YAY Allergic contact dermatitis to coconut derived substances

[SleepyTangles]

I'm sorry Soj, coconut oil is one of the cheapest mass produced oils. And since the big Palm oil debate, It has mostly taken its place as default vegetal oil, together with soy.

I used to brew soapnuts and wash my hair with the tea, its a bit time consuming but effective and delicate.
The tea is pure liquid, has no clogging residue for your drain.

[Soj]

ETA: But yeah, I know what you mean about being allergic to TP. The coconut doesn't bother me, but perfume does, so I have to be careful about getting unscented TP, facial tissues, trash bags ... Scented facial tissues are the worst! I've got a runny nose already, so I grab a tissue to blow my nose & just rub on the perfume. Oh my. And trash bags? These days, manufacturers seem to think everybody wants their trash to smell nice, so I've found most trash bags that don't say what scent they are, have perfume. The joys of being allergic to your kitchen garbage...

I think for me its the "lotion" they put in a lot of paper products these days. Thankfully nobody needs their garbage bags any slipperier than they already are. There are other "feminine" products to which I am also allergic in addition to the TP. Pretty sure they are lotion infused with coconut products because coconuts are not endangered, and the derivatives thereof are cheap. And none of that stuff HAS to list the ingredients.

Btw palm oil comes from palm fruits which are definitely not coconuts; I guess it depends if one is sensitive to all palm species or only coconut.

OP I'm really sorry you're having this problem - it's hard enough to find products not containing just straight coconut oil, let alone to avoid its derivatives too! A thought that occurs to me, have you found any skin lotions that are okay? If so, for an occasional hair treat, are the ingredients such that you'd consider using a little on your ends? Of course they wouldn't do exactly the same job as actual conditioners due to not having the ionic conditioning agents, but I've often thought to myself that many of the more natural lotions have very hair-friendly ingredients!

Edit: though this talk of scented TP is baffling - I've only come across it once over here and it's certainly not the norm

As far as I can tell, its just coconut. I used to eat palm sugar all the time (as an ingredient in Thai cooking) - well, and sometimes the little hard shaped sort, they were like candy. That was BEFORE I turned up diabetic though. Coconut on the other hand I have always hated, and everyone in my family hated it as well. I'm guessing I've always been allergic but it used to be relatively easy to avoid, and you could always smell it (or at least I could). Even coconut candles were anathema to me. Then in the last 20 years it seems it has started turning up in EVERYTHING, and the constant and increasing exposure just worsened my avoidance into a full-blown allergy.

And yeah, allergic contact dermatitis is still an allergy. You don't need to go into full-blown anaphylactic shock to be allergic. Hopefully it'll never get that far. To my knowledge, the only other thing I'm allergic to are wasp stings. Never been stung by a hornet or a bee so - don't know about those guys. Oh yeah, and urushiol. The stuff in poison ivy - and fresh mangos, which I love, but I can only eat one, cut up and carefully placed in my mouth without touching the lips. If I eat more than one, I get open sores inside my mouth no matter how careful I am. Thankfully perfectly safe after being cooked. I do love mango. It was really disappointing to be living in Puerto Rico where I could pick mangos up off the ground and still be limited to one every couple of weeks, LOL!

Lots of things are "perfumed" these days, if you're not sensitive you might not even notice. Fortunately for me, the TP I got from Target (that clued me in to the fact that coconut stuff is in a lot of TP) which is marked as "eco" and has no dyes or perfumes, also lacks any lotion content. And I started to heal. So yay for that. A lot of complaints about that stuff not being soft enough, which is probably due to the lack of lotion content, thank the high heavens. At this point I'm afraid to try anything new. Lots of this stuff isn't required to list ingredients.

Lotion: Some of you may have a hard time understanding this, but while I am definitely female, I am not a "girl". I have never worn makeup, quickly outgrew a brief affair with nail polish, have never much messed with my hair other than trying to keep it under control (haven't had a hair cut in over 30 years), I hate dresses and always have, and I own maybe 4 or 5 pairs of shoes, at least 2 of which are actually rafting sandals, one is only for mowing the lawn, and one of which are my cycling shoes. I think there's another pair that I haven't seen in years. NOT A NORMAL WOMAN on that count alone, according to friends over the years, LOL!

I haven't used lotion other than sun tan lotion back when I was a rafter and canoe-er and runner and skier and cyclist and gardener and etc etc etc.

It's been over a decade since I was well enough for much of any of that so ... basically that's how long its been since I used any lotion. I did used to use some lotion when I was an active potter because clay really tears up your hands. Not sure how to handle that situation now that I'm allergic, but I guess I'll figure it out. After the move, first thing is to set up my pottery again, so there's another looming problem I hadn't thought of until now. *sigh*

I've been using the hemp oil as a skin moisturizer, and if you can tolerate the odor (smells like dry grass to me, doesn't bother me, but some find it more objectionable than I do) it works really great for that. It is absorbed, and it is noncomedogenic. It has really saved me from a lot of suffering from the extreme dryness where I live, where any lotions I tried (I guess I have used some in the last decade, though I'd forgotten) did not a thing to help alleviate the dryness. Hemp oil really saved me on a lot of fronts.

Wow. I better go hunting a heavy duty lotion that has no coconut in it. I doubt I'll have much more luck with that than I have with hair products. Or maybe I can just coat my hands in pure shea butter or something for doing pottery. I wonder what that might do to the firing characteristics ... AAARGH!

I'm sorry Soj, coconut oil is one of the cheapest mass produced oils. And since the big Palm oil debate, It has mostly taken its place as default vegetal oil, together with soy.

I used to brew soapnuts and wash my hair with the tea, its a bit time consuming but effective and delicate.
The tea is pure liquid, has no clogging residue for your drain.

Yeah, I need to experiment with the powder (I make an amla rinse with amla and hibiscus powders which I strain, so - I have to find out if soapnut powder can be strained?). I can get the powder pretty easily, but whole are a little harder. I'll look into it in some depth pretty soon here. I've had some kind of virus for the last couple of weeks that finally seems to be starting to lift, haven't felt up to it during all that. It has to be deliverable to an Amazon locker (post office says I'm not disabled ENOUGH for home delivery so I can't get mail, the boxes are too far away) - or maybe my local Indian grocer carries the whole soapnuts. I'll have to check. Haven't felt up to it. Hope my car starts, LOL!

[MusicalSpoons]

^ re: scented TP, I am not 'sensitive' to fragrances as far as I know, but my nose is sensitive for picking up on that kind of thing I make sure to buy unscented feminine products because I just don't want to risk it, and thankfully the market for those scented products is still modest over here - unscented/uninfused is still mainstream and readily available. I can only imagine trying to navigate the world of scented or lotion-infused products maybe they do it because it's cheaper than producing an actually decent base product!

You've got me thinking though - when I eat too much coconut (a couple of handfuls of dried, or a large handful of fresh) my throat goes a bit dry and itchy, the same as when I used to use a lip balm with avocado oil. My skin hasn't liked coconut oil so I try to avoid it in skin products anyway (strangely enough I can't eat avocado but I hadn't noticed it being a problem on my skin away from my mouth) but a recent massive eczema flare has plateaued in healing after solving the original cause; I'm now reevaluating everything in an attempt to pinpoint what might be hindering it.

Lotion wise, I understand - for most of my life I didn't bother with anything, but in the last 5 or so years I've turned into some kind of dehydrated husk; my skin still produces *plenty* of oil but loses moisture exceptionally well so I have to have something containing water not just oil, otherwise my skin dehydrates even more. In my quest for avocado and coconut-free I found Lush (thankfully not all of their products are overwhelmingly aromatic!). The two I mainly use do contain cetearyl alcohol though which I believe may be derived from coconut but basically if Lush is available to you, it might be worth a trawl through the website to see if there is anything that might be suitable. It is expensive, but they do give generous samples and if you find something that does a great job for you then you might feel it's worth it - or you may not.

Before that I used Sukin moisturisers (with several coconut derivatives, incidentally) but they all contain avocado so I'm avoiding that for now. However they all had ingredients lists that I thought looked pretty great for hair needing something a bit heavy-duty and that's what led to the thought of if you knew there was a lotion that was okay for you. There are more than a few of us here who are not typically girly-girls, and if I could get away without skincare beyond rinsing with water, I very happily would!

Hemp oil sounds good (tbh decent rapeseed oil smells grassy and makes me hungry!). If just oil, or oil on damp skin works, stick with that! Babassu might be a coconut oil alternative; low melting point but none of the reaction (or crunchiness, in hair!)

[lapushka]

Personally I have never gotten perfumed toiletpaper in my life. That even exists?! Sheesh. I mean... why?

[Soj]

^ re: scented TP, I am not 'sensitive' to fragrances as far as I know, but my nose is sensitive for picking up on that kind of thing I make sure to buy unscented feminine products because I just don't want to risk it, and thankfully the market for those scented products is still modest over here - unscented/uninfused is still mainstream and readily available. I can only imagine trying to navigate the world of scented or lotion-infused products maybe they do it because it's cheaper than producing an actually decent base product!

You've got me thinking though - when I eat too much coconut (a couple of handfuls of dried, or a large handful of fresh) my throat goes a bit dry and itchy, the same as when I used to use a lip balm with avocado oil. My skin hasn't liked coconut oil so I try to avoid it in skin products anyway (strangely enough I can't eat avocado but I hadn't noticed it being a problem on my skin away from my mouth) but a recent massive eczema flare has plateaued in healing after solving the original cause; I'm now reevaluating everything in an attempt to pinpoint what might be hindering it.

Lotion wise, I understand - for most of my life I didn't bother with anything, but in the last 5 or so years I've turned into some kind of dehydrated husk; my skin still produces *plenty* of oil but loses moisture exceptionally well so I have to have something containing water not just oil, otherwise my skin dehydrates even more. In my quest for avocado and coconut-free I found Lush (thankfully not all of their products are overwhelmingly aromatic!). The two I mainly use do contain cetearyl alcohol though which I believe may be derived from coconut but basically if Lush is available to you, it might be worth a trawl through the website to see if there is anything that might be suitable. It is expensive, but they do give generous samples and if you find something that does a great job for you then you might feel it's worth it - or you may not.

Before that I used Sukin moisturisers (with several coconut derivatives, incidentally) but they all contain avocado so I'm avoiding that for now. However they all had ingredients lists that I thought looked pretty great for hair needing something a bit heavy-duty and that's what led to the thought of if you knew there was a lotion that was okay for you. There are more than a few of us here who are not typically girly-girls, and if I could get away without skincare beyond rinsing with water, I very happily would!

Hemp oil sounds good (tbh decent rapeseed oil smells grassy and makes me hungry!). If just oil, or oil on damp skin works, stick with that! Babassu might be a coconut oil alternative; low melting point but none of the reaction (or crunchiness, in hair!)

Tea seed oil aka camellia oil (NOT TEA TREE) is similarly hair and skin friendly but without the odor associated with hemp oil. But in the USA it is really expensive, and frequently adulterated/faked. They cook with it in much of Asia, it's that cheap there.

I've decided not to worry about cetearyl alcohol as the processing for that SHOULD remove the vast majority of the allergens in coconut. That may be wishful thinking but at least SOME substances derived FROM coconut oil probably destroy and/or remove many of the allergens in the original coconut. The processes used to make alcohol involve a lot of both mechanical and chemical processes that are highly likely to pretty much "cleanse" the originating ingredients. Distillation, for one thing, will leave a lot of stuff behind - they just want the alcohol and distillation will leave the majority of the fat and water soluble molecules behind because the alcohol "boils off" before the fats and water will. Then they keep refining the alcohol, leaving more and more crap behind. All things considered, cetearyl alcohol is not high on my list of worries.

It might be different for someone with full-on anaphylactic shock but I think this'll work for me. At least I hope so. Ceataryl alcohol doesn't HAVE to come from coconut products but a lot of it does. It may be mixed as well eg not purely from any one source.

My bet is that coconut allergy is nowhere near as rare as they think it is, its just that very few Westerners much came in contact with it until very recently in history, like the last 20 years. I've heard a lot of stories about older women such as myself suddenly finding themselves in considerable discomfort from sudden mysterious rashes that their dermatologists tell them don't exist because NOBODY TESTS FOR COCONUT ALLERGY. Buying the least processed products is making more and more sense.

Personally I have never gotten perfumed toiletpaper in my life. That even exists?! Sheesh. I mean... why?

Because poop stinks so ... perfume is serving its original purpose, that of covering up stench. Of course if you just FLUSH ...

Honestly I never "got" it either. Also, why bleach TP? I never got that either. WHY?

[lapushka]

Because poop stinks so ... perfume is serving its original purpose, that of covering up stench. Of course if you just FLUSH ...

Honestly I never "got" it either. Also, why bleach TP? I never got that either. WHY?

If you can't get used to "your odor" it's sad (just generally speaking).

I don't know why, maybe the softness, maybe the core materials it is made from are a really "off" color. Maybe it would look horrendous and it just wouldn't sell, if they didn't do it.