What do sanitiser and gardening have in common?

What do sanitiser and gardening have in common?

As we keep tweaking and adjusting our lives to be safer, hand sanitiser sales must have gone through the roof over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, the side effects of keeping safe can lead to dry, cracked skin as well as redness or discolouration and flaking.

Not dissimilar to the side effects of gardening... soil can be abrasive and if you don’t wear gloves, little particles of dirt and plant matter damage the protective top layer of skin, leaving it vulnerable to moisture loss. Even if you do wash your hands, scrubbing with soap adds to the issue.

skin moisture

Your skin has three layers: The epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, provides a waterproof barrier and creates our skin tone. The dermis, beneath, contains tough connective tissue, hair follicles and sweat glands. The deeper subcutaneous tissue (hypodermis) is made of fat and connective tissue.

Using sanitiser and enjoying gardening leads to the same results – leeching all the moisture out of your hands and damaging the outermost layer of skin.

The first product I created was a hand lotion (you can read about the beginning here) and over time, this lotion repairs the outer layer and helps to rebuild your natural barrier to lock moisture in.

Other lotions I’ve tried leave a surface film on your hands, which, even though it does create a barrier, it’s not skin deep, and it isn’t a nice feeling. My recipe uses Shea Butter – it’s very nourishing and traps the moisture further down in the layers. Over time, you can use it less and less because it’s repaired the natural barrier your body produces.

Frankincense Oil is used in my hand lotion – Egyptians used it in perfumes and salves for soothing skin. It comes from a resin in the Boswellia tree and offers anti-inflammatory effects that may help to reduce join inflammation caused by arthritis.

Another ingredient is Jojoba Oil which is extremely nourishing and is the closest oil to mimic the natural oils your skin produces. It can be effective in treating acne, eczema, contact dermatitis and psoriasis.

However, it’s not the ingredients on their own that get the results, together they create a synergistic blend. It’s quite firm in the jar (the beeswax stops it from turning to liquid in the heat), and you only need the size of your little fingernail to cover your nails, hands, and wrists.

It’s one of my top sellers and everyone who buys it keeps coming back to buy more.

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