Shea butter added into cosmetics products such as creams and lotions, e.g. shea body butter, shea butter cream, is natural and moisturizing. I love shea as a skin care product for mature skin. It’s also great for dry and brittle hair. I prefer the creamy texture of shea butter over the oilier texture of cocoa butter as a skin cream. Organic shea creams soften skin. Shea works!

I love shea butter for it's great moisturizing properties. Try Tree Hut body butter with organic shea butter added. You can find shea butter beauty products for a bargain. Shea is good!

Shea Butter is a popular ingredient in cosmetics and beauty products. What is Shea Butter?

I love shea butter! Most women have better things to do than surf the web and write health and beauty articles day in and day out. But that’s what I do every day. And the more I read, the more interested I become in all of the anti aging health and natural beauty products. The natural and organic products always attract me the most for some reason. I like personal care, body, bath and cosmetic products that tout all natural organic and vegan ingredients with all sorts of moisturizers, vitamins and nutrients in them. One of the ingredients I see in a lot of the body butters (I love body butter creams!) is shea butter. I decided to read up on shea.

Shea Butter

Shea butter is made from African shea butter, or karate. Shea butter is a solid fatty oil that is made from the nuts of karate nut trees. Karete nut trees are found solely in the West Africa savanna, near the Sahara dessert. The Karete tree requires a large rainfall and a long dry season to product the valuable nuts. African women collect the nuts and turn them into shea butter to moisturize their bodies in the dry Sahelian climate in which they live. African women have know about the shea beauty secret for years, but only recently has the shea become a popular ingredient in bath, body and personal care beauty products. Shea butter is increasingly popular in Japan, Europe and now North America for its purported healing and moisturizing properties.

From the Shea Nut to the Shea Butter

Turning the shea nuts into shea butter is no small task. After the nuts are collected they are boiled, dried in the sun, and shelled by hand. Then they are crushed, roasted and pounded in a mortar and pestle. The butter is used as a moisturizer but also can be made into ointments, lamp oil and soaps. The shea butter mainly helps with dryness and is purported to be a miracle cream for healing burns, skin conditions, and stretch marks. The vegetable fats in the butter (it’s 50% fat) are claimed by some to promote circulation and cell regeneration. I don’t doubt that the cream is a wonderful rejuvenator for aging skin because of it’s moisturizing properties yet I am not sure I believe that is stimulates cell regeneration LOL!

Shea Butter Beauty Products

I notice Shea Butter in a plethora of beauty products. I see it marketed as an ingredient in creams, sunscreens, conditioners and also in ointments that treat muscle pains and burns. If you are reading this web site, you are probably interested in shea as an ingredient in moisturizer creams and hair conditioners for dry and brittle hair. I’ve read medical claims that shea butter is helpful in treating scars, eczema, burns, rashes, severely dry skin, skin discolorations, dark spots and psoriasis. It’s even used as a sun blocking protection, though I doubt it’s effectiveness is appropriate. I don’t know that I buy all the beauty claims about shea, however I do believe one thing. It has great moisturizing properties, and that in and of itself is an anti-ager. Keeping skin moist, supple and soft is that one thing that a cream like shea can do for you. Because it has a high fat level and good moisturizing properties, I give shea a thumbs up.

What skin benefits from Shea are you really getting?

Shea is loaded with vitamins A, E, and F. The A and E vitamins help maintain the skin and keep it healthy which in turns helps to prevent premature wrinkles and facial lines. The vitamin F protects and rejuvenates the skin by soothing rough dry skin and softening dry damaged hair. Shea butter is also high in a fat called unsaponifiables. As an example, avocado oil has 2-6 percent of this kind of fat and is known as a good skin conditioner. Shea has even more, 7-12%. Shea has high moisturizing capability, depending on how much pure shea is in the beauty product you buy.

Should you spend more on shea butter products?

I would say that if you happen to find a cream with shea butter at a reasonable price and love the way the skin cream works on you, then more power to you. I believe that shea has good moisturizing ingredients and I am a strong believer that a good body butter cream is just as good as the high end expensive anti-aging serums and a better value.

But the thing with shea (or any beauty secret ingredient for that matter) is that you really don’t know how much of this you are actually getting in the product you are buying. First of all, the shea has different grades, and different extraction processing procedures to the point where you could be getting ultimately very little shea in that cream you are buying and it may be processed and far from the original raw stuff. It probably gets refined to the point where any cheaper nut oil can compete with it. One thing to do is to check ingredients on the products you buy. If the product is honest, then it lists ingredients from highest to lowest so that the higher the shea is on the list the more that is contained in the product you are buying.

I’m a sucker for organic, natural beauty products with vegan ingredients, but I still want to find them for a bargain!

My conclusion is that you probably aren’t getting that much shea in the beauty product you are buying to warrant spending a lot of extra cash. If you find a shea product at a reasonable price, it could be a good deal because the shea does have good moisturizing qualities which is the secret to beautiful skin in my opinion. I’m a sucker for organic and natural beauty products with cool ingredients like shea. But I usually try to get such things at the TJ Max and other cheap places where they sometimes end up in overstock. Shea can smell a little funky so try to smell the cream before you buy it if you’ve got a sensitive nose.

How much to pay for shea nut butter?

One last thing is that you would think you could use something like cocoa butter instead of shea and spend a whole lot less money. I have to point out that cocoa butter tends to be really oily and greasy. It doesn’t have the same creamy, moisturizing, stick to the skin adherence as shea butter. So that is yet another good thing about shea. Most of the skin creams I’ve tried that had shea in them were smooth, soft and moisturizing. Shea has the moisturizing properties yet it’s not oily, and that’s the one really good thing about shea butter!

If you want to try an inexpensive body butter product with shea you can try Tree Hut Shea Body Butter. This body butter can be found at places like Walmart and they are a cheaper dupe of the Body Shop ones. The Tree hut shea body butter is made with pure shea nut butter, to soften and deeply moisturize the skin. Natural oils and botanical extracts are blended with the shea butter to help further soothe and hydrate skin. Tree Hut is a good brand, I’ve bought it many times. The body butter costs around $6.99 or even less if you are lucky to find it at Walmart. Tree hut cream is thick, yet lightweight. It moisturizes, smells great and softens skin. I would definitely recommend body butter with shea to a friend for this price point.