❤ Cocoa Butter & It's Uses


Cocoa Butter is a natural edible vegetable fat, which comes from the cacao bean. It comes from the same prized bean that our delicious chocolate is derived from. A great side benefit to the already immense power of cocoa butter is the fact that it smells like chocolate! This butter acts as a superb moisturizer, softening and healing the skin. Because of it’s velvety smooth texture that melts into your skin, it gets absorbed extremely quickly by the skin. Cocoa butter is actually the vegetable fat that can be extracted from the cocoa bean. This can be done in two ways. The first is by making a cocoa liquor. The liquor is made by taking fermented and roasted beans and removing the shell from them. The innards are then pressed to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids. Part of the magic of Cocoa butter is the fact that it contains Vitamin E, in addition to various other moisturizing agents. It also serves as a natural antioxidant, minimizing damage to the skin from sun exposure. It is particularly helpful and useful for individuals that experience chronic dry skin. It works quickly and effectively to keep skin soft and supple. Cocoa Butter is used extensively in body butters, creams soaps and lotions. It acts as a wonderful lubricant for the skin and has shown the ability to relax the muscles as well. Cocoa butter has long been known for its value in preventing and treating scars. It can also act as a wrinkle remover, as many individuals have seen great results on this front. When used as a part of your regular beauty regime, cocoa butter acts as a powerful anti-aging treatment.

Cocoa Butter is also used as a natural therapy for many conditions, including burns, stress-relief, and improving your own immunity to various diseases. There are some who believe that cocoa butter possesses elements that ward off cancer, although those claims have not been scientifically validated as of yet. Herbalists often use this butter to aid in arthritic pain for patients. Furthermore, it contains some antiseptic properties and can be utilized to treat snake bits and other general wounds. It has also been scientifically proven to be a natural diuretic, flushing the excess fluids from the body. 

Many pregnant women find that cocoa butter application can improve the skin’s elasticity, when rubbing the butter in a circular manner over the stomach. It is quite common for pregnant women to utilize creams or oils that contain cocoa butter, vit e oil, wheatgerm oil, sweet almond oil to massage their stomachs in an effort to prevent and reduce stretch marks caused from child rearing. Stretch marks occur when the skin grows faster than it’s internal fibers can handle. Stretch marks are characterized by violet discolorations that occur in bands on the skin. Using cocoa butter during pregnancy keeps the skin supple and prevents stretch marks. It may also be used after giving birth to reduce stretch marks. The important benefit to cocoa butter use is the fact that it can penetrate the skin and reach down to the dermis level. The dermis is the second layer of skin cells. The highly concentrated and stable fats in cocoa butter begin to repair any damaged areas of the skin tissue by helping to replenish the collagen that has been lost in the skin. Once the production of collagen has been improved, stretch
marks and the discoloration that they can cause in the skin will then gradually disappear. Truly the uses of cocoa butter are endless. Millions of individuals the world over use it to make their skin look healthier and youthful. About 36% of the fat in the cocoa bean is "good fat" — either mono- or polyunsaturated fat, of which, oleic acid (the fatty acid also abundant in olive oil) makes up the largest proportion. Of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter, over half comes from stearic acid. Stearic acid has been shown in numerous studies to have a neutral impact on blood cholesterol. Why? The main reason may be that stearic acid converts from a saturated fat to an unsaturated fat when metabolized in the body. Studies have been conducted where participants fed chocolate daily for two weeks showed no change in blood cholesterol when total calories in the diet were kept the same.

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