Yes! What I said.
This is because there is a lot of really poorly formulated black soaps out there and many of you just really like to DIY.
So the main issue here is that you are still using soap on your face.
Step up your game, please.
I’m sure we have heard of Black soap, I think it’s even more famous than the lemon thing, or not.
I’ll just get right to it.
Black soap is locally made with oils and lye – gotten from a highly alkaline hydroxide usually produced from ashes. Due to the nature of lye, the final product would have an incredibly high PH, and because the formulations vary wildly, it usually sits around a 10 on the pH scale – which is about 1000x more alkaline than pure water. A high pH product will damage the acid mantle while irritating and aggravating the skin. Soaps like this can actually cause burns if left in direct contact with your skin for too long.
Ouch, I’m sure you don’t want that.
After using black soap on your face, you have a tingling feeling on your skin, it gives your skin that squeaky clean feeling, yeah, that’s mostly a bad thing.
That squeaky clean feeling is the soap dragging out all the oils from your skin; the excess oils and the really good ones, this is too harsh for your skin and would cause dehydration. Some natural oils should be allowed to remain on the skin to protect the pH balance and keep microflora in check.
If you have acne, I’m sure you’ve been marketed a couple of black soaps while serving your time. Stay away from it. It will give you the dry and squeaky feeling we talked about and everything would seem okay till your sebum layer fights back, overproducing oils on your skin. So now, you have acne with an oily and dehydrated face.
Exactly like black magic, comes back to haunt you, even worse.
If you have dry face, it just dries it out even more.
In reality, there are no actives in raw black soap, it actually just does what soap is supposed to do; cleans and most times, over-cleans.
Also, since everyone is now a homemade skincare genius and mixes honey, lemon, raw pineapples, pawpaw, carrot, cabbage, and makes a full salad in their soap without even considering a preservative or maybe, somehow, these ingredients will grow bacteria over time and actually give you some form of irritation.
No? You didn’t think of that?
If you are looking for active ingredients in a cleanser, you can go buy a properly formulated product that contains the active ingredients, you seek.
Nevertheless, I strongly believe if black soap is formulated properly and incorporated in a good skincare routine, it could be good for your skin, but hey, that’s not the topic for today.
So in essence, should you stop using black soap?
Yes.
But really, the choice is absolutely yours. I mean, there is scientific evidence that black soap doesn’t do you any good. It cleanses, but so does a properly formulated facial cleanser while improving your appearance and skin health.
If after this sermon you choose to use black soap, who am I to stop you?
But just know that slathering your skin with incredibly unpredictable, potent, drying soap is a very risky game.
Love x Light
Mae
The Chemist. 