Fragrances In Skin Care Products - What You Need To Know
In the world of organic acne treatment, vegan skincare, and cosmetics more generally, it can be difficult to know what sort of ingredients are being placed in skin care products that are advertised as being safe. It’s 2018, and even with all our technological improvements over the past century, it’s become no more clear which skin care brands we should trust, and whose we should completely disregard as untrustworthy.
There are plenty of ways which brands, brands not just in the cosmetic industry, can cut corners. By using certain preservatives, GMOs, fragrances, dyes, and even outdated industry knowledge, it’s often the case that consumers aren’t getting what’s best for them. In our previous two posts, we’ve taken a look at the relationship between GMOs and skin care products along with parabens and skin care. While parabens have largely been deemed safe for use (all Aleavia plant-based skin care products are paraben and GMO-free), the presence of GMOs in our food, cosmetic, and skin care products is nothing short of alarming. Check out our full post on this topic, GMOs And Skin Care - Why Aleavia Is A GMO-Free Skin Care Brand, when you get the chance! We do our best to explain our philosophy at Aleavia in addition to a more general picture of the dangers of GMOs in cosmetics.
Aleavia Plant-Based Skincare is:
- 100% natural and organic
- Non-toxic and GMO-free
- Chemical- and paraben-free
- Environmentally-friendly
- Free of all fragrances and dyes
- Safe for everyone in the family, even baby
- Vegan
- Always cruelty-free
Each plant-based ingredient we place in our all-natural skin care products is done so purposefully. Extra-virgin coconut oil infuses your skin with vital hydration, but not before organic Acadian Sea kelp gives the skin important nourishment to help restore appropriate pH levels. This helps relieve irritation, while soothing aloe vera purifies the skin, leaving you with a plumped, radiant glow!
Let’s get a bit more specific.
We believe that seven pure and organic ingredients are all it takes to help your skin rebalance itself, leave you hydrated, purified, plumped, and glowing. Mild to moderate to severe skin conditions like rosacea, acne, eczema, and psoriasis are all issues that can be solved according to a simple principle: prebiotic skin care.
We’ve said it in past blogs and we will continue to explain it, because the beauty of prebiotic skin care (and the wealth of benefits it provides us) is in its simplicity. In a basic sense, “prebiotics” refers to the act of feeding the beneficial bacteria found on the skin (whereas “probiotics, a term you might be more familiar with, refers to ingesting beneficial bacteria). While most folks are familiar with gut health and probiotics to a certain degree, there exists plenty of commonality between prebiotic skin care and what many health professionals are coming to believe is a vital part of our overall health. For both our digestive system and our skin’s microbiome (the living ecosystem of microorganisms found on your skin), we need to actively support the positive, good microbes so we can starve the harmful bacteria, yeast, and viruses.
While the vast majority of microbes that exist on your skin are harmless, the act of destroying the bad with the good (through the use of antibacterial cosmetics and skin care products) completely throws our skin’s balance out of whack. Aleavia’s prebiotic skin care formula helps the beneficial bacteria fight the good fight, as it were, so that balance can be restored to the universe that is your skin’s microbiome. Restoring a harmonious relationship with the microscopic life found on the microbiome, as opposed to essentially “nuking” everything on your skin through antibacterial products, is the key to achieving healthy skin. While there is certainly more that goes into it than what we’ve described above, the concept of feeding the good bacteria on our skin is far from rocket science — and we hope you can tell why exactly we are so passionate about our organic skin care brand that has harnessed the science of prebiotics!
“This gentle cleanser and facial mist combo definitely calmed my skin down. It helped clear up my breakouts and I have a lot less flare ups. I would definitely repurchase. I was having a hard time finding a face cleanser that wouldn't dry out my skin and this definitely does NOT. It gently cleans and doesn't strip the moisture from my skin.” - Jdominguezas, Verified Purchaser
As this loyal customer, along with many others, have testified, Aleavia prebiotic skin care is worth the investment. Now that we’ve had the chance to tell a little bit more about ourselves, we have a promised blog topic to get to!
Fragrances And Skin Care
As we mentioned above, all of our skin care products are free of fragrances, as opposed to many popular products on the market. Does it matter? Should we care? In a word, yes. But let’s look into the matter a bit more.
What’s A Fragrance?
Excellent question, allow us to explain: Fragrances are scents that lawmakers define in one of two ways.
- The first is that it might be a “ scent, made of a mixture of essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents that you wear on your body to make it smell good.”
- The second is A scent added to a beauty product to neutralize the nasty odors of its ingredients, which can involve chemically-based scents as well.
It’s not too complicated to understand why fragrances are included in cosmetic products — people like smelling aromas, and people like smelling good — it’s attractive. Businesses have found that if they can infuse a product with a positive scent, sales will improve, generally speaking. Truth be told, some products that have no added scent don’t smell so great, which will deter most people from any benefits that same product might offer.
The Dangers Thereof
Unfortunately, things are not always what they seem, and in this case, there is more to the situation than meets the...nose. Fragrances are active contributors to common skin problems like psoriasis and eczema, which are two problems that Aleavia and our organic treatment can go a long way toward clearing up.
Fragrances cause allergic reactions, which lead to skin irritation and worse. Among the “worse” might be any combination of nausea, hives, headaches, eczema, asthma, psoriasis, allergies...and the list goes on.
Simply put, your nose and skin don’t always agree with what is best for you.
Regulations
At this point, you might be wondering if there are any sort of regulations regarding fragrances in cosmetic products. While brands have to disclose if there is “perfume” in a product, fragrances are conveniently labeled “trade secrets” which means that brands can keep specifics proprietary so that the competition can’t steal the secret sauce.