New soap!
This soap is all about sustainability and crafting what's around you for skin medicine, my favorite kind of remedy making. This soap is cleansing, hydrating, enhancing, protecting and healing the skin from every angle. As always, loaded with venison tallow from this hunting season. This batch I did something a little different. I decided to harvest the Chaga I had been admiring all season by my deer blind. I spent a lot of time in the woods at that spot, from baiting to bow season to rifle season. Many many hours of sitting with my thoughts and find my vision for the future and bring the spark for life back into my heart. Its come to be a special place to me and I decided to go back even though hunting season is done and my blind has long been put up. Both the tallow and Chaga was harvested from this spot, which just feels special to me. A little piece of my special place in the woods, in the form of soap 😆This soap is infused with Chaga in every way possible. From the water portion of the recipe to infusing the tallow with Chaga too to extract both water soluble and fat soluble constituents. I also powdered Chaga and layered the soap which made it look so similar to the beautiful birch tree it was harvested from by my blind. Infused with vanilla bean, it has such a delicate heavenly aroma. Just like the last soap, I used potato water which also naturally produce hyaluronic acid which moisturizes and hydrates the skin 🥰
Chaga has a plethora of benefits topically. From its anti inflammatory properties, to aiding with skin sensitivity and acne (thanks to the kojic acid). The betulinic acid found in Chaga is responsible for its skin cell regenerative properties. Chaga is loaded with antioxidants and nutrients for the skin. It's extremely beneficial to all ages and stages 🥰
A little recap on Tallow and PUFA. The healing that tallow offers is backed by time honored traditions. These are the methods our ancestors used. The original care. Most natural products we use on our skin these days are filled with inflammatory PUFAs which are unstable and can be toxic to the body. Tallow on the other hand is far more balanced and offers stability and slows oxidation. Tallow is also loaded with bioavailable nutrients, both for your skin and internally. Let's go down the rabbit hole of polyunsaturated fatty acids- aka PUFAs.
Skin care products that are made with PUFAs and touted to be anything and everything for our skin. I've certainly used plenty of them for myself, for my family and in products. They have so many great qualities, and I'm not going to sit here and say they're all bad, but moderation is certainly key as with everything. Essentially, the issue with PUFAs is that they are most times unstable and this leads to oxidation (damage and deterioration) when they're exposed to light, heat or air (so, anytime they're on our skin). Their molecules have double bonds, rendering them weak and easily broken. So why does any of this matter? Well, when these oils on your skin oxidize it creates a free radical cascade which damages what may have been previously UNdamaged lipids in your skin. PUFAs have now been identified as the main culprit of cellular damage. In fact, there have actually been studies done of internal use of PUFAs vs not, and how quickly the individual consuming PUFAs skin starts to get damaged and deterioration sets in, because what you eat affects your skin too.
This is why we made the transition some time ago (however, surprisingly we were already using relatively no PUFAs) to only using MUFAs (monounsaturated fatty acids) and SFAs (saturated fatty acids) aka Tallow!! SFAs have no molecular double bonds, which means there isn't any opportunity for oxygen to squeeze in and oxidation to occur.