Umbra Fisk is a character developed at Grist TV (and performed by Jennifer Prediger) who brings a surprising smile to a movement more familiar with a Green grimace. Her Ask Umbra videos appear often enough to remind us how to bike to work safely or enlighten us on growing food in your apartment. In her latest video, she describes how to make lube from flax seed. As she explains, personal lubricants are loaded with petrochemicals that one might otherwise find in brake fluid and antifreeze. The recipe is as quick and easy as her messages and welcome humor. Thanks Umbra for bringing on the Omega 3’s and helping us all avoid “Toxic Hoo-Ha Syndrome.”
Look up this recipe anywhere else and they will tell you that it is NOT CONDOM SAFE. Flax seeds have a high oil content, oil breaks down latex. Great recipe, not so great safer sex information.
Okay, good to know. Shame.
I make cosmetics, and as sort of an occupational hazard I obsessively read ingredient lists.
With one exception I found at Good Vibrations in San Francisco (I forget the brand name…) even the most natural lubes still have parabens in them. Or worse.
At the sex shop I work at, we sell some stuff that my coworker, who is a trained engineer, agreed is pretty much the same as engine grease. Yikes.