You may be seeing elaborate shower cleansing routines on social media: daily exfoliation, double cleansing, antibacterial soap, loads of scented body scrubs and shower oils.
“I’m kind of appalled by the shower routines,” said Dr. Olga Bunimovich, a practicing dermatologist and assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
The multistep processes that have inspired people to spend endless amounts of time sudsing up can harm your skin — and the environment. Dermatologists say it’s all mostly unnecessary.
“Your skin is a barrier,” said Dr. Nicole Negbenebor, a dermatologic surgeon at University of Iowa Health Care. “It’s one of the biggest barriers you have. It’s you in your natural elements. So you want to treat it right, and then sometimes there can be too much of a good thing.”
I mean… If you’re trying to clean yourself, exfoliation is kinda necessary and part of what happens when you scrub yourself anyway. You want all that nasty dead skin on you?
Everything else is optional, sure. And anti-bacterial soap is actually more damaging in the long run. For you and everyone else. And you definitely don’t need fancy microbeads to exfoliate; if you want a new thing to use, use one of those new microfiber cloths that feel kinda awful to touch. They feel that way becsuse they’re grabbing on that dead skin and work hella good as a wash cloth.
Skin sloughs off naturally and requires no scrubbing. It isn’t nasty dead skin, just dead skin; no big deal. Get some dirt off, maybe excess but not all oils off, and you’re good.