What Is Natural Skin Care?

Discover The Powerful and Common, Natural Ingredients of Skin Care

Can you get clinical level results from a skin care routine that heavily emphasizes natural ingredients?

What is “natural skin care” anyway?

I love reading labels of products I think might be green-washed and finding preservatives like the classic formaldehyde releasers listed along with some fairy dusted botanicals in a product packaged and touted as “natural.” It looks nurturing for you and the environment, but it’s a story spun by a marketing department.

Products need to be preserved or they go bad. Clinical grade actives especially need to be formulated with stability in mind. And, not all natural ingredients are innocuous – think arsenic or poison oak.

How do you green your skin care without sacrificing results or falling for marketing shenanigans?

I like green, clean natural skin care so I think about this a lot. Here is my opinion.

There are two, key steps for greening, natural skin care:

Keep your base products simple, and ideally as natural as possible. Know which of your products need top-level product stability for clinically important active ingredients to stay active.

You have four key skin care steps: Cleanse, Correct, Hydrate and Protect.

Of these four steps, the Cleanse and Hydrate steps are basic, use the highest volume of product and lend themselves to going natural. This is the sweet spot and high ROI opportunity for natural skin care!

Natural cleansers include naturally-made liquid and bar soaps. Go fragrance-free or use products scented with natural essential oils (they are potential allergens though) to avoid artificial fragrance that contains phthalates.

Non-facial skin is an ideal place to use a natural made soap or cleanser for skin cleansing. You use a lot of it so get rid of the chemicals and you’ve made a huge step towards real natural skin care.

If you have extremely sensitive skin, especially sensitive facial skin, the pH balanced SYNDET (synthetic detergent) skin cleansers are often the only product options for skin cleansing. By definition, they are “synthetic.” Unfortunately, some extremely sensitive complexions simply won’t tolerate the alkaline pH of truly naturally made soap.

If this is you, choose a SYNDET that is fragrance-free, and you can potentially get the best of both worlds – pH balanced skin cleansing and a formulation without ingredients like phthalates that we want to avoid.

The other two essential skin care steps are Correct and Protect.

Your Correct step is where your clinical grade active ingredients have the opportunity to treat skin problems and maintain skin health.

Antioxidants, retinoids, acne treatment ingredients, AHAs, etc. are part of this step. These are tricky ingredients that can’t just be mixed into any formulation without regard to the stability and chemistry of the actives. You want a product that starts with a stable active, is formulated with enough to do the job and is proven to maintain stability over the normal time you will store and use the product.

The good news is that you typically don’t use these corrective products in high volume.

They are often used primarily on your face, neck and chest, and they are pricey – reflecting the technology that goes into making them. The exception to the low volume use of corrective products would be in the treatment of back acne, but that’s just the way it is.

AHAs are also correcting ingredients used in higher volumes because they are highly effective to help fight the signs of skin aging on non-facial skin. They help soften keratosis pilaris, rough feet and crusty age spots. Fortunately, these are acid pH products that are actually fairly simple and don’t need heavy preservative systems.

Are they green?

I don’t think so, even though they theoretically come from things like sugar cane and milk. But, even in modern formulations, they are non-toxic to humans and the environment in my opinion.

The stability of products you use for protecting your skin from sun damage is crucial and has to be a top priority.

Sunscreen breaks down. You need to watch the expiration dates on your products. Zinc oxide is fairly stable and is the sunscreen ingredient I recommend. It has served my patients well for years and evidence of product failure never shows up in my exam room!

There are many, good natural sunscreen formulations that rely on zinc oxide. Some are elegant for everyday use. Many are also invisible. High performance products for swimming and athletic activities also exist in natural formulations.

Minimize the use of your sunscreen by wearing sun protective clothing. This is truly natural sun protection!

Cover up, apply sunscreen to exposed skin, seek the shade, and know your exposure.

 

That’s sun protection that balances a desire to go natural with brilliant self-care and best of modern skin technology.

When it comes to sunscreens, know that you are going to see more discussion about mineral versus chemical sunscreen ingredients in the near future. I am not a fan of the chemical ingredients because I’ve seen them fail my patients more times than I can count.

Some of the chemicals themselves are coming under scrutiny as endocrine disrupters and marine-life troublemakers. There are also some new chemical ingredients available outside the U.S. that are trending.

I’ve been a scientist for almost 40 years. I’ve watched scientific trends and conclusions come and go – proven then disproven with solid studies and evidence done by good labs. I’ve learned to be patient and use my science brain’s common sense. I predict the story to evolve with the chemical sunscreen agents, and I’m sticking with zinc oxide.  

You can have it all – powerful skin care that’s also natural – or mostly natural.

The trick is to know where to lean into the fully natural and where to compromise.

Happy Earth Day Month!

Want to save on natural skin care products right now?

Check out our big Earth Day Sale here!

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