People have been conditioned to believe it is best to be as clean as possible, and that, to achieve such cleanliness, they must lather up in the shower. Both are wrong.
Do You Need Lather to Get Clean?
Soap lathers because of the way its molecules interact with water and air. Soap molecules have a love-hate relationship with water. When agitation occurs, such as the rubbing of hands or sponging the skin, air is trapped by the water-hating side and forms a bubble. A mass of bubbles is what gives products lather or foam.
Erica Halliwell, the entrepreneur and co-founder of Sans Savon, a line of soap-free oil-based cleansers for hands and body, explains that the lather created from soap and water has no real purpose. It isn’t cleaning. It only helps spread the soap over surfaces to make it easier to see where it is being applied. While some may find this foamy guide helpful, it isn’t harmless.
How Does Soap Clean?
As well as loving (and hating) water, the mighty soap molecule is also fat-loving (or lipophilic). This is how soap cleans your skin (and your dishes, cars, and floor). The fat-loving side grabs onto oily, dirty, or grimy skin so effectively that when you rinse, everything on the surface of your skin gets lifted away. Not only the dirt, grime, and germs that you want to remove, but also the oils and moisture that skin needs to be healthy and function well.
When you strip your skin of its natural oils, it can feel tight, dry, and itchy. Over 70% of adults identify as having sensitive skin, and the Sans Savon team believes this is because people are overcleaning their skin by stripping it and breaking down the skin’s protective barrier.
Soap, and anything that lathers or foams, is doing too good a job.
There are other ways to clean without stripping, and although it may seem counterintuitive, the solution is to clean with oil.
The Skin Barrier
Skin has a moisture barrier, which is essential for protecting against environmental stressors like pollution and bacteria. The pH of soap is alkaline, and this goes for even the gentlest of soaps. Skin is acidic, and this mismatch upsets the skin’s balance, leading to a breakdown of the skin barrier.
With the oil-based cleansers Erica developed at Sans Savon, the formulas clean just effectively enough, removing dirt, grime, and 99% of dangerous bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella. However, the cleansing agents aren’t “strong” enough to remove the skin’s natural oil. Added to the formulas are humectants, which add moisture to the skin, and oils, which seal the moisture in. Finally, Erica shared that their formulas include prebiotics, which feed the skin’s microbiome, further enhancing the skin’s health.
Switching from soap to oil-based cleansers results in skin that is clean yet soft and supple. Sans Savon’s growing community of soap-shunners will never experience the tight, dry feeling that occurs as a consequence of washing with soap. In fact, many customers report back to Sans Savon that they also end up using far less moisturizer because their skin no longer needs it.
The bottom line is that you don’t need lather to get clean. When evaluating which soapless cleansers to choose, be sure to read the ingredients. Many “gentle” soaps and cleansers claim to be soapless and yet have detergents in the first few ingredients. As a simple rule of thumb, if it suds, it strips. Truly soapless cleansers won’t foam at all, and the best will leave your skin feeling protected and moisturized.
Sans Savon’s Starter Set ($90) is the perfect introduction to soap-free cleansing and currently offers a 30% saving with a free body brush (worth $15) and free body bar (worth $25).
