My Experience with The Body Shop Tea Tree Oil

*purchased by me*
*non sponsored review*

 I think you've already know how much i love Body Shop lately (read my review here, here, here and more in future) but in fact, this is the first one that hook me in.. Beside the body polish, of course ^___^

I am on fight with acne since last December (another story can be found here) and i purchased this baby in late February. Truthfully, i was clueless about how to use essential oil as skincare. Thanks to the Beauty Assistant how does help me there.

 

The Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil

10ml / 0.33 US fl.oz

idr. 119,000

contains of 15% Tea Tree Oil

(as long as i know, previous version contains of 10% Tea Tree Oil)

 

The bottle is made from thick green glass while the closure is from plastic.

 

direction of use :

use directly to acne spot skin

drop to warm water as aromatherapy, facial steam and even foot spa

..and it can be mix with your favorite BB Cream, CC cream or foundation to make it bearable for acne prone skin (tried it several times : most of the time it does works)

 

The bottle is very save. It's even almost impossible to open it with one hand. You need to use both of your hand, one to hold the bottle and the others to push and screw the closure to open it. 

There's some information i'd like to bold about it :

[1] even it's an oil, the texture actually feels more like water

[2] it's not a pure essential oil

[3] it does contains of alcohol

The Ingredient List :

 Water, Alcohol Denat., PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Polysorbate 20, Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Oil, Limonene, t-Butyl Alcohol, Calophyllum Inophyllum Seed Oil, Citral, Leptospermum Petersonii (Lemon Tea Tree) Oil, Denatonium Benzoate, Tocopherol.

FYI, this one is my THIRD bottle so i think i really know about it, and how it works on my skin.

At first, it works like wonders. After 3 days of use, i can see how it improve my skin condition. My acnes reduced and my skin feels great because of the cooling sensation. I'm really happy, so i think maybe pure Tea Tree Oil will works even better.

Before the first bottle completely empty, i moved to another brand of pure tea tree oil. No alcohol at all. As i predicted, it works better. In the other hand, my Tea Tree Oil from Body Shop start to makes me disapointed.

I think it's because the one is pure, while the other one loads another ingredient that low it down. That time, i thought the lower the better because i read it somewhere on internet that pure tea tree oil is not supposed to use directly to your skin.

After the pure tea tree oil finished, i am back to The Body Shop one.

I use it religiously every night, morning, afternoon, evening.. Anytime.

It won't work as wonder as the first time i used it. And i start to noticed that my skin oftenly turning red and itchy.

To make it worse, everytime i feel itch, i add more tea tree oil to that area because it cool it down.

I am not supposed to do that.

Because it does contains alcohol (second in ingredient list) and therefore, makes my skin getting worse).

My favorite website to help in analyzing ingredients is COSDNA.com

And here what it said for The body shop Tea Tree Oil (read it here):

1. Alcohol denat is level 5 in irritant
2. Tocopherol is level 2 in both irritant and acne trigger ingredient (but since it's the last ingredient, maybe the number is not significant)
3. There are two pure fragrance in list (Citral, Leptospermum Petersonii (Lemon Tea Tree) Oil) which are not irritant nor acne trigger but i found it disturbing
4.  Calophyllum Inophyllum Seed Oil beside work as anti oxidant and a plant extract, also as sunscreen. And i definately won't use sunscreen anytime. Not at night.

 

My biggest concern is how could a product that supposed to be use as Acne repellent contains of a level 5 irritant ingredients?

But my skin does loved it at the start.

Well, i've moved on again.

ps. maybe it just me? or does it also happens to you?

because i hope it really works. I love tea tree, and my skin does too.

oh and i love Body Shop :)