The Alchemist’s Guide to Oils: Not All Elixirs Are Created Equal

In the ancient world, the role of oil in skin care was well known. In the Odessey, Homer referred to oil as 'liquid gold' and Hipoocrates (father of western medicine) called it 'the great healer' (Clodoveo et al., 2014) . The ancient Egyptians used cleansing creams made from animal fat and vegetable oil, and they commonly used oils and creams for protection against the harsh desert elements (McMullen & Dell'Acqua, 2023). Skin produces natural oils, called sebum, to promote skin homeostatis, involving mainenance of skin hydration and antimicrobial defense (Li et al., 2025).

While applying oil directly to skin is not the best way to get its benefits, in the modern world, we have gone completely the other way using harsh detergents in the form of liquid soaps and even in shampoo/body bars that strip our skin of its natural oils causing erythma, scaling, and inflammation as early as the same day of use (Malewicz-Oeck et al., 2024). Fueled by our relatively newfound knowledge of the germ theory of disease we spent decades scrubbing it away with harsh detergents, only to find our skin angry and unbalanced (Carlsson & Raberg, 2024).

The truth is, your skin and hair love oil. It just needs the right type and amount of oil for the right type of skin with a cleansing regimen that does not just wash it all away.

The Chemistry of the Cleanse At Potionologie, we don't look at "oils"; we look at Fatty Acid Profiles. For example, unsaturated short chain fatty acids are able to penetrate and therefore hydrate hair more readily than saturated long chain fatty acids, which are more likely to sit on top causing buildup (Marsh et al., 2024).