Sep 14 2009
Olive Butter Maintains Healthy Skin and Youthful Looks
Olive butter is a hydrogenated form of olive oil, but don’t let the term hydrogenated put you off. Although hydrogenated fats are not always good to eat they can work wonders on your skin, and that is precisely what olive butter does. It is yet another product of the wonderful oil tree that has provided us with olive oil and olive squalene among other health-giving products that are good for your skin.
What is special about olive butter that it should be so prized as a skin care product? The answer is that it is packed full of antioxidants that destroy the free radicals that damage your skin. Free radicals are small oxygenated molecules such as superoxide and peroxides that are produced by the action of the UV portion of sunlight, and also by exposure to such pollutants as traffic and industrial fumes and pesticides. They are also generated by your body’s natural metabolism, so there is no way of keeping away from them.
One of the properties that free radicals possess is to disrupt the membranes of your skin cells and effectively kill them. This leads to wrinkles and other forms of premature aging of your skin. Olive butter contains substances known as antioxidants that destroy these free radicals and so helps to prevent this form of skin damage. While not exactly an elixir of youth, it can certainly help you to maintain youthful skin.
Unlike many other similar substances, such as shea butter, few people are sensitive to olive butter, and it can be used safely by those with the most sensitive of skins. If you are sensitive to shea butter or any other skin preparation, try olive butter because it is gentle on your skin but a killer to free radicals.
Olive oil and olive butter are very similar chemically: it is just their form that is different. Hydrogenation causes the oil to become more spreadable, and is therefore more easily applied to your skin than the runny olive oil. Both are packed full of antioxidants, but the butter tends to stay on your skin longer and have a less oily feel to it.
The term antioxidant refers to substances that destroy oxidizing agents such as free radicals. Chemically an antioxidant is a reducing agent, and it neutralizes free radicals as soon as they are formed. It has to, because free radicals attack skin cells, or any other body cell for that matter, as soon as they are formed, and unless there are antioxidants in the vicinity at the time of their generation, they will rupture the skin cell membranes.
By rubbing olive butter into your skin you will make sure that it is there ready for action as soon as free radicals are formed, and destroy them before they can do your skin any harm. If you want an example of what free radicals do to your skin, think of those fair-skinned people that live in hot climates and think of their tough leathery skin after a while in the sun.
That could be you, but olive butter will prevent it, and make sure that your skin remains soft and smooth even in the hottest sun and after exposure to the foulest pollution. You should try to avoid pollution and hot sun without a sun blocker, but olive butter will make sure that you are protected – just in case.
Laura’s website Castle Baths Spa Products offers a large number of natural skin care products, and for more information on how olive butter keeps your skin young visit Castle Baths Olive Butter.