What is a yeast rash?
Yeast is a type of fungus that naturally lives on your body in small amounts, often found in your mouth, on your skin and in your intestines. We all have yeast and bacteria in our body that makes up our microbiome, which keeps us healthy. A yeast rash occurs when the natural yeast in our body and our good bacteria become inbalanced.
Most common in diaper-wearing children, yeast, specifically Candida albicans yeast, could cause a diaper rash on infants if the balance of yeast and healthy bacteria is off. Infected feces are the main source for a Candida diaper rash.
| Yeast Rash | Diaper Rash | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Skin Characteristics | Skin that is bumpy (pimples), shiny, cracked, or oozy with a deep red or purple tone. | Skin that is dry, scaly, or smooth with a light pink to purple tone. | |
| Affected Areas | Appears on skin folds near the groin, legs, and genitals. | Appears on larger surfaces like the buttocks. | |
| Rash Distribution | Rash could be in several smaller spots along the diaper region. | Rash is in one spot along the diaper region. | |
| Treatment | Treat with antifungal medication, which could take a few weeks to clear. | Treatment with diaper cream clears rash in a couple of days. |
Contributing factors to the development of yeast diaper rashes include:
- Little to no air circulation on the skin.
- Urine or stool touching skin for long periods of time (overnight).
- Diaper material rubbing on skin repeatedly.
- Side effect of taking antibiotics or receiving them from a chestfeeding parent.
- Diet and other factors that affect individual children may make them more prone to this imbalance, making yeast rashes more common.
Ways you can help prevent yeats diaper rash:
- Avoid using disposable baby wipes or cloth wipe solutions with fragrances or alcohol.
- Change diapers frequently.
- Clean skin between diaper changes.
- Be sure not to over stuff diaper or snap diaper too tightly, which may restrict airflow.
- Leave diapers off for short periods of time or opt for periods of time in cover-free diapers, such as flats, preflats or fitteds to allow for additional airflow between diaper changes.
- Use a stay dry liner, such as fleece, to help wick moisture away from babys skin which can help keep skin dry between diaper changes.
- Use ointment or cream to create a barrier between skin and diaper. If a non-cloth diaper cream is being used, be sure to use a liner to protect diaper fibers from cream/ointments
For treatment of suspected yeast rash on your child, always consult your healthcare provider. A culture test will conclude if the rash is yeast, and a prescription of oral and/or topical medicastions may be suggested. It is important to follow all treatment advice from your provider from start to finish to ensure that the situation is resolved completely.
How to deal with cloth diapers during a yeast rash
If your child has a confirmed yeast rash, it is important to treat your cloth diaper laundry to remove active yeast from the fibers in order to prevent the rash from continuing or worsening. The most effective way to treat yeast in fabric is with a bleach wash or soak.
While dealing with yeast, you may choose to switch to disposable diapers until symptoms have cleared or you can continue to use cloth diapers while implementing preventative measures into you diaper wash routine until symptoms have cleared. If you opt to use disposable diapers, treating diapers one time should be enough.
To treat cloth diapers for yeast you can use your washing machine or you can soak items in a diluted bleach solution. Proper dilution ratio and exposure to bleach solution is essentila for a soak to be effective.
Method 1: Machine washing
- Before you begin, always check care labels to confirm fiber content before washing; avoid bleaching wool, silk, and non-fast fabrics. PUL and TPU are colorfast and will not fade when washed with bleach. Hand-dyed or knit fabrics may fade or become discolored after being treated with bleach.
- Select a sanitizing bleach that has at least 5.25% sodium hypochlorite. Avoid color safe or low/no splash bleach.
- For non-HE machines, you will use ½ cup of bleach in your cycle. For HE machines, use ¼ cup
- Choose a heavy-duty cycle with hot water and an extra rinse
- Add bleach and detergent to the correct compartments in your washing machine.
- Load diapers into your machine loosely to allow items to move freely in the cycle. Avoid over filling your machine drum.
- Run cycle and check laundry after it has finished. If the smell of bleach is still present, you may want to run an additional short cycle with hot water to ensure all remaining bleach has been rinsed out.
Method 2: Hand washing and soaking
- Before you begin, always check care labels to confirm fiber content before washing; avoid bleaching wool, silk, and non-fast fabrics. PUL and TPU are colorfast and will not fade when washed with bleach. Hand-dyed or knit fabrics may fade or become discolored after being treated with bleach.
- Select a sanitizing bleach that has at least 5.25% sodium hypochlorite. Avoid color safe or low/no splash bleach.
- Pretreat stains and clean visible soils, rinse to remove loose soil
- Soak diapers for 10 minutes in a solution of 1/4 cup bleach added to 1 gallon of cool water.
- Rinse and perform a wash with detergent by following your regular wash routine
If choosing to continue using cloth while waiting for the rash to clear up, it is advised to continue bleach treatment during every wash day until all symptoms have cleared for 1-2 weeks.
Bleach alternative methods
Some cloth diapering sources may provide alternatives to using bleach in order to kill yeast in clothing. Due to the lack of available studies and reputable research around these methods, I will not be discussing them in this post. One of the biggest alternative methods for dealing with yeast is Grapefruit seed extract (GSE). There are studies that show GSE can inhibut or kill yeast and other microbes both topically and on non-porous surfaces, but there is no research to show efficacy of this product on clothing. GSE has been shown to be both non-toxic and effective at killing microbes in a ratio of 1:5 of GSE to water. This means that you a lot of GSE in order to meet the levels that has been shown in lab testing to be effective. But again, none of these tests have been done on fabric to show any potential efficacy. Additonally, none of the lab tests have specified that candida is one of the potentially affected microbes. So due to the overall lack of compelling research around this method, I do not advise it for effective results.
Sources:
- https://www.clorox.com/learn/how-to-use-bleach-in-laundry/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12165191/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15610620/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20411504/
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22307-yeast-diaper-rash#:~:text=Yeast%20diaper%20rashes%20are%20a,and%20prevent%20it%20from%20returning.