Here’s the decades old question… bar soap or liquid soap?

I was once told that the fact that a bar is in ‘bar form’ means that it contains more harsh and drying chemicals than liquid soaps in bottles.   This is pertinent information to a medical esthetician working alongside cosmetic and general dermatologists.  More so than the fact that it may harbor more bacteria than liquids.  However, I should not have been so naive in my younger 😉 days and should have demanded proof before allowing my beliefs to be so easily swayed by a little piece of information, with no backing to such a statement.  Have you ever marveled at ALL of the harsh, synthetic, drying ingredients on the back of a liquid soap bottle?  Or, any bottle?  Or bar of soap?  I have.  Quite recently!  It’s disturbing and a rude awakening, every time.  I’m still marveling, over the fact that Dove Sensitive skin ‘beauty bar’ contains tallow, which comes from fatty acids in cattle and sheep.  Vegetable and plant oils, I’m sorry, “extracts” aren’t enough, I guess.

I’m really not surprised that my daughter’s first pediatrician ‘who had been doing this longer than I had been alive’ told me to use this sensitive skin dove bar on my baby girl who was not even eight months old at the time and who was and is severely allergic to cow protein.  No wonder she was more itchy and her eczema FLARED!  [I always questioned product ingredients and product integrity when I wasn’t supposed to worry about such things.  But, I was supposed to accept the good with the bad and be objective about that]- .  My baby’s former pediatrician is no different from, let’s call them ‘people’, I previously worked for whose over the counter skin care recommendations came from whatever sample skin care product:  body bar, anti-dandruff shampoo, sunscreen, face or body lotion…you get the idea, they had in their sample closet.  Unless you work(ed) in a doctor’s office, you don’t know that these skin care sample products are donated by drug company representatives who provide the entire staff gourmet catered lunches (and lovely paperweights) in exchange for merely two minutes of the doctor’s time-because a 2 minute briefing of their NEWLY FORMULATED, BETTER ABSORBING, MICRO-FINE INGREDIENT with PATENT-PENDING TECHNOLOGY product now gives an almost guarantee that their product will be given out to patients and recommended on the patient home care regimen handout to making the rep’s projected monthly sales goal almost more tangible; all while the patients’ skin care woes disappear.  Have I strayed off topic?  Not yet, there is a point.  And here it is.

My baby’s pediatrician had no clue what was and still is in that little dove beauty bar that HE RECOMMENDED I use on my baby girl who has/had severe food allergies to wash her skin daily and nightly! because she has such reactive skin, and it’s gentle.    It’s not as gentle as the label says!  And, the doctor hadn’t the slightest clue that he was telling me to apply an ingredient from his said product that causes the most allergic contact dermatitis from her list of food allergies.  I had no choice but to go organic for her and her poor itchy skin’s sake.

So, my first point (I have many), just because the product recommendation comes from a doctor (especially a prescription, sorry, Doc) does not mean the product will heal, help heal, or prevent a chronic skin condition.  Most common:  eczema, itching, redness, bumps, hives, flaking, tightness, burning, stinging (these are all possible categories of a sensitive skin condition).  Okay, I promise to stay on topic as the title states.  What does all of this have to do with liquid vs bar soaps?  ALL of the over the counter brands are virtually the same manufacturing company.  Huh?  Dove is made from Unilever.  Lever is made from Unilever.  Dove and Lever are made under the same manufacturing plant umbrella.  Think Dove is SO much more moisturizing due to the 1/4  moisturizing cream than the Lever Body Bar?  I scoured over the ingredients, just trying to invent a moisturizing ingredient that accounts for that 1/4  part cream, eventually my mind went…b l a n k.  I couldn’t find it, and I study ingredients.  Labels are more or less useless.  We must all learn to read the ingredient list.  Ingredients don’t lie – Labels do.  Stay with me, this is where it gets GOOD.  An article from Daily Finance confirmed from a product formulator at Proctor & Gamble (Makers of Olay, Pampers, and tons (I forget the exact number but it’s a LOT) of household products that we all love and use) actually admitted that body washes net P&G 30-50% more $$$ than bar soaps!  WOW, how very honest!  And body washes now account for more than 70% of the entire bath market, that’s some phenomenal billion dollar advertising on their part, it paid off, literally!  Additionally, a NY Times study conveyed that bar soaps do NOT harbor enough bacteria to cause sickness or ill-health, especially when rinsed off after use.  Of course  bars are cheaper to make; they are not the company’s top producer – between the two, body washes are.  P & G product formulator stated that skin-improving ingredients can be added to liquid lotions but NOT bars.  I don’t believe that.

First, a true ‘skin-improving’ ingredient can only be called a drug, that’s why there is separation between prescription drugs and the cosmetics (skin enhancing) industry, and why every single over the counter, yes, department stores, too) skin care and makeup company has to get us ‘oohed and ahhed’ over their advertising, usually falsely displayed, to get us to buy their product instead of a prescription.

Second, it’s a body WASH.  Not, a SERUM.  Body washes and skin cleansers, can only cleanse the surface of the skin.  You can apply water to dehydrated skin and immediately on the surface the skin ‘appears’ improved.  But, has the skin itself been ‘improved’?  No.  The skin is improved when the lower layers, where a cleanser does not and cannot go where those lower layers of damage are repaired.  You can use a $60 cleanser, yep!  from France until you’re so cleansed you’re…blue, and be left with nothing but dehydrated skin and lost hope.  Even the nicest cleanser has detergents in it, and surfactants.  Cleansing and foaming agents give you that stripped, clean feeling (leads to tightness and dryness if it’s too cleaning for a sensitive or dryness-prone skin type).  Where else have you heard the word detergent?  Oh, I don’t know, laundry; all similar if not the exact same cleaning ingredients in our products.

Bar soaps and liquid soaps:  They both have high concentrations of unnecessary ingredients in them (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is incorporated into nearly 80% of all over the counter hair care and body care products, it is a known skin irritant and certain researchers label it as controversial) Too many surfactants and detergents which over time will dry out anybody’s skin- I ask, how much foam or cleaning soap does one really need?  And, what about the little skin-enhancing ingredients in a bottle of liquid wash, or that pretty ‘scent’?  The fragrance is artificially added and can irritate the skin over time and has not one ounce of skin improving quality in its little existence; and, the ‘skin enhancing!’ ingredients are negated by all of the harsh ones.  If you are to follow my opinion, I choose neither.  What a waste of even a couple of dollars.  I would rather ingredients be benefitting my skin 100%.  However, if you do not mind using what you’ve been using all of your life, go with the cheaper option, the bar because the body wash ingredients cannot even hold a bar of soap they are so lousy, no matter what the commercials and magazine ads say.  Just remove those bar suds with a loofah, sponge or wash cloth – they are known to leave residues on the skin and prevent other products such as moisturizers from appropriately absorbing into the skin.  If I have a change of heart because a mass producing bath or skin care line changes their ingredients (for the better) I will re-post, but until that day comes…

 

Wishing you an enlightened mind and healthy skin,

 

Melissa Armstrong,

Licensed Esthetician & Skincare Educator