this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
176 points (88.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43757 readers
1526 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's not recommended by dermatologists. Soap destroys the acid layer on your skin that keeps bacteria out. As a regular thing, you should therefore only lather on soap where the bacteria buildup is high enough, i.e. under your arms, in your butt crack and other skin folds.
Unless you got super sweaty, you shouldn't soap up your arms and legs every day.
I can't stand the feel of human-produced skin oils building up anywhere on my body. I need to feel squeaky clean to feel clean. But that might be just my own personal mental problems. I never even use lotion. I just can't stand grease and oily substances. Seeing or feeling my own fingerprints on my devices sends me into a rage of wiping everything down with alcohol.
For what it’s worth, scrubbing to get that “squeaky clean” feeling removes the protective layer of sebum between your skin cells. It dries out your skin, and hence, causes your body to go into overdrive producing more oils. As a result, you end up really greasy by the end of the day. After learning this, I backed off the temperature of my daily shower, switched to a pure Castile soap, less of it, and stopped scrubbing vigorously. Now I don’t leave oily smudges on my phone screen, except after sweating a lot. Also, no more itchy, dry skin and cracking knuckles in the winter.
Phones and keyboard are filthy, but it's more about people usually not cleaning them enough and not about people not being clean enough.
The amount of bacteria on thoroughly and often soap-washed skin very quickly rises high because of the missing acid and/or oil layer.
The “only use soap on armpits+groin+feet most of the time” recommendation is not made up.
Fair point. When I said soap, I really meant a body wash, of which pH balanced versions are available.
You also have an oil layer that keeps certain kinds of bacteria out, so don't destroy that one. As said: most days, just lather pits, groin, and feet, simply rinse the rest with water.