While everyone else is talking about essential oils, in the Skin Actives’ lab, we are talking about essential fatty acids. What’s the difference? Essential oils are distilled from the aromatic part of a plant like the leaves, bark or roots. Whereas a fixed oil is cold-pressed from the fatty parts of a plant like the seeds, nuts or kernels. Essential oils may be irritating on the skin, so we use them sparingly. But certain fixed oils are essential to our overall health, which includes the skin.

The Right Essential Fatty Acids for our Skin

The way to choose an oil for skin care is to look at its fatty acid composition. Essential fatty acids are more commonly known as Omega 3, 6 and 9.

This is because we need certain fatty acids that are paramount for our skin health but, unfortunately, we can’t make them. Essential fatty acids are, like essential amino acids and vitamins, chemicals we need for life but do not have the ability to make ourselves. For this reason, they must be in our diet and, for the skin they must be applied topically. Because of its fatty acid profile, coconut oil is great to eat but it will not help your skin topically. Put coconut oil on your skin and it will feel oily but will not do the job rosehip seed oil does. Rosehip seed oil contains the right balance of essential fatty acids that is ideally suited for the health of your skin.

Make sure you get at least some rosehip oil or another product that contains essential fatty acids.

Rosehip Oil’s Fatty Acid Composition is What Makes It So Special

The rosehip is the fruit of the rose plant, and the oil is expressed from the seeds. Its composition will depend on many factors: the type, conditions of growth and method of extraction. We purchase our rosehip oil from Chile, where it is cold pressed. 40-50% of the fatty acids will be Omega 6, and almost 30-40% Omega 3. This is an incredible proportion of fatty acids essential for human metabolism!

There is a drawback to the fact that this oil has a majority of unsaturated fatty acids: the oil will go rancid (oxidized) faster than oils with mostly saturated fatty acids. This is why the price of rosehip seed oil is high: its useful shelf life is short and it depends strongly on the crop yield of the last harvest season.

Use Rosehip Seed Oil For:

Use it for everything where the composition of the oil matters. Many of Skin Actives’ most popular products contain Rosehip Seed Oil. We use it for its many benefits to the skin. Rosehip Seed Oil nourishes and hydrates skin. It is a perfect ingredient for anti-aging serums and creams because it helps reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles, tightens and brightens skin and evens out skin tone.

Massage your tummy with rosehip oil during pregnancy to help prevent stretch marks. Also consider using rosehip seed oil for baby skin, dry skin with a tendency to acne, or for inflamed skin.

You will find rosehip seed oil in the following Skin Actives products:

• Every Lipid Serum: because from all the lipids your skin needs, Omega 6 and Omega 3 are at the very top! No anti-aging skin regime can do without this product, or at least without these two key essential fatty acids.
• Restoration Cream: when your skin has been through a lot, whether it is for after surgery (consult with your doctor first!) or after a peel or laser treatment.
• Ultra Moisturizing Cream: rosehip along with flax seed, argan, pomegranate and chia oil, plus a bonanza of antioxidants.
• Post Radiation Cream: for soothing and healing, you will find rosehip seed oil together with pomegranate, foraha and kukui oil, antioxidants to trap reactive oxygen species, melatonin, boswellia serrata extract and more.
• In our Revitalizing Nutrient Cream look for everything your mitochondria need to keep doing their job, including lipids, mitochondria, creatine, CoQ10, and carnitine.
• Capillary Health Cream is what your blood vessels need to recover elasticity. So be sure that rosehip seed oil is there too, with horse chestnut and butcher’s broom extracts, rutin, hesperidin and much more.



Thanks for checking out this exploration of rosehip seed oil. Check around our blog and you’ll find posts on all sorts of other topics, from active ingredients to DIY projects! Subscribe to our newsletter today and never miss another post. All these products discussed above containing rosehip seed oil are available in our webstore now! Standard shipping in the United States is absolutely free, all year round.