This is what happens when you stay in the bath for too long
After a long day, there’s nothing better than soaking in a bubble bath until the stress melts out of your brain. But there are consequences to taking too long of a bath, and we’re not just talking about the not-so-attractive look of pruney fingers. Experts say that your skin can literally fall off if you spend prolonged periods of time in the tub, day after day. So you might want to find some other ways to unwind on a Saturday afternoon.
Digg spoke to Dr. Jeffery Fromowitz, a dermatologist in Florida, who explained what happens when you lounge in the bath for too long.
“”In essence, prolonged immersion in water supersaturates the skin and can lead to skin breakdown,” Dr. Fromowitz said.
If this is starting to sound like a sci-fi horror film, just stay with us. There’s some real science behind this.
Let’s come back to the pruney fingers that come from a bath. They’re actually vesicles, which are bubbles that have water trapped between two layers of skin—the epidermis and the dermis. You might think this happens because your body is absorbing liquid, but it’s actually a mechanism your body does in order to be able to grip on things in wet conditions. Pretty cool. But this relates to your health.
These vesicles will burst eventually, and that will expose your fresh skin to the outside world, which makes you more susceptible to infection.
So if you’re taking an extended bath every day, you’ll likely have a lot of bodily fluids that have been trapped in those vesicles and you’ll then have a lot of new skin that’s being exposed. Cue the infections.
But that’s not all. Sitting still for consecutively long chunks of time can be detrimental to your health as well. It could result in sores, atrophy, or even blood clots.
Never knew a long bath could be so dangerous, did you? Maybe cut down on bath time and save it for those special occasions.
