How Bad Is It Really to Share a Bar of Soap?
Posted by Jimmy Gould on
You're staying with a friend and whoops, you forgot to bring a bar of soap for the shower. Or, maybe you and your partner share the Dove daily. Ever stopped to think if you're swapping more than just suds? If this sounds like you, you can breathe a sigh of relief. It's really not so bad, Kelly Reynolds, PhD, professor in public health and environmental science at The University of Arizona, tells LIVESTRONG.com. That said, don't think you can make a...
Derm-Approved Face Soap Bars That Will Leave Your Skin Squeaky Clean
Posted by Jimmy Gould on
Derm-Approved Face Soap Bars That Will Leave Your Skin Squeaky Clean Thanks to their moisturizing ingredients and grime-busting capabilities, these face soap bars boast the ability to create a glowing complexion without all the plastic. Serious tree huggers and frequent flyers may not see eye to eye on many things, but they're sure to agree that liquid face washes cause more trouble than they're worth. The cleansers are commonly packaged in 100-percent plastic tubes or bottles with pumps that can't be recycled,...
Mother Nature Knows: The Best Natural Soaps for Sensitive Skin
Posted by Jimmy Gould on
If you suffer from sensitive skin, you know the importance of regulating everything that touches the surface of your body. This means being careful about which pillowcases you use, how often you wash your towels, and, of course, only applying skincare products made for sensitive skin. One of the most important decisions you must make is which body soap you use in the shower. There are several soaps explicitly formulated for sensitive skin. But these soaps often include several nasty chemicals. Depending on...
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Can Soap Get Dirty?
Posted by Jimmy Gould on
When you see lovely little bars of lemon-thyme or lavender hand soaps on the rim of a sink, you know they are there to make you feel as fresh as a gardenia-scented daisy. We all know washing our hands is important, but, like washcloths and towels, can the bars of hand soap we use to clean ourselves become dirty as well? Soaps are simply mixtures of sodium or potassium salts derived from fatty acids and alkali solutions during a process called...
Can a Bar of Soap Transmit Infection?
Posted by Jimmy Gould on
And would a jar of liquid soap be a better bet than bar soap? Q. Are there any health risks to using a communal bar of soap in, say, a health club? A. No. Bar soap does not appear to transmit disease. The most rigorous study of this question was published in 1965. Scientists conducted a series of experiments in which they intentionally contaminated their hands with about five billion bacteria. The bacteria were disease-causing strains, such as Staph and E. coli. The...