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Lube

Auch auf Deutsch verfügbar. English is not my native language. Please excuse mistakes, if something sounds weird to you please ask me about what I intended ;)

Last updated: 2024-11-10

After many hours of online research (latest at 08/2022) I ended up with the following information, which I want to share here. I did this research purely out of self-interested and political motivatlon as a layperson. I can not judge the scientific/medical quality of the information, I can only collect it ;).

In short my overall conclusions are the following:

  1. Using personal lubricants for sexual activities (for people with vaginas) is not only significantly beneficial to their sexuality but also their health.
  2. However, the vast majority of the lubes available on the market have a harmful composition or ingredients.

If anyone has further Information, corrections or resources please let me know.

In the following I'll talk only about water- or oilbased lube made for vaginas, without silicone or spermicides and with information about their osmolality value.

Lubes and their risks (womensvoices.org

pH & Osmolality

Despite the great relevance of pH & osmolality of lubes to health I was only able to find very few online resources about it. This concerns me because the osmolality value of some lubricants exceeded the WHO-recommended thresholds by up to nine times. The following resources were the best I was able to find:

This Infographic is an easily understandable summary of the statistical information in comic-form: The Science Of Lubricants & Moisturisers

for convenience here are links to the references used, including the one from WHO:

Here is another explanation: What is Osmolality? What You Need to Know (Dr. Laurie Steelsmith & Alex Steelsmith aloecadabra.com)

Ingredients

Here are tables about ingredients in some common products and information why they may cause health risks:

Anecdotally to some people it feels itchy if they don't wash of lube containing aloe, but without it causing any health problems in the long run.

Products

The following products were the only I could find which met the WHO recommendations for pH & osmolality and don't include potentially harmful ingredients. Due to limited financial resources and limited availability in Europe I couldn't test all of them yet myself.

After days on the internet browsing through websites trying to figure out osmolality values of various different lubes I came across "fertility friendly" lubes. Here are some fertility supporting lubes, which might be not only sperm but vagina friendly:

Here are some products which seem interesting due to their ingredients list but don't mention their osmolality value anywhere:

Here I made an overview of all product data available online.

And a recommendation for penis length-reducing rings: The Pelvic People