Green Cosmetics

SKIN CARE HAS A LONG HISTORY

NOURISHMENT FROM WITHIN, NOURISHMENT FROM WITHOUT

For thousands of years food has been used therapeutically in naturopathy. Indian Ayurveda medicine recommends butter, flour, yoghurt, spices, herbs, and oils for external use. From this evolved one of its principles: put only edibles on the skin. Just as skin care is edible, remedies are edible.

Many ingredients in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) are taken from the kitchen. The principle is 'outside as inside': food is care and medicine. TCM cosmetics take their active ingredients from rice, green tea, chestnut, ginkgo, or peach. Moxa, a method of heat acupuncture, uses ginger, sea salt, or garlic to stimulate the inner body too.

Western traditional medicine is also rich in a lot of treatments with foods. Ointments are made with lard, butter, or resin and compresses are made of curd, herbs, or vinegar. Flour soothes irritated skin; medicinal clay heals wounds; onions ease coughs. Edible herbs such as plantain, chickweed, or thyme act on skin problems by disinfecting, soothing, and healing wounds.

THE WORLD'S OLDEST NATURAL COSMETICS

Animals have always used nature as a cosmetics shop, pharmacy, and pantry. Instinctively familiar with the healing powers of herbs, animals probably taught our ancestors their knowledge about nature's ability to care for the skin.

Aristotle writes that goats showed we humans the use of Dictamnus albus or burning bush for treating wounds. The Italian Scientist Giambattista della Porta discovered the healing powers in serratula, a member of the daisy family, as he watched a tortoise using it for self-healing after it had been bitten by a snake. There's also a story handed down about a medicine man from Africa who discovered an effective plant to cure diarrhea by observing a sick porcupine that dug up a root, ate it, and recovered shortly after.

Animals prescribe their own skin care and medicine and know exactly which natural remedies to use. Capuchin monkeys use natural cosmetics, rubbing the pulp of citric plants into their fur, knowing the essential oils it contains drive away bugs. They use a whole body care range of plants with heavy aromas, such as pepper, onion, or garlic.

Natural cosmetics are used by the Arctic Kodiak bear too. To clear its fur of parasites it chews the aromatic leaves of a plant of the carrot family and then carefully applies this mush to its fur with its paws, just like sun cream.

Orangutans use similar natural ointments. They chew the leaves of an anti-inflammatory plant and apply the greenish mush just like skin cream. Researchers assume that orangutans soothe muscle and joint pain in this way. Gibbons put chewed mush from chlorophyll plants on their wounds. No wonder; it has healing and regenerating effects on the skin.

Deer and bears rub their wounds against resinous trees because resin speeds up the healing process. Even parent birds use certain herbs for lining their nests to protect their offspring from infections. They rub themselves with ants because the poison, formic acid, drives away parasites.

Animals with their delicate sense of natural remedies are beauticians, pharmacists, and doctors rolled into one. This knowledge is stored deep down and they can access it even though they have not consciously learnt to do so. Therein Dr. Edward Bach, founder of the Bach flower remedies, recognized a universal principle of nature. All living beings, be they animals, humans, or plants, carry the knowledge of the healing powers of nature. Thus we humans also carry the age-old knowledge of how to use nature for skin care, nutrition, and medicine. We don't have to travel far, read lots of books, or ask specialists. It is enough to go outside and discover nature with curiosity and joy to bring out our inner knowledge again.

SKIN NUTRITION FROM CLEOPATRA TO EMPRESS SISI

Papyrus Ebers, an Egyptian collection of 880 diagnoses and recipes from around 1500 BC, lists numerous foods that heal physical discomforts. A mixture of onions, beans, natron, salt, and butter milk is used for curing skin abscesses. Olive oil, fennel, and poppy heal athlete's foot, and milk, beans, and palm fruits soften hard skin.

For the Greek medical practitioner Hippocrates, the father of medicine (460-377 BC), nutrition and medicine were very closely linked. 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food' was his creed. He healed from within and from without using the same foods, such as wine, olives, honey, or roses.

Legendary is the beauty care of Egypt's Queen Cleopatra (69-30 BC). Legend has it that she even wrote a book on cosmetics, the Cosmeticon, describing skin masks made from honey, cucumber, yeast, and clay; eye-care with aloe vera, or face lotions of milk and honey. Her daily baths in detoxifying asses milk are mentioned frequently.

The book Medicamina faciei femineae by the poet Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) provides an insight into the Roman art of beauty. Crops such as barley, Tuscan spelt, or ervil (a type of bean) as well as eggs or honey give a lustrous complexion. For smooth skin he recommended among other foodstuffs lupin seeds, beans, or red nitrum. Moreover, he mentions the use of ground poppy seeds and water for skin care.

The Roman polymath Pliny the Elder, who died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, documents in his Naturalis Historia nutrition for care and cure of the skin: turnip mixed with salt cures foot problems when applied as a pack and soothes chilblains when used hot.

Compresses with cabbage ease external wounds and abscesses. Barley flour, rue, coriander, and salt help with rheumatic pains; celery and honey with ophthalmic illnesses, and a mixture of wild mint, salt, oil, and vinegar heals scorpion bites. Wild fennel leaves mixed with vinegar soothe inflamed swellings; flax seed 'betters the skin of women's faces' and is a wonderful skin care product.

At the same time, the Greek physician Pedanios collects in his Dioscurides (1st century AD) collects in his opus De Materia Medica many healing food recipes. He uses cinnamon and honey for moles and freckles; quinces and oil for healing abscesses and chilblains. He treats skin rashes with a mixture of milk, water, honey, and salt; uses breast milk and incense to ease ophthalmic illnesses, and treats skin inflammations with butter.

Another prominent Greek physician, Galen of Pergamon (129-199 AD), committed himself to the preservation of beauty. The famous cold cream, Unguentum refrigerans, a mixture of rose water, oil, and beeswax successfully nourishes dry skin. Even the treatment of wounds and burns with the oil from the buds of the black poplar can be traced back to Galen. He worked on hair care and documented hair tinting lotions with nutshells for dark hair, quinces for blonde hair, and henna for red hair.

During the Middle Ages, cloistral and herbal medicine prospered. In her scriptum Physica, the naturopath, abbess, physician, and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179 AD) describes numerous recipes with nutritious ingredients from the kitchen: thyme cream and barley water soothe irritated skin; quince eases abscesses; lime tree gives clear eyes; ash from the wood of plum trees makes hair grow, and ginger compresses heal irritated skin.

Theophrastus Bombastus of Hohenheim, also referred to as Paracelsus (1493-1541 AD), discovered that humans absorb nutrition via the skin. He stated that the body takes in nutrition by both the mouth and by skin absorption. In his remedies he used many edible herbs: stinging nettle for plague and joint pains; lady's mantle for bones and wounds; ground ivy balm for cramps, and plantain for suppurations and inflammations.

From the nature of women and their diseases, an anonymous manuscript from the second half of the 15th century, lists many recipes for the care of and cures for women. One chapter deals with the treatment of chest pains and documents the use of numerous foods such as lard, honey, butter, common purslane, or rose water for healing.

Anmut und Schönheit. Aus den Mysterien der Natur und Kunst für ledige und verheirathete Frauenzimmer by Christian Gottfried Flittner was published in 1797. In it blemishes are treated with bran, salt, and vinegar; red spots are rubbed with a brew from elderflower and oil, or soothed with a potato compress. Wheat flour, yeast, and honey are used for blackheads, and any itchy pox is treated with a compress of soft boiled rice, breadcrumbs, melon pips, lemon juice, and white wine. For beautiful hands, a paste of bitter almonds, eggs, white wine, and flour is suggested.

Even in apothecary recipes edible medicines from the kitchen or directly from nature were used. This also applies to the beauty remedies of the Austria Empress Elisabeth, known as Sisi (1837-1898). Owing to their natural wholesome ingredients they are fashionable once more. Exquisite ingredients such as roses, violets, almond meal, yoghurt, honey, or milk were stable components of her skin care.

How closely nourishment and skin care were related in those days we can read in Chris Stadtlaender's Sisi: The secret beauty remedies of the Empress and the Court. He writes: "Get the delicacies for the skin from your pantry. The skin, just like the stomach, likes eggs, milk, honey, curd cheese, lard, and butter, accompanied by fruits, fruit juices, and vegetable juices. In those days we were still untouched by modern science! No one would have thought of putting anything on their face that their stomach would not...