Imagine my surprise when my eemo handed me a bright, red box with the label "100% Pure Horse Oil" on it.
Trying my best to be as polite as possible, I feign a smile and graciously accept the gift with open arms. My eemo is a tour guide for Koreans who visit Japan so she flies to Japan every other week and often picks up things that interest her. This week, it had to be horse oil.
Not gonna lie, I felt pretty disgusted when I found out that horse oil was being used as a beauty product. But then I realized that I was just being a culturally insensitive little bitch. (Hey, don't get me wrong if you don't support horse oil if you're vegan or if you care for animals. I'm just saying that if you're alright with other animal products don't hate on the horse oil.)
Horse oil blew up last year in Korea as an alleged cure-all for acne, eczema, and other skin conditions. It's been used for hundreds of years across Asia and the first account of it being used was
found in an ancient Chinese medicine book called Bencao Gangmu.
This seems to be a no-brand horse oil but since it just appears to be horse oil with no other ingredients, it should be the same as other horse oil brands. Thanks to my boyfriend (he's starting up his cooking blog so please check him out!) for translating the Kanji, which says: Hokkaido Pure Horse Oil Highest Quality.
This 70 mL glass jar came in a nice box but I lost it since I received this last year :( The price was 3,500 yen.
The consistency is very similar to coconut oil, which I've also used as a moisturizer. It melts into a liquid at body temperature yet maintains a creamy, solid state in the jar. I really hate putting oil on my face so I reserve this only for the eczema on my face and body. The oil just sits on top of your skin and takes the longest time to soak in.
Last year, I had an unknown skin rash (probably eczema) that grew on my eyelid overnight. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING I did would help it go away, even pills or steroids. This is where my eemo comes in, swooping with her horse oil. I was pretty desperate at this point to get rid of the rash so I slathered a layer of horse oil onto it before I went to sleep to dream about normal looking eyelids. When I awoke, my eyelids looked significantly better and were not flaking! They still didn't feel like normal skin, but I was happy to know that something was working.
I don't use this oil anymore after I discovered ceramides, but it was one of the products that helped my weird eyelid rash. It's an alright moisturizer/oil for super flaky skin but I wouldn't recommend it for daily wear if you don't have the patience to let it soak in. Putting makeup on top of the unsoaked oil will result in your face looking and feeling like a greasebomb.
Left: unmoisturized eczema
Right: eczema after leaving a layer of horse oil on overnight
On application, it feels like nothing. But then my eczema slowly starts to burn (not in an unbearable way, it's just common in my experience whenever I put a moisturizer on my eczema). As you can see, the photo on the right is less flaky and scabby than the photo on the left but it's nothing dramatic or life-saving.
I'll stick to my ceramides, thank you very much.
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