Home Doctor Tar Face & Body Soap, 70 g |
Dr. Sante Baby Thyme & Beggarticks Cream Soap, 90 g |
Green Pharmacy Verbena & Lime Bath Soap with Olive Oil, 100 g |
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It would seem that there is nothing more familiar than an ordinary bar of soap. A lot of people don’t pay much attention to the kind of soap they use to wash their face, hands or body. But actually soap can greatly affect your skin’s condition. Bad soap dries your skin out and irritates it, while good soap has softening and moisturising properties.
Today you can buy a bar or bottle of soap literally anywhere, from a small corner shop to a large supermarket. Sadly, most mass market soaps are not very good. They even aren’t actually soaps. Such products contain a significant amount of chemicals which do more harm than good. Their only advantage is low price, but saving a bit of money isn’t worth the health risk.
Handmade soap is much safer and more useful than the so-called “soaps” you’ll find in the supermarket. Handmade soap doesn’t contain synthetic perfumes and preservatives, artificial colourants and detergents that often cause skin dryness and irritation, allergic reactions and other skin problems. Handmade soap is made from scratch with natural ingredients which allows to produce high-quality product that is simultaneously effective and safe for your health.
There are three main variations of the soap-making process. They are the cold process, the hot or semi-boiled process and the fully boiled process. The cold soapmaking process allows to preserve a maximum of nutrients contained in natural plant ingredients used for soapmaking. Sadly, cold process soap needs to be cured and hardened for 4 to 8 weeks before use. On the other hand, well cured soap has a lot of useful properties.
Handmade soap is made from scratch using a combination of pure vegetable oils such as olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil and others. To obtain soap, oils are treated with a strongly alkaline solution. Hard soaps are typically made with sodium hydroxide (also known as caustic soda and lye) while liquid soaps are obtained using potassium hydroxide (caustic potash). You shouldn’t be afraid of alkaline solutions because they bring about a chemical reaction known as sanctification and lose their causticity in the process. Obtaining soap without an alkaline solution is simply impossible.
Although natural soap is mainly based on vegetable oils and alkaline solution, it can also contain other ingredients. Most handmade soaps are made with a variety of additional useful ingredients such as herbal extracts, rare vegetable oils, essential oil, honey, milk, beeswax etc. They provide soap with softening, soothing, nourishing, moisturising, antiseptic, protective and other useful properties.
It is quite easy to distinguish handmade soaps from mass market soaps. Handmade soaps do not have a sharp smell, they only have a light, pleasant scent of natural essential oils. Such soaps are not brightly coloured and do not produce abundant foam. Bright colour, intense scent and thick foam are just a marketing ploy by cosmetic manufacturers who want to make their soap more attractive. Natural soaps clean just fine despite their seeming lack of foam and don’t irritate your skin.
At our online shop Organic Store you can buy natural soap by reputable brands. We offer a wide selection of natural and organic soaps to suit every taste.