Lubricants
Ingredients
An ingredient list is ordered by quantity. That single fact makes most bottles readable in under a minute.
Cosmetic style ingredient lists are ordered from most to least, with everything below one per cent grouped loosely at the end. Water is almost always first in a water based formula. What appears second and third decides the character of the product, and what appears anywhere in the list decides whether a particular body will object to it.
The usual suspects
- Glycerine
- Common humectant. Sweet, slippery and associated with thrush recurrence in people already prone to it.
- Propylene glycol
- Similar role, and a recognised contact irritant for a minority of users.
- Chlorhexidine
- An antiseptic that appears in a few formulas. Suppresses the lactobacilli that keep vaginal tissue healthy.
- Nonoxynol-9
- A spermicide, now widely discouraged for frequent use because it irritates and thins mucous membrane.
- Menthol, capsaicin and warming agents
- Deliberate irritants sold as a feature. Fine for those who enjoy them, unpleasant for sensitive tissue.
- Fragrance and flavour
- A single word covering many compounds, and the most common source of unexplained reactions.
What a gentle formula looks like
Short lists, water first, a cellulose or hyaluronic thickener, a mild preservative and little else. Formulas built around hydroxyethylcellulose have a long record in clinical settings for exactly this reason. Aloe based formulas are also popular and usually gentle, provided the aloe is genuinely near the top of the list rather than a trace amount used for the label.
The shorter the list, the fewer the suspects when something goes wrong.
Working out what reacted
- Stop using every product in the area for a week, including washes and wipes.
- Reintroduce one product at a time, leaving several days between each.
- Write down what was used and when, since memory is unreliable at this level of detail.
- Compare ingredient lists of anything that produced a reaction, looking for shared entries.
Persistent irritation with no obvious trigger is worth taking to a clinician rather than solving by trial and error, since several conditions produce the same symptom and none of them are solved by changing brand.
Where to compare
Full ingredient lists are increasingly published on product pages rather than hidden on the packaging. Retailers that specialise in this category tend to publish them; a listing such as the inWonderstate selection exists precisely because some conditions require a shorter list than the average formula offers.
Certification and testing
In Europe, lubricants intended for internal use are commonly placed on the market as medical devices, which brings a conformity assessment with it. That is a meaningful distinction from a product sold as a cosmetic or a novelty, and it is usually stated somewhere on the packaging or the product page.
It is not a guarantee of comfort. A conforming product can still contain an ingredient a particular body objects to, which is why the ingredient list remains the useful document rather than the mark.