**disclaimer** I have never written a blog, therefore I do not know the rules regarding length or cadence, this is just me, talking to you, about my salves :) Read if you choose to, click away if it's too long.
I approach salve creation with a synergistic, treat the source and help the body do what it's designed to do, heal itself. I know the body is a smart vessel that's designed to heal itself, the body just forgot what it's capable of. When I formulate salves, I do it with activating the body's natural healing abilities in mind. I've also given away this salve for the last two and a half years to people all over the nation to put it to the test.
That being said, let's dive into the story of how I got started with creating topical salves and the story of the Restoration Salve Formula creation.
Let me start off by saying I also want to make creating salves less intimidating so that more people are encouraged to try it themselves. That's part of the reason I'm going to share this story with such transparency. I want you to see that you too can see a problem and potentially formulate a solution.
When my husband first said, "man my knees really hurt. I wonder if there's a salve I could put on it." I truthfully didn't even know what a "salve" was. I said to him, "I can try anything, what the hell's a salve?" He explained what he had researched already (he's my forever muse) and said it's essentially infused oils set with beeswax that you apply topically to your body. Interesting. Because he's the amazing human he is, he bought me a book about herbs and their medicinal properties. He asked me how I was going to infuse the oils and what method I was going to use. Method? There are methods? I hadn't really thought about any of the application of what I was learning from these books, but I figured I could start with selecting the plants. From there I reverse engineered my formula, starting from the reported issue. My husband had very little cartilage in his knees and his tendons were shot to shit from a combination of jumping out of planes from the Army and age. He had, at this point, tried CBD Salves, and a variety of herbal salves, but one that he tried that had the plant comfrey in it appeared to provide some relief. He also experiences something that causes adverse reactions to NSAIDS, opioids, and most other "pain meds."
At this point, some relief being found from this salve with the comfrey in it was EPIC because he had no relief from anything prior. With Comfrey in mind, I went to my handy-dandy book (you can use any book you want that talks about the medicinal properties of herbs) and looked up the plant comfrey (Symphytum officinale), nicknamed "knit-bone." Knit-bone, that's a powerful nickname, I thought to myself, I wonder why it's not being used?
I dove into lots of research about this plant and found that it's a healing powerhouse because of quite a few constituents, but the one I homed in on was allantoin, which promotes rapid ORDERED cell growth (cell proliferation) and accelerates tissue repair. This is the same process that happens in utero when a fetus rapid grows in the womb. I was super interested. In addition to allantoin, comfrey has rosmarinic acid. I promise you I either used a search engine or an AI chat bot to help me learn more about each of these things. You don't have to know everything to follow a nudge or an inkling that you might have. Rosmarinic acid is an antioxidant and anti-inflammtory, Those are two things that my husband's knees would need to help him find relief from what was essentially an early onset of arthritis. Tannins, I wanted them for their antimicrobial properties, Silicon, structural support for connective tissue,
I went through all the properties for these plants and decided to pick the ones that had the most benefits for what my goal was, to help my husband's knees rebuild cartilage, heal the connective tissue and to find not only pain relief but to help his body activate it's own healing. I had the main ingredient for my formula and now I needed some friends to join the party. My brain also intuitively understood that you can enhance or amplify a formula if you think about all the other factors that go along with finding pain relief.
I needed a powerhouse "everything blood" agent to join the formula and I found cayenne pepper (Capsicum annum var. acuminatum). Why cayenne pepper? because it was known for stimulating circulation and relieving pain. Even though it burns on open wounds and orifices, it does not do any tissue damage and often leaves the tissue better than before it was introduced. Why does cayenne pepper work as a pain reliever? The constituent capsaicin is responsible for the pain relief. The same thing that makes it "hot" also provides pain relief. It reduced substance P (sounds like a comic book), a neurotransmitter involved in pain signaling, less pain signals being sent, less "feeling pain," it acts as an anti-inflammatory because it inhibits inflammatory proteins and free radical production, it's a metabolism booster because it increases thermogenesis and it's already being used in creams for nerve pain, arthritis and psoriasis (lots of medical journals you can read articles on).
Now I had comfrey leaf and root, cayenne pepper and I felt like I was missing something, plant wise, like the formula wasn't complete. I'm not sure how I landed on Rosemary other than having the thought, "hmm, I wonder what rosemary can do?" When I looked this powerhouse of a plant up I found rosmarinic acid, the same as comfrey, why not double up on a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory polyphenol? Carnosic acid and carnosol (yes I had to look them up) they're diterpenes with strong antioxidant properties, but they hone in on neural tissue and reducing oxidative stress (level up on the antioxidant? yes please). Rosemary contains flavonoids like luteolin and apigenin (yes, also looked these up) that support vascular and celluar health (again an amplifier for the other plants). On top of all that, Rosemary, when infused, releases the following essential oils: cineole (enhances memory and alertness; also acts as a bronchodilator), camphor (stimulates circulation and has mild analgesic (pain relieving) effects), pinene (anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties). I felt like I had my plants that I was going to include down.
My husband was like congrats, but now what carrier oil are you going to use? He wanted me to use some wildly expensive oil (can't remember at the time but the price shocked me) and I was like, how about we find an oil that can penetrate the dermis and go subdermal? What's the deepest penetrating carrier oil? Answer: castor oil. I also had to do a deep dive on castor oil because I only ever heard of it being used for constipation or for inducing abdominal cramping, so I had a lot to learn.
The star constituent of castor oil is ricinoleic acid, castor oil can contain anywhere from about 85-95%. So, what does this do? Ricinoleic acid is the dominant fatty acid in castor oil that works as an anti-inflammtory, antimicrobial, and analgesic (three things that the plants already contained, this is another stack of constituents). In addition to that stack, it contains omega-9 fatty acids that nourish dry or damaged skin and enhance elasticity (big plus for wound healing and pain relief). Omega-6 fatty acids, which help reduce inflammation and support healing, and vitamin e, which protects skin from oxidative damage and promotes healing.
But why is it a powerhouse, specifically as a "carrier oil?" because it's thick and sticky, which allows it to stay on the skin longer and deliver the nutrients deeply. Its unique molecular structure enables it to penetrate the skin and hair shaft more effectively than other oils (you can deep dive that piece). Here's where more truth comes out, castor oil is expensive! So, I wanted a way to "cut" my castor oil with another beneficial carrier oil that was a little more available? Answer, olive oil.
Olive oil’s medicinal power comes from its high content of oleic acid, polyphenols, and vitamins E and K, which together offer anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and heart-protective benefits. Again, you're just stacking benefits by adding olive oil.
I now had my plants, my oils and I needed to come up with a process to infuse the oils. Most methods were to put the ingredients in a jar and store it in a cool, dark place for 5-8 weeks (which I've also done and it works really well, just takes a while). I saw a method of using a water bath to heat the oils with the plants to infuse them and they all said a minimum of 8 hours. I like to experiment, so I decided to use my crockpot with a wash rag on the bottom and the lid off on low heat. After I filled my jar with the ingredients I tightened the lid and set it in it's water bath and let the magic begin. Every so many hours I'd go visit the slow cooker and add water to it, pull the jar out and shake it up. It was so magical to me to watch the oil change colors, it went from a clear liquid to a red/brown/green infused liquid. The longer it infused, the darker the color got. This was so stinking magical. I felt like a wizard of sorts, this was literal alchemy and I loved every moment of it.
I was terrified once 24 hours had passed (I didn't want to chance it with 8 hours like the internet told me, so I did the overkill method and kept it in there for 24 hours). I now had the jar of the infused oil but I had to get the plant matter out without it going into the oil and boy did this have hot mess written all over it! I asked my husband to help me trouble shoot, and like the hero he is, he got me some cheesecloth and a metal mesh strainer. I used a metal spoon, the glass measuring cup, strainer and cheese cloth to press out the infused oil from the plant materials. (I've since been upgraded by the husband to a wine press and it's saved my thumbs) I now had the oil, but no clue how to turn that into a topical salve.
My husband says, just add beeswax, I'll get you some. He purchases a small tub of beeswax pellets. I don't know how much to add and I don't like following advice on the internet so I did the "wing-it" method and just poured about a cup of beeswax into the 1 and 1/2 cup infused oil mixture and gave it a little mix.
Now what?
I had to double boil it somehow, so I took a small pot filled it about halfway with water and put the glass measuring cup inside the small pot and put it on a medium low heat. I just kept stirring it, not really sure what was going to come of this, but I was going with the flow. Eventually the water came to a low boil and the oil inside started heating and the beeswax started dissolving. This was so stinking cool. I really felt magical watching this whole process happen before my own eyes. After the beeswax melted, I now had an infusion. You want to know what part I didn't think about prior to this moment? I'll tell you, containers. I hadn't thought about what on earth I was going to put the salves in! I'll give you one guess on who saved the day, again ;) You guessed it, my amazing husband, Antonio. He went to the local grocery store and got me some 4 oz canning jars. I had kept stirring the mixture while he went to the store so it stayed liquid. Once we poured it into containers we had to let it set up.
I was so excited and so nervous, just because we had made the salve doesn't even mean this would work! Once the salves set up, it was time to test it out. And test we did, for several months after that. With little tweaks to the amounts of each ingredient, we landed on a solid formula that kicks pain's bootay and helps your body remember how to heal. I'm sharing this story, with all the boring details, because I want someone to read this and think, you know what, I can do that and give it a go!
Believe it or not, I didn't go into salve creation with creating a business in mind. I simply wanted to use the money from my "day job" to create herbal salves in my crockpot that could help people in my community find relief from pain and skin issues. After two and a half years of giving it away for free, I decided to turn it into a business so that I can use the profits from this to feed back into itself and give me the means to continue to give these salves away to those that can't afford it or that money would be a barrier to finding relief. I want to eventually have enough of a surplus that I can bring jars into senior living facilities and rehabilitation facilities and give them away at no charge so that those people can also find relief and restore their quality of life.
I think I'll end this blog entry with, don't be scared to try something knew, the worst that could happen is it doesn't work out and you have to go back to the drawing board to try again. It's okay to fail, that's how we learn :)
Keep trying new things!
Dominique Rogers
0 comments