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Cosmetic components: Odorants
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
Fragrances and preservatives - substances whose content in cosmetics is negligible - cause great concern to consumers. Therefore, in order to convince buyers of the safety of their products, some companies put a note on the cosmetics - "without perfumes" and / or "without preservatives".
Does this mean that the tool does not really contain these components? As a rule, in this case the absence of substances of a synthetic nature is implied.
Ideally, fragrances should perform only one function - to give the product a pituitary smell and not have any effect on the skin (neither good nor bad.) Natural essential oils are a mixture of many components, among which there may be those that do not smell. Extra ballast, since they do not carry any functional load, and yet it is better to get rid of this ballast, because for some particularly sensitive people, it can cause undesirable reactions, manifested in the form of allergies.
In principle, any substance (even the most, at first glance, harmless, for example, whey proteins) can be an allergen, just some compounds have allergenic properties expressed more strongly. Therefore, in order to minimize the risk of unwanted skin reactions, it is better not to introduce unnecessary components into the cosmetic composition. From this point of view, qualitative synthetic perfumes have an advantage over natural essential oils, since they are "chemically pure" substances released from concomitant compounds. Particularly we emphasize that the quality of synthetic perfume is determined by the degree of its purification from solvents and by-products. Good synthetic fragrances are quite expensive and are used in high perfumery and elite cosmetics.
The above does not apply to the means of aromatherapy, where the smell is designed to perform a non-passive role (improve the consumer properties of the product), but to have an active physiological effect on the body. In this case, a natural mixture of various compounds is usually more preferable than a synthetic perfume composed of one component. In complex mixtures, different compounds can work together, strengthening or, on the contrary, suppressing each other's action and simultaneously affecting different levels of perception of the human body.
The effects of aromatherapy are a completely different area.
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