Whether you have sensitive skin or are just someone conscious about what you apply to your face and body, you might choose fragrance-free beauty products. In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on choosing additive and fragrance-free beauty products for many reasons.
What is its Purpose?
Fragrances are added to beauty products to give them a luxurious feel. The scent creates a positive and luxurious experience, not a skincare utility.
This is exactly why some brands aim at creating a custom scent for all their products. It adds a marketing appeal.
Sometimes, fragrance is added to mask the smell of strong, unappealing ingredients.
Why is it Bad for your Skin?
Believe it or not, the first negative impact of scented skincare and beauty products on you is that they send your senses into overdrive. Scented products can be mildly irritating to many and trigger headaches, sneezing, runny nose and more. Fragrances can be irritating when added to products that are to be applied topically.
What Does it Really Do?
Apart from irritating your skin, these synthetic fragrances can lead to certain health concerns. These are often derived from petrochemicals and can sometimes trigger asthma flare-ups, cause nausea, and lead to allergic skin reactions, rashes and redness in people with sensitive skin.
Some medical journals also report respiratory issues, hormonal imbalance and mood swings with anxiety in individuals who use fragranced skincare and beauty products. Whether or not you have sensitive skin, beauty products with added synthetic fragrances can prove extremely harmful and toxic.
In addition, since it is an ingredient that irritates your skin, it can also increase the appearance of dark spots and fine lines and make it more prone to sun damage.
Which Fragrance Ingredients Are Bad?
Artificial and synthetic fragrances are added to beauty products under many different names. You’ll find them listed as an ingredient under the name ‘parfum’ or ‘fragrance’ and sometimes citronellol, citral, limonene or linalool.
You might find it shocking, but many beauty products that are super popular today contain 50-100 different chemicals in varying proportions to make up the signature scent.
What is Natural?
Natural fragrances are extracted from naturally occurring ingredients like flowers and fruits through the processes of distillation, cold pressing and fermentation. These may sometimes be accompanied by other synthetic fragrances as well.