This is from one of my Isypedia-type replies to someone with a dreadful case of clostridium difficile (commonly known as c.diff) who had been told to use antibacterial soap to wash.
NB: This is not an opportunity to argue about antibacterial soap, but a sharing of experience from someone who was on the front lines of the “soap revolution” over a quarter of a century ago.
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A word from an old nurse on this question, one with leaky gut, bouts of multi-system candidiasis, and assorted other gut issues, as well as c. diff …
About c. diff
C. diff is common in hospitals and is an opportunistic infection. (Doctors carry it from bed to bed on their white coats, and few of them even wash the darn things more than once a month. This is disgusting.) Once it’s in you, it hibernates, and comes out in flares periodically, usually when you’re stressed out or when your immune system is down. There’s no question of curing it, but of suppressing it and managing outbreaks.
Healthy gut flora are the first, best line of defense. They simply crowd it out and leave no room for it to grow. A normally healthy person might do fine with eating yogurt, but those of us with chronic or profound illnesses usually can’t meet their needs this way. We need the big guns because our gut flora are likely to be very weak,very few, or both.
There are some great probiotics out there. Good brands are pretty numerous. They include Jarrow, Garden of Life/RAW Vitamin Code (my personal favorite), and Ortho Molecular Products. I use the RAW Vitamin Code 5-day Intensive product for 2 weeks at a time, when I need to reboot my gut. Recently, I had candidiasis and c.diff flare up simultaneously, so I’m using the Ortho Molecular Pro Biotic 225 (tastes weird, so I mix with juice to cut the funk) for 2 weeks and then I’ll do a round of the RAW Intensive (which has a much broader spectrum of organisms, something my body really needs for maintenance — the longer a person has CRPS, the fewer gut species that person has, oddly enough) for 10 days or so.
I get these products on Amazon or at Vitacost.com, where they can usually be found at near-wholesale prices.
About the social and practical aspects of soap
Men have trouble with soap. (I’ve had to teach males of every age to wash their hands for dressing changes or eye care, so yes, I can confirm it absolutely.)
It doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of using it well, any more than women are incapable of lifting weights; they just have to put a little more effort into it, but almost all of them are capable of becoming very capable.
No, really, it’s true. They can. They just have to put a bit more work into it.
Where possible, many men would much rather have a toxin or tool to do the cleaning job for them — hence sonic cleaners and autoclaves for equipment, and benzalkonium chloride or alcohol cleaners for the skin of male responders and providers.
These aren’t as good as soap and water. Notably, alcohol cleaners, which are widely used in hospitals and do kill many germs, don’t even touch c.diff — a peculiarly hospital-based pathogen.
These products are considered good enough, and are certainly a great deal better than nothing at all.
If men (at least, US men) have to use soap, though, it seems easier for them to think about if it’s a tool-ish sort of soap — Gojo (by every mechanic’s sink, next to a fossilized bar), Lava soap (which feels like dirt and has powdered rocks in it), or antibacterial soap (which sounds medical, and therefore like a specialized tool.)
That’s a lot of needless expense. Also, and more importantly for the purposes of this blog, it’s becoming clearer that there are toxicity issues with antibacterial soaps which affect men as much as women and children.
How to clean your skin so well at home, only a surgical scrub could be better
Whatever body part you’re washing, whether it’s hands or what the medical profession delicately refers to as the “peri area” (Latinists, look away from that) and what most Americans call “the crotch”, there is a very simple way to get as clean as you can, short of a surgical prep.
Here’s the magic:
- 20 seconds by the clock (you’d be amazed how long that really is) with regular hand or body soap,
- On your hands, from nails to wrist; Between your legs, from front to back; In both cases, right through all the crevices and any wobbly bits,
- Then rinsing well afterwards,
This process will get you as clean as, or cleaner than, any amount of antibacterial soap, without the side effects. That’s what the independent science says, over and over, plain and simple.
The problem is, of course, that most people (especially men) have trouble spending that much time with soap and water.
Personally, I do a quick pass with soap to get the worst of the stinkies off, and then do a second and sometimes a third pass, front to back. I do this every time I shower, and when I’m too sick to shower but can still stand up at the sink to wash. It adds up to 20 seconds, usually closer to 30. My nurse’s nose finds my sick-body smells distressing, so I like to clean them off completely.
When I’m really not up to washing well for at least 5 days out of the week, that’s when the troubles start. Usually, diet and hygiene keeps my gut content, but I recently got a virus and then a long pain-flare and that put me down for over a week of very little proper washing — plus, of course, diminished immunity. That’s probably what led to the multiple gut flares. (They’re much better now, thank you.)
Making the right choice for you
Bottom line is this… IF you can trust yourself to really clean yourself properly, which means 20 seconds of soap (in 1, 2, or 3 increments at a time, as long as it’s 20 seconds total), then ordinary, nontoxic soap is just fine.
If you can’t trust yourself to do that, then yes, you need the extra killing effect that the antibiotic soap can have on pathogens, and will have to risk the consequences.
For triclosan and its relatives, this includes muscle wasting, dose-dependent (the more you use it, the worse it gets); for most others, it includes moodiness, suppressed immunity, more skin issues, and all the stuff that goes with endocrine disruption — possible neurological issues like pins-&-needles and faulty neuro, endocrine, and hormonal responses. (You have to watch the medical science closely to find some of those things, because they rarely make it into the mainstream press. Bad for business.)
And that, ladies and germymen, is the lowdown on how to choose soap.
Hope it helps!