Babassu Oil vs. Coconut Oil

Babassu oil is an all-natural ingredient that comes from an Amazonian superfruit, babassu palm seeds. It’s an enriching moisturizer that’s packed with fatty acids and vitamins, and it’s quickly becoming more preferred for these uses than its counterpart, coconut oil.

There are several benefits of babassu oil as compared with coconut oil, particularly for hair and skin care. The two are fairly interchangeable for cooking and cleaning purposes, but some aspects of babassu oil make it a preferable treatment for beauty uses.

Lightweight Moisturizer

Babassu oil is much more light-weight as compared with coconut oil. While coconut oil seems to linger, babassu oil is barely noticeable (if at all) about an hour after you apply it to skin or hair. It doesn’t feel oily like coconut oil, and won’t clog your pores like coconut oil might if you are prone to acne, have oily skin or smaller pores.

Because it’s lighter weight, babassu oil also soaks into your skin much more quickly than coconut oil. This makes it less messy as well, and actually may protect your skin better than coconut oil because it dries with an undetectable layer that acts as a barrier against the free radicals that promote aging and cancer.

Coconut oil often needs to be washed out when used for hair moisturizing purposes, especially with some hair types and textures, but babassu oil is much lighter and soaks in completely, eliminating the need for this extra step. Just apply it and enjoy the results of healthier, shinier and softer hair. Babassu oil is a great daily moisturizer for men with beards as well, since it moisturizes and treats both the hair and skin beneath.

Excellent Mixer

Some people dislike the potent and distinct coconut scent that permeates the air when that fruit’s oil is used, which is another advantage of babassu oil. It has a very mild scent that is almost undetectable, so that you can enjoy the moisturizing benefits without smelling like tanning lotion. The almost total lack of aroma with babassu oil won’t affect other fragrances you choose to wear.

Thanks in part to its mild scent and also its soft texture, babassu oil mixes fantastically with other essential oils and ingredients. Make your own health and beauty products at home using babassu oil, including toothpaste, salt/sugar scrubs, salves and more. You can even mix your own scented moisturizer with a personalized combination of essential oils and/or scents in a small tub of babassu oil.

Nourishing Natural Treatment

Babassu oil has anti-microbial properties and is rich in vitamin E and the anti-inflammatory lauric acid. Both of these properties make the oil an excellent treatment for a variety of skin conditions such as eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, plant rashes, bug bites, and more. The vitamin E helps promote cell regeneration, so babassu oil can be used to treat shallow cuts, chapped lips, mild burns, and irritated skin.

Scalp conditions such as dandruff and skin irritations can also benefit from a daily babassu oil treatment, reducing redness or inflammation and deeply conditioning and moisturizing both hair and scalp skin.

At Teadora, we use Babassu oil in our RainforestHydration™ Elixir which is a combination of 5 superfruit oils from the Amazon rainforest + Argan Plant Stem cells. We utilize this elixir in two of our products: Our Brazilian Glow™ Multi-tasking Oil for skin, hair and nails and our Brightening and Exfoliating Mud, which helps to detox, exfoliate and brighten your skin and our Mountain Ninja Beard and Skin conditioning oil.

We also use Babassu that is sustainably harvested by women-led communities in the Amazon River basin so we ensure the forest is worth more standing than cut. Supply chain transparency plays a huge role in protecting our planet.

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Cheers, Val