Flora on your skin? Repeat after me. Acid outside, Alkaline inside.

The latest New Scientist has a piece on skin flora. Of course the majority of us are such healthy critters that we probably have very little skin flora because we use alkaline soaps to kill them and gallons of precious water to wash it off after we kill them.

But is this how we should do it? Is it really best for our skin?

Our skin has a naturally acid mantle, and so washing it off with alkaline soap is.. well... dumb. The purpose of the acid mantle is to create an environment in which flora flourish. The purpose of the flora (friendly bacteria) is to eat incoming nasty bacteria. Take a look at the back of your hand. It's a battle royal down there!

That's why the Atopia shower head is such a good idea. It converts alkaline tap water to acidic water, leaving your skin at the right pH to support the good bugs.

We have been brainwashed into thinking that constant washing is good. The body has been protecting itself for thousands of years and it makes sense to support its proven methods of germ control rather than eliminate them on a daily basis in the shower.

When we really 'click' that we should be alkaline balanced within and acid balanced on the outside, we begin to see the marvel of the body's master plan, including using acidic sweat as a way of maintaining our precious acid mantle skin defence system.

The New Scientist article refers to a claim by a shampoo that it supplies friendly flora. Here's what they said:

My new shower gel proclaims: "New! Stimulates skin flora." Is there any benefit in this?

It sounds like advertising hype to me. Your "normal" flora don't need any extra nutrition if your skin is in a generally healthy condition. Each distinct zone of healthy skin has its own stable, dominant flora and meddling with it is risky.

The ideal flora for each zone form an even, adherent coating of a particular combination of strains that perform all sorts of different functions, such as tuning your personal and family varieties of body odour. It also crowds out or repels rival strains that might threaten your health. Over large areas of skin your normal beneficial flora form what amounts to a protective non-stick coating.

Growing too vigorously does no good because overcrowding might cause them either to harm your skin or flake off, leaving footholds for alien pathogens. Furthermore, in microbial ecology one of the most important competitive weapons is the denial of food to rivals. Leukocytes in pus, for example, inhibit germs partly by absorbing iron, and therefore denying it to invasive bacteria and fungi. If your shower gel supplies excess nutrients to your skin, that surplus might fuel an alien invasion."

New Scientist article here