My Fitbit recommends that the silicone strap be cleaned with “a non-soap cleanser, such as Cetaphil.” If it’s not soap, what is it? What makes it different from soap?
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Soaps are made from fats that are combined with an alkali, like sodium hydroxide. They are effective at cleaning, but can be somewhat chemically harsh to your skin and strip it of oils. Detergents are like synthetic versions of soap, but designed for a specific cleaning purpose, and can be engineered to be less harsh and reactive. Facial cleansers are (usually) a kind of detergent designed to be so mild that it can be used frequently on your face.
So probably your strap won’t stand up to harsher chemicals like soap with regular cleaning. A facial cleanser is about as mild as it gets.
Cetaphil is brand. Cetaphil makes gentle cleansers as well as moisturizers. The Gentle Cleansing Bar is labeled as a non-soap. The product lacks the detergents that are common ingredients in body soaps and shampoo. The ingredients simply interact with dirt and oils in a manner that isnt harsh as soaps and wash off easily so minimal residue is left behind.
I don’t know the answer but I have thought about this before and I’d appreciate it if someone can tell me where/if I’m right and correct me where I’m wrong: soap is attracted to water and oil molecules, the two don’t usually mix so soap allows us to wash away oily residue with water. Pretty sure about that part, less so about this part. Lots of things have oil as a key ingredient. While a lot more stable than liquid oil, the soap still attaches to the occasional oil molecule, gradually wearing on the item over time.
For those of you sitting on the toilet with nothing to read:
“Aqua, Coco-Glucoside, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Betaine, Glycerin, Citric Acid, Isopropyl Alcohol, Panthenol, Pantolactone, Phenoxyethanol, Polyquaternium-10, Polysorbate 20, Sodium Benzoate, Tocopheryl Acetate. FIL.1554.V00
”
(Cetaphil gentle foaming cleanser)
So water, to dilute everything and make it a liquid with the right viscosity,
Coco-Glucoside is a mild surfactant, basically functionally similar to a soap or detergent, just chemically a bit different.
Most soap and detergent molecules have an ionic part (hydrophilic: attracts water) and a hydrophobic tail that loves fats and oils, and doesn’t like water(hydrophobic). The ionic part is often a carbonate or sulphate. Ionic means it has an electric charge, which is why water loves this. Water is polar, which means it has electric charge as wel, but it has both positive and negative distributed over the molecule, and is neutral as a whole. So water can attract positive ions with its negative part ( the oxygen) and negative ions with its positive part (the hydrogens).
In stead of using an ion group to make a strong water attracting part in a soap molecule you can use polar groups in the molecule. These still attract water but not as strongly, because they just have a little bit of charge distributed, and are neutral as a whole. An example of a polar group you can use is an alcohol group: -OH which looks a lot like water (H-O-H). They like eachother: polar molecules attract, but not as much as ions.
Coco glucoside is a detergent with a polar group in stead of an ionic group to attract water. The polar part consists of a ring with 4 alcohol groups attached. All these alcohol groups can get cozy with the water. Thats the glucoside part. It comes from glucose, which is sugar, which as you know likes to dissolve in water.
Then they stuck on a long fatty coco tail to interact with oil and fat. This is a fatty acid which can come from coconut oil.
The acid part of the fatty coco acid can react with an alcohol group on glucose and afterwards they are attached to make a detergent molecule.
So now you have a detergent like any other, but how strong it attracts water to pull oils and fats into micelles in the water (look up micelles yourself 🙂 is modified by exchanging the strong ion group with a much less powerful polar group.
Thats the main detergent in Cetaphil, and what is different about it compared to other soaps and detergents that are harsher or more aggressive.
I use sanitizer. After covid, have lots of sanitizer and I use it to clean the silicon strap.. every 3 or 4 days.. result is, the strap looks brand new.. previously used soap .. I hope sanitizer is ok
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