Is washing your face with milk soap good for your skin?

More and more people like to wash their faces with handmade soap, mainly because it has outstanding cleaning effects and rich and delicate foam. It can thoroughly clean the dirt in the skin and make the skin more lustrous and elastic. Although handmade soap can meet people's needs, the soap contains a certain soap base. Long-term use can more easily cause the skin's stratum corneum to become thinner, so proper use is still very helpful.

What is Handmade Soap

Handmade soap is soap made by yourself. At least three materials are required: grease, NaOH, and water. The raw materials used to make handmade soap are made of glycerin, vegetable oil and other raw materials, which have an outstanding effect on skin care. It can be used for washing the face, removing makeup, and bathing. The foam of handmade soap is delicate and rich, which can remove oil and dirt deep in the pores.

Shelf life of handmade soap

Because soap does not contain chemical stabilizers or preservatives, the shelf life of soap is much shorter than that of industrial soap. Generally speaking, soap can be used within one year after it is made.

How to store handmade soap

Cold-process vegetable soap contains many natural ingredients and unsaponified moisturizing oils, so the soap should be stored in a cool and dry place to preserve the moisturizing ingredients in the soap. Soap that is not needed in the near future can be placed in the refrigerator, and the shelf life should not exceed one year. Use well-permeable containers to avoid water accumulation.

Reasons why handmade soap is not recommended for washing your face

1. Detergent

Handmade soap has a gorgeous name called "natural cleansing surfactant". Many handmade soaps contain certain ingredients of this additive, so you should pay special attention when purchasing. Because among detergents (surfactants) soap bases (soaps) are the most harmful to the skin. Others are cleansers made from oils and strong alkalis and are called "synthetic cleansing surfactants." Synthetic cleansing surfactants are the culprits that have caused sensitive skin discomfort, wrinkles and redness in recent years. Soaps are the surfactants that have been used for the longest time in human history. They are also the surfactants that cause the most damage to the stratum corneum of the skin, and soaps cause greater damage to the stratum corneum.

2. pH value

The damage that soap causes to the skin was once believed to be due to its high pH value. However, studies have shown that pH value is not the most important factor leading to dry and damaged skin, because the skin has a strong ability to adapt to pH value. The damage of soap to the stratum corneum of the skin lies in its unique surfactant properties. Therefore, the lower pH value of handmade soap than ordinary soap is not the reason why handmade soap is less irritating than soap or perfumed soap.

3. Glycerin

Some people would say that more glycerin makes handmade soap milder. After incomplete saponification (the saponification rate is lower than that of ordinary soap), there is no subsequent glycerin extraction process, so there is a lot of glycerin in the final product. But unfortunately, the large amount of glycerin that many handmade soap enthusiasts are complacent about is not the reason why handmade soap is milder than toilet soap. Due to its water solubility, glycerin is destined to be washed away during the cleaning process and will not be deposited on the skin. In other words, glycerin's improvement of mildness can only have a weak effect, which can be ignored.

4. Vegetable oils in handmade soap

The carbon chains in the vegetable oils in handmade soap are not all long-chain fatty acids such as stearic acid. The short-chain fatty acid soaps formed after neutralization are actually quite irritating to the skin because of their small molecular weight and can more easily penetrate into the skin. Different natural oils have different compositions and short-chain fatty acid contents, and the irritation they cause is also different.

5. Skin irritation

Soaps themselves are very irritating and will always dissolve some lipids no matter what method you use. What's more, handmade soap does not contain the compound amphoteric surfactants or non-ionic surfactants commonly used by formulators to reduce lipid dissolution and irritation. Some people also say that it is said above that you can supplement lipids such as stearic acid, but you have to think about it: wouldn’t it be better and gentler if the lipids in the stratum corneum did not dissolve? Why do we have to wait until it dissolves before replenishing it?

Therefore, from a gentle point of view, the editor believes that it is not good to wash your face with handmade soap, and you cannot use handmade soap as the main daily cleaning product just because of its better rinsing feeling. So it is better to buy cleaning products such as facial cleansers to wash your face.