Active Skin Repair—a First-Aid Kit in a Bottle
If you surf long enough, getting injured is inevitable. Hopefully, it’s something minor, like a reef scrape or a jellyfish sting—but even then, it’s important to treat those injuries properly so that you don’t get infected and you heal quickly. For years, I’ve been taking a first-aid kit with me whenever I travel—both on surf trips and non-surf trips—but I’ve always wished there was one product that could take care of everything for me.
Well, now there is! Active Skin Repair is like a complete first-aid kit in a single, three-ounce bottle. The product comes in both a gel and spray form, and it does just about everything you could hope for. It disinfects cuts and scrapes, helping to prevent infection. It also alleviates inflammation from bug bites, jellyfish stings, sunburn, and even other types of burns, such as those from hot water or oil. The product is able to so because it contains the same molecule that the human body uses to heal itself. It is natural, non-toxic, antibiotic-free, kid-safe, and non-sensitizing (which means that it doesn’t sting when you put it on an open wound). In fact, some parents have even used it to help treat their infants’ diaper rash, and some people actually use it on their pets too!
When I first learned about Active Skin Repair, I was intrigued. And I wasn’t the only one. The World Surf League found out about it in 2017 and decided to test it out at their Fiji event. The WSL doctors used it on all the athletes’ reef cuts, and the week after the event they called up Active Skin Repair and ordered tons of it. They now use it for every event and often end up sending athletes home with it. The BWRAG big wave guys have been using it too, and find great success with it.
The gel is great for stings and burns, and also for wounds that require stitches, while the spray is easy to apply to scrapes and small cuts. Damien Hobgood is a team rider, and a while back was on a trip to Fiji when he took a foil board blade to the head. It sliced his head open, but he simply put some of the gel in the wound, then had it stitched up. He surfed the rest of the trip, reapplying Active Skin Repair after every session to mitigate infection risk, and went home with a healing head!
Gerry Lopez has also been using the product and says it's the product he’s been looking for—something that can treat jellyfish stings and sunburn, as well as all of the bumps and scrapes he inevitably gets when he is out chasing tropical barrels. And the most convenient thing is that the product is intentionally bottled in travel-legal three-ounce packaging, so TSA will let you carry it on when you are chasing waves. With a two-year shelf life and all of the convenience of a full first-aid kit, Active Skin Repair is the cure-all that you didn’t know you needed. Make sure to grab some before your next trip, or even just for your next session on the Ala Moana reefs!