About Us
Egyptian Botanicals uses medicinal botanicals for therapeutic benefit.
As a social worker Rita Mobarak learned that self-care is the strongest driver of mental and physical well-being and that building resilience toward life's inevitable stressors requires mindful self-care.
Growing up Rita experienced the therapeutic magic of botanicals’ healing power firsthand.
Her late Egyptian father proudly shared with her countless Egyptian natural healing remedies. Rita's father would suggest that she put olive oil in her hair overnight when her hair was dry, sweet almond oil on her eczema and to chew cloves when she had a toothache.
Rita's father would boil ginger-zanjabil-and honey for Rita when she was sick explaining how important these natural ingredients were for strengthening the body's immune system.
He brushed his teeth with baking soda telling her how the ancient Egyptians chewed natron, a baking soda salt mixture harvested from the dry lake beds in the Nile Delta region, as a tooth cleanser and mouthwash.
He used the ancient healing practice of cupping to activate the immune system and the body’s natural self-healing powers.
He regularly used a loofah for dry brushing his skin, recounting how loofahs are natural sponges harvested from the fruits of the loofah plants around the Nile Delta farms in Egypt.
When they visited Egypt Rita’s father would give her wood licorice root sticks to chew on explaining how they were better than toothpaste for gingivitis.
In Egypt he introduced her to the hibiscus flower and tea made from its leaves-karkade-explaining hibiscus' many health and beauty benefits.
Her father enthusiastically inhaled plant extracts native to Egypt such as jasmine, cedarwood, rose, frankincense and lotus explaining how the olfactory route of inhalation affected the emotional centre of the brain and could decrease stress.
Given her experience with breast cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, double mastectomy surgeries and semi-retirement a few years ago Rita reacquainted herself with the “dirty dozen” in cosmetics.
The David Suzuki Research Foundation indicates that "dirty dozen" chemicals are found in 80% of the most common cosmetic products and that one in eight of the 82,000 ingredients used in personal care products are toxic industrial chemicals, including carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, and hormone disruptors.
Inspired by the wisdom of the country of her birth as well as a long standing desire to formulate all natural products, using bio-active plant substances, to decrease the body’s stress hormones and strengthen its immune system, Rita decided to disrupt the billion dollar cosmetic industry in a very small way.
