Soap ok for eczema/psoriasis

[whitewitchbeauty]

I have four soap bars in mind to help with eczema and/or psoriasis. The soap types are: Pine tar, salt bar, goats milk, and charcoal cold process soap. I am making each type individually and not mixing ingredients or adding fragrance or essential oils. Is there a good base to start with? Such as olive oil, coconut oil, etc.? I'm ashamed to admit that I don't understand when I get formulas given in percentages, maybe it's part of my brain trauma or I'm just plain stupid. So I guess I have two questions, one, is there a website where I can learn how to figure out the percentages into ounces? Two, are there specific oil's that would work well for psoriasis and eczema? this weekend i'm making pine tar, salt and charcoal soap bars. If I have enough ingredients a.k.a. oils. I have a lot of coconut oil, peanut oil, crisco, vegetable oil lard, and olive oil on hand.

 

[kumudini]

Peanut oil has to be a big no no unless you know every person who is going to use that soap has no peanut allergies. I have a long answer shaping up about the rest but I have to wait until this work at hand is done. I'm sure more people will chime in.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Is the person for whom you're making this allergic to anything?

As for %, you can just put those in as-is and adjust the "total oil weight" option and let the lye calc work out what the real-world weights are.

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

I was just listing all the oils I have I'm not going to use peanut oil for this. She hasn't mentioned any allergies and I asked her and she said she has psoriasis and eczema. She mentioned a charcoal bar but after reading some of these posts/threads I noticed that isn't really helpful. I don't really know.

Thanks for the % info!

 

[dixiedragon]

As for turning percentages into ounces, SoapCalc can do that for you. Most of us tend to post recipes in ounces because seeing a recipe is, for example, 20% coconut oils is useful information whereas know that a recipe is 63 ounces and has 12.4 ounces of coconut oil requires too much math. For me, anyway.

I think any soap recipe with no fragrance can be a good one for eczema or psoriasis. Next time you make your regular recipe (whatever it is), pour off a bar or two in individual molds before you scent and color the rest.

 

[navigator9]

It's a shame that there isn't one recipe that would be good for all those who have eczema, but everyone is different. I think just having a bar that has no fragrance, and the kind of junk that's in commercial bars, would be beneficial. You want something that's not too drying/cleansing. If it's friends or family with eczema, you could make small batches of each recipe, and let them try them out for a while to see which works best for them. I used to make soap for a co-worker with eczema, and she liked a bar with lots of shea. Good luck with your quest!

 

[dixiedragon]

I made this soap years ago and a lady swore it cured her son's psoriasis. It's Pandan Valley Soap.
http://millersoap.com/soapanimal.html#PandanSoap

It uses coconut milk, pandan leaves and rosemary EO and Ylang Ylang EO.

 

[Arimara]

Buying pandan leaves sounds like a good idea but is there a substitute if I cannot find it?

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Thank you! I'm going to make small batches of each soap and let her try each one per month. Then she can tell me what she likes best. I have shea butter and will use that with CO and OO. I'm hesitant to use any essential oils and I don't want to irritate her skin. This is for a friend. I'm not quite ready to try selling my cold process soap yet I'm still only three months into making cold process soap. I never heard of pandam leaves, I will check that out. Where can I get that?

 

[Susie]

I am going to vote high lard (no surprise to anyone), but my reason is that lard is the least likely to be on anyone's list of allergies. It is also very conditioning.

I send soap to both of my grown children who also have histories of eczema. We no longer have it because I make soap instead of buying soap from the store. Just getting your friend off of store bought syndets may be the "cure" for her eczema. Nothing will cure psoriasis.

 

[fluffmuffin]

Two of my children have terrible eczema. Just switching to homemade soap seemed to make a difference at first. Then I found a recipe designed to help eczema and have tweaked it a bit. It's high in lard, olive oil, and shea butter. Little bit of coconut and castor in there too. (I don't have my notebook with me so I can't quote percentages right now.) It really seems to help in my children's case.

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Thanks! I happen to have all of those

 

[penelopejane]

The dermatologist told my DH pure olive oil Castile soap. No fragrance no colour. It works well for him but it takes 12 months to cure.

Everyone is right though, eczema is one of those things that can be caused by many things so your friend will just have to try a few options and work out what is best for her.

Also it takes more than a month for my DH to test something new. That's because his eczema gets better and worse depending on stress, wind, heat, pollen etc so he has to sort of balance out those other factors over time. You may need to make a few more cakes of soap than you planned!

 

[dixiedragon]

Buying pandan leaves sounds like a good idea but is there a substitute if I cannot find it?

Honestly, I don't know that the pandan leaves actually added anything to the recipe. I have 3 Asian grocery stores in my area and none of them have it, I actually had a friend find them when he was at a farmer's market in another city and brought them to me. If you want to try a leafy something, you could try it with lemongrass. But I think you'd get the same soap with the coconut milk and the EOs.