Beauty Investigations: HYPOALLERGENIC

Sorry for being so unproductive with my blog in the past weeks, but I’m back with a new series “Beauty Investigations by Nele”. Basically I’m taking a closer look on terms and ingredients regularly used concerning cosmetic products.

Today I’m going to start my new series with a term, which is very important to me, because it’s something I have to deal with myself. I’m talking about the often used term “hypoallergenic”. Nowadays you can find this term more often and the general idea behind this was, to make it easier for people with allergies, to find something that’s not causing any reaction.

BUT there is a huge BUT I would like you to know…

All products using “hypoallergenic” as a characteristic indicate that this product is “having a decreased tendency to provoke an allergic reaction"”.
Please read this sentence carefully: It means that there is a lower risk of experiencing an allergic reaction by using this product, but you can’t be 100 % sure to avoid an allergy by using it.

I would be just fine by knowing that I probably would have less problems by using a certain product stating that it’s certified as hypoallergenic. Of course a company has to be on the safe side. And saying that their products are definitely not causing any allergy on you means a high risk, especially by thinking about, that there is always somehow something new our body dislikes, no matter if we had to deal with an allergy before or not.

Here comes another BUT: The biggest problem is that there are no regulations, which would control/limit the usage of this specific term. There are no regulations telling the companies, how they have to proof that they have created a hypoallergenic product. Bottom line any brand offering cosmetic products could use this term, for any product this brand sells!

Do you understand what this means? Today we always have to think about the marketing aspect and wouldn’t it be clever, to describe something as non-allergenic. Not just thinking about the persons affected by allergies who would crave for this product. Even the not affected ones would think that this must be truly a good product and that would lead to the effect of making people want to spend more for this product! Right???

I’m sure that there are a lot of brands trying to satisfy all their customers and truly test all their products, before you get to buy them and are really successful by using ingredients which are doing a great job for our skins, without showing negative aspects.

I hope this could clear up a few discussions going on in the internet and I hope that there will be a regulation soon to help all the people who have to trust in this term.


Disclaimer: I don’t own the copyright of the used image.