Ingredient Spotlight: Shea Butter

If you have dry skin, you'll be familiar with shea butter, one of nature's ultra-moisturising ingredients. It comes from the seeds of the African shea tree, and is so soft that, like regular butter, it melts at body temperature, leaving the skin extremely smooth.

Thanks to its other special properties, shea does more than moisturise. It's also naturally rich in Vitamin A and Vitamin E, which work to provide the skin with essential nutrients necessary for collagen production.

Benefits of shea butter

• Moisturising: contains highly concentrated forms of vitamins and essential fatty acids that are exceptionally good at nourishing dry skin.
• Smoothing: oleic, stearic, palmitic and linoleic acids protect and nourish the skin, preventing the loss of moisture that causes dry, scaly skin.
• Anti-aging: oleic, linoleic and stearic acids combat oxidative stress, helping your skin's turnover of new cells for a fresher, more youthful complexion.
• Reduces inflammation: lupeol cinnamate and allantoin can help treat skin inflammation and restore the skin's natural balance. This ingredient is often used to treat blemishes, itches, sunburn and eczema.

Is shea butter good for my skin?

Shea butter works best for dry skin types, as its rich, soothing texture and ultra-nourishing compounds visibly improve dry skin within hours.

However, if you have oily or acne-prone skin, you can still enjoy the benefits. Shea is not known to clog pores, though, like every ingredient, some people may experience sensitivities, so it's good to check with a patch test before you dive in!

If shea on the face isn't for you, you can still get a healing dose for your hair or body.

Adding shea butter to a beauty routine

Benefits are well documented and accepted by dermatologists and modern cosmetics research, so it's very easy to incorporate this amazing moisturising ingredient into your routine. It's as easy as looking for 'shea butter' on the label or butyrospermum parkii on the ingredients list.

We added shea butter to our Exquisite Moisture Mask to deeply hydrate the hair follicle, leaving your hair incredibly soft and shiny. It's also used in our Day Culture Cream to support the hardworking probiotics that work to rebalance your complexion and keep your skin's microbiome healthy and strong.