When it comes to botanical skin care most people think of healthy ingredients such as ginseng, lotus leaf, green tea, cucumber, willow bark, and a whole host of other appealing ingredients.
While this is generally true, some botanical skin care products can do more harm than good.
Some botanical skin care products do contain great ingredients.
However, many times those ingredients come in such small amounts that they don't do you any good.
What's even worse is the healthy ingredients are nullified by the use of dangerous filler chemicals.
Some companies that manufacturer botanical skin care products use the bare amount of healthy ingredients to satisfy legal requirements.
It's also cheaper than using the beneficial ingredients in the right amounts to actually get results.
There are many well known brand name companies that are guilty of this.
Grab a bottle or tube of any botanical skin care products you may be currently using, or any skin care product for that matter.
Let's take a look at some of the ingredients that you may find.
If you see any of the following you may be in trouble, acrylamide, alcohols including ethanol, ethyl alcohol, methanol, benzyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol and SD alcohol.
All of these are very drying and irritating for the skin.
DEA (diethanolamine), MEA (monoethanolamine), and TEA (triethanolamine, dioxane.
Other ingredients to watch out for include fragrances: The word 'fragrance' is a real battlefield.
It can mean up to 4000 individual ingredients, many of them being toxic or cancer causing.
A lot of common fragrances can affect the central nervous system, causing depression, hyperactivity, and irritability.
Mineral oil: liquid paraffin, paraffin wax, petrolatum.
These are all petroleum by-products that coat the skin to lock in moisture.
It can clog the pores of your skin and interfere with the skin's ability to get rid of toxins, causing acne and other skin problems.
Quality botanical skin care will have healthy ingredients with a concentration level of at least 50%, without using the harmful chemicals mentioned above.
Some of the new age healthy ingredients that you want to see in botanical skin care products should include the following; CoEnzyme Q10 in Nano-Lipobelle H EQ10 form, phytessence wakame, which is an extract from a specific type of Japanese sea kelp.
Natural vitamin E, and active manuka honey which comes from New Zealand are great ingredients you'd like to see.
Macadamia and avocado oils round out the list.
You have to do a little research to find botanical skin care products with the right ingredients in their correct concentrations.
One hint is many of the best botanical skin care items are now manufactured in New Zealand.
A little time spent searching out these companies will be well worth your time and money.
In conclusion, just because a company claims to be botanical skin care in nature doesn't mean their products are good for you.
You need to look at the ingredients to find the best, safest botanical skin care products.