“Natural” seems to be the easiest to define, as most people would agree that it applies to a substance taken from nature i.e. not-man-made. We trust natural because the human species had plenty of time to figure out what is safe and what is not in the natural world, what is edible and what is poisonous, what is good for us and what harms us. Not the sort of thing somebody creates in a lab, puts on the market with great advertising fuss and then years later we may find out it has undesirable side effects. Plant extracts and naturally occurring minerals are substances most of use would consider natural.
But what do cosmetic manufacturers mean by “natural”? Well, the answer to that question is a lot less straightforward. “Natural“ being so popular a concept with consumers, cosmetic companies often take liberties with the word. In marketing jargon, natural can mean “natural-derived-processed”, “partly natural” or “almost natural”.

“Natural-derived-processed” – a bit of a mouthful, so  it’s understandable that the word “processed” is often left behind. It means a substance originating in nature has been modified in a chemical process. One example most of us are familiar with is hydrogenated oil. Liquid natural oils – e.g. olive oil – go through a chemical process that adds a few hydrogen atoms to their molecules, thus turning the oils into solid, butter-like substances. At the end of the process you have a different substance, with a different chemical formula than what you had at the beginning. Is the end substance still natural?

“Organic” can be more than “natural”, but interestingly, it can be less.
The Soil Association’s criteria for organic skin care products are rather lengthy – not the kind of information you can summarise on a product’s package. Neither are they the sort of pleasant reading you would want to have with your cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon. That is why I will venture to say that – of all the natural-related buzz-words, “organic “is the least likely to be understood by the general public.
In the context of “100% natural and organic”, the organic certification is a step towards safe and healthy. But if you compare a product that is 100% natural with a product that is certified organic you will often find the  100% natural one is the closest to nature. Because the organic standards allow a number of preservatives and emulsifies, even though they are synthetic, on the grounds that there are no natural alternatives to them.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing like reading the ingredient list for yourself. The rule of thumb is: If every single ingredient in the list sounds natural, then chances are the product is natural. But if the end tail of the ingredient list reminds you of the chemistry book, then the natural claims of that brand would be better taken with a pinch of salt.

Which brings us to this question: Necessary for what? For the health of our skin? Well, no. Not at all. These additives are used to produce the oil and water emulsions we got used to buying as moisturisers. But they are not all motherhood and apple pie. Far from it.

This beaker pictured here bears the brunt of one encounter with one these “necessary” additives. Back in the times I used to experiment with fluffy emulsions myself, well before The Herbjar was born, I made the mistake of picking this plastic container instead of a glass one. This is what happened to the beaker when the preservative went in. The plastic wall is corroded – these white stains appeared because the preservative melted it. I’m keeping the beaker to remind myself why none of the of The Herbjar products contain any water (and any synthetic preservatives).

You may be forgiven for thinking it’s an old-fashion preservative I’m speaking of, something  discontinued many ears ago. It is not. It is well in use today, touted as a modern, gentle preservative and you can see it on the labels of thousands of cosmetic products out there (listed as “Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin”).

And now for the good news: At least some consumers are noticing the additive-ridden moisturisers are performing poorly compared to natural ones. These consumers are choosing to ditch the emulsions and accept – happily – that natural creams will have thicker consistencies, which may well vary with the ambient temperature.

The fact is, our skin will be on display a lot more than our cosmetic jars. And if our creams are not perfectly white, fluffy emulsions  that stay the same consistency at minus ten as well as plus thirty Celsius, who cares?

 Widespread along coastal areas of Europe and Asia, including Britain, sea-buckthorn  is a sun-loving shrub, tolerant of salt in the air and soil – a useful plant in stabilising mobile sand dunes. The ripen berries echo the colour of the sun. Soft, juicy and rich in oils, they are relished by birds, especially fieldfares and starlings migrating onto the coast in autumn.

The thorny branches do not relinquish their bounty easily. Harvesting is done by shaking the fruit off the shrubs, but only up to a quarter can be removed, the rest carry on brightening the landscape and feeding wildlife through the winter.

The fruit of the plant has a high nutritional value: fifteen times more vitamin C than oranges,  carotenoids, vitamin E, amino acids, dietary minerals, sterols and polyphenolic acids. It is used as  food (juices and jams), nutritional supplement and as a skin care ingredient.

I like to use sea-buckthorn pulp oil – rather than the seed oil – because it retains a wider range of the fruit’s nutrients: a high proportion of pro-vitamin A carotenoids (as much as 300 to 370 mg per 100g), vitamins E and K, sterols and wide variety of fatty acids.

The sea-buckthorn oil is known to promote wound healing and tissue regeneration and it’s used to treat burns, eczema and radiation injury. It is also taken internally in the treatment of stomach and intestinal diseases. There has been no reported evidence of sea-buckthorn oil causing  any adverse reactions.

Sea-buckthorn is a wonderful gift from nature, used for centuries by traditional medicine and whose benefits modern science has only just begun to explore.

A 100% natural personal care routine is achievable and, what’s more, it isn’t difficult. Here are some replacement products for shampoo, shower gel and soap.

Cleaning your hair

There is a very effective replacement to shampoo and hair conditioners. Rhassoul Moroccan soap clay, sometimes spelt Gassoul or Rasul, is a powerful cleanser what will absorb all oil and impurities from your hair while protecting the hair shaft and keeping it healthy and shiny. I use it often  – not because I have a problem with shampoo, but because I have not found any shampoo and conditioner combination that keeps my hair as healthy and shiny as the clay.
You will need:

• one spoon of soap clay – rounded for short to medium hair or heaped for longer hair;
• one or two spoons of vinegar.

Mix the soap clay with water before using it. A mixture of one part clay to two parts water will give you a good consistency. Apply on wet hair and spread from the root to the ends, then rinse off.
Add the vinegar to one to two litres of water and rinse your hair with the mixture, then rinse again with clean water.

Cleaning your body

 You can use Rhassoul soap clay as a cleanser in the shower. One teaspoon of powder mixed with two teaspoons of water is plenty for a wash. It will not foam, but it will spread so easily and leave your skin silky and fresh.

If you’d like to give your skin a wonderful conditioning treatment at the same time as cleaning it, you can skip the soap or shower gel entirely and use a vegetal oil instead. Using an oil as a cleanser is not at all a new idea. Ancient Romans and Greeks used perfumed oil for cleaning – they applied in on their bodies, then used a curved tool called “strigil” to remove the oil, together with any dirt or sweat.
Of all the oils available, I prefer coconut oil, because of its fatty acids profile.

You can use a cotton cloth like a face towel to rub the oil off your skin. I like using a face towel soaked in the juice of an orange or half a grapefruit. Cosmetic companies add AHA (Alpha Hydroxy Acids) extracted from fruit to moisturisers to stimulate skin cell renewal. Why not take it from fresh fruit instead of having it from a jar, mixed with preservatives? Unless the skin is broken i.e. in case of severe eczema, it will never feel acidic on top of the oil and it will leave the skin soft and refreshed.

Conditioning your skin

It is possible to find good quality moisturisers that are also free of any preservatives, emulsifiers and other harmful additives. Look for water free moisturisers. Although they are not guaranteed to be  free from synthetic additives, it is actually possible to formulate a 100% natural skin care product by excluding water. You will need to read the ingredient lists to make sure the products you buy are indeed natural. If the ingredient list contains water (aqua) you need go no further – that product will contain at least two synthetic additives – an emulsifier and a preservative. A good product that will benefit your skin should contain antioxidants (Vitamins A, C and E are natural antioxidants) and a healthy balance of fatty acids, avoiding excessive amounts of polyunsaturated oils which are unstable and can oxidate, generating free radicals. You can read more about fatty acids in my blog post below.

Every skin expert would tell you that fats are hugely important to the integrity and function of our skin:

• The outer layer of our epidermis, which protects the skin against external influences is often compared to a brick wall in which dead, keratinised skin cells are embedded in a matrix of inter-cellular lipids in the same way bricks are embedded in mortar. This lipid matrix is responsible for keeping skin moisturised.
• Deeper in the skin, fatty acids are essential components of living cells membranes, playing an important part in regulating membrane fluidity. They are also calorie-rich nutrients that living cells convert into energy.

Not all fats are created equal. There is an amazing variety of fatty acids (building blocks of fats) from tiny molecules with only four carbon atoms in their chain to mega-molecules with chain lengths of over thirty carbon atoms. Some fats have stable molecular structure – the saturated fats. Others, the unsaturated fats, are less stable and they will behave very differently once absorbed into our bodies.

Saturated vs. unsaturated fatty acids
We a hear a lot about saturated and unsaturated fats these days. Many doctors believe unsaturated fats are better for us because they lower blood cholesterol and shield us from cardiovascular disease. But the scientific world is not so united in the belief that unsaturated fats are all good and wonderful. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find experts warning that an excess of unsaturated fats, especially the polyunsaturated ones with their unstable molecules, cause cellular damage – they trigger free radical chain reactions that alter vital cellular structures, thus accelerating ageing processes and even causing abnormal tissue growth and cancers.

Fatty acid chain lengths
A less known classification of fatty acids is by molecular size.  There are short chain, medium chain, long chain and very long chain fatty acids. The chain length makes a big difference to the speed at which fats are absorbed into cells and turned into energy. Short and medium chain fatty acids – like those found in coconut oil, palm oil and cocoa butter are so quickly absorbed and processed by cells they are almost instant energy. That is why they are sometimes called de-fatting fats – they speed up cellular metabolism and prompt cells to burn other fats a lot faster.

So how do different types of fatty acids influence the skin?

Saturated vs. unsaturated fatty acids in skin care products
The wide majority of moisturisers aim to put some fats into our skin in order to replenish its lipid barrier. Since skin is so exposed to environmental factors – especially UV radiation – any unsaturated fats are prone to oxidate very fast. Even before doctors and nutritionists settle the saturated vs. unsaturated fats debate and come up with the optimum balance for our diet, I believe it is safer to limit the amount of unsaturated fats in skin moisturisers, especially in day creams.
Cosmetic formulators know that unsaturated fatty acids, especially the polyunsaturated ones increase membrane fluidity and bind water into the skin. But you can have too much of a good thing.  If membranes are too fluid they will become unable to keep their content. Water will leak out and the skin will become dry as a result. Which, by the way, is not a bad thing for cosmetic companies, because that will make you reapply their products more often. I take a different view – that a cosmetic product should help the skin retain moisture naturally and that cell membrane fluidity should stay at an optimum level, not be increased at any cost.

Fatty acid chain length and skin care
The size of a fat’s molecule will determine how quickly that fat penetrates the skin. Short and medium chain fatty acids will give a boost to cellular metabolism, prompting cells to generate more energy faster and giving skin that lovely, healthy glow. Longer chain fatty acids will give a richer feel and help alleviate skin dryness.

Fats really are wonderful things!  There is such a diversity of fat types, each with different properties to benefit different skin types – from oily to dry and from teenage to mature skin.

Instead I’m going to ask: How big is the oil based cosmetics market going to get? I for one will venture to place a bet on this answer: “really big” and this is why: The oil and water emulsion, which has been our typical moisturiser for many decades now, relies on emulsifiers (how else can you get the oils and water to mix?) and on preservatives to stop the emulsion becoming a paradise for all kinds of bacteria, moulds and fungi. To date, the cosmetic industry has not managed to find a functional natural emulsifiers or preservative – unless you count the “vegetal derived, processed”. More than that, there are some basic issues with these two groups of substances:

• Emulsifiers make it possible for water and oil to mix by hooking a fat molecule at one end and a water molecule at the other. On the other hand, our skin works hard to maintain an orderly structure of fats in its deeper layer (the so called ’skin’s intracellular matrix’). Disrupting the fat content of this matrix is thought to be a cause of skin dryness. If the emulsifiers we put into our skin via cosmetic products go around attaching themselves to the fats in our skin’s intracellular matrix, and binding them to alcohol and water molecules, it seems to follow that our skin will have to work even harder to repair its intracellular matrix.  
• The issue with preservatives is even more obvious: they are killers. Is it possible to create a substance that kills all bacteria while being totally harmless to living skin tissue?

Oil based cosmetics go round the problem by leaving water out altogether. Emulsifiers become totally unnecessary. As for preservatives, products that consist exclusively of oils can only degrade through oxidation – all you have to do to preserve them is pack them full of antioxidant, which are great ingredients for the skin too. 

There is a good chance the natural cosmetics market will be divided along this line:
1. The almost-natural stuff in which all ingredients are natural except the emulsifier and the preservative
2. The oil based products which can be formulated to be 100% natural.

I won’t rule out the 100% natural cosmetic emulsion as a possible future achievement of the cosmetic industry, after all there are some ingenious chemists out there and the prize is worth it. Nevertheless, after carefully weighing the facts, I have put the water deionizer into storage and I’m placing my bet on oil based cosmetics. For now.