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Honey is brown, lovely and oh so sweet.   Pop a dollop in your tea, drizzle it on your pancakes or toast or just take a lick from the spoon and honey is right there with you.  Not only is honey sweet on the tongue and good for you internally, it’s great for skin and hair care too!

Tasty Skin Care

Honey is a natural anti-inflammatory, which basically means that it can soothe irritated skin.  It is also a natural humectant,  which means, like glycerin, it attracts and maintains moisture in the skin. Now, before you twist open that jar and start slathering the sticky brown stuff all over your face, here is a simple recipe for you to try:

Mix 1 tsp of honey, 1 egg yolk, ½ tsp olive oil and 1 tsp plain yogurt. Apply to face and neck. Leave for 15 minutes and rinse off with cool water. Your skin should feel moisturized with tight pores.  It should also feel softer and more “dewy”.

For an all over sweet treatment, add about 1/ 4 cup of honey to your bathwater before you take a soak.

Honey is being used by pharmaceutical companies for wound care and treatment.

Natural Hair Care

Honey can be used as a natural conditioner and moisturizer for the hair.  As stated before, honey is a natural humectant, so if you have dry hair, a honey hair recipe may just be the thing for you.

Bump up the moisturizing properties of your regular or deep conditioner by adding a half part of honey.  For example, if you usually use a half-cup of conditioner on your hair, add one-fourth of a cup of honey to that one-half cup.  If it does not mix, try heating it in 15 second increments in the microwave – make sure it’s not too hot when you apply it to your hair!  Let the mixture stay on your hair for about 15-20 minutes, then rinse with cool water.  Style as usual.  Your hair should feel softer to the touch.

As each individual’s hair is different, experiment with the amount of honey used until you reach the ratio that is just right for you.

Try not to lick your fingers when using these honey recipes!

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Eva's Shea Butter - over 75% pure, unrefined shea butter

able to do it all and was gentle enough to use on infants.  Well, imagine my surprise when I received my first order of shea butter and found out that it looked and smelled like yellow Play-Doh.  Of course, my first thought was, if shea butter was so great, then why is it so hard and so difficult to actually apply to the baby’s skin?  I scooped out a bit of shea butter and tried to use it, but it was just too hard to spread!!

Fast forward about two years and the arrival of my daughter.  As I described in the previous post, she developed eczema at the nine month mark and I was frantic.  It was bleeding and weepy and it just devastated me to see her beautiful skin destroyed!  Back to the computer and again, I threw “shea butter” into the search engine…and found a few bulleting boards talking about this stuff called whipped shea butter.  Well, a whole new world opened to me – I started whipping shea butter with avocado oil, with coconut oil, with evening primrose oil – and discovered that these concoctions, with the base of shea butter, actually helped my daughter’s (and the rest of my family’s) skin.

Shea butter’s benefits vary with the type of shea butter used.  Refined shea butter is pure white and sometimes grainy – that is when you smooth it on the skin, one feels little pellets or beads.  These are tiny bits of shea butter that need extra rubbing to melt into your skin.  Refined shea butter has many of the natural nutrients bleached out, thus resulting in the pure white color.  Refined shea, in my opinion, is used when the person wants to have the label appeal of shea butter in their product, but does not want to deal with the variations in color or smell of natural shea butter.
Now, as I write about smell, I can hear people thinking – how should shea butter smell?  Believe me; I have purchased shea butter that smelled like the bottom of an old ashtray.  The smell of cigarettes on this shea butter was so strong that even the best fragrance oil could not cover it!! Eventually through trial and error and by reading bulletin boards about who had the best shea butter, I learned to purchase only from vendors who had consistent quality.  The shea butter I use is unrefined and is through a fair trade vendor.  My shea butter is unrefined, is a creamy off white color, and has a very, very slight nutty odor – it is so faint that you’d have to put your nose practically in the container to smell it.  It’s great for making whipped shea butter as well as balms.

First of all, a little research. Shea butter comes from the shea nut, a tree found most commonly in West African, i.e. Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Ivory coast. These trees are located on the savannah in both the fields and the forests. According to abangakarite.com, shea butter can be used as a decongestant, cooking oil and a skin healing salve. Shea butter is high in oleic acid as well as vitamins A and E, which are very good for the skin.

In my own experience, shea butter has helped greatly with my daughter’s eczema. I tried many commericial preparation, short of prescription medication, but my creations with shea butter, cocoa butter and virgin coconut oil helped her the most. In addition, I gave some whipped shea to my grandmother who claimed it helped lessen the pain of her arthritis. Shea butter is a mainstay in both my home and my products. I use Eva’s Shea Buttah whenever I see dry skin and I use it on my daughter twice a day, in the morning and the evening. The mixture’s emoillents keep her skin soft and supple, and no more scratching in the middle of the night!

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There are many benefits to the usage of olive oil all over the body.  You can treat dry, ragged cuticles with some olive oil on a cotton swab and use olive oil to remove makeup.  You can also use olive oil in the bath – after soaking for five minutes, add a few tablespoons of olive oil – it will moisturize your skin while you soak.

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First, what is it?.  Virgin coconut oil is what results from the pressing of the coconut meat.  Usually one things of virgin coconut oil coming from the Philippines, but the oil can come from Australia, India and other places around the

Virgin coconut oil is extracted from the meat of the coconut

globe.

If you run a search for virgin coconut oil, you will find that seems to be touted as the miracle oil.  It helps you lose weight, cures infections, is an antioxidant, helps your heart, is antifungal, anti viral, etc. etc.  neosoul.essentials doesn’t make any claims to the nature of what it does to your body, inside or outside, we just report what works and has worked for us and our clients.

When applied to the skin, virgin coconut oil melts very quickly and sinks into the skin, creating a barrier between the skin and the elements.  As a natural antioxidant, it is said to prevent premature aging and skin sagging.  And as a massage/skin oil, it is said to nourish the skin and hair, preventing wrinkling and age spots.

I often use the virgin coconut oil on my daughter’s hair – lends a wonderful shine – or as a quickie massage oil.  It smells wonderful and helps the skin.

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Keeping skin healthy is important not only for your appearance but also for your health.  The skin protects our body and is subject to environmental toxins and free radicals.  If you watch television or listen to the radio for any length of time, I’m sure you’ll see and/or hear commercials pushing skin and body creams that are supposed to heal, repair and keep skin healthy.  As a natural mom, or at least a mom that is trying to live naturally, I know that I can’t purchase all these expensive creams to put on my or my children’s skin.  Not only is it cost prohibitive, but there are probably a lot of additives in these skin creams that I don’t want!  Therefore, I prefer “feeding the skin” naturally through foods and natural supplements.

There are several vitamins that are recommended for healthier skin.  Vitamin A is an antioxidant that will equip your skin to fight against free radicals.  Vitamin A can also help in reducing or eliminate can aid in skin repair, an as a side note, can improve how well you see in the dark!  Good sources of vitamin A include red, yellow and orange fruits and vegetables.

Vitamin B12 and Vitamin B6 are two vitamins that are part of the vitamin B complex.  This vitamin complex can serve to reduce stress as well as working with the skin to eliminate acne and other inflammatory skin conditions.  Because it improves blood flow, it can assist in giving your skin that healthy glow.  Vitamin B complex is also essential for your immune system to produce sufficient antibodies to fight off infections and diseases.

Vitamin C is the vitamin that everyone talks about. This vitamin is water soluble and thus should be taken every day.  Vitamin C is found in citrus fruits like oranges and strawberries and is also found in papaya, bell peppers and my family’s personal favorite – broccoli.    An antioxidant like vitamin A that fights against free radicals in the environment and helps your body eliminate these toxins, vitamin C also helps the skin heal and repair itself,  It plays an essential role in the production and retention of collagen – the glue that holds the body together and keeps skin elastic and strong.  Taking vitamin C internally can keep fine lines and wrinkles to a minimum.

Vitamin E is another favorite antioxidant of mine.  I use the vitamin E oil on my skin and my children’s skin and make sure it’s a daily part of their diet.  Vitamin E has anti-inflammatory properties and it softens and smoothes skin.  In addition, Vitamin E is added protection from the sun for skin.  Keeping a high level of vitamin E in the body may also serve to prevent age spots.

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Shea Butter

mixture that would soothe her skin.

In my experience as a bath and body products maker, there are two types of shea butter, refined and unrefined shea butter. To the inexperienced consumer, refined shea butter may be the best way to go, as its white color and odorless quality may be easier to blend with different fragrance/essential oils and colors. However, to be a well informed consumer and to truly get the skin benefits of shea butter is to know exactly how refined shea butter is made and how this process can detract from its skin benefits.

Refined shea butter is pure white and has no odor. Most makers of refined shea butter use hexane or other chemicals to strip the unrefined shea butter of its color and slight nutty/earthy fragrance. Through the refining process, the hexane also removes much of the healing components of the unrefined shea butter. While the white color and neutral odor of the refined shea butter may be appealing, remember that many of the moisturizing qualities and skin nutrients may be lacking. Refined shea butter may also be harder to the touch than unrefined shea butter and depending on where one purchases the shea, may be “grainy’ or have small granules. This is not to say that the refined shea butter is not suitable for use in many applications – often this type of shea butter is preferred when one wants the label appeal of shea butter without the variation in appearance and/or odor, which can occur with unrefined shea butter.

Unrefined Shea butter

Unrefined shea butter is extracted from the seed of the karite tree by boiling the opened shea nuts, which releases the shea butter from the meat. Then the shea butter is usually hand kneaded until it reaches the desired consistency. Though this process can take much longer than the hexane extraction process, the result is a creamier product that retains the nutritive essence of the shea nut.

Unrefined Shea butter is the preferred raw ingredient. It contains the natural Vitamin A and E as well as many antioxidants which are not found in refined shea. Unrefined shea butter is said to help heal wounds, sooth sunburn, prevent and/or lessen the appearance of stretch marks and to lessen the appearance of wrinkles. Unrefined Shea butter is also said to have many natural qualities that help skin cell regeneration and capillary circulation. My grandmother claims that that unrefined shea butter can help eased her arthritis pain! On top of it all, shea butter is an excellent skin moisturizer.

Our products use only unrefined shea butter for its skin-nutritive properties.

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