness of aromatherapy’s ability to heal, however studies have shown that many essential oils and other herbal compounds are effective antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, and a slew more anti-benefits. The idea behind aromatherapy is that either through inhalation or topical application – pure essential oil is absorbed into the body to provide therapeutic benefits.

As I mentioned in part 2 of this series "Is the Fragrance in Your Bath Products Killing Your Natural Products?" essential oils are very volatile and should be used with extreme care. To learn more about how essential oils are produced, this article is a good start. Long before there was a pharmacy, there was herbal medicine where healers used botanical ingredients to heal man’s and beast’s ailments. Today, we have come to a place where holistic health includes western, eastern and herbal medicine to heal and keep our families healthy.

Of the many thousands of essential oils, many are used for their therapeutic benefits. These uses may include topical applications, ingestion or aromatherapy. When essential oils are inhaled, it is believed that the smell receptors in the brain trigger a bodily reaction to specific scents. This reaction may improve mood (i.e. uplift spirits, reduce stress). Most essential oils are applied to the skin using carrier oil (i.e. almond oil) to provide therapeutic treatments. Clinical trials have even been done on the benefits of aromatherapy on cancer patients (National Center for Biotechnology Information - Aromatherapy and Essential Oils).

In natural soap making, essential oils are used to scent soap and sometimes for their aromatherapy benefits. However, claims that a soap is “intended to treat or prevent disease, or to affect the structure or function of the body, it’s a drug” falling into the FDA drug category requiring FDA approval and extensive testing and studies and regulation FDA - Essential Oils. The manufacture and the practice of aromatherapy are currently unregulated, but the industry complies with current safety standards and practices which can found at the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy. We use essential oils to fragrance our products and use special blends to aid in ensuring that skin types or conditions are not adversely impacted but soothed by our formulas. In some cases, individuals with allergies or special conditions should be careful when using products containing certain essential oils as they like other additives can aggravate certain conditions. Essential Oils are very sensitive to heat, light and air and some believe that they may lose some of their effectiveness in the soap making process, either through the initial chemical reaction phase or the curing phase. We like to think that as long as the scent remains the benefits remain and the ingredients that the oils DON’T have in them are just as beneficial as what remains in your beauty products. This is not an issue with leave on products like butters, lotions and massage oils.

Many essential oils should be avoided during pregnancy and citrus oils may cause photosensitivity. Essential oils are beneficial in many ways in body products:

·        Soften Skin

·        Moisturize Dry Skin

·        Free of Artificial Chemicals – so less damaging to the skin

·        Toning

·        Soothing Itchy Skin

·        Deep Cleansing

·        May Cause Less Skin Reactions to Sensitive Skin

·        May Improve Mood

·        Some Essential Oils May be Absorbed Into the Skin and May Impart Topical Application Benefits of the Oils

·        Anti-bacterial, Anti-fungal and Antibacterial

·        And They Smell WONDERFUL!

A little research always goes a long way in determining the products that are best for you and your family.

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Is the Fragrance in Your Bath Products Killing Your Natural Product?

9/11/2014

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In this second part of our 4 part series on “What’s in your "natural" skincare products?” I want to talk about product fragrance additives. Since the beginning of time, history has shown us that fragrance or perfume has been around “scenting” our lives. The word perfume is derived from the Latin word; per fumum; which loosely translated means smoke. It is said that Stone Age man discovery of fire and the scent of burning wood began man’s exploration and use of “scent” originally used to pay homage to the gods and later with the Egyptians initiating its use for personal enjoyment.

What's really in your "natural" skincare products?

Fragrances in bath and body products

Early use of fragrance in bath and body

Fast forward to present day and we still use fragrance to bring enjoyment, medicinal purposes and covering up not so nice “odors”. The human olfactory system (our sniffer and our brains) consists of receptors that detect particular molecules and responds to them with an electrical impulse to the brain. No worries, I won’t bore you with the biology and chemistry lesson. BUT, I do want to show that a fragrance or scent is more than just a smell, but a chemical and biological stimulant resulting in some sort of reaction from the human body.

So how does fragrance in body product affect us? And why should you care? On the most basic level, we use the “scent” of bath and body products to either effect our own senses or those around us either by making us respond in a positive way (either making us feel good or preventing us from feeling bad, think how deodorant prevents those around us from feeling bad J). Then there is the aromatherapy aspect which indicates that either the inhalation or absorption through the skin of certain herbal scents will have a mental, physical or emotional influence on one’s health (we’ll talk more about that in our next article).

Distilling Essential Oils for bath and body

Distillation Process for Essential Oils and Hydrosols

Early on, the “scents” used in bath and body products were botanical in nature. Rose water always comes to mind for me. People used herbs and flowers to “scent” themselves to either attract others or cover up not so pleasant body odors when bathing was done as frequently as we do now. Later, as we became more advanced and our appetite for greater variety of “scents” for the body, chemist began mixing compounds together trying to duplicate existing natural scents and create new “perfumes”. Today, we bath and body product developers have a plethora of natural and man-made options for “scenting” our products.

Bath and Body “scenting” options usually fall into 4 categories: Scent Free, Fragrance Oils, Essential Oils and Hydrosols. Since we’re talking about scent today, we’ll only be discussing the fragrance oils, essential oils and hydrosols. Fragrance oils are usually a combination of aroma chemicals, essential oils and/or aroma resins. What’s really in fragrance oils? Well we don’t know exactly. Fragrance oils and perfume ingredients fall under the FDA’s Trade Secret regulations and do not need to be disclosed in product labeling (http://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/labeling/regulations), so it’s very difficult to define exactly what ratio of man-made vs. plant derived ingredients are in a fragrance oil. However, all ingredients must be approved safe by the FDA individually, but that doesn’t necessarily give me the warm and fuzzies considering all of the other chemicals that have been shown to not be so safe and are approved for use by the FDA. What we do know is that fragrance oil are usually a combination of hundreds of synthetic and natural aromatic ingredients that either come in liquid, powder or crystalline form. (Nature's Garden has great article on how fragrances are manufactured if your curiosity is peaked.)

The resins and crystalline ingredients must be dissolved into liquid form using a solvent. One such solvent that has been used for the last 50 years and is now being phased out is DEP (Di Ethyl Phthalate). Although it has been declared safe by the FDA (See what I mean?) it is considered toxic by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) www.atsdr.cdc.gov It can affect the liver and reproductive systems. Because this substance is known to be toxic, we consider fragrances with this ingredient a no-no for our products.

There are many fragrance oil manufacturers that are also saying no to DEP in their formulations and I applaud them for this. In an effort to make more “natural” fragrance oils, other companies are manufacturing blends using compounded natural aroma isolates – which are single odor molecules that are extracted from raw material using distillation. You can’t get more basic than a single molecule and we like this idea that the distillation method must also be chemical free.

Lastly, hydrosols are basically less concentrated essential oil made from steam distillation of plant material – you probably know it better as floral water. In the distillation process – essential oils from the botanical ingredient is collected and the fragrant water that remains from the steam process is the hydrosol. Unlike most essential oils, hydrosols can be used directly on the skin because of their mild nature (but the rules of safe plant material still must be followed – as the hydrosol may still carry the toxic or medicinal impacts of the plant ingredient).

As you can see there is more to the fragrance in your product than just its lovely aroma. As a naturalist, I try to use products that are as close to the botanically derived product as possible while ensuring that the method used to make the product is as chemically free as possible. For this reason – I chose to use DEP free and natural isolate fragrance oils and essential oils in our soaps and body products. At one time I vowed never to use fragrance oils, but am quite pleased with the more naturally derived products that have been made available in the last few years. I am still very careful in choosing my vendors and making sure that I know from where and how my ingredients are derived. But personal care products are a matter of personal choice and only you can decide to be informed of what goes in and on you and your family’s body.

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Essential Oils - Help or Hype?

What's In Your Natural Body Products

Is the Fragrance in Your Bath Products Killing Your Natural Product?

What's really in your "natural" skincare products?

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