The most commonly overlooked piece of gear in both road and mountain biking is your own. While our shorts come equipped with chamois for comfort, that’s about as far as we typically take it with our under there care. Sure, we’ve heard of chamois cream, but isn’t that just for Belgians, and other burly folk who don’t mind sticking their hands down their pants and slathering a healthy dose of smelly, waxy gunk between their legs?

If you’re putting in heavy weekly mileage, participating in a multi-day bike tour, or training for a race, it may behoove you to make like a Belgian. Here’s why.

Prevention is the Best Medicine
Chamois cream creates a barrier between you and your shorts to reduce friction in places that come into heavy contact with the saddle, ensuring you don’t chafe. Besides being uncomfortable, chafing can break the skin, opening the door for infection. An infected welt down under, otherwise known as a saddle sore, can put you out of commission for a race, and interrupt your training. It’s not so much that it makes riding difficult, but impossible. If you’ve never had any sort of irritation, let alone chafing or a saddle sore, that doesn’t make you impervious. It just means you haven’t created the proper conditions yet, according to Jeffrey Telo, the owner of California-based Beljum Budder. He contends that the most common reason for not using chamois cream is “I don’t need it.” But that’s a false sense of security because there are variables outside your control that could be introduced after years and years of riding without irritation.

Consider that shifts in altitude and temperature cause barometric pressure changes that can alter the dimensions of your body. While imperceptible to you, your contact point with the saddle subtly adjusts in response. So while powering up Mount Evans (at 14,000-feet), or hammering the flats on a hot summer day, you’re contacting the saddle in a slightly different way. The friction may not be enough for you to notice during the ride, but could leave you irritated or chafed afterward. And if it does bother you during the ride, the skin might be breaking, providing bacteria an easy entry point that leads to the dreaded saddle sore. (No matter how clean you keep your person and your cycling shorts, Telo said that bacteria starts festering down there after only an hour of riding.) Or, speaking from experience, what if you’re 35 miles from home out on country roads and get caught in a sudden downpour? Even if you take shelter, you’re still stuck riding back in sopping wet shorts, which won’t bode well for your nether region. With chamois cream, we’ve found it’s much better to be safe than sorry.

Slather Up With the Good Stuff
Once one understands the need for chamois cream, and the benefits of being proactive, there’s still an “ick factor” to get over. Let’s face it; the products haven’t exactly been savory. Gooey, waxy, irritating, messy, and smelly have all been used to describe the brands available on the market (Assos Chamois Cream being the one exception). But worse than that, carcinogenic. After a friend died of prostate cancer, Telo began researching causes. Turns out that parabens, preservatives found in body care products, have been strongly linked to cancer. In 2006, Telo worked with a lab to formulate the paraben-free Beljum Budder. “Chemical preservatives that can cause cancer don’t belong in your cycling shorts,” he said.

Around that same time, Laurie Mellott of Reflect Sports hired a chemist to help her formulate “Hoo Ha Ride Glide,” strong enough for a man, but PH balanced for a woman. She’d gotten irritated after a 50-mile ride and was dismayed at the choice of creams, which featured heavy fragrances, sure to cause even more irritation, as well as petrochemicals and parabens. “And the texture was disgusting,” she said. “Who wants to put something so heavy and waxy down there?”

Telo agrees that texture is critical. Both he and Mellott worked on formulations that would absorb into the skin, creating a true protective barrier, not sit on the skin like Vaseline. “If it doesn’t absorb into the skin, it will get rubbed off the contact points and pushed over into the creases, and folds,” Telo said. “That doesn’t do you any good.” He compares an effective chamois cream to a dry lube for your chain. His product accomplishes that with a vegetable-based wax, while Mellott opted for a vegetable-based cream.

Both products include antimicrobials, eucalyptus oil for Mellott and benzethonium chloride, an emulsifier with antibacterial properties, for Telo. They also include moisturizers like Vitamins A, D, and E, as well as soothing substances like witch hazel or lavender. This helps keep bacteria at bay, and makes the ointments suitable to treat pre-existing saddle sores and irritation. “You can actually put it on again after your ride, once you’ve showered,” Telo said. “Kind of like adult diaper cream.”

Other products, like Joshua Tree Salves, have also opted to use all-natural (even organic) ingredients, but without any skin softeners, because “a healthy callus is your body’s own natural protection.” While we don’t exactly want calluses between the legs, the point is that the skin needs to toughen up a bit down there if you’re going to be logging miles in the saddle.

Something most manufacturers now agree on is that chamois cream should be naturally preserved (no parabens), and use as many natural ingredients as possible, instead of chemicals. Dave Zabriskie’s DZ Nuts is a good example of a chamois cream with no parabens and mostly natural ingredients, but using a few chemicals like dimethicone – a silicone polymer compound known for it’s velvety texture and for creating an impenetrable moisture barrier. The logic is that the benefits of some chemicals far outweigh the risks.

So ultiamte;y, you should use chamois cream, but not just any old cream. Find out if the ingredients in your cream meet your down under skincare expectations at Cosmetics Database and get Telo’s tips for application at Beljum Budder.com.

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