Making Skin Care Using Essential Oils
Essential oils are a natural and powerful preservative, but aren’t often used to preserve cosmetics and store bought lotions and creams.
The oils are generally used for scent when making skin care, and taken very seriously when it comes to real aromatherapy. Essential oil comes from flowers, leaves, grasses and woody plants.
During the 19th century, there was a Cholera Epidemic in France. Tens of thousands of men, women and children died from this bacterial virus. It was observed that workers in the perfume factories were almost completely immune to this disease. That was one of the first situations that showed how powerful Essential Oils can actually be.
Today Essential oils are used more and more for their powerful antiseptic abilities and one drop of orange essential oil can kill all of the bacteria and fungus in a 2 ounce container of lotion.
So why doesn’t the cosmetic and skin care industry start using essential oils as a preservative rather than the toxic substances commonly used in making skin care creams and lotions on the market?
First of all, essential oils are expensive. They can cost many times more than the cheap preservatives found in most of today’s products.
Another reason is because of the scent. If the manufacturer wants to give the product a fun scent like bubble gum for instance, the essential oil would certainly interfere and the finished product would not smell right.
The other reason is that essential oil is volatile or easily vaporizes, so it can quickly evaporate from the lotion or cosmetic when making skin care, if the container is left open. This would risk the stability of using essential oil as a preservative.
When you are making skin care products and are using essential oils to scent bath products such as bath salts, bath oil, and soap and massage oils, you do not have to worry about using harmful synthetic preservatives. The antiseptic properties of the essential oils will protect your product.
To learn more about using essential oils as well as creating soap and bath products to use as vehicles for your beautiful essential oils, please visit www.soapmakingschool.com
