What is natural?

What is natural skin care?

Many of you have heard the term but may not have been clear about its exact definition. In addition, there are numerous skin care products on the market that claim to be natural in one form or another, but the term is so vague that many consumers remain confused.

What is natural? Natural is not a term that is actually regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to a New York Times magazine article (November 1, 2007), so it’s anyone’s guess what manufacturers term as “natural” and are putting in their products. As a consumer, your best defense is to read the label of whatever you are purchasing.

Neosoul.essentials was built on kitchen chemistry: we use ingredients that are readily available to the average consumer, either at a bricks and mortar store or via the Internet and for the most part can be mixed up in a kitchen – which is how our products are created! Most of our products are created from oils and butters normally used in foodstuffs, such as cocoa butter, shea butter (used for cooking in African countries such as Uganda), coconut oil, olive oil and the like. Check out our natural skin products!

We do use synthetic fragrance oils as well as 100% natural essential oils to scent our products. We also use FDA approved cosmetic colors in some of our products, but when you visit our website, you’ll see you have a choice between 100% natural and “nearly” all natural products.

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Virgin Coconut Oil

We love, love, love virgin coconut oil. Not only does it have the smell of fresh coconuts – a welcome escape from the dreary weather we have been having here lately – but it also is good for both the skin and the body.  Of course, we will be focusing on how good virgin coconut oil is for the skin.

First, what is it?.  Virgin coconut oil is what results from the pressing of the coconut meat.  Usually one things of virgin coconut oil coming from the Philippines, but the oil can come from Australia, India and other places around the globe. 

If you run a search for virgin coconut oil, you will find that seems to be touted as the miracle oil.  It helps you lose weight, cures infections, is an antioxidant, helps your heart, is antifungal, anti viral, etc. etc.  neosoul.essentials doesn’t make any claims to the nature of what it does to your body, inside or outside, we just report what works and has worked for us and our clients.

When applied to the skin, virgin coconut oil melts very quickly and sinks into the skin, creating a barrier between the skin and the elements.  As a natural antioxidant, it is said to prevent premature aging and skin sagging.  And as a massage/skin oil, it is said to nourish the skin and hair, preventing wrinkling and age spots. 

We here at neosoul.essentials use virgin coconut oil in our lotion bars, glycerin soap, megamix whip and our soon to come sugar scrub.  I often use the virgin coconut oil on my daughter’s hair – lends a wonderful shine – or as a quickie massage oil.  It smells wonderful and helps the skin.

Visit us at www.neosoulessentials.com.

Tags: shea butter, coconut oil, virgin coconut oil, natural, skin care, no preservatives

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Happy Thanksgiving

A happy holiday to all who are reading this blog right now.  I hope your holiday was enjoyable!

More information about natural skin care to come!

Tags: shea butter, cocoa butter, natural skin care, natural, olive oil, no preservativesPowered by Qumana

Happy Thanksgiving

A happy holiday to all who are reading this blog right now.  I hope your holiday was enjoyable!

More information about natural skin care to come!

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Olive Oil

To begin the discussion about olive oil, first we have to discuss polyphenols.  Polyphenols are a type of antioxidant that can help stop the aging process.   Olives are high in polyphenols compounds and thus may help to repair and heal skin.    We use extra virgin olive oil in our products  and while we do not claim that olive oil can cure or treat any skin disease or ailment, I can attest from personal and family usage that it does serve to soften the skin.  As I mentioned in a previous post, my daughter suffers from eczema and while my shea whip does not make the eczema go completely away, it certainly lessens her itching and softens the skin to a great extent.  I would certainly rather use a natural mix of edible butters and oils, especially olive oil, on the skin than steroids and cortisone.

There are many benefits to the usage of olive oil all over the body.  You can treat dry, ragged cuticles with some olive oil on a cotton swab and use olive oil to remove makeup.  You can also use olive oil in the bath – after soaking for five minutes, add a few tablespoons of olive oil – it will moisturize your skin while you soak.

Nearly all of our product use olive oil from our glycerin soaps to our megamix and shea whips.  Check us out at www.neosoulessentials.com and thanks for reading!

Tags: shea butter, olive oil, natural skin care, small business, cocoa butter, skin care, dry skin, eczema

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Shea Butter

Shea butter, the butter extracted from the shea nut, from, of course, the shea tree, comes in many different forms.  When I first discovered shea butter, about four years ago – I remember because I ordered it to use with my firstborn  - I purchased it online from some company or another.  I was fascinated with the fact that shea butter seemed to be able to do it all and was gentle enough to use on infants.  Well, imagine my surprise when I received my first order of shea butter and found out that it looked and smelled like yellow Play-Doh.  Of course, my first thought was, if shea butter was so great, then why is it so hard and so difficult to actually apply to the baby’s skin?  I scooped out a bit of shea butter and tried to use it, but it was just too hard to spread!!

Fast forward about two years and the arrival of my daughter.  As I described in the previous post, she developed eczema at the nine month mark and I was frantic.  It was bleeding and weepy and it just devastated me to see her beautiful skin destroyed!  Back to the computer and again, I threw “shea butter” into the search engine…and found a few bulleting boards talking about this stuff called whipped shea butter.  Well, a whole new world opened to me – I started whipping shea butter with avocado oil, with coconut oil, with evening primrose oil – and discovered that these concoctions, with the base of shea butter, actually helped my daughter’s (and the rest of my family’s) skin.

Shea butter’s benefits vary with the type of shea butter used.  Refined shea butter is pure white and sometimes grainy – that is when you smooth it on the skin, one feels little pellets or beads.  These are tiny bits of shea butter that need extra rubbing to melt into your skin.  Refined shea butter has many of the natural nutrients bleached out, thus resulting in the pure white color.  Refined shea, in my opinion, is used when the person wants to have the label appeal of shea butter in their product, but does not want to deal with the variations in color or smell of natural shea butter.

Now, as I write about smell, I can hear people thinking – how should shea butter smell?  Believe me; I have purchased shea butter that smelled like the bottom of an old ashtray.  The smell of cigarettes on this shea butter was so strong that even the best fragrance oil could not cover it!! Eventually through trial and error and by reading bulletin boards about who had the best shea butter, I learned to purchase only from vendors who had consistent quality.  The shea butter I use is unrefined and is through a fair trade vendor.  My shea butter is unrefined, is a creamy off white color, and has a very, very slight nutty odor – it is so faint that you’d have to put your nose practically in the container to smell it.  It’s great for making whipped shea butter as well as balms andr.

First of all, a little research. Shea butter comes from the shea nut, a tree found most commonly in West African, i.e. Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Ivory coast. These trees are located on the savannah in both the fields and the forests. According to abangakarite.com, shea butter can be used as a decongestant, cooking oil and a skin healing salve. Shea butter is high in oleic acid as well as vitamins A and E, which are very good for the skin.

In my own experience, shea butter has helped greatly with my daughter's eczema. I tried many commericial preparation, short of prescription medication, but my creations with shea butter, cocoa butter and virgin coconut oil helped her the most. In addition, I gave some whipped shea to my grandmother who claimed it helped lessen the pain of her arthritis. Shea butter is a mainstay in both my home and my products. I use my Megamix Whip whenever I see dry skin and I use it on my daughter twice a day, in the morning and the evening. The mixture's emoillent's keep her skin soft and supple, and no more scratching in the middle of the night!

neosoulessentials.com has natural shea butter products that will meet your needs. Visit us today.

Tags: shea butter, cocoa butter, whipped shea, dry skin, eczema, shea, natural

Canola Oil

In our increasingly health conscious society today, you most likely have read about the benefits of canola oil for your health. But have you discover the boon this oil may have for your skin? Certainly, you must think, an oil that I can find in my grocery store can’t have the benefits of those concoctions sold across cosmetic counters….but you would be wrong!

Canola oil has a high monounsaturated fatty acid content and contains Vitamin E, known as an antioxidant and skin conditioner. It penetrates the skin easily and does not leave a greasy film. It has also been suggested that canola oil may assist the skin in supplying the adequate lipids (fat) it needs to maintain its protective barrier.

Neosoul.essentials uses avocado, olive, canola and other oils to create products that are natural and beneficial to skin. Most of our ingredients are edible, believe it or not!

Why Natural?

Have you ever taken the time to sit down and read the back of that lotion bottle from the store? As I mentioned in a previous post, I struggled to find my daughter some releif from her eczema. After a bath, I applied a popular lotion formulated for children and was horrified when she started screaming that it burned her legs. I looked on the back, read the long list of ingredients and came to the words "sodium hydroxide" = lye - the same ingredient that is use to saponify soaps as well as in many hair relaxer applications. Now, to be fair, the lye appeared far down on the list of ingredients, indicating that perhaps only a small amount was used in the lotion, but why is lye in lotion anyway?

My products at www.neosoulessentials.com use no preservaties and very little in terms of synthetic (man-made) chemicals. All my ingredients are pretty much edible, such as shea butter, virgin coconut oil, canola oil and the like. I strive to use ingredients that I would feel safe using on my 18 month old, who, against his will, is a frequent tester of my products.

When it comes to skin care, why use chemicals that you can't prounonce on your skin? Try some good-smelling virgin coconut oil on those dry patches. How about some shea butter? Or my personal favorite, cocoa butter.

Next - How Natural Oils help your skin.

Welcome

Welcome to the blogger.com site for neosoul.essentials, llc. Neosoul.essentials was founded in 2006, after I had conducted much research and 'mixing' skin balms and salves for my daughter, who suffered from eczema (sometimes bleeding) on her poor little legs. When I first discovered that she had ezcema, I tried many things to give her relief, diet(nothing helped), over the counter ointments and even the dreaded Vaseline (which was actually recommended by my pediatrician). I chose instead to do my own research and look for natural ingredients that would actually help heal her skin, not mask the symptoms.

So, from this was born neosoul.essentials, my own little start up in the basement workshop businessess. I offer body butters, lip balm, solid lotions, massage oils and soap. And that's just the beginning. Interested? Of course you are! Check it out at www.neosoulessentials.com.