Botanical Skin Care

Using herbs and other botanicals from nature was the only way to care for skin or get makeup products for many years. Botanical skin care has certainly been around since the beginning of time. From nuts and roots that made soap, to fruits and berries that provided color to herbs that gave these homemade skin care products a nice scent, botanical skin care is nothing new. Today botanical skin care has become a science, just as herbal skin care has. Many companies that make synthetic makeup tout that their products contain plant ingredients; however it is important to note that they also contain synthetic ingredients that can be detrimental to your health. When choosing a botanical skin care product read the label. Find out how the product was manufactured. When using botanicals it is important to keep the most active part of the plant cell, the protoplast, intact. This plant cell can be removed from the plant without changing or damaging its cellular structure depending on the extraction method used. Botanical skin care products that do this offer the highest concentration of active botanical compounds making these products a better choice for natural skin care because they work synergistically. Herbal skin care products can be purchased or made at home using natural skin care recipes. A great skin moisturizer can be made from the leaves and flowers of lemon balm, lemon grass, sage, dandelion and lavender. Simply mix the herbs together to get a half of a cup, add four tablespoons of lanolin or glycerin, which is a synthetic product, puree it, bottle it and rub it on your skin daily. This mixture should be keep in a cool, dark place and used within a week. -Robin Neorr