Some time ago, one of our friends went through a difficult time, after months of intermittent and mild but aggravating symptoms a visit to the doctor revealed a dangerous diagnostic, that if left unattended for a few more months could have been fatal. What was remarkable about it wasn’t the benefit of early detection, but the fact that our friend ultimately came on top simply by eliminating food and personal care products containing preservatives and harmful chemicals.

That was a huge wake up call for us, it made us wonder what kind of garbage we put in, and on, our bodies that instead of helping us thrive is making us sick, that set off a decade-long crusade for our family.

For over ten years now we have done extensive research looking into every ingredient of the products we ingest or use on our bodies and their long term harmful effects. It was evident to us early on our quest that the food component would be relatively simple to manage: by avoiding restaurants and preparing our meals at home with wholesome, natural and when possible organic ingredients we could control the amount of preservative and chemicals we ingested, but finding personal care products without harmful chemicals and preservatives would prove an impossible task.

There are many reasons for this, but it basically boils down to the two P’s, Profit and Pleasure. You see, personal care products, from liquid hand soap to skincare and makeup have a very long shelf life, some products can last for decades without any significant change, and that’s by design, the longer a product can last, the more profitable it is for its manufacturer because they can produce huge amounts and have a longer window to sell all that product, and in order to do that products are packed with artificial preservatives. The Pleasure part is in part our responsibility, we rather buy a product that has gorgeous color, delicious texture that is both creamy and smooth on our skin, and of course a fragrance that makes us dream, but guess what? the only way to get all that is by adding even more chemicals.

So it was clear to us that we needed to take the same route we took with our food and rely on ourselves to make our own personal care products, it was a daunting task, it took us years to come up with formulas that were both safe and effective, it involved trying hundreds of ingredients from all over the world; playing with chemical and even cooking processes to find the best way to get an extract from a plant to reap all the benefits of it; and reading hundreds of research reports, academic papers and books that sometimes weren’t even available in English. There were many occasions during this process when we were ready to give up, but fortunately we never lost sight of our goal and in the end, once we got to stable formulations, we realized it was worth every single minute of our time, the products you now have access to under the Cinthus brand are not only safer but far more effective than those packed with harmful chemicals and preservatives.

Our quest is a testament to the ancient wisdom that claims that Mother Nature, in its infinite wisdom, has provided us with everything we need and all we have to do is find them.

R. Guzman