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Best plan to prevent saddle sores on a tour

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Best plan to prevent saddle sores on a tour

Old 12-11-12, 04:17 PM
  #26  
Hangtownmatt
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Originally Posted by Chris Pringle
Did the sores appear almost immediately or after a few thousand miles on the B-17? BTW, what saddle do you use now?
I rode this saddle three thousand miles. Problems started after about 1,000. I replaced it with a Specialized Romin Evo and the saddle sores literally healed while I rode without any change in hygiene or anything else.
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Old 12-11-12, 04:20 PM
  #27  
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This may help someone.

https://www.cervelo.com/en/engineerin...-saddles-.html
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Old 12-11-12, 04:43 PM
  #28  
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Originally Posted by 10 Wheels
Best saddle fitting description I've read! I'm a T-shaped, needs-a-cutout guy.
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Old 12-11-12, 08:07 PM
  #29  
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Saddle sores, crotch rot, and other such unwelcome divertments

It sounds like you have been doing all the right and proper things that are Conventional Wisdom on this subject but I would offer a different take on your situation and the general subject of pelvic hygiene. First of all let's enumerate the things that "everybody" says is the right thing to do.
1. Get out of the wet, sweaty clothes as soon as your day is ended.
2. Wash the crotch area (and the rest of your body for that matter) every day after riding.
3. Completely dry the area after washing.
4. Put on clean riding clothes each day.
5. In the event of skin breakdown, treat the lesions by keeping the area dry, or soaking it in warm water or Epsom salts, then applying antibiotic ointments or creams, drying unguents or powders, anti-inflammatory creams or ointments, or antiseptic, astringent liquids, and then cover the area with a clean bandage or leave the area open to the air to form a scab.

As you can see from item 5, there is some confusion on how to treat crotch/butt sores. At least part of this is because what people call saddle sores can be caused by several different mechanisms.
1. Pressure sores - caused by continued pressure on an area of tissue that prevents proper blood flow to keep the tissue vital and hence you get cellular death and tissue breakdown from lack of blood perfusion.
2. Folliculitis - caused by clogging of one or more skin sebaceous glands creating a soup of sebum, white blood cells, bacteria and lysed bacterial products. A pimple is a simple folliculitis, a carbuncle (look it up if you never seen one) is a bad one.
3. Abrasion both simple and infected - caused by a break in an area of the skin by friction.
4. Contact dermatitis - allergic reaction to something that contacted your skin. BTW, soaps, fragrances and anti-perspirants are common offenders.
5. Fungal infection - crotch rot, formally known as Tinea Cruris.
6. Insect bites - mosquitoes, black flies, ticks, fleas, crabs, scabies, chiggers. Spend some time in the woods and these guys will find you.

and 7. Any or all of the above in any combination.

I won't try to cover treatments for all of these but what is the usual cause for tissue breakdown during a tour is a either or a combination of pressure sore and folliculitis. Sitting too long in one position will cause a sore spot just from ischemia alone but because the blood flow is compromised, so is immune response to local invasions of pathological bacteria. To prevent it, move around on your saddle, stand up and ride, stop and walk around. But if you do get an infected/ingrown hair, or pimple, treat it by washing the area and applying a spot of antibiotic ointment and cover it with a Band-Aid. Change it daily. This is a simple local infection. If you don't treat it, it will not stay local.

Pressure sores are larger and look just like a red area (at first). If they persist then you will get total tissue breakdown that can look like a big seeping hole in your backside - a very painful seeping hole. Though pressure sore can get infected, they don't necessarily have to be. Treatment is first of all STOP PUTTING THE PRESSURE ON THAT SPOT UNTIL IT HEALS! Second, keep the area clean and dry. If the skin is intact you can use talcum powder. Do NOT use corn starch unless you want to "Meet My Leetle Friend" Tinea Cruris. Tinea eats starch. Talcum is a non-nutritive mineral.

Contact dermatitis can be caused by nearly anything and the way your immune system works, it might even be something that you have used or had contact with for years without problems. Primary treatment first involved stopping contact with whatever it is that is causing the problem. Sometimes that isn't as easy as it seems. I was 55 years old when I suddenly started to get uncontrollable itching in the middle of the morning. After weeks of suffering, I found I was now allergic to the fabric softener in my underwear. Never had the problem before. Treatment is to use soothing creams or ointments. OTC Hydrocortisone cream is the gold standard for rashes but there are stronger steroid creams with a prescription. Oral Anti-histamines will control itching (Benadryl) I heard of one poor guy who became allergic to the Proofhide he put on his Brooks saddle. The rash only showed up after riding for about 50 miles when enough sweat had built up to transfer whatever chemical in the Proofhide was causing the problem.

Now the part that will raise your eyebrows in disbelief.

The amazing thing is that most of the time you DON'T have skin lesions. The body is very efficient in dealing with all the environmental insults that assault it on a daily basis. Over eons it has evolved remarkable mechanisms to cope. Primary among these is what is called (and you've heard it before) homeostasis. It turns out that the best way to beat pathological bacteria and fungi is to keep a healthy population of benign bacteria and natural oils on your skin at all times. Unfortunately some of our best intentions and efforts to stay healthy wipe out these friendly bacteria. Frequent washing, washing with caustic soaps, and antibacterial soaps kill not just the bad bacteria but ALL bacteria. And after your skin gets a scorched earth cleansing, repopulating it with bacteria means all kinds of bacteria have a shot at setting up shop. Fortunately the benign bacteria that normally populates our skin is by far the most common kinds in our usual environment, but they are not the only ones out there and if you happen to have an irritated hair follicle, or a little abrasion, the bad guys can get established in their own little haven.

So what I am saying here is, yes, wash at the end of the day. But don't use lye soap (Ivory), deodorant soaps (Dial, Irish Spring), or antibacterial soaps (Betadine). These kill off your normal flora and strip the skin of its proper oils. Rather use a mild soap, something like Dove, which will clean but not scourge your skin. "Body Washes" are even more drying to the skin than lye soaps because they are not even soap, they are detergents. When you live in a protected environment like a house and work indoors, your body (specifically your sebaceous glands) can keep up with the daily stripping of oils but if you are on tour, you are in a much richer biological environment and it can cause problems.

I can see that this entry has gone on quite long enough so I will quit here. There is actually a great deal more information but fortunately most of it you don't need to know in order for it to work. The human body is an amazing machine - even more amazing than a bicycle, and that's a lot.

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Old 12-11-12, 08:31 PM
  #30  
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I didn't see anyone recommend chamois cream. I think it would be worthwhile to carry some along. I have shorts that work great except for a few points where chamois cream makes all the difference. I carry little bags of it on long rides.
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Old 12-11-12, 11:09 PM
  #31  
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Originally Posted by 10 Wheels
Nice article, thanks. Interesting to see one of their pressure-map images where one side had more than the other. When trying out my B17 Select I noticed the thigh chafing (from the skirt) was only on the right side; I might have some hip etc asymmetry. Puzzled why the B17 skirt flares out instead of being vertical or else tucked in. & that's when new, I've seen well-used Brooks saddles where the outward flaring becomes more pronounced. Some posters suggest lacing. I squeezed the skirts a bit to see if it would raise the middle-top surface & it doesn't seem to rise drastically. However since lacing is somewhat common it would be nice if Brooks pre-drilled all their saddles w/skirts & not just the Aged models.
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Old 12-12-12, 07:45 AM
  #32  
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Originally Posted by gif4445
I developed some sores. ... use the butt butter ... and the sores were like follicular in nature.
Originally Posted by 200k
2. Folliculitis - caused by clogging of one or more skin sebaceous glands creating a soup of sebum, white blood cells, bacteria and lysed bacterial products. A pimple is a simple folliculitis, a carbuncle (look it up if you never seen one) is a bad one.
There was a time that I used butt butter as a preventative measure, except it seemed that I regularly got folliculitus (thanks to 200k, I now know what it's called ). I suspect regularly slathering my skin with a greasy product contributed to the problem. Now I simply carry a small packet of butt butter and only use it when I feel a problem developing, which is rare (thankfully).

FWIW, I've never found any other relationship to cleanliness, time in cycling shorts, etc to those sores. In fact, I got it most when being OCD about cleanliness and using a chamois cream regularly. YMMV
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Old 12-12-12, 10:40 AM
  #33  
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Originally Posted by rogerstg
FWIW, I've never found any other relationship to cleanliness, time in cycling shorts, etc to those sores. In fact, I got it most when being OCD about cleanliness and using a chamois cream regularly. YMMV
That doesn't surprise me. I do not find that the incidence of problems is any worse when I am traveling where I go several days at a time without washing as compared to places I can shower every day. Similarly, I saw no additional problems when I went to only taking a single pair of bike shorts.
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Old 12-12-12, 12:37 PM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by gif4445
I used to use bag balm. In fact I used it on cow's udders back in the day when I was milking the family Holstein. I stopped using it for cycling purposes b/c I could only find it in a large green tin container. ... Maybe I should reconsider and attempt to re-package it.
You can get Bag Balm in a 1 oz (green) can, which costs half as much as the one pound(?) can. I've saved my old little cans, and now refill them from the big can.
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Old 12-12-12, 10:27 PM
  #35  
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Originally Posted by staehpj1
That doesn't surprise me. I do not find that the incidence of problems is any worse when I am traveling where I go several days at a time without washing as compared to places I can shower every day. Similarly, I saw no additional problems when I went to only taking a single pair of bike shorts.
When I've gone on medium distance rides w/o a shower I sometimes get some thigh chafing, prolly due to grimy skin being stickier than from bacteria/fungus. BTW I read an article about hand-washing in hospitals--there is research showing that frequent washing (esp with "soaps") damages the skin layers & beneficial microflora causing the skin to actually harbor more bad "bugs".

https://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/5/1287.full
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