All About Clays

Sea Clay

The Dead Sea clay is sourced from the bottom of the Dead Sea. Because of the unique location of the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea clay contains many minerals that help to achieve and maintain beautiful skin. It has been known to contain calcium which gives you clear skin and helps alleviate pains and sores. It also contains sodium, which helps create a pH balance in your skin. There’s potassium in it too so the water balance in your body is also regulated. Dead Sea clay also has a soothing feature because it has bromine. Sulfur in it detoxifies your skin and it acts as a stimulant to metabolism. One other stimulus for metabolism is magnesium. Not only that, it also prevents different kinds of allergies. Dead Sea clay also contains iodine.  Iodine, of course, is good for the health of your thyroid glands and aids in cell metabolism. These are just a few of the minerals that can be found in Dead Sea clay. Together, they give your skin and also your overall health a boost and protect your from allergies and other illnesses. Sea Clay, also known as Dead Sea Clay, is a product that originates from The Dead Sea, located in Israel. It is the lowest place on Earth, and people would visit the area to bath within the waters. Those waters are known for the healing effects in the salt and mud. The product on the market has high levels of magnesium, potassium, sulfate and calcium, making it great for your skin. some benefits are:

1. Detoxifies

The mud’s gentle pulling action helps gently exfoliate the skin and draw out impurities and toxins, so it’s a perfect part of any holistic health detox plan. It’s also great for oily, acne-prone skin.

2. Increases Circulation

Ever noticed how after doing a facial your skin is red? That’s because facials stimulate blood flow and body masks or wraps do the same thing. Circulation helps bring vital nutrients and oxygen to your cells and carry away toxins and wastes all essential to healthy and normal cell functioning.

3. Improves Skin Health

Dead sea mud is high in minerals, such as sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, iron, and calcium, so it nourishes the skin. It also naturally softens and moisturizes, so it dramatically improves the appearance and health of your skin leaving it more tone, even in texture, and clearer.

4. Treats Skin Conditions

Studies by the Dead Sea Research Center (DSRC), a non-profit organization, have shown Dead Sea mud is useful for treating skin conditions, such as psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and vitiligo, especially when used in conjunction with adjunct therapies, such as Dead Sea bathing, moisturizing creams, and increased sun exposure.

5. Relieves Aches & Pains

Dead sea mud is therapeutic and useful for treating rheumatic conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. It’s also beneficial for fibromyalgia, tendonitis, bursitis, sports injuries, and recovery from orthopedic surgeries according to the DSRC. It’s even useful for relaxing sore muscles. Therefore, take advantage and use the mud as a pack to treat specific sites if you don’t have time for a full body treatment. Also, combine treatments with soaks in water enriched with Dead Sea salt for maximum results.

French Green Clay

Illite, most commonly known as French green clay, is a type of mineral clay valued for its highly absorbent properties. Illite is a bio-mineral, composed of both decomposed plant material and trace minerals such as calcium, aluminum, magnesium, silica, phosphorous, copper and zinc. Alternative medicine practitioners believe this composition makes French green clay particularly beneficial as a therapeutic treatment for a variety of health concerns, and it is one of the most popular clays used in Pelotherapy. Some benefits are:

Detoxifying

French Green Clay has been used for years as a detoxifying beauty treatment. When applied topically, it can aid the skin in healing and ridding itself of harmful toxins. French Green Clay has an ionic charge. Acting like a magnet, this type of clay attaches itself to the molecules of toxins so they can be rinsed away when the skin care treatment is done.
 

Exfoliating

French Green Clay cleanses and gently exfoliates. Used on the skin, green clay can make it feel softer while tightening pores and aiding in the optimal function of oil glands. This clay has also been known to boost blood circulation in the skin while helping to remove dead skin cells, resulting brighter, more healthy looking skin.
 

Clarifying

French Green Clay is highly absorbent, like Australian Washed Blue Bentonite Clay, it’s one of the most absorbent cosmetic clays. French Green Clay has the uncanny ability to hold close its weight in water. Due to its absorbent nature, French Green Clay is highly recommended for oily, clogged or acne prone skin; but any skin type can also benefit from the occasional clarifying treatment.

When used as a facial mask, French Green Clay effectively removes excess oil and other impurities that can clog your pores.

Kaolin Clay

It is a naturallyoccurring clay substance mostly found in soils that have developed from the chemical weathering of rocks in hot, moist climates. A good example of such a climate is the tropical rain forest. It is also called China clay, White clay, White Cosmetic clay, Hydrated Aluminum Silicate, Kaolinite clay amongst other names. Some benefits are:

1. Enhances blood circulation

Kaolin clay is mild, making it efficient in improving circulation of blood to your skin, as well as elimination of wastes and toxins. When used as facial mask, kaolin clay can detoxify the skin and you never have to worry about dry skin anymore. Moreover, it is placid in nature which makes it great for dry and damaged skin.

2. Good for oily skin

Skin experts recommend kaolin clay for dry and oily skin. In fact, it is one of the best skin care treatment that helps reduce production of sebum, the main contributor to greasy skin. Kaolin clay simply helps in mineralizing the dry areas of the skin. As a result, you will get a smooth skin just like you have always wanted.

3. Facial products

Kaolin clay is an active ingredient in most facial products, natural deodorants, body powders, mineral makeup, poultice and scrubs. Nonetheless, it is still advisable to consult a doctor before you use any skin care product, especially if you have skin disease. This is important so as to avoid potential skin damage or adverse side effects.

4. Therapeutic uses

The compound, montmorillonite found in kaolin clay has proven beneficial in eliminating oils and toxins from the skin. Also, it contains essential nutrients and phyto-nutrients, both of which play a role in therapeutic purposes.

It is advisable to steer away from facial masks or kaolin clay for that matter if you have skin disease. Also, make sure you consult a skin specialist beforehand so as to avert skin damage.

Bentonite Clay

Bentonite clay is composed of ash made from volcanos. The largest known source of bentonite clay is found in Fort Benton, Wyoming where numerous volcanos are present, so the name of the clay stems from the town where today much of the supply is still harvested.

Today the clay is harvested mostly in the U.S., France and Italy. “Bentonite” is actually the trade name that the clay has been given, but people for the most part speak about Montmorillonite and Bentonite clay interchangeably and are referring to the same product.

Bentonite clay stems back far in history as a traditional healing method for protecting the body from disease. It has been reported that several traditional cultures living in regions of the Andes, Central Africa and Australia have consumed clays in numerous ways for centuries. Because the clay is readily available and required no modern processing, it has been a popular and cost-effective way of “detoxing” the body for quite some time.

How Bentonite Clay Works

We come into contact with a range of toxins numerous times every day, as toxins are given off from common products like paint, cleaning supplies, markers, substances used in building homes, low-quality unpurified water, and even pesticides that are widely sprayed regions that have farming present. It is quite common to inject a range of different toxins just by breathing in the fumes that are present all around us, not to mention the toxins that we receive from an unhealthy diet filled with low-quality processed foods.

On top of being able to draw-out toxins from the body, the clay itself has a range of nutrients. Bentonite clay is known to have an abundance of minerals, including calcium, magnesium, silica, sodium, copper, iron and potassium.

When ingested into the body, either in a drink form or by eating the clay, its vitamins and minerals are absorbed similarly to how a supplement would be. Therefore, some people use it as a supplement since the clay is a natural source of important dietary nutrients. Some benefits are:

 1. Used on the Skin to Heal Eczema, Dermatitis & Psoriasis

When used as a mask the clay is able to bind to bacteria and toxins living on the surface of the skin and within pores to extract these from the pours. This helps to reduce the outbreak of blemishes, alleviate redness, and also to fight allergic reactions from irritating lotions or face washes, and even helps help poison ivy.

Thanks to the clay’s special ability to act as an antibiotic treatment when applied topically to the skin, the clay can help to calm skin infections and speed up healing time of wounds or eczema, even when prescription antibiotics were not able to help solve the problem.

2. Used in the Bath as a Soaking Liquid to Remove Toxins

The clay can be added to your bath water and used as a soaking liquid, binding to the toxins that are dispelled from your skin. The clay leaves skin feeling smooth, hydrated, and less inflamed, all while you relax in the tub effortlessly!

3. Allows Cells to Receive More Oxygen

Bentonite clay helps to get oxygen into the cells because it has the ability to pull excess hydrogen from the cells, leaving room for oxygen to take its place.

When cells have more oxygen entering them, you feel more energized and your body can repair itself more easily from illness or hard workouts, including improving muscle recovery.

4. Alkalizes the Body

Much of the foods that are present in the “Standard American Diet” have an acidic reaction in the body, meaning they alter the body’s preferred pH level to make it more acidic than we’d like for it to be.

The less healthy someone’s diet is, normally the more acidic their body is. This is the case because the stomach needs to work extra hard to produce strong acids in order to break down these foods, creating the need for even more alkalizing foods to balance things out.

Proper digestion requires enzymes that are made from alkalizing minerals, so when alkalizing foods do not enter the body, acidity remains high and digestion suffers. Bentonite clay contains alkalizing minerals, which brings the level of the body’s pH to a more optimal balance between acidity and alkalinity, helping to make the blood, saliva and urine more alkaline. 

5. Boosts Probiotics

By removing toxins, digestive-distress causing chemicals and heavy metals from the gut, bentonite clay helps to promote the “good bacteria” or probiotics living in your gut wall and decrease the amount of harmful “bad bacteria.”

A healthy gut wall prevents us from experiencing malabsorption of nutrients from our food, increases our immunity, and also helps to elevate our mood and brain function. Research has also shown that bentonite clay can bind to particular toxins like “aflatoxins” that are common in the standard diet, found in things like peanuts and some grains.

6. Relieves Digestive Problems (Constipation, IBS, Nausea, etc.)

Thanks to its ability to neutralize bacteria in the gut and kill viruses, bentonite clay helps to alleviate many digestive problems. It is often used as relief for nausea and vomiting by pregnant women, is a safe way to remedy constipation, and helps with IBS.

7. Boosts Immunity by Killing Harmful Bacteria and Viruses

Bentonite clay was also found to be effective at killing harmful bacteria. In a study published by the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, “results indicate that specific mineral products have intrinsic, heat-stable antibacterial properties, which could provide an inexpensive treatment against numerous human bacteria infections.

8. Improves the Health of Teeth and Gums

The mouth is one of the most susceptible areas of the body when it comes to harmful outside “invaders” taking over, like bacteria and toxins.

Bentonite clay binds to unhealthy substances in the mouth, such as around the teeth and on the tongue and gums, and helps to remove them before you swallow them and become sick. Because of Bentonite’s antibacterial properties, it has been used in natural toothpastes and even mixed with water and used as a daily rinse.

9. Purifies Water

Bentonite clay has been researched as an effective way to remove some of the fluoride that is often in drinking water.

When combined with magnesium, the clay has been shown to benefit the purity of tap water, which leads to some promising possibilities for using it in the future as a widespread cost-effective water purification method.

10. Useful As a Baby Powder Alternative

Bentonite clay can be applied to any area on the skin of babies that is irritated, red or needs soothing in the same way that traditional powders are used. Plus, it is very gentle and naturally cleansing.

Apply a small amount of the clay directly to the skin and allow it to sit for several minutes before wiping/rinsing it away.

Brazilian Clays

• Improve circulation, gently exfoliates, cleanses, detoxifies & minimizes pores without drying the skin. Now for the breakdown on the different type of Brazilian Clays

Natural Brazilian Clay

• Rich in titanium (physical sunscreen)
• Recommended for oily skin
• Reduces dark spots
• Due to mineral composition combats pimples & blackhead breakouts
• Excellent body scrub
• Natural antioxidant
• Helps slow down skin aging
• Absorbs solar radiation
• Regulates excessive capillary seborrhea (severe oiliness)

Purple Brazilian Clay

• Good for sensitive skin
• good for detox & improves emulsion stability

Yellow Brazilian Clay

• Rich in silicon dioxide (natural compound made of 2 of the earths most abundant materials)
• Catalyst for formation of skin collagen
• High capacity for cation and anions
• Slows skin aging process
• Purifying
• Astringent
• Improves elasticity & blood circulation of skin

Pink Brazilian Clay

• Anti aging
• Antioxidant
• Drying
• Astringent
• Reconstructive
• Antiseptic & Detoxifying
• Rich in iron and absorbs toxins of oiliness

Dark Red Brazilian Clay

• Rich in iron oxide (important for cellular respiration)
• Great ability to absorb temperature and reduce localized fat
• Suitable for body use to clean completely & deeply in the skin
• Powerful drying capacity
• Helps healing wounds
• Assists in rheumatism & Arthritis
• Removes excess water in skin
• Removes oiliness of the skin restoring softness & shine