Urea: Happy Feet (and happier hands!)

It's 4 in the morning and you can't sleep. You have a new hobby and loads of ideas to try and experiment. No doubt what do you do? You get up and decide to make a cream for your feet!

Awesome cream with UREA

Since I am not an expert (yet!) I have copied this recipe from here. I have made some changes so I will add in this post my recipe...

What's Urea and Why I wanted this ingredient in my cream?

I quote (from here):

" Urea is a humectant "

" Urea is a naturally occurring substance found in the surface layer of our skin, and it is an active part of our natural moisturising factor (NMF), which functions to keep skin hydrated, protected and working efficiently. "

" When it is applied to the skin it penetrates the stratum corneum, where it readily absorbs and retains water, thus increasing the capacity of the skin to hold moisture and rehydrate.

To conclude it helps to regulate the cell cycle, encouraging natural desquamation or exfoliation, enhancing your barrier function, whilst regulating the good micro flora that resides on your skin to keep your protective acid mantle intact."

Basically, Urea helps moisturize but is a great ingredient for chapped feet! But the nicest thing is that after putting it on my feet (they feel fresh and happy!) my hands are also happy and the cuts I had look better, as well as the patches of damaged skin which seem to have a more normal colour.

Shall we start?

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Phase A

Water to 100

Xanthan Gum 0.2

Carbopol Ultrez 21 0.3

Glicerine 5

Phase B

Shea Butter 5

Cocoa Butter 5

Coconut Oil 3.5

Almond Oil 3

Bees Wax 1

Abil Care 5

Dry Flo 1

GC Derm 3

Cetyl Alcohol 1

Phase C

Urea 15

Conservant 0.6

Perfume

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I started by gellifying Phase A. To do this I separated the water in two parts. One part is to dissolve the Carbopol, which I just add and let sit till hydrated. The other part I add to the mix of Glicerine and Xanthan. I do blend both gels (it makes loads of bubbles, but it doesn't matter! They will dissapear later!). Finally I add the Xanthan gel to the Carbopol.

Once Phase A is ready, we can concetrate in Phase B. I measures all my oils and butters and I added them to the becker. I used Abil Care 85 which gives the final cream a lovely texture and a nice touch, even if the oil phase was quite heavy.

After I put both beckers in a double boiler and take to 70 degrees. Having reached this temperature, I sit both container on a kitchen towel and add the oil pahse into the water phase. I did it, this time for the first time, adding in three times, and mixing, adding and mixing.... The emulsion was easy and looked lovely from the beginning.

Once the emulsion is done, I sit the becker in a cold bath in order to lower the temperature. I want it to go down to 40/45 degrees. Do not stop mixing with a spoon during this period, it helps stabilize the emulsion.

Having reached room temperature (it's 35 degrees here... so!) means we can work on Phase C. My phase was simple cause I really wanted to get the most from the urea, in part cause I am learning about ingredients, properties, etc, and I feel that the best way to valutate if an active is worth it, is using it not mixed with a lot of other actives (how would I know which one works for what!). Before adding the urea I checked the PH. Urea seems to increase the PH of the cosmetics and I don;t have what I need to block it. The PH at this point was 6 and that was ok with me.

I decided to take a bit of cream and add bit by by the urea pearls into it. It was supposed to dissolve, I had checked. It wansn't dissolving! OMG! What now!!!??

I kept mixing and mixing, used the stick blender, added a bit of water to the pearls. It was 5:30 in the morning and I was determined to have my urea cream!

It took me a while working really hard on dissolving the urea. Finally, it wasn't completely smooth, but added to the main recipe didn't seem to cause much trouble. When added to the rest of the cream, the pearls were no longer visible and seemed it was properly incorporated.

I added conservant and perfume (a combination of E.O. of Eucalyptus and a Fragance called "Sea Wind" which I find masculine but sexy!). And finally checked the PH again. Was still 6, I added a drop of Lactic Acid but seemed to liquidify the cream a bit (Carbopol works on PH 6!), so left it like that. I will be checking the PH again after a few days to check it hasn't gone up like mad!

I finally coloured it with a touch of lime green mica. And here it is the final product!

Beautiful texture. Lovely on the skin.