Some experts say if you clean too often, especially with harsh soaps and lots of scrubbing, you can strip away your skin’s protective layer, leading to dry, irritated and itchy skin.
But according to dermatologist Dr Jenny Liu, daily showers and baths are perfectly fine for your skin. In fact, it’s what she recommends to her patients with dry and eczema prone skin.
Speaking to her 192,000 followers on TikTok, Dr Liu said soaking, especially in the bath, helps to hydrate the stratum corneum and improve desquamation, as well as enhance the penetration of topical medication and your moisturiser.
The stratum corneum is the outer layer of your skin, while desquamation refers to when the outermost layer of a tissue, such as skin, sheds.
So in fact, soaking does the following:
- Helps to rehydrate skin
- Remove dry and crusty skin
- Can calm and soothe itchy and eczema skin
Dr Liu stressed: “It’s really daily showers or baths without using a moisturiser that damages the skin, especially if you’re being aggressive with cleansing and using harsh soaps.”
Instead, she offered the best way to cleanse your skin:
- Keep the water contact time to less than 15 to 20 minutes.
- Use comfortably warm water not extremes of hot or cold
- You really don’t need soap unless you have spoiled armpits or buttocks
- Apply moisturiser to damp skin immediately after the shower or bath
- To help seal in the moisture within your stratum corneum and prevent any additional trans epidermal water loss.
Naturopathic doctor Dr Janine Bowring recommended always ending your showers with cold water.
She explained: “This is why you should always end your showers with cold water, especially on your head and on your chest, because cold helps your leptin receptors, and your leptin resistance needs to be fixed in order to balance your hormones.”
Doing this can also help with weight loss, said Dr Bowring, and it’s especially important for vagus nerve tone.
