Parabenos Simplificados

Helmé is known to be an all-natural ingredient skin care line. As you read through your product's ingredient list you might doubt the “all-natural” title; what are those complicated long named ingredients any way? You can check this out yourself by looking up our ingredients on: incidecoder.com. (If you have not used this website before, check it out! It will give you an inside look into all your skincare product’s ingredients.)

As you can see some of those words end with the -paraben suffix. This means they are all part of the paraben family. You have probably heard the term before. What are these? Why have I seen paraben free labels? Should I be worried? Parabens are naturally occurring chemicals found in plants. They are commonly used as preservatives both in skin care products and foods to control the growth of microbes. Skin care products need very low doses of parabens to be preserved. All labels list ingredients from a higher to a lower concentration so, you will find them towards the end of the ingredient list. 

Around 1998 a study by Routledge et al. was published that caught the skincare world's attention. It showed these types of preservatives were seen binding to estrogen receptors in rats and therefore acting as female sex hormones. This study was the first on the topic, but after taking a closer look it showed that parabens were "thousands to millions of times weaker than estradiol" (naturally occurring female sex hormone). Therefore it seems impossible for one to act as the other. It is also important to note that the parabens in this study were injected under the rats' skin, where in our case your product is applied on top of the skin. 

Since then, the FDA stated that "there is no reason for consumers to be concerned about the use of cosmetics containing parabens." This is because of the low concentration of parabens and since they have been used in 90% of pharmaceuticals for almost 100 years, researchers have a pretty good idea about their side effects, which are close to 0.

With Helme´s all natural products we chose to go on the safe side, by using a minimal amount of the most pre-tested preservatives instead of new ones which may cause unknown reactions. In our extensive research we found things that convinced us this was the way to go, since parabens preserve our products from fungi or bacteria that can come in through air or water or even your own skin. These microbes that start growing on your product because of the fungi or bacteria can be invisible so you don't even notice your product has gone wrong, meanwhile easily passing that fungi or bacteria on to your skin, causing infections, even if your product looks and smells fine. 

This article was not written to scare you, on the contrary Helmé Care Team wanted to simplify parabens, for you to make a conscious decision every time you buy a new product even if it's ours or somebody else's. 

We look forward to reading your questions or comments down below!


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