Herbs to Add to Your Massage Oils

Did you know that your skin is the largest organ in your body and it absorbs everything that you place on it?  Did you know that mainstream beauty products are filled with industrial chemicals, like parabens and petroleum?  According to the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org), common beauty and body care items contain many chemicals, both natural and synthetic.  The manufacturers, by and large, do not test their products for health and safety, so we do not know how much of their chemicals get into our bodies or what their risks are to us or to our environment once they get tossed.  Yet the EWG estimates that consumers use about 10 personal care products containing 126 ingredients every day.  

A couple of weeks ago, I held a green beauty workshop in the Breckenridge Arts District at the Fuqua stable to teach our community how they can make beauty and body care items at home, without the use of synthetic ingredients.  Every item we made contained five ingredients or less, and with no preservatives. 

The first item we made was a body oil in which we learned how to infuse herbs into oils.  We chose to infuse our oil with dried comfrey leaf, because it is therapeutic when applied to bruises, sprains, broken bones and injuries. In one European study, an ointment made with comfrey root proved to be effective at treating both pain and swelling in 142 patients with sprained ankles.  Research done in the United States has shown that one of the natural chemical constituents in comfrey, allantoin, proliferates cell growth so that wounds to connective tissue like bones, cartilage, and muscle can heal more rapidly.  The body oil is effective for application over strains, sprains, bruises and muscle aches, but is not recommended for application over open wounds because the rapid cell proliferation may pose the risk of trapping microbes and toxins beneath the surface of the skin.

The second item we made was a healing first aid salve using calendula-infused oil.  Read More...