I've read in several places where Dr. Baumann says that natural is not always better and many times, a natural ingredient that comes manipulated from a lab is much better.
I don't know if this situation that happened to me several months ago is exactly the same thing, but I know that can be used to prove the contrary.
I love olive oil for foods, so in one of our shopping trips to the grocery store with my mom, we picked a bottle of olive oil, the better looking one. At my home, I opened the bottled and I smelled it a bit because I love the strong, salty scent of olive oil, but guess what? It had literally no scent and no flavor either, none. After that, we went in the next months, several times more to the grocery store and I always bought a new bottle of olive oil, all of them from different brands. At the end, I bought like 4 or 5 bottles and with all I had the same problem, no scent and mostly no flavor, sometimes the flavor changed a bit, but wasn't a real olive oil flavor, not even an acceptable one.
Another day, we went with my dad to a small rural town, which are places my dad loves, and we found lots of places selling local foods from fruits, vegetables and sweets to oils, cheese, honey and many goodies more (my country has the perfect climate to cultivate and produce almost anything). I decided to buy a bottle of organic olive oil there, and that was the most amazing olive oil with the strongest and greatest scent, really really good.
Some other random day, I wanted to learn a bit more about natural skincare and I ended up reading about organic farming and ingredients, so then, I did realized that most of the insipid oils I bought from the grocery store surely were ridiculously refined and manipulated while the organic oil was just pure and clean olive oil.
That's why I believe what Dr. Baumann says is not really true. I know she supports several natural ingredients, but why the synthetic or manipulated ones are better than the natural and organic ones? As the refined olive oil lost all its scent and flavor, a manipulated natural ingredient will lost all its benefits, no matter what a doctor or scientist says, it's the true, it's a good enough thing already why it would need something extra? At the skincare world, it's all about miracle products and ingredients like vitamins (which include many common ingredients like retinols and panthenol), antioxidants and some other things which all of them are naturally occurring from fruits, vegetables and plants. When a company talks about the latest greatest ingredient they added to their new cream it's always something related to nature, or I'm wrong? So if natural it's not better, what's the hip and why in their purest form can't work better?. Irritation is a concern, and if a natural ingredient can cause irritation, we should look closer to the same synthetic and really common retinols and AHAs, which are most of the times very irritating. On the other hand, the skin healers are mostly natural ingredients (chamomile, calendula, rosehip...) or natural derived.
I know that in the regular skincare world the word "chemical" doesn't mean a bad thing and I know that all of the essential and vegetable oils have a chemical composition which is what makes them effective, so I won't say I'm against the "nasty chemicals" in the regular skincare products because I would be a hypocrite, but I do believe there is a difference between naturally occurring chemicals and synthetic chemicals and being honest, why the man would do something better than nature? we are the ones who are destroying the planet after all, why to choose the artificial things when we have better resources?
Yet again, I don't believe the synthetic skincare products are toxic, carcinogen or extremely bad as most natural skincare activists claims, I'm not against of them and I believe that it's something really dramatic and excessive and not entirely true (although there are some truths), but I do believe natural and organic is simply better, cleaner, pure, realistic and truly luxurious (think about it).
I had a hard time trying to look for a solution to my oily, sensitive and pigmented skin. I'm just 20, but my skin was a disaster, I had mild acne which left me with a slight scarring and I wanted to fix it and prevent from aging, something hard when you have sensitive skin. Everything was just too much for my skin, too much oily or too much harsh, not to mention that none of those products worked well on my pigmented skin.
Looking for an alternative and another solution, I ended up in all this. I have to say that nothing worked better and gentler than the organic products I used and made by myself.
May sound weird controlling and balancing oil excess with oils, but it's really effective when using light and similar to sebum oils like jojoba with the addition of purifying essential oils like geranium, lavender and neroli to avoid problems. Facial steams with purifying essential oils can really change the reality of black and whiteheads. Also, may sound weird getting rid of dark spots and scars with oils, but oils like rosehip, tamanu, pomegranate, sea buckthorn, helichrysum and german chamomile have literally changed the tone and texture of my skin, and you can even do some research and you will find great things supporting these oils for treatments, especially of scars. When it comes to age prevention, these oils are the best choices for me, argan, rosehip and pomegranate are fantastic sources of vitamin C, A, E and punicic acid (google it, would be a long story here), nothing better and nothing more far from irritating.
It's amazing how just treating my skin with oils had changed its reality, I was skeptical at the beginning, but nothing worked better so far.
It's important to learn more about this before implement it, read and read, ask an expert and as with retinols, limit the use of essential oils to the night, with the exception of some that can be used anytime. But it's definitely something to think and consider.