Dry skin

[Bamagirl]

Hi everyone, it's been awhile since I've posted anything, things have been crazy busy here. Anyway I was hoping someone could help me out with some ideas. I've made the same basic recipe for since I started making soap in 2016 and it has worked really good up until a few months ago. It used to be that just using my soap, I never needed any lotion or anything else. However, now my skin is really dry and I have to use lotion (I am a 41 year old female so this could possibly be hormonal). My basic recipe is

65% lard
15% co
12% oo
5% castor
3% beeswax

Ok, typing up my recipe, I realize that the last batch I made in May was a little different, I used to use 15% oo and no beeswax, but the dry skin started before then anyway. I have a couple ideas, but just haven't had time to implement them. I am thinking that maybe if I cut the co to 10% and increase oo to 17% it might help? I was also thinking of making liquid soap in the hopes that it would be better. What do you think? Has anyone here made bar soap and then made liquid soap and noticed a difference? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I hate and I do mean I detest using lotion, but fear I may be at the age that it has become a necessary evil

Thanks for any help you can send my way!

 

[lsg]

Have you thought about using lanolin in your soap? A little goes a long way. I wouldn't go over 5% lanolin. Shea butter and avocado oil would be good additions, also.

 

[DeeAnna]

My first thought is to reduce the coconut oil a tad, although I use 10-15% CO in a lot of my recipes and find CO in that % range to be fairly mild to my normal to dry skin. If you do lower the CO, I'd probably add the % removed to the olive oil, since you already have a high % of lard.

Lanolin might be nice, as lsg suggested. I've used 3-5% in some of my recipes. 5% can leave a noticeable film on the skin that you may or may not like; 3% doesn't leave an obvious film on the skin. I don't care for the film, so I stick with 3% in my bath soaps. It's not a miracle additive that takes the place of lotion for me, especially in winter.

Honestly, your recipe as-is is already mild and gentle, so I have to say that changing your soap may not get you a lot of improvement. For serious moisturizing and conditioning, a good lotion may be the answer ... but there are lotions, and there are lotions. I make my own and prefer my homemade lotion to store bought -- I hate goopy, greasy lotions.

 

[earlene]

I was also going to suggest 3% lanolin in a hard bar. And also in LS. The liquid soap I use in a foamer for shaving my legs has 6% lanolin and it feels so luxurious on my skin; makes my legs feel really nice after shaving. I don't use it as a regular LS, because I've never really like LS. Anyway, for my legs, which often used to get quite dry, I rarely feel as though the skin of my legs look or feel dry anymore. I only shave them about once every two weeks, though, so it's not all about the LS.

As for why your skin is drier, there are so many variables, it's hard to say what about your soap might contribute. Do you use a chelator in you bar soap? Or do you have hard water and maybe not use a chelator in your bar soap? If the latter, that could contribute to the feeling of dry skin, and be something you could adjust. Just a thought.

 

[soapmaker]

From experience hard water is a very great culprit in dry itchy skin. A water softener works wonders.

 

[dixiedragon]

Is it possible that the OO has become irritating to your skin? Maybe make your same recipe with sunflower or rice bran instead of olive?

 

[soapmaker]

Is it possible that the OO has become irritating to your skin? Maybe make your same recipe with sunflower or rice bran instead of olive?

That's very interesting. Is this known to happen? I never think of a possibility of OO being irritating.

 

[dixiedragon]

There are actually quite a few people on the forum who avoid OO because they find it drying/irritating.

 

[amd]

Being a 41 year old woman who also has dry skin, I will say that a high lard soap leaves my skin super dried out. I swapped soaps with a local soaper who makes 100% lard soap with goats milk, and that soap dried me out so bad! I can't use it. My husband, who has extremely oily skin, likes it so I've let him have that bar. This makes me wonder if there's a point where high lard + dry skin really don't mix well. For my own recipes I started with a 50% lard/tallow soap and was still using lotion constantly. I switched it up through some trial and error and currently use lard/tallow at 25%, using shea and cocoa butter to make up 20% (I moved the remaining 5% of the 50% to my oleic oils). I rarely use lotion with this recipe. That said... soap is a wash off product not intended to treat dry skin. It helps, but it isn't the cure.

 

[soapmaker]

Oh! now I'm really confused! The soap that helped me so much in my 40's is not helping in my 60's. I am blaming the CO and have made a soap of 75% lard, 20% olive and 5% castor. It does seem better. Soft water has always been a great help to me but now that we've moved our well water is so extremely hard that we have to use an extreme amount of salt to soften it and that seems to make me itch. To soften water it is really just exchanging one mineral for another, that is calcium and magnesium for sodium. The other soft water I used wasn't from very hard water so not much sodium either.

 

[amd]

I wouldn't take what I said for facts, it's merely my experience. There's a lot that could play into my experiences with high lard soaps - water hardness, soap SF, how dry one's skin is or what is causing the dry skin to start with (if it's a normal skin condition, weather conditions, medications/diet, or even if some areas of the body are drier than others). I should have added to my first post that I don't have a lot of experience trying to formulate a "soap for everyone", I just happen to have found a soap recipe that works extremely well for me and have people willing to buy it

 

[soapmaker]

Good for you!