Hi good morning.
This is one of the question asked by our SoapLab Club member last week.
Its usually assumed that all natural ingredients are good and eczema will subside. So when it doesnt and at times gets it worst; whats the reason for it?
One of the reason is: because you are allergic to one of the ingredients inside.
Ingredients; regardless if its natural or not; if your skin is allergic to it; you will still get the flare.
Of course the chances of having flare is much more when you are using ‘chemical’ products but some 'unlucky' ones still get it with natural products.
Example: You have a peanut allergic; so when u apply something with sweet almond oil or macadamia oil; you will get the flare and allergic reaction. For this person; its worst to use these oils as compared to the pore clogging mineral oil!
Thats why its really important to know which ingredient you are allergic to.
What are the steps to do allergic testing?
- Do a general allergic test as I’ve mentioned before here. Its a 24 hour test and should be done on every product you purchased / made
- If you have allergic reaction against these product; then start doing allergic test on every ingredients .
Lets assume that you made an eczema balm using ; shea butter, jojoba oil and beeswax.
You did allergic test where you applied the balm on skin and got reaction within 24 hours.
Then you know that you are allergic to something on the balm.
So now what you can do is to apply these ingredients a little. Like one drop of jojoba, a little melted beeswax, and a little shea butter on your body (different places). And after 24 hours; watch out for any reactions.
24 hours later; it turns out; the spot where you applied shea butter has reactions. So now you can conclude that shea butter is the ingredient that causes the reactions; so you can avoid it in the future.
Thats all.. easy peasy:)
Heres a picture of how skin specialist does an allergic test but of course since we don’t have all these ‘canggih’ things; we don’t do this.
Cautions! : Now please bare in mind if when you do the first test (24 hours general allergic test) and got symptoms such as difficulty in breathing, or dizzy and have headache; then don’t attempt to do the second test without doctor’s supervision. In these rare cases; its safer to pay the skin specialist to find out what your allergies are.
Other than that; if your reactions are mild (just redness and mild itch) then you can do the test at home.
Does this means ill be allergic to the ingredients forever?
Yes and no. If your reaction is very strong then there are chances you will never be able to use that ingredients forever.
But if its mild; you can always reintroduce the ingredient into your skincare little by little (changes made every 6 months to 1 year)
Example maybe you were having allergic reactions towards shea butter in the balm where shea butter was 30% of the content.
Maybe after 6 months; start using shea butter at 1-5%, then 6 months later add another 1-5% and so on.
Yes it will take ages before you can use it at the full amount but hey; its better safe then sorry right?
I hope this article helps you a little.
Below I’ve compile a data from ‘personal care product council’ ( based in Washington; these are the people who does research on product ingredient safety; not some blogger who assumes everything is unsafe) that you could download below.
The data is according to 4 categories of ‘safety’ and it includes natural and non natural ingredient list.
I hope it helps you when you go about choosing your ingredients in making your handmade skincare:)
Thank you for reading..
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