Ladies and gents, prepare yourself to be amazed by something you use daily in your kitchen or enjoy as a snack. It’s pretty to look at with sunny golden petals and beloved in gardens all over the world. We love them because we associate them with warm weather and we can it to heal too.
Sunflowers are more than just a beautiful decoration. Pre-Colombian cultures used parts of the sunflower plant to heal bites and condition their skin. Sunflower oil is widely used in cooking and making its way into skin care. No wonder, since it’s an excellent source of vitamin E, rich in nutrients and antioxidants, so that it’s a tool in your arsenal to fight issues like acne, inflammation, general redness and irritation.
A brief history
Worldwide, there are about 70 different species of sunflower and it has a history that spans thousands of years. The wild sunflower is native to North America. It’s widely accepted that the common sunflower was first domesticated in North America about 5’000 years ago.
Indigenous tribes cultivated the sunflower. They grew it from its original bushy, multi-headed type to a single-stemmed plant bearing a large flower with a variety of seed colours including black, white, red, and black/white striped.
The sunflower was and is an important crop. The seed was eaten, ground into flour for gruel or bread, and pressed to extract oil. The sunflower seed trester, the mush left after pressing is not thrown out but used as a livestock feed. Sunflower was THE crop long before corn and beans were brought to America.
In the 16th century explorers from the old continent brought sunflower seeds from America back to Europe. The flower became widespread in Europe, mainly for ornamental purposes, and it also made its way to the Russian Empire where it became a popular plant for cultivation. The sunflower was grown for oil production.
The botanical name Helianthus annuus has both Greek and Latin roots. Helios, Greek for sun and anthos ‘flower’. Annuus is annual in Latin.
Did you know that the sunflower is the national flower of Russia? Or that its head is made up of 1’000 to 2’000 individual flowers joined together?
Many indigenous American peoples worshiped the sunflower. They regarded it as a symbol of their sun god and placed sunflower images made of gold in their temples. It was and still is believed that the head of the sunflower follows the sun across the sky and therefore, it symbolised the sun god.
The fact is, however, that only the young, immature buds track the Sun across the sky. The belief might come from how young sunflowers develop in the early stages where they orient themselves in the direction of the sun. This is called heliotropism. The orientation stops when the growth of the stalk stops. Then the flower is mature and always faces east from that moment on.
Uses
Apart from eating the seeds as a snack, they can also be processed into something like peanut butter: sunflower butter. Sunflower oil can be extracted from the seeds and used for cooking or to produce margarine.
Besides eaten as food, the sunflower was very versatile. The flower petals and pollen were used as a dye for textiles and body painting. The oil was used to condition hair and skin and as. The dried stalk is a great source of building material. The root, either fresh or dried, had medicinal uses ranging from snakebite to other body ointments.
How is sunflower oil made
Just like almonds and walnuts, sunflower oil comes from the seeds. The best oil is made by cold pressing the seeds. The seeds are first cleaned, milled, then pressed at a low temperature. The other way is to use chemical solvents while pressing.
Sunflower oil has a neutral flavour. Its colour ranges from clear to yellow.
What’s so good about sunflower oil
The oil obtained is primarily made up of linoleic, polyunsaturated (omega 6), and oleic, monounsaturated (omega 9) fatty acids. There are four types of sunflower oils
- High linoleic with 69 % linoleic acid content
- High oleic with 82 % oleic acid content
- Mid oleic with 65% oleic acid content
- High stearic with high oleic with 18% stearic acid (saturated) and 72% oleic acid content
A short refresher: linoleic acid is a polyunsaturated fat while oleic acid is a monounsaturated fat. As a general rule of thumb, oils that have a higher linoleic acid to oleic acid ratio are generally less comedogenic. That is, they tend to block your pores less and so trigger fewer breakouts.
Sunflower oil is an excellent source of vitamin E. Just 100 grams of sunflower oil will cover your daily value at 274 % – not that you’ll down 100 grams… It also contains vitamin K.
Moisturises without clogging
If you find high linoleic sunflower oil, it’s a non-comedogenic carrier oil that penetrates quickly into your skin and won’t feel heavy or block pores. It’s non-irritating and so suitable for most skin types.
Sunflower oil is considered an emollient: It fills the gaps between skin cells and softens and soothes the skin. It also acts as a mild occlusive and forms a protective barrier on your skin. In doing so, it helps your skin maintain the integrity of the stratum corneum (also known as your skin barrier). This means it prevents trans-epidermal-water loss (TEWL).
A refresher: Your skin barrier is mainly made up of corneocytes (dead skin cells) glued together by lipids (ceramides, fatty acids, and cholesterol). Not enough lipids can result in a weakened or damaged barrier. Sunflower oil is great in that it helps enhance and replenish this protective barrier.
Protects your skin from the sun and environment
As an excellent source of vitamins E and K, sunflower oil has potent antioxidant qualities. The oil not only helps protect your skin from free radicals and from the harmful effects of the sun such as wrinkles and sagging. It also reduces the damage:
Reduces visible signs of ageing
Visible signs of again like sagging, wrinkles, and dark spots can be caused and accelerated by environmental factors – and not just from the normal process of ageing.
Thanks to vitamins E and K, sunflower seed oil helps protect the collagen and elastin in your skin and so delays the appearance of wrinkles. The primary cause of fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging is when your body makes less of the protein collagen and elastin. These are key proteins in maintaining the skin’s structure and its ability to stretch and bounce back. So, when your body makes less and you have lower levels of them, your skin loses both its structure and elasticity and the results are wrinkles.
What’s more, the vitamin K in sunflower oil, helps your body to produce new skin cells. This is good news because fresh and healthy skin cells will sooner replace older skin cells.
So, without enough antioxidants, your collagen production and cellular turnover slow down.
Soothes
Rich in linoleic acid (polyunsaturated omega 6, also known as vitamin F) sunflower seeds offer anti-inflammatory properties. Not only does linoleic acid hydrate the skin, replenish the lipids, and improve elasticity, it also has a natural calming effect on your skin.
How to use
If you want to use sunflower oil on your skin, it’s best to find an organic and cold pressed sunflower seed oil. The other extraction process involves chemical solvents so that the oil so obtained may change its quality. Also, if you want a light, non-comedogenic oil, opt for sunflower seed oil with high linoleic content.
You can then use the oil immediately after washing with warm water or toward the end of your routine. You can also use sunflower seed oil as a carrier oil to dilute essential oils or thicker oils such as castor or buriti oil.
Other ways are finding lotions and creams containing sunflower oil. As always, patch-test before you introduce something full-scale into your routine.
