Natural Alternatives To Soap
So you’re careful to eat a natural paleo diet, but what skincare products do you use? Have you looked at the ingredients in the soap you use?
While soap is considered a necessity by most people for keeping clean, if often comes loaded with chemicals. Soap can also be very drying to a lot of skin types and strips the skin of its natural moisturisers and of its natural defences.
While there are many natural soaps based around essential oils and herbs, there are alternatives to keeping your skin clean without the need for soap.
Essential Oils
For some added fragrance when it comes to bath time, try adding some essential oils to the bath water. Camomile or lavender make an ideal combination if for relaxing, peppermint oils are good for stimulating and lifting your mood, and ylang ylang and geranium essential oils will increase your feeling of well-being.
Epsom Salts
Some people find that once they have stopped using soap their skin becomes much drier. For some people this might be temporary, while for others the skin can continue to remain dry. Adding some Epsom salts to a tub of bath water will help soften the skin. Epsom salts are also believed to have many health benefits. The magnesium content helps to relax nerves and muscles and reduce stress. Epsom salts are also thought to reduce toxins in the body and relieve muscle cramps and pain.
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is great on the skin – and if you have dry skin, applying coconut oil will certainly help.
Instead of using soap, try filling a muslin cloth with your selected herbs and then add in five to ten drops of essential oils. Tie the muslin cloth to the bath tap and let the aromas spill out. The muslin cloth can also be used to exfoliate the skin and slough away dead skin cells without the need for an exfoliator, which can be damaging to some skin types.
Do you use a commercial soap, or have you found a more natural alternative? Share your suggestions and recipes in the comments section.
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About a year ago after years of suffering of itchy skin ( it used to drive me crazy) and trying every body wash on the market –natural and chemical . I finally had a go at making my own cold process soap. Eureka it is wonderful. I found out that commercially made bar soap has the glycerine (which moisturises your skin) extracted from it that is why soap you buy is drying to your skin .The glycerine is then sold for skin care products, go figure ! The first time I followed a u-tube instruction video , soap so easy to make .I use olive oil, coconut oil , castor oil and lye. I use no essential oils as I love the clean fresh natural scent the soap has. Even on the hottest days I can go out in the sun ,perspire and never itch .It bliss. I will never wast money buying body wash or soap again. I also use white vinegar instead of fabric softner in my washing machine to get rid of any detergent residue. I am currently researching making my own shampoo. Thanks for this great blog.
I`m a paleo newbie so I`m just at the start of my paleo journey.
Hi lesley, thanks for posting your home made soap success story. Can you post the instructions for me, I’d love to try it!
Thanks in advance 🙂
Ditto. Sounds great. Please post the recipe.
BTW (just my two cents) — Best natural hair cleanse I have used: 2 cups [purified] water, 1 cup stingin nettles tea, 1 cup ACV, 2 tbls raw honey. Excellent! Note that the original recipe I saw used chamomille tea instead of nettles. You can google them, but I prefer the nettles. I DO NOT reccommend using baking soda/ACV combo. I did that for about year, and let’s just say results were less than satisfying. And on top of that, it’s messy and a pain. I also tried on with coconut milk that didn’t work out at all. Hair never really did get clean. Good luck!
one time I made my own, due to trying to do the pH balance of hair and mixed fenugreek with avocado and walnut. The avocado’s great, fenugreek smells like maple syrup – not worth it, and walnut got stuck in my hair. Maybe try avocado instead of coconut? I mean whole avocado.
Tried avocado instead? I one time made my own concoction to match the pH of my hair to the ingredients. I used avocado, fenugreek, and walnut, and the avocado worked the best – the fenugreek smells like maple syrup and the walnut pieces got stuck in my hair (I suggest going with walnut butter next time). The avocado worked.
Found this article for cold process soap making, and a whole website devoted to making soap and other toiletries.
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/coldprocesssoapmaking/
Hi can you please post me the Soap recipe.
Thank you.
Hi Jennifer, I’ll be posting some more natural soap and skin care recipes on the blog soon – stay tuned!
I traveled off the commercial store-bought path as well by alternating soap to a sugar scrub. A mix of sugar (exfoliator), olive oil (moisturizer), ACV (cleanser), and honey (great for everything) , leaves my skin moisturized before even getting out of the shower and my skin unbelievably soft!
Hi hun I been so icky for months now and it been reading you email s about your soaps and they sound so good can you please send me some emails about th men y thanksxx
water is #1 – because it’s a cleanser. The other’s brush – sometimes just scrubbing enough with purified, clean water is equivalent to soap, as the purpose of soap is to get dirt off rather than disinfect – which is why there’s antibacterial soaps, and those’re bad for the environment. I feel soap is bad for the environment too, so I usually (except for my hands, in which I use soap) will soak a makeup brush in water and wash my body with it. It saves a lot of water too. Since the brush gets dirty, sometimes I will wash that with soap, but not my skin – it does get soap residue I bet from the soap. Sometimes I use the brush dry.
Another alternative I do is aloe vera + shea butter on top. Aloe’s very cleansing for removing dirt and shea butter keeps it off. I do this combo, because I live in the mountain desert where the air’s dry and polluted, so dirt goes into my hair too easily for showers to be effective for more than 5 minutes. Hair/skin usually gets dirty from being cracked, for me from the dry air (as it’s more, better surface area for clinging) – so the aloe provides the moisture to heal the hair and the shea butter keeps the moisture locked in. Now my hair’s silky and the dirt flies off, especially with a small flick.