What is a Good Moisturizer?
By mati. Filed in Skincare |Tags: Skincare
A moisturizer is supposed to moisturize the skin, so it has to be able to penetrate the skin and not just sit on the top. If you have dry skin, people love to recommend that you use thick, heavy creams. Although the heavy creams definitely make your skin softer, they don’t normally penetrate the deeper layers of the skin, and they don’t usually have enough water in them to be really moisturizing either. Fat and oil are not moisturizers!
Many of the people who make natural skincare products, often use olive oil based balms with lots of essential oils in them. They avoid putting water in the balm because as soon as you introduce water, you also need to use a preservative. So they avoid the water and put lots of essential oils into the mixture instead. There is a possibility that essential oils can have a preservative effect if you use them in a high enough concentration, but the problem with that is that they can be highly irritating to the skin.
A friend of mine is selling a totally natural product called “Simply Divine Botanicals.” She was giving her friends free facials to introduce the product line, and I went over to try it. The cleanser didn’t do much on my skin at all, and we had to use it twice. The toner looked like an old cup of coffee, and the moisturizer reminded me of clear shoe polish. I rubbed it all in, and my face looked nice and shiny when I left with a smell of roses strong enough to sink a ship.
Before I got to the post office, which was about 10 minutes away, there was an odd, prickling, hot sensation on my forehead. I picked up the mail and went straight home and looked in the mirror. I looked like I had the measles!!! My whole forehead had broken out in a nasty rash, and my cheeks were starting, too. I dug out my own cleanser and started cleaning it off. The oiliness was so heavy I had to use my own cleanser twice, just to get it off. By then my face was red and hot, and I felt like an idiot.
Anyway, natural or not, that was NOT what I call a moisturizer. To be truly moisturizing, a moisturizer should have enough water that it becomes a serum type liquid, even for dry skin! Remember, thick heavy oils are not moisturizers and can leave the underlying skin still dry!
The most important humectant, besides water, is hyaluronic acid, which is a natural ingredient that can hold its own weight in water 1000 times, and also supposedly stimulates collagen production. Other humectants can be honey, glycerin and lecithin. Lecithin also has the ability to increase the permeability of the skin so the moisturizer can penetrate deeper. This is great, if your moisturizer contains only natural products, but not so great if it contains harmful chemicals. So read the labels!
A moisturizer also needs to leave a membrane that can keep the moisture from evaporating. This can be in the form of oils, butters and waxes. If your skin is oily or has a tendency to break out, the oils need to be non-comedogenic so it doesn’t clog the pores. So, it doesn’t have to be oil-free. The so called “oil-free” moisturizers are usually so full of chemicals I wouldn’t touch them with a firepoker. It just has to be made with light oils, like olive squalane, jojoba and soybean oil.
So, the three things to look for in your moisturizer is, water, hyaluronic acid, other humectants, and some good natural oils. If it has lecithin, it should be soy based. And, stay away from moisturizers with too many essential oils in them, or you could end up like I did. So, even when it comes to natural moisturizers, we have to watch out and still read the labels.
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