In this article you will learn:
What Is Lye?
Is It Natural?
Is It Necessary In Soap?
The History of Natural Soap
Are Detergents Better?
What Is Lye?
Lye is a strongly alkaline (basic pH) solution, a white odorless solid that is used for washing or cleansing purposes. The scientific name for the two different kinds of lye is “sodium hydroxide” or “potassium hydroxide”. When properly made, there is no free-floating lye left after soap is made.
Archaeologists have found lye soap dated back to 2800 BC in Babylon. When animal fat and ash mixed in water made lye-based soaps. This was thousands of years before pure lye by chemical process was available. Primitive peoples made their lye the old-fashioned way by leaching water through wood ashes layered in a barrel. Our forefathers discovered lye by running water through wood ash. By doing this they extracted the lye from the potash.
Scientifically speaking, lye is a metal hydroxide traditionally obtained by leaching wood ashes. Lye is a strong alkali which is highly soluble in water, producing caustic basic solutions. “Lye” most commonly refers to sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The term lye has also been used as another name for potassium hydroxide (KOH).
Today, lye is commercially manufactured using a membrane cell chloralkali process. It is supplied in various forms: as flakes, pellets, beads, coarse powder or a solution. Lye has traditionally been used as a major ingredient in soap-making.
Is Lye Natural?
Lye can be found in nature, even without human intervention. Lye is a natural substance since it was originally discovered from rainwater filtering through hardwood ashes. However, this natural process produces inconsistent purity levels.
For modern purposes, lye is now manufactured in mass-scale production factories. The 99% purity level of manufactured lye is extremely important for making consistent and safer soap products!
Is Lye Necessary In Soap?
Lye is an absolutely necessary part of making soap bars. Without lye or another highly alkaline solution, we can’t ever make soap! Soap needs the saponification process – or else it would just be a bar of pure fat! Saponification means turning fats into soap. Saponification is a chemical impossibility without a strong alkali!
Without lye, you only have fats and oils, not soap!
“Soap” is an FDA-protected term that is restricted to only real soap products. According to the FDA: “soap is a product in which most of the non-volatile matter consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and whose cleansing properties are due to these alkali-fatty acid compounds.” This definition was specifically written for the purposes of excluding soap from being FDA regulated as a cosmetic product.
The History of Lye Soap
Lye soap goes back as early as Babylonian times. They discovered a crude form of soap through melted animal fats mixed with ashes and water over a cooking fire. Archaeologists say that this probably happened by accident the first time it was discovered!
After the Babylonians found natural soap over 5,000 years ago, they began making soap for washing purposes. [SOURCE]
Is Lye Soap Dangerous?
If made correctly, lye soap is completely safe as there’s NO LYE left in the soap after it cures! Think of soap like concrete: dangerous when not cured, but safe when cured! A well-made body soap that is cured for several weeks is very safe and beneficial. Soap is simply saponified fats and most formulas have excess free-floating fats to nourish the skin while cleansing. We always cure our cold-process lye soaps for 4+ weeks before it gets into the hands of our customers! This ensures a mild, well-lathering bar of soap that lasts a long time.
Lye soap only becomes dangerous when it’s made wrong with too much lye. Lye soap has gotten a bad reputation from poor formulations from the unprofessional, inexperienced, or improperly equipped soap-maker. Soap can only be dangerous because of ignorance or improper formulations.
Soap-making is a scientific profession, just like baking or any other important job that has a level of hazardous risk. It often takes a year or more of research and daily experimentation to even scratch the surface of basic soap-making.
BUT there is an easy way to test for a lye-heavy soap! Inspect the soap. Is the soap crumbly, super hard, and shows large white spots? If your tongue touches the soap, does it “zap” your tongue like a small electrical shock? When mixed with some water, does it read higher than a 10 pH on a pH test strip? And finally, is the soap very drying and almost “burns” when you use it? If yes to all of these, then you have a lye-heavy soap that should not be used on the body! If this happens, soak your skin in plain vinegar to help neutralize the lye.
Are Detergents Better Than Lye Soap?
There are only 2 effective cleansers that foam and lift dirt away from surfaces: lye soap or detergents. “Effective cleansers” have hydrophillic (water-loving) and hydrophobic (water-repelling) sides to their molecules. These molecules help dirt, oil, and water all wash away from surfaces very well – resulting in an effective cleanse!
But detergents (this includes “naturally-derived” surfactants) are cheaply manufactured unnatural chemicals. Detergents only mimic the cleansing and nourishing qualities of real, natural soap… and there is a downside to convenient and cheap detergents.
Detergents strip the skin, scalp, and hair much more harshly than real soap. They also destroy the microbiome of the skin and scalp’s acid mantle (even “pH balanced” cleansers). Detergents weaken the hair and scalp, making hair more susceptible to damage despite the synthetically achieved pH level. If you are concerned about the pH effects of using any cleanser, always use a moisturizer or conditioner afterwards!
Simply put, if natural soap was worse than detergents, people wouldn’t be seeing such drastic benefits to using natural soaps. Especially since most people now have only ever used detergents all their life. We wouldn’t hear daily testimonials from customers. We’ve heard thousands of times, “Switching from detergents to real natural soap saved my hair and skin!” We just wouldn’t ever hear of that, but we do!
Soap has an average pH of 9-10, about the same as highly alkaline water or sea water. If you don’t want to disrupt the skin’s acid mantle, then technically we shouldn’t even be bathing with pure water.
There’s good news, too! The skin’s acid mantle resets only minutes after using natural soap or washing with water. But the skin can be permanently disrupted or altered with detergents because of the chemical harshness.
Cold-process bar soaps are very nourishing. They have an almost lotion-like feel compared to using detergents. This is because well-made natural soap bars have tons of free-floating fats that the skin sucks right up – yuuuummy!
Could your skin benefit from acidic products after a soap cleanse? We encourage oily skin types to try our acidic toners and/or then apply our moisturizers afterward. Dry or combination skin types can leave out the toners to not dry out their skin more.
In conclusion, are detergents better than lye soap? Well, your body isn’t a pile of dirty dishes or laundry! So we don’t think you need to treat it as such. 😉