EMULSIFIERS AND PRESERVATIVES IN

BOTANICAL SKIN CARE PRODUCTS

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Featuring: Rachael Pontillo, M.Msc, FDN-P, CIHC, LE

Introduction

Hi, I’m Rachael Pontillo. I am an herbal skin care formulator and educator and I’m here to talk today about some
of the issues with making creams and lotions that are really important to take into consideration so that your
products are safe, stable, and effective.

We’re going to talk about some things that are more on the functional side when we’re discussing skin care
ingredients that maybe might not seem as fun as choosing essential oils and beautiful carrier oils and aromatics
and butters and herbs and flowers and all of that, but they are just as important because your skin care product
is only as good as your formulation is, and the formulation needs to stay together, meaning it won’t separate into
oil and water, if we’re making a cream or a lotion, and we want to make sure it does not spoil or grow microbes,
meaning bacteria, mold, and yeast. Because when we are making something that is intended to help people look
and feel their best, we don’t want any uninvited microbial visitors.

Emulsification

So, I’m going to start today by talking about emulsification. Emulsification is what happens when we take oil and
water and we mix them up and we make sure they stay mixed up instead of separating back into oil and water.
Now, traditionally herbalists and people in general who are not as familiar with the more sciencey ingredients or
sciencey side of things, they’re all about just using a blender to mix up their hydrosols or their herbal teas with
their carrier oils and sometimes they’ll put something like beeswax in there or lecithin in there, which can help it
stay together for a time, but if we’re wanting something to stay fresh for months at a time and not have to worry
about refrigeration, we do have to do a little bit more than that to make sure that the product stays together.

So, an emulsifier is an ingredient that basically keeps the water and oil together bound into a uniform
consistency and prevents it from separating back out. It binds those molecules together and keeps them happily
married.

So, we are really fortunate that in this day and age and because of technology, there are so many naturally
derived, plant-derived emulsifiers on the market, many of which are approved for use in natural and organic
products by international certifying bodies such as COSMOS and Ecocert and also here in the United States by
MADE SAFE​Ⓡ​, they’re certified non-toxic, that we have a lot more variety. We have a lot more ability than we had
even 5 or 10 years ago.

So, what I recommend is using a standard emulsifier that is derived from plant-based fatty acids. So, we have
many that come from olive oil, some that come from coconut or palm oil. If you’re using palm oil, I do
recommend making sure that it’s ethically sourced, because we want to make sure that we are not leaving a

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footprint, that we are not immediately filling right back up again. That’s very important. Obviously, with herbal
skin care, we want to be conscious of the planet, conscious that we are putting back what we are taking. So
important.

And what I love is that some of these ingredients also have added benefits. So, I’m going to just go over some of
the ones that I’ve been enjoying. Many of them are available from online suppliers, if you just look them up. One
of them is a line called Phytomulse™ and they have it blended with chlorella, with coconut, with amaranth, which
is really lovely. The chlorella gives some nice little prebiotic benefit to your product, in addition to the emulsifying
properties.

Olivem​Ⓡ​ 1000 is derived from making olive oil. You have the fatty acids that come from olives that help with
that. Cetearyl alcohol is another one that is really common. It’s typically palm-derived, sometimes
coconut-derived, but it is one of the first emulsifiers that DIY skin care makers turn to once they realize that, hey,
the beeswax and lecithin aren’t quite getting the job done long-term.

That’s one that you can add, and it also give you some interesting options with texture. It can sometimes change
the consistency a little bit to make the product a little bit opaque, which could be really fun if you are making a
base for a liquid mineral foundation or something like that.

What’s important to know about ay of these options with the standalone emulsifiers, is that there is a range of
use that the manufacturer will tell you. Typically, 2-5% is what I see most frequently. If you’re using a lot, you’re
typically going to get a different texture and a different thickness than if you’re using less. So, you’re going to
want to experiment to make sure that you’re getting the consistency you want, both how it feels, but also how it
looks on the skin. You don’t necessarily want something that’s going to leave a streak because that’s just not
attractive, unless that’s what you’re going for.

But what I love is that with these emulsifiers, because they are plant-derived, they play beautifully with other
natural and plant-derived waxes and butters, like your beeswax or candelilla wax or carnauba wax or your
lecithin.

By the way, if you are using lecithin, this is a really important tip: Make sure it is cosmetic grade. I made the
mistake before of getting lecithin as a supplement when I ran out of the stuff that I had ordered for cosmetics
and I had to make a product for a client. I was out of my lecithin and I needed only like 2% of it, so I found
lecithin granules that were sold as a supplement.

Guess what? They didn’t melt at all. So, I ended up not being able to use it and I had to come up with a
substitute really quickly, and that’s something else I recommend. When it comes to any of your skin care
ingredients, whether they’re your performance ingredients, meaning your oils and your herbs and all the fun
stuff, or the functional ingredients, like your emulsifiers, your stabilizers or anything like, preservatives. Make sure
you’ve got a couple of options on hand because sometimes you do run out of something and you don’t always
realize when you’ve run out of it, so it’s really helpful to be able to just grab this one. I’m out of the Phytomulse™
chlorella, oh, but I have Olivem 1000, let’s just grab that. You might have to switch your formula a little bit to
make sure that you’re adding the right amount because they don’t always substitute equally in terms of
percentage, so it’s good to have just a couple of options available when you’re figuring out your formulation but
have some options for yourself.

But anyway, as I was mentioning, these emulsifiers that are plant-derived do play really well with your natural,
herbal, and your beeswax—which is obviously from bees—but if you’re wanting to keep your products as natural
as possible and you don’t want to use a lot of the plant-derived ingredients, what you can do is use a lower
percentage of the emulsifier with your beeswax and your lecithin and it’s just going to help it stay together more
effectively.

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Now, another option I want to tell you about when we’re talking about emulsifying, is the idea of a co-emulsifier
or a stabilizer or a gelling agent. These are often similar types of ingredients, but what they do is they help
emulsifiers work better, so that you have a full emulsification system, since very few of your emulsifying
ingredients, your single emulsifying ingredients, are going to be enough to hold the product together on its own.

So, if you use a gelling agent or a co-emulsifier or something called a stabilizer to keep the product stable, that
can also be another solution.

So, something that herbalists in particular love, instead of using the standalone emulsifier, is again, keeping the
beeswax, keeping the lecithin, but adding something called a gelling agent, which actually can be 100% natural.
Xanthan gum, guar gum, acacia gum, these are derived from tree resins, plants, and they can be found food
grade or cosmetic grade. You typically do have to hydrate them and turn them into a gel before you can add
them into your product. That’s the best way to do it. But that is going to act as a thickener. It can act as a
stabilizer and either a gelling agent or a co-emulsifier.

What I will advise you for these, whether you’re using one, like a xanthan gum, or if you choose a blend, like
Sucragel​Ⓡ​ or Siligel™, which you can get online, start with a very low percentage—I’m talking like half a percent.
Reconstitute it and then add it to your product slowly and see what it does. See what it does to the consistency,
how thick it gets.

I made a mistake the first time I was experimenting with guar gum. I was running low on my emulsifier, I put the
guar gum in, I’m like, oh, most emulsifiers are 2-5%. I put my whisk in it. It looked beautiful in the pot. It was this
gorgeous, white, smooth cream. I take the whisk out, the entire thing blobbed on it and I had a whisk full of
something that resembled Silly Putty. Which hey, it was great to give to my kids to play with, but not so great to
put on your face.

So, take it from me, when you’re experimenting with any new ingredient, whether it is an emulsifier or a gelling
agent, go little by little. Start with a half a percent, document the changes you see in your formula, and then
adjust, continue to adjust, until you get your desired consistency. Okay? So, that’s really important.

So, those are some of my best tips for how to keep your creams and lotions from separating after you’ve
blended them. By the way, sometimes you don’t even need to use a blender. If you’re using a traditional heated
method where you’re melting down your oil phase and your water phase on your heating elements with your
double boilers, you get them to the right temperature, you mix them up, you can usually slowly mix them
together with a whisk, watch them turn opaque, and typically, that’s going to be enough to keep them together
with a traditional emulsifier, as well as an emulsification system like I mentioned, with your natural ingredients
and some gelling agents or stabilizers added.

Again, just experiment, see what works for you with your formulation. Something else that’s really important to
understand about any cream or lotion is that every functional ingredient is going to be dependent on the other
ingredients in that formula. When it comes to emulsifiers, the one you pick is going to determine what
consistency you get, so if it is a lotion, you might want a different emulsifier than if you’re looking for a richer
cream. If you want a lighter serum, obviously, that’s going to be a different choice. If you’re doing cold-process
emulsion, meaning you’re not using heat at all, you’re just blending things up, or you’re doing a one-pot method,
that is also going to require a different emulsifier, because some of them do require to be heated, whereas
others, you can just put into the blend, let it sit for a little while, and mix it up.

Preservatives

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So, now what I want to do is shift to one of the most important topics, if not the most important topic when
we’re talking creams and lotions, and that is preservation. Specifically, natural preservation.

And the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because it is one of the most controversial topics when we
are talking about cosmetics in general. And it’s also something that has unfortunately led to a lot of
misinformation being spread online and fearmongering being spread online.

I am quite certain by this point that you have heard about the controversy with parabens. Parabens, which
include methylparaben, butylparaben, isobutyl paraben, propylparaben, this is a family of parabenzoic
acid-based preservatives that have been the most common ones used in skin care products, hair care products,
any other cosmetic or personal care products and we even see them in certain foods, certain processed foods.

In 2004, a study came out that linked parabens with breast cancer. Now, specifically, traces of parabens were
found intact in a breast cancer tumor and what that did was led to a whole flurry of, “Parabens cause breast
cancer; parabens cause cancer,” this and that. This and that. And then you had a lot of backlash cosmetic
chemists and from the larger brands who said, “No! That’s fearmongering, that study was flawed, that study
didn’t prove anything. It didn’t show a causal relationship, it just showed a correlation, which is not the same
thing.

What I want to say about that without going deep into the conversation, because —we would be here all day, is
that because of that study, many further studies have come out and are ongoing about the link not only between
parabens and cancer, but xenoestrogen ingredients in general. That means manmade ingredients that have an
estrogenic effect on the body.

One of the biggest statements that I see from companies and practitioners who are on the backlash side of the
paraben debate is that parabens occur naturally in fruits and vegetables, so it’s really fine. Any of the
phytoestrogenic compounds that are naturally occurring in whole fruits or vegetables or nuts or seeds or
anything like that, it is not the same effect on the body as a manmade xenoestrogenic chemical is going to have.

When you’re eating a whole food, you’re ingesting a whole food or you’re utilizing a whole plant topically, that
ingredient, that plant also has all of the other vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, coenzymes, and cofactors
needed for that plant to be able to be digested and absorbed the way it’s meant to by nature. The human body
sees it, recognizes it, say, “Hey, I know you, come on in,” and it goes to where it needs to go. The body can
store what it needs, and it can eliminate what it doesn’t. That is typically what happens with a whole plant or
whole food-based skin care product or food that you would ingest.

However, when you have a manmade or synthetic chemical, like a paraben that you would see as a preservative,
that is a xenoestrogen. “Xeno” means foreign. The body does not recognize it and it’s not in the setting of a
whole food or a whole plant, where the body sees the other things that it recognizes and it says, “Hey, come on
in.” The body sees that ingredient, it doesn’t know what to do with it and we do know that these synthetic
chemicals, even though they are in the product at a very low percentage, they do tend to bioaccumulate and
there have been multiple studies done, both privately and larger-scale studies, that have shown this
bioaccumulation because of the amount of products people use on a daily basis that contain parabens, in
addition to other xenoestrogen ingredients.

So, my recommendation is to not use them whenever possible. Okay? So, when I’m recommending
preservatives, which I’m going to do if your product contains water or living plant matter, I’m not recommending
parabens. I’m not recommending any of the preservatives that if you were to look them up on any of the
databases, like the EWG Skin Deep database, Think Dirty app, MADE SAFE​Ⓡ​, any of that, the ones that I’m
talking about have been approved for use by organizations like MADE SAFE​Ⓡ​ or COSMOS or NATRUE or

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Ecocert™ because they are not shown to have any risk of bioaccumulation or toxicity to the endocrine system or
the neurological pathways or organs or anything like that.

So, I want to be really clear that when you hear the word preservative, I’m not saying that we’re going to use
ingredients that are going to harm you. That being said, not everybody wants to use preservatives because, as
you’re going to learn, it’s not a cut-and-dried solution where you can just go online, look for a natural
preservative, pick one, and then have it work for all of your products. So, we’re going to talk about that a little
bit.

Before we dive into the actual preservative options themselves, I’m just going to back up and I want to clarify a
few things because as I said, there are quite a few myths about preservation when it comes to natural skin care
products. And these are myths that I do see perpetuated, sometimes by people who mean really well, and they
want to keep the integrity of the plants and of the products. So, they are standing firm on the idea that they don’t
believe their products need to contain a preservative.

I want to break down some of the things that I see, and I hear, mostly on blogs. Sometimes on social media, but
it is misinformation, so I do want to clarify that for everyone.

Myth #1

Essential oils can be used as preservatives

So, the first myth about preservation that I want to address is the idea that essential oils can be used as an
effective preservative in your skin care products.

Now, it is true that essential oils are some of the most powerful medicine that the plant kingdom has brought us.
They are so powerful, in fact, that they can do harm when used inappropriately. And it’s absolutely true that
some of the essential oils have antiviral, antifungal, antibacterial properties that if you put them in a petri dish
with that microbe, it’s going to kill that microbe. Absolutely, we’ve seen that happen.

However, for that to happen in a product, in a skin care product that contains a lot of water and probably other
humectant ingredients like glycerin or aloe vera gel, that action, to be successful for a long period of time in a
bottle on a shelf, there would have to be a very high concentration of that essential oil. And we do know that
essential oils, whether they should be used on the face or not, that is typically up to the aromatherapist or up to
the formulator. There are varying schools of thought on whether or not essential oils should be used on the face
because we know that they can wick into the eyes and that can cause sensitization issues.

Typically, what I recommend to my students is that if you are going to put essential oils into a facial skin care
product, you should be conservative with the percentage that you put in. I recommend no more than a total 2%
concentration of essential oils in a facial skin care product and if it’s a product that’s specifically intended to be
used around the eyes, like a makeup remover or an eye cream or an eye serum, I don’t recommend putting
essential oils in at all. We just don’t want to risk any sensitization because that area does tend to accumulate a
lot.

For an essential oil to be considered effective as a preservative, it would have to be used at a higher than safe
concentration in a product. There is so much controversy with the correct uses of essential oils and we’re not
even going to touch that today because that’s a whole class on its own, I’m sure.

But what I will say is just that simply, for it to be effective as a preservative, it would not be at a safe
concentration to be used topically or to be used around the eyes, around the mouth, or around the mucous

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membranes, where it could get into the body and cause sensitization, cause receptors to shut down. These are
some of the risks that you don’t always hear about from the people selling essential oils, so, we want to be very
clear about that.

I’m not saying don’t use essential oils in your product, but I am saying use them correctly. Please know what
you’re doing before you put an essential oil in there. Even if it’s an essential oil that you know people use in skin
care, like a lavender or a tea tree oil, which do have natural antimicrobial benefits, there are downsides to using
essential oils every single day and there are downsides to using them long term.

So, just keep that in mind as you are planning your formulations.

Myth #2

Antimicrobial herbs can be used as preservatives

The second myth about natural preservation that I want to address is similar to the essential oil myth and that is
the one that herbal skin care products don’t need preservatives because the plants themselves have
naturally-occurring antimicrobial properties.

This is one that I see being taught still in some herbal classes. Not all of them, but here’s the deal. Again, while
it’s true that the plants themselves do contain naturally-occurring antimicrobial properties—and when I’m
referring to antimicrobial, again, I’m talking about antibacterial, antifungal, anti-mold, anti-yeast—these are what
we’re referring to.

While that’s true and while plants have been turned into medicine for viruses, for bacterial infections, when we’re
talking about keeping a product fresh and microbe-free on a shelf outside of a refrigerator for any long period of
time, it is not enough. Once you introduce water into a skin care formulation, that immediately turns it into what I
call a virtual smorgasbord for microbes. It’s like the microbes are going to show up and have a picnic because
water breeds microbes. It just does.

Microbes need water, light can also affect microbial contamination and I’m going to be very honest, the
consumer contaminates products quite often. And as a skin care maker, you’re responsible for making the
products safe, whether you’re making products for yourself, your friends and family, or if you do happen to have
a business, it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re safe, even though it’s very true that somebody might be
dipping their hands into a moisturizer and putting it on their face instead of using a pump bottle or using a
spatula, which is a lot safer and a lot less likely to cause contamination. You have to prepare for how the end
user is going to use that product, even if you have specific usage instruction. You have to assume that they’re
not going to follow it because that’s just human nature and people don’t always follow rules. And sometimes
they’re in a rush, and all of that.

So, we have to assume that the product is probably not going to be stored or handled properly despite our best
intentions, but any product that contains water or is acqueous in nature in any way. So, when I say water, I’m
referring to your herbal teas, I’m referring to hydrosols, I’m referring to flower waters and distillates of any kinds.
Aloe vera gel. We see a lot of bio-ferments these days that are being used. Those are also water-containing.

I’m referring to humectants such as honey or glycerin. When you add honey or glycerin into a product at any
percentage less than 50%, guess what? It’s actually going to cause bacterial or other microbial growth even
more because they are such powerful humectants. The water activity of that product is going to increase
exponentially, which makes it even more prone to contamination.

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The other thing that I want you to understand is that adding things like arrowroot powder to a cream or a lotion
to thicken it up or to improve the feel can be great in terms of the consistency. However, the arrowroot powder
itself, or a clay, something like a kaolin clay or a French green clay or a rose clay, if you add it, that is also going
to increase the water activity because these are absorbing ingredients. They pull water in and they hold it there
and once you stick it in a bottle with other phytonutrients, which is essentially food for these microbes and you
have it in the water, that is when this contamination happens and it’s not really possible for us to predict what’s
going to happen in that bottle.

Anytime you have a skin care product that contains water and/or plant matter of any kind, it requires a
preservative.

I speak sometimes at cosmetic chemistry conferences and the biggest concern the chemists come to me after
my talk is always about herbal skin care products because they are difficult to preserve, even using standard
preservatives. And we’re going to talk about that in a little while.

But it’s the biggest concern. We see a lot of backlash against natural products, against organic products and
herbal products from some of these more conventional-minded chemists and skin care companies who are
saying that natural skin care products aren’t safe because they’re contaminated and that’s not always the case.
It doesn’t have to be that way if you do it right, but unfortunately, because some people do formulate according
to these myths, it can be true.

Myth #3

If the product looks fine, it must be fine!

Another myth that I want to bust when we’re talking about natural preservation, is if the product looks, smells
and feels just fine, then it must be fine. This is sometimes the case. Sometimes you might make a lotion or a
cream or a gel, you open the bottle and, ooh, there’s some fuzzy stuff there. You make a mask, a clay mask, you
open it and there’s some spots of brown or dark red or green or black. Then you know, okay, something’s gone
wrong.

Sometimes you might open a bottle or pump something into your hand and, ooh! That does not smell right.

This happens often when a product is not properly preserved. That’s a good thing because it’s a clear sign that
tells us, hey, something has gone wrong here, let’s not use this product.

However, that’s not always going to happen. Sometimes microbial contamination happens in a way that is not
visibly detectable. It does not have a negative odor. It does not have any change in the feel. It doesn’t separate
or get clumpy or anything like that.

Obviously, if your product does have a detectable change, you’re not going to want to use that, but you can’t
assume that just because you don’t see something, that it’s fine to use.

So, in many cases, you don’t know if something is contaminated until somebody has had an adverse reaction.
Some of those reactions include eye infections, pink eye is really common, rashes, skin rashes, inflammation,
something that feels just hot or painful to the touch when it doesn’t normally. These are some of the most
common. But even respiratory infections that you might experience when you’re having an allergy attack, could
be the sign that something has gone wrong with one of your topical products.

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So, this is when it’s too late. And I always recommend that when you are formulating a product that contains
water, that you learn how to do simple at-home microbial testing and I’m going to talk about that in a little while.

Myth #4

Probiotics act as an anti-biotic!

I want to talk about another myth, and that is the idea of adding probiotics to your product so that it kind of
serves as an anti- biotic, if that makes sense.

So, probiotics are having quite a moment in the spotlight with good reason. I’m so happy to see that we have so
much awareness about the benefits of fermented foods and these wonderful things like kombucha and sour
dough and even probiotic supplements that are on the market now. The idea of populating our bodies with a
biodiverse population of good guys so that we keep the bad guys in check is just great. It’s wonderful.

However, when we’re talking about the idea of putting something like raw, apple cider vinegar or kombucha into
a cream or a lotion with the idea that it’s going to conquer the bad guys before they become a problem,
unfortunately, that’s not always something that we can predict.

So, kombucha and apple cider vinegar, especially if you’re making them yourself at home and it’s being
fermented with wild yeast from the air in your environment, you don’t always know what those microbes, those
bacteria and yeast that are normally friendly, are going to do once they get more food and if they’re in a closed
environment, which a skin care bottle or jar would be.

So, when you have an herbal skin care product and you have these natural fibers, sugars, essential fatty acids,
vitamins, nutrients, they are nutrients for the yeast and for those bacteria. So, even if they are “friendly at first,” if
you give them too much food, they might then turn opportunistic, which could have the same effect as a
pathogen or an unfriendly bacteria, mold or yeast.

So, while the idea might make sense in theory, it does not always translate in reality and you would not know
that necessarily until it’s too late, because somebody has had a reaction.

Choosing a Preservative

So, as I mentioned, when it comes to choosing a natural preservative or a naturally derived preservative, or even
a synthetic preservative blend that’s appropriate for use in natural and organic products, it’s not a
straightforward choice.

So, when choosing a preservative for your herbal creams and lotions, as I mentioned, it’s not always as
straightforward as going online and picking one that you happen to see that looks natural and then putting it in
your product at the recommended percentage.

While it is important to always follow the manufacturer’s guidelines in terms of percentage to use—which is also
the case for emulsifiers, as I mentioned earlier—it’s not as straightforward with preservatives because
preservatives can be complex. Sometimes you have to use more than one and make a little preservative
cocktail.

Sometimes you have to adjust, even after the preservative is added, because adding the preservative itself can
actually alter the pH of the product and make it either too acidic or too alkaline for the skin. And when that

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happens, the product itself could become irritant, which we see in commercial and conventional skin care
products all the time, cleaners especially, tend to be so alkaline for the skin. That’s where you get that
squeaky-clean, tight feeling that we are trying to avoid. It’s because those products are too alkaline.

Water itself is already too alkaline for the skin, because the skin’s pH naturally should be somewhere between
4.5 and 5.5. That’s typically what is normal for the surface of the skin. It is a little bit on the acidic side.

So, something that is containing a lot of water is already going to be more on the alkaline side, and then if you
add a preservative that makes it even more alkaline, up to an 8 or a 9 on the pH scale, that actually can be more
damaging to the skin than using something that is a little bit more on the acidic side.

So, it’s important to know how your preservative affects the pH of the product and you can do that by testing
with pH strips that you can get pretty much anywhere. They’re really easy to use. You don’t need to have any
fancy pH meter or anything like that. I really just love a pH strip with the color coding because it’s so easy to tell
what’s going on.

You want to test before you add the preservative and after and you have to know the pH before you add the
preservative because different preservatives are only effective within a set pH range. That information will be on
the manufacturer’s specification for that preservative, so please make sure you have that information and
document that information before you add your preservative.

The other thing you need to know about preservatives in general, is that as I mentioned, there are so many
options that do not cause some of the scary health risks that parabens cause. But, they’re not all natural. There
are some synthetic blends. Some of the more common ones that you might see are potassium sorbate, sodium
benzoate, these are often seen in food products as well. You might see something like an ethylhexylglycerin,
phenylethyl alcohol, which all sound kind of sciencey again, but phenylethyl alcohol is actually a byproduct of
making rose absolute, which is an aromatic and is still considered natural. So, we’re able to use these
ingredients, ethylhexylglycerin you derive from glycerin, which you get from making soap. So, it might not be
100% whole plant-derived, but even if it’s a synthetic, it’s typically something that can be synthesized from a
plant.

These are ingredients that need to be used in blends. You can often see them available individually. Citric acid is
another one. But what’s important to know is if you were to, say take citric acid and just put it in your cream or
lotion, it’s not going to be enough to preserve the product for a long period of time. You have to add them
together in a blend and you have to make sure it’s the right pH and you have to test them.

Fortunately, green chemistry has come such a long way in the last five years. When I first started teaching
people how to make organic and all-natural skin care products, there were very few choices on the market.
There was one main blend called Geogard​Ⓡ​ ECT that people loved. Even though it wasn’t all that effective
against mold, people still like it for many formulations, but it’s a synthetic blend and it’s a blend that has been
approved for use by many of these international certifying bodies and third-party organizations that are kind of
helping oversee what is organic and what is natural in the skin care market, since there’s not too much oversight
otherwise.

But they are synthetic, and I don’t want you to be afraid of synthetics because many of them are either nature
identical or are plant-derived.

When you’re looking at a preservative, it’s good to look for the logos of those certifying bodies. The online
suppliers who sell them will proudly list those, so, they are easy to find. So, again, Ecocert™, COSMOS,
NATRUE, MADE SAFE​Ⓡ​, those are some of the ones that I typically recommend people look for.

You will choose a couple of these different preservatives. Like I said, you want to have options because if one
fails a test, you want to be able to add another one or reformulate using that other one.

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But you also do have some options that are natural. There are certain botanical blends that you can find. There is
an orange lemon grass blend that does show some broad-spectrum protection. There is this new one out
that’s—it’s not really new anymore because it’s been around for a few years, but it’s one that has really been
embraced by herbal skin care formulators, natural skin care makers. It’s called Leucidal​Ⓡ​ Liquid and Leucidal​Ⓡ
has a whole suite of products. There’s Leucidal​Ⓡ​ Complete, Leucidal​Ⓡ​ SF Max. They’re all based with this
Leuconostoc kimchii i​ ngredient, which is technically a peptide that’s derived from fermentation, from red radish
root ferment, which when you make kimchi, and there’s red radish root in that, the peptide that comes out of
that fermentation process, that’s the Leucidal​Ⓡ​.

So, what’s great is that a lot of challenge tests have been done by various independent labs on these different
versions of the Leucidal​Ⓡ​ antimicrobial and when it’s a natural product that’s not a synthetic preservative, it
would be called an antimicrobial. But what you’re looking for, you want to see on the manufacturer’s website or
on the distributor’s website, test results that show, okay, this is how this preservative in this type of formulation
held up over time. This is what it grew, this is what it didn’t grow, this is the pH range. You want to see
information like that so that when you’re making your purchasing decisions, you’re confident that the
antimicrobials and preservatives that you’re choosing are going to cover a wide variety of formulations.

So, that is one of the favorites that my students like because it is a natural ingredient and it does have a lot of
science backing up its efficacy against gram-positive, gram-negative bacteria, as well as mold and yeast.

However, there is a downside. You have to use it at a fairly high percentage in the cooling phase of your creams
and lotions, which means that you don’t get to play as much with other ingredients that might go in that cooling
phase, like your botanical extracts, your essential oils, your vitamins, and so on.

So, with the Leucidal​Ⓡ​, even if you are using it at its full percentage—which I recommend, by the way. For any
herbal skin care products, because they do contain plant matter, they often contain high humectant
percentages, I recommend using the highest allowable percentage of your preservative because you’re going to
need that protection.

The thing with synthetic ingredients, is that even though they might not be desirable to people who are trying to
live a greener, more natural and healthy lifestyle, in terms of formulation, they are more user-friendly. So, this is
why chemists prefer them because they’re inert. They don’t really have a lot of variables so a chemist or a
formulator can predict how they’re going to act when you put them in a bottle with a preservative. They’re a lot
easier to formulate with, a lot less labor, a lot less research and development and trial and error involved. So,
that’s why they might be preferable for some people.

So, all is not lost for our natural products, but just be aware that you do have to really keep safety in mind first.
So, if you want to use the Leucidal​Ⓡ​, just be aware that you might have to sacrifice some of the more fun
performance ingredients that you might have wanted to use, but that’s okay. You can just have those
performance ingredients in your oil phase or water phase. So, what you can do instead of putting a calendula
extract in your cooling phase, make a calendula-infused oil and use that in your oil phase, so you still get the
benefit. So, that’s something you can do.

The other thing that I want you to understand with these synthetic blends, is they can be used, many of them, at
a very low percentage. So, some of the blends that I have been working with lately, you can use them at 1%.
Sometimes you can use them at 0.75%.

What that means is that sure, I still want to have my herb-infused oils and my hydrosols and these beautiful
ingredients in my water phase and my oil phase, but if I want to add a little bit of extra something, a little tincture
or another glycerite or maybe an active of some kind in my cooling phase or essential oils, I can do that because
I have more room to play. I typically don’t like my cooling phase to exceed 10% of the total formulation. So, if

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4-5% of that is getting eaten up by something like a Leucidal​Ⓡ​ Liquid or any of its varieties, that gives me a lot
less opportunity to customize a formulation for a client.

However, if I have 1% of my preservative, then I have 9% to play with in my cooling phase.

So, these are things to take into consideration. But what you need to do when you choose preservatives to work
with—test. pH tests, use those strips. Test before you add the preservative, test after. If your pH changes to a
point where it’s not compatible with that 4.5-5.5 on the skin, you’re going to have to reformulate or you can add
pH-adjusting ingredients.

Some other botanical antimicrobials you can consider are white aspen bark, willow bark, these are some other
options as well.

I want to address the idea of using alcohol as a preservative, too, because obviously alcohol is something that
herbalists use to make tinctures and extracts and we know that alcohol itself, when we’re making a tincture,
does give it a nice long shelf life, sometimes a couple of years. As a preservative for short-term preservation in
some cases, typically up to 20%, if you’re using 80 proof or higher, it can cause a couple of problems both in the
formulation and for the skin.

While alcohol itself is often less sensitizing to the skin than some of the preservatives and antimicrobials on the
market, it can be drying for some people and if someone is already prone to dry skin or sensitive skin, 20%
alcohol in a product could just be too much for them, so that’s limiting.

The other thing to understand about using alcohol as a preservative is that it’s going to alter the consistency of
your product. It’s going to make it a lot more viscous, a lot more liquidy. You might have to do more with
thickeners that could then make the product even harder to preserve because you’re raising the water activity,
which kind of goes against the purpose of using alcohol in the first place.

So, if you are using alcohol as a preservative, just be aware that your shelf life is going to be limited. I typically
say it’s not going to give you anymore than 1-3 months. Be aware of that.

You could run into issues with over-drying and sensitizing for someone who already has drier and more sensitive
skin. And then your consistency is going to have to be taken into account.

If it’s something that’s like a liquid hand soap or something that you don’t mind if it’s a little bit more liquidy, that
is sometimes okay. But if it’s a cream or a lotion, that typically is something that you would want to have a little
bit of a body to it, so alcohol is not going to be an inappropriate type of preserving option for that cream or
lotion.

Testing

So, the final thing I want to talk about when we’re discussing creams and lotions in general, whether we’re
talking about keeping it together as a stable emulsion or keeping it from contamination by using a proper
preservative, is testing.

We’ve already talked about the importance of pH testing to make sure that the pH of the product is compatible
both with the preservative and with the skin after the preservative has been added and that, if you need to make
adjustments, testing is the only way you’ll know how you need to adjust, whether you need to go more acidic or
more alkaline.

But you can also run microbial tests from home. There are affordable kits that you can get from online ingredient
suppliers that are really user friendly. There are these little test tube vials with a paddle that has agar on the

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different surfaces. One side is for bacteria, the other one is for mold and yeast. You put your sample on the
paddle, you put it in the little vial. You can either purchase an incubator for it or you can just leave it at room
temperature for a set number of days. You see what color the things turn, what grows on it, and it gives you a
nice little diagram with what that might be, so that you can determine, okay, this preservative was great against
bacteria, but it actually failed against mold and yeast. So, now I need to go back in with an antimicrobial that is
known to protect against the growth of mold and yeast and vice versa. If you have a result that shows, hey, this
grew some bacteria but there’s no mold or yeast, then you can go back in with ingredients or with a preservative
that shows stronger efficacy against bacteria.

But you won’t know that unless you test because remember, contamination is not always detectable with our
senses, so I always say don’t guess, test. Because even if you’re not selling your products, you personally—and
your friends and family who you’re making your products for—deserve to have a stable and safe product.

Well, that’s all I have for you today, folks. I hope this was really informative for you. I encourage you to not be
afraid of experimenting with herbal creams and lotions and go online, do some research, go to some of the
ingredient suppliers, and see what products are available for emulsifiers and preservatives, read the descriptions
and see what makes sense most for you, for what you believe, and for how you want your products to be.

You have so many options now, it’s a wonderful time to be making herbal skin care products.

So, I hope you enjoyed this overview today of herbal creams and lotions and how to make them safe, stable, and
effective. For more information, I invite you to come to ​RachaelPontillo.com​ or ​CreateYourSkinCare.com​. You
can also find me on Facebook and Instagram, and I hope to connect with you further. Thank you so much for
watching.

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