The Best Natural Ingredients for Your Skin
Not many of us like the idea of spreading chemicals on our skin, but the sad reality is that many of the products we use on a daily basis are laden with ingredients that are not only unsafe for our skin, but can even harm our bodies.
Using natural, plant-based ingredients is a great way to avoid chemicals and toxins in your products and use ingredients that work synergistically with your skin to help improve it and help it look its best.
If you’re lost on which natural ingredients you should have in your products, we can help.
RMS Beauty is dedicated to creating products that outperform their traditional beauty counterparts while maintaining the highest industry standards for pure, natural product ingredients.
Why Is Clean Beauty Important?
Clean beauty bypassed social media buzzword and accelerated to mainstream staple several years ago. Seeing the words clean, green, or pure on the label of your favorite products is now fairly commonplace.
The problem is, those words don’t really mean anything. The cosmetics industry in the U.S. is woefully underregulated, which means your products can contain anything from formaldehyde to coal tar.
When it comes to regulation of clean cosmetics, it gets even trickier. There’s no regulation for the terms “clean,” “green,” or “natural,” so it’s really up to each company to make their own definition of the terms and market their products to you based on those definitions. If you don’t know or trust the company, you can’t trust their products.
Even organic cosmetics aren’t totally safe. While there’s some regulation over what can be labeled organic, there are some cosmetic ingredients (like pigments and minerals) that simply cannot be organically sourced, because they aren’t living ingredients.
Clean beauty is important because it protects your skin, your body, and the environment, but in order to access the best in clean beauty products, you have to be able to trust your brand.
How? We’re glad you asked. Your favorite beauty brand should:
- Be transparent with their ingredients
- Give you information as to why the ingredients are in the products (i.e., how they benefit your skin)
- Tell you how they source and process their ingredients.
If you can’t find this information easily, you generally shouldn’t don’t trust the brand.
RMS Beauty is completely transparent with our ingredients. We keep an updated ingredient database so you can easily learn about our products and know what you’re putting on your skin.
Our founder and our team of beauty experts search tirelessly for the best natural ingredients for your skin. Here are some of our favorites.
What Natural Skin Care Ingredients Should I Look For?
If you search our database, you’ll find an extensive list of our product ingredients, but that list is relatively short. Our philosophy has always been less is more, from ingredients to product application.
Here are the ingredients we love for nourishing and keeping skin looking radiant.
Buriti Oil (Wildcrafted)
This oil is pressed from the moriche palm tree’s nuts and is one of the richest sources of beta-carotene available. Buriti oil is full of antioxidants to help protect your skin against free radicals and also contains fatty acids to help smooth fine lines and wrinkles.
Buriti oil is even able to help protect your skin from the sun, which makes it a great addition to your sunscreen for added, natural protection.
Castor Seed Oil (Organic)
Castor seed oil is found in many of our products. You’ll find it replaces petroleum commonly used in traditional beauty. Castor oil is an excellent skin protector, with natural analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties.
Castor oil also works as an emollient, forming a protective layer over the skin to help keep moisture in.
Chia Seed Oil
Chia seed oil is extracted from chia seeds and is full of linoleic acid (like olive oil). It has antioxidant properties that make it great for protecting your skin against environmental stressors.
Similar to castor oil, chia seed oil also works as an emollient, keeping your skin well hydrated.
Cocoa Seed Butter (Organic)
The cocoa butter sourced by RMS is organic and cold-pressed to preserve it in its true, unrefined state. Cocoa seed butter is packed with vitamin E, one of the most skin-beneficial vitamins available.
Cocoa seed butter is extracted from the beans of the cocoa tree, and literally melts onto the skin, making it a great inclusion in products like creams, lotions, and cosmetics, like our Luminizer.
Coconut Oil (Organic)
Coconut oil may be the true O.G. of natural skin care products. In fact, it serves as the basis for all RMS Beauty formulas.
Coconut oil is packed with vitamin E, antioxidants, and skin-healthy enzymes. It’s the richest source of lauric acid that has antifungal and anti-microbial properties. Coconut oil helps moisturize, condition, hydrate, smooth, and protect the skin. It can even help clear acne prone skin.
CoQ10
CoQ10 is found naturally in the body and in some of the foods we eat. CoQ10 can help support your skin’s natural self-renewal process, which can aid in reducing the appearance of sunspots. CoQ10 also helps you improve your skin’s overall tone.
Jojoba Oil (Organic)
Jojoba oil is extracted from the beans of the jojoba plant, which is a shrub that grows naturally in Mexico and the southwestern regions of the U.S.
Jojoba oil is the closest match to our skin’s natural oil, sebum, which means it is easily absorbed by the skin. Jojoba absorbs rapidly, and never leaves the skin greasy.
Jojoba oil isn’t actually an oil, but a wax ester. It’s incredibly good for even the most sensitive skin types.
Kakadu Plum Oil
Kakadu plum is rich with antioxidants, and has 50x more vitamin C than an orange to help plump and nourish skin. Vitamin C is notorious for supporting collagen and elastin in your skin to keep it looking firm and youthful.
Meadowfoam Seed Oil
This plant seed oil is relatively new to natural skin care, but studies show it may be beneficial as an emollient. This oil is extracted from the seeds of a flowering plant common in California and other temperate climates, and can also help protect your skin as an antioxidant.
Rosehip Oil (Organic)
You don’t need a prescription for retinol if you’re using a product with rosehip oil. Rosehip is loaded with retinoic acid, vitamin C (to help brighten your skin), and skin beneficial fatty acids. It helps supercharge your skin cell renewal, helping skin appear more youthful.
Shea Butter (Organic)
Extracted from the seeds of the karite tree which is native to Africa, shea butter contains natural fats, oils, and waxes that help moisturize and condition the skin. However, it’s important to note that only organic, unrefined shea butter contains enough of these ingredients to benefit your skin.
Refined shea butter has been chemically altered such that it doesn’t contain enough beneficial ingredients to be helpful or nourishing to your skin.
Tamanu Oil (Cold Pressed)
Tamanu oil is another oil rich in antioxidants, which are vital to keeping your skin healthy, nourished, and young, especially when paired with the lipids in tamanu that help to stimulate collagen.
The fatty acids in this oil also help moisturize, soothe, and soften skin.
Vitamin E (Full Spectrum)
Vitamin E is one of the most skin beneficial vitamins you can use. Vitamin E helps condition your skin, keeping it smooth and supple. It’s also excellent for helping you correct areas of discoloration, like sunspots and acne scars.
Vitamin E is an excellent emollient, protecting your skin from losing hydration.
What Synthetic Skin Care Ingredients Should I Avoid?
In the U.S., there are numerous skin care ingredients that are harmful to your body and your skin, but these are some of the worst offenders.
Aluminum
Aluminum is present in skincare sometimes as a thickening agent, or most popularly, in antiperspirants.
The presence of heavy metals in skincare is nothing new, but what is new(er) is evidence that shows it’s harmful to us.
All RMS products are aluminum-free, so you don’t have to worry about exposing your skin to this ingredient.
Fragrances
In the U.S., fragrance is proprietary information, which means it doesn’t have to be disclosed on the ingredients label. This means a company can essentially include anything in their signature scent without telling you what it is.
Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is present in numerous cosmetics (mascara, nail polish, and nail hardener for natural or acrylic nails are three popular products). Formaldehyde isn’t actually added to your products, it’s there as a result of the combination of other ingredients which release it once added to your cosmetics.
Hydroquinone
This chemical is added to products to give them fragrance, and can also be found in products that bleach the skin and/or hair. It’s sometimes used as a synthetic antioxidant. It’s a known carcinogen and can also cause reproductive and developmental harm.
Parabens
If you’re familiar with any chemical that shouldn’t be in your skincare, it’s probably parabens. Parabens are added to your products as a preservative, but they’ve been known to cross the skin barrier and get into other tissues. They’ve even been found in samples taken from breast tumors.
Talc
In natural form, some talc contains asbestos, which is why you never want it included in any of your products. Even though the talc included in your skin care products has to have untraceable levels of asbestos, research suggests it is still a carcinogen.
Silica
Synthetic silica isn’t a good or desirable ingredient in your skin care. However, RMS uses natural silica in our products because it is an excellent light-diffusing agent.
Our silica is an amorphous, non-crystalline form, which is safe for use in cosmetic products. We do not use synthetic silica, which has a very extreme flashback and is dangerous for inhalation.
Knowledge Is Power!
Knowing what’s in your products is great, but knowing the company who makes your products is better. Trusting a brand means having peace of mind when you buy any product they sell.
RMS Beauty is dedicated to bringing you the cleanest, greenest, and most natural products available. Our ingredients are the closest to their original state as possible, which is most beneficial to your skin and safe for your body.
Sources:
Formaldehyde And Formaldehyde-Releasing Preservatives - Safe Cosmetics
Meadowfoam Seed Oil and Human Stratum Corneum|NCBI
