Jeanne talks about skincare preservatives and addresses the fears created around this by the social conversation. She specifically talks about natural skincare products and the natural preservatives that come with it. Is it safe? Are preservatives in skincare dangerous for your health? Is it really necessary?
Jeanne talks about skincare preservatives and addresses the fears created around this by the social conversation. She specifically talks about natural skincare products and the natural preservatives that come with it. Is it safe? Are preservatives in skincare dangerous for your health? Is it really necessary?
Key Moments In Episode:
00:00 Introduction
02:55 Micro-organisms in your skincare: What are they, how do they grow and multiply?
05:00 Microorganisms and water.
06:04 How Ph affects the growth of micro-organisms
08:25 Oxygen and micro-organisms
09:10 Introducing bacteria into our skincare products.
09:57 How temperature humidity, sunlight and oxygen contribute to micro-organisms growth.
11:40 Why do we fear preservatives? Why use these when we can use natural preservatives?
14:40 Skincare packaging and how this determines the type of preservative needed.
19:30 What types of micro-organisms can grow in your skincare?
19:48 So, do you need preservatives in your skincare?
20:45 Conclusion
Jeanne Retief: Blog | Podcast | Instagram | FIGGI Beauty Shop
[00:00:00.170] - Jeanne
Hello, FIGGI Goddess. Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about preservatives in skincare. Do you really need your preservatives in your skincare? And if you do, why? And that really combines also with packaging. How does skincare packaging work? And why should you be concerned about your skincare packaging? So be sure to stay tuned, and we will be back soon.
[00:00:26.570] - Intro
Welcome, goddess, to your sacred space. This is my FIGGI Life podcast, where we openly discuss life's wins and losses on our journeys to self discovery. This is your best life. This is your FIGGI life. And now here is your host, Jeanne.
[00:00:46.510] - Jeanne
Hello, FIGGI Goddess. And welcome back to this episode where we're talking all about skincare preservatives in your skincare. And if you even need preservatives in your skincare. A very important topic to discuss when we're talking about the preservatives in our skincare is to understand the packaging of our skincare, because it really does directly affect how long our skincare lasts, where we can store it, how we should store it, but very importantly, how we should interact with it. Okay, so let's just get into it. Do you need preservatives in your skincare? We've seen a trend, a continuing trend, I think, in natural skincare with natural ingredients going back to more natural roots, trying to take out all of those chemicals and kind of all kinds of yucky ingredients. And as always, when I'm talking about these things, skincare is a very personal journey. I have dry and sensitive skin. My skin is influenced by my health condition, my anxiety disorder. I take medications for this which affect or can affect your skin. And you may be dealing with something completely different. I mean, you may have oily skin, you may have combination skin, but it may still be sensitive.
[00:02:02.930] - Jeanne
Whatever the case is, skincare is a very personal journey. So what works for me does not necessarily work for you. But that being said, we should also draw that line towards what you choose to put on your skin versus what somebody else may feel comfortable putting on their skin. I am not trying to tell you what to choose or what you should or should not use. I'm just giving you the facts because I believe that we are all independent thinkers and we can make up our own minds about what we want to consume as consumers. But I like to base that decision I make on the facts to take my cue from there. So that's all I'm trying to do and that's all I'm trying to give you. In this episode, it's really not either or must or don't type of situation. Preservatives. We're talking about natural skincare. That is kind of a trend, and I think it will be for a long time because we're seeing a lot of new developments in that, and people are really interested in going back to a more natural way of living and consuming and just kind of using the space that they occupy in this world.
[00:03:13.840] - Jeanne
So I don't have anything against natural skincare. In fact, I love it. I love natural things, I love natural beauty products, I love biological foods. I really don't have anything against that. But we also should remember, as with all things, taking things to the extreme can be a little bit dangerous or may not work as we had hoped it would, as we want to plan for it to work. This is the case with preservatives when we're saying we want a natural product, all natural skincare, which means that we also want natural preservatives or preservatives that are more natural. We have to understand that that immediately places us at a risk as the consumer. Because if we want to use skincare like that completely your choice, but then you also have to use it responsibly, knowing that it will not have the same shelf life. There may be a risk of microorganisms growing in your skincare which can be unbelievably dangerous to your health. We should be cautious of that from the outset before we even discuss anything else. That is the major factor that it always comes back to and that we should always be cautious of.
[00:04:27.530] - Jeanne
Why should we be so cautious about this? Well, there are certain environments that bacteria and fungi love to exist in. I mean, it's just kind of the perfect breeding ground for them. It's a really comfy, cozy bed created by these certain circumstances. And unfortunately our skincare products is like the perfect breeding ground for bacteria times ten. Why is this so? Let's just go through some of the steps. First and foremost, most skincare is made up of 80% or more of water. Microorganisms love water. And just to make it clear, when I'm talking about microorganisms, I'm talking about bacteria, fungi, dangerous bacteria and fungi which you do not want to consume or have on your skin. These are the types of microorganisms I'm talking about. They love water. Water is a major food source for them. So if we take a cream, for example, that is placed in a jar, a facial cream or a moisturizer, and we take out all of the preservatives from that cream and we have the perfect formulation, we are providing those microorganisms a wonderful 80% or more comfy bed of water food source and they will just thrive and grow in it.
[00:05:58.520] - Jeanne
That's the first one. But there's more also with our skincare. We want our skincare to be the perfect PH because we cannot have something too alkaline on our skin, we cannot have something too acidic on our skin. Especially when you're dealing with sensitive skin, you really have to be extremely careful of formulating with the right PH balance. And I don't think it's that much of a thing anymore. But it was like a couple of years ago, it was the thing. If you buy a skincare product, a cream, a body wash, whatever it may be, people were really concerned with looking at the label and saying, oh, it's PH 5.5. Really something that people and consumers were looking for. We've moved a bit away from that. But we still want our products to be in the perfect PH. Even when the products go for testing in terms of stability, to see how long is the shelf life before you place a product or a skincare product on the market, it first has to go. It has to it's law, it has to go through these tests, and you have to determine what is the PH of the product?
[00:07:12.720] - Jeanne
Does the PH of the product change over time? Does it go up? Does it go down? Does it stabilize? And too many changes in this will lead to the product not being passed and therefore not being able to be registered. So PH is extremely important. Now, guess what? Guess who else absolutely loves the perfect PH environment? Yep. Those little pesky pesky microorganisms that we are trying to avoid. So now we've given them two wonderful, glorious food sources in our skincare. We've given them water, a lot of it, and we have given them the perfect PH. So we're still discussing kind of this hypothetical scenario where we have absolutely no preservatives in our skincare. Okay? Because I'm trying to convey the message of how perfect a breeding ground skincare is for microorganisms. The next thing is oxygen. What living, breathing organism doesn't love oxygen? Microorganisms. These bacteria and fungi are absolutely no different. They love oxygen. And this is kind of where the packaging comes in, which I will talk about a little bit more later in the episode. But a lot of packaging come in jars, a lot of skincare products, especially moisturizers. So you're opening the jar, letting all of that oxygen in, and then that's all.
[00:08:39.830] - Jeanne
You're closing it. You're closing all of that oxygen inside of that jar. So now you have provided three integral food and living sources for these microorganisms. A bunch of water perfect PH, and you're feeding them oxygen. The next yeah. Can you believe it? There's more. There's more. The next one is the introduction of more microorganisms into this already vulnerable product. How do we do that? By interacting with our products. We put our fingers inside of the jar to scoop out the cream. We have pump bottles, for example, that we loosen to get the last bit of the cream out. You can wash your hands a million, thousand times. We carry bacteria on our hands and under our fingernails. So now, again, we have given them the perfect amount of water, the perfect PH. We're constantly introducing them to oxygen and feeding them with that. And we're putting extra bacteria into that product and then closing the jar with that extra oxygen, with that extra bacteria, and we're leaving it essentially to fester. It's not a pretty picture, but I hope I'm kind of bringing the point across then the last thing? Well, actually, two things.
[00:09:59.760] - Jeanne
Can you believe two more things? They love a good climate. And let's be honest, if we're talking about like, room temperature climates, what that would be? Anything between, say, 19 to 24 degrees, maybe 25. Most of our skincare yep, you're right. Live in this temperature. It's often in our bathrooms, or maybe it's like in a vanity cupboard in our bedrooms. But that is the common kind of room temperature and also the baseline room temperature, depending on where you want to sell your products in that the stability tests will also be formulated towards. So now we've taken it a step further. The last two things are humidity and sunlight. What do we have a lot of in our bathrooms? Yes, you're right. Humidity. Also with the changing climate and where many of us live, we have very humid environments. It's either humid in winter, humid in summer, humid all year round, but there is humidity in your bathroom. Again, you're opening, you're closing your products, you're exposing it to humidity. And many of us have beautiful windows in our bathrooms to let in all of that natural light and air. But we also tend to sometimes leave our products next to these windows, and it is exposed to sun.
[00:11:14.740] - Jeanne
So I'm not going to go through the whole train ride again. I think you understand what I'm getting to add here. It really is the perfect playground for a microorganism to live, breathe, multiply, fester, duplicate, in. And that is why it is so important that we have to have really good preservatives in our skincare. Now, I think the fear with preservatives are that they're bad for you, they're bad for your health. It can be replaced by natural preservatives. So why use these kind of chemical or synthetic preservatives? The thing about this is that, and I'm speaking from the figi beauty perspective, because we are registered to sell in the European Union, so we have to follow the European cosmetic regulations, which are a lot more stringent than the US. But in the US. You still need to follow the FDA regulations on cosmetics. And in terms of these principles, for example, in the EU, there is the scientific committee for consumer Opinions or Consumer safety, the SCCs. And it's a group of objective scientists, researchers, doctors, that come together and that really go through the ingredients in skincare and cosmetics and determine whether it is safe or not safe.
[00:12:36.920] - Jeanne
And they regulate this severely and very strictly. So the preservatives that are available to put in your skincare are, rest assured, safe. Not only are they safe, it's extremely dangerous to not use them in your skincare because of all of these reasons I've just given. Okay, great. So if we understand that, why can you then not just use the natural version of a preservative like this? The short answer and the only and the total answer is they are not as effective and as strong at keeping the products safe. Also, there is a lot of misunderstanding that goes into this. A lot of indie brands and small brands making natural skincare products will incorrectly assume or think that they can use things like vitamin E as a natural preservative. And actually it's an antioxidant. And what that means is it's actually the worst thing that you can use as a preservative because as soon as it is exposed to oxygen, it oxygenates, it turns brown and it doesn't work anymore. It's completely ineffective. So you may have heard, for example, a vitamin C serum. Never buy it in a dropper bottle, never buy it in a jar or something like that because the moment it turns brown, it's ineffective and it doesn't work on pigmentation.
[00:13:59.140] - Jeanne
It doesn't do anything that it's supposed to do. It's really just kind of expensive goop that you're putting on your face. This is the same if you use like a vitamin E as a natural preservative in your products. There are many other more natural preservatives that you can use. But you have to be unbelievably careful. If you are buying these natural skincare products, please make sure that you understand the brand, you understand their story, you understand their ethos and the research that goes into this. Because although you can use these more natural preservatives, you then have to make very, very wise decisions about your packaging. And this is where we get into the packaging. In many instances, creams come in jars because it's a very cheap form of packaging. So it's very affordable, it's readily available, it's easy to rebrand to what you need for your brand. But it is also a very high risk form of packaging. High risk forms of packaging are packaging like jars or bottles with screw, open tops that the entire top comes off and you can get the body wash from there or your face wash or the cream or whatever.
[00:15:15.690] - Jeanne
When you're putting your products in a package like this, you can absolutely not avoid using preservatives because again, that entire train I took you through, you're exposing the product to all of that and you're not keeping it safe. If you want to use a more natural preservative then you have to be very, very sure that you have passed your tests. And in many instances, if you don't use the right natural preservative, you won't pass. The stability test will not pass because something will go wrong. Microorganisms will grow. Maybe there are some instances where that may not happen. But again, you have to be so, so careful. If you are then convinced that it must be a natural product with natural preservatives or more natural preservatives, you have to choose the right packaging. And that packaging would be what we would call the low risk packaging. Low risk packaging are your airless containers. So that means it squeezes all of the air out while it is providing you with your product. It cannot screw off. You can never touch the products with your hands. And it doesn't suck in extra air as soon as a pump is released.
[00:16:29.830] - Jeanne
So at least that takes away the oxygen, the introduction of additional bacterias, but it doesn't take away all of the water in your product, the perfect temperature you're keeping your product at, the perfect PH your product is at. So it really still is a risk. It's not impossible, that's not what I'm saying. But it's a risk. A risk that for me personally, I don't always understand. If I understand that preservatives are safe, there are many regulations around them and the use of these preservatives and they are there to keep the consumer safe and to keep your product safe and beautiful and ready for use. Another form of packaging that you will often see and natural brands will often use is what we would call a medium risk packaging. Medium risk packaging is your pump bottles. So that's really very common. Your pump bottles, where you have the little pump at the top and you pump out the cream, or a squeeze tube where you have the flip open cap and you squeeze the contents of the tube out. That's very common with masks or face washes or balms. That's what we would call medium risk.
[00:17:45.180] - Jeanne
And the reason for that is because as soon as you let's take the pump for the first example, as soon as you press down on that pump, it releases the product into your hand. As soon as you let go of that pump, it sucks in air. Not a lot, but it does. So it still exposes the product to that air. It's the same with the tube. As soon as you squeeze the tube, the product comes out. If you then release the tube, it sucks in the air, which then exposes the product to oxygen. Should products have preservatives? Yes or no? In my humble opinion and based on the facts as I know and understand them, absolutely yes. It is unbelievably irresponsible to make products, skincare products, cosmetics products, without the proper preservation system. Not only is it unethical, it is illegal. That's why you have to go through all of these tests to make sure that the product as it is after it's manufactured doesn't just stay that way for a month or two. It stays that beautiful, that healthy, that safe, that effective for as long as is its shelf life. So having preservatives in your skincare product, it's so important because it's really a safety concern.
[00:19:09.450] - Jeanne
Yes, you want to keep your products from going off. Of course. We don't want to spend money on a skincare product and it lasts for two or three months and then we have to throw it away. Which is again why I do not understand vitamin C serums in this type of packaging. But the bigger picture here is the risk to your health. I mean, this is really serious types of microorganisms that can grow in your skincare, things like E. Coli, Salmonella, Staphyloccus. It's very, very serious health risk. So, yes, we do need preservatives in our skincare, and there is a very good reason why. And I think that sometimes with the social media conversation, we get blinded to the facts of the situation, and there's so much fear mongering and incorrect information out there that really honestly creates such a risk to consumers. There are such stringent measures on what can be used within a skincare product and what cannot. There's an entire complicated, extended, extensive database for the European Union's cosmetics regulations where you have to go in and see, okay, I'm using this preservative. First of all, is it allowed? Yes, it is.
[00:20:24.650] - Jeanne
In what percentage is it allowed? And all of these things that they list, there have been objectively researched and researched and objectively found by scientists and doctors to be safe for human use. I hope that I've shed some light on whether one should use preservatives in skincare or not, one and two, how the packaging kind of plays into that, and how important it is to consider the packaging of your skincare. Again, it's not my intention to force you towards a less natural way. I just, as I said in the beginning, believe in having all of the facts. That's my only intention to give you the facts as I know them, believe them to be true, and then I love to base my decision off of that. So thank you so much for enjoying this episode with me, or at least I hope you enjoyed this episode with me. And we will see you again next time on the My FIGGI Life podcast. But until then, remember that everyone deserves to celebrate. The Goddess within the FIGGI Beauty skincare.
[00:21:34.480] - Intro
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