r. Jared Ross is a shower fanatic. The temperature where he lives in Charleston, S.
C., recently reached the steamy triple-digits—and he coped by hopping under a nice, cool deluge of water four times a day. Even when it’s milder outside, showering is “the first thing I do when I wake up, and the last thing I do before I get into my PJs at night,” says Ross, 39, an emergency medicine physician.
He also jumps in after working out or swimming in a pool or the ocean. “There’s a certain zen and relaxation to taking a shower,” he says. “And a sense of being clean that’s refreshing and therapeutic, especially if I'm going to throw on fresh clothing.
” Ross makes it a point to shower quickly—3 to 5 minutes typically does the trick—so he doesn’t waste water. But what about the health effects? We asked dermatologists if there’s such a thing as showering too much—or too little. Almost everyone showers.
Yet we all have different tolerance levels—and exactly someone showers can be more important than how often they do it, says Dr. Jules Lipoff, a dermatologist in Philadelphia who teaches at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. “People who have a tendency to have dry skin or eczema are not going to tolerate excessive washing that well,” he says.
“Whereas for most people, [showering more than once a day] would be no issue.” The skin has many different layers, Lipoff explains, and generally absorbs a certain amount of water, retains most .
