LCHF America goes hippie: homemade lotion

2013 brought a lot of major changes into our household.  We went from a house that ate every packaged food on the planet to a house that got excited about grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, organic spinach, and grain-free cat food.  A year ago, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what ingredients were in anything, and now I inspect every label with the suspicion of a scorned woman.  The last few weeks I’ve been really thinking about how to broaden this even further in our house.  After all, food isn’t the only thing that goes into our bodies.  I have dry skin, flyaway hair, scaly scalp, and have put all sorts of junk all over my body to tame these problems.  Then there’s the cleaning products in the house. If I were to inspect the labels of my beauty and cleaning products with the same ferver that I inspect my food products, would I like what I see?

So far, I’ve been a little terrified learning some of the ingredients.  Parabens, phthalates, sulfates, mineral oil, and other junk.  I don’t need that stuff in or on my body!

So starting now, you may occasionally see some posts with the category of “Hippie”, my loving designation for my 2014 goal to try and clean up our bathroom cupboards.  Here’s my first attempt at making something terrifying: body lotion.

Yeah, that’s my cat eating coconut oil in a santa costume. Wanna fight?

Confession: I’ve been using coconut oil for a couple months now as my body lotion.  I actually was craving it on my skin one day.  Yeah, that’s a thing.  Like craving ice cream or bacon.  So I bought a jar exclusively for skin.  Turns out it works great as a lotion on its own.  Cats also like eating it.  Every morning when I get out of the shower, I go into the bedroom and am greeted by my menagerie meowing for coconut oil.  The jar comes open, some oil gets on my skin, and a lot gets eaten by the cats.  It’s perfectly healthy for them to eat, so I don’t care.

It works pretty good 95% of the time, except when it gets below 0 degrees F, then the air is just so dry that no lotion can keep up.  Well, at least none that I had found.  I thought that maybe if I found a recipe for lotion that incorporated shea butter or something to that effect, it may just be the ticket.  I don’t know anything about making lotion so I didn’t feel comfortable with inventing a recipe (yet).

Enter Wellness Mama’s luxurious homemade lotion recipe.  Folks, I grew up on that Avon intensive therapy stuff that could rehydrate a mummy overnight.  This stuff rivals that, I swear to you.  And it smells as good (or as neutral) as you want it to, because you customize it with essential oils.

For my ingredients, because the recipe is slightly customizable, I used the beeswax, Vitamin E oil, almond oil, coconut oil, the optional shea butter, and I added lavender essential oil and a touch of vanilla extract.  DON’T BE LIKE ME.  Don’t add the vanilla extract.  They suggest it, but don’t do it.  It will pill up with little globules because it doesn’t mix.  I’d bet vanilla and chamomile would be fantastic.  Do that instead if you’re looking for something soothing.

For a jar to do the melting, I used an old empty ghee jar.  Worked pretty amazing.  Once it all melted per the recipe instructions, I poured it all into a wide mouth 8 oz mason jar.  Boom.  Lotion done.  By the way, this stuff works fantastic as a lip balm too.  Double score!

Seriously, if you are looking for a simple recipe to shimmy your way into making your home healthier, this is a simple one to do.  Remember, I almost set my oven mitts on fire and I made this recipe work.

Are you excited that we will be occasionally posting natural household recipes?  Please comment below!

The finished product!

Fully melted. See the brown dots in the bottom? That’s the vanilla I warned you about.

Half melted.

All the ingredients, before melting them together. Looks sorta gross. Don’t worry, you aren’t eating them.

Sugar content of medicine

The sun is shining, the grass is growing, and pollen is flying around everywhere.  Sneezing yet?  I sure am.  I’m lucky when I can see clearly when I open my eyes in the morning right now.  Pre-LCHF, i’d probably reach for any ol’ allergy medicine to take care of my symptoms.  Now I check every bottle.  Did you realize that a lot of medicines have sugar added to them?  That cherry flavor wasn’t added with fairy dust.

If you don’t have a bottle of allergy or cold medicine handy, go to drugstore.com and check out the ingredients for the Children’s Benadryl.  Sugar! I like how they label it as “Sucrose”, how fancy.  There’s a reason they make special cold medicine for diabetics.

What is an allergy sufferer to do?  You have a few options.  First, the pill form (not the fast melt) of medications tend to have less or no sugar since they don’t have to flavor them.  I’ve personally never been kicked out of ketosis by the pill form of any allergy medicine *yet*, but as previously discussed, everyone’s body is different.  You can suffer through with no medicine.  You can try alternative treatments as well, like using a neti pot, or treating with essential oils.  I am a big fan of a neti pot and I’ve stopped getting sinus infections since I started using one, and my sister swears by her essential oils.  You need to decide based on your symptoms, your body, and your comfort zone what you want to do.

Did you notice I didn’t include “you can also use the cold medicine made for diabetics” on that list?  Cold medicines do nothing for colds, and aren’t going to help your allergies.  The only “cold medicine” that shows any effectiveness for colds is decongestants like pseudoephedrine.  I know it sucks to sit there and suffer and not take anything when you’ve got a cold, but there is no reason to be ingesting chemicals when you don’t need to be.

I’ve seen countless posts from people who have accidentally kicked themselves out of ketosis by forgetting that all sorts of medications contain sugar, so maintain vigilance.  Try a new solution.  You’ve already kicked your carb habit, why not try an alternative treatment to your allergies.