Whether you shower at night or in the morning, hygiene is important. However, a dermatologist recently warned that many people could actually be showering wrong by ignoring body parts that need washing the most. Dr. Lindsey Zubritsky pointed out areas that you need to be washing if you’re not already, including behind your ears, your belly button, under your fingernails, your feet, the back of your neck, and your elbows. Dry and flaky skin can easily build up behind your ears, which is why that area should be cleaned every time you shower. We all know that the belly button is a perfect “lint trap,” and when dirt and debris builds up there, you can actually develop a naval stone. While they’re not painful, they can smell awful. Always use a washcloth to clean out your belly button when you shower. While it might seem like your fingernails get clean enough in the showering process, that’s actually not true. Scrubbing underneath your fingernails with a nail brush will get rid of the dirt and bacteria that cause bacterial infections and harbor MRSA. The number one place Dr. Zubritsky recommends cleaning regularly is your feet. That’s because they are one of the dirtiest places on your body. If you don’t clean between your toes, you could wind up with a staph or fungal infection. People typically forget about the back of the neck, mainly because it’s not in view. However, this is a warm, moist area that hair tends to sit on and is prone to dirty patches. Finally, elbows are often neglected when they shouldn’t be. Elbows are constantly resting on dirty surfaces all day and tend to look darker and drier because of dead skin cell build-up. So, the next time you shower, make sure you hit all the crucial areas to ward off any health issues.
