10 Unusual Uses for Butter

Step 4: Beautify

These same proteins that are good for you leather are good for your own skin, too! Rub a small amount of butter around your hands, or other dry/damaged areas of skin. Rinse off with a mild soap and water, and you'll feel the difference.  Butter also keeps cuticles soft and flexible, and fingernails less brittle.

Butter is excellent for treating skin irritations like a nasty rash. Rub a generous amount of butter on these irritations twice a day. Allow it to air for an hour or so each day. Cover with a bandage after applying the second daily coating of butter, and within a few days, the wound should be gone.

If you run out of shaving cream, and need smooth skin in a pinch, use a knob of butter on wet skin and get a nice, close shave. 

Butter is also be an excellent substitute for hair conditioners.  It provides essential amino acids to fine, limp hair. Comb a little butter through your hair after you use your regular shampoo. Rinse the butter with moderately warm water for a shiny, healthy head of hair. Take that Pantene Pro-V!

Comments

[jamilks]

Aloha and thank you for sharing so many good ideas!

I know that at one time, lanolin (a relative of butter, I guess, in that it is an animal fat) was used to heal cuts and wounds and it is a known fact that the guys who shear sheep regularly nick themselves with their shears but never get infections because of the lanolin in the wool.

I make fruit leather and have a problem with the dried leather sticking to the pan/tray even though I've used coconut or olive oil. I'll definitely try butter next time. Is there any concern about it going rancid, though, at room temp?

[Mirime]

Well lanolin isn't anti-microbial, but living on a sheep farm, I can testify to the wonders of it. Before my sis learned how to shear sheep the guy that came around had the softest hands and shearing mocs. Shearing mocs are mostly just Minnetonka mocs that have a soft leather sole. Lanolin can be used on leather and was used and still is in some the natural ointments for cuts and diaper rash. And Javin007 even the dad of the shearer would cut himself sometimes and he had been shearing for about 60 some years.  If you look at hand lotion some do have lanolin.  Just think you are rubbing ram grease into your hands;)

[jsawyer]

Butter, as a mostly saturated fat, won't go rancid very quickly. However, the milk solids that remain in the butter will spoil.

Clarified butter will be better, but a more stable oil, like soybean or canola might be better...

[Javin007]

You know, I'd never really thought of this, but when I was stationed in Egypt we would regularly have to shear the sheep that we kept for research purposes. (You do weird things in medical research. We would draw blood from the sheep to make our blood agar, and in return they were some of the best kept, and oldest living sheep in Egypt.)

But, clutz that I was, I was *constantly* knicking myself, even with the electric shears. Not once in Egypt did I get so much as an infected hang-nail. I'd never connected it to the lanolin. I'll have to look into this! Thanks!