Taking Care of Sunburn Skin

Aloe, Water & Essential Oils

Taking in the rays of the sun can be good for the body, but getting to much sun can cause serious skin damage, or sunburn.  I love that warm feeling of the sun's rays on my skin, but to much UVA and UVB rays from the sun can alter DNA causing damage to the skin and premature aging. According to the Mayo Clinic, there are more than three million cases of sunburn in the United States every year. Many of these cases are mild and can be treated at home. 

 If you find yourself out in the sun to long, here are a few natural ways to care for sun burn skin. The most common response I have seen in my research for treating sunburns, is drinking lots of water. Keeping yourself hydrated is key in  healing sunburns. In addition to drinking water, you could drink herbal teas and water kefir. Another way to treat sunburn is Aloe Vera. This has been in use for not only sunburns, but many other types of burns for a long time. Getting the aloe from the plant instead of using a lotion with aloe may be the best option for nursing your sunburn. 

Oatmeal can be another way to tend sunburn skin. Add half a scoop or one cup to cool bath water, then soak. It's that easy! If  the sunburn is only covering a small area, you can add oats to cool water, put inside a cheese cloth or gauze, then place onto the burnt area. You may want to change gauze and re-cool the oatmeal as needed.  In addition to putting oatmeal on sunburn skin, you could use a clean potato. You would want to puree the potato first, placing the puree inside gauze, then applying to burnt area. My favorite way to ease sunburn is the use of essential oils, like lavender. I love the way essential oils smell and feel on my body without sunburn. Just image how much comfort you could have if  these oils are used on sunburn skin. When using these and any other remedies, try keeping the ingredients cool. This can help soothe that searing sensation felt on the skin. There are many other natural remedies used for the treatment of sunburn. Some items you may even have in your home. It's summer time and the sun is out longer. Sunburn can occasionally occur on anyone, what's essential is knowing how to treat it.

Here are other Sun Burn Relief Remedies:

after making keep cool

Andrea's Comment from Wellness Mama Blog: add into a 2 oz bottle with a mist top.

• aloe vera juice-1/8 tsp.
• vitamin E oil-1 1/2 tsp. 
• fractional coconut oil  
• roman chamomile 2 drops 
• lavender 2 drop 
• 2 drops melaleuca 

Herb Spray from Wellness Mama Blog:

• Boil 1 cup of water and add 2 tablespoons of dried mint leaf, lavender flowers, and dried plantain leaf. 
• Remove from heat and let cool. 
• Once cool, strain out the herbs. 
• Add an equal amount of apple cider vinegar to the cooled tea mixture and pour in to a spray bottle

Koketta Knowles

Scent...An Influential Sense

           

Every woman/man has a favorite scent they are drawn to or enjoy smelling. Some likes the fragrance of flowers while other enjoys a stronger musk type scent. I have always been partial to the soft fruit type smells. As I think back on my youth, I realize I have only had two favorite scents.(one being added only recently) I have always love the smell of coco butter. I actually grew up using coco butter to moisturize my hair and body. Companies have tried to introduce me to other smells, but that coconut fruit smell was the only scent I adored. Everything I purchased, from my shampoo to my soaps and lotions, had coconut oil or coconut butter infused in them.
              Later in life, I began searching for natural products that contained my favorite scent (coconuts). There are many natural products that contains coconut essential oils, but one product caught my attention. +Bloomfield Bath's Premium Body Butter. Their Premium Body Butter contains 40% unrefined, organic Shea Butter. In addition to the She Butter, Bloomfield Bath's Premium Body Butter contains: Virgin Coconut Oil, Coco Butter, Vitamin E and a host of other great ingredients that will benefit your skin. Once this body butter is rubbed onto your skin, it feels like your skin is getting the moisture needed to stay strong healthy and refresh. I finally found a product that is great for my skin and has my favorite scent. The bonus to all this, which had me smiling from ear to ear, is this body butter is 100% natural.  A win, win for me. While searching on Bloomfield Bath's website, I realized they have so many natural products to offer and there are additional scents available to add to the butters I love.

Best of all, there was a coconut scent available. It's call Coconut Cream. I was in heaven. I had my butter with Coconut Cream scent. I later found out I could get that same scent added to the soaps and polishes. So, now I can clean, exfoliate, and moisturize with the same aroma. To top it all off, the Cleanser and Conditioners has the coconut oil in their ingredients as well. Bloomfield Bath offered me a complete line of natural products to use that all contained my favorite scent. I was excited!
A year has passed and I am online ordering my products like normal, when I must have accidentally ordered my soap bar in a different scent. (Honey Almond) I didn't realized my mistake until I received my soap bars. The first thing I did was smell the soap to find out if I would be okay with this scent. I put the bars to my nose and took a deep whiff... Instantly, I felt as if I was in another place. That moment I determined, I was going to keeps those bars of soap. After a few days of using the Signature Soap Bars with the Honey Almond scent, I had added a new scent to my favorites list. Now, two years later, I use my Premium Body Butter, Polish and Signature Soap Bars all with the Honey Almond scent. I still love the coconut smells, especially the Coconut Cream scent, but Honey Almond has won me over. It is said that, "Nothing is more memorable than smell" and I can say my first sniff of Honey Almond has me now in its clasps and I am forever captivated with this scent. What is your favorite scent? What feelings do you sense when that fragrance embraces your nose? Always remember "[Your] sense of smell can be extraordinary evocative,", and for me every time I smell Honey Almond from Bloomfield Bath, I am taken to a place of bliss.

Instead of ordering single bars, I order a loaf of soap. That's 10 bars of soap.

Click here to check out my webpage, Koketta's Bloomfield Bath

What Are You Putting Under Your Arms?

Do you know what goes into the making of commercial deodorant? I thought the brand that I used was the best. It kept me smelling fresh and it kept me from sweating. Now that I am transitioning to using all natural ingredients, I decided to read the label on the commercial deodorant in my home. I was shock when I realized what I have been putting under my arms since I was old enough to use deodorant. I decided to check my husband deodorant ingredients, and yes pretty much the same thing.
"Deodorant" is actually a cosmetic substance applied to your body to help prevent odor. People commonly brand any substance placed under the arms, deodorant. However, if you use antiperspirants your not just using deodorant, you are using a FDA approved over-the-counter drug under your arms. If you are wondering how an antiperspirant deodorant can be classified as an over-the-counter drug, here is why. According to Wikipedia, an over-the-counter drug is a substance use to treat a specific condition, in this case sweating, without the supervision of a physician. This substance also has to be proven to be "reasonably safe and tolerated". What makes antiperspirant deodorants an over-the-counter drug is that it contains aluminum. Aluminum can cause contact dermatitis in those that are allergic. Different brands of antiperspirant deodorants uses different compounds of aluminium, there are aluminium cholorhydrate, aluminium zirconium tetracholohydrate, aluminium salts, etc. It all varies on the commercial brand.

a famous anti-antiperspirant deodorant brand

The aluminium reacts with the oils produces by your sweat glands to create a plug. The more you use antiperspirant deodorant to less you will sweat because your sweat glands are being blocked. This could result in several side effects, such as darken armpits. Also with frequent use, your body will began to product an organically, Synthetic Musk Galaxolide. This is a musky, flowery, wood scent. Galaxolide is a fragrance sometimes used in commercial soaps, cosmetics and detergents. Just imaging the damaged your doing to your armpits.
Also, it is thought that the aluminium in antiperspirants causes breast cancer, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. There is even a warning on the label that states to consult with your doctor if you have kidney disease. Patients with high levels of aluminium and kidney disease are more likely to develop dementia. Thus, the FDA requires this warning on the labels. A study completed in the European Journal of Cancer finds between 1945 - 2000 antiperspirant sales increased 14,000%. With this increase many of the women who uses antiperspirants and shaved under their arms has been diagnosed with breast cancer 19 years earlier than women who did neither. This study is accepted, because the lymph nodes in your armpits are connected to the lymph nodes in your breast. Thus, linking what you put under your arms to the changes in your breast tissue.

How antiperspirants work. 

Other studies have been conducted to refute the study done by the European Journal of Cancer. According to Ted S. Gansler, MD, MBA, and director of medical content  for the  American Cancer Society, "There is no convincing evidence that antiperspirant ... use increases cancer risk". This is thought so because the aluminium is not absorbed into the body but forms a plug in the sweat duct as a chemical reaction. Although there has been a few chemicals produced from antiperspirants found in breast tissue, there is not enough evidence to show these chemicals are the cause of breast cancer. Right now scientist are still in the research phase. Studies are contradicting themselves on whether using antiperspirant is good or bad for your health. Since there is no confirmation of whether commercial deodorants can cause health problems or not, an alternative to using commercial deodorants/antiperspirants is make your own homemade deodorant. Therefore, knowing what you are putting under your arm.

Did you know you can easily make your own deodorant at home with kitchen ingredients familiar to you? Making your own deodorant will mask the odor, however, you will sweat. Sweating is your body's natural way of cooling down and removing waste. The perspiration from your body is really odorless. The odor comes from bacteria feeding on the oils from the sweat glands, dead skin and hair cells. When making homemade deodorant, if you use essential oils it will inhibit the growth of microbes, like bacteria. Thus, preventing odor. There are a wide range of deodorant recipes available on the internet. The one that caught my attention was the information offered by Wellness Mama. All the ingredients she used to make her natural deodorants were similar to the ingredients +Bloomfield Bath uses to make all of their Natural Body Care products.

Ingredients Needed:

1. Corn Starch/Arrowroot 
2. Baking Soda
3. Coconut Oil
4. Essential Oil 
1. this is the fragrance
5. Vitamin E
1. to keep the armpit area soft
6. An empty container

Directions: Quick and Easy

     Mix baking soda and corn starch together.(1/4 of cup of each) Mash in the coconut oil (6 tablespoons) with fork until well blended. Add oils (about 1 tablespoon) and store in container. 

I adjust this recipe based on what I had available in my cabinets. I did not have coconut oil, so I used Bloomfield Bath's Premium Body Butter~Unscented. As for Essential Oils, I used +Bloomfield Bath's Miracle Oil Hair and Body. When I placed my finished product under my arms, it had the same consistency of the antiperspirant I used before. If you have sensitive skin you may want to replace the baking soda with bentonite clay or using less baking soda. As I read some of the responses to this recipe, some of the makers added other ingredients like bees wax, unrefined, or a little lemon juice. The bees wax works like a hardener and the lemon juice is great with preventing your armpits from getting darkened. It's great to experiment to find the perfect product for you.

all the ingredients mixed

Applying homemade deodorant under your arms has other benefits, besides preventing clogged sweat glands. Homemade deodorants moisturize your armpits, allows your body to rid itself of toxins, keeps you from have under arm odor, and its budget friendly. When creating your own homemade deodorant, play around with the essential oils and ingredients until you find the consistency the works best for you. When I make my next batch, I am going to try with the Honey Almond Premium Body Butter. I like that signature scent from Bloomfield Bath. Although there are 11 other Signature Scents options, I want to start with my favorites until I find the right scent for me. There are more and more options available now for taking care of your skin and keeping it healthy and beautiful.  Using natural ingredients is the best way to preserve your skin's radiance.

after sanitizing my container, added the mixture.

The finished product

Lavender Love

This month, +Bloomfield Bath's Charity Soap of the Month is Lavender Love. In lieu of this month's charity soap, I will be talking about the effects of lavender on your skin. If your wondering what type of flower lavender is, well, it's actually an herb. Lavender can be used for many things, such as, consumption in baking products and teas, or as a fragrance for your home. Bloomfield Bath uses lavender in our body products. Lavender is native to northern Africa and the mountainous regions of the Mediterranean and it can come in a variety colors like yellow, green or white. The Latin version of Lavender is "lavare", which means, to wash. This herb has a nice refreshing smell. Lavender has many uses, one being a great aromatherapy agent. When dried you can place inside pillows or sleeping masks and this will help you to sleep, naturally. It is thought that lavender slows down your nervous system. *Do not use Lavender with any additional sleeping aids*  You can dry lavender flowers, place inside cloth bags, and use as dryer sheets. Thus, giving your linen a cool, refreshing, natural scent straight from the dryer. The natural scent of lavender can keep bugs away. Yes, no more buying those "chemical" bug sprays, when you apply the lavender essential oil you shouldn't have to worry about bug bites. Lavender is effective against most bugs like mosquitoes and moths. If you were to get bitten by a bug, all you would have to do is apply lavender essential oil to reduce skin irritation and pain. Not only is the lavender essential oil a great anti-inflammatory, it can help with skin acne and provide minor burn relief. When added topically, the essential oil of lavender can help hinder bacteria growth by reducing scarring when the acne begin to heal. Also Lavender relieves the pain of minor burns when applied to the skin. 

I have only spoke of a few of lavender's properties, but there are many other qualities that lavender posses in addition to relaxing the mind, soothing minor burns, and/or bug bites. Scientist are researching the effects of lavender and finding more and more great advantages of it's use. For example, researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal found that Lavender oil is lethal to an array of skin pathogenic strains. Another study completed by The Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database says that, "...lavender can promote hair growth..." WOW, "hair growth". When I read that, I wanted to know more. This was then backed up by a Scottish study report. The, "[l]avender oil increases blood circulation..." when rubbed on your scalp regularly. They reported that patients with alopecia showed 40% more hair growth when using lavender essential oils on their scalp. 

Lavender is a great herb with healing and soothing properties. Bloomfield Bath adds lavender to our soaps, creams, lotions, butters, and polishes. When you've had a stressful day, why not take a bath with our Lavender Love homemade soap bar, then moisturize your skin with the cream. Now watch all your stress go away. The bonus in using Bloomfield Bath's lavender soap bar is knowing that we truly use all natural, unrefined lavender essential oils. Get soothed today with our Lavender Love Signature Scent. 

Lavender Love - a blend of lavender & lemon

Lavender Love