Most people have read the story about how founder Wendy Strgar started Good Clean Love. More than 15 years ago, Wendy found that the personal lubricant choices she found on the market at the time caused negative reactions. “I was looking for a product that was natural – like all the other personal care I was accustomed to shopping for – and there weren’t any choices,” she remembers.
It took years of experimenting in her kitchen and finding a laboratory that would work with her to develop a healthy lubricant that supported her vaginal health – a product without parabens and petrochemicals, something made with natural ingredients. Today, because of that dedication, Good Clean Love produces what has become one of the best-selling organic lubricants on the market.
Discovering Osmolality
Several years later, Wendy received a letter from the local chapter of HIV Alliance, to whom Good Clean Love had donated several thousand Good Clean Love lubricant samples. In addition to saying “thanks,” the writer shared with her what would come to define her understanding of a good, safe lubricant. Although it took time to understand and articulate the concept of osmolality, the letter shared that Good Clean Love’s Almost Naked personal lubricant had the same osmolality as vaginal fluid.
Wendy notes, “At that time, I was unclear on what that meant, but wasn’t surprised when I read that it closely resembled human secretions. I had already experienced, like many of our customers using Almost Naked lubricant, that it felt like taking 10 years off the clock – easing vaginal dryness and odor. The lubricant felt like ‘me’, or at least how I used to feel before nursing four kids across 10 years.”
Bio-Match® Was Born
In 2012, the contents of that definitive letter about personal lubricant osmolality showed up in an NIH-funded study where Good Clean Love’s lubricant was found to be one of the safest products in the study.
Ironically the study was intended not to study personal lubricants, but to invent a (vaginal) buffer gel that would prevent the increasing incidence of HIV and other serious STIs. Although the research project didn’t accomplish this task, gathering data on 5,000 women showed the incidence of bacterial vaginosis (BV) and how this most common genital infection heightened the risks of HIV and STIs. One of the primary researchers, Dr. Richard Cone, remarked " All sexual lubricants should be reformulated…” So, Wendy called him.
“I was determined to understand osmolality and why it is so important. I called Dr. Cone, marking my first step in scientific education when it came to the work of formulating lubricants. Prior to this, I just knew I didn’t want any ingredients that I wouldn’t have in my kitchen, and the best alternatives for preservative effectiveness. I was a minor statistic on this most common of genital infections – two in five women have BV and 84% of the time they don’t know they have it. ‘Smelly vagina’ is one of the most expensive keyword searches you can buy on the web.”
Talking to Dr. Cone began an education and a friendship that resulted in the beautiful idea of bio-matching Good Clean Love’s personal intimacy products to existing healthy vaginal ecosystems. Today, these pillars of pH, iso-osmolality, and supporting natural flora make up Good Clean Love’s Bio-Match principles.
Since that time and collaboration with Dr. Cone, Good Clean Love has continued to forge this path of creating vaginal care products that do no harm, using biomimicry to support bodies back to their natural, healthy state. We were even awarded a patent on the idea of Bio-Matched vaginal gels.
Good Clean Love continues to work on new Bio-Match products and are gratified each time we hear from customers how our Bio-Match products have changed their lives, improved their vaginal health, and for some, are the first vaginal products that ever worked for them.
