Acne bar advice

[kbmart]

My brother needs an acne bar and has asked that I make one for him to try. I usually use coconut oil, olive oil, palm oil, and lard in my soaps. Would any of these make a good acne bar? Maybe increase the coconut oil? Would adding tea tree oil and lavender be beneficial? Thanks for the input

 

[kchaystack]

there are many threads already about acne bars. Even the less than perfect search box at the top turns up several on the first page of results. Or you can cut and paste this into google.

acne bar site:Soapmakingforum.com

 

[Yooper]

I'm no expert on acne soaps at all, but how does he do with your regular soap?

The first thing I thought of was a pine tar soap, although I've never used one. It's supposed to be great for skin conditions, and that may be just the ticket.

Since I've never made a pine tar soap, I can't help with a recipe but I wanted to try to help a bit.

there are many threads already about acne bars. Even the less than perfect search box at the top turns up several on the first page of results. Or you can cut and paste this into google.

acne bar site:Soapmakingforum.com

I know that is meant to be helpful, but it's not.

It's a little intimidating already to come into a forum and to sign up and ask a question, only to be told to "use the search".

This is a forum for discussion. If it was only a forum for searching, it should be called "soapmakingsearch.com". When someone joins and has one post, I think it should be a matter of routine to not simply say "here's how to search". I'm an admin of a much larger forum for another hobby (200,000 members) and one of our main rules is to not do that. I don't mean to sound critical, but I've been on this forum for nearly 4 years and see this all the time.

Maybe a quick link to help, or a quick answer to the question, and then a description of how to get a better search on their own would be a much better way to respond to new members.

Since I have no idea how to advise on an acne bar besides what I've read, I can't give a very good answer- but I'm of the belief that trying to be helpful or not saying anything at all is a good policy.

 

[Seawolfe]

I like salt bars for when I break out. Some swear by pine tar, others by neem oil.

 

[cmzaha]

My daughters do well with charcoal bars without a lot of coconut. I keep the coconut in the 10% range for them. I make a cream soap base dead sea salt scrub that one daughter loves when she has a breakout.
It takes time and trial to find one that works and then it may only work for a short time. Acne can be different for everyone just like eczema is. Keep in mind acne does not necessarily like harsh soaps and scrubs, it can overreact the oil glands causing worse breakouts. Right now daughters are doing good at the moment with a pine tar soap, with neem and activated charcoal, but no guarantees it will work tomorrow, and they usually have 3 or 4 different soaps to rotate with. Keep in mind these are grown women not teenagers that do not have severe teenage acne, just aggravating adult breakouts, although one with cystic type breakouts does well will charcoal masks, charcoal spot treatments, and face polishes with charcoal and sugar

 

[Dahila]

I believe in very gentle wash for acne prone skin, my daughter has this problem. Acne is problem with something in the body. It can also be caused like mine outbreak (in my age hell) after using sunblock

 

[jiroband]

Like Seawolfe, I too recommend salt bars for acne.

As I have posted on another thread, coconut oil in soap irritates my skin. I substitute palm oil for coconut oil even in my salt bars. I also suggest adding hazelnut oil to this soap, or any product for acne.

I would also add tea tree, eucalyptus, and rosemary EOs. Carrot seed EO would help with healing. (But off course, you could never say on a label that this soap treats, soothes, or heals acne -- due to FDA regulations.)

 

[shunt2011]

Another vote for salt bars. I make one with charcoal, tea tree and a titch of lemongrass. I have suffered with breakouts since my teenage years up into adulthood and this works awesome for me. Also works great for my daughters. However, everyone's skin is different.

 

[Dahila]

Shunt is the cleansing number in your salt bar low? My daughter wants something to clear her acne. Maybe I will make the salt bar for her

 

[KristaMarie]

Not speaking for shunt, but I don't think you can have a salt. bar with a low cleansing number. Well...you can, but it might lather like a piece of plastic. Coconut oil is one of the few that can lather in salt water, so you need a good amount of it for a salt bar, making the cleansing number pretty high.

That said, salt bars have helped my skin tremendously and with a nice, long cure they aren't drying, in spite of the high cleansing number

 

[shunt2011]

No but I use a 20% sf. 80% CO, 10% avocado and 10% castor is the current one I'm using. I vary between 10 and 15% avocado or so.

 

[snappyllama]

I vote for pine tar bars for face and salt bars for everything else.

 

[Dahila]

I should know better, salt bars must have a lot of CO ( I hope it was a temporary brain freeze

 

[not_ally]

Jiroband, did you mean that you sub PKO (not palm) for the coconut in salt bars? I just used one of my first official salt bar batches in the shower - have just been using them for my hands, which I loved - and although it did not make my skin *feel* tight/dry, it was, little tiny flakes galore on my arms after I dried off. Which made me sad b/c otherwise I loved the skin feel and the lather.

ETA: saw on another post that you do not like PKO, so it *is* palm. I just thought maybe otherwise b/c I could/cannot figure out how to get lather w/o lots of coconut/PKO/babassu if using as much salt as you would in a salt bar. Would be very interested in any tips you could provide there.

Yooper, that is a *huge* board! What is the hobby? That must take a lot of time to admin.

I do sometimes post my favorite searching link (sitecomber) b/c the link is set up for here with an open search term bar so that if you bookmark it is easy to do different searches. Also, I found searching hints so helpful myself - I do them all the time - that I hope others do as well. I also always tell new people to look at the bottom of any relevant thread here for the "similar threads" box, sometimes they do not know about it.

 

[jiroband]

Jiroband, did you mean that you sub PKO (not palm) for the coconut in salt bars? I just used one of my first official salt bar batches in the shower - have just been using them for my hands, which I loved - and although it did not make my skin *feel* tight/dry, it was, little tiny flakes galore on my arms after I dried off. Which made me sad b/c otherwise I loved the skin feel and the lather.

No, PKO also gives me that same dry irritation -- I use palm oil, and I get plenty of lather. I also prefer using Morton's popcorn salt for the salt because of its very fine texture.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EZK6L40/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I think using a fine-textured salt helps the bar function better. You get a more uniform salt and soap mix in your lather every time when using it. When using a coarser salt, the outer soap matrix holding the salt together tends to wear off first, leaving a crust of salt surrounding the bar. Since soap is softer than salt, it washes away faster, so after the first use, you'll always have more contact with salt than you do soap. This stays constant through the life of the bar.

Using an extra-fine salt produces a smoother bar, and as I said, a more uniform mix of salt and soap during each and every use.

I know I'm being waaaaay too picky once again.

 

[not_ally]

I don't think you're being too picky at all, and am grateful that you are willing to share. I like brine bars - which I do at pretty much the max solubility rate for salt in the lye water, I use 26% salt to water weight.

There I use my regular recipe which is low in CO and high in moisturizing/conditioning oils and SF'd at 7-8%. The soap is really nice, but definitely does not have the explosive lather of a salt bar. I guess I was looking for that high moisture-high lather holy grail thing

With the salt bars I used 75% CO and a mixture of lard/SAO/castor, with coconut milk as the liquid and a 20% SF. W/the CM I'm sure the SF was at a higher level than even a normal salt bar, but still found it drying on my arms. Oh, well.

 

[newbie]

My son got improvement with salt bars but the results from pine tar soap have been better for him. I use some tea tree in mine and my last batch, I put a little frankincense EO in there too. From my reading, in the old days, like ancient Rome, frankincense EO was essential for any healer because it was so good for infections. No experience with it myself, but I was intrigued.

 

[Yooper]

Yooper, that is a *huge* board! What is the hobby? That must take a lot of time to admin.

I'm a homebrewer and winemaker, and the forum is on homebrewing.

I don't have much time for many other forums, so this one is the only other one I spend any time on at all.

The nice thing is being able to use whatever beer or wine I want in a recipe- I have a seemingly endless supply!

 

[cmzaha]

No, PKO also gives me that same dry irritation -- I use palm oil, and I get plenty of lather. I also prefer using Morton's popcorn salt for the salt because of its very fine texture.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EZK6L40/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I think using a fine-textured salt helps the bar function better. You get a more uniform salt and soap mix in your lather every time when using it. When using a coarser salt, the outer soap matrix holding the salt together tends to wear off first, leaving a crust of salt surrounding the bar. Since soap is softer than salt, it washes away faster, so after the first use, you'll always have more contact with salt than you do soap. This stays constant through the life of the bar.

Using an extra-fine salt produces a smoother bar, and as I said, a more uniform mix of salt and soap during each and every use.

I know I'm being waaaaay too picky once again.

I do not know how you get any decent amount of lather using high palm, unless you are using some tallow and low salt. I have made salt bars for several years and have always found palm to kill lather, but I do use 100% salt most of the time

 

[not_ally]

Slightly off-topic, but I went to my 8 year-old nephew's birthday party, and saw one of his friends. I only see the friends and their parents a couple of times a year, on his birthday and at maybe at some school-related festival. This little girl has terrible, terrible exzema/psoriasis. Or maybe something else, I don't know much about these things. As long as I have known her (3 years, I think) all of her skin that you can see is covered with angry red welts/flakes.

She is a sweetheart, too, although a little reserved, for reasons that I can only guess, it must be so hard to be a kid and have to deal with other kids with issues like that. I'm sure her mom (a single one) is doing the best she can, the kids go to a magnet school where the parents are required to do a significant of "volunteer" work, they are all pretty smart, invested and engaged in their childrens' well-being.

I *so* wanted to talk to the mom and see if there was anything I could do, stuff we could try, but I didn't. I just thought that she had heard all the well-intentioned advice, probably over and over, and maybe just wanted to sit w/the other parents and sip some sangria for a change. Anyway, it made me really sad and realize how scarring, in so many ways, these things can be. Especially when you are a tender, small person.