You know you love your work, when you have fun doing it and it doesn't seem like work at all, more like a hobbie. :) I have had so much fun making my own products, but above all, testing the finished results and journaling how they perform, and what results they have. I always had alot of fun testing the new products "the cosmetic company" I work for sent out to me as "top secret" and comming soon.

I've been testing the results of cocoa butter on stretch marks for a while now. Product wise, Mine vs. Theirs. A while back they came out with this really expensive stretch cream. Upon looking over the ingredients, it contains, in basics, the same ingredients as their alpha hydroxy wrinkle and line smoothing creams for your face, but with a touch of cocoa butter at the end of the product list. It raises the stretch marks a bit to look more even and smooth with the undamaged skin, but it realy doesn't have any perminant results. If I stopped using it, the stretch marks looked the same as they did before.

For years people have "believed" that cocoa butter helps to prevent stretch marks during pregnany and helps heal them after pregnancy.
Here is a cold hard fact that no one likes to hear and everyone everyone likes to pretend doesn't exsist in hopes for a miracle cure to get rid of stretch marks.
Once ya gottem, they aren't going away perminantly, however, you can help them fade, shrink and look better. If there were a miracle drug or surgery to make your skin look perfect the way it did before children and before weight gaine, NO ONE would have stretch marks anymore.

I know this bugs me beyond words. Alot of marketing is based on the emotions of people who suffer from specific problemed skin. I am not saying their aren't good products, because they are, I use alot of them. But the fact remains, no matter how much money you spend and how much you try, we will get lines and wrinkles from getting older and we will always have stretch marks and scars from life events. However, we can take care of them they can fade!

This is my experience from what I have seen so far with my own stretch marks and scars. "Their product plumped and raised the scars to appear smoother , but after I stopped the application each day , two or three times a day like suggested, the scaring and stretch marks looked the same as to prior use.

Now, a stretch mark is caused from the skin stretching to the point that it cannot stretch any further and the elasticity breaks down. That part of the skin has seperated and will not mend back together. SO, to me, the object of creating a cream or some sort of product to help stretch marks, would have to be a repairing cream that helped regenerate and mend together the broken elacticity of the skin. Whether it can be done or not, is not the question. Maybe over time and more research such a miracle cream can be found. Maybe I will be the one to discover it, maybe i won't, but the question for me is, does cocoa butter really help stretch marks?

I make my own cocoa butter creams, and I use it on my stomach every day. I havent been putting it on the stretch marks I have my legs, so I can see if there is actually a differance.

After one week of using pure emulsified cocoa butter, I have definately seen a differance. I really need to take some pictures to post, but I hate my stretch marks and that is going to take alot of courage. LOL!!!
So after a week of applying my straight cocoabutter cream, has olive oil too, I have noticed they do look alot better. they look lighter, and as if they have faded. They look thinner and not swollen and puffed up to meet the rest of my skin like "their" cream made them look. when I run my hand over my stomach, it feels smoother. I wonder, if prolonged use of straight cocoa butter will eventually heal them to the point that they are almost completely gone.

For the first time in ten years, my stretch marks are looking great!!! I don't know tht they will ever disappear, but the cocoa butter does make them look alot better and it gives me hope that more experimenting with natural ingredients that I may eventually be able to repare by regeneration, the damaged skin. even if it's only by fading and skrinking. A smaller stretch mark is better than a larger one, right?

I don't know that using pure cocoa butter and vitamin e will remove stretch marks with continued use, but it does seem to help.