Be Careful What You Put On Your Skin

I found the following excerpt on the website: http://www.coconut-connections.com/skin_care.htm

"Most commercial creams and lotions are predominantly water.  Their moisture is quickly absorbed into dry, wrinkled skin.  As the water enters the skin, it expands the tissues, like filling a balloon with water, so that wrinkles fade away and the skin feels smoother.  But this is only temporary.  As soon as the water evaporates or is carried away by the blood stream, the dry, wrinkled skin returns.  No matter how hard you try people will never be able to permanently cure dry, wrinkled skin with any commercial body lotion or body care products. 

Besides the water, most lotions have an oil of some type.  This oil is almost always a highly refined vegetable oil devoid of all natural protective antioxidants. One product in our food supply and in body care products that leads to a great deal of free radicals is oxidized vegetable oils. Our skin is made up of connective tissues.  These tissues give our skin strength and elasticity.  When we are young and healthy the skin is smooth, elastic and supple.  This is the effect of strong connective fibers.  As we age their fibers are continually subjected to free-radical attack which breaks them down.  As a result, connective tissues become hardened and lose both elasticity and strength.  The skin loses its ability to hold itself together and begins to sag and become wrinkled.  Once young, soft and smooth the skin turns dry and leathery.

Once a free-radical reaction is started it can cause a chain reaction which produces more free radicals, which ultimately damages thousands of molecules.  The only way our body has to fight them is with antioxidants.  When a free radical comes into contact with an antioxidant, the chain reaction is stopped.  For this reason, it is good to have plenty of antioxidants in our cells and tissues to protect us. 

The number of antioxidants we have in our tissues is determined to a large extent by the nutrients in our diet.  Having antioxidants in skin care products is important, too...

Conventional body care products that are made with refined vegetable oils which have all the antioxidants stripped from them are highly prone to free-radical generation both in and outside the body.  That is why eating processed vegetable oils can cause a deficiency in vitamin E and other antioxidants.  The antioxidants are used up fighting off free radicals causing permanent damage to connective tissues.  This is also the reason why you should be careful about the type of oils you use on your skin, and in your lotions, creams and lip balms. 

If you use a lotion, or cream with a refined oil in it you are in fact causing your skin to age faster.  The lotion, though it may bring temporary improvement will actually accelerate the aging of the skin and even promote skin cancer through the free radicals that are readily formed from  the refined vegetable oil."