Shea butter is very useful natural ingredient in a wide variety of beauty products. It can be used for dry, burned or itchy skin, stretch marks, scars and cuts, or even arthritis and sore muscles. It is so useful that instead of purchasing expensive beauty products that contain shea butter, many people prefer to save money and purchase the healing ingredient alone. Shea butter comes in mainly four varieties and with a bit of knowledge, anyone can find the perfect shea butter for its desired qualities.
Shea butter comes from the Karite tree that grows in Africa. The nut is either pressed or treated with hexane to remove the oil. Hexane is also used in the production of edible oils. It dissolves the oil-containing part of the product so that more oil can be extracted.
What Color is Shea Butter?
Shea butter can come in a wide variety of colors from nearly white to play dough yellow. The color is not an indicator of quality at all; the color of shea butter comes from the region that it was grown and the time of year it was harvested.
The Different Types of Shea Butter
- Raw Shea Butter: Raw shea butter is not changed after it is extracted from the nut. It hasn’t been filtered, melted into a different form, or processed at all. Raw shea butter has a strong nutty smell to it. No additives have been added except if the shea butter was extracted using hexane. Raw shea butter is great for its natural healing qualities. It has low SPF and has been known for getting rid of scars and stretch marks. Raw shea butter is best without any added scents because its rich, nutty scent will overpower any scent ingredients added to it.
- Unrefined Shea Butter: Unrefined shea butter is like raw shea butter only it is melted and sifted through a cheesecloth to remove any impurities. It cannot be filtered through any process that could take out its scent or color or remove properties from the shea butter. Unrefined shea butter can often be found at health food stores mixed with jojoba oil and this mixture makes a great lotion. This type of shea butter still will have a nutty scent and, while sometimes not as strong as raw shea butter, it will still overpower most added scents. The shea butter and jojoba oil mixture works well for strongly scented homemade lotions like natural bug repellents and headache balm.
- Refined Shea Butter: Refined Shea Butter can have added chemicals and has been filtered at least once. It can be deodorized to remove the nutty smell and bleached to remove the color. It usually has preservatives because the natural preservatives have been removed. This shea butter will have not scent so it is good for scented lotions and solid perfumes. It is slightly harder than unrefined and raw shea butter so it works well as a lip balm.
- Ultra-Refined Shea Butter: This is the shea butter in commercial beauty products. It has had the most contact with chemicals. It has been filtered chemically, bleached, deodorized, and then chemically treated to soften it for addition to beauty products. Preservatives have been added. This shea butter has been treated to take out almost all of it healing qualities, but it is still a very good moisturizer.
Shea butter is an excellent natural moisturizer and it comes in four main varieties. Depending on the purpose, each type can be very useful.
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