Why Every Woman Needs This “Magic Cream”

I’m a mother.

Which makes me in the know about magic.

Add the word “magic” in front of anything—cream, Band-Aid, medicine, sandwich—and your kid will love it. It’ll go down like a charm.

But sometimes when I say something is magic…

It really IS.

Like magic cream.

What if there was a cream you could put on pretty much anything—insect bites, rashes, break-outs, chafing, razor burn—and it would soothe the skin and heal it almost overnight?

There is.

But it’s not actually called “magic cream.”

Its real name is a bit embarrassing.

It’s diaper rash cream.

Moms have been using diaper rash cream on themselves for years but never told a soul. It performs such miracles on a baby’s tender skin that you can’t help but see if it can do the same for yours.

I haven’t used diaper rash cream for its intended purpose in years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still keep it to hand.

It’s the only thing that soothes my daughter’s bug bites.

When she came down with big red rashes all over her chest—I can’t remember what she had, but it wasn’t pretty—magic cream came to the rescue.

Like celeb beauty bloggers, I put the stuff on spots instead of zit cream, too.

The “magic” in magic cream comes from zinc oxide. That’s the good stuff you’ll find in natural sunscreens.

Zinc oxide has been used in skin creams since 500 BC. It not only protects against sun damage, reduces inflammation, and reduces pigmentation, but it also helps burns and wounds heal faster. It locks in moisture and even provides anti-aging benefits by boosting collagen synthesis.

In short, it’s really good stuff!

Combine it with calendula (marigold), chamomile, and sweet almond oil, and you’ve got a cream your skin will love.

But you won’t find that formulation in just any diaper rash cream. The top-of-the-line stuff comes from Swiss brand Weleda.

Other diaper rash creams can include petroleum, which isn’t great for your skin. Weleda’s diaper rash cream includes beeswax and lanolin instead, along with clay and other essential oils.

I love my Weleda diaper rash cream. I’m keeping a tube of it in my medicine cabinet forever.

And by renaming it “magic cream,” I don’t have to embarrass my daughter, who’s very definitely outgrown baby things.

But that’s not the only magic cream in my cabinet.

The other tube of magic cream only comes out on two occasions:

• When one of us has a cold and is blowing our nose constantly, or
• When one of us has a blister or a callus on our feet that’s rubbing against our shoes

Before I tell you what this magic cream is, let me tell you what it does.

If I smeared a dab on your finger, you might think that it was extra-thick Vaseline, or petroleum jelly. It’s completely odorless and almost but not quite clear.

Unlike Vaseline, it really sticks where you smear it.

So if you smear some on the tender red skin of your nose, chafed from so much blowing, your nose won’t get so sore. It’ll stay put even if your nose keeps running.

That ability to stay put is what makes it great for blisters.

In my early days of running, I was always getting blisters and calluses. My feet were disgusting. But I refused to let the pain stop me. I’d smear my calluses with Vaseline and keep limping along.

Vaseline wears off quite quickly, though, especially when you’re rubbing that blister against the inside of your shoe with every movement.

This stuff works SO much better.

You can also use it on cracked skin in the dead of winter. It’s a miracle worker for dry, scaly skin.

But many people never think to use it, because it has such an awful name.

It’s nipple cream.

Yep. The stuff breastfeeding mothers smear over their nipples to heal any tenderness.

The go-to brand is Lansinoh, which makes a lanolin nipple cream made of the purest grease from sheep wool.

Yeah. It’s sheep wool grease. Just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?

But this stuff is magic.

In cold weather, you’ve got to warm up the bottle to squeeze the tiniest bit out, because it solidifies like any other oil. But that inconvenience is minor compared to the benefits it brings.

I used to feel embarrassed when I had a cold, because the skin on my nose would start to peel off from constant blowing. Kids would sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” when I walked past. (Kidding.) I hated it.

Now I keep my nose protected with nipple cream when I’ve got a cold, and it helps enormously.

You can see now why I love the term “magic cream.”

Who wants to admit that diaper rash cream and nipple cream are two of her favorite go-to skin treatments?

Just tell everyone you’ve got a tube of magic cream, and leave it at that.

Winking optional.