by solveeczema | Jul 18, 2007 | About Eczema, About Products, Must Reads, Solveeczema.org, Solveeczema.org
Until further notice, I must withdraw my recommendation for Dove bar products. (I have never recommended the liquid products.)
For general use, and especially for “the washing test” on the solveeczema.org web site, I no longer recommend using Dove or any bar products with the same surfactant formula as Dove’s current unscented Sensitive Skin product, the formula of which was changed as of January 2007. See previous posts on this blog for more information.
Initially, there were several products with the same surfactant formula as the OLD unscented Dove formula with sodium cocoyl isethionate (give or take a few fragrances and colors), but they, too, seem to be changing over to the new surfactant formula with sodium lauroyl isethionate.
Here’s the problem:
I can recommend that people use any soap product, because soaps are a very narrowly defined surfactant. Thus, I can say that all soaps, provided they are relatively non-drying (and there are MANY non-drying soaps) should be fine for people with detergent-reactive eczema (also provided there are no individual ingredient allergies).
Without getting into a detailed discussion about Dove, empirically, unscented Dove, a combination of mild detergents, soaps, and fatty acids, was also fine. It was more than fine, actually, it worked especially beautifully to remove existing detergents on the skin that are a problem for people with detergent-reactive eczema.
Unfortunately, I have no such empirical information about the new formula. In fact, the majority of visits to my blog these days appear to be from people trying to figure out what happened to the old unscented Dove formula. I have received several reports of problems, though I cannot draw conclusions until I know much, much more.
The old unscented Dove product had lots and lots of empirical support, not just from those who successfully used my site, but from dermatologists’ experiences over many years. I have no idea why Dove’s maker would want to monkey with this successful product line.
Until further notice, instead of unscented Dove for the “washing test” on the solveeczema.org web site, use Cal Ben’s liquid dish glow from a foaming dispenser. (Do not use it straight as it is quite concentrated.) Rinse especially well. As always, spot test it first to determine personal sensitivity to the ingredients.
by solveeczema | Jul 16, 2007 | About Products
Toothpastes are some of the more difficult products to find without detergent. The shelves of the health food stores carry choice after choice of “natural” toothpaste with detergent. Not just any detergent, usually sodium lauryl sulfate, one of the worst if detergents give you eczema.
There are a few, mainly European, choices that don’t have detergents in them, but they do have large amounts of sorbitol, which I don’t personally tolerate well. I’ve run across so many other adults who have the same trouble with sorbitol that I’ll admit I haven’t paid much attention to the non-detergent toothpastes that contain sorbitol. In fact, there are only three brands I know off the top of my head that don’t have sorbitol or detergents: Burt’s Bees, Weleda, and Ipsab Tooth Powder.
Only Burt’s Bees and Weleda had children’s versions – until just recently, when Burt’s Bees discontinued selling toothpaste! My local health food store ordered as much as they could, since it was a best seller for them, but even that stock is long gone. I have a healthy stash now myself, most of which I ordered through Amazon.
Weleda package inserts state that “All WELEDA Toothpastes are free from fluoride, detergents, synthetic fragrances, colors and preservatives. … All WELEDA Toothpastes are developed in cooperation wtih dentists and are scientifically tested.”
It’s too bad about the fluoride, I wish someone would come out with a non-detergent fluoride toothpaste.
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 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 | 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!
