My homemade eczema treatment cream

As always, I must have projects to keep me entertained and happy during the down time between trips.

This year I decided I would experiment with making my own home remedies for conditions that I’ve never found a satisfactory treatment for elsewhere.

Eczema, for instance.   The thick, nasty ointments and creams the doctors prescribe are downright disgusting.  You have to be really miserable to slather yourself with that stuff.  Alternatively, you can slather with cortisone-based cream.  A side effect is that cortisone makes me grow a moustache.  That’s almost worse than the skin problems!

Infusing cayenne and ginger oils for an arthritis cream

So I did a little (okay, a lot) of research and found a recipe for an eczema cream I liked.  I tweaked it a little bit.  And I am absolutely delighted with the result.  It contains beeswax. coconut oil, safflower oil, aloe vera gel, Vitamin E and honey.  It was scented with rosemary and tea tree oil.  But I thought it smelled nasty, so I added some sweet orange essential oil.  Now it smells wonderful.

The honey was an odd addition, I thought.  But it must be the magic ingredient that makes this cream really special.  It is completely non-greasy and feels wonderful on the skin.  And the soothing protection lingers for hours.

I’ll make this again, but will wait until my shea butter order arrives, as I think it will make it even more healing.

Another project is finding a pleasant, effective treatment for osteoarthritis back pain.  Cayenne (capsicum, capsaicin) is widely used in OTC arthritis creams.  Ginger is warming and anti-inflammatory, so I think it will  boost the effect of the cayenne.

In researching home remedies, you run into so much garbage and ignorance, it is very difficult to sift fact from myth.  But I ran across an Israeli study that said that frankincense rubbed topically over joints for 7 days was an effective arthritis pain treatment.  I also ran across a Japanese study that said that orange oil rubbed into arthritic knees had proven beneficial to elderly Japanese patients.

I splurged on cute Japanese dishes — in hopes they will help me limit my food portions!

So, combining all of that information, I decided I would make a cream infused with cayenne and ginger oils, and add frankincense and orange oil to scent it with.  If nothing else, I love the smell of frankincense and sweet orange, so it ought to smell good!

I have to infuse the cayenne and ginger oils for 10 days first.  I’ll pour the oils into a clean jar then, let them settle, then decant them for use in my arthritis cream.  I am so excited to see if they really do help!

The oils will be combined with beeswax, almond oil, grapeseed oil and aloe vera gel, so they should not be irritating to the skin in the proportions I’m using.

A final project is trying to lose the massive amount of weight I’ve put on this past year due to the double whammy of quitting smoking and steroid COPD treatments.  So I bought myself a little Japanese dish set that will be so much fun to use — and will hopefully help me limit my food portions.

After Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, of course!  🙂

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!