nourish your skin with oil blends or should you use cream?

I love using oil blends on my body and try to do it daily, however I do know many people who just won’t use oil on their skin because it’s too high maintenance – meaning it’s too messy, or it ruins their underwear or it takes too long to soak in or blah, blah, blah! I may be preaching to the converted here but using oils on your body can be so beneficial. When I say “oils’ I am referring to coconut oil, almond oil, jojoba oil, sunflower oil and other carrier oils. This past winter my skin looked like crocodile skin so I decided to whip up a batch of cream with beeswax, oils and cocoa butter (basically because that’s the stock I had available).

Bees and their beeswax – pic via sweetbeez.org

It did really help my skin and I remembered one of my clients saying that her facialist sometimes talked about the right time for cream and the right time for oil. So when your body skin is scaly and horrible, that would be the perfect time to use a cream.

Why?

In a body cream, if it’s made naturally, you’ll get oil, water and emulsifying wax at the very least. You may also get essential oils, beeswax, cocoa butter, mango butter or shea butter too, to make it rich and gorgeous. Then hopefully there will be some pure essential oils added to the mix to give you a scented experience and emotional support. If you have a cheap cream made in huge vats, by big companies that is sold all over the world you’ll get water with a whole lot of synthetic crap. So when I talk about using a body cream I’m referring to a beautiful hand-made cream or a high quality cream from a boutique shop, health food shop or a market.

Handmade cream – pic via tipjunkie.com

In a body oil blend you’ll be getting a carrier oil (or oils), and some essential oils which in itself is a wonderful treat but sometimes you just need a little more.

What’s the diff?

The wax. And beeswax is the bomb and adds so much more to a cream than a synthetic wax could ever do.

pola wax – a synthetic emulsifying wax

Most people will also use an emulsifying wax that is sure to combine the oil and the water into a smooth cream, although I’m sure others could make a beautiful cream with only beeswax. It is now much easier to find a 100% natural emulsifying wax but many waxes sold on the market will have synthetics in them. If your emuslifying wax beads are very white they probably have some synthetics in them. Anything with a number in it, like PEG-150 Stearate, is synthetic. A lot of synthetic preparations are safe to use but some are not. You can check the toxicity of ingredients at www.ewg.org/skindeep/

Wax will

* provide a mild barrier between your skin and the environment and give protection which is wonderful for dry skin and rashes and will help the symptoms of eczema and psoriasis

* make your skin feel beautiful and soft as it acts as an humectant (draws and holds moisture) and as an emollient

* have some mild actions including being an anti-inflammatory agent as it has been used over the centuries for wound healing

* mild anti-bacterial action as in honey (we know to use honey for coughs and colds because of this)

I recommend using a combo of both oils and creams on your body, and as in everything in life, mix it up a bit.

And from William Cowper’s poem, “The Task” (1785): “Variety is the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor”.