Moisturizer is the most important skincare product. If you choose to go natural, you should only buy organic moisturizers that contain no chemicals. Moisturizers stay on the skin for longest, so any toxic ingredients in their formula absorb almost fully into the skin.
A good green moisturizer should contain the following:
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Emollients: beeswax, squalene from olive oil, jojoba and other plant oils, shea butter, cocoa butter, plant-derived silicones. Thickening agents like triglycerides, palmitates, myristates and stearates may be pore-clogging.
Humectants: hyaluronic acid, glycerin, or sorbitol that work by attracting water molecules to the skin.
Soothing and healing agents, such as bisabolol, allantoin, aloe, licorice root, green tea, and chamomile extracts, are added to many moisturizers to help skin tolerate the ingredients that may cause irritation.
Sunscreen ingredients, such as titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Certain antioxidants can boost the protective action of sunscreen ingredients.
When buying a new moisturizer, you should always check a product’s ingredients; when in doubt, test it on a patch of skin first to make sure it doesn’t cause any adverse reactions. Also, be aware that just because a product has a certain ingredient listed on a label, that doesn’t necessarily mean it has enough of it to produce visible results.
Fatty acids and fatty alcohols are very popular emollients derived from natural sources. Like oils, they form a film on the skin surface, but this film is thinner, is not airtight, and it also works as a neutral delivery vehicle for other ingredients. Some natural fatty acids, such as palmitic, are better tolerated, while gamma-linoleic acid from evening primrose oil may cause irritation in some people. That’s why chemists create blends of natural fatty acids to play up their better qualities and minimize side effects.
One major drawback of humectants is that some of them can increase water loss by moving water from the lower skin layers into the upper skin layers where it can evaporate quickly. For this reason, humectants are almost always combined with an emollient agent, so they would work together to enhance and preserve skin hydration.
