Weird questions

[silhouette]

Hello all, i ve this very weird questions.. Ok now i live in a hot place. It either hot or hotter here. Do we have to select oils based on our climates. Does high conditioning and low cleansing soap make one feel oily. Lets consider the person has normal skin. Thanks.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I think that humidity is more an issue. With anything butter-based (like lotion bars) the heat might be a pain, but with a soap I don't know if it will be so bad.

 

[Miha Engblom]

Hello! I live in the cold Finland , and every winter the skin on my hands has been horible cracked and bleeding, except this winter when we started using castille soap (100% olive oil soap). In the summer, on the other hand my hands have been doing just fine with the cheapest commercial soap that i have been using in the past (I guess that for normal skin all soaps are ok in the summer). this is just my experience... I think the skin need a mild soap in the winter because the air is so dry .
I think the oily feeling comes from the Super fat. if you do not want the oily feeling on the skin , I guess you should have low SF

 

[engblom]

Does high conditioning and low cleansing soap make one feel oily. Lets consider the person has normal skin.

The skin is very fast adapting and might even adapt in a bad way. I am going to take my scalp as an example.

When I used commercial shampoos I had to wash my hair daily or it would become really oily and fat. The whole scalp would begin to itch. This is all because they were having too high cleansing value. When all the fat got washed away, the scalp begun to replace it and my hair became greasy.

When I switched to use super mild soaps, my scalp begun to adjust. If I would shower in the morning, my hair would be still clean the next day and I could leave out washing my hair. When I used highly cleansing shampoo, I had to wash my hair every day or it would be greasy.

I highly recommend using low cleansing soap regardless of climate and temperature. Low cleansing values will least mess with your skin. Highly cleansing values will dry out your hands if the air is dry. If the air is moistures, it might make the skin more oily.

 

[seven]

i live in a hot place all year round too. i use all the usual oils: palm, co, pomace, rbo, canola, etc etc. i prefer low SF though.

 

[lenarenee]

engblom, what do you consider a low cleansing bar? 10 or lower on soapcalc?

 

[Susie]

I plan on my soaps based on the humidity. Not the oils, just the other stuff. No salt or sugars on bars that are going through the high humidity summer. The heat should not have much to do with your soaps. But the humidity will have a lot to do with curing time and such.

 

[silhouette]

Right like some one pointed out it should be the SF and not the oils. I live in a place which is hot and humid through out the year.. My neighbour to whom i ve gifted a soap said she got acnes using one of the soap.. So was wondering..

 

[AnnaMarie]

I lived in Hawaii for a year and just recently came back to my native NW. The climates are very different, but I still found the elements harsh enough in both that I used a conditioning soap with Shea butter and almond oil in both places.
Cheers!
Anna Marie

 

[engblom]

engblom, what do you consider a low cleansing bar? 10 or lower on soapcalc?

The cleansing value at soapcalc.net is very naive. You should take it with grain of salt. Soapcalc is considering only Lauric and Myristic acids to be cleansing. They form the cleansing value by calculating how many percent of the fatty acids are either Lauric or Myristic.

For example coconut oil is having 48% Lauric acid and 19% Myristic acid. Thus they add 48%+19%=67% and then they say the cleansing value is 67. They completely omit Capric acid (6%) and Caprylic acid (7%) which are both contributing a lot to cleansing. One percent of Capric or Caprylic will cleanse a lot more than one percent of Myristic. 48%+19%+6%+7%=80%. 80% are thus highly cleansing. The rest of the acids will also cleans to some degree.

Look at this:
Caprylic is having a chain-length of 8
Capric is having a chain-length of 10
Lauric is having a chain-length of 12
Myristic is having a chain-length of 14
Palmitic is having a chain-length of 16
Stearic, oleic, linoleic, linoleic are all having a chain-length of 18

The longer chain, the heavier the molecule is. The heavier the molecule is, the less it is cleansing in soap. All of them will clean, but to different degree depending on the chain length. Thus saying that olive oil is not cleaning at all is false.

Also, the cleansing property is also affected by several other things:
1. Super fatting will steal some of the soap molecules to "dissolve" own fat. Less soap molecules are available for washing. Also the percentage of soap molecules goes down because of the fat percentage.

2. Adding salt will make a milder soap as salt prevents soap from dissolving into water. The more salt, the less soap in the water.

Doing anything of those will give a completely different cleansing property of the soap.

Those soap I am making all have less "cleansing value" than 10 normally but I am not looking much at that value at all.

So as conclusion: Do not look blindly at the cleansing value at soapcalc! The value is just plainly stupid, especially if you superfat.

 

[neeners]

I live in a hot and humid place all year round, my soap recipes have OO, CO, castor and a butter in there for hardness (shea or cocoa)...I use butter b/c I can't find palm oil or lard. my SFs are kept around 7%....I don't feel greasy.

plus, no matter where you are in the world, your soap recipe is really dependant on your personal preference. I have dry skin even here.