The organic movement has been growing steadily for the past twenty years or so, with more and more product manufacturers examining their organic profile and offering options for people who prefer to take an organic option when one is available.

Once, \”organic\” referred only to food and drink, but now the definition has spread to all manner of products, including clothes and cosmetics. Sometimes people get in something of a muddle when describing organic products and use terms such as “natural” and “chemical-free”. In reality, everything in the universe is natural and every substance is a chemical, but we sort of understand what people mean, and it is usually that the products come from plants (or animals) and that they are not made artificially in factories from other chemicals. Of course, naturalness is no guarantee of safety just as much as something being man-made makes it inherently dangerous. The shelves aren’t heaving with foxglove facial creams, arsenic tonics or nettle wines … oh, wait a minute … but you get the picture. As long as there are checks on the safety of all products that go to market, choosing organic products will be a decision based as much on beliefs about manufacturing methods and origins of products as on their effectiveness.

That said, organic skin care is now a massive industry, so there must be plenty of people who buy into the philosophy. They are reassured by the organic label and all it represents, but to keep these products selling so successfully, they must indeed work. One of the factors the products have in their favour is that as they are based on naturally-occurring ingredients, they have often been used for generations by peoples the world over.

One of the best known is aloe vera, which oozes a fluid whose soothing properties have made it famous the world over (despite being native to Africa). It now finds its way into sun creams, moisturisers, shampoos and conditioners, and can even be taken internally. It is an example of a product which is about as natural as can be, and which has been helping people probably since before recorded history.

The organic cosmetics industry uses extracts from thousands of the world’s plants. The chemical structures of many of these ingredients are the result of billions of years of evolution, and some of them are incredibly complex and unlikely to ever have been stumbled upon in a lab. They will have been tried by someone, perhaps by accident, at some point in history and their effectiveness will have been noted and passed on to later generations.

Because of this complexity and diversity, the organic cosmetics industry is one of the leaders, along with its medical counterpart, in the fight against deforestation. Once a plant species has become extinct, we might lose all trace of ingredients that might never be discovered artificially and which might have transformed medicine or cosmetics forever. So it’s fair to say that organic cosmetics are about much more than a pretty face.

Author Bio: Debbie is health, nutrition and skin care specialist and gives advice on organic skin care and generally on the advantages of well thought out skin care programme.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
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