Thread: a medical reason for a pre-shave prep of a "lather and rinse" with soap and water

A simple lather and rinse with regular soap serves as my face prep. Washing with soap reduces the number of bacteria on the skin, although it can't "sterilize" the skin. (reference below for a hand washing experiment) Theoretically, that should decrease the chance of redness and irritation caused by bacteria getting into small breaks in the skin. Lathering with shaving soap and shaving without first rinsing-off don't do the trick, because the bacteria are still in the lather until rinsed away. After the initial lather and rinse, the switch to shaving soap gets me the shave performance I want, on a cleaner face.

Shaving after showering would accomplish the same thing, I suppose.

I gave this advice to the concerned mother of a young person plagued with bumps and redness after DE shaving. A simple soap wash and rinse, followed by a standard DE shave did the trick.

I use an olive oil based soap with lavender essential oil which purportedly has some antibacterial effect. The soap and water prep seems to work whether or not I use lavender soap, which I choose for its fragrance.

Reference:

M. Burton, E. Cobb et al,
The Effect of Handwashing with Water or Soap on Bacterial Contamination of Hands

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011 Jan; 8(1): 97–104.

Published online 2011 Jan 6. doi: 10.3390/ijerph8010097

I believe you are correct, pre washing does remove a lot of bacteria, it is my practice before shaving.
After an back operation and the resulting infection that nearly killed me it is clear that bacteria can take a man down in a hurry and antibiotics are less effective than ever.

After reading that article, I think I'll go wash my hands again...

I do agree that washing your face before hand helps, otherwise you are spreading the stuff around your face and possible into open cuts.

hang on,
there is nothing to suggest that bacteria are the cause of redness post shave!
perhaps the pre shave prep worked in other ways such as lubrication or whisker softening.

I'm not sure I want sterile skin! Bugs are part of the normal skin carpet and environment, and not necessarily nasty things.

Yes but you aren't using a disinfectant. I would agree the world, thanks to hype marketing, has gone stupid for disinfectant products and the world is a worse place for it. Plain soap on the other hand is excellent and should be used regularly to prevent illness/infection.

Soap doesn't actually kill bugs, all it does is make it easy to wash/wipe them off. Simply using a regular soap pre-shave, and properly drying your face (drying is key) "removes" many bacteria but certainly does not sterilize.

Originally Posted by Damo

hang on,
there is nothing to suggest that bacteria are the cause of redness post shave! ...

I'm not sure I want sterile skin! Bugs are part of the normal skin carpet and environment, and not necessarily nasty things.

Damo, you make an excellent point that skin needs some bacteria to be healthy. Certainly, we do not want sterile skin. Most redness after shaving is probably just irritation, not infection. The medical term for that is irritant contact dermatitis.

Some redness after shaving is infection. That is actually a well proven consequence of shaving. From the NY Times, citing a study in Lancet, a medical journal:

"""
On June 11, [1983] the editors of The Lancet called on surgeons to stop shaving patients because it is dangerous. They cited evidence that skin damage from preoperative shaving leads to increased rates of infection after surgery.

Studies with scanning electron microscopes show that a razor shave by even skilled hands produces nicks, invisible to the naked eye, that can provide entry points for microorganisms, providing a focus of infection that may begin before the incision is made. Even electric razors can do the same. Intact skin acts as a mechanical barrier to the entry of such germs.

The timing of the shaving affects the wound infection rate. When shaving was done immediately before surgery, the infection rate was 3.1 percent. Shaving 24 hours or more before surgery raised the infection rate to more than 20 percent in one study, probably because infections had time to get started in the nicks and scratches and presumably then spread at the time of surgery.
"""

I'm not suggesting that skin be sterilized. Good old soap and water does the trick by reducing the number of bacteria, without completely eliminating them. The risk of infection goes down. SOME cases of redness will be avoided. That is all I am saying.

The researcher in me wants to dig into medical journals and find 5 journal articles that refute the one or two article posted - because they are most certainly there. For every medical journal article published, there are three more that refute it. It doesn't mean it's not valid it simply means that medicine is not an exact science. I think making a conclusion that some cases of redness from shaving might be mitigated by soap and water if the redness is caused by bacteria - is a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Unfortunately, it's not actually supported by any of the research cited. It could have been done - but that wasn't the research question going into the study and therefore the research method didn't include variables and metrics to answer that question. Again - it's certainly a reasonable conclusion and one with which I probably agree (as stated in your last post boshave) - but the scientific reality is that the conclusion is empirically unsupported from a pure research perspective - given the research cited.

..and no - I don't have time to dig into the medical journals. It's a black hole for a researcher with far too much research of his own to conduct...

Adam

I won't argue the point about a pre shave lather and rinse with soap and water may reduce the bacteria count on skin and possibly some redness/irritation. OTH if you uses an AS with alcohol, alum block or witch hazel post shave I'd bet they would do a similar job of lowering the bacteria count just as well.

Bob

Thank you all for the useful replies.

I agree that the matter hasn't been scientifically tested, and that the articles I mentioned addressed the questions, "can shaving lead to bacterial infection?" and "does soap and water decrease the number of bacteria on the skin?" not specifically whether soap and water lessens the risk of redness after shaving. No settled science here, and no double blind controlled study in the offing, which would be kind of hard to do. My (empirical and wholly unscientific) personal experience is that some cases of redness from shaving can be mitigated by a soap and water pre-shave regimen consisting of one lather and rinse before shaving. I have seen others benefit from that advice, using basic soaps without antiseptic. That's the reason I posted that prep in this forum, just as a suggestion.

I hoped it might be useful to some.

BobH's point about AS with alcohol, alum or witch hazel lowering bacteria counts makes perfect sense,as well. That may well be one reason why after-shaves have such a long history and loyal following. They bring much more than just a favorite fragrance to the table, er .. sink.

This has been an interesting proposition. I have been straight razor shaving for something close to 40 years and to date I have never had an infection while in the beginning I managed to accumulate quite a few nicks at the beginning. Even now, after all that time, I manage to get at least one nick per month or so. However, I do like the concept of pre-washing ones face, at least with the hottest water tolerable prior to the shave. My thought is not necessarily to reduce bacteria, but to ready the face better for shaving.