Are Natural Skin Care Products Better For You?

It is unlikely that a natural chemical will be bad for you, unless someone is trying to sell you a poisonous plant extract like Nerium oleander as skin care! But that does not automatically make synthetic skin care ingredients bad for you, does it?. As a scientist, we should test the theory.

Case 1: “Natural is Better Than Synthetic”

What is a natural ingredient? Something that exists in nature and has not been modified by chemistry done in a laboratory. What is a synthetic ingredient? Something that is created in a laboratory. There are some natural ingredients that are good for you, and some that are bad for you. The same goes for synthetic ingredients. The criterion is simple: don’t use an ingredient that does not exist in nature just for novelty’s sake. The consumer appetite for novelty provokes companies to invent new ingredients all the time. But, it is a bad idea to introduce novel chemicals into your body unless there is an excellent reason for that, such as when there is an illness that requires it.

Think of it this way: an extraordinary benefit is required to justify a moderate risk.

The immune system is too complicated a mechanism, and nobody can predict how an individual will react to a new chemical that has not been encountered before. This is especially true if your body tends to react with allergies. Skin care does not need novel chemicals.

In particular, synthetic chemicals that modify those that already exist in your body are a bad idea. One example is that idebenone, which modifies the all important Coenzyme Q10, can lead to allergies. Why use idebenone when you can use Coenzyme Q10?

Case 2: “Synthetic is Better Than Natural”

More and more advertising is dedicated to convince you, the consumer, that natural is good for you. A natural ingredient is an ingredient that exists in nature and has not been modified by chemistry done in a laboratory. But sometimes, using natural stuff is bad for the environment, and there are more and more examples of this situation. Substances that used to be considered luxurious are now accessible to many people. For example: frankincense used in Chanel #5 in very small amounts is one thing, but frankincense essential oil sold by the ton by multi-level marketers is another. You may approve of this democratization of expensive taste but this can be bad for nature. There is overuse of frankincense, adulteration with fake ingredients and more.

Another good example of the toll on our environment would be that the desirability of palm oil in the skin care and food industries has led to the decimation of natural forests in Borneo to make space for palm oil trees. Outside of the environmental level, we can also look at formulation. Sometimes, a natural chemical is strongly colored or has very low solubility in skin compatible solvents. However, one version, azelaic acid in alcohol can dry and damage your skin. At Skin Actives we use potassium azeloyl glycine, a synthetic azelaic acid derivative, that works well in water based serums like our T-zone serum.

When should we avoid synthetic chemicals? When the chemical we need has more than one “version” (stereoisomers) like in the case of vitamin E. Here, we use the natural alpha-D-tocopherol, avoiding synthetic tocopherol. The synthetic version contains both stereoisomers and using the wrong one can lead to allergies.

What About Essential Oils

People sometimes mistake the “essential” in essential oils to mean “essential for your health”. Essential oils are not essential for humans, on the contrary. The word means that the chemicals present in the essential oil are key (thus, essential) to the aroma or fragrance that the plant has. The plant may use these chemicals to attract pollinators or to defend itself from predators or infection, but the chemicals are not “essential,” not even for the plant.

Marketing versus Science

It’s true that the words Primal Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Pachamama, Gaia, etc. sound better than “Science”. A scientist working in a lab may not sound so romantic. But sometimes, the not-so-romantic scientist is doing Nature a favor. When we suggest the use of a synthetic chemical, we are not suggesting making a novel chemical but, rather, using a “bio-identical” version of a natural chemical. What is the advantage here? It benefits the environment if the plant used to make the natural version is endangered or its cultivation requires the destruction of a natural ecosystem that supports important species.

What Does Bioidentical Mean?

While there is currently no official definition of bioidentical, at Skin Actives we prefer using an ingredient made by humans in an industrial facility as long as it is chemically identical to the chemical that occurs in nature. A natural and a synthetic chemical are identical if the chemical structure is identical. Your body, nose, skin, and cells will not be able to tell the difference. Remember that these chemicals are present in minute concentrations in the plant, so you need huge amounts of plant material to extract and purify small amounts of the chemical you want (and eliminate those you don’t want).

So when Skin Actives announces the new skin care line with apocynin, we are proud to tell you that we are using synthetic apocynin, identical to the apocynin found in Picrorhiza kurroa or Apocynum cannabinum and not the chemical extracted from the plant.

Conversely, when we are in need of a natural ingredient, we do our very best to avoid problematic origins of that plant material. For example, our sea kelp is cultivated in Maine, avoiding the use of over-harvested California sea kelp. As usual, we at Skin Actives try to stay informed on everything, including sustainability of the environment. We do our homework!