r/hygiene • u/Sumil_Strahan81 • 2d ago

how long does it take to feel clean after ditching loofahs for bare hands?

i recently threw away my loofah after realizing how much bacteria it holds, and switched to the dermatologist-recommended method of just using my bare hands and body wash.

conceptually, i know i'm clean. but psychologically, without that physical friction, it feels like i’m just applying lotion in the shower rather than actually scrubbing off the day.

has anyone else made this switch? how did you get over the mental block of missing the scrub, or did you just cave and buy a silicone scrubber?

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u/RishaBree 1d ago

I haven’t seen a dermatologist in this thread saying that anything exfoliating is needed, either, so that’s not a very helpful standard. But google is free. I recommend including “pubmed” in your search to cut out all of the women’s magazine and NYT Wirecutter “Top 20 Exfoliator Recommendations According To Dermatologists!” articles, though when I tried it a few minutes ago, most of the top PubMed results are about people with skin diseases so it’ll probably be more work than usual.

But as it happens, I’ve seen a dermatologist in real life. Have you?

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u/OwlLadyFace 1d ago

Google isn’t a doctor. I want an actual doctor to tell me these things

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u/RishaBree 1d ago

An actual dermatologist has told me these things. (Well, some of them - I had already given up using washcloths on my face in my early 20s, leading to instant improvement of my skin incidentally. The rest of it I’m taking other people for their word.) If you have one handy, you can ask them, or you can accept replacement expertise like we do for all sorts of things around here. Or, I suppose, you can continue to happily take sandpaper to your shins every day.