Reason 2

Trapped sweat doesn't stay sweat.

Day 1

Week 1

Week 2

Week 4

Sweat that can't dry starts changing what's living on your skin. It follows a pattern:

• Day 1: Damp, shiny skin. A little sticky by the afternoon. You don't think anything of it.
• Week 1: A smell you can't wash off. Yeasty. Sour. It's back an hour after you shower.
• Week 2: Pink, itchy skin along the crease. It stings when you sweat. You start calling it a rash.
• Week 4: Red, raw, weeping skin. It burns. The fold feels like a paper cut every time you move.
• After that: It comes and goes with the weather. Every hot day, every humid week, it's back.

Most women never connect the damp skin on Day 1 to the raw skin on Week 4. But it's one problem the whole way through. The sweat never dried. Everything else grew in it.

Reason 3

Antiperspirant can't go there.

The first thing most women try is what they'd use anywhere else that sweats. Deodorant. Antiperspirant. A roll-on under the breasts.

It doesn't work, and it can hurt. Antiperspirant is made for an armpit - skin that gets air. In a closed fold it goes on wet and stays wet. The aluminum stings skin that's already sore. And it does nothing about what's already growing there.

So it feels fresh for twenty minutes. Then the fold is damp again, and now it stings too.

Sweat products were never built for skin that touches skin. None of them were.

Reason 4

Powder makes it worse. It just doesn't feel like it at first.

Gold Bond. Baby powder. Cornstarch. This is the next thing almost everyone tries, and for about an hour it works.

Then it meets the sweat. Powder soaks up moisture until it can't hold any more. After that it turns into a gritty paste. The paste sits in the crease, holds the wet against your skin, and rubs.

Cornstarch is the worst of them. Yeast eats starch. You're feeding the thing you're trying to get rid of. By the afternoon you've got a damp fold with paste in it. That's worse than where you started.

Reason 5

The creams make it wetter.

Once it turns into a rash, most women move to the cream aisle. Antifungal cream. Diaper cream. Whatever the doctor wrote down.

Some of these do kill yeast. That part works. But every one of them goes on wet. Cream is water and oil. Ointment seals moisture in. Diaper paste sits on top like frosting.

You're putting a wet product into a fold whose whole problem is that it can't dry. The cream helps for a few days. The fold stays wet. It comes back.

Lotrimin was built for a foot. A foot gets air. A fold doesn't.

Reason 6

Three things are happening in a wet fold.
Most products treat one.

Moisture

Friction

Yeast

Once the sweat can't dry, three problems start at the same time, in the same inch of skin:

Every product you've tried does one of these jobs. None of them does all three. That's why each one helps, and then quits.

The fold doesn't stay dry until something is made to dry it. Something that keeps it dry, kills the yeast, and stops the rubbing all at once.

Reason 7

There's one thing made to dry a skin fold. It isn't in the sweat aisle.

Healora Intertrigo Relief Cream is the only over-the-counter product built for skin that touches skin. It isn't a deodorant. It isn't a foot cream. It isn't a baby product. It goes on like a cream so you can work it into the fold. Then it dries to a powder finish and stays dry all day.

• Phase 1 - It dries

  (the first 60 seconds)

  

  Witch hazel pulls the moisture out of the fold on contact. Silica and tapioca starch turn the cream into a dry powder finish that doesn't cake and doesn't turn to paste. For the first time all day, the fold is dry.

  

• Phase 2 - It kills the yeast

  (days 1-5)

  

  Undecylenic acid (10%) kills the yeast that's been living in the wet. Microencapsulated tea tree oil takes the smell with it - without stinging skin that's already raw.

  

• Phase 3 - It keeps it dry

  (day 5 and after)

  

  Zinc oxide (15%) leaves a breathable barrier between the two sides of the fold. Skin stops rubbing skin. Sweat can't pool. The fold stays the way it was always supposed to be. Dry.

  

Goes on like a cream. Dries to a powder in 60 seconds. Stays dry all day. No steroids. No added fragrance. Dermatologist tested.

A dry fold by tonight. A dry fold all summer.