At the risk of stating the obvious, any/all ingredients in a Natural or Herbal skin care product should be 100% natural.

Now, there is natural and there is natural; truly natural or 'holistically natural' ingredients are ingredients that have been sourced from nature in their natural form. Now, obviously, putting rose peddles into a rose cream is not what I mean, however, using pure 100% essential oil of Rose is what I am talking about, when calling a product holistically natural.

A synthetic version of Rose oil does not have the healing properties, nor does it have the same smell and of course, it is anything but natural.

Similarly, herbal extracts should be extracts from plants and these extracts should be included in a herbal or natural product in its entirety, if this product is supposed to be truly or holistically natural.

However, this is more frequently not the case. Many manufactures extract specific active ingredients from the herbal extract and use it in concentrated form in their products. Yes, it is a natural ingredient, can't be argued, however, by using it in isolation, the concept of a 'natural' product is starting to be diluted and is following in the foot steps of the pharmaceutical industry.

An example is the use of AHA's (Alpha hydroxy acids); Papaya fruit extract contains AHA's in their natural, balanced state, however if these AHA's are extracted and added to a lotion or cream base, the risk that a user of this product has an allergic or other adverse reaction is greatly increased.

The reason is, that the moderating ingredients present in the papaya fruit extract are no longer present to balance the actions and effects of the AHAs. The inclusion of all the ingredients is necessary for minimising potential adverse effects or irritation of the skin.

In addition to the holistic use of herbal extracts and using 100% pure essential oils as active ingredients, the base of the cream or lotion should also be natural. This is where many companies fall down. They include synthetic or artificial preservatives, emulsifiers, etc., and being so called “non-active” ingredients, they are usually not listed anywhere. So the customer does not know that there are in fact also synthetic chemicals in the skin care products they are about to buy.

There is no need to use artificial or synthetic chemicals in skin care products. Natural preservation of products is obtained simply by the proper formulation of herbal extracts and essential oils. Almost all essential oils are anti-septic and the alcohol from the herbal extracts is another preservative, thus, if the concentration of essential oils and herbal extracts is high enough, there is absolutely no need for any added preservatives in your natural or herbal skin care products.

Natural emulsifiers such as lecithin for example, are just as good as synthetic ones. In fact they are better. This is because fewer people have allergic or other adverse reactions to them.

The other problem with synthetic or artificial ingredients is that an increasing number of these ingredients have been found to potentially cause health problems and some have been linked to causing cancer.