Preserving Natural Skincare

Water (aqua) is normally listed as the first ingredient on an ingredients list. You won’t find water in OmMade Organic Skincare creams and moisturisers at all. Water free, preservative free moisturisers are extremely good at treating dry, sensitive, normal skin types and surprisingly, oily/combination skin types. Our moisturisers are for all skin types because they do what they are meant to do. They moisturise the skin. I firmly believe that the “for dry skin” for “oily skin” or “night cream” and “day cream” labels are simply marketing ploys to get you to buy more products. Our moisturisers are extremely concentrated so always use the tiniest amount to begin with. Apply on fresh, clean, and slightly damp (patted dry) skin.

To ensure maximum freshness, it’s also important to ensure that you don’t get water into the product once you get it home and that you store your products in a cool place. The labels states to store below 25 degrees C, so definitely not on a sunny windowsill or in the car. A fridge is best but not necessary for the average Australian home with air conditioning.

Not all our products are water free though, so how do we ensure a good shelf life for those products? The other requirement for bacteria to breed is oxygen. This is why our Aloe Vera Hand cream is in an aluminium tube. The allows little to no air in. We don’t add water to the hand cream but aloe vera itself has a very high-water content. I would love to put the hand cream in a tin, but it would allow too much air to be in contact with the product.

We also use essential oils in our products, not just for their therapeutic benefits, or because they smell amazing, but for their ability to preserve the product. Essential oils are natural, volatile, and aromatic liquids extracted from specific plants that are a complex mixture of secondary metabolites (terpenes, phenolic compounds, alcohol). Studies such as the one linked below, show that essential oils possess a wide range of antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. [2] Citrus essential oils, such as sweet orange, lemon and bergamot are cold pressed from the citrus fruit peels. These essential oils are rich with limonene, a monoterpene that is a strong antibacterial and antifungal agent. [1]

Essential oils: A promising eco-friendly food preservative - ScienceDirect

Honey is a wonderful natural preservative and is one of my favourite ingredients. Not just for its incredible healing properties, but also for its anti-bacterial properties. The preservative nature of honey has been studied by evaluating the role of hydrogen peroxide. Honey is chiefly a combination of various sugars and hydrogen peroxide and has been shown as effective against bacterial strains from pasteurized milk samples. [3]

With a little extra care and the use of wonderful natural preserving methods, we can offer safe, effective skincare with a good shelf life without the needed for chemical preservatives. Remember, if you can’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin.

X Tina

[1] -ur-Rehman, S., Hussain, S., Nawaz, H., Mushtaq Ahmad, M., Anjum Murtaza, M., & Jaffar Rizvi, A. (2007). Inhibitory Effect of Citrus Peel Essential Oils on the Microbial Growth of Bread. Pakistan Journal Of Nutrition, 6(6), 558-561. http://dx.doi.org/10.3923/pjn.2007.558.561

[2] Fisher, K. & Phillips, C. (2006). The effect of lemon, orange and bergamot essential oils and their components on the survival of Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and in food systems. J Appl Microbiol, 101(6), 1232-1240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03035.x

[3] Krushna NS, Kowsalya A, Radha S, Narayanan RB. Honey as a natural preservative of milk. Indian J Exp Biol. 2007 May;45(5):459-64. PMID: 17569289. Use of hydrogen peroxide as a milk preservative. - Abstract - Europe PMC

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