Coming Clean

Posted on Feb 16 in Mediaby QV SkincarePrint

There’s nothing like good old soap and water, is there? Except soap and water is good for nothing except maybe your clothes. You should stop using soap forever if you care about your skin.

”It’s harsh and it’s drying,” says Alan Oppenheim of Ego, maker of the ubiquitous and long trusted QV range. ”It’s the wrong pH for the skin. A slightly acid skin is 6. Soap has a pH of 10 or more.” Soap only exacerbates dry, irritated and inflamed skin conditions and also strips the natural oils from perfectly healthy skin. ”It’s old technology from when people had no choice,” Oppenheim says.

Gentle soap-free cleansers are better suited for the skin, such as QV Wash ($29.35 for a litre) or, for those who can’t wean themselves from the feel of a bar of soap in their hands, QV Bar, $8.95. Ego also introduced QV Kids Wash in 2003 ($14.99 for 375ml): colourful Vitamin A and E beads magically disappear upon application. Who knew washing your hands could be so much fun?!

But old habits die hard, of course, and I suspect you still reach for a bar of soap when you’re in the shower. Or have you succumbed to one of the lurid shower gels? I always think of these as fancy dishwashing liquid. What do you use to wash? Would you consider going soap free?

smh.com.au : Coming Clean Natasha Hughes

5^th November, 2009