‘Natural’ Beauty Products Can Be Bad For Your Skin, Too

‘Natural’ Beauty Products Can Be Bad For Your Skin, Too

Marketers will have you believe natural or organic is synonymous with healthy, but that’s not always the case. (As one clinical professor put it over at INSIDER, “Poison ivy’s organic and it’s not good for you.”) Even more innocuous ingredients like tea tree oil and rosemary can irritate your skin, though.

Photo by zenspa.

The INSIDER points out that, although many health-conscious consumers prefer natural products, those products can be just as bad, if not worse, for people with sensitive skin. According to the Mayo Clinic, a lot of the top triggers for allergic reactions come from natural, plant-based ingredients: Eucalyptus and rosemary, for example. They reported:

“People have to be really cognisant of the fact that just because [a product] is botanical, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be an irritant or an allergen,” Mona Gohara, MD, associate clinical professor at the Yale University department of dermatology, told INSIDER…even if you don’t have allergies, some natural ingredients — like tea tree oil and citrus-derived ingredients — are common causes of skin irritation. They may not cause an allergic reaction, but they can still make some people itch and develop a rash.

Of course, this isn’t to say these products are bad, either. But it’s always useful to know how marketing affects our purchasing decisions. For more info, head to Insider’s full post at the link below.

Why natural beauty products can be secretly horrible for your skin [INSIDER]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments