Unusual Skin Care Ingredients: Avocado Oil

We're wrapping up the month's feature of weird, unusual and unexpected skin care. So far, we've talked mushrooms for lightening dark spots, spirulina algae for inflammation and marshmallow root for wound healing.

This week, we're ending the series with an increasingly popular skin care ingredient that's being hailed the new coconut oil!

What is avocado oil?

While avocado oil may not be the most unusual beauty ingredient for those in the know, it's becoming increasingly popular in mainstream use and DIY recipes.

Made from the delicious avocado fruit (yes, it's a fruit!), avocados have been mostly known for being a delicious, nutritious source of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat.

While mashing up the fleshy avocado pulp has been a long DIY beauty treatment, creating an oil from its flesh is a complicated process that begins with extraction at high temperatures, typically then "refined, bleached and deodorized, resulting in an odorless yellow oil."

What are the skin care benefits of avocado oil?

While cooking with avocado oil is a healthy alternative, applying it to skin and hair also delivers a nutritious treat! With high levels of antioxidants like polyphenols, tocopherols and carotenoids, this powerful oil delivers by absorbing into skin easily and quickly. It also contains a high concentration of oleic acid, an anti-inflammatory that can help ease skin conditions like cracked skin, insect bites and stings, sun burns, eczema and keratosis pilaris.  

Can avocado oil be an effective moisturizer?

With a healthy dose of skin healing vitamin E, avocado oil makes a fantastic light weight oil for your body. For expecting or breastfeeding Mamas who have to worry about safe pregnancy skin care, avocado oil can be a great natural alternative that's effective and safe for you and baby. That's why it's one of the oils featured in our Bump Gloss pregnancy stretch mark oil. Unlike other popular skin care, we use a cold-pressed, unrefined avocado oil to ensure all its nutrients and benefits are preserved.  With its highly penetrative abilities, avocado oil delivers essential hydration to Mama's skin, and helps prevent stretch marks from occurring.

Additionally, try this all-around miracle oil for softening cuticles, smoothing hair and relieving dandruff as well.

Have you tried coconut oil in your skin care regimen? Share your experience below!