You may have noticed that recently everything you look at claims to be ‘natural’, but what is natural? Are you referring to everything in the product? Are some of the ingredients in the product natural? Or is a single ingredient, which was isolated from an originally natural source, the only thing that is natural in the product?

These are just some of the questions that are confusing customers today, and in many cases, the claims by some manufacturers that their products are natural are misleading, if not outright false.

let’s see what natural it is actually defined as:

• related to nature,
• according to the usual course of nature,
• present in or produced by nature, rather than man-made or created by people,
• Not artificially colored or treated.

That doesn’t really tell us much, but let’s think about the images that this word, natural, can create in our minds.

Natural: natural scenery, nature’s playground, such as the beach, mountains, virgin forests and forests, beautiful lakes, etc. It also reminds us of natural substances, smells of flowers, the air just after the rain, animals in their natural habitat, etc.

When it comes to products, whether consumer or personal care, we tend to think of ‘natural flavors’ rather than artificial flavorings, natural vs. artificial preservatives, but what is a natural ingredient and how might we best define it?

This is where things get a bit murky because there are many ways that we can think of a substance as natural or unnatural. For example, let’s use my favorite – Aspirin. The active ingredient in Aspirin tablets is salicylic acid. Salicylic acid is found naturally in the bark of the white willow tree. Therefore, salicylic acid is a natural substance and if it is extracted from the bark, rather than synthetically recreated in a laboratory, it could be said to be a natural product. But is it?

Strictly speaking, a liquid made from, say, water and salicylic acid, would be natural and fit the definition of ‘as found in nature’, but let’s look at another way to get the same therapeutic effect from the properties of the bark of the white willow.

Herbal medicine uses the entire bark and uses traditional methods to extract the ingredients from the bark. One of these ingredients is salicylic acid, but it is only one of the ingredients. There are many more that don’t help numb the pain or do much to help relieve pain, but do work to balance out the effects of salicylic acid.

We know that this acid can and does irritate the stomach lining and this is why many of the companies that make aspirin will put warnings on their labels and suggest taking aspirin with food etc. However, using the full extract will include the cortex-modifying ingredients, which will protect the stomach lining, yet the salicylic acid will still work to reduce pain.

Now, what do you think is the ‘natural’ product? The one that uses a single, naturally-derived ingredient in a liquid, or the other, that uses the more comprehensive set of ingredients found in white willow bark? This point could be debated forever and both could be called natural, depending on YOUR DEFINITION.

My definition is that single-ingredient isolated products are unnatural because many of the naturally-contained substances that are part of white willow bark are missing. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say that the Aspirin in the Pharmacy or Drug Store, which contains salicylic acid, was extracted from the bark; It’s not, but let’s pretend. Also, let’s assume that the salicylic acid was in plain water, again, this is not the case, but just pretend with me for a little longer. That would mean that there are basically two ingredients in aspirin, the first is salicylic acid and the second is plain water. So you could say that this product is 100% natural or all-natural, right? Of course, there is nothing artificial, the ingredients are found in nature, so it is natural.

So what makes herbal extract more natural? Well, it contains more ingredients whose origins are found in nature. Here is the dilemma, both are natural, both have taken all their ingredients from nature, so we can find a way to differentiate between Pharmacy/Drugstore Aspirin (it is 100% natural…) and Herbalist Aspirin (it is 100% natural). % natural…)?

Let me introduce a ‘new’ term “holistically natural”, what do I mean by this term? I propose that this term may be useful to describe the type of product that has not been heavily modified. That means “holistically natural” would accept alcohol extraction of all the ingredients, but not except for the additional step of extracting the salicylic acid from the alcohol extracted ingredients. Similarly, essential oils are extracted from their parent plant by a variety of means, including cold-pressing, steam distillation, and others. “Holistically natural” would apply to essential oils, which have been most appropriately extracted, but would not apply to further isolation or manipulation of the derived essential oil.

The reason for providing this ‘new’ term is to differentiate our “Natural Aspirin” from the Chemical with the White Willow Bark Herbal extract used by herbalists. Both products will help reduce pain, but only the latter, which contains a more complete set of white willow bark ingredients, will help mitigate the potential irritating side effect of salicylic acid on the stomach lining. Thus, the herbalist’s version of the product would be “holistically natural.”

Now the skin and personal care industry is abuzz with claims of ‘natural’ skin care products, with many manufacturers abusing the term. natural To the extreme. As we have seen, using a natural chemical isolated from a plant is not what natural implies. Let’s look at the definition again: Natural it means present or produced by nature… Well, a single ingredient may well be present and produced by nature, but nature itself does not use it in isolation. Nature uses it in balance with other associated chemicals, holistically.

In the skin care industry, not only do creams and lotions contain many different ingredients to achieve the manufacturer’s claims for a given product, but more often than not, the ingredients are a list of naturally derived, but not holistic . natural ingredients, along with unnatural chemicals that do not originate in nature at all. Examples of this would include emulsifiers, colors, flavors, preservatives, etc.

Some manufacturers bend the rules even further. Any substance that contains the chemical element Carbon is, by definition, an ‘organic chemical’. This is what ‘Organic Chemistry’ (Bio-Chemistry) is based on. Now, organic skin care, therefore, may well be skin care that contains carbon-based chemicals that may not occur naturally in nature, but because they contain carbon, they can be termed organic. Do you see where I’m going with this?

The term Organic is supposed to indicate that no artificial or synthetic products were used to grow, for example, vegetables. Therefore, there are no inorganic substances such as inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc., present in the plant or in the soil in which the plant was grown.

Many less ethical manufacturers will use the term organic to appeal to consumers looking for ‘organic skin or personal care products’, but will actually be selling them a product that is non-organic in the true sense of indicating that it does not contain inorganic substances. grown with organic farming methods, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all companies that claim to have organic skin care products are cheating you, far from it, however, there are some that do and it’s sometimes hard to tell which one they use. the term organic in the ‘holistically natural’ sense.

At Wildcrafted Herbal Products we believe that holistically natural skin and personal care products are the only way to go. They are safer, better for you, and easier on your body to use. The holistically natural concept follows the principle of ‘the less processed a product is, the better it is for you’.