*guest post*
Did you know that when it comes to health, what you put ON your body is just as important as what you put IN your body? Indeed, the largest organ of your body is your skin and since it is porous, it can absorbs everything you put on it.
Whatever your skin absorbs gets dumped into your blood stream straight away, as opposed to what you ingest orally, which is filtered by both your liver and kidneys. Therefore, yes, a healthy nutrition and some healthy lifestyle habits are all very essential to make sure you stay in vibrant health, but what you put on your skin on a daily basis is just as important for good health as what you put on your plate.
Most conventional beauty products are loaded with harsh chemicals, petrolatum, and many other substances that are known to be hormonal disruptors and can also create a lot of damages within your body in the long run (e.g. internal inflammation, skin problems, brain malfunctions, headaches, reproductive health issues, etc).
As always, when it comes to health: Knowledge is Power.
Indeed, knowledge is key because the more you know about what kind of chemicals are lurking in your skincare products and cosmetics, the easier it becomes to avoid such ingredients.
And thankfully for us, there is a lot of information out there if you want to better understand what you really put on your skin and how to avoid harmful chemicals found in your skin care products and cosmetics. For example, these two books :Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry by Stacy Malkan and Healthy Beauty: Your Guide to Ingredients to Avoid and Products You Can Trust by Samuel S. Epstein and Randall Fitzgerald, are great resources. But if you are not into books, you can also visit this clever website:The Cosmetics Database. There you will find a lot of useful information, such as which products and brands are safer to use.
Finally another option, which I am particularly fond of, is to make your own beauty products at home from easy, clean ingredients that you can find in your kitchen pantry or easily source online (see links at the end of this post).
Trust me, there is nothing more satisfying than to actually know EXACTLY what you put on your skin and it is so gratifying and fun to make it from scratch and to be able to customize your various body products! Today, I want to show you a simple way to make an Easy Homemade Whipped Body Butter.
Indeed, it has been a few years now that I stopped buying conventional cosmetics and beauty products because once I would look at the ingredients list, there was always a myriad of cited chemicals, which certainly did not belong in my shampoo, conditioner or body lotion. So the first thing I started doing was creating my own hair treatments with kitchen ingredients.
Homemade hair masks and hot oil treatments became fun to experiment with every weekend. Later on, I started making my own body lotions. BEST decision EVAH! Using my own Easy Homemade Whipped Body Butter was so fun and felt so much safer. Plus, my skin LOVED it and felt so moisturized even during the harsh Canadian winter months. I was hooked!
The best thing about making your own body lotion is that you can customize the texture and the scent of your creation. Pretty cool, right? I sure think so. One of my favorite scents these days is a mix of lavender with citrus (provided by clean essential oils)… So this recipe was created according to that combination, but feel free to use any scent you would like.
The only think I have to recommend is that you use pure and organic essential oils and not fragrance oils as these are loaded with more chemicals, which would defeat the whole purpose of creating something clean and healthy for your skin. Besides, once you start seeing the variety of smells Mother Nature has in store for you, you will quickly forget and even start disliking unnatural fragrances.
Without further ado, let’s jump into this, shall we?
Here are the ingredients you will need for this:
Easy Homemade Whipped Body Butter
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of raw organic cacao butter
- 1 cup of raw organic shea butter
- 1/4 cup of organic extra virgin coconut oil
- 1/4 cup of organic almond oil (optional)
- 1/4 cup of organic castor oil/ EVOO/ or jojoba oil (optional)
- 3 Tbsp of pure vitamin E oil (natural preservative)
- Optional: Organic Essential Oils of your choice for the scent. I used 6 drops of lavender and 3-4 drops of citrus.
Instructions:
Here is a little video for you to be able to see how easy it can be to make your own Homemade Whipped Body Butter.
Once you have obtained a creamy consistency. Simply transfer your new body butter to a glass jar/container. You can store your body lotion in a dark and cool area and it should last for a good month a half, if not two months, outside the fridge (especially in colder months). If you live in a more tropical and humid climate, I would recommend storing it in the fridge. The whipping will ensure that your body lotion remains easily applicable and does not become rock solid again.
I really hope you will enjoy the process of creating your own body lotion, completely free of harsh chemicals.
As always stay vibrant, beautiful people!
– Sarah Somain – check out more from her Deliciously Vibrant Blog
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