what's up everyone we're back I'm Dr Shaw Dr Maxfield welcome back to our Channel Dr Lee where we talk about all things skincare and dermatology and today I'll say it again I've said it before if there was ever to be a Nobel Prize for a skincare ingredient it would be white petrol AUM yes that sounds insane petroleum jelly Vaseline the greatest skincare ingredient of all time I truly believe it and I know somebody's reading on the internet right now thinking did they just say refined petroleum product could potentially be the greatest ingredient yes I said
it he said it he claimed it he owned it make a poster of it but there is a good reason why this ingredient is one of the best in fact a hero ingredient and if you go to any dermatologist house you're like hey do your Vaseline it's probably going to be a yes because we use it all the time in and outside of the office so Vaseline petrolum hacks how can the save your skin here we go all things petrolum hacks here we go quick little background story here Robert cheeseboro cheese bro he's rolling around
in the 1800s and he's refining kerosene he's refining all kinds of things he says I'm going to refine petroleum and he makes petrol AUM he gets it patented and he actually says I've invented refined petroleum and I've decided to call it Vaseline he even used to eat it and then he'd drive around in New York in his Factory selling Vaseline to people for all kinds of things and then it actually became so popular he would burn himself with acid and then he would put Vaseline on it and as a demonstration and he would tell people
don't do this at home but you can look at all these other areas where I burned myself and how well they healed because I used my vaseline on them they even used it in in war afterwards for like they would give it to soldiers to heal heal wounds and things like this don't eat it even though he ate it and lived to be 97 years old or something crazy like that I don't recommend eating it a lot of people are worried about the hydrocar bin that come from refined petroleum but this been refined refined again
and refined again it's triple refined and not just that any reputable compan is going to have a USP grade petrol AUM and USP has specific Pharmacy standards to show that it doesn't have impurities in it to show that it is safe and not only is petrol AUM safe because of a lack of hydrocarbons or very minimal hydrocarbons are undetectable hydrocarbon it's so safe for in terms of an allergen they did a patch testing on like 880,000 people and there were only like two reactions to White petrol AUM one of which they said was angry back
syndrome which means that the whole back was inflamed from just anything that you put on it and the second one they thought was a clerical error that's how rare an allergy to petrolatum is is that they question the study itself and not the petrolum product and so you could potentially be allergic to petrolum but it's very very uncommon it's pretty much inert and we use it as the control in most of our studies because it's what we expect to not react when everything else is reacting right this is like the poster child for physically inert
ingredient almost impossible to react to it so if we haven't sold you on the fact that it's safe to use and that it can be used if you're over your angst about this you're probably worried about how we're saying the word because if it's not a comment about that it's a comment about the other look look I even took a look at Amazon today it specifically says and I don't know how else you would want us to say this petroleum jelly White petrolatum skin protectant I know white petrolum no no no no for me it's
petrolatum till I die now we've gotten past the hurdles what are some of the best ways to use this ingredient so many different ways to use it so simply it is the best occlusive moisturizer it's about 99% inclusive it prevents transepidermal water loss so it acts as a very very effective moisturizer no it's not bringing lipids into the skin no it's not bringing ceramides into the skin but it's an effective inclusive and one of the reasons why our skin gets dry is because we lose moisture to the environment and how we measure the effectiveness of
moisturizers is looking at the transepidermal water loss and petrum is the most effective ingredient to do this so simply using it as a moisturizer we oftentimes call this slugging where you use it as the last step in your skincare routine to really lock everything in I truly believe it's incredibly effective for repairing a damaged Skin Barrier and being one of the most effective moisturizers on the market and I think an interesting thing is when slugging came to be as a dermatologist I thought twofold one I was like oh this is something we recommend in the
office all the time like the hydration plush occlusion combination like this is just routine for dermatologist the second thing is why the heck are they using so much it is not like this it's not like a handful of Vaseline on the face over I mean that's just a mess it's impractical not necessary you just use a thin layer of serum thin layer of moisturizer thin layer of Vaseline to lock it all in there you go that's how you slug definitely dermatologist approved and it was before slugging was even a term hack number two we can
simply use it as a protectant meaning that we can use it on areas where we don't want other things to get so if you're going to use a high strength chemical exfoliant you could use it to protect the under eye area so you apply Vaseline first and then you apply the chemical peel on the rest of the area to kind of protect it then we see people do this for example people who are getting their hair dyed um they can put Vaseline on their hairline so that the dye doesn't drip down and kind of stain
the forehead you can use it on your cuticle to protect your cuticles in different scenarios it really can be used also as a protectant in many cases over sensitive areas before you exfoliate around the eyes around the mouth again you use this barrier to your benefit not only does it lock in hydration but it keeps out other irritating things where you don't want them and I guess that kind of can lead to the third hack which is again using this occlusive barrier to your benefit when you olude ingredients it can make them more effective now
this comes with caution you don't want to olude your actives like retinoids or exfoliants you don't want to do that on sensitive areas especially like the face neck however there are times where you want to include even something like Ura or perhaps even an exfoliating acid that's a little more gentle on thick resistant skin like the feet so you can take an ingredient you can apply Vaseline and it will make it more effective we do this all the time with prescription active ingredients even an ingredient in an ointment base where Vaseline is part of the
formula can make it more effective so ointments a lot of times will increase the penetration and that ointment base is the petrolatum that's pushing it kind of deeper into the skin because of the occlusion so you could take your Ura you can then follow with Vaseline and then it will lock it in penetrate it deeper into the skin you can also do this for topical steroids you can do this for topical vitamin D for people who have psoriasis and this combination makes it more effective through the occlusion the next hack is using it to make
your perfume last longer we've seen this one online where basically you take some Vaseline you put it onto the skin and then you apply your perfume or your cologne directly onto it this will make it kind of hold on to those oils and last longer similar to how the perfume lasts longer this longer than the toilet I suppose the toilet is a type of I feel like I'm saying toilet is the the sort of water-based fragrances and then the ud Day perfume is the more oilbased fragrances similarly this will kind of latch on there and
hold it longer and maybe even protect your skin from the fragrance if you have sensitive skin right and I just wanted to try this anyway this is a I don't know how you say this Aqua profundo mhm that smells nice so yes fragrance can be irritating it is highly allergenic so any sort of barrier you can put in between this and your skin is acceptable by me Vaseline or petrolatum can be that barrier top Derm level hack is wound healing there's all kinds of wound healing ointments antibiotics topical antibiotics that you can put on the
skin if you just had surgery or you have some kind of wound and you've cleaned it thoroughly Vaseline is the best thing for wound healing keeping your wound moist first of all is better than keeping it dry a lot of people let their wounds dry out they think it's going to heal better keep your wound moist and keep it moist with Vaseline a lot of people think it it's not going to allow wounds to heal because it's not letting your skin quote unquote breathe enough it's been shown in multiple studies to Aid in wound healing
and make your wounds heal better and heal faster yeah and I tell this to patients all the time I do a lot of surgeries on skin cancers you don't have to tell them if you kept it covered you don't have to tell me if you used Vaseline or an ointment I'll tell you it is the most dramatic difference even at one to two weeks the most traumatic healing difference is based off of whether or not you keep it covered and goopy so it is tremendous in terms of healing and then also it helps prevent secondary
infections it's been studied multiple times compared to topical antibiotics shown to be as equivalent or as beneficial at preventing infections as antibiotics so again definitely great for healing your your wounds so after any injury making sure you clean the wound or after any surgery applying Vaseline doing that for like 2 to 3 weeks gooped up and then afterwards during the wound healing process you can switch to something with silicone in it to really try to prevent scarring but in that immediate healing phase Vaseline is the number one thing you can do for any wound and
interestingly this also includes burns like not immediately after the burn where it still like feels warm even though it's not like super normal warmth after the next day or so applying Vaseline based products to even a burn wound is the best way to heal it it's how most wound healing ingredients are studied they actually look at postburn skin and then see how well an ingredient works at healing it Vaseline is no exception so when using Vaseline one of the most common concerns all here especially on the face is that it's cogenic there's been studies to
show that it is not cogenic it is not pore clogging it's not likely to cause acne but like we said earlier anything you olude underneath Vaseline can make it kind of hold deeper into the skin and so if you have not cleansed your face before applying Vaseline it could lock in your acne caus bacteria so that's just the one caveat if you are going to slug with Vaseline make sure you cleanse your face before and then use it but by itself is not pork cling that's a practical concern and probably the only real concern with
this ingredient it also may not sit well with your skin from an aesthetic standpoint you may hate the feel and that is fine but the benefits are undeniable so hopefully this was helpful to you hopefully now you can wait a minute one thing I wanted to say this product's price also hasn't been updated since its Inception I think unless I'm wrong it was like $4 in 1872 and it is still $4 so I mean you cannot beat the cost of this byproduct it is ridiculous inflation does not touch this so in summary a relatively safe
effective affordable skin care product that should be in everyone's skincare armamentarium whether you keep it on top of the sink or underneath the sink it is a Derm favorite we love it and we agree that it's safe so hopefully you all found this helpful hopefully we can maybe dive into a little bit more of the history of Vaseline in the future cuz I I find the history of all of these things super fascinating okay so we shot the whole Vaseline hacks video and two of the most important tips fell off occasionally this happens it actually
doesn't happen to us that often but we could not let this video go live without these two hacks the first of which you do it without thinking maybe you do it with thinking but vaseline as a lip balm not a ChapStick as I've been corrected before in the past but a lip balm so chapstick is technically a trade or brand name so you know lip balb I guess is what the function is but you could take Vaseline and you could take your favorite moisturizer and you could put Vaseline over the top of that and you
can really lock in those lipids or whatever you want to lock in there or you could just use Vaseline by itself because it really is such an incredible occlusive moisturizer so someone who has dry or chapped lips Vaseline is an incredible hack yeah exactly and it is extremely hypoallergenic almost physically inert meaning there's almost no chance almost no chance of it causing an allergic reaction unlike most of your lip products except for like remedy for lips just throwing it out there um that really can make it worse make your lips worse instead of actually it
oh no I'm just kidding okay while he applies his own lip balm here the next hack the other hack cudra maybe perhaps is that Vaseline is actually an incredible eye cream even though it's not a cream this is something I've seen on Doctor Shaw's channel from way back like do you need an eye cream maybe maybe not but Vaseline actually makes a great one Vaseline is incredible for like we said a lot of reasons so there's two ways that you could use it on the eyes you could simply use it as a protective layer let's
say for example you have very irritated eyelids there is something called eyelid dermatitis and one of the top treatments for this is something called tacus and tacus is the active part of the ingredient there but the thing is that it is in a Vaseline or a petrolum base anyway right so you get a lot of the benefits of the inclusion of petrolatum and a lot of your prescription treatments of the ointments that you use around the eye so Vaseline essentially is the base of a lot of our really heavy hitting prescription treatments that would you
would use under the eyes in order to have that efficacy so petrolatum just as a protective layer is incredible as an eye cream you can use it over other things to lock them in or you could simply just use it to protect your eyes when you're using a chemical peel you're using a retinoid but what I would do is I'd cleanse first apply the Vaseline second and then I would apply my retinoid or exfoliant afterwards just so that it doesn't actually penetrate that Vaseline layer as a barrier and so for your eye creams too more
towards the like treatment phase this isn't going to be the eye cream that treats your dark circles treats your dark spots or the wrinkles underneath your eyes but it is going to be the eye cream that helps with irritated or dry skin around the eyes that's where this lives and nice thing too again mentioned it's inexpensive as compared to perhaps the $100 $200 eye creams that you may be so inclined to purchase this is uh I don't know the math actually I could do the math it's $200 and this one's four bucks and it's what
98% keeper I mean what kind of discount is that that's kind of wild so even better than that because you get a tiny eye cream and you get a gigantic Vaseline tub for that same price of $4 so it's even better of a deal than that and there's another hack that I've seen from the makeup artist community so you'll see a lot of makeup artists say that they use Vaseline or sometimes even aquafor as like a base layer underneath the eyes before they apply the makeup just so that it doesn't cake underneath the eyes when
people smile there you go that's the bonus tip so that is it now now now our Vaseline hacks video is complete we can die preferably live happily knowing that this is now out there in the world this is the last thing Dr Maxfield wanted to do before he died so we we made sure to complete this video this video is going to end up being pretty timely now so hopefully this is helpful to all of you we love Vaseline don't let people fear-monger you out of using it it really is effective and truly one of
the safest ingredients that are available on the market perfect yep we appreciate you thank you and we'll see you next time time
