Natural Compared To Synthetic Skin Care Products
Skin care products are a practice to protect and improve skin health, repair skin conditions and enhances the beauty. It play important role in protecting the largest part in human body, which are skin. Skin serves as a protective barrier to help regulate body temperature and acts as a filter especially for face, skin and leg that exposed to sunlight. It is comes much kind of products such as cleanser, toner, moisturizer, sunscreen and lotion either in natural nor synthetic products.
Nowadays, consumers preferable for natural skin care product compare to synthetic products due to effect of chemical substances for either skin health or environment. Several local skin care products contain heavy metal and chemical that cause harm to consumers in term of health problem and skin irritation. Addition of the heavy metal want to give faster result in order to get good skin texture and increase profit of company. Previous study which review by J. N. (2015) stated that mercury help in skin lightening that inhibit melanin formation and resulting in a lighter skin tone. Common heavy metal that be detected in skin care product are mercury and hydroquinone. According to The Star Online (2018, 23 February) stated that three cosmetics product had banned by Health Ministry due to poison chemical contain which are mercury, hydroquinone and tretinoin.
Presences of poison chemical or heavy metal in skin care products will cause adverse effect towards skin and environmental effect. This is because heavy metal is a carcinogen toward human health and environment. According to Lentini et al. , (2017) studies stated that heavy metal can enter human body through skin absorption and heavy metal toxicity can cause kidney damage. Studies by Rustemeyer (2018), stated that metal present in cosmetics might being absorbed through mucous membrane, respiratory and gastrointestinal tract may accumulate in skin that cause cutaneous effects.
Consumers nowadays have awareness towards usage of natural ingredients product instead of mixture with chemical. According to Ribeiro, Estanqueiro, Oliveira, & Sousa Lobo (2015) natural product is from extraction of plant and animal products that found in nature. The bioactive ingredients in plants extract give benefits to influence the biological functions of the skin, providing the nutrients for healthy skin.
Current studies the skin care products more focus in herbal or medicinal plants with many good properties such as antioxidants, antimicrobial and anti – inflammatory agents that help in protecting skin. Previous study shows that antioxidants can help in protection from Ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV radiation from sunlight can harmful to skin such as skin cancer and sunburn. According to (Gm, 2012) stated UV radiation have three different types which are UVA (320– 400 nm) the longest wavelength, UVB (280– 320 nm) medium and UVC (200–280 nm) at shortest wavelength. Ninety percent of UV radiation reach earth’s surface are UVA that can damage underlying structures of dermis that cause skin wrinkles. This is because of increasing in oxidative stress when reacts with UV radiation. According to (Seyedreihani, Tan, Alkarkhi, & Easa, 2017) previous study shows that plants extract of Ulam raja (Cosmos Caudatus) shows high antioxidants compare to five popular Ulam in Malaysia, “selom” (Oenanthe javanica), curry leaf (Murraya koenigii), “pegaga” (Centella asiatica) and the seeds of “petai” (Parkia speciosa).
Antioxidants can reduce the formation of oxidative stress and as photo protection. This is because according to previous studies organic sunscreen usually aromatic compounds conjugated with carbonyl group that allows the molecule to absorb UV rays and thereby preventing the skin from damaging effects of UV radiation.
