We all enjoy our daily showers. They take us away from everything else for a moment and offer an enjoyable relaxing experience of being refreshed and more prepared for whatever lies ahead each day. Whether our daily routine consists of showering at night or in the morning, when we’re ready to enjoy a nice relaxing shower, the longer the better right? Well, not exactly. Unfortunately, although utterly satisfying at the moment, long showers can actually have an unpleasant after effect on your skin. Each day, you should shower for approximately 10 to 15 minutes. So how long should you shower everyday?
When showering, you should at least shower for 10 minutes to rid of germs and bacteria, insure cleanliness and remain comfortable. However, when exceeding over approximately 15 minutes of those relaxing and satisfying streams hitting your stressed shoulders, you are actually doing your skin more harm than good. Excessive showers can ultimately leave your skin tight and dry and uncomfortable. Your skin has an outer layer, called stratum corneum, made of hard dead skin cells that serve as a protective barrier for the delicate living skin underneath. Your skin’s hard outer layer made of dead skin cells is held together by fatty composites called lipids. These lipids help your skin to hold moisture. Long showers dissolve these lipids, drying out your skin and weakening it’s important outer protective barrier. Although moisturizers are always nice to apply after a shower, all of the moisture in the world can’t replace these dissolved lipids and damaged skin cells and they must gradually repair themselves. It’s certainly better to take a quick refreshing shower and feel moisturized and comfortable than to step out of your shower looking like a raisin and weeping the incommodious repercussions of the damage done to your skin later on. A nice clean feeling is pleasant, but remember there should always be a balance between both clean and healthy skin. So before you turn the shower knob next time, you may need to reconsider the amount of time you allow yourself to luxuriate in your shower.
