Keeping naturally healthy isn't just about diet and exercise - skin care comes into it too. Just as you shouldn't be putting harmful chemicals and processed foods into your body if you want to be healthy, the same goes for what you put onto your skin. Too many of the mainstream skin care brands rely on chemicals for their products, and that lovely smell that attracts you in the first place is probably a synthetic chemical fragrance used to disguise the aroma of something less pleasant.
So how can you make sure that the stuff you're using has only healthy, natural ingredients that people have been using on their skin for centuries without problems? Well. if you're Deborah Baker from La Marina on the Costa Blanca, you get trained up in natural skin care, then found your own company to make skin care products using the best ingredients Nature can offer, sourced in our healthy Mediterranean region.
I caught up with Deborah - who has lived in Spain for 12 years - last week, and I thought you might be interested in how she set about founding her own natural skin care company. Naturally Mediterranean started as an ideal for Deborah and her associate, Caroline - an experienced specialist in natural hair and body care. They attended courses in natural skin care in the UK, and were horrified by what they discovered. Some of the products that go into the best known skin care products are about as far from natural as you can get. Petroleum by products and chemicals which are known carcinogens are just the tip of the iceberg. As Deborah explained, even some of the so-called natural ingredients are questionable:
'The collagen included in skin creams is often sourced from aborted foetuses, and the skin of condemned criminals in China. Do you really want to put that on your skin, even if it has been processed? And the thing is, you actually don't need to, because if you go about it the right way, you can stimulate the body to produce more of its own collagen. Eating a diet rich in fruit and vegetables - especially brightly coloured ones - will help, and so will natural oils such as argan oil, which is present in all of Naturally Mediterranean's products.'
Once they had learned all they could about natural skin care, Deborah and Caroline sourced the ingredients for their products, and the Mediterranean region proved particularly fruitful. Some oils - such as argan oil, elemi oil and of course olive oil have been used by women for centuries for their skin care and hair care. In fact olive oil dates back to the days of the Ancient Egyptians as a skin cleanser and moisturiser.
Having lined up the ingredients for their products, Deborah and Caroline set about manufacturing their first items. There's no big production line involved here. Deborah told me:
'Our products do not include artificial preservatives, so we only make them up in small batches. A lot of the process is done by hand, because that gives us more control over the finished product. We're more interested in providing a quality natural product, than in producing skin creams that can sit on the store shelf for years.'
In the middle of 2013, the Naturally Mediterranean skin care range was launched, and so far, it's doing really well. Feedback is favourable, both in Europe and the USA, and customers love the personal touch the company provides, as well as the natural products which seem to deliver on their promises, acording to the reviews on Amazon.
Deborah is delighted with the success of her new venture. As she says:
'We decided to do something to steer clear of all the unnecessary and harmful chemicals that appear in some of the big cosmetic brands, and Naturally Mediterranean is the result. At the moment, our range is small, but we will be adding more products in the future, as we identify gaps in the natural skin care market.'
You can find out more about Naturally Mediterranean's natural skin care range, and pick up lots of information on natural skin care, and the ingredients to avoid, at their website.
I'm now trying out a couple of their products, and I'll review them here shortly. I really enjoyed my chat with Deborah - I have a lot of respect for people like her and Caroline who follow their convictions and put their money where their mouth is. I for one wish Naturally Mediterranean all the success in the world - with their 'can do' attitude to natural skincare, they deserve to do really well.
