Jade Rebecca: What's In My Beauty Products #1

I've been wanting to do a 'What's In My Beauty Products?' series of posts since I started my blog, how many times do you look at a product and think 'wow, that looks great, it's got x in it' but not actually know what x is or does? I certainly do, so I'll be researching various beauty ingredients and sharing my findings with you each week.

The reason it took me a while to write this post is that I just didn't know where to start, there are so many ingredients that crop up in many beauty products and claim to do amazing things and I discovered even more when I started researching a couple!

I finally decided that I’m going to start with jojoba oil; it’s in quite a range of products, especially those with more natural ingredients and I’ve seen it sold in its pure form in health food stores like Holland and Barratt.

First things first, I feel that I should point out that jojoba is pronounced ‘hoh-hoh-buh’ (yes, I’ve been pronouncing it jo-jo-bah for years, oops!) and that jojoba oil is not actually an oil, it just got that name because it has oil-like properties. Jojoba oil is the liquid wax produced by the jojoba plant’s seeds and, refined, it is colourless and oudorless.

Jojoba oil became more widely used in the cosmetic industry in the 1970s when, following the US ban on importing whale oil in 1971, it was discovered that jojoba oil is in fact superior to whale oil for many cosmetic applications.

Jojoba oil is structurally and chemically similar to the skin’s natural sebum so it is readily accepted by the skin as a moisturiser and can be used on both the hair and body in its pure form.

Jojoba oil is naturally high in iodine (don’t worry, not high enough to be toxic) and will not clog pores, so is great for spot-prone skin. The oil is also high in antioxidants (they help to prevent and repair damage to the body’s tissue), non-toxic, non-allergenic and is even thought by some to have anti-aging properties.

So, we’ve discovered that jojoba oil is probably best and most widely used for moisturising and here are a few products that make use of jojoba’s properties: