[Research] The soap/SLS/detergents dilemma : what's the good type of cleaning ingredients to look out to now for body wash?

Beauty Tips For Body Care
Hi,First I’m sorry if my sources are sketchy : I’m already in another Ph.D program in social science and don’t have the time or mental energy to do much more than a vague google search (but it would definitively help to take advantage of my access to Pubmed and other databases).I'm interrested in skincare ingredients here and there since last year, and it made some benefits to my skin, mostly about acne (thanks Paula’s Choice BP and BHA!). I want to talk here mostly about body cleanser, and the ingredient responsible for the cleaning agent. I’m a little lost as to what to search for in the ingredients.I had banned SLS a long time ago, and thought that cocamidopropyl betaine was the holy grail. Then I read somewhere that it’s polluant and allergenic. I thought it was fine for me but I realise now that I developed keratosis pilaris while using my body wash on CB (and it disapeared rapidely with a change, I talk more about it in another post). I see that some more types of detergents exist outside of SLS and CB, but I don’t see them often in body wash. That seems to be the only choices around. In cocamidopropyl betaine really controversial? What are the other choices?I also read about soaps and how it’s too drying for the skin, and about the Ph issue. Some sources (mostly artisan soap companies, so definitively biased) explain in their websites that soaps can be very gentle on the skin if there’s added moisture by having added oils/butters to the recipes, so that not all the fat is converted to soap ( http://bubbleandbee.blogspot.ca/2008/02/soap-vs-detergent.html ). What is your opinion on this? Is soaps with added shea butter or almond oil can be gentle for the skin? I know that squeaky and drying sensation on the skin with bar soaps, but I also seen some bar that let my skin very hydrated. I’m actually using an olive oil based luxury bar soap in my bathroom for my hands, and the Occitane lavender bar soap in the other bathroom, and the two seems to let my hands very hydrated. There’s also another soap company that try to debunk the Ph issue : http://www.chagrinvalleysoapandsalve.com/idascorner/soap/are-your-soaps-and-shampoo-bars-ph-balanced . Do someone have done a lot of reading on saponification and Ph and can close or open the door on this?I’m somewhat interested in all the organic/fair trade/zero wastes kind of fads, and trying to conciliate these interests with some common sense and scientific knowledge. Is all the «artisan» soap bad for the skin, and is there a kind of very gentle detergent I can look up when reading labels on organic body wash? Is making my own will automatically come to the result of some big skin mistake, whatever my ingredients would be?Thanks!
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Submitted by Flow_frenchspeaker