Soap on the ropes

As the health spotlight falls on the skin microbiome, some experts claim our obsession with cleanliness is harming us and the planet.

- PAUL LITTLE

When did soap become a dirty word? In a range of recent books, podcasts, magazine articles and other dispatches from the health-hysterical front, the much-loved cleansing product has got many people foaming at the mouth.

With the publication of his book Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less in 2020, Dr James Hamblin became the unscrubbed but fresh face of the anti-soap movement and had a lot of readers questioning their daily hygiene rituals. The preventive medicine specialist and Yale University lecturer did it with one simple but revolutionary act: he stopped washing himself in the interest of allowing a diverse and energetic skin microbiome to flourish.

For several years, his personal cleanliness routine was the basic minimum. These days, he confirms, he's not quite so dogmatic. "It's a minimalist routine, I guess. I would say I just use soap as needed, which to me is when you actually have things that cannot be removed with water alone."

The result of his experiment? Nothing bad happened. He did not get sick. He did not develop an odour that repelled other humans. Unpleasant germs did not set up home and start new families in his body. But the lessons he learnt from the experience are still with him. In particular, he realised that many of us wash too much.

Dermatologists agree that overcleaning, which for many people is the minimum, can do damage to us in numerous ways. For the average person, says Manawatu dermatologist Dr Louise Reiche, showering "weekly or every second day would be absolutely fine. And it doesn't have to be a long bath or shower. If you're doing face, hands, armpits, groin and between your toes and then rinsing off, it doesn't take long. And using warm water is better. Hot water takes the oils out of the skin."