What really is Shea Butter?

We’re proud to say our Shea Butter changes lives. That’s how this all started after all. Our range of shea butter products let you indulge in luxury self-care whilst helping you heal your dry skin. Our hero ingredient has always been 100% pure, grade A, unrefined Shea Butter. It’s what makes sure its therapeutic properties are preserved and packed into each of our products. 

But if there’s any question, we get asked more than any other, it’s the simplest: what really is shea butter?

So, what is Shea Butter?

Shea Butter comes from grinding roasted shea nuts and separating its valuable oils. The oil solidifies at room temperature, creating a creamy and rich texture packed with five essential fatty acids including:

1. Allantoin
2. Phytosterols
3. Vitamin A
4. Vitamin D
5. Vitamin E
 

Thanks to these properties, it has been used for centuries in parts of Africa as a natural remedy to help hydrate, heal and protect skin, as well as soften and smooth it. Varying in colour from ivory to yellow or green tones, its earthy aroma helps explain its origins: two oily kernels within the shea tree seed.

Where does Shea Butter originate from?

Shea butter originates from the African Shea Tree, traditionally known as the Vitellaria. It’s a traditional African food plant, known for improving nutrition, boosting food supplies, fostering rural development, and supporting sustainable land care. 

 

Our unrefined shea butter is ethically sourced directly from the fields of Northern Ghana, where we work closely and sustainably with a Women’s Cooperative. However, it can also be found in 18 other countries across the continent, including Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali.

What benefits does Shea Butter offer for skin, hair, and health?

Thanks to its softening, moisturising, anti-inflammatory, anti-irritant, anti-ageing and protective properties, unrefined Shea Butter offers plenty of benefits for your skin, your hair, and most importantly, your health.

Here’s just some of the benefits using our unrefined shea butter can give you:

It can help soothe inflammatory skin conditions

Shea butter’s anti-inflammatory properties helps soothe your skin and relieves itching. Its rapid absorption means quicker relief for flare-ups from inflammatory skin conditions such as dermatitis, eczema, and psoriasis.

 

Shea butter’s ability to penetrate your skin swiftly using its fatty acids calms inflammation, as well as helps slow down the production of inflammatory cells that contribute to skin conditions.  

 

Using Vitamins A and E, shea butter soothes and treats irritable and sensitive skin, making it the perfect solution to anything from skin conditions to sunburns, abrasions and diaper rashes.

It promotes skin cell regeneration 

Shea butter’s moisturising, antioxidant properties help your skin develop and generate healthy new cells.

Our bodies are constantly creating new skin cells whilst getting rid of dead ones. In fact, you can get rid of 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells every day. 

With the right balance of shea butter moisture on the surface of your skin, you’ll have fewer dead skin cells getting in the way of cell regeneration.

Studies show that shea butter, thanks to its ability to help skin cell regeneration, can stop scar tissue from reproducing. This means that things like stretch marks and scarring can be minimised and reduced.

Better yet, it’s anti-ageing properties and collagen production boosts help reduce photoaging – which is all those wrinkles and fine lines that our skin can create from ageing. 

It can help your hair flourish

Shea butter isn’t just good for your skin, it’s great for your hair, too. It helps prevent hair breakage and treats dandruff through its moisturising properties.

 

Now that you know what shea butter really is, where it comes from, and how it can benefit you, it’s time to start looking after your skin.

Why not get started with one of our curated kits, such as our Shea Hand and Foot Butter kit, Shea Body Lotion and African Black Soap kit, and Shea Body Butter and African Shea Black Soap kit.