It’s easy to convince yourself that all the soap and shampoo cascading down your legs is enough to clean your feet when you’re rushing blearily through your morning shower. But is that really true? Chemist and former Dollar Shave Club product wiz, Fadi Mourad, took us through the science of how soap works to find out the truth.
“Scientifically speaking, soap has a negative charge, while oil, dirt and any other gunk that may be crawling on your feet have a positive charge. Opposite charges attract, so the soap grabs onto all that nastiness and carries it down the drain when you rinse off,” Mourad explained. In simpler terms, soap is essentially a magnet that grabs ahold of everything slimy, slithery and mucky. So that means the soapy runoff from your upper body should keep your feet clean, right?
Bad news — not according to Mourad: “You can’t expect soapy water that’s just running over the skin to do a good job of cleaning — you really need to massage the soap into the skin for it to bind with the oils and gunk.” Why? Because while soap does latch onto grime that it comes in contact with, the act of scrubbing (and mixing together all that filth, soap and water) is what actually removes the now soap-coated crud from the skin.
So if you haven’t given your feet a strong, soapy massage in a while, you might want to consider making up for time lost. But don’t worry, we got you. *fist (or maybe foot?) bump*