Why Long, Hot Showers Are Bad for Your Skin
Some of us live for those extended hot showers early in the morning or at the end the day as part of our daily routines to wake up, warm up, get energized, or as therapeutic act to get through the day. However, as soothing as they can be, they can also do significant damage to your skin’s natural functions over time.
Skipping hot showers altogether is the best solution skin wise, but we know how hard that can be to do. Let’s explore the different ways hot showers may or may not be harmful to your overall skin health.
Hot Water
Long, hot showers can combat the skin’s natural functions as a protective barrier and deplete natural oils from the surface while also stripping hair of its own protective oils and weaken your complexion altogether. Hot showers adversely affect the skin’s most outer layer, the epidermis, full of substances that provide a tough defense against outside conditions while retaining moisture.
Heat from hot water combined with soap will soften your skin and slowly strip away its natural, oily protective barriers. Some of this can good like removing dirt, sweat, or body odor. However, we want to keep in the skin’s natural moisture where possible and prevent dry or irritated, itchy skin.
Hot showers and baths can inflame the skin, causing redness, itching, and even peeling — similar to a sunburn.  They also can disrupt the skin’s natural balance of moisture, robbing you of the natural oils, fats, and proteins that keep skin healthy. Dry skin can increase your chances of infection and actually lead to an overproduction of oils in an effort to compensate for the lack of moisture.Basically, the longer and hotter the shower, the worse it is for your skin’s health
What About Baths?
You may think hot baths may be less scalding or hurtful but soaking in a tub of hot water can be even worse than a hot shower. To prevent extra dryness from a bath, some doctors suggest adding a few spoonfuls of oil (olive, almond, or grape seed to combat some of the dryness.) Metrin’s #1 Deep Cleanser is great to add into your bath, as it contains cold pressed high oleic sunflower seed oil.
Hydration
Gentle cleansers can also help protect your skin’s natural moisture barrier to offset exposure to hot water. Our #1 Deep Cleanser is perfect for gently cleansing your skin, while protecting your skin’s barrier.
It’s important to follow up your bathing, however you do it, with regular moisturizing to keep your skin from drying. Moisturizing right after a shower can act as a temporary replacement to your skin’s natural oils and keep moisture in. The longer you wait to apply moisturizer, the more moisture will escape.
Cold Water
Colder showers have been known to have certain benefits to the skin. The water doesn’t have to be particularly cold either. Lukewarm or tepid water under 110° F (or 43° C) is recommended. It will also help keep your energy bill lower.
Aside from easing your energy costs, cold showers can shock your body awake as the change in temperature relieves the body of any fatigue and increases mental alertness. They are also better for your hair, skin, hydration, and help split ends, dry skin, and in some cases can be used to treat depression.
Like anything, balance and everyday maintenance is essential. Just as a we advocate for daily skin care to maintain your skin’s health and upkeep, other everyday cleaning methods like washing, bathing, and showering should be considered.
Other Tips
Try to keep your showers as short as possible, 10 minutes at most. When you do shower, make sure to cleanse and only use soap in essential areas like the underarms, groin, or feet to prevent dryness in other, more sensitive areas. When you can, make sure to try and avoid constant exposure to hot water on your skin for extended amounts of time. What’s most important is gentle care and daily washing or cleansing of your skin to make sure its at its best alongside a skin care routine.
While keeping shower temperatures moderate can help your skin retain its healthy level of natural oils, gently exfoliating your skin when taking a shower or bathing will also help your skin better maintain its moisture barrier, keep it smoother, and more resilient.
While we may be focusing on bathing and showering here, the same goes for hot water use outside the tub or shower. Make sure to limit hot water use on the skin when doing your facial skin care cleansing in the bathroom sink.
Remember, the bottom line is that long, hot showers dry out the skin despite how good they might feel. It can also exacerbate skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema or atopic dermatitis. We want to keep as much of the skin’s natural functions working their best, so it’s best to avoid those hot showers when you can.
Skin Care Tips
While controlling temperature and duration of hot showers, hydrating the skin is one thing, but what is the best way to maintain the skin’s ability to retain its natural oils and its resiliency?
While double cleansing the entire body can be time consuming, it’s the best way to cleanse and gently exfoliate the skin. This method of cleansing reduces stress on the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin, while cleansing thoroughly. The gentle exfoliation, when done on a daily, incremental basis, is not only gentle on the skin, but gentle exfoliation actually helps the remove dead skin cells, thereby promoting skin renewal, and in doing so, helping to improve the barrier function of the skin.
The less dead skin cells you have on your skin, like taking away fins on a heating radiator, the skin surface area where moisture loss can occur gets reduced. And, the cleansed and gently exfoliated skin is more efficient receiving hydration (due to reduced barrier of dead skin cells on the skin).
It’s a waste to hydrate dead skin cells.Â
But hydrating the skin after cleansing isn’t enough. Once the skin is clean and gently exfoliated, the skin should not only be hydrated but also nourished and protected. Using skin care products (like Metrin’s #4 Protective Lotion and #5 Enriched Vita Conditioner ) that contain nourishing sunflower seed oil and aloe vera with abundance of Vitamin E, Vitamin C , essential fatty acids (helps restore oil back to the skin), amino acids with high antioxidant properties not only nourishes the skin but also protects the skin by aiding in its resilience against and recovery from dryness, infections, and aging. Â
