It shouldn’t be so hard to get the best products.
Hi, I’m Karen. In 2013 I became ill following a low carb diet. For a long time I suffered from raging anxiety and crushing tiredness. It took years to get my health back but now I’m in that better place I refuse to put damaging ingredients on my skin.
I spent some time trying to find a nice body butter, with good ingredients, that I could enjoy using but alas, my search ended in disappointment. So I thought ‘why not make my own?’ & here we are!
Honestly
The idea for the ‘Honestly’ brand came from my blog page ‘Honestly, Karen x’, which I started not long after I became ill. It was a way to share my journey back to health (and my mistakes) with absolute honesty. I share everything even when I make myself look a bit silly, as that’s just life right? We all make mistakes! My brand will always be based on honesty, integrity and using the best ingredients, which equals products you can count on to be good for your body.
Every ingredient is considered for the benefits it brings to the table. On my journey back to health I learnt that one of the most damaging ingredients you can put in your mouth or on your skin is PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids). Different in their composition to saturated fatty acids (saturated fats are made up of single bonds, which makes them stable and less susceptible to oxidation), polyunsaturated fats are made up of double bonds which are less stable and far more fragile and highly susceptible to oxidation. Oxidation is a reaction with oxygen that changes the structures and properties of fats for the worse.
The key polyunsaturated fat in vegetable oil is omega 6 - linoleic acid, which accumulates in our bodies/fat stores the more we eat it. Linoleic acid is problematic even when not heated as it can oxidise just sitting on the shelf. Vegetable oils will oxidise in your body, creating toxic oxidation products. They also damage mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell using food & oxygen to create ATP) and block glucose oxidation (diabetes anyone?). Sunflower oil, for example, is a whopping 66% linoleic acid.
So my guarantee to you is that you will never, ever, ever find PUFA laden oils in any skincare on this site!
Research
Ingredients
Fatty Acid Profiles
Benefits of Saturated Fats
The skin is a potent steroid synthesising organ, in fact it’s your largest organ, so you don’t want to give it estrogen or any kind of signal (i.e. PUFA in vegetable oils) to produce pro ageing hormones. Saturated fats increase energy production of cells, including skin cells. The more saturated fat you absorb in your skin, the less lipid peroxidation will occur from stored PUFAs. Saturated fat blocks the effect of being exposed to sunlight whilst having too much stored PUFA. Saturated fats raise cholesterol, so when you apply saturated fats to your skin the skin cells will take the saturated fats and synthesise more cholesterol.
One of the most reliable biomarkers of cell ageing is the decrease of free cholesterol inside the cell. Even though cholesterol in the blood stream rises with age, the free cholesterol in your cells gets lower and lower. By providing saturated fat you reverse it by giving the cells the raw material to synthesise it. Cholesterol is the raw material for synthesising steroid hormones, such as progesterone, testosterone and pregnenolone. Studies have shown that when they apply these steroids to the skin of elderly people there was a decrease in visible skin ageing [see studies below].
Stearic Acid
A saturated fatty acid
Found in good quantities in cocoa butter, mango butter and shea butter
[Some information provided by Georgi Dinkov/taken from Ray Peat Forum, i.e. stearic acid thread]
Stearic acid increases mitochondrial function and has strong anti-cortisol and anti-anxiety effects. It is both incorporated into cell lipids and metabolised further into longer chain fatty acids, which have been shown to have a number of beneficial effects including antiviral, antibacterial, anticancer, antiestrogenic etc. Studies have shown it to reduce visceral adiposity (body fat) by more than 70%, without a change in calories, whilst increasing lean body mass. It has also been shown to protect against the progression of type 2 diabetes and to regulate mitochondria in humans. [See studies listed to the right]