Review: Carekate Herbal First Aid Skin Salve
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free skin care · Thu Dec 21, 2006 6:53 am

So, as you all know I have VERY sensitive skin. That means pretty much every time I catch a cold, within a day my poor nose is red, raw, and chapped. I used to just put a little badger balm on it and it healed it right up, but I had to give up the BB due to allergies since it contains castor oil, and since then I've been suffering. This week in particular I caught the mother of all colds and my nose has been terribly sore. Luckily, I remembered that Carekate had been kind enough to include a sample of this stuff in my last order, so I rummaged it out and gave it a shot. First impression: love the rich, creamy texture and light herbal smell. Also, I LOVE the fact that I dabbed this stuff on my poor sore nose, and it was instantly soothed!!! The pain stopped!! Thank you, carekate!!!!! Since I just have a sample I don't know the ingredients (Maybe carekate can enlighten us--- I hope it's vegetarian... Embarassed

), and since I've never ordered a full size I don't know how much it costs, although since I'm DEFINITELY planning on ordering more I should have more info for you guys soon. After seeing what this stuff did for my nose, I can't wait to see what it does for cracked heels, chapped hands, etc!

free skin care · Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:15 am

OOOhhhhh! This sounds sooo good. Thanks for the review, manslayerliz. I'll be keeping an eye out for this. Sounds like something I would use a lot of - with my allergies and dry hands and cuticles.

free skin care · Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:24 am

I agree, it's really a nice product. My cat got really sick and I had to give her about 10-12 pills a day, for about a month. Well, I thought I had become so skilled at it, but I didn't realize it's a lot easier to "pill a cat" who is sick and weak! As she got stronger, I took some scratches to my forearms. I immediately applied CareKate's Herbal First Aid Skin Salve (after washing) and the scratches healed so fast. They were literaly a non-issue.

Kitty is doing great, too! Very Happy

free skin care · Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:52 pm

manslayerliz wrote:

Since I just have a sample I don't know the ingredients (Maybe carekate can enlighten us--- I hope it's vegetarian... Embarassed

)

Yes, it’s vegetarian! With the exception of a product I’m developing for La Vie En Rose to apply to stuff like bruises, muscle strains, arthritis pains, etc., I’ve stopped using castor oil and Emu oil in my formulations (due in most part to ManSlayerLiz’s allergy to these ingredients – I figured it would be easier to simply find similar alternatives so that I could cut them out of my recipes then it would be to make two different versions of each product).

The first aid salve basically contains stuff like calendula, rosemary, chamomile, neem oil, lavender EO, witch hazel distillate, Self-heal herb, Echinacea leaves and powdered Licorice Root in a base comprised of soy wax and cocoa/aloe/shea butters. There are a few other botanical ingredients that I include, but I can’t think of what they are offhand (my binder filled with all my recipes and reference materials is at home).

I actually created the first aid salve for my mom, who is addicted to “Neosporin” type anti-biotic ointments, so I wanted to see if I could develop an all-natural alternative that would provide the same germ-killing power for minor wounds, while at the same time providing a sort of natural pain relief (courtesy of Lavender EO which is great to use on minor cuts/scrapes/burns/scratches all by itself!). My mom was a bit dubious at first, but after my salve healed an infected cut she got on the heel of her foot after numerous trips to the doctor for treatment did nothing but make the wound worse, she’s now using the salve on everything from nasty cat scratches to minor burns to infected hangnails.

In addition to healing a chapped snoot from too much honking into the kleenex, as Liz stated, I also like to apply it to any zits after “extraction” when I was unable to resist the temptation to squeeze the living gunk out of it! Embarassed

The ingredients in the salve are antibiotic, antiseptic, antimicrobial, antibacterial and anti-viral to kill out just about any type of bacteria that could be lurking, while at the same time being anti-inflammatory to help calm and soothe any redness and prevent over-drying so you don’t get that flaking and peeling as the bump heals.

Actually, this reminds me that I need to make another batch of this as my mom is nearly out and was bugging me for more over the holidays. Let me know if this is something you guys would be interested in so I know whether or not I need to make a super-sized batch of size this weekend....

free skin care · Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:20 pm

Hi carekate,

If you're making some, I'd love to get my paws on it. The skin around my nose is all red and irritated ...bleeh

Catxxx

free skin care · Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:52 pm

OMG this stuff saved my life!!!!! I don't know why it happened (maybe cold weather???), but the corners of my mouth had become so dry, cracked, red, and flaky that I couldn't even cover the problem with makeup. I went to the derm and she told me that my problem was NOT yeast-related (sometimes mouth-corner problems are...), and that I should just use a cortisone cream and my prblem would go away. Well, it didn't and it was both painful and embarrassing. THANK GOODNESS for this magic salve--- after putting it in the corners of my mouth before bed for just 2 nights, my lips healed up. What a relief!!!! PLEASE make more carekate--- I need a full-size jar ASAP!!!!!

free skin care · Fri Dec 29, 2006 1:18 pm

oh, I wanted to add that as much as I love Brave Soldier's anti-bac ointment (and I've always used it as a more natural alternative to neosporin), I tried using it on the corners of my mouth and it did nothing. Only carekate's salve healed it!

free skin care · Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:22 am

Liz is right, this is another awesome CareKate product! Definitely a keeper!

Every winter when the weather turns cold, the skin on the end of my right thumb gets very dried out and hard. I end up with a vertical split in the skin which bleeds and is quite painful. The skin thickens up so much, its almost like a really bad heel callous! Nothing has ever really fixed it and because the severity of the problem goes in cycles, I usually end up with this condition the entire winter and into the start of warmer weather.

Enter Carrie's first aid salve. This stuff cleared up my thumb in 4 days, which is practically a miracle!

I heavily layered the salve on the end of my thumb and covered it in a band-aid which I left on all day at work. At the end of the day, the skin was definitely softer. By the end of day 4, the split had healed and the skin had softened up so much that it could be painlessly exfoliated. The skin on the end of my thumb is about 98% healed in such a short time - no pain, no bleeding, no dryness or hardness!

The product is a light amber-colored, opaque substance that's not a cream and not a gel. Its a somewhat thick oil-based substance (and by oil-based, I mean essential oil). A little goes a long way. It smells DIVINE and does not sting when it goes on an open sore. It really is a pleasure to use, and even when its rubbed into a cat scratch mark and not covered with a band-aid, it does not leave an overly oily film on the skin, but actually absorbs quite nicely. I used a band-aid on my thumb because I glopped so much of the product on and only rubbed it in part way - I wanted a thick layer of the salve to stay on my skin all day because of how damaged my thumb was.

I cannot imagine going without this product. So much better than Neosporin!

free skin care · Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:58 am

As I mentioned to Liz in a PM yesterday, I made a new batch of the Herbal Skin Saver First Aid Salve last weekend (in between runs to the hospital for visiting hours w/ my grandmother), but I’m not really happy with it.

I incorporated some new herbal ingredients into it (i.e.: licorice root, marshmallow root, echinacea, St. John’s Wort, Self-Heal) but all I had was powdered versions of these herbs (think “cooking spices”) so the resulting salve is sort of gritty in texture (not too terrible, but enough to be noticeable) although it WORKS fantastically!!

To wit: I cut the hell out of my knuckle on Saturday night (the scissors slipped when I was cleaning the blade to remove the sticky residue from the mailing tape I use to affix my “labels” onto the containers) – the wound was nearly down to the bone!! – and I put some of the Skin Saver on it and put a bandage on it and left it on overnight...when I woke up the next morning, I had actually forgotten I’d hurt myself because it no longer hurt at all. When I took the bandaid off, I was ASTONISHED to find that the cut was almost completely gone – it looked like a week-old wound that had healed and was just starting to “scar over.”

So anyway, what this means is that the new additions to my Skin Saver formulation are wonderful...I just need to get LIQUID extracts of these herbs (which I ordered yesterday!!) so I can make a new batch that won’t be gritty.

I probably won’t receive my order of the herbal extracts until the middle of next week, though. I just wanted to let anyone thinking of ordering this that it won’t be “in stock” until next weekend. If anyone needs an emergency ration to tide them over until then, I can send out samples of the gritty formulation so just let me know.

Fri Jan 05, 2007 3:46 pm

I'm new at this and would like to know how to purchase some of the skin salve--it sounds great! Thanks

free skin care · Mon Jan 08, 2007 8:56 am

kathy s wrote:

I'm new at this and would like to know how to purchase some of the skin salve--it sounds great! Thanks

Hi Kathy S!

You can send Carekate a PM with the products you want to order, and put "order request" in the subject line!

I'll chime in with everyone else and say this is a great product! I had this weird, dry, scaly patch show up on my arm last week (no idea what agitated my skin), and tried everything from oils to cortisone cream, and nothing really soothed it. I put the salve on twice last night, and the patch is healed this morning! Plus, the scent is lovely...

Mary Very Happy

free skin care · Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:44 pm

Update: We are having a big cold spell here in L.A. (I know, its all relative, but trust me, we are freezing our collective butts off because we are not used to temps in the high 30s/low 40s at night, and mid-50s during the day!) and my thumb is fairing spectacularly well. I have not had a recurrence of the dreaded skin thickening and splitting - its like one shot of CareKate's salve staved off any additional trouble I might have. The skin on my thumb is a little flaky, but normally by now it'd be split and bleeding again.

This stuff is amazing. Highly recommended.

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