Neosoulessentials’s Weblog

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, that is 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.   

We do use synthetic fragrance oils as well as 100% natural essentials 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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In reading over my blog, I have to admit I did not give shea butter the time or the blog space that it deserves.  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 and salves.  I even use a bit of it mixed with virgin coconut oil for my daughter’s (and my) hair.

Shea butter is good for eczema, dry skin, stretch marks, flaky skin and the like.  Shea butter is said to contain fatty acids as well as vitamin A, E, and.  All I can say is that it works for me and those that use our products give great reviews. 

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