If you happen to work out at Equinox, there’s a great likelihood you additionally bathe there. In any case, the locker room famously feels extra like a spa, and every little thing you have to lather, lotion, and go away feeling contemporary is included in your round $300 membership price , whether or not or not you make the most of it. Ever because the fitness center switched from Kiehl’s tub and physique care merchandise to Grown Alchemist ones in Might, loads of members have made it clear how pissed they’re to be paying for what they deem to be lower-quality merchandise.

Private preferences apart, the change is definitely a giant deal for folks with nut allergic reactions, since a couple of of the Grown Alchemist gadgets comprise nut oils. A variety of the model’s merchandise at the moment are stocked within the Equinox locker rooms, however the issues about allergy threat are particularly swirling across the physique cleanser, which accommodates macadamia oil, and the conditioner and physique cream, each of which have candy almond oil (the identical emollient, it’s value noting, that was included within the Kiehl’s lotion beforehand supplied within the gyms).

The issue, in keeping with folks like content material creator Blake Rayfield (who’s since canceled her Equinox membership in response to the product swap), is that physique cleanser and conditioner are arguably crucial for totally showering post-workout, whereas lotion could be extra simply skipped. Plus, the physique cleanser and conditioner are stocked in all the communal showers, which means it’s loads simpler to make contact with the residue of these merchandise by way of, say, the partitions or flooring, versus a cream that’s extra contained, Rayfield tells SELF.

Rayfield isn’t the one one frightened; within the feedback of her TikTok video folks with nut allergic reactions have referred to as the product swap “extraordinarily unfair” and advised that the model must designate sure showers and even loos as “nut-free.” SELF reached out to Equinox for touch upon the potential challenge, however they declined. So we turned to allergists and dermatologists for his or her ideas: Must you rethink a visit to the Equinox showers in case you have a nut allergy—or will most individuals be A-okay? Right here’s what it’s best to have in mind earlier than you lather up.

A nut oil doesn’t pose as large of a menace to an individual with an allergy as a complete nut.

Each almonds and macadamia nuts are tree nuts, some of the frequent meals allergens and among the many most probably to set off anaphylaxis, a life-threatening response that may begin with itchiness and progress to wheezing and fainting. However that’s extra more likely to occur when somebody with a nut allergy eats one in every of these nuts, not once they apply a topical product created with them.

That’s as a result of nut oils utilized in skincare are usually extracted by way of a course of involving chemical compounds or excessive warmth, which strips them of a lot of the nut proteins that result in allergic reactions, Joshua Zeichner, MD, a board-certified dermatologist and the director of Beauty & Scientific Analysis in Dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York Metropolis, tells SELF. In a press release supplied to SELF, a Grown Alchemist spokesperson confirmed that within the formation of their merchandise, “nut allergen proteins are sometimes eliminated to the purpose of nonexistence.” (For some context, the aim of those oils in skincare is the fats content material, which softens tough areas and “varieties a protecting seal over the pores and skin,” Dr. Zeichner says.)