What kind of lubes can I use? Can lube harm my toys?

Last updated June 11, 2020

Water-based

Fairly inert stuff. Good for toys that don’t require you to stretch a lot. Great for getting that good, slick feeling. On large toys you may end up needing to add some grease to help combat the “squeegee” effect. Perfect for plugs as the lube gets absorbed and helps it lock in place, just reapply when it’s time to extract. My favorite lube for toy play is actually a blend of water based and grease based that I do on the fly, alternating between the two depending on what I’m wanting at the moment.

Grease

Primarily vegetable shortening, coconut oil, or water soluble grease lubes. Great for use in combination with water-based lubes when working with wider toys requiring a stretch. The grease clings to surfaces whereas the water-based stuff just squeegees off. Choose a water-based lube for plugs or the grease will just make it harder to hold it in. Oil or grease attack latex and vinyl and should not be used with these toys or condoms. Toys made of silicone are impervious to grease and oil.

Silicone-based

I have seen no melting or dissolving effects of using silicone lubes on my toys in all these years, but I went back and forth on the safety of using them with my silicone toys in the early days, because other producers of silicone toys have warned against it for a long time, and still do. There might have been some incompatibility with the early generations of silicones but many of my customers use silicone lube exclusively and there have been no reported adverse affects since I introduced SuperSoft silicone to the adult toy market in 2006.

A dissolving occurs when silicone toys are stored in contact with many vinyl toys and could have indeed been the origin for this urban myth. Read my interesting theory on how this all got started here.

As silicone lube is hard to wash off entirely, be mindful that this can make cleaning and sterilizing your toys more problematic, trapping odors, bacteria and viruses within it like a protective blanket. Blue Dawn® is effective at removing most silicone lubes, using a soft cloth to gently work the lube off the surface of your toy. Acetone can also be employed, as it is a known solvent for silicone fluid. Read more about using acetone here: https://www.squarepegtoys.com/support/how-do-i-remove-…dor-from-my-plug/

There are also some experimental results and references in my published study on the effects of silicone lube on cured silicone. Concerns about whether silicone lube is safe to use internally are also addressed in section 5a of the article.

J-Lube

2014 Update: there have been rumors of J-lube causing a fatality when a perforation happened and J-lube entering the abdominal cavity. It is reported to have caused a reaction that caused death. I’ve not been able to substantiate any of this. J-lube’s sugar origin may be the root of it as bacteria feed on it. 

A staple in the veterinarian’s office, its purpose is to aid the vet to do things like : insert her/his arm into a cow’s or horse’s rectum to check on fetal development, or, to perform artificial inseminations. Needless to say that it is great at reducing friction during play and can allow one to play for much longer than they might normally before getting sore. Same problem here as with water-based lubes however for larger toys, but adding crisco to the mix seems to help. It is basically a polymer based on sugar and polyethers, and is fairly inert. Being sugar based it will breed bacteria so only make what you will use in a few days. If you keep the large batch free of contamination (don’t dip into it during play), freeze it until your next use. Try freezing it in an ice cube tray, makes for great little single servings when you need it.

Newer Powdered Lubes

New to the scene are powdered lubes you can mix with water at home. What’s novel about them is that they provide the slickness of J-lube without the stringy mess and complicated cleanup. No toy damage has been reported from using these newer generation lubes.  There seem to be generally two types.

There are ones made from food based ingredients, mainly some form of saccharide, that are commonly found in many things we eat: Xanthan gum, Guar gum, Carrageenen and the like. You can even buy them in most health food stores as raw ingredients. Many of them have been found to be irritating to the digestive system when eaten in larger quantities. Xanthan Gum is a known laxative and is excreted by bacteria grown in different mediums like corn, wheat or soy. If you have a food allergy it might warrant some investigation as to what it was grown in. Guar Gum comes from Guar beans, Locust Bean Gum from Carob beans, Carrageenan comes from Seaweed and is a suspected intestinal irritant and is banned from use in infant formula in the EU. If you use these lubes and are finding reactions consider you might simply have a food allergy to one of these ingredients.

The second group are those composed of mostly polyethylene glycol (PEG), the ingredient in laxatives like Miralax®. It works in the digestive tract by drawing water to it from surrounding tissues as it is hydrophilic, thus softening things up and making things move more easily.  PEG is derived from petroleum.