A woman’s horse came in from the pasture with a large cut across its chest. Saga Stevin, a horse lover and owner herself, had a remedy to offer: a solution she’d developed herself using plant oils, whose antibacterial, antifungal, and healing properties had been working with good effect on her Thoroughbred’s “scratches,” a disease that causes dried, cracked skin on the animal’s ankles.
Stevin didn’t anticipate the question that followed: The woman lifted her shirt and asked if the remedy might work on “this”—scars from a double mastectomy and an infection that had continued since the surgery.
“Horse people always self-medicate,” Stevin says. Knowing how sensitive their animals’ bodies are, they figure anything that’s safe for their horses will be safe for them, she explains.
That was in October 2007, and with the healing she experienced, the woman—a patient at the Piper Breast Center at Abbott Northwestern Hospital—was eager to introduce Stevin and her plant-oil therapy to other patients and to the medical staff there. Stevin had transferred manufacturing from her kitchen to a small contract manufacturer, Loring Labs in St. Bonifacius, and had begun to see a following for her product among horse owners, trainers, and vets. But now she had an opportunity to reformulate it for human needs—scarring, burns—by talking with Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, medical director of Abbott’s Penny George Institute for Health and Healing. In August last year, Stevin formed her Plymouth-based company, iBody Science.
Practitioners at several Twin Cities health care facilities are using Stevin’s Skin Solution with their patients and residents now. Besides the Piper and George specialty centers at Abbott Northwestern, the Minnesota Masonic Home North Ridge in New Hope is using it to help heal rashes and other skin problems in its elderly nursing home and assisted living residents. Andi Sadowski, a nurse-administrator at the facility, says that doctors and other staff have been impressed with how well wounds have healed when treated with the product.
Retail shops at Abbott Northwestern as well as several medical spas in the Twin Cities are selling Skin Solution. Stevin also sells it through her Web site, ibodyscience.com ($30 for one half-ounce). She hopes to have more retail outlets soon. Meanwhile, she has a new product in development and expects to launch it this summer: an all-natural, plant-based insect repellent.
