Save your precious skin
How you shower matters more than when, doctors say
For as long as Jay Maharath can remember, he's showered at night, a habit instilled by his Asian parents, who didn't want the outdoors dirtying up their home.
“It just feels a bit cleaner,” said Maharath, 26, of Hanover, Md. “Once you go outside, especially here in the summer right now, you're dealing with all kinds of bugs, you're dealing with the dust, you're dealing with the dirt.
“Being able to shower at night lets me calm down a little bit and then it's like I can get into the mode of actually being able to sleep.”
Zaid Al-Hamdan is more concerned about waking up. A former night showerer who switched about 10 years ago, he said he noticed an immediate improvement in his mood and productivity after making the change.
“It's made a world of difference,” said Al-Hamdan, 28. Beyond starting the day feeling clean, Al-Hamdan said, stepping under the shower spray “just shocks you and wakes you up.”
“When I go into the office, I'm more prepared to work as soon as I walk in,” he said. “I don't spend 30 minutes waking up and just drinking coffee after coffee.”
Although sleep experts say there is some evidence that a nightly rinse could help you sleep, dermatologists say skin health depends much more on how, not when, you're showering.
“The benefit really comes from what you're using in the shower, what you do right after the shower,” said Mona Gohara, professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine.
Here are some factors to consider when you shower:
TEMPERATURE AND SHOWER LENGTH MATTER
For some people, especially those with drier skin or conditions such as eczema, a long, hot shower can do more harm than good, dermatologists say.
Long showers or baths, said dermatologist Ivy Lee “can actually draw out and dehydrate the skin.”
When “you're opening up that skin barrier and creating that permeability, it really just decreases (the skin's) ability to hold on to water.”
Lee and other dermatologists recommend showers of no more than 10 minutes with warm or room temperature water, which may be less drying.
Water temperature and timing are also important if you're a night showerer who hopes it will help you sleep, said Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Zee recommends a warm shower one to two hours before going to bed.
This warms up your hands, feet and head, causing heat to dissipate from more central parts of your body and helping to decrease your body temperature.
Because the body naturally cools down at bedtime, this may help you fall asleep, she said.
LESS IS MORE
If you have drier skin or aren't doing many activities that result in sweating or exposure to dirt other irritants or germs, you could shower less frequently said Chad Prather, professor of dermatology at Louisiana State University.
Dr. Gohara recommends people wash their bodies once a day or twice at the most.
For those with conditions such as eczema, even showering once a day might be too much, she said.
Jules Lipoff, dermatology professor at the University of Pennsylvania noted that while a long shower or bath can be important for mental health, much of what people do when they bathe is “not medically or hygienically necessary.”
Dr. Prather encourages people to clean “the three Ps: pits, privates and piggies.” Your armpits, groin and feet are the only parts of the body that emit bad odours.
As for hair, if it's brittle, coarse or has split ends, that may be a sign that you're washing too frequently and stripping the natural moisture, Dr. Lee said.
Dr. Prather recommends focusing shampoo on your scalp.
“Washing your hair should feel like you're giving yourself a scalp massage,” he said.
CHOOSE BODY FRIENDLY PRODUCTS
There are very few “true soaps” (made with a combination of fats or oils and an alkali, such as lye) on the market today, as most body cleansers are synthetic detergents, which are less irritating to the skin. Dermatologists suggest using soap or body wash described as a “gentle cleanser” and sulphate-free shampoos.
If you feel “squeaky clean”after a shower, you may be using something too harsh, Dr. Gohara said. “When you feel like your face is tight, that is basically your skin barrier giving you an SOS, like, `You destroyed me.' ”
Dr. Lipoff cautioned against antibacterial cleansers, which are more drying. “It's not necessarily healthier and in our interest to reduce bacteria all the time,” he said.
DON'T SCRUB
“Scrubbing is like synonymous with cleansing and that's a really big fallacy,” Dr. Gohara said. “I always tell my patients that scrubbing is for your appliances, not your skin.”
Soap yourself with your hands, a soft shower poof or cotton washcloth, she said. Loofahs are too abrasive.
Some exfoliating products and tools can be “very irritating” to the skin, Dr. Lee said. “Your skin will naturally exfoliate,” she continued.
If you do choose to exfoliate, avoid doing it more than once a week and be gentle. Gritty washes “can lead to little microtraumas and exacerbation of dryness and problems with the skin,” Dr. Prather said.
PRACTICE AFTERCARE
Don't dry off with the classic “towel shimmy” and rub your skin.
Pat yourself dry and focus on moisturizing.
Dr. Gohara suggests moisturizing immediately postshower in the bathroom because the skin is still damp and you can capitalize on the “ambient humidity.”
There are many types of moisturizers.
Dr. Lee recommends using a fragrance-free moisturizing cream, which can lock in more moisture than lighter-weight lotions with a higher water content.