When asked the question, Do you prefer gel or soap?, many of you answer that despite wishing to act in more #zero-waste terms, you do not because you think that bars of soap dry skin and gels care for skin more.
Today on the Essabó blog we provide reasons why you should go back to using solid bars of soap to obtain moisturised, nourished and beautiful skin.
As you know, our outer skin layer consists of a hydrolipidic layer made up mainly of water and lipids (fats), hence its name hydrolipidic. It is also known as an acid layer because its pH is slightly acidic.
This outer layer is of utmost importance. Did you know that human skin is the biggest organ of the whole human body and covers up to 2 m2? Viruses, bacteria and other pathogens depend on its balance and find it hard accessing our organism because its slight acidity protects against these agents. Therefore, having healthy skin is a synonym of having a healthy body.
Using neutral soaps that do not undo our skin’s balance is, therefore, necessary to preserve its natural balance. A neutral pH is 7, this being the pH of natural pure water. Our skin’s average pH is 5.5, which is slightly acidic like rainwater.
If we move upwardly from pH 7 (the maximum pH is 14), we would find alkaline agents, while a pH from 7 downwards would mean acidic pHs (Figure 1).
In principle, the pH of conventional shower gels is more acidic than that of bars of soap, and can sometimes equal the pH of our skin despite adverts stating that soap is pH-neutral, but they are not (see Figure 1).
However, despite much talk about gels possessing an acidic balance, many are extremely alkaline. A study published by the University of the Andes on the pH of commercial gels indicates well-known gels having a higher alkalinity than bars of Essabó soap (Table 1).
Our Essabó soaps not only have a lower pH than many conventional gels, which range between pH 8.5 and 9.5 depending on each one, but in order to care for skin’s hydrolipidic layer, they are formulated with a high concentration of oils and contain glycerine to keep our skin moisture-absorbing.
So a bar of Essabó soap helps our skin’s pH to slightly rise, which allows skin to be better cleaned in less time. Moreover, the oils that Essabó soap contains help our skin retrieve its optimum slightly acidic pH status, a status that returns a few minutes after bathing.
Some bars of soap can lead to drier skin owing to their poor quality ingredients or faulty formulations, which conventional brands overcome by adding additives and correcting agents of petrochemical origin that soften skin. As Essabó soaps are made from top quality raw materials, like plant and ecological first cold-pressed oils, they clean and condition our skin without leaving it feeling dry, and instead it feels clean and cared for.
We also make attempts to ensure that our soaps can be used even with the most delicate skins because they are formulated with the best oils for skin like ecological virgin coconut oil and ecological olive oil.
Hence the quality of ingredients marks a huge difference between conventional bars of soap and ecological Essabó soaps certified by Bio.Inspecta, one of the most prestigious ecological certifiers in Europe.