Nope. Nothing but good genes and good stitch-work by your surgeon can prevent nasty scars. But topical steroid creams, steroid injections, or treatments with pulse dye lasers can shrink them — as can a tight compression bandage or massage. The pressure reorganizes the random bundles of collagen that make up scar tissue and pushes them into straighter lines. If you choose to use cocoa butter to do the rubbing, that’s fine, says Lawrence Reed, M.D., a spokesperson for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. But if the scar improves, it’s not the lotion that’s doing it, it’s the massage.

New York City dermatologist Katherine White, M.D., agrees. “There’s nothing inherent to cocoa butter or vitamin-E oil or any other lotion that is helpful for scars,” she says. “Scars remodel naturally, building up and breaking down at the cellular level for at least a year after you get them.”