Veladerm
Care for you hands with VELADERM
The hands are a healthcare professional's most valuable
instruments. They have to be cleaned many times a day. For this purpose,
dentists have used soap for generations and have long suffered from skin
dryness, irritations and hand eczema equally long. There is now a new
solution to the old problem: VELADERM® Professional
Handwash Lotion cleans the skin without destroying its protective lipids.
It is the first product that keeps the hands clean and healthy at the
same time.
Protective Skin Lipids
Soap does not just remove dirt. It dissolves and removes the skin's protective
lipid layer. The attached dirt goes with the lipids. For cleanliness this
is fine. For the skin's health and function it is devastating.
A health skin needs its lipids. Sebum lipids produced by the sebaceous
glands make the skin smooth and soft and a pleasure to tough. The stratum
corneum lipids seal the skin and form the barrier between the body and
its environment. With the frequent use of soap this barrier is destroyed.
Through a defective barrier the skin loses its moisturizers. They have
the capacity to bind water and are responsible for keeping a certain amount
of moisture in the surface layer. A skin without moisturizers dries out.
By the same token substances penetrate into the skin which would normally
be stopped at the surface. This leads to skin irritations and allergies.
Dry Skin and Eczema
There is no way of replacing the barrier lipids, after they are washed
down the drain. Cremes and ointments may provide momentary relief of the
symptoms of dry skin. However, they do not repair the defective barrier.
On;y the skin itself can synthesize the barrier lipids and arrange them
so they are functional. This requires time, roughly a week or two. Much
too long for somebody who washes his hands 50 to 100 times a day.
The continuous removal of skin lipids may not cause symptoms initially.
With time, a dry, tense and itchy skin develops. This proceeds to rashes
caused by skin irritations and allergies. It ends up with chronic eczema.
This chain of events may evolve over an extended period and there may
be contributing factors such as age or glove work. For these reasons many
do not realize that the soap in the beginning is the cause of the eczema
at the end. There is on;e one way of keeping the skin lipid layer intact
and avoiding all the problems: get rid of soap.
Cleaning
with Detergents
Water and
detergents destroy the skin's protective lipid layer and remove its moisturizers.
The skin dries out. Dry skin is unpleasant to feel and touch. It is defenseless
against microorganisms and toxins. It develops rashes and allergies.
Cleaning with VELADERM®
VELADERM®
cleans with urea instead of detergents. This removes contaminants,
but retains the protective lipids. A fraction of urea penetrates into
the skin and increases its water binding capacity. VELADERM®
keeps the skin clean, pleasant and healthy.
The
VELADERM Solution
Two German university dermatologist thinking about
alternatives to the well-established cleaning with detergents hit upon
urea. This protein metabolite is capable of disrupting the non-covalent
bonds linking foreign material to the skin. Their experiments with urea
as cleaning agents were highly successful.
Urea cleans without destroying the skin's lipids. The contaminants are
removed, but the barrier lipids remain intact. Urea has an added advantage:
it is one of the most important moisturizing factors in the skin and has
been successfully used in the treatment of dry skin. Thus, urea not only
cleans the skin without causing harm, it also contributes to the regeneration
of dry skin.
On the basis the two doctors formulated a handwash lotion specially designed for dentists and other medical professions who can not do without frequent handwashes.