Precautions for bathing in winter Should you bathe every day in winter?

In the cold winter, there is nothing more comfortable than taking a hot bath before going to bed. But if you don't wash it properly, it will cause skin problems.

Precautions for bathing in winter

Not long ago

Ms. Wu (pseudonym) from Yangzhou, Jiangsu

Just because I take a bath every day and use shower gel

Cracks on hands and feet

There are more than 10 cuts on the hands alone

Some of them are bleeding...

36-year-old woman takes a hot bath every day

Cracks on hands and feet

Ms. Wu, 36 years old, works in a factory in Yangzhou city. She is a person who loves cleanliness very much. Not only is her home spotless, she also takes a bath every day before going to bed. "If I'm lazy and don't take a shower one day, I'll feel uncomfortable all over and have to get out of bed and take a shower before I can sleep well."

Ms. Wu said that she has a special requirement. Whenever she takes a shower, she must use shampoo on her head and shower gel on her body. "Otherwise I would feel uncomfortable." She kept this habit for several years. Every winter when she found her skin a little dry, she would use some moisturizer.

But this winter, the first thing Ms. Wu noticed was not dry skin, but small cracks on her hands and feet from time to time. "Especially during this period when there was no rain or snow, once I entered the factory and turned on the air conditioner, my fingers and heels ached terribly. Upon closer inspection, I found they were cracked."

People say that the fingers are connected to the heart. The cuts on the feet are better, but these cuts on the hands are so painful that Ms. Wu grimaces in pain just by slightly bending her hands, let alone touching them. “Is my body lacking something that makes the skin on my hands and feet so dry and brittle?” She was a little worried and went to the hospital for a check-up.

Less sebum secretion in the hands and feet

Excessive cleaning damages the protective barrier

After examining Ms. Wu's hands and feet and asking about her medical history and her usual diet and lifestyle habits, Bai Shanshan, a dermatologist at Yangzhou Friendship Hospital, said that Ms. Wu's hands and feet were chapped because she bathed too frequently. "Hands and feet have less sebum secretion. If you overuse alkaline cleaning products, it is likely to damage the skin's protective barrier due to excessive cleaning."

She said that Ms. Wu has sensitive skin and often suffers from allergies in spring and summer, so if she bathes frequently, her skin will easily become chapped.

Wang Mei, deputy chief physician of the Department of Dermatology at Yangzhou Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, also said that the skin surface needs oil to be moisturized, and under normal circumstances, sebum can supply itself and meet the demand. If the sebum is washed away but the supply cannot keep up, the skin will lack moisture and become dry. Of course, if you continue to wash more often, it is not limited to the loss of sebum, but also the loss of intercellular lipids, which will lead to incomplete barrier function and even drier skin.