Showering: Dermatologist recommends ways to keep skin healthy

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There are many opinions that divide people nowadays but the importance of showering still enjoys a broad consensus. That’s because the simple daily practice rejuvenates the mind and body. Although people may have different preferences over when to shower, it is believed there is an optimal time of the day to scrub yourself clean.

“It’s believed that showering in the evening is better for your skin health for a number of reasons,” explained cosmetic doctor Dr Rekha Tailor.

According to Dr Tailor, one of the primary benefits is that it cleans the skin before you go to sleep.

“In doing this it removes the dirt from the air which includes germs, pollution and dust which can gather during the day, as well as sweat which accumulates,” she said.

“By showering at night you are cleansing your skin of these before you go to sleep, thus enabling it to properly regenerate overnight.”

What’s more, because the period when we are sleeping is crucial for skin regeneration, ensuring you have clean skin will help to make sure that pores don’t become clogged, noted Dr Tailor.

This should hopefully prevent whiteheads and blackheads from developing, as well as acne breakouts.

Other health benefits of bathing before bed

Evidence also suggests a warm shower or bath before bed can aid the sleeping process.

This is the key finding of a study published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.

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Researchers performed a meta-analysis on thousands of studies that link showering with warm/hot water to improved sleep quality.

They found that the optimal time to shower was one to two hours before bedtime to improve your sleep.

“When we looked through all known studies, we noticed significant disparities in terms of the approaches and findings,” said Shahab Haghayegh, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and lead author on the paper.

“The only way to make an accurate determination of whether sleep can in fact be improved was to combine all the past data and look at it through a new lens.”

In collaboration with the UT Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Southern California, the UT researchers reviewed 5,322 studies.

The findings suggest that showering one to two hours before bedtime will aid the body’s natural circadian rhythm.

The circadian rhythm is part of the body’s internal clock, running in the background to carry out essential functions and processes.

One of the most important and well-known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle.

Getting a good night’s sleep is particularly vital because it can reduce your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

According to Dr Tailor, showering is not the only activity that is conducive before bed.

“The best time to shave the skin is before bed,” she said.

Dr Tailor explained: “This is because as we sleep our skin gets warmer and swells slightly which causes the hairs to retreat back into their follicles and become less obvious.

“So by shaving in the evening, when you wake in the morning your skin will feel smoother.”

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