Wanted: A simple and safe chamois cream
#51
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Look at diaper creams. Since they're used on babies, the pressure to be safe is more intense, and you can find some with simple ingredients. Also much less expensive. They work as well or better in my experience.
Here's one example for $7 a tube. The ingredients are: Active Ingredient - Purpose. Zinc Oxide, 16% - Skin Protectant. Inactive Ingredients: Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Beeswax, Citric Acid, Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba Wax), Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Myroxylon Pereirae (Balsam Peru Oil), Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil.
Here's one example for $7 a tube. The ingredients are: Active Ingredient - Purpose. Zinc Oxide, 16% - Skin Protectant. Inactive Ingredients: Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Beeswax, Citric Acid, Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba Wax), Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Myroxylon Pereirae (Balsam Peru Oil), Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil.
(Posted for reference after the link stops working.)
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What does the size of the farm have to do with the source of the lanolin? What are they supposedly doing at these large farms that's different from what your wife's family does?
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I have been using Kucharik's chamois butter for the last thirty five years with no problems. Similar to A&D ointment for baby's butts and works quite well with natural chamois riding shorts. A quick search should take you to the web site and the store in California. Good folks who have been doing this for many years. Smiles, MH
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I took enough chemistry classes that I can pronounce the names of most ingredients. I guess the world's a safer place for chemistry majors?
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I have some of this from WalMart and it seems to work. It smells kind of funky and is much greasier than the bike-specific creams, but washes out of my shorts just fine and is certainly cheaper than the bike-specific stuff.
#57
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I use Assos Chamois cream, and have used it for years. It has some unpronounceable names in its ingredients, but so does your average potato. After 30 years of use, I am still alive, and my backside is thankful.
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Meh. It isn't that simple and I totally object to the claim that a natural product is nothing more that the breakdown of a number of different "chemicals".
Lemon juice isn't citric acid and "Citric Acid" is not "Lemon Juice". Commercial "Citric Acid" is usually made by fermenting Molasses or other starches and hasn't been anywhere near a piece of fruit.
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If its chemical composition is identical, what does it matter where it came from? It's the same thing at the molecular level. If there are impurities, yes, that could be an issue, but, if it's pure, it is what it is. H2O is H2O regardless of whether it came from a cloud or someone exhaled it as a result of their cellular respiration.
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Meh. It isn't that simple and I totally object to the claim that a natural product is nothing more that the breakdown of a number of different "chemicals".
Lemon juice isn't citric acid and "Citric Acid" is not "Lemon Juice". Commercial "Citric Acid" is usually made by fermenting Molasses or other starches and hasn't been anywhere near a piece of fruit.
Lemon juice isn't citric acid and "Citric Acid" is not "Lemon Juice". Commercial "Citric Acid" is usually made by fermenting Molasses or other starches and hasn't been anywhere near a piece of fruit.
If its chemical composition is identical, what does it matter where it came from? It's the same thing at the molecular level. If there are impurities, yes, that could be an issue, but, if it's pure, it is what it is. H2O is H2O regardless of whether it came from a cloud or someone exhaled it as a result of their cellular respiration.
Well you are more qualified than most to actually know, so, Is Citric Acid the same as Lemon juice and is Lemon juice the same as Citric acid?
I say NO but what do I know.
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Meh. It isn't that simple and I totally object to the claim that a natural product is nothing more that the breakdown of a number of different "chemicals".
Lemon juice isn't citric acid and "Citric Acid" is not "Lemon Juice". Commercial "Citric Acid" is usually made by fermenting Molasses or other starches and hasn't been anywhere near a piece of fruit.
Lemon juice isn't citric acid and "Citric Acid" is not "Lemon Juice". Commercial "Citric Acid" is usually made by fermenting Molasses or other starches and hasn't been anywhere near a piece of fruit.
As I said above, there are also lots and lots and lots of “natural products” that are deadly.
And, by the way, corn starch has been been “near a piece of fruit”. What do you call an ear of corn? Molasses may not be a fruit but it is plant based.
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Last edited by cyccommute; 06-30-20 at 10:13 PM.
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To follow up on cyccommute 's explanation, lemon juice isn't exclusively made of citric acid, but the citric acid found in lemon juice is identical to the citric acid that you can make by hydrolyzing and reducing sugars (which, by the way, is a reaction most of our cells do constantly). It's the combination of other chemicals added to the citric acid (along with the citric acid) that make lemon juice "lemon juice" and not "orange juice" or "pure citric acid".
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To follow up on cyccommute 's explanation, lemon juice isn't exclusively made of citric acid, but the citric acid found in lemon juice is identical to the citric acid that you can make by hydrolyzing and reducing sugars (which, by the way, is a reaction most of our cells do constantly). It's the combination of other chemicals added to the citric acid (along with the citric acid) that make lemon juice "lemon juice" and not "orange juice" or "pure citric acid".
Ascorbic acid does not make Vitamin C or completely replicate the benefits that natural Vitamin C provides us when acting in concert with various other components such as say flavonoids. Others as well.
There is no laws relating to content descriptions on food packaging and other products that requires manufacturers to list say "lemon juice" as a long list of the various chemicals and compounds that make up lemon juice.
If its got lemon juice in it it will say "Lemon Juice". If its got a bunch of chemical names then its got a bunch of chemicals in it.
Now if your OK with that then your OK with it. I'm really objecting to some people who are trying to claim that a bunch of chemicals added to products are "Natural".
It's just muddying the waters.
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Years ago I tried using a chamois cream (Butt'r) as i was getting saddle sores as I started increasing the length and time of my rides. I didn't care for the process of smearing the cream on me/the chamois. Then, my understanding was that, to be effective, for a very long ride, you need to re-apply more cream after a few hours riding (open to being corrected on this) which was a hassle. While (fingers crossed) I've resolved the saddle sore issue, it wasn't the cream that did it. What did seem to have worked just fine for me was to finally settle on a comfortable saddle (Brooks) and bike fit. I haven't used cream for several years and haven't gotten any saddle sores. YMMV.
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If its chemical composition is identical, what does it matter where it came from? It's the same thing at the molecular level. If there are impurities, yes, that could be an issue, but, if it's pure, it is what it is. H2O is H2O regardless of whether it came from a cloud or someone exhaled it as a result of their cellular respiration.
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What I'm objecting to mostly, and I'm not directing this specifically to members of this forum, is the hubris of Man to believe that just because we can isolate a few chemicals and then replicate those few isolated compounds in industrial facilities, that we then are Masters of our own Universe and actually have a clue about what we are doing.
Your point that we don’t seem to have a clue as to what we are doing might have been valid 200 to 500 years ago. It becomes less valid as we move forward. Yes, there are things that we don’t know but we are very clever monkeys and we will learn the things we don’t know eventually. Then there will be more things to learn. There is always more to learn.
There is no laws relating to content descriptions on food packaging and other products that requires manufacturers to list say "lemon juice" as a long list of the various chemicals and compounds that make up lemon juice.
If its got lemon juice in it it will say "Lemon Juice". If its got a bunch of chemical names then its got a bunch of chemicals in it.
Now if your OK with that then your OK with it. I'm really objecting to some people who are trying to claim that a bunch of chemicals added to products are "Natural".
It's just muddying the waters.
If its got lemon juice in it it will say "Lemon Juice". If its got a bunch of chemical names then its got a bunch of chemicals in it.
Now if your OK with that then your OK with it. I'm really objecting to some people who are trying to claim that a bunch of chemicals added to products are "Natural".
It's just muddying the waters.
There is no fruit of the chamois tree that can be plucked and squeezed to make chamois cream. You don’t milk Rupicapra rupicapra to get chamois cream...well not the kind you put on bicycle shorts, anyway. It is a mixture of chemicals obtained from natural and “unnatural” sources that have been made so that it has certain properties.
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Gold Fever Three days of dirt in Colorado
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Picking the Scablands. Washington and Oregon, 2005. Pie and spiders on the Columbia River!
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Some of them are killed. I will say that it is done in a fairly kind way, but ... it's still killing the animal.
Factory farmed animals are treated in just terrible ways. They are simply numbers. I find some of the practices to the sheep to be disturbing enough that I would prefer not to type them here (tied, hanging upside down ... it's just bad).
Everyone makes decisions about what they support and accept - I find factory farming to be so unpleasant that I make efforts to avoid sending my money in that direction.