Pleasant scents are something really great! They give us a feeling of well-being, freshness and purity.
Fragrances are therefore not only used by us humans! Pheromones, for example, also play an important role in the animal and plant world. In bees, the queen uses pheromones to pass on information to her worker bees. In the plant world, they serve to spread pollen and seeds.
But scents also play an important role for people, albeit more psychologically. They serve as an association for memories and feelings and are also decisive for whether "we can smell someone" or not. They often give us a feeling of cleanliness and aesthetics, similar to the foam in shower gel or shower soap. We are now used to our creams, lotions and the like being perfumed and exuding a pleasant scent. In the past, natural scents from plants, herbs and spices (musk, lavender, etc.) were used. Sometimes it was very time-consuming and expensive to produce extracts. Today it is possible to synthetically produce thousands of fragrances quickly and cheaply. But who actually thinks about whether these fragrances are also good for us and really harmless?
Due to the complex production process, perfumes used to be something precious and unaffordable for a large part of the population. Therefore, they were often only used for special occasions and only discreetly dosed. But that has changed with synthetic production. Perfume is no longer a luxury item but has become an affordable standard in every bathroom. Fragrances have no skin care or cleansing effect but a purely psychological one. Therefore, there are not only scented cosmetics, detergents and cleaning agents, but also in our living rooms or in supermarkets and department stores, the mood is kept high with the help of room fragrances. However, a pleasant scent can have unpleasant consequences! Fragrances get into the waste water primarily through our detergents and cleaning agents. These are not only difficult to biodegrade, but can also accumulate in our bodies and other organisms. A fragrance allergy is also the second most common contact allergy after nickel allergy.
But how can you recognize a fragrance allergy? The sensitized skin begins to itch no later than 72 hours after contact and, in the worst case, forms weeping blisters, wheals and scales. With such obvious symptoms, one quickly concludes that it is a contact allergy. However, there are also less obvious symptoms of contact allergy. Intolerances can also manifest themselves, for example, in the form of headaches, nausea, dizziness and exhaustion. In addition to direct contact, fragrances can also enter our organism through breathing, where they are distributed throughout the body via the bloodstream. Fragrances accumulate in the human organism in a wide variety of ways. They nest there, so to speak, and are only degraded very slowly. The tendency for allergic reactions to synthetic fragrances is increasing as the human body comes into contact with more and more scented products. In addition, new synthetic fragrances are constantly coming onto the market that are not subject to the explicit obligation to declare. In order not only to protect your organism and the environment, you can make sure that you are not misled by the external appearance and the scent of a product and judge your purchase primarily by the ingredients. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
But how do we at PureBee do that with our scented products? We use the natural alternatives: essential oils and natural flavors! The lavender scent in our products, for example, is made from 100% lavender flowers. But since the fragrances are also concentrated in natural essential oils, they also harbor an allergy potential and we always recommend our original products without fragrances for very sensitive skin or known contact allergies.
All original products have no added fragrances or flavors. "But then what do you smell like?" we are often asked. You could say "neutral", although we would always put it in quotes. They simply smell of the individual ingredients and everyone interprets this smell a little differently. With our Oleogel Original, for example, we primarily smell the beeswax and propolis, someone else might recognize the jojoba oil.