Hey, I'm a Genius
Yes Dad, I know it's late, but I just made a fascinating discovery. So I bought some
chapstick (yes, that brand) on Sunday because I had just run out of my old cherry chapstick, which is what I always use. The store didn't have cherry, so I bought "classic," knowing that I'm sometimes sensitive to different lip balms. So I bought it, and lo and behold, had a reaction to it. I used it for a couple of days and my lips were burning and having all sorts of symptoms that they shouldn't, and I suspected the lip balm. I looked up online and couldn't find anything helpful. The labels of the
cherry versus
classic were unhelpful, because only the active ingredients were listed. So I did further research on the chapstick website, noted that there were only about three different ingredients in the inactive ingredient section between the two. For one, classic contained Oleyl alcohol whereas cherry did not. I suspected this could be the culprit because alcohol is very harsh on skin sometimes. I searched online for "olely alcohol allergies" and came up with a blackwell-synergy.com
document that was clearly from a scholarly journal (many references, volume number given, etc) discussing in only two pages, this exact issue. Turns out, some people are sensitive to the combination of oleyl alcohol and lanolin (both present in classic, not cherry) and so I have determined that as the cause of my lip reaction. No more classic chapstick for me. Back to cherry. So I'm a genius for discovering that and it's time for bed.
Posted by lib at November 14, 2007 02:12 AM