Why Use Natural Soap?

Did you know your skin is the largest organ of your body? To protect you from overheating, it sweats and blushes. To keep you from getting cold, it can close down its blood supply, keeping your body heat inside.
Skin has two layers. The outer layer, the epidermis, is a barrier that keeps disease out and keeps in water. The skin is sometimes called the mini-kidney. It helps push toxins out of the system and keeps the lymph system cleansed. If your skin is bombarded by the chemicals found in commercial soaps, (in addition to the pollutants in the air and water) it can't perform its job properly. Simply put, it lets disease in and water out, causing all kinds of complications
that go much more than skin deep.
Paraphrased from an article by J.D. Anderson of White Dragon Soaps.
Note* J.D. Anderson was my primary mentor when I was learning to make soap. He has pass on now and his business was closed down by his family as none of them shared his passion for soapmaking.

Commercial soaps are made in huge batches from detergents, surfactants (a chemically derived product that promotes foaming), synthetic fragrance and many other synthetic (chemically derived) products. They can strip the natural oils from your skin, and possibly cause skin rashes, dry, chapped skin, and many other symptoms of dermatitis.

Natural soaps are made in small batches from vegetable and/or animal fats. These fats contain nutrients needed to keep your skin healthy. They don't strip the protective layer of oil that your body naturally deposits on your skin in order to keep out disease bearing bacteria and other pollutants and to protect you from the effects of sun and wind
Natural soaps retain all the glycerin found naturally in vegetable oil in just the right amount to keep the moisture in your skin.

Some people have asked if the process of soap making depletes the benefits of the oils used. My answer is always, not if the soap is make properly. The oils have to be heated above 150 degrees in order to start degrading, and if soap is properly make the oil should not be heated above 110 degrees. The saponification process doesn't destroy the properties of the oils either.

How To Make Lye Soap
Step by step instructions plus 2 basic recipes and links to even more information on natural soap making.
How to Cure Lye Soap
Tips and tricks for curing lye soap to bring out it's best characteristics.

There are conflicting opinions on whether the skin absorbs anything you put on it, but from personal experience I feel that it definitely does.

Many soap makers use the least expensive oils they can get (soap/cosmetic grade). Others prefer to use the higher quality, extra virgin or expeller pressed (food grade) oils.

The problem with the soap/cosmetic grade oils is that they are extracted with a chemical, usually hexane, and even though all possible efforts are made to remove this chemical after extraction it can't be removed completely.

While it's true that the minute amounts of a chemical found in one bar of soap will probably not harm most people, a life-time build-up of chemicals from external applications in addition to the chemicals added to our food to preserve it for long shelf life, our drinking water to kill harmful bacteria, and the pollutants in the air, can lead to such problems as allergies, and even life threatening diseases. Why not eliminate as many of these as we can, including the chemicals found in products we put on our skin?

You can learn more about the properties of vegetable oils used in natural soap at SilverMist Garden

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