Many people worry about oil in their facial moisturizers. But is oil necessarily a bad thing in a moisturizer?

Do you have oily skin? Do you find that many moisturizers actually seem to make your skin more oily and feel heavy and greasy?

If you do you’re not alone, many women find the same thing. So it seems to make sense that you should be using an oil free anti-aging facial moisturizer.

But if you did that you’d be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, well the oil anyway.

You see the problem with most of the moisturizers that use oil is that they use the wrong oil. There are many oils that are beneficial to your skin, and your skin, of course, has it’s own oil.

And as your skin loses oil it’s beneficial to add the oil back.

But the problem with most common moisturizers is that they use mineral oil. Mineral oil will clog pores, possibly create acne and make your skin feel greazy.

Why do they use mineral oil if it does this? Because it’s cheap.

The worlds best skincare and anti-aging products use oils known to be beneficial to the skin and which do not clog up pores or cause a breakout.

They use Babassu oil, from the fruit of the Babassu tree. This protects your skin and moisturizes very well. It also smooths the skin and helps the skin repair itself.

And they use grapeseed oil, which is high in beneficial anti oxidants, linoleic acid and other oils that are good for your skin. Read the rest of this entry

Just about everyone knows about moisturizers, what do they do?

A  moisturizer ads moisture to your skin right? Well yes, but there’s more to it than that. What exactly does moisturizing do?

Your skin is the largest organ in, or on, your body. Skin is the interface between the outside and the inside. There are multiple organs within your body that help protect you from nasties that get in, but it’s your skin that is the first line of defence to protect you.

Your skin acts to filter out many nasties that you don’t want in your system. It’s not perfect, and doesn’t screen out everything, but it does a good job. You need a good barrier as the first line of defence.

And a good moisturizer helps keep your skin supple, moist and healthy, all of which contribute to that first barrier working as well as it can.

Healthy well moisturized skin helps protect you better from sunburn, for example. It helps protect your skin from dehydration, and improves your skin tone and skin texture. It also helps other anti aging ingredients that come from your skincare products or are even in your moisturizer itself work better.

What should you find in your moisturizer?

As you will know from reading our website we are strongly in favor of all natural ingredients in any moisturizer or other skincare or anti aging product. There are nasty ingredients in many mainstream moisturizers, for example Parabens which are usually used as a preservative. These are not good for you or your skin.

All natural ingredients which work extremely well as moisturizers include such naturally occurring ingredients as Shea Butter. Shea Butter comes from the seed of the Shea tree, and is an excellent natural moisturizer. It helps sooth inflamed skin, reduce skin blemishes and even help protect against sunburn. And it moisturizes very well.

Manuka honey is also has also been shown to be excellent for promoting skin health because of the high levels of natural enzymes which have good healing properties for skin. This honey is collected from the Manuka tree pollen, and only certain types contain the active ingredients.

Macadamia oil is also an excellent oil for moisturizing. It is readily absorbed into the skin, and penetrates deeply. It helps soften the skin and protect the skin cells from aging.

And there’s many other natural ingredientst that help moisturize the skin, and improve the overall level of skin health, suppleness and reduce skin aging.

You can find them in the skincare products from Xtend Life, a small New Zealand skincare company that makes what we consider to be the best skincare products in the world.

They use all natural ingredients, like those mentioned above, and more. Read the rest of this entry