Natural Skin Care Jargon EXPLAINED!
When dealing with natural skin care, organic skin care and any other kind of skin care, it is quite common to run into terms on bottles and packages that you kind of understand but not really. Here are a couple terms defined that you may run into often with skin care:
Emollient - making soft or supple; also : soothing especially to the skin or mucous membrane <an emollient hand lotion>[1]. An emollient helps smooth rough areas of the skin.
Humectant - a substance that promotes retention of moisture[2]. Humectants lock moisture in and discourage the moisture from escaping.
Paraben - either of two antifungal agents used as preservatives in foods and pharmaceuticals[3]. These are added to commercial skin care products as a preservative. Generally, this ingredient in skin care is meant to be avoided, although no conclusive results have been posted by the American Cancer Society. Parabens have weak estrogen-like qualities and were found in breast cancer tumors in a small study in 2004[4].
Essential Oil - any of a large class of volatile odoriferous oils of vegetable origin that give plants their characteristic odors and often other properties, that are obtained from various parts of the plants (as flowers, leaves, or bark) by steam distillation, expression, or extraction, that are usually mixtures of compounds (as aldehydes or esters), and that are used often in the form of essences in perfumes, flavorings, and pharmaceutical preparations—called also ethereal oil, volatile oil[5].
Astringent - having the property of causing contraction of soft organic tissues[6]. Basically, an astringent will close up your pores.
Hypo-allergenic - having little likelihood of causing an allergic response[7].
These terms are only a few of the many that you may run into, but are some of the most common. Take the time to figure out what you are putting on your body!
[1] emollient. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emollient
[2] humectant. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humectant
[3] paraben. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/paraben
[4] Antipersirants and Breast Cancer Link. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/antiperspirants-and-breast-cancer-risk
[5] essential oil. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/essential%20oil
[6] astringent. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/astringent
[7] hypoallergenic. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2011, from Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hypoallergenic
