Healing Salve Recipe: A Natural Hand Salve with Warming Essential Oils
Need a healing salve recipe for winter skin care? This healing hand salve hydrates and protects skin with all natural ingredients, including a simple blend of warming essential oils to help improve circulation and reduce inflammation.
Cold weather can bring misery with it as we age, whether from arthritis or chronic pain. This is in addition to dry, chapped skin. This healing salve recipe for hands tackles both of these symptoms to help offer both dry skin relief and pain relief in a single product. As healing hand salve recipe contains a warming essential oil blend, it does more than simple promote skin health. Plus, the simple essential oil blend also smells great and can help lift your spirits if you’re struggling with seasonal depression.
My hands are always dry throughout the winter months. Even more so now that I’m in my mid-forties. Keeping them moisturized is the key to helping them look healthy. And, if we’re being honest, it also works as a brilliant disguise from my actual age. While my face can usually pass for at least a decade younger than I am, my hands often tell a different story. If I don’t take the time to moisturize and protect my hands, they quickly begin to yield crepey skin that resembles a much older person.
I’ve also found that my hands and feet tend to get colder than the rest of my body during winter. While I can pile on wool socks, wearing gloves — or even fingerless gloves — while I’m working from home can be problematic, and very annoying. However, I’ve found that by increasing circulation in my hands, they aren’t as cold. I also have less pain my hands as result. As I have fibromyalgia (and some good old arthritis kicking in) this is a win for me on multiple levels.
Healing Hand Salve with Warming Essential Oils
This healing salve recipe works great as a natural remedy for dry skin relief. It also helps to improve circulation and soothe sore muscle pain. I like to use this healing hand salve to moisturize and protect my dry hands. However, it also helps to soothe sore muscle and joint pain due to the warming essential oil blend.
I use a simple, 2-ingredient essential oil blend in my healing hand salve recipe to improve circulation, as circulation in extremities is often diminished when the weather is colder. This same essential oil blend also helps to soothe minor aches and pains in joints and muscles.
To make a healing salve recipe, I chose to use ginger essential oil and blood orange essential oil.
Benefits of Ginger Essential Oil
There are a number of skin care benefits of ginger essential oil.
One of the main ginger essential oil benefits include being a natural anti-inflammatory. Ginger essential oil has several natural compounds that are natural anti-inflammatories. One of these compounds is zingibain, which has been shown to help relieve migraine pain without side effects.
The anti-inflammatory properties of ginger can help reduce pain and inflammation from muscle ache, arthritis, and migraines. While I use my favorite ginger oil salve for sore muscles, I also find it effective at soothing fibromyalgia pain when it flares up.
When applied topically, ginger essential oil can help to increase circulation and soothe redness. And, as ginger essential oil has antioxidant and antibacterial properties, it likewise also helps to reduce the visible signs of aging, such as age spots and hyperpigmentation, and promote healing.
Benefits of Blood Orange Essential Oil
Like ginger essential oil, blood orange essential oil also exhibits both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Due to its anti-inflammatory properties, blood orange essential oil is also able to increase circulation as well as calm dry, irritated skin.
In aromatherapy, blood orange essential oil also has uplifting properties. Therefore the scent of my healing salve recipe can help to ease stress, tackle anxiety and calm the mind. Research has shown that inhaling blood orange essential oil can have positive effects on those suffering from depression.
Other Key Ingredients for a Healing Salve
In addition to the essential oil blend I chose for my healing salve recipe, there are also the ingredients that make up the actual salve itself. These ingredients include the following:
- Baobab Oil: An alternative to coconut oil, baobab oil absorbs quickly and is a wonderful, all natural moisturizer. Therefore it’s able to help hydrate dry skin without feeling greasy.
- Shea Nut Oil: A liquid derivative of shea butter, shea nut oil is rich in oleic and stearic essential fatty acids that help to moisturize and nourish skin without greasiness.
- Beeswax: Beeswax is rich in vitamin A, which supports skin health and cell reconstruction. It’s also anti-inflammatory and a natural skin protectant.
- Vitamin E Oil: A powerful antioxidant, vitamin E oil that helps to soothe inflammation, moisturize skin, promote healing and fight free radicals.
Healing Salve Recipe
Now that you know more about the benefits of the ingredients in my healing salve recipe, here’s how to make it.
Ingredients to Make a Healing Hand Salve:
1 oz. baobab oil
.5 oz. shea nut oil
.5 oz. beeswax pastilles
1-2 drops vitamin E oil
9 drops blood orange essential oil
6 drops ginger essential oil
Directions on How to Make a Healing Salve:
Combine the baobab oil, shea nut oil and beeswax in a double boiler or candy melting pot.
Once melted, remove from heat. Then add the vitamin E oil and essential oils to the healing hand salve. Stir to combine.
Now pour the healing salve into a sterilized 2 oz. amber glass jar. Allow to cool completely.
How to Use Your Healing Hand Salve:
To use your healing hand salve, simply massage a small amount into skin, as desired, taking a less is more approach. Reapply as needed to soften and moisturize hands, as well as to protect skin from the elements.
Healing Salve Recipe
This healing salve recipe for winter skin care hydrates and protects skin. It also contains warming essential oils for improved circulation, for the perfect healing hand salve for your natural beauty routine.
Materials
- 1 oz. baobab oil
- .5 oz. shea nut oil
- .5 oz. beeswax pastilles
- 1-2 drops vitamin E oil
- 9 drops blood orange essential oil
- 6 drops ginger essential oil
Tools
- Double boiler
- 2 oz. amber glass jar
- Utensil for mixing
- Disposable or glass dropper
Instructions
- Combine the baobab oil, shea nut oil and beeswax in a double boiler.
- Once melted, remove from heat. Then add the vitamin E oil and essential oils to the healing hand salve. Stir to combine.
- Now pour the healing salve into a sterilized 2 oz. amber glass jar. Allow to cool completely.
Additional Ways to Use The Essential Oil Blend from My Hand Salve
If you love the smell of the ginger orange essential oil blend I use for my healing salve recipe, then you can use it in other applications as well!
You can easily combine this essential oil blend with a carrier oil, such as fractionated coconut oil or sweet almond oil, to create a skin soothing, warming massage oil Simply add 6 drops of the ginger essential oil and 9 drops of the blood orange essential oil to two ounces of a carrier of your choice. Then mix well to combine.
You can also check out this post to learn how to incorporate essential oil blends into other natural skin care and beauty products, such as body butters, lotions and homemade soaps.
More Natural Remedies for Dry Hands
If you like my healing hand salve recipe, then you’ll also want to try these other remedies for dry hands.
- DIY Hand Mask for Dry Hands
- Body Balm Recipe for Chapped Skin
- Skin Softening Hand Scrub Recipe
- Hand Salve Recipe for Winter Skin Care
- Whipped Hand Cream Recipe
- Dry Skin Salve Recipe
Alternately, if you’re looking for natural remedies to soothe muscle and joint pain, then be sure to explore these pain relief salve recipes.
This post originally appeared on Becca Ink.
For more great DIY ideas like my healing hand salve recipe, follow Soap Deli News via Blog Lovin‘, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.
