COVID-19 causing chaffed hands
SYDNEY — Washing your hands is one of the best ways to help stop the spread of COVID-19, but it can take a toll on your skin.
Local dermatologist Dr. Stacey Northgrave said there have been more cases of chapped hands — or irritant hand dermatitis as it’s known medically — in recent weeks as a result of the pandemic.
“We see this a lot in the winter anyway, but then when you add in frequent hand-washing and hand sanitizers that have a high alcohol content, it gets a lot worse. Often you’ll see it kind of starting in the web spaces and then cracking at the tips of the fingers — it can get quite painful for people,” said Northgrave, who has a practice in Sydney and is an assistant professor of clinical dermatology and cutaneous science at Dalhousie University.
“The tough thing is just where we are with the pandemic right now, you can’t really stop the hand-washing but there are things that people can do to kind of minimize the downside.”
Northgrave said the best way to prevent your hands from chafing and cracking — or stop them from getting worse — is to use a barrier hand cream whenever you can.
While a typical moisturizer would help, she said a barrier hand cream usually contains silicone or dimethicone to make it stay on better and help protect your hands the next time you wash them.
Neutrogena's Norwegian Formula, Glysomed, Avon’s Silicone Glove and O'keeffe's Working Hands are a few common brands, she said, adding “I have no interest in any of these companies.”
Another thing to keep in mind is how often your hands are exposed when you’re cleaning at home, so she recommends wearing rubber gloves whenever you’re cleaning with solvents and detergents.
Northgrave said some people are at higher risk of getting socalled dishpan hands, including health-care workers, people in the food industry and even new parents.
“Frontline health workers — especially nurses and doctors that are seeing patients, you have to wash your hands so many times that they are for sure at increased risk. People who prepare food are often at higher risk and right now those are the people keeping everyone going. Often new parents are washing their hands a lot if they have a new child — they are at higher risk for this kind of thing. And then people who have predisposing factors, so people who had eczema growing up as a child or people who have psoriasis, they would be at higher risk, for sure.”
While it might seem like a cosmetic issue, Northgrave said chapped hands are not only painful, they can lead to more serious health problems.
“With our hands of course you can’t just not use them, so that’s the biggest issue,” she said. “Our skin is a great barrier — it can keep the outside world out and the inside world in — but once you breach that barrier then it does put you at higher risk of getting infections. Pain obviously is a big issue and then increasing risk of infection would be another one.”
Regrettably, if your hands have already been rubbed raw by frequent hashing, there’s not a lot that can be done to treat them.
“It usually takes a number of days and weeks to get to the point that people would experience pain with it, so it can be quite hard to settle down once it gets to that point,” she said.
“Sometimes if people have an eczema related to it, their doctor might give them a cortisone cream to settle the eczema down but if it’s mostly the cracking then it’s protection, protection, protection. Sometimes people will use a Ban-aid or some New-skin, which is something you can paint on any of the cracks to help heal them, but unfortunately it’s just time and healing.”