What is natural skincare and why is it so important in midlife? Here Rachel Culleton, Registered Nutritionist at Urban Wellness, looks at what is natural skincare, why it matters to us midlife women, and also gives the low down on Tea and Tonic’s Cleansing Balm.
My obsession with natural skincare started while I lived in Australia when my journey with health and nutrition began about 10 years ago. When I got back to the UK, I found the beauty market was a little lacking in natural skincare products. However, over the past 5 years, we have gone on to up our game, which is fantastic. Go us!
Now, why is natural skincare important?
When thinking of natural skincare, this is everything from your daily moisturiser to your deodorant, your perfume to your make-up.
Our skin is our largest organ, and hence it matters because what we pop on our skin can get into our bloodstream and ultimately disrupt our hormones. While the research is lacking in terms of how much we actually absorb, we want to be mindful of what we are using, especially as our endocrine system uses the bloodstream as one of its main ways to transport its chemical messengers around our body, meaning that what use on our skin can end up competing, interacting and disrupting their function. Obviously not ideal, especially if we already working with hormone dysregulation.
However, natural doesn’t always mean better when it comes to clever marketing and pretty packaging! It can be a bit of a minefield debunking ingredients to know if a product is truly ‘natural’ or not. The Think Dirty app, while American, can be helpful in identifying mainstream products but otherwise, here are some tips on how to know if a product is ‘natural’ or not:
Top tips for choosing natural skincare products:
Pay attention to the order of the ingredients – the first five ingredients typically make up about 80% of the product.
Just because the ingredients list is long, doesn’t mean it is bad (unlike food labelling!). Natural products often do have a longer list of ingredients
Natural skincare products naturally have a shorter shelf life (e.g., 6 months or less) so check the labels as this gives you a clue as to how ‘natural’ they are.
Product review:
Here at Urban Wellness, we only recommend products we have tried and tested ourselves and so when the lovely people at Tea and Tonic asked if I wanted to try one of their products, I jumped at the chance to use their ‘The Meadow’s Secret’ Cleansing Balm.
Now talk about luxury. From the moment I took off the lid and saw the beautiful yellow balm inside, it truly smelt good enough to eat.
Also, I loved this product because a little bit goes a long way. Using a good fingertip amount and rubbing it between your fingers gives you enough product to massage into a dry face, working it across your skin and eyes. It is a dream with melting mascara away. You then simply get a warm damp cloth and wipe away your day, leaving you with the softest, most hydrated skin. I was especially impressed by the glow it gave me and having tried other balms in the past, this natural version was up there with them.
At £28 for 50ml glass pot, I would definitely recommend it in terms of value and I was so impressed with how it melted away my daywear make-up.
The ingredient list also sounds equally as delicious. You don’t see any of the typical peskys (parabens, benzophenones, bisphenols, phthalates, etc) that you might find listed on the back of the products you currently have in your bathroom. The ingredients with the Tea & Tonic’s products, literally do sound as though they have come from a meadow and are all listed on their site.
To round up what I loved about this product:-
A little bit goes a long way
It’s fantastic a melting away your make-up
It feels pure luxury - I looked forward to using the product every day
It’s packed with lovely skin-nourishing ingredients (my skin is combination and can be problematic and for me this product did not irritate it)
Slightly shallow, but it looks good in my bathroom!
You can refill the glass jar
It is a UK brand and I love supporting ‘home-grown’ businesses
Check them out for yourself at https://www.teaandtonic.co.uk/ - your skin will thank you!
