by Jean Shea
What sets you apart from the competition? Surely it’s the quality and range of services you offer. But did you realize you also have a significant opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competitors by the products you use in your practice? Today massage lubricants offer such a wide range of ingredients and benefits, they actually can help you differentiate your service offering, not to mention satisfy the special needs of your clients.
As you look across the market landscape for new massage lubricants, lotions with cocoa butter are ones you might want to seriously consider. The versatile, smooth-textured natural fat derived from the cocoa bean has been used in the manufacture of skin-care products and toiletries for years, not to mention cocoa powder and chocolate. Now, cocoa butter is beginning to make its mark on the massage lubricant marketplace and for good reason.
For starters, you couldn’t sing the praises of cocoa butter without first mentioning its subtle cocoa scent. Even nonfood products containing cocoa butter smell good enough to eat. What client could resist a massage enhanced with the delicious aroma of this natural emollient, which also can help ease the mind?
As if the scent weren’t enough to please any client, cocoa butter is considered the ultimate moisturizer. That’s because its naturally rich in vitamin E—as well as a number of other vitamins and minerals—which helps soothe, hydrate and balance the skin. Vitamin E also assists in the production of collagen, so it aids in diminishing wrinkles and other signs of aging as well.
Cocoa butter also is a very stable, highly concentrated natural fat, and because it melts at body temperature, it easily absorbs into skin. It not only helps retain moisture, it helps protect sensitive skin against environmental conditions.
Cocoa butter also may have significant health benefits based on research. Like chocolate, it contains a lot of cocoa mass polyphenol (CMP). Research from Japan indicated CMP can slow the growth of cancer cells. There also is some evidence that CMP in cocoa butter may help prevent heart disease and ease arthritis.
Clearly, cocoa butter has a wealth of properties that make it an attractive ingredient for a lot of personal care and food products. Now, new cocoa butter-based massage lotions provide another “tool of the trade” to make massage sessions even more beneficial, not to mention a delightfully aromatic pleasure.
Jean Shea is founder and CEO of BIOTONE, a leading manufacturer of superior quality professional massage oils, cremes, lotions and gels, as well as spa-body and facial-treatment products. Shea founded the company in 1980 and today continues to help create and manufacture all of the company’s formulas.