Someone traveling here from the distant past could fairly assume a “lack of moisture” is a dangerous epidemic in our society. Every personal care product strives to moisturize and at the same time we’re reminded to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

Are we really going to dry up and blow away? Probably not. But the simple truth is that we bathe about seven to fourteen times more frequently than our ancestors just a century ago. And while that’s terrific for hygiene, it’s pretty rough on our skin. Our skin is full of miniature moisture factories that (ideally) coat our skin in a light layer of sebum to protect us and lock in moisture. A shower once or twice a day is more than most of the skin’s glands can keep up with.

Since frequent bathing doesn’t seem to be a fad soon to fade away, we just have to be a little more careful about protecting and reproducing our body’s natural moisture protection.

• Moisture begins from within, so drink enough water. Enough said.
• Don’t wash your body with something that just takes and takes, but doesn’t give back. Your soap should clean you by whisking away sweat, dirt and oil – but it also has to leave behind some emollient (moisturizing) ingredient to replace what it just took. Our handmade soaps are formulated to have free oils just for this purpose.
• Be wary of products that contain irritants or drying ingredients. Skin irritation doesn’t always present itself as redness and itching. The overuse of ingredients like waxes, fragrances, dyes, alcohols and petro-chemicals can simply look like dry skin that has no glow.
• Pick nature’s most nourishing moisturizers. Moisture is technically just water. But if water alone did the trick, then standing in the shower would turn our skin baby-soft. To moisturize, we have to reproduce something like our body’s natural sebum. Several vegetable oils come very close – such as jojoba oil. Others like olive oil, soy oil, avocado oil and shea butter provide nutritive or healing properties. Read ingredients labels and check for the real deal: natural oils.
• Say it with us: humectant. Hemectant ingredients are non-oil substances that actually draw moisture to themselves right from the air. Things like glycerin and honey make great additions to lotions because they help add moisture. One of the great things about our handmade soap is that glycerin is created when the soap is made, so they have plenty of natural glycerin already in them.
• Seal it and heal it. For particularly dry or chapped skin you may need something more than a standard lotion. Lotions contain water, so they are a bit like “diluted oil”. This is great for daily moisturizing but not for those heels that could cut glass. Fortunately nature has some wonderful oils like shea that are excellent for intense dryness and cracking. We like to add an additional dose of vitamin E to our shea for an extra boost. If you’re looking for an intense moisturizer, be sure to find one with little or no wax.
• Avoid too much sun. Also obvious, but your mother called and insisted we include this.