Jill just wants to know…I remember hearing that Avon Skin So Soft is not only an amazing moisturizer but it can also stop bugs from biting. Is this true? 
The Left Brain replies:
Skin so soft is a great moisturizer that gives a smooth, dry feel to skin. That’s because it’s not a lotion – it’s a blend of mineral oil and esters that lubricates without being too wet or greasy.
Avon Skin So Soft Bath Oil Ingredients
Mineral oil, isopropyl palmitate, dicapryl adipate, fragrance, dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, BHT (to prevent oxidation) and carrot seed oil (source).
I think that the most amazing thing about this product is that for decades people have been convinced that it is an excellent mosquito repellent. Rumor had it that Skin So Soft was even better than products with DEET, the most effective active ingredient on the market. In fact so many people were buying SSS for this reason that Avon launched a companion product that contained a non- DEET active.
Ineffective insect repellent
Unfortunately, this urban legend has been thoroughly debunked by Snopes.com. They reported on a 2002 study that evaluated 17 nationally marketed mosquito products. The researchers found that the more DEET the products contained the better they worked. Off! Deep Woods kept the nasty buggers at bay for an average of 302 minutes. By comparison SSS only worked for 9.6 minutes.
You can read more at Snopes.com or you can read the original study in the New England Journal of Medicine, 4 July 2002 vol 347:13-18 Number 1.
What do YOU think? Have you used Skin So Soft? Or do you have your own favorite tricks to keep mosquitos away? Leave a comment and share the “buzz” with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
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The Today Show just did a segment on ” The Best Mosquito Repellants ” July 7, 2009 with Janice Lieberman. See:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/up/31778455#31778455
Avon’s Picaridin and IR3535 products were reviewed with very good results.
My mom swears that Skin-So-Soft repels bugs. She’s been using it successfully as a bug repellent for years. I say, if it works for her, why not?
I buy the sunscreen with repellent for me and my kids every summer. I think it works great at keeping mosquitoes (and sunburn)away. It also does not irritate my sons sensitive skin.
As someone who CANNOT use products containing DEET, the search for a decent repellant is always a challenge. I still haven’t found the answer for mosquitos – once they’ve found my body heat, I’m sunk. BUT – for those nasty biting gnats, noseeums, and midges – vanilla. A cloth dipped in pure vanilla, a vanilla-scented body spray, a spritz of vanilla-water… Vanilla is the key.
When I was a kid I had to constantly be on sulfur-based drugs for chronic bladder and kidney problems. Bugs always left me alone.
Just saying, maybe those who can’t use DEET should ask for a prescription for Septra-DS.
God, when I was a little kid I lived near what we called the “bajas” and what was officially called the Tonocum Wildlife Preserve. 87 MILLION mosquitos with their own g*ddamned Air Force, I’m telling you.
The only thing that worked was being in a hermetically sealed capsule or being December. I’m a total skeptic on ANY of those bug sprays. No matter what junk I sprayed on myself, those little emeffers sucked me dry the sminute the sun went down.
It’s a huge part of why I love southern California. NO DAMNED MOSQUITOS!!!!!
Tinicum. Blasted typos.
I too am loved by the mosquito air force. I have tried SSS but the fragrance isn’t very “manly” and it did not seem to help. Suffice to say I smelled bad and still got mosquito bites. I’m not a huge fan of southern CA but the lack of mosquitoes just moved it up a few notches in my book! Now if someone could make a “bug spray” that kept the damn Japanese beetles off my Raspberry bush that would useful. Maybe I’ll try SSS…that’s a free one Avon.
SSS might not work, but Jerry Baker might have some advice for those bug infested bushes.
http://www.jerrybaker.net/garden/homepage.aspx
I was actually kidding about the SSS
. I’m pretty sure it would kill the bush. Thanks for the book recommendation Jami!
Chav – oh I figured that, but I was at work so I was typing quick.
The myth that SSS repels insects is not quite true, it’s not quite false either. This past week, my husband and I took my 5 and 6 year old great nieces to a wildlife park near Tybee Island, Georgia. Oatland Island is surrounded by marsh and is swarmed by “no see ums” (better known as sand gnats.) These little monsters (the bugs, not the girls) began attacking immediately. Fortunately I had a bottle of Skin So Soft in the back of the car and applied liberally on the girls, my husband and myself. Not a single bite for the next 3 hours on any of us! I’m not sure who or where the idea that it repels mosquitoes came from…but I can assure you, this is the best stuff in the world to keep sand gnats from biting.
I formulated products for some years and the SSS product has a fragrance that in and of itself has some repellent properties, be it sand gnats or the girl next door. The fact it used emollient esters is also important. This is a pervasive emollient in that is spreads easily. The mineral oil is put in as a more occlusive barrier and it is much less expensive that the ester (IPP). The sand gnats are reluctant to light on oily skin since they breathe thru their exo-skeletons. IF they stay too long, long enough to bite, they can suffocate.
To repel mosquitos, try rubbing Thai Lemon Grass on you. You can research on the web, how great it is for repelling mosquitos from your garden too.
I have found that Skin So Soft has been a very effective method of repelling mosquitos. I attract mosquitos and have a severe reaction to their bites. During the summer and when I go on vacation to a mosquito prone area I make sure I take it along! I learned of its effectiveness when I accompanied a family member on a walk through a trail in the Everglades. I ran out screaming because I was being attacked by the mosquitos however, my family member had used this product and did not have one bite on him! It works for me and I’ve been using it for years.
I live in the Deep South where mosquitoes rule in the damp hot summers and into the fall. I use Skin So Soft and it’s always worked well enough that I keep using it. I haven’t tested it for extreme long ventures outdoors but it works fine around the yard and when doing short hikes. Like it very much.
I don’t know. I used to go down south every summer and my grandmother would smother me in SSS because the mosquitoes LOVED me. Sometimes it would work, most time it didn’t. They would bite me so bad it looked like I was breaking out in hives all over my body.
So David (from above) is right. The reason it works is due to all the oils etc in it. Especially the eucalyptus oil. However, the reason it doesn’t always work is that once the oils have been absorbed into the skin and the fragrance has been evaporated the “smell” is no longer there and the pesky insects start to bite again. I personally like Vicks Vapo Rub better especially the Vicks Baby Rub on the kids and yes my puppy. She (the puppy) got a bad case of fleas recently which resulted in a severe rash and so not knowing what to do and not having any money I smeared some vicks baby rub on her really raw spots and wallah no more licking no more scratching no more biting herself and when I took her out for her evening pee no insects biting at her. Now I wouldn’t normally recomend this as an all the time remedy but in a pinch it worked. And if we can avoid putting chemicals in and on our bodies that God didn’t make and didn’t intend to be there then I say all the better. However, if your headed to the swamps in the south or to Africa get some deet better than malaria or west nile virus.
The study cited by Snopes certainly does prove that Deet is very effective. However, logically, it does NOT prove that SSS does NOT work. Think about it – the people in the study shoved their arms into a small, enclosed cage with 10 or 15 mosquitos in the enclosure. With such close proximity to the arm and nothing else to do, the little buggers still didn’t bite the people wearing SSS for nearly 10 minutes. To me, that shows SSS has some positive attributes in repelling the mosquitos. After all, you’re not normally going to have THAT kind of concentration right around one part of your body.
Clearly, deet is much better… but Snopes and other such sites should not be so quick to say that this means SSS only works for 10 minutes. It may well work much longer than that under normal circumstances, as opposed to the heightened circumstances present in the study.
I for one, am a proponent of eating foods with a lot of onion powder in them. Seems to help (then again, it might repel women too). (-: In all seriousness, that does seem to help a little, but I still use Deet when out hiking.
SSS works for repelling bugs. I live in the deep south, Biloxi, and the mosquitos are terrible. SSS has been used since the 1970s as an easy remedy. I used it on my son during the clean up after Hurricane Katrina and it worked as well as the harsh, chemical bug repellent. I thought and the time, and still do, that most of the value is in the oil on the skin. Very difficult for the little blood-suckers to land and do their business without drowning or being very bothered, in any case. So in some ways, it’s inconvenient and messy. On the otherhand, I prefer the kids to have this on them than a strong chemical.
According to Snopes the only thing that works effectively are products containing DEET. Fine, I’m sure that DEET works consistantly but it is a chemical. and a corrosive one at that. A used deet wipe was touching my sunglasses in the bottom of my childs buggy. When I took my glasses out to wear, some of the plastic had corroded away! So if thats what it does to plastic, whats it doing to my skin?
I have tried SSS and found it worked, perhaps only for a short time but long enough for me play in the garden with my kids, late afternoon mid summer in Hong Kong. Normally we would have been driven indoors after 10 mins or covered in deet (which I don’t like) I actually saw midges and mosquitoes fly AWAY after getting a wiff of SSS. After a while they started coming back.
I think a safe compromise if you are outside for any length of time is to apply DEET to you COTHES and something like SSS to skin, then have the SSS to hand for reapplication when needed.
My mother in law (who I get along with so great – thank goodness!) told me about the Made from Earth Rooibos Detox Scrub. Rooibos is a type of tea.
I decided to try it. Well, it has left my skin feeling so soft, that I am AMAZED since my skin is never smooth nor soft!! It made my skin look baby soft.
There was no need to followup with a moisturizer afterwards because the scrub is moisturizing! Does not strip your face. The 2oz lasted me about 2 months with use 3x per week as recommended.
Mandi, re: Vicks VapoRub – if you’re happy putting Turpentine and Petrolatum (they sound really natural, don’t they?) on your kids and puppy; well, I don’t really know what to say.
Petrolatum is not good for skin (although years ago we used vaseline – petrolatum – as lip salve in winter!)
SSS is basically mineral oil – another name for petrolatum! It also contains isopropyl palmitate, dicapryl adipate and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate.
It seems to work as a barrier to insects as it has a good emollient so it spreads across the skin and blocks their entry. Possibly not good to have the skin coated for any really long period BUT overall it is far less toxic than DEET.
so i looked this up because a trusted neighbor and i were outside chatting one evening at about 7:30 (just after the sun set in southwest florida…) and he noticed i was going crazy trying to swat those stupid frkn mosquitos away! he is an ex military man who told me he and all his military buddys swore by skin so soft to keep the mosquitos at bay… and last night i was at the beach (with a very heavy duty bug spray on) when the sand fleas started biting. IM TRYING THIS PRODUCT! if it worked for the military men (those who were man enough to put up with the girly scent) then okay!!
I heard that it is safe to use on cats for fleas is this true?
Thought you all might find this interesting: “Buttery” perfume deters mosquitoes by overloading their sense of smell http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/06/02/buttery-perfume-deters-mosquitoes-by-overloading-their-sense-of-smell/#more-4653
The chemicals target the very neuron that mosquitoes use to detect carbon dioxide, causing them to go berserk.
I have a customer who owns horses, who swears by Skin So Soft Original bath oil to deter flies. Her horses were reacting badly to the regular fly spray, and had open sores on their legs that the flies were irritating even more. The Skin So Soft Original bath oil helped heal the sores and keeps the flies at bay. She ran out last week, and called me in a panie. Luckily I had some on hand to bring her. In your search engine, look up 100 uses for Skin So Soft.
OOps! Panic, not panie!
in the first comment…that video from the today show…I CANNOT BELIEVE they promote DEET as safe for babies as small as 2 months!!! How irresponsible of them! DEET can melt plastic, why would you put it on a baby?
Also, My mom has used SSS in the woods camping with us since we were children. It worked for us! we still use it…and now…I sell it!
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