3 Crazy Chafing Treatments That You Should Never Try

These days there’s all sorts of misinformation on the internet, and crazy chafing treatments are no exception! Some thigh chafing can be minor, and you could temporarily soothe it with DIY home remedies, such as calming aloe vera or turmeric. However, chafing can become a severe skin condition if your skin starts to crack or bleed. If your chafing has severe symptoms, it can become excruciating, infected, and possibly leave scarring. Using home remedies for chafing can be risky; if you have serious chafing that’s bleeding, you should consult a pharmacist or medical professional. For this reason, it’s essential to treat and prevent thigh chafing with products that work, not any old internet DIY chafing treatment trend.

Don’t try these 3 DIY chafing treatments at home!

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is a popular product these days for just about everything, from cooking to haircare and skincare. Many blogs may tout coconut oil as a promising DIY chafing treatment, but in reality, it’s one to avoid!

At first glance, coconut oil can seem like an excellent anti-chafing product. Coconut oil makes a great moisturizer because it absorbs quickly into the skin and can calm inflammation. However, because coconut oil absorbs quickly, it’s not effective in preventing chafing. Instead, you’ll want to use an ointment that keeps the chafed area lubricated and hydrated longer.

Coconut oil can also be messy and is known to stain clothing easily, so it’s not a suitable treatment for chafing when you’re heading out for the day.

Baking Soda

Baking soda is a widely used product for cleaning and cooking, so why would you want to use it for chafing? Good question, and the answer is, you shouldn’t.

Perhaps you remember having chickenpox as a child and your parents applying baking soda to your pox sores? They did that because baking soda can help reduce itchiness. It’s this logic that some blogs use to suggest baking soda is a good treatment for chafing. 

Baking soda can certainly help reduce itching and pain associated with chafed skin... However, baking soda sucks moisture out of the skin. When mixed with water, baking soda on the skin will become alkaline, and the alkaline pH of baking soda can upset the balance of the skin’s pH. This treatment can actually make the skin more prone to chafing rather than helping it.

Cornstarch

Cornstarch is often used for diaper rash, so it makes sense that many people think you can also use it for thigh chafing. Cornstarch or baby powder can be used to reduce the friction between thighs caused by skin-on-skin contact. And it can be somewhat effective at absorbing the sweat that causes chafing. But cornstarch and baby powder are messy. You can’t put cornstarch between your legs and then put on a dark-colored outfit without getting major white stains. If you’re in a pinch, you can use a little cornstarch between your legs to prevent chafing, but it won’t ease the pain from existing skin irritation.

There are much better products made specifically for chafing that you can use long-term instead of cornstarch, and they won’t leave embarrassing white marks everywhere or dry out the skin. Some home remedies and chafing treatments aren’t necessarily bad. Aloe vera, turmeric, ice, manuka honey, or tea tree oil are known to reduce pain and inflammation for minor chafing. However, these home chafing remedies are often messy or can stain clothing (especially the turmeric!). You can only use them to soothe chafing at home; you can’t use them while you’re out and about, so they often don’t prevent further chafing.

Bandelettes thigh bands create a barrier between your thighs to prevent chafing. With Bandelettes, you don’t need to treat chafing because your thighs will be protected from ever getting chafed! Prevention is the way forward in the fight against chafing. With thigh bands, you never had to deal with painful inner thighs again!