What Are The Benefits Of Mango Butter For Your Skin?

Move over, shea butter — mango butter's in town. While lotions, gels, and creams are the top choices for moisturizing and caring for your face and body, butters, which are skincare ingredients that contain vegetable-based oils and fats, are also an excellent option (per I Love Cosmetics). Among these butters are shea butter and cocoa butter, which effectively moisturize the skin and offer several other benefits. But as always with the world of skincare ingredients, there's an underrated, maybe unknown ingredient you've yet to find and love. Cue mango butter — not as well-known as other butters, but chockful of antioxidants and vitamins beneficial for the skin.

Mango butter, also known as mango seed butter or mango kernel butter, is derived from the seeds of mangoes or the pit. According to New Directions Aromatics, mango butter can be extracted by cold pressing the seeds to let the fats seep out or by solvent extraction. Asides from being an excellent moisturizer, it also has a lightweight texture and quickly sinks into the skin. From tackling inflammation to its anti-aging properties, here are the skincare benefits of mango butter.

Mango butter contains several fatty acids, including oleic acid, stearic acid, linoleic acid, and palmitic acid. As Purity Woods explains, these fatty acids bind with water molecules, sinking into deeper layers of the skin and thereby locking in moisture, keeping your skin hydrated for much longer. While butters offer your skin intensive, long-lasting hydration, they typically feel heavier than regular lotions or creams and take longer to absorb — eyes on you, shea. However, Dr. Axe explains that mango butter quickly melts from its semi-solid state into an oil upon contact with your skin and does not leave that heavy or greasy feeling that butters are known for. 

Mango butter is lightweight, emollient, and non-comedogenic, making it moisturizing and light on the skin. Purity Woods also adds that mango butter has a silky texture when used in creams or lotions, leaving your skin feeling soft, smooth, and hydrated.

Remember when we said mango butter is chockful of antioxidants? Yeah, we meant it. Your skin barrier, known as your moisture barrier or acid mantle, protects you from harsh chemicals and environmental stressors like UV rays daily. Exposure to UV rays can produce free radicals that damage your barrier, causing dryness, irritation, redness, hyperpigmentation, and certain skin conditions. Mango butter helps protect your skin from such damage through its ready supply of antioxidants like vitamins A, C, and E (per Healthline). 

In addition, according to SkinKraft, mango butter produces salicylic acid upon exposure to air. Salicylic acid is a beta-hydroxy acid (BHA). Unlike alpha-hydroxy acids like glycolic acid, salicylic acid does not increase sun sensitivity, and research shows that it even protects skin from UV damage to some extent (per Acne.org). However, as Annmarie Gianni warns, mango butter is not a substitute for sun protection methods. Here's a quick reminder to use sunscreen.

Damage to your skin barrier by free radicals does not only translate to dryness, irritation, or redness; it can also lead to premature aging. But the good news is your jar of mango butter can help. Premature or accelerated aging can manifest in several ways, including wrinkles, fine lines, and an overall dull appearance on the skin. Antioxidants and phytochemicals in your mango butter, like vitamins C and E, are excellent at neutralizing these free radicals, protecting your skin from further damage (per Herbal Dynamics Beauty). Mango butter also contains vitamin A, which reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by encouraging skin cell turnover.

Mango butter also stimulates collagen production. As we age, our collagen production decreases, causing our skin to lose elasticity and become crepey. WebMD explains that the vitamin C content in mango butter helps increase collagen production, meaning firmer, healthier skin. A fantastic anti-aging ingredient in our books.

In addition to containing ingredients that neutralize free radicals, mango butter is also antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory. Several factors can cause inflammation on the skin: allergies, irritants, harsh chemicals, or skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, or dermatitis. Mango butter helps soothe inflamed, red, or irritated skin through its emollient nature and its many nutrients like magnesium, beta-carotene, and vitamin C (per Herbal Dynamics Beauty). Its anti-inflammatory action also means it improves your barrier's protective function, keeping your skin healthy.

According to Flora's Angels, mango butter is antibacterial and soothing to skin inflamed due to microbes acting on the skin's surface. And if you have several wounds, scabs, or cracked skin on specific areas, WOW Skin Science adds that incorporating mango butter into your routine can help heal and repair the skin. It's also soothing for bug bites, razor burns, allergic skin reactions, and rashes (per Green Leaf Naturals).

It's lightweight, non-greasy, and excellent for dry or itchy skin — mango butter's our favorite skincare allrounder. And that's not all. While all skin types can use this butter due to its light texture and deep penetration into the skin, dry skin types and people with itchy or flaky skin might find mango butter even more appealing. This is because of the triglycerides and fatty acids present, which SkinKraft confirms soften and soothe the skin, preventing itchiness. Its lightweight nature also allows oily-skinned folks to use it without their skin feeling greasy or heavy.

Mango butter is non-comedogenic, allowing oily, normal, combination, and even sensitive skin types to indulge. And for an extra benefit, you can use it on your scalp too. Mango butter is an excellent scalp treatment as it moisturizes and softens the hair strands, giving you healthy, shiny hair (per Prose).

Mango butter is a fantastic moisturizer, has anti-aging properties, and can help with wound healing. But there are things you need to know before indulging. One of them is that allergic reactions to mango butter can occur, especially if you're allergic to mangoes as fruits. To tackle this, New Directions Aromatics advises you carry out a patch test on the inside of your elbow or wrist and wait at least 48 hours. If there's no reaction, you can apply your mango butter worry-free.

Again, mango butter is non-comedogenic, but if you have highly acne-prone or oily skin, it is advisable to seek your dermatologist's advice before applying this ingredient to your face (per Healthline). Our top "manglow" product picks include Kiehl's Buttermask for Lips which contains wild mango butter and boasts a rating of 4.1 stars at Ulta, and The Body Shop's Mango Body Butter, which retails at $8 for 1.69 ounces and $24 for 6.7 ounces of product.

Mangoes taste great and offer a ton of skincare benefits through their seeds. Indeed the king of fruit.