How soap can not only just save skin but safeguard your health?

How soaps came into existence?

Practice of taking baths with soaps probably began with an accident thousands of years ago. As per a popular tale, rain washed the fat and ash from animal sacrifices into a nearby river, where they formed a lather which was found to be super-efficient in cleaning skin and clothes. Perhaps the inspiration had a vegetal origin in the frothy element made by boiling or mashing certain plants. However this was discovered, the ancient accidental or non-accidental production of soap changed human history. Although our ancestors could not have imagined it then, soap would ultimately become one of the most potent safety apparatus against invisible pathogens.

Soaps saving you from Corona and other diseases

Washing yourself with bath soap and water is one of the key public health practices which have been seen since one can imagine. In the current situation where people are panicking about Corona, soap can significantly cure the spread and limit the number of infections.

For keeping the skin gentle and soothing, soaps are a boon, but for the dirt, bacteria and other microorganisms, it is often a serial killer. One time wash with soap and water is sufficient to combat and kill many types of bacteria and viruses, including the new coronavirus that is currently creating havoc. The secret to soap’s potential is its hybrid structure.

Soap is made of pin-shaped molecules, each of which has a hydrophilic head — which immediately bonds with H2O — and a hydrophobic tail, which shuns water and prefers to link up with oils and fats. These bonds, when suspended in water, freely wander about as solitary units, bond with other molecules in the solution and unite themselves to form little bubbles called micelles, with heads pointing outward and tails tucked inside.

Few microorganisms are covered with lipid membranes that resemble double-layered micelles with two bands of hydrophobic tails stuck amidst 2 rings of hydrophilic heads. These layers are induced with essential proteins that let viruses infect cells and perform vital tasks which don’t let bacteria die. Pathogens wrapped in lipid membranes include coronaviruses, H.I.V., the viruses that cause Hepatitis B and C, Herpes, Ebola, Zika, Dengue, and numerous bacteria which harm the intestines and respiratory organs.

When you wash your body using the best bathing soap and water, you cover the microorganisms on your skin with soap molecules. The hydrophobic tails of the free-floating soap molecules try to evade water; simultaneously they squeeze themselves into the lipid envelopes of few bacteria and viruses, prying them apart.

“They act like crowbars and destabilize the whole system,” said Prof. Pall Thordarson, once a head of chemistry at the University of New South Wales. Necessary proteins escape the damaged membranes into the surrounding water, combating the bacteria and making the viruses dead and useless.

But will bathing with soap for a long time make the skin dry?

The more bubbles anybody wash or soap bar produces, the more it washes natural oils off your skin. The element in soap which creates the lather is known as surfactant. Surfactants are chemicals which attract oil and water and remove all of them from skin. So using organic handmade soap without chemicals is the best and safest option.