5 reasons why you should say goodbye to hand sanitizers!

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Chances are that you swear by hand-sanitizers if you are a neat freak! It seems like the easiest way to clean your hands if you don't have immediate access to soap and water.

But let's break the bad news for you that a hand sanitizer is just not healthy for your skin. Let us enumerate the top 5 reasons:

• Most sanitizers are alcohol-based, and alcohol though kills germs is a skin irritant, which disrupts your natural oil production causing both dry and flaky skin. If you are an avid hand sanitizer user, you will notice that the skin on your hands always seems dry which makes it prone to wrinkles thus making them age more rapidly.
• Other hand sanitizers which don’t have alcohol content use triclosan instead. Triclosan is an anti bacterial and anti fungal agent but it can lead to the development of superbugs which are essentially diseases that have developed a resistance to traditional antibiotics. Triclosan is capable of quickly being absorbed into the skin and once it enters the blood stream, can cause various side effects like cancer, allergies, hormonal problems, infertility and muscle weakness.
• It has recently been found out that hand sanitizer increases your absorption of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that messes with the body's endocrine system.
• Synthetic fragrances present in sanitizers, such as phthalates can cause abnormalities in hormone production if used frequently.
• Certain hand sanitizers besides killing off microbes can also remove naturally produced oils and beneficial bacteria present on your skin, which, ironically, reduces your body’s defenses against disease.