The instructions on this tube are five words long — apply generously to the entire body daily — and they are the most important thing on it, because they set up a sum that the product cannot survive. An adult body needs somewhere between 15 and 30 millilitres of lotion for one generous all-over application; eczema clinics, which think about this constantly, tell patients to get through 250 to 500 grams of emollient a week, and hand out half-kilo pump tubs to make the point. This tube holds 145 millilitres and costs fifty dollars. Used as its own label directs, it lasts somewhere between a fortnight and three weeks, at a cost of roughly a hundred dollars a month for a body lotion. That is not a criticism of the formula, which is in several respects the nicest all-over product Dr. Hauschka makes. It is a criticism of the match between the formula, the price and the skin the label names — very dry, flaky, itchy, atopic — which is precisely the skin that goes through emollient by the tub.
Now the formula, which deserves to be read on its own terms. The Med line is the brand's unfragranced sub-range, and this lotion honours the brief: no parfum, no essential-oil accord, no declared allergens, only a faint woody trace of amyris and rosemary extract as an antioxidant. Glycerin sits third on the list — the highest placement in any of the Ice Plant products — and the pressed ice plant juice sits second, delivering the succulent's water-holding osmolytes at a real dose. Avocado, jojoba and almond oils follow, with mango and shea butters further down: a lighter lipid stack than the line's creams, sized for an area rather than a patch. Tapioca starch and hectorite absorb the surface oil so the whole thing sets to a dry, comfortable satin within a minute or two and does not mark clothes, and the ethanol at position four helps it flash off fast enough for an all-over application before dressing. After a shower, on damp dry skin, it goes a long way, feels like water going in rather than oil going on, and keeps arms and legs comfortable through most of the day. Flaky shins settle over the first week. As a natural, unscented everyday lotion for dry, unreactive skin, it is easy to like.
The ice plant, second on the list and the reason for the product's name, should be enjoyed as a story. Mesembryanthemum crystallinum survives salt flats by hoarding water in glistening bladder cells full of pinitol, proline and sugar alcohols; those compounds are humectants of the glycerin family, useful and mild, and the brand's claim that the lotion calms itching is carefully limited to the itch 'associated with' dryness — the itch that hydration and lipids already relieve. The support behind the plant is a Lanzarote nurse's 1988 practitioner report and the plant's chemistry. The glycerin at position three is doing most of the work the succulent gets credit for.
The formula's problems for atopic skin are the range's familiar three. Ethanol at fourth position is a lipid solvent in a lotion for skin that has lost its lipid, less buffered here than in the creams because there is less oil to buffer it, and it stings on any patch that has been scratched open — which on itchy skin is most of the patches that matter. Beeswax at ninth and lanolin at tenth supply the lotion's cling and overnight occlusion and are two of the more frequently positive contact allergens in patch-test series of eczema patients; the lanolin dose here is closer to the face and body creams' than to the hand cream's token amount. None of this makes the lotion unsafe for the majority of dry skin. All of it makes 'atopic dermatitis' on the label an audience the formula is only partly built for, and a plain, alcohol-free, lanolin-free emollient the safer default during any flare.
The review record is three five-star ratings on the brand's site, which is three people who liked it, and there is no independent study of the lotion or of ice plant juice on atopic skin. Dermatological testing, in Dr. Hauschka's usage, means a tolerance panel.
So the recommendation is a narrow and slightly wistful one. For someone with dry, unreactive skin who wants a natural, unscented, fast-absorbing body lotion and is happy to use it on arms and legs rather than head to toe — six to eight weeks of use, a tolerable cost — this is a good product from a brand that rarely makes one this clean, and the ice plant is a pleasant bonus. For the very dry, itchy, atopic body the label addresses, the ethanol and the animal waxes are reasons for caution and the price is a reason for disbelief: a lotion that asks to be applied generously every day, sold by the fortnight at fifty dollars, is the right formula in the wrong tube for that skin. The clinic's half-kilo tub is not romantic. It is what generous daily application actually costs.
