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Natural Vs Synthetic ingredients in Skincare.

Natural Vs Synthetic ingredients in Skincare.

Natural vs synthetic ingredients, what does this mean? With an increase in brands selling ‘natural’ products to meet the latest ‘trend’, it all sounds very nice and convincing, but what does a natural product actually mean? There are very little regulations around brands using these terms and the requirements products need in order to qualify for these labels are let's just say minimal. With this in mind you’re left not knowing what to believe and who to trust.

You’re here which means you care about what you put on your skin, and you want to know you’re using products that are safe and also do what they say they do. There’s no point in a product being all natural if it’s not effective at solving your skin woes. As always Akaia Blends is dedicated to decoding the jargon so you can know exactly what is in your products, so you are then able to make informed decisions about the products you use on your skin.

Let’s start with Natural, what does this actually mean?
Natural products are classed as ingredients that have come directly from a natural source with no laboratory manipulation, think from plants, pure botanical oils and extracts. The trouble with labeling a product as natural is that it can be done if the product contains a certain amount of raw materials of natural origin, this doesn’t mean it’s 100% natural unless stated so and there are basically zero legalities or standards defining the term ‘natural’, it’s not monitored or certified by anyone. This means a product labeled as natural can in fact still contain non-natural ingredients inside their product formula, this is why it’s so important to get clued up and learn to read and understand ingredient lists.

There are even some natural ingredients that can be harmful to the skin, while some bio-available (lab made, man made) synthetic ingredients are extremely beneficial for the skin, think vitamin C, Hyaluronic acid, Vitamin A etc, so again this is why it’s so important to educate yourself on safe, beneficial and harmful ingredients.

On that note synthetic ingredients, what are they, and are they bad for you?Synthetic ingredients are naturally derived ingredients replicated in a laboratory to present the same qualities of the natural ingredient.  Are they bad? Short answer is no, not necessarily, just because an ingredient is synthetically created doesn’t mean it’s bad for you. As I mentioned before, ingredients we love like Vitamin C and A are synthetically made or hyaluronic acid, a really popular anti-ageing ingredient which was originally taken from animals and has now been molecularly replicated to have the same effects as the animal derived product.

There is plenty of misinformed information out there about natural ingredients and synthetic ingredients. So it pays to do your research. You’ll find all sorts, like people claiming essential oils as being extremely harmful to the skin, when it’s clear they haven’t done enough research or don’t understand skincare formulations. Many of these claims are talking about the usage of these essential oils at 100%, which yes is harmful as they always need to be diluted before applying to the skin and also used at very low % in skincare around 0.2%, not enough to be harmful in any way.

Here at Akaia Blends we try to take the hard work out of it, as we understand you don’t always have the time to be researching skincare ingredients in your spare time. We let you know all the ingredients in our formulations alongside a short description of their purpose in the formula and also the benefits of that certain ingredient. We believe you should know exactly what you are putting on your skin.

If you have any questions feel free to DM us over on Instagram @akaiablends, we love to hear from you and help in any way we can. Talk soon

 

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