I have a tub of Vaseline and have hardly scratched the surface. I’m curious whether anyone uses it for anything other than their lips.
YES. Tiny cuts.
You know when you get a paper cut or similar, (not a scratch, a clean cut) and it stings and is really irritating, but it’s not deep enough to bleed much if at all?
Whack some vaseline on it. You block the air from your nerves and get instant relief.
Also use it sometimes to prevent chafing, like before a long bike ride.
That’s exactly what it was originally meant for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly
Native Americans discovered the use of petroleum jelly for protecting and healing skin.[4] Sophisticated oil pits had been built as early as 1415–1450 in Western Pennsylvania.[5] In 1859, workers operating the United States’s first oil rigs noticed a paraffin-like material forming on rigs in the course of investigating malfunctions. Believing the substance hastened healing, the workers used the jelly on cuts and burns.
Oh wow, I never knew!
I’m pretty sure that most of what Neosporin is is Vaseline… And it makes sense. It’s basically Vaseline with a mild antibiotic.
Vaseline is awesome for preventing scars too: when the wound is still open, use Neosporin, but after it closes up a bit and is just healing, switch to Vaseline and just keep it in Vaseline until it’s totally gone.
This.
Wounds heal best when they’re kept moist and have a barrier.
Carmex lip balm as well.
No need for the Neosporin at all, just use the vaseline
Mixing Vaseline with cotton and rolling it into small balls makes for surprisingly effective firestarter. Catches fire from almost everything (even flint and steel) and the burns with strong flame for like 2 minutes.
I used these a bunch in some jungle training. Any petroleum based jellies worked great, so we used bacitracin packets as our additive.
Fun fact: dead bamboo will always be dry in the middle between two joints. You can split it up into a couple thin pieces and it makes great kindling.
Live bamboo will create a small pressure bomb.
Another fun fact for if you’re in a deciduous forest, beach tree bark will always light, even when wet. It contains a flammable oil.
That’s pretty neat!
That seems counter productive to tree survival
You don’t have to peel bark from a live tree… There are usually plenty lying around in a forest like that. So no it’s not really.
Dryer lint is great for that combo.
We put a cotton ball in the dogs’ ears when giving them a bath to prevent water going in their ears, and we apply Vaseline to the exposed part of the cotton ball - makes the cotton ball waterproof. I thought you were describing that when I started reading your comment.
Yes. And I’ll take no further questions on the subject.
I use it around my hairline before I color my hair so as not to stain my skin.
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I know a girl who thinks of ghosts. She’ll make you breakfast; she’ll make you toast. But she don’t use butter. And she don’t use cheese. She don’t use jelly, or any of these.
She uses Vaseline.
Vaseline.
Vaseline.
Is it you? Is it me? Search for things that you can’t see.
A new Lemmy version of a_poem_for_your_sprog spotted
Those are song lyrics. She Don’t Use Jelly by The Flaming Lips
Oh my bad!!
If only. We can dream.
No
I use it in my nose after a nosebleed and put it on popsicle sticks to put in houseplants to be a sticky trap for flying pests
You should consider Aquaphor for inside your nose instead.
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If you are getting nosebleeds often you might want to try getting the inside of your nose cauterized. It stopped my constant nosebleeds for years. I’m starting to have them occasionally in one nostril I had it done about 18 years ago so that is pretty good.
When I get a cut on my hands and they are very dry my skin heals over the wound, but the wound still stays there. Callouses just kind of grow over it and it gets painful and shitty. I put a glob of Vaseline on it and cover it with a bandaid or something and I a few days it’s back to normal.
That’s a lot of the reason why Neosporin or any other antibiotic ointments help you heal faster. There’s petrolatum in all those products.
Now I wonder if it would work on those tiny painful as fuck cuts that you get around your fingernails during winter when your skin is dry. I’ve been using those expensive Compeed bandaids which do provide instant relief but if it’s just about blocking the air then maybe Vaseline could be just as good.
Absolutely it does. I work with chalk and know exactly what you’re talking about. The super treatment is to lube up and wear cotton gloves. Really works quick.
Oh… You know. Hehehe
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If I’m feelin’ fancy, I’ll break out the WD-40 Specialist Silicone
Water based dries pretty quickly
Talking like a true iterator
Vaseline is just a petrolatum jelly and a lot of creams and moisturisers have this as a component. The problem with Vaseline is that it’s basically pure petrolatum and so blocks the skin completely.
You rarely want to block the skin completely. The uses some other people noted, like stopping bleeding, is one of those uses.
The truth is that I rarely recommend Vaseline because of how limited it is on skin use.
I recommend people look into Aquaphor by Eucerin, which is only about 40% petrolatum and moisturises a bit better. I always travel with a very small container (just a tiny bit) of the stuff. It’s useful if you have any skin conditions (flaked skin, rashes, etc) that you might want to deal with pronto.
Aveeno (a very good brand for skincare) also make very similar heavy creams.
Long story short, no, Vaseline is pretty bad choice for skincare because it just blocks all air exchange. There are better choices. You often do want petrolatum…just not 100%.
Source: lifelong eczema issues
This might sound like an ad, but I always keep Aquaphor in my bag. I go rock climbing which gives me really dry hands and Aquaphor helps with that so much
I have a bizarre sensitivity to shea butter and beeswax, so am heavily limited in the chapstick department. Aquaphor is absolutely the best!
Aquaphor is sold in the Baby Supplies aisle of drug stores and bigger grocery stores. It’s been great for alleviating diaper rash with my kids.
I feel like sometimes you want a complete block to lock in moisture. I put vaseline on over my moisturiser every night and wash off the remainder in the morning.
Also to answer OP’s question I also use it to take my makeup off.
That Eucerin makes really good stuff. They have a thick healing cream that’s amazing, like supercharged moisturizer. I use it on my feet once in a while to avoid skin problems.
I play sports and always put it on my heels before switching into cleats. Prevents blisters. Works with new shoes too, while you break them in.
Good tip, will try that
When my siblings and I were young we would occasionally get eczema flair ups on our hands. Whenever this happened my mom would fill a sock with Vaseline and have us wear it on our hands to bed. Kinda funny.
Did it work though?
Eczema runs hard in my family and my kids get it terribly. We’ve tried a lot of things but never thought of Vaseline.
We had pretty mild cases, but yeah I remember it working quite well! I wouldn’t recommend it without speaking to a professional first since your kids’ cases are quite severe, but I’ve had good experiences with it.
Yeah we’ve seen skin specialists and tried everything up until steroids.
In the summer it’s worst. I feel so sorry for my kids but we’re hoping that they grow out of it like we did. I’m 34 now and I only really get it on my hands and fingers, I can’t wear any rings because of it. I still get it mildy on my legs too and sometimes it gets bad to a point where I’m bleeding everywhere from scratching it but my hands are the worst, my skin is like old leather now and looks like it’s damaged from acid burns.
I use medical petroleum jelly on my carbon steel stuffs to prevent them from rust. I think it works better than WD40, and I don’t have to protect my hands while applying it.
And sometimes I mix it with bee wax as wood oil. I think it works.
I know what your great great grandma used it for
I use it when casting my patients who have a partial hand amputation. It works great as a separator for casting agents and allows me to easily easily slip a cast off of them. It also helps prevent ripping out too too many hairs during the process.
I use it kind of like WD-40 in a farm setting. It’s messy, but not as messy as grease. It’s effective to coat things that constantly wear and have started to rust. I also rub it on my leather boots to waterproof it for cheap.
