A rather innovative new mashup product has hit the shelves: a company called Isle of Candles is offering a new soy lotion candle that’s not only a clean burning fragrance candle, but also a moisturizing body lotion.
The new candle/lotion combo works by letting the candle burn until a pool of oil forms, covering the top surface of the candle. Users then dip their fingers into the melted soy oil.
The oil is warm but not scalding hot, as soy candles burn cooler than paraffin wax (though you do need to extinguish the flame before dipping into the oil, of course). The skin absorbs warm oil better than it would a cold lotion, allowing it to penetrate deeper to smooth and moisturize the skin.
Soy is well-known for its beauty benefits. More and more skin care products are using soy-derived ingredients like soy isoflavones, as they help to decrease redness, brighten the skin, boost collagen production and improve skin tone.
It’s especially popular for menopausal and postmenopausal women, because it helps to fade age marks and offset the estrogen loss that accompanies aging, as well as offer beneficial effects on lines and wrinkles.
Soy contains vitamin E which helps to stimulate skin cell replacement. Its lecithin content aids in replacing skin elasticity to restore a firmer, more glowing appearance.
Soy lotion candles like the type made by Isle of Candles, also contain vitamin E, and customers report that they’ve helped to relieve eczema, psoriasis, burns, cuts, scrapes and insect bites. This important vitamin also helps to heal cracks and soften the skin.
Traditional Chinese medicine has often talked about the wonders of soy when it comes to skin care benefits, with anecdotal accounts from scientists that Asian workers in soybean factories who handled the beans regularly had especially smooth, even-toned hands, and that women who worked in the tofu industry had beautiful skin.
Of course, observations like those don’t hold up to modern scientific scrutiny, but it’s clear that many companies are embracing the use of soy, resulting in quite a few happy customers.
One study, conducted in 2009 at the Federal University of Sao Paulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil, found that postmenopausal women using a concentrated, isoflavone-rich soy extract for six consecutive months had a significant increase in epithelial thickness, number of elastic and collagen fibers, and blood vessels, which would result in younger, healthier-looking skin.
-The Alternative Daily
Sources:
http://isleofcandles.com/take_a_dip.html
http://blogs.webmd.com/healthy-skin/2011/11/the-soy-effect.html
http://www.soyconnection.com/newsletters/soy-connection/health-nutrition/articles/Oral-and-Topical-Use-of-Soy-May-Provide-Skin-Benefits
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578653
