Shea Butter Soap

Shea Butter Soap – Shea Butter

We purchase our raw unrefined shea butter for soap from Ghana, where it is harvested by hand. Shea butter is considered a natural moisturizer because it provides a breathable, water-resistant film on your skin, so it greatly enhances the moisture ability of a soap. Our skin absorbs Shea Butter very quickly and so a shea butter soap supports skin care for stretch marks, dry skin, cracked heels, eczema, psoriasis & many other frustrating skin conditions. Shea Butter is considered a rejuvenator for troubled or aging skin. Read on, if you’d like to know more about Shea Butter and our Shea Butter Soap.

Where Shea Butter Comes From

Shea Butter (pronounced SHAY Butter, not SHE-a Butter) comes from the Mangifolia tree found in the savannahs of central Africa. Shea Butter is found exclusively in Africa. Shea butter comes from the Karite Tree, which means ‘life’ when translated from the local Dioula language. The Karite tree grows wild, with little need for cultivation or fertilization, and can generally be considered ‘organically’ grown. These trees can live for 300 years, and are a fundamental role in African culture. Shea butter is a product of the oil extracted from Karite nuts, which are produced once a year, and has been used by African healers for thousands of years, providing supportive care for skin ailments like burns, dermititis, cracks and crevices caused by dry skin as well as skin ulcers.

Just about all parts of the Karite tree have some practical value. The bark is an ingredient in traditional medicines against certain childhood ailments and minor scrapes and cuts. The shell of the nuts is reputed to repel mosquitoes. It is the fruity part of the Shea nut, that provides a vegetable butter that can be used in cooking, soaps, and skin and hair care.

How Shea Butter is Harvested for Soap Use

Shea Butter is called Women’s Gold because its harvesting is primarily a womens’ industry, providing a trade for poor women. Extracting the butter from the nuts gives employment and income to hundreds of thousands of rural African village women. When crushed and processed, the nuts of the shea tree yield a vegetable fat known as shea butter. It takes twenty (20) hours just to handcrush 2.2 pounds of Shea Butter.

Other Uses for Shea Butter besides Soap

Shea Butter has been used to make local foods and soap, but shea butter these days is also considered a valuable export because of its popularity in manufacture of both chocolate and skin care products. Unprocessed shea nuts have been exported to Europe for decades, primarily for the manufacture of chocolate in Switzerland. It was only in the late 1990s, that shea butter became a popular export for purchase by skin and hair care companies.

Healing qualities of Shea Butter Soap

Shea Butter is an all-natural product that contains cinnamic acid, which provides protection against damaging ultraviolet rays and vegetable fats which promote cell regeneration and circulation.

Use of shea butter on the skin reduces sun exposure, which can then delay or reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Taken a little further, by buffering sun exposure, shea butter may help prevent skin cancer. Shea Butter also provides a natural protective barrier against cigarette smoke, and other harmful chemical pollutants and smog in the atmosphere.

Our Shea Butter Soap

We use shea butter in our hand soaps, gardeners soaps, as well as many special purpose soaps precisely because of its ability to help new cell growth and encourage circulation. Our shea butter soaps include Diabetic Foot Soap, Rosacea Soap, and our soaps for those who struggle with eczema, psoriasis, and thinning skin tissues that bruise easily due to blood thinners. Our Shea Butter Facial Soaps and Shea Butter Sunburn Soap will provide the intensive moisture treatment and protective barriers so many of us need.