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Gaia Essential's Authentic Soaps are handmade from scratch using 100% certified food grade ingredients, pure Botanical Essential Oils, and Organic Herbs. Being a cold processed soap, they are cured a minimum of 2 weeks then hand-cut. Weights are approx. 3.5 oz with slight variations. These are the highest quality Soaps you could ever have the pleasure of bathing with.
Why use Food Grade Ingredients in Skincare?
Your skin is one of the largest organs in your body and readily absorbs everything that touches it thru the elaborate pore system.
Simply put, if you would not eat it, you should not use it topically on your skin.
Different types of Soaps & their Origins.
Gaia Essential soaps are created from scratch with Certified Food Grade Vegetable Oils and a Food Grade Alkali (salty derivative of wood ash called Sodium Hydroxide), this yields sodium palmitate (soap) and glycerin upon saponification. Also called old fashioned “Cold Process” Soap making.
Handmade soap differs from industrial soap in that an excess of oil is used to consume the alkali (superfatting), and the glycerin is not removed.
Superfatted soap is more skin-friendly than industrial soap.
Different types of oils/fats create different types of lather for various soaps. For the most part all my recipes contain organic extra virgin Olive (conditioning), Coconut (explosive lather), non- GMO Canola & USA grown Palm (bar hardness) with an emollient oil for moisturizing (called superfatting).
This is the only true form of “Authentic Soap” making.
FYI, there are quite a few processes’ that go further and create other types of bases for “Soap Crafting”. Manufacturers chemically extract the natural glycerin, add a few things and produce products they call “natural Glycerin Soap” or “Melt & Pour Bases”. These are either grated or slabs and crafters can re-melt, add fragrances & colorants pour in cute molds, add decorative swirls or even items, and call it hand made soaps. Most “Goat Milk” soaps are made this way as well. Although very artistic and eye-appealing, it is not true natural soap.
“Commercial soap” (referred to as “beauty bars”, deodorant bars”, “facial bars” or “antibacterial bars”) is in fact Detergent, not soap. Some antibacterial cleansers have chemicals killing bacteria that coexist on the skin's surface and are essential to skin health. More alarmingly, the rise of antibacterial cleanser contributes to antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Even worst for skincare are the popular “liquid” cleansers, as not only are they evasively stripping your skin of needed oils, they contain alcohol to keep formulas’ from solidifying which is too harsh an astringent for your skin.
Gaia Essentials does not utilize pre-manufactured bases or Synthetic Fragrances in any of the items in our product line.
Pure Essential oils vs Fragrance oils
Fact, Pure Botanical Essential oils are “active”. Not only do they produce a natural Aroma but have medicinal values for your health as well. Aromatherapy is proven, and Botanicals used for homopathic remedies has been around as long as humanity.
Synthetic & chemically made “Fragrance oils” smell good, that is all.
What is Aromatherapy?
Aromatherapy is the use of volatile liquid plant materials, known as Essential oils (EOs), to affect someone's mood or health. The word was coined in the 1920’s by French chemist René Maurice Gattefossé, who devoted his life to researching the healing properties of essential oils after a lucky accident in his perfume laboratory. (In the accident, he lit his arm on fire and thrust it into the nearest cold liquid, which happened to be a vat of lavender oil. Much to his amazement, the burn quickly healed without a scar.)
The different ways to Moisturize and Condition Skin
Gaia Essentials’ handmade “Moisturizing Bath/Body Oils”, “Body Butters” and “Lotions” are created with high quality food grade & extra absorbent oils & butters for natural skincare without a greasy feel. Each oil/butter is carefully selected for the recipe.
With three basic ways to moisturize skin, personal preference comes in to play. Oils are the purest form and the longest lasting. Butters are thick creams and a combination of oils & water bonded together with an emulsifying wax. Lotions are oils & water combined as well, but thinner in consistency for quicker absorption. You only need to feel the difference to understand and select what best suits your needs.
As with my soaps, the skin care products I create use only pure Botanical Essential oils for the Aroma & benefits. You will find no artificial fragrances added.
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