by solveeczema | Jul 1, 2007 | About Products
So, since about three weeks ago, I have tried maybe 30 or 40 different kinds of bar soaps. Every sink in the household is surrounded by half a dozen bars of soap. Finding one that is a suitable washing test replacement for the old unscented Dove is a more involved matter than this — for now, I am just trying to find a nice true soap bar that cleans well without drying.
At this point, by far my favorite of all the ones I have tried (and I will post a list as soon as I can, with comments on each), is … Luxo Banho, distributed by the Kala Corporation. I have tried the Nectar and the Creme varieties. These soaps are truly a luxury. (Unfortunately, also luxury-priced, since they are imported from Europe.)
Ingredients:
Luxo Banho Nectar: vegetable base (sodium palmate and sodium cocoate), glycerin, nectar essence (appricot and peach), water, tetra sodium EDTA, palm acid, titanium dioxide.
Luxo Banho Creme: vegetable base (sodium palmate and sodium cocoate), glycerin, sweet almond oil, powdered milk, water, tetra sodium EDTA, palm acid, titanium dioxide.
Unfortunately, I could not find an unscented version. Each of the varieties has a slightly different formula; as you can see the Creme version has sweet almond oil but the Nectar does not. The base of all the Luxo Banho bars I saw was the same vegetable-oil soap.
I personally prefer the Creme soap, despite a fragrance that I don’t particularly like. Fortunately, the fragrance doesn’t remain strong on the skin. I love the fragrance of the Nectar soap, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea … or shall I say, bowl of fruit. It smells very strong and fruity. The bar has a distinct, almost neon-orange color. Both bars seem to rinse pretty well, but also seem to dissolve startlingly fast in any standing water. There are numerous other soaps from this company that I have not tried yet, but given my experience with these, I probably will soon.
The drawbacks are pretty minimal – these soaps are amazingly gentle, neutral, non-drying, and they clean pretty well.
I also tried the Olivella unscented bar soap, available at Drugstore.com after all. I’m fascinated that this olive-oil-based true soap is so neutral and non-drying, even compared to other products that have a virtually identical ingredients list. There must be an art to the saponification.
Olivella is probably not going to be as popular with everyone. The biggest drawback is probably the strong green color – a natural coloring from the olive oil, but nevertheless a dark green color that would leave a green residue. Fortunately, it rinses pretty well; it also dissolves like nobody’s business with any standing water. I don’t see how I could leave it in the shower. It’s nice for washing hands, though.
by solveeczema | Jun 26, 2007 | About Eczema
A woman in my mother’s club once told me that she did not believe her baby’s eczema could be caused by detergent exposure, because she herself had eczema and the condition was obviously genetic. In my experience, this genetic connection is a big indicator that the eczema is probably caused by detergents.
Detergent-reactive eczema seems highly correlated with atopy. That is, if one or more parents has a history of allergy, eczema, and/or asthma, the chance that baby’s eczema is caused by detergents is very high.
Although solveeczema.org is the only place to currently find this solution, I am not the first person to observe that detergents underly most eczema in infants with atopy.
As I mention on the solveeczema web site, noted pediatrician author Dr. T. Berry Brazelton points out in his book Touchpoints that he could PREVENT VIRTUALLY ALL INFANTILE ECZEMA if he identified parents with an allergic history and had parents take certain steps, primary among them using only soaps rather than detergents to wash baby’s skin, clothing, and hair.
I have called Dr. Brazelton to thank him for this insight which led to the solution to our son’s eczema and now for so many other people who have used the solveeczema.org site. He told me he found no research on this issue in his day, he realized the connection from years of clinical practice.
My hat goes off to Dr. Brazelton. Given the meticulous round-the-clock observations my husband and I had to make to solve this problem — even with the head start of the advice in Touchpoints — I have no idea how anyone could figure this out from the vantage point of an office or clinic. More than that, I have seen how difficult it can be to convince anyone — most especially anyone with a history of allergy — to switch personal care products. Part of Dr. Brazelton’s genius was his ability to convince so many families in his practice to make these kinds of personal product changes.
Today, detergents are far more ubiquitous than in Dr. Brazelton’s day. In my experience, nowadays changing products only for the baby’s laundry, skin, and hair is only partly effective, or maybe not effective at all. Everyone in the household has to switch to non-detergent products. Fortunately, given the connection with atopy, this often alleviates allergies, asthma, and skin problems in one or more of the adults in the household, too.
Thank you Dr. Brazelton!
by solveeczema | Jun 4, 2007 | About Products
The clear winner of the plant-based soaps I tried from this Drugstore.com order is … Olivella Face and Body Soap. It says it’s 100% olive oil from Italy. The ingredients are: Sodium Olivate (saponified virgin olive oil), water, glycerin, fragrance.
I was pretty skeptical given the short ingredients list, and how drying I have found most castile soaps I’ve tried. For that matter, most plant-based soaps I have tried with a short list of ingredients have been pretty drying. This one was really not bad. I’m guessing it rinses pretty well, because the bar is so susceptible to dissolving in water. The package warns: “DO NOT leave soap in standing water.” It’s so susceptible, I’m wondering how anyone can leave a bar like this in the shower. Never mind, it works well.
But… There’s always a catch, right? Here again, the fragrance. I quickly got used to it (unlike some other soap fragrances) and it doesn’t seem to leave a strong residue of fragrance on the skin. However, the fragrance has a distinct, I would say slightly masculine, European soap smell to it. The scent makes me think of European hotel soap or maybe someone’s dapper Italian grandfather.
They have a web site www.olivellaline.com . The company has baby products and makes a “detergent.” But their “detergent” appears to be made from castile soap. (I do not speak Italian, though – always check with the company!)
At any rate, if I can get this same soap without the fragrance, I will see how it works with the washing test and report back. The lesson from this for me was that soaps from the same basic oil can be very different.
by solveeczema | Jun 2, 2007 | Off Topic Posts
Please forgive me for a second off-topic post – I just felt I needed to say something.
Blue Shield is behaving worse than despicably to my family in a health care coverage issue that has nothing to do with eczema. (My coverage is through a federal plan, so I do not have the usual recourse through states and state courts, please do not write with suggestions regarding rights I don’t have, it’s too depressing.)
There isn’t much anyone can do – unless you happen to have some superhuman clout at Blue Shield – but I’d ask the following if you want to help:
1) Get involved. Just in general. My situation is just one of millions. We need to fix our health care system, no one should have to go through this.
2) I get so many heartfelt letters of thanks from parents for the site and how it has helped them. In many cases I hear from people whose children had the worst cases of eczema you can imagine, who are able to then live eczema free because of the information.
If you are one of them, please consider sitting down and estimating how much money this solution saves in medical costs annually that your insurance company might otherwise have been on the hook for: doctors’ visits, medications, even hospitalizations. Although you may have more expenses at home in implementing this, for example installing a water softener, insurance doesn’t typically pay for those. However, they do get the benefit of NOT having to pay indefinitely for the medical interventions that you or your child would have otherwise needed had the eczema continued.
Please write to me and tell me about it. I will not use your name, only tally the numbers: X dollars saved in X number of cases. Please contact me through the web site, www.solveeczema.org, through the feedback link on the home page.
I have seen statistics on the average cost of eczema patients’ annual medical care. If I use those numbers, and just the people I know of whose eczema-related medical expenses essentially went to zero after using my site, well, that’s a huge amount of money. But real numbers mean a lot more than statistics.
If my husband and I just had the time we’ve had to spend on this medical paperwork for the last two and half years (to no avail) to spend on this site instead, and the time we’d have saved because of just having the use of our family’s savings which is now essentially wiped out, we could save even just our own insurer many times what they are trying to avoid responsibility for here.
Not that I believe making that argument to them is going to change anything, but I can always hope. At the very least, they need to hear that sometimes they are not just being immoral, they could save more money overall just by doing the right thing.
by solveeczema | May 31, 2007 | About Products
The box of new soaps arrived yesterday from Drugstore.com. I sat on the living room floor and opened all the little brightly color packages – I couldn’t wait to try them. I must have washed my hands twenty times last night just to get an initial feel for some of these products.
After trying about half of them, I would say I got less of a FEEL than a SMELL Pee Yew!! Ack, ack, ack…
I’m not especially sensitive to fragrances in washing products, but this is over the top! I mean, if I wanted to smell this strongly of something, I’d wash with a no-scent shampoo and soap and use a good perfume. How could anything compete with this? My husband made me wrap some of the bars in plastic and air out the room!
A lot of people are sensitive to fragrances in washing products. Fragrances can cause allergies including contact allergies. Is all this really necessary?
For example, one of the bars I liked is “Johnson’s Baby Bar.” On the cover it says, “New and Improved! Better Fragrance Added Moisturizer”
If this is a better fragrance, I’d hate to smell the old one! It’s not so much that it’s so offensive as that it’s just too, too much. Especially in a bar for babies. I wish they would come out with an unscented version, it’s a great basic non-drying bar soap that strikes a pretty good balance between moisturizing and leaving the skin feeling clean.*
The ingredients of Johnson’s Baby Bar are pretty simple: Sodium tallowate, water, sodium cocoate or sodium palm kernelate, glycerin, titanium dioxide, fragrance, pentasodium pentetate, tetrasodium etidronate.
Sodium tallowate, sodium cocoate, and sodium palm kernelate are all soaps. Glycerin is a natural byproduct of soapmaking that moisturizers, this bar has added glycerin. Titanium dioxide – I wish everyone didn’t feel like they had to add titanium dioxide, I think it’s just for making the soap look white – but it is used in a lot of sunscreens and is supposedly not absorbed. The last two ingredients, I believe, are water softening agents to help keep the soap from binding with minerals and forming scum. They should help with rinsing. But that fragrance!…
Probably my favorite of the ones I tried last night is pHisoderm pH skin cleansing bar (unscented). It’s great for leaving the skin feeling pretty soft and normal, not too dry, not oily. I’m not sure I’d want to use this for my hands if I was going to put in my contact lenses, but otherwise it’s a pretty good, unscented basic non-drying soap bar. I still have to see how it does for the washing test, because there it has to do a good job removing detergents on the skin and rinsing clean, but I will report back as soon as I find out.
The ingredients of pHisoderm skin cleansing bar (unscented) are: sodium tallowate, sodium cocoate, water, glycerin, petrolatum, lanolin, titanium dioxide, pentasodium pentetate, tetrasodium etidronate. May also contain sodium palm kernelate. So that’s soap, water, glycerin, petrolatum and lanolin (both of which are in Aquaphor), titanium dioxide, and water softeners/rinsing agents. No fragrance or masking fragrance. The bar smells quite neutral and has a nice feel to it.
For people who would prefer vegetable-based products only, my old favorite is still Clearly Natural unscented glycerin soap. In my own experience, it is less drying than the usual clear bar made from vegetable soap.
Last night I also tried a bar called the healing garden organics wild honey soap. It has a fairly strong fragrance, just a warning. The printing on the label is microscopic, but it appears to say that 70% of the ingredients are organic, and it is all vegetable-based. When I tried it, it left what felt like a heavy moisturizing residue on my hands. This could be a good or a bad thing depending on what people are looking for. It seemed to take several washings with other soaps to remove the residue. Again, could be good, could be bad, depending on what you want.
The ingredients of the healing garden organics wild honey soap are: sodium palmate (organic), sodium palmate (presumably nonorganic), water, sodium cocoate (organic), glycerin, sodium palm kernelate, fragrance, shea butter, honey, pentasodium pentetate, tetrasodium etidronate, sodium chloride, tetrasodium EDTA. That is, soaps, glycerin, fragrance, shea butter, honey, and water softening/rinsing agents. I actually tried this bar because it is an organic vegetable-based product with moisturizers and rinsing agents, but it sure didn’t feel like it rinsed all that well.
Sometimes when makers try to make moisturizing products, the ingredients end up leaving the skin feeling less than clean. It’s a tough balance. Sometimes added oils don’t stop a soap product from being drying so much as they make the washed skin feel both dry and oily. Ick. I found that to be the case with a few vegetable-based soaps with added oils.
I know I’ve been kind of hard on Dr. Bronner’s products, because the ones I’ve used have been too drying for me, but I found one nice surprise: Dr. Bronner’s All-One Hemp Unscented Baby-Mild Pure-Castile Soap. It turned out to be not so bad. I wouldn’t call it moisturizing, but I didn’t find it any more drying than, say, Ivory bar soap. For someone looking for an all vegetable, organic soap, it’s better than I expected.
Finally, the soap I have been using in the shower most recently is South of France French Milled Ultra Moisturizing Shea Butter Soap. It is traditional soap made with 100% vegetable oils, palm, olive, and/or coconut oil, shea butter, mineral pigment or vegetable color, natural fragrance and/or essential oils. Interesting that they chose to avoid using chemical names for soap, like sodium palmate or sodium cocoate, but maybe there is a valid distinction when a traditional soap is made without removing the natural glycerin byproduct of saponification. At any rate, the fragrance is very pleasant and not overbearing. South of France also has an unscented glycerin soap that I have not tried. My one big beef with this soap (no irony intended there) is that it rinses less well than the old unscented Dove and leaves more residue in the shower even though we have soft water. On the plus side, it lasts forever – I think that comes from french milling.
I believe South of France and Clearly Natural both make liquid hand soaps as well, but I have not tried them. (Note: I just saw Clearly Natural’s liquid “soap” with iodine, and it has sodium laureth sulfate in it, which I would not recommend using. So, as always, check ingredients before buying, especially with liquid products.)
In short, I can’t say yet if I have found a good substitute for the old unscented Dove for the washing test (see http://www.solveeczema.org for details), especially for someone who doesn’t have soft water and who might have allergies to other ingredients especially fragrances, but I can say the above are all true soap products that should at least not cause the detergent-reactive eczema. At the very least, grown ups have a greater choice of what to use on their own skin, without causing baby to react.
*After using Johnson’s Baby Bar several times now, I should report that it causes my hands to itch (mildly, but distinctly). Since I have used without problems many other products with the same ingredients except for the specific fragrance, I would strongly suspect the fragrance. I would remind everyone again, always be aware of other sensitivities. When in doubt, leave it out. There are lots of products out there!
