The Skinny on Skin

One of the biggest misconceptions circulating on the Internet today is that our skin is a giant sponge, absorbing everything we put on it. This is so prevalent, that many people are more concerned about what they put on their body than they are about what they put in it. Last summer we sold our products at a local community market, and I was chuckling at the fact that customers were grilling me over every ingredient in my lotions, but purchased multiple canned and baked goods without inquiring as to the whether they contained trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc.

The reality is that our skin is designed to protect our bodies from the countless things that bombard it on a daily basis (heat, cold, dirt, pollution, bacteria, sun, wind), and keep things out of our bloodstream, while our digestive system is designed to process everything we eat into energy that is relayed directly into the bloodstream.

“Because 60% of what we put on our skin is absorbed into our bloodstream. That is why transdermal patches for medicines (nicotine, morphine, birth control, etc.) are so effective.”

I pulled this quote from a blog, which I will leave as anonymous as there are so many I could have chosen, and I’m not here to point fingers at inaccuracies or errors by another blogger. The reality is that it takes a lot of work to get medicine into the bloodstream, which may include potent penetration enhancer, application of electrical currents, or even patches containing micro needles, to push the drug through all the layers of the skin to the bloodstream. It also requires that it be covered to prevent evaporation, and the patch must be held securely against the body for a prolonged period of time, ranging from several hours to days. Even with these special measures, when a transdermal patch is removed, a high percentage of the drug that was on the patch initially remains on the patch.  A study done using the narcotic Fentanyl showed that after 3 days of continuous wear, up to 84% of the original dosage remained on the patch, requiring special disposal methods to prevent potential narcotic abuse.

Without the dermal patch and penetration enhancers, the absorption rate drops to around 4%.

This does not mean that we should stop caring about what we put on our skin, but we should definitely start thinking of it more as a Kevlar vest, which requires some effort to get through, rather than as a giant sponge….

How does this apply to products such as preservatives? The maximum recommended usage rate for preservatives in cosmetics is between .5% and 1%. If you purchase an 8 oz bottle of body lotion, then the maximum amount of preservative in the bottle is .08 oz. As no more than 4% of what we apply to our skin makes it through the dermal barrier, that means no more than .0032 oz of preservative makes it through the skin, with even less than that making it through into the bloodstream…..that’s less than 1/300th of an ounce of preservative if you use the entire bottle of lotion.

Compare that to the risk of contamination from preservative free lotions. I can hear the wheels turning….if so little of our lotion penetrates the skin and moves into our bloodstream, then the risk from using a preservative free lotion must be equally low, right? Yes and no. A contaminated lotion will penetrate our skin just as poorly as a preserved lotion, but there are two factors to consider: a small amount of preservative will not cause problems for a system that is designed to flush out what the body doesn’t need….preservatives are regarded by the body as a foreign substance. Bacteria, such as eColi, staphylococcus, and salmonella, however, are living organisms which immediately latch on to healthy cells and begin to multiply, and only a small amount is required to start the potentially deadly ball rolling.

The other wild card that we need to consider is that those absorption rates apply only to healthy skin. If the skin is damaged by a cut or has been compromised by illness, sunburn, or even dehydration, penetration will occur at a higher rate. This isn’t of too great a concern when we are speaking of the ingredients in a properly made lotion, but bacteria will take full advantage of any small chink in the body’s armour.

So, if you have a friend or relative who is chronically ill, suffers from eczema, or is going through chemotherapy, stay away from preservative free lotions or body butters. If you are still anti-preservative, a better choice would be an anhydrous (contains no water) product such as a whipped body butter. No water = no environment for bacteria and mold to grow.

Okay, this post is definitely approaching “run on” territory, so I’m going to leave the issue of the absorption of essential oils through the skin for tomorrow!

Further Reading:

http://personalcaretruth.com/2011/01/the-impermeable-facts-of-skin-penetration-and-absorption/
http://www.americannursetoday.com/keep-consumer-hand-lotions-at-home/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8845555

Shameless Self-Promotion

After a much needed redesign, and a switch to an improved shopping cart, BumbleBee Lane SoapWorks new website is up and running.

Visit it us at http://www.bumblebeelane.ca

Handmade Soap is Hard on Your Skin

No, actually it isn’t. I’m going to immediately qualify that statement…A well made bar of handmade soap is not harsh.

This summer we have been supporting a new local Community Market by selling our products there. It has been an extremely valuable experience, as it has allowed me to meet our customers face to face, which doesn’t happen very often when you only do online and wholesale orders.

Aside from hearing what people would like to see in our lineup, the most valuable thing for me has been hearing what their concerns are. The most prevalent concerning handmade soap is the belief that it is harsh and hard on your skin. First I’m going to talk about why so many people believe this, then we’ll look at why this belief is incorrect.

When most people are asked about handmade soap, they think about the lye soap that our grandmothers (or great grandmothers) made at home. The ingredients were rendered fat from the cows or pigs that they butchered for food, and lye made from wood ashes produced by the wood stoves used to heat their homes.

The process was simple: throw wood ash into a pot, fill it up with rainwater, let it soak until an egg dropped into the water floats with about 1/4 of its surface above the water. Strain the ashes out and use the remaining solution to make soap.

The difficulty in making soap with homemade lye is that there was no way to measure the strength of the lye. Let’s do a quick and easy review of basic high school chemistry….I promise it will be quick, hang in there! This is a molecule of water:

 

Each hydrogen atom has the ability to attract and hold two oxygen atoms, giving water the chemical formula of H2O.

In this same fashion, when we make soap, the individual atoms of fatty acids that make up the vegetable oils pair off with the sodium (NA), oxygen (O), and hydrogen (H) molecules that form a molecule of lye (NAOH), forming two new molecules, soap and glycerin. If we used olive oil, we would have roughly 1 molecule of glycerin for every 3 molecules of sodium oleate (olive oil soap).

Still with me? Back to our grandmother making soap. With no way of measuring how strong the lye was, ie how many molecules of lye were in the lye and water solution, there was no way to measure how much animal fat she would need to add to pair off with, thereby neutralizing or consuming, each molecule of the lye. More often than not, the end product contained free molecules of lye within it. Lye is a caustic substance, so this active lye would sting and burn the skin when the soap was used.

So it wasn’t the handmade soap that was harsh, it was the unneutralized lye suspended within the bar of soap that caused the problems.

Fast forward to now: lye is commercially produced by passing an electrical current through either sodium chloride (salt) to produce sodium hydroxide, or through potassium chloride (potash) to produce potassium hydroxide. The end product is 100% pure lye (plus some other substances that aren’t used in soapmaking), which allows us to calculate precisely how much of any individual vegetable oil or animal fat is required to consume one molecule of lye. Each oil has a different chemical composition, so the amount of lye required to saponify (change to soap) one gram of olive oil is different than the amount required for one gram of coconut oil.

Modern soap makers use special lye calculators to create our recipes. Each type of vegetable oil contributes different qualities to a bar of soap, and we spend a great deal of time coming up with the perfect blend. Once we have that blend perfected, the lye calculator will tell us exactly how much lye and water we need to add to our batch of oils to convert every molecule of oil to soap and glycerin, and leave no lye in the finished product.

However, we don’t stop there! We add extra oils to each batch. This is called ‘superfatting’. Superfatting our soap does two things: it ensures that we never have any lye left in our soap, even if our scale is out of balance resulting in small discrepancies in the amounts measured, and it leaves a small amount of unsaponified oils in the finished product, which leaves your skin feeling lightly moisturized after your shower.

So that is why modern handmade soap is not harsh. This is not your grandmother’s soap!

If you purchase a bar of handmade soap that irritates your skin, there are three possible explanations:

1) You are allergic to one of the ingredients;

2) The Soapmaker has produced a lye heavy soap. Natural and handmade products are a growing industry, and when there is money to be made, you can be sure there will be people who try to cut corners to maximize their profit. Rushing to get product ready for sale can result in errors. Sometimes beginners will run out of an oil in their recipe, and replace it with another without running it through a lye calculator thinking that ‘it’s just a small amount, it won’t make a difference’ ;

3) You may have extremely sensitive skin. While most people with skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, rosacea etc can use a fragrance free handmade soap, there are some who cannot. Try a bar of authentic Castile soap made with 100% olive oil, which is the gentlest soap,and if that doesn’t work you should probably stick with synthetic cleansers such as Cetaphil.

One final comment on lye: there are two types of lye, potassium hydroxide, which our grandmothers made, is now used to make liquid soap, sodium hydroxide is used to make bar soap, and a blend of the two are used to make cream soaps and most shaving soaps.

Dr. Oz, what have you done?

I feel a wee bit of a rant coming on, but I’ll try to keep it under control 🙂

This week my inbox has been inundated with emails from ‘Dr.Oz-News’ and DrOz-Press Release’ among others. This week they are touting the weight loss benefits of green coffee beans, last week it was raspberry ketones.

Now if you bother to read the email you will notice that it does not come from Dr. Oz, but from some random company looking to get rich quick off of desperate people by tying their product to Dr. Oz’ popularity and reputation. I’ve heard that Dr. Oz has lawyers working overtime trying to prevent this, but the problem is that they are using his name because he did feature these products on his TV show.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Dr. Oz as much as the next person, and I think he has brought a lot of really useful information to light, both on his show and during his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, he is a cardiologist, not an expert on all things relating to health and medicine. When he began a daily talk show, he entered the ranks of those vying for the almighty ratings, and his credibility is suffering because of it.

I stopped watching The Dr. Oz show because every week there was another “Top 5” episode. The Top 5 Cancer Fighting Foods, Top 5 Weight Loss Supplements, Top 5 Belly Busters…and on and on. Now Dr. Oz, and his lawyers can preface these shows with as many disclaimers they like about him not personally recommending them, or claims have not been scientifically proven, etc. The minute he gave these people a forum to showcase their foods, juices, teas, pills etc, he was seen as promoting them, and he has no business trying to disassociate himself from them once he has moved on to the next hot ratings winner. Not to mention, as a doctor, he has no business featuring unproven supplements, foods or drinks at all. Being a doctor brings with it a much higher degree of responsibility than the average person is held accountable to, because the average person will believe everything a doctor tells them.

Seriously, if you watch Dr. Oz daily and incorporated all of these things into your daily life you would be so far from eating a healthy balanced diet….Does he not understand that there are people who are so desperate they will incorporate every single one of his suggestions into their lives? What about interactions between these disparate items?

Contrast the snake oil he promotes on the show with what he actually promotes as being responsible for his health and wellbeing in his March 2013 article in Men’s Health. Not a green coffee bean or raspberry ketone in sight! In fact, he only mentions 3 things to add to your diet: green tea, nuts, and a Vitamin D supplement.

This appears to be a case of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’, and not in a good way….

http://www.menshealth.com/health/dr-ozs-25-greatest-health-tips

What’s the deal with Castile? Buyer beware!

These days it seems like you can’t turn around without tripping over someone claiming to sell “pure Castile soap”. What exactly is Castile soap, and why is it such a big deal?

The origins of Castile soap can be traced back to the Eastern Mediterranean regions, where soapmakers produced a bar of soap known as Aleppo soap from olive oil, lye, and laurel oil. Although it cannot be proven, it is commonly believed that the Crusaders brought Aleppo soap back to Europe with them in the 11th century, where manufacturing of the soap spread throughout the Mediterranean. Since laurel oil was difficult to come by, it was dropped from the recipe, and the soap made from 100% olive oil and lye became known as Castile soap in Spain, and Marseille soap in France. Historically, the use of the names Castile and Marseille soap were restricted to those soaps manufactured in and around those areas, using olive oil produced in the region.

These laws have since been changed, allowing Castile and Marseille soap to be made from oils other than olive, and apparently, unbeknownst to me, the term ‘100% Castile soap’ is now used by many people to identify a soap made entirely from vegetable oils, containing no animal fats or synthetic surfactants. Who knew?

This is where the confusion happens. Authentic Castile soap made from olive oil is revered for its extreme gentleness, and is recommended for use on children and anyone with sensitive skin.

Most consumers who are aware of Castile soap believe that it is a 100% olive oil soap, and that is what they want to buy. However, finding that elusive 100% olive oil soap can be as difficult as finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

One of the best sellers is Dr. Bronners 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure Castile Soap – Not sure what the deal is with the 18-in-1, but this product claims to be Pure Castile Soap. How many people actually stop to read the ingredients when faced with a label that says ‘Pure Castile Soap’?

Ingredients: Water, Organic Coconut Oil*, Potassium Hydroxide**, Organic Olive Oil*, Mentha Arvensis*, Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil*, Citric Acid, Tocopherol

Dr. Bronner is not trying to hide anything, their ingredients are clearly listed, and they provide the following explanation:

“In earlier centuries, an all-vegetable-based soap was made in the Castile region of Spain from local olive oil. By the turn of this century, “Castile” had come to mean any vegetable oil-based soap, as distinct from animal (tallow) fat-based soap. “Pure-Castile” is now also your guarantee that what you are using is a genuinely ecological and simple soap – not a complex blend of detergents with a higher ecological impact due to the waste stream created during manufacturing and the detergents’ slower biodegradability. Unfortunately, many synthetic detergent blends are deceptively labeled as “Liquid Soap” despite the fact that they contain absolutely no real soap whatsoever.”

Dr. Bronner’s seems like a perfectly nice soap, although potentially a bit drying with coconut oil being the first on the list, and an ecologically sound choice, but not what many people are looking for when they set out to purchase Castile Soap.

So, as I keep stressing (are you sick of hearing it yet?) read the labels and ask questions.

Personally, I’m going to be changing our labels from ‘100% Pure Castile Soap’ to ‘Authentic Castile Soap – Made with 100% Olive Oil.

What does certified organic really mean?

I have been doing a lot of reading lately about this subject, as I try to determine whether BumbleBee Lane SoapWorks should go through the process to be certified as an organic manufacturer, and this is what I’ve discovered along the way.

1) There is no single organization which certifies cosmetics as organic. While a company can apply to the USDA, (or their government body) for certification, the USDA does not control the certification process in general, and any company can set themselves up as a certification “body”. Since all of the requirements for organic certification exist officially only for food, each organization is free to adopt their own definition or interpretation of these requirements as they apply to cosmetics.

So, the first thing to consider when you’re assessing a certified organic product is who is doing the certifying. Look for a reputable company that has the resources required to adequately audit the manufacturing processes of the applicants, and read their specific requirements. Any company that has gone through the certification process should be happy to provide you with this information.

2) The USDA has identified three categories of labeling organic products, which most certification bodies adhere to. It is important to note that the only place where these are legally binding is in food production. At this point, the organic cosmetics industry is self-regulating, which means a company can market its products as organic with no certification in place.

100% Organic: Made with 100% organic ingredients

Organic: Made with at least 95% organic ingredients

Made With Organic Ingredients: Made with a minimum of 70% organic ingredients with strict restrictions on the remaining 30% including no GMOs (genetically modified organisms)

Products with less than 70% organic ingredients may list organically produced ingredients on the side panel of the package, but may not make any organic claims on the front of the package.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? Not so much….

Where it gets tricky, and what many people don’t realize is that a 100% organic certification does not mean that the food has never been subjected to non-organic treatments, or that the cosmetic contains nothing but organic ingredients. Doesn’t even mean that the food or cosmetic contains no synthetic ingredients. Say what?

Every organic certification out there allows the producer/manufacturer leeway on certain ingredients or processes, if they are deemed to be necessary to the production of the item, and an organic alternative is not available. If you want to check out the full list of what is and is not allowed in organic products, you can find that here. Scroll down to Subsection G: Administration. For cosmetic purposes, we need to look at § 205.605 Nonagricultural (nonorganic) substances allowed as ingredients in or on processed products labeled as “organic” or “made with organic (specified ingredients or food group(s)).”

This is a list of all of the synthetic ingredients that are allowed to be in a product and still be classified as 100% organic according to the USDA. Of particular note is sodium hydroxide, more commonly known as lye. As I keep harping on, no lye=no soap. When I first started researching the subject, I couldn’t understand how soap could ever be certified as 100% organic. Even though there is no lye left in a properly made bar of soap, it was definitely a required ingredient. This list is the answer. So to be clear, 100 % organic means 100% organic plus anything on the list of allowed exemptions

So what does this mean? It means that 100% organic products may not be 100% natural. This was a shocker to me, especially when it comes to food. I thought the first criteria would be that the product was all natural, and that the organic label was an increased level of “goodness”!

So when you are bopping your way around the Internet looking for natural cosmetics, keep these things in mind.

Here is a ‘cheat sheet’ to use in evaluating claims you may find on cosmetic products:

a) Soap – can be “100% organic”, can never be “100% natural” or “all natural”

b) Emulsified lotions and creams (water as an ingredient) – can be “100% organic”, “100% natural” or “all natural” . CAUTION: this designation means they are not using a preservative, or they are relying on a form of natural preservative, or they are mislabeling their product. (See below)

c) Whipped butters and scrubs, balms, salves (no water included) – can be “100% organic”, “100% natural” or “all natural – these require no preservative as there is no water in them to provide an environment for yeast, mold, and bacteria to grow. However, many formulators, including myself, will add preservative to a product such as a scrub that is designed to be used in and around the bathroom, due to the high likelihood that you are going to accidentally splash or drip water into the container while using it. A tiny amount of water is all it takes to make the nasties happy!

A word on preservatives: To the best of my knowledge, there are no natural preservatives which have been proven to be effective in preserving a product for any significant length of time, so please be cautious. Do not expect that you will be able to identify when a product has “gone bad”. Yeast, mold and bacteria can multiply and thrive in your lotion with no visible signs. Do not expect to be able to treat an “all natural” product the same way you treat one with a synthetic preservative. A product made without preservatives may have a shelf life of up to 6 months IF IT IS NEVER OPENED, assuming that they used fresh ingredients. Ask the seller when it was manufactured. Once it has been opened, refrigerate it and toss it after a month. Don’t be deceived by the fact that it still “looks fine”! Take a look at it under a microscope and it could be teeming with life, and unfriendly life at that, such as staph, eColi or botulism….things that can make you very sick, or could kill someone with a weakened immune system. It is just not worth the risk.

Keep all of this in mind when you’re comparing products, and don’t assume a statement is accurate just because its coming from a name brand. I was shocked just this morning when I dropped by the Burts Bees website and found that they are marketing their soap as 100% natural! I guess they found some magical, natural lye to make their soap with, or they are basing the statement on the fact that there is no chemically identifiable lye left in the finished bar. That’s like saying there is no sugar or flour in a cake because you can’t see it! Nonsense….

As always, keep asking questions…..

Don’t believe everything you read (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this post, which was published yesterday, I raised the subject of the misinformation which is spread daily on the Internet, as well as in magazines and advertisements, and mentioned two of what I consider to be the biggest offenders. They are probably not significantly worse than many others out there, but because they have been so widely quoted, they are now regarded by many people as ‘authorities’ on the subjects of what is good and bad for you.

The first of these is Skin Deep, which is a cosmetics database run by the Environmental Working Group, which lists 66,000 ingredients and assigns a rating for each between 0 and 10, with a lower score being better than a high one. This sounds great on the surface, but the problem is in how they assign their scores, which has no basis in logical assessment, and is also completely inconsistent.

Their rankings are based on a dual rating system which comprises a Hazard (Concern) Rating and a Data Availability Rating. I’m going to link to a couple of posts that explain things far better than I could ever hope to, but the problems that I see are as follows:

They are using a Hazard rating, but not a Risk rating. For example, if there is a pothole on your street corner, that represents a hazard, which could seriously injure you. However, if you always drive past that corner and never walk, then your actual risk of stepping in that pothole is zero, so it doesn’t really present much of a hazard. The Skin Deep database takes into account every possible hazard, but never takes the actual ‘real life’ risk into account in their assessment.

However, the thing that really worries me is their Data Availabilty Rating. Under each score, you will see a notation as to the amount of data compiled on the ingredient, such as Poor, Fair, or Limited. The one that really causes the problem is None. As an example, search ‘paraben’ in the database, and you will find two pages of results, most with rankings between 4 and 7 based on Fair to Limited Data. Then you will see 9 parabens listed with rankings between 0 and 2, based on Data:None. Think about this for a minute….they are assigning a safety rating to this ingredient based on NO INFORMATION! They might just as well pull numbers out of a hat! To be clear, ratings between 0 and 2 are ‘green’ ratings, which means that Skin Deep has assessed them as safe for you and your family to use, but in many cases, they have made this assessment based on nothing.

If you are stating that it is your “mission….to use information to protect human health”, then you have no business assigning a favourable rating to an ingredient you know nothing about. It should either be excluded, or be assigned a big red 10, and a comment to use at your own risk because there is not enough known about the ingredient.

The danger is that Skin Deep has become so well known as the people’s watchdog, that some companies are now checking the list of ingredients and making choices for their products from those that have been given favourable ratings, just to insure a thumbs up from Skin Deep. That would be fantastic, if all of those favourable ratings were based on actual data, but in choosing an ingredient with a favourable rating based on NO data, they could very well be choosing the next thalidomide.

There have been many eloquent posts on the pitfalls of Skin Deep and the EWG. Two particularly good ones are Robert Tisserand’s post on the flaws in their assessments of essential oils, which you can find here. I’ll warn you, this is a lengthy article, and he doesn’t get to Skin Deep until about two thirds of the way through, but the article is an excellent analysis of the confusion surrounding fragrance in cosmetics, and well worth the read.

The second article is done by Personal Care, and you can find it here.

Do yourself a favour, Google EWG, and don’t stop with the first couple of hits. In order to get past all of the glowing endorsements and see the other side of the story, search “Environmental Working Group + criticism”, and sit down for a read.

Okay, moving on to Livestrong. Like many of you, I have occasionally seen an article from Livestrong pop up in my daily wanderings online and not given too much thought or credence to their musings, until last week a post on Robert Tisserand’s Facebook page caught my eye. He referred to a 2011 article as “mostly nonsense”, which prompted me to do a little exploring on his website, where I found this blog post on Essential Oils and Eye Safety, which he was inspired to write after another article on Livestrong caught his eye. Pretty scary stuff. If this kind of misinformation and unsafe advice is being put out on essential oils, why would I think it would be any different for sunscreens, or vitamins?

The problem for me with Livestrong is that they are gathering and disseminating information to fill space for their subscribers, and to catch the attention of new readers. This puts them in the same category as a newspaper or magazine, needing to fill their pages with content to attract readers which attracts advertisers. The question is: how much fact checking is being done when new articles must be pumped out daily to keep the site fresh and active? So for me, if EWG has a big, red flashing light attached to it, Livestrong has a big yellow caution light…just because it is associated with a foundation that provides support for people fighting cancer, does not mean that it can be relied on for accurate information.

I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but my mantra when it comes to the information, or more accurately, data that I am flooded with every day on the Internet, in magazines, on TV, even on billboards, is ‘Question Everything’. It’s easier to let someone else do the legwork for you, but it’s you and your family that are affected by what you put in and on your body. Take responsibility.

Okay, it’s not fair for me to give you a list of places you shouldn’t go to for information without giving you some alternatives, so here are two sites to take a look at. NOTE: Just because I am recommending these sites, does not mean you should accept everything on these sites as gospel. The same rules apply….question everything!

Robert Tisserand – the “godfather” of aromatherapy in North America, a valuable site for anything to do with essential oils

Personal Care, Information Based on Scientific Fact – this site has just been recommended to me. What I like about it at first glance is that the articles are submitted by a panel of independent experts, and their conclusions appear to be based on concrete data, not sensationalism and scaremongering. Check back in the future for my comments, once I’ve had a chance to check it out more thoroughly.

I also really enjoy anything that Dr. Joe Schwarcz writes about. Dr. Schwarcz is a PhD in chemistry, is a Professor at McGill University in Montreal, and has a very low tolerance for what he calls “quackery” and misinformation. A very bright, articulate man who writes with passion and humor.

Ok, I’ve bored you enough for today! Go forth and question!

PS: If you like the cute little picture at the top of my post, I found this at Robin’s Edge, where you can find lots of helpful info on marketing with social media among other interesting stuff. Check her out!

Don’t believe everything you read (Part 1)

Women’s Health magazine posted this little tidbit of “information” on page 50 of their July/August issue, and it has generated a lot of comments in the handcrafted soap industry.

Lets break it down, shall we?

“Bar soaps are more drying than liquid because the chemical sodium hydroxide is required to create the cleansing system.”

This is a quote from a chemist, who should definitely know better. Leaving aside for the moment the idea that bar soaps are drying, liquid soaps are made using the synthetic chemical potassium hydroxide. Both sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are commonly known as lye. Bar soaps are not more drying than liquids.

“The upside is that most of today’s bars contain synthetic detergents (they’re easier to manipulate than natural ones which can be unpredictable), making them more skin-softening than they used to be.”

Today’s commercial bars contain synthetic detergents (syndets) because they are cheaper, resulting in higher profits for the manufacturer, and because they produce massive amounts of lather and less residue, not because they are easier to manipulate, or better for your skin! You can read more about synthetic detergents in my earlier post, What is Natural, Part 1.

As far as their “skin-softening” abilities, the only way that you can actually generate softer skin is by eating healthy foods, drinking lots of water, exercising, and using a sunscreen daily. There is no beauty bar, soap, lotion, cream or expensive serum that can give you softer skin. Soap is designed to cleanse your skin by removing dirt and dead cells, which may make your skin look softer. Lotions and creams make your skin feel softer, but the results are temporary, which is why you have to keep reapplying.

A carefully crafted and cured bar of handmade soap is usually “superfatted” which means that the soapmaker has included more oils in the soap than is required to fully neutralize all of the lye, leaving no active lye in the soap. These extra oils are then available to leave a light occlusive barrier on your skin to shield it from the elements. This also helps your skin to look and feel softer. Also, real soap does not strip your skin of its own natural oils. Synthetic detergents are also known as degreasers, and are designed to clean very well.

Some syndets will advertise that they have added moisturizing cream or glycerine, which supposedly gives you softer skin. If you look at the ingredients you will not find any exotic ingredients…..moisturizing creams are made by emulsifying oils and waters, the same oils that are already in handmade soaps. Syndet bars need to add them.

Real handmade soap does not need to add glycerine. Glycerine is a by product of the chemical reaction that makes soap (saponification), and we leave the glycerine where it belongs, in our soap. Commercial manufacturers remove the glycerine and sell it separately to manufacturers of glycerine soaps, thereby increasing their profits.

While we’re on the subject, lets take a look at the Dove Truth Files campaign that was seen everywhere last year, and which claimed that Dove was gentler than other products. They placed cute little pink paper dolls on a Dove bar, and on their competitors, a variety of synthetic bars, liquid cleansers and body washes. In their commercial, the paper on their bar remained intact, while the others disintegrated, supposedly proving how harsh the other products were. The website http://www.dovetruthfiles.com, and the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/dovetruthfiles are no longer active, but according to what I’ve read, they did not try this comparison with handmade soap, only with other syndets. Here is a picture from one of their PR events, and not a single bar of handmade soap in sight. What a surprise.

Okay, back to business…

“Look for formulas that contain hydrating oils, such as sunflower seed oil and olive oil. Try Kiss My Face Olive Oil Bar Soaps.”

Now this is where I get really steamed! They start off their comments by saying to avoid bar soaps because they contain sodium hydroxide, then finish by recommending that you go ahead and buy a particular brand of bar soap, leaving the impression that this bar soap is better because it does not contain lye! WRONG!

Kiss My Face, like every other bar or liquid soap out there, is made with lye.

Bottom line is this. Consumers need to be aware that every manufacturer, whether they are a large commercial operation or a small handcrafted soapmaker, is ultimately trying to get you to open up your wallet and buy something, and many of them will go to outrageous lengths to do so. Every magazine is trying to fill their pages with content to make you buy the issue. You must educate yourself. Just because you read something on the Internet or in a major magazine, it doesn’t make it true. Don’t believe something just because its a major company giving you the information, or because its featured in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign.

Also, keep in mind that any fool can write a blog. Don’t believe everything you read. Many bloggers will simply regurgitate something they read on someone else’s blog, without doing any independent research. This is how misinformation gets distributed so thoroughly that eventually people start believing that it is definitive and proven.

Be skeptical. Ask questions.

(Unfortunately, Women’s Health is not the only one guilty of repeating misinformation. Two other websites that drive me crazy are Skin Deep, a database administered by the Environmental Working Group, and Livestrong. However, this post is already long enough, and your brain is probably full, so I will take a look at these organizations tomorrow in Part 2.)

The difference between men and women…..

….in soap, that is!

You could write an encyclopedia on how different men and women are, but recently I have seen some interesting discussions on how differently we look at soap and other skincare products.

Most women love to slather creamy, luscious goodness on their skin. Just look at the buzzwords in commercials for your favorite products….creamy, moisturizing, hydrating, emollient…you get the picture. I love getting out of the shower after using one of my luscious all natural salt or sugar scrubs and feeling the softly moisturized skin it left behind. My soaps are also generously super fatted to leave that same creamy feeling behind, and are full of yummy cocoa butter and shea butter. Love it….

Men? Not so, much….

I remember the first time I gave my business partner a bar of my soap to try. After a few days,, I asked him what he thought, and he complained that it left a film of something on his skin. I explained that it was not so much that it was leaving something behind, but that it was not over cleaning his skin, thereby stripping away the natural oils that protect the skin as commercial cleansing bars do. He got used to it, but still complains once and awhile.

Men don’t like lotions and potions and creams. They want to feel clean and fresh with nothing left behind.

So how to formulate a bar for men, that will give him the gentle cleaning of handmade soap without making him feel like he needs another shower? One solution I’ve found is adding kaolin clay to my recipe, either the white China clay, or French green (stay away from pink or rose, or you’ll defeat your purpose!). The clay seems to counter the superfatting and leaves a slightly less creamy feeling on the skin. Be careful with the amount you add to your recipe, as too much clay can kill the lather.

Another good option for men is a good salt bar like our wham! citrus salt bar. The salt added to this bar also cuts down on the creaminess, while gently softening the skin like a swim in the ocean. The punchy citrus scent doesn’t hurt, either!

I would also suggest a good scrubby, exfoliating bar, but one word of caution. Men who are blessed with a nice, hairy chest do not want to have things get caught in it while they are soaping up, so make sure you are using very finely ground ingredients that wash away easily!

So ladies, if you’re shopping for your man, clays and salts are the things to look for in a good bar of handmade soap.

Alternative Financing

I think one of the biggest stumbling blocks for anyone in the handcrafted industry is in getting banks and other financial institutions to take you seriously, especially when so many of us get our start in kitchens, basements and spare bedrooms.

What do you do when you get to the point where you are rapidly outgrowing your allotted space, but you not have the capital required to make the jump to the next level, whether it be a bricks and mortar retail location, or the craft and farmers’ market circle?

For many years, people in underdeveloped countries have been able to take advantage of micro loans through organizations such as Kiva. In North America, there have been few such alternatives until recently.

A new funding model has arrived, spearheaded by organizations such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Unlike Kiva, which solicits loans from visitors to the website on behalf of the applicants, Kickstarter and Indiegogo invite users to launch campaigns to raise funds for their projects. These funds are not loans, and are not repaid.

Since I have decided to make the move to all natural ingredients, and include organic whenever available, I have been finding it difficult to make this move without increasing my price per bar. The problem is that organic ingredients are two to three times more expensive than non-organic, and to get a break in the price you need to be able to buy in bulk.

I decided to give Indiegogo a try, and launched my campaign, Go Organic!.

There are two funding formulas: under the Fixed Funding model, Indiegogo keeps 4% of your contributions, but you only get the money if you meet your financial target. The Flexible Funding model charges you 4% if you reach your goal, but if you don’t reach your goal you receive any money that was contributed, but they charge 9%.

In order to really get noticed on Indiegogo, you need to increase your gogo factor, which means you have to actively promote your campaign through social media. This is what gets you moved up the ladder and on to their front page and in their feeds, where you have a better chance of being noticed.

So, this is an experiment….honestly, I think I will fall flat on my face if my campaign gets noticed at all among the thousands listed, let alone generate any funds, but you never know! At the very least it is encouraging me to be more diligent in my social media marketing!

Check back later for an update!