Do you need to shower and scrub yourself hard every day? Are the natural oils and glands present in your body not sufficient to protect you? Remaining “natural” or not using chemicals on the skin and hair is now becoming a trend worldwide.
The excess use of chemicals does harm the skin, but can our environment and growing dust levels allow us to remain natural? One is constantly exposed to a variety of chemicals and small particulate matter in the air, these if not washed away can make us very uncomfortable and also cause diseases.
Conventional wisdom states that more you shower, the cleaner you are. It is important to have a bath to keep yourself free from foul odour. The body is assaulted by harmful chemicals, dirt and grime making it very important to bathe every day. With approximately 2 million bacteria in every square cm in just the arm pit, you can imagine how many there would be in the whole body!
So showering or lathering up with a healthy dose of soap in hot water can kill the germs. But showering too much is potentially damaging to the skin. The skin cells offer protection to the underlying layers of living and healthy cells. When you shower or scrub too much the underlying layer of the skin gets affected.
Dr Vinay Aindala, Apollo Life Centre, says, “The more showers you take, the more frequently your skin will get damaged. Also, the skin does not get enough time to repair itself through natural oil production. What’s more, the rough layer of your skin can be sloughed off by scrubbing, exposing the delicate skin cells underneath. Thus showering too frequently can lead to dry, irritated and cracked skin.”
Another problem with people who shower too often is the vigorous use of a towel. The right way to use a towel to dry yourself is by patting yourself softly and gently, allowing the water to be absorbed by the skin.
To protect the skin night and day from the elements of the outside world, your skin has to constantly regenerate cells. The body produces new skin cells non-stop round the clock. As the old cells wear out they remain on the skin, clogging pores, which leads to breakouts. On an average, an adult can shed 50,000 dead skin cells every minute.
To facilitate the shedding of dead skin cells it is important to exfoliate on a regular basis. Exfoliation is a simple process that removes dead skin cells from the surface of the body. This can be done using a face wash that has tiny sand-like particles. This process can be followed twice in a week but the schedule varies for different skin types as excessive scrubbing has its own share of harmful effects.
Dr Srirang Akbari, dermatologist at Aware Global Hospitals, says, “Excessive scrubbing of the face and body can wear away the stratum corneum, which is the outermost skin barrier. When this happens the skin gets dry, leading to irritation and cracking. Damaged skin also leads to bacteria and viruses settling on the skin. This can cause various infections.
Hence scrubs are to be done only once in a week or once in a fortnight. Facial scrubs with sugar, salts and seeds must be avoided.
