Sweet or Salty - Spa Treatments

Salty Glow or Sugary Scrub

Body scrubs are essentially exfoliants that also rehydrate your next layer of skin, leaving it smooth, velvety soft, and providing you with a radiant glow. Especially useful when end-of-summer tans begin to fade or mid-summer sunburns begin to peel, the body scrub is also a natural remedy that scratches the itch for those with sensitive skin. A real treat is a spa body scrub that offers you the additional pampering of being bathed while you lay back and enjoy. Although the sea-salt or salt glow is the traditional spa scrub favorite, many spas have recently sweetened their menus with a new entry, the sugar scrub.

What's the difference? While the differences between the salt glow and the sugar scrub are few, the most significant difference is that sugar scrubs usually dissolve quicker than salt scrubs do. This makes them less abrasive than salt scrubs. In addition, sugar scrubs leave your skin tasting as good as it looks and feels!

However, you can have the best of both worlds. Many sugar body scrubs include salt in their recipes.

Body Scrub Ingredients

The most popular base ingredient for the salt glow scrub is sea salt although some salt scrubs are based with the less exotic Epsom salts. Sugar scrubs may be based with natural sugar, granulated sugar or brown sugar. Many sugar body scrubs include salt in their recipes as well, offering you the best of both worlds - a sweet body scrub that gives you maximum exfoliation results.

Additional ingredients in body scrubs may include essential oils (most often citrus), fruit and vegetable fiber (like cucumber or pumpkin), base oils (soy, sunflower, or a variety of butters), fruit oils (Jojoba, sweet almond, apricot or avocado), soap flakes (for individuals who need the bubbles to feel clean), clay, seaweed, and/or milk.

The spa body scrub process

Lie back on the massage table and get ready for a relaxing, revitalizing experience. As you lay on your stomach, your massage therapist rubs the aromatic scrub into your skin, removing those pesky dead skin cells and leaving your skin baby soft.

After ten to fifteen minutes of this relaxing massage, your therapist drapes you with plastic and leaves you to think your own quiet thoughts for about twenty minutes as your scrub goes to work at hydrating your new skin. If your spa is so equipped, when your therapist returns you may have the opportunity to luxuriate in a Vichy shower. Otherwise, your therapist will show you to a shower area where you'll rinse, leaving a nice coat of hydrating, nutrient rich oil on your new skin.