Avoid Baby Oils and Lotions with Mineral Oil

Mineral oil has long been believed to make skin softer and healthier looking. It’s found in Baby Oil, Vaseline, numerous baby lotions and liquid baby soaps. In recent years, mineral oil has been shown to actually harm your skin and cause other health problems.

Mineral oil is derived from liquid or gelatin petroleum, AKA petroleum jelly and is found in 98% of skin care products available on the market today. Who wants to put a coal tar derivative on their FACE, let alone their hair? Not me!

Mineral oil actually clogs your pores, suffocating your skin. My hairdresser told me once that Pantene coats your hair with wax, which is why you get split ends so often when you use it. Mineral oil does essentially the same thing (only with petroleum rather than wax); it applies a coating over your skin or hair, so nothing can get in or out.

Our skin needs to be able to breathe; it’s one of the main outlets our body uses to get rid of waste. If it’s covered with a mineral oil coating, wastes can’t get out. In an infant, this can be extremely dangerous, because these wastes build up into toxins in their small bodies.

Have you noticed that many babies have dry, hard skin? This is from the mineral oils in the baby soap and baby lotions. Interesting that the very products we use on our babies to keep their tender skin moisturized are actually causing severe dry skin.

A study in the early 1980s illustrated how our skin absorbs mineral oil; once it enters through the skin, it’s filtered through the liver into our intestinal tract. There it soaks up all of our vitamins, which in babies causes serious nutritional deficiencies.

Because of what it does to our internal systems, the medical community has already deemed it unsafe to take orally and it’s been removed from all medications. Why then, since an earlier study proved that mineral oil can be absorbed through our skin, is it still approved for use in our skin care products?

It’s best to search for safer alternatives than mineral oil, especially for your babies’ sensitive skin. There are many all natural oils that are better for your babies’ skin, such as olive oil, jojoba oil, rose hip seed, grape seed oil and coconut oil.

It is so imperative that our babies receive all the vitamins and minerals that they need to grow. We don’t want to be using lotion on their skin that will soak into their bodies and absorb all of those much needed vitamins. Look for organic alternatives, or try the all natural oils I mentioned above.