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New Scents for Mother's Day!

Neosoul.essentials Launches Three New Scents for Mother’s Day
Scotch Plains, NJ, April 28, 2008- neosoul.essentials, llc a natural bath and body company based in central New Jersey has launched three new scents for summer. Intended to embody the spirit of hot summer weather and vacations, the scents are first to be added to the line in over a year.

The three new fragrances: mango surprise, island passion and tropical glow are available online at www.neosoulessentials.com. The company offers a variety of natural body products such as body oil mists and whipped body butters. All items are available in a variety of fragrances and are suitable for all members of the family. “I love summer and these fragrances really remind me of the beach or those fruit smoothies that are so popular when the weather gets warm,” says Christine Lowe Woolard, owner and chief “mixtress” of neosoul.essentials. “These new fragrances are becoming so popular among my customers and I have had many requests for Mother’s Day baskets.”

For additional information on these new fragrances, or natural bath and body products, contact Christine Lowe Woolard at Christine@neosoulessentials.com or visit www.neosoulessentials.com. Samples are available at a minimal cost and are shipped free.

http://www.prlog.org/10067283-neosoul-essentials-launches-three-new-scents-for-summer.html

Kpangnan Butter "Golden Shea Butter"

Kpangnan butter, pronounced “pain-ya”, is also called golden shea butter or African nut butter. It is obtained from the African nut tree, which is found in the forests of West Africa. It is a golden yellow color, which is the reason why some call it “golden shea butter”. It is not, however, related to shea butter. Kpangnan butter is a soft, powdery type nut butter that melts into the skin and gives it a dry, silky feeling.

According to cyberlipid.org, this butter contains a high proportion of stigmasterol, a plant sterol. In skin application, this sterol may have anti-inflammatory effects and may assist in healing skin irritations such as eczema and severely dry skin.

Kpangnan is a lovely, powdery butter that plays well with other oils and makes a wonderfully soothing balm for the skin. We use it in our megamix shea butter whip and some of our clients have found it to naturally soothe their dry skin without leaving behind a greasy after-feel.

Disclaimer: The information contained on this website is not meant as a substitute for advice from a medical professional. We are only commenting on our own experiences and urge you to seek medical advice where applicable.

Sources:
Cyberlipid.org
http://www.znaturforsch.com/ac/v54c/54c0937.pdf
http://www.agbangakarite.com/newsletters/february2005.htm

Tags: shea butter, golden shea butter, kpangnan butter, eczema, dry skin, natural skin products

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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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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

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.