I suppose this is a bit of a PSA on why you shouldn’t start taking bleach baths at home. You’ve like heard about the recent study demonstrating that regular old bleach diluted in a bath helped to improve the skin of aging mice (Stanford School of Medicine). Similar baths have been used to treat skin disorders like eczema with success, which is what turned the researchers on to investigating bleach (Australian Journal of Dermatology).
But that doesn’t mean that you should start hopping into bleach baths. There are a few reasons for that, chief among them that this data is new, and that means we need way more tests before you’re stealing products from your laundry room. Does this mean that bleach will never, ever be useful in skin care? No, but it does mean that the basic facts about bleach make us uneasy about using it on your skin.
For those who look for all-natural solutions, keep in mind that bleach is a solid 100% concentration of a chemical compound, sodium hypochlorite. Bleach is a chemical. Some of you might read that and think, “Well, duh.” But the truth is that “chemical” has become a dirty word we often use to describe ingredients and substances that seem foreign to us. There’s a sort of cognitive dissonance that sometimes makes us forget that baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, and bleach is sodium hypochlorite, and these things are chemicals that can be useful or harmful depending on how they’re used. This isn’t to make anyone afraid, this is to remind you that even household ingredient that your mother’s mother used can do damage when used improperly.
The Facts on Bleach and Anti-Aging
The authors of the study were interested in the inflammatory part of many common skin issues like eczema and radiation dermatitis. The researchers believed that bleach could treat these disorders. They surmised that bleach baths reduced levels of NF-kB, a compound responsible for inflammation associated with eczema and radiation dermatitis at the cellular level, and so perhaps bathing with bleach could also reduce levels of eczema and dermatitis flare-ups.
Getting into it further, for the ultra-scientific (if you’re not, scroll down to “Why You Don’t Want to Start Bleach Baths Yet”): When the cells in the body are damaged, the immune system sends cells to respond and prevent infection. But inflammatory responses can become harmful when they get out of control. One of the pivotal components in inflammation, aging, and radiation reaction is the nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells, or NF-kB, so researchers focused there.
NF-kB works by entering the nucleus of a cell and binding to the DNA so that it’s able to control gene expression. Leung’s team found that dilute bleach baths (0.005% bleach) caused the oxidation of a crucial activator that doesn’t allow NF-kB to enter the necleus of a cell. It also inhibited the expression of two genes that NF-kB controls. Essentially, bleach stopped this important molecule in inflammatory reactions from doing its job, which can help to curb the damage from an immune system overreaction.
The NF-kB molecule is one that’s been discovered to be the primary molecule involved in inflammation-based aging. Essentially, the immune system undergoes changes as we age, and those changes result in more NF-kB activity, which causes DNA damage and cellular aging (Ageing Research Reviews). One of the ways it ages the skin is by stimulating matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which degrade collagen and elastin, causing the skin to age (Letters to Nature). Researchers have found that inhibiting NF-kB can help to delay age-related changes (The Journal of Clinical Investigation).
In the case of bleach baths, which showed promising results in studies on human skin cells and mice, the inhibiting effect was temporary. Within 24 hours, NF-kB was no longer inhibited, and without regular baths, signs of aging began to return.
If Bleach Reduces NF-kB Too Much, This Could Be an Issue
Bleach lowers NF-KB levels. Since high NF-kB levels are associated with eczema and dermatitis, lowering NF-kB could only do good, right?
Wrong.
While NF-kB can promote certain cancers, it can also inhibit others, meaning that a huge decrease in NF-kB could potentially lead to certain kinds of cancer (Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology). In addition to certain kinds of cancer, NF-kB dysregulation can also lead to various autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammatory syndromes. Even though NF-kB and other inflammatory cytokines can be crucial factors in the aging process, cutting them out completely might cause widespread dysregulation within the body, and hence different forms of cancer (Nature Immunology). So, basically, you definitely don’t want to inhibit NF-kB completely. Think of NF-kB as that dangerous bad boy you used to date in high school — yes, he caused you trouble, but if you let him go before you were ready, that would have caused pain as well. Lowering NF-kB properly is complex.
Bleach Baths Might Irritate Your Skin
It’s pure sodium hypochlorite solution, mixed with water. Alone, bleach has a pH of 12.6, which is incredibly alkaline. For reference, “neutral” is 7, and the pH scale goes up to 14. Your skin, which has a pH somewhere between 4.5 and 6.5, is slightly acidic and protected by what’s called the “acid mantle” (Exogenus Dermatology). So, ideally, you want to use products that have a neutral or slightly acidic pH. Using very alkaline products can irritate the skin. Using very alkaline products repeatedly will result in cumulative damage, and that’s a documented fact (Dermatology). And while it’s true that diluting bleach with water will cut that pH by quite a bit, when you get to one part bleach for every 100 parts water, are you really getting the benefits of using bleach in the first place?
One of the reasons you don’t want to start a bleach bath is that we don’t know the effects of prolonged down-regulation of NF-kB in the way that bleach does it. It’s important to see what long-term studies and studies on humans show.
Bottom Line
It’s really interesting and promising that researchers have discovered that bleach’s ability to inhibit NF-kB could lead to beneficial anti-aging care. Diluted bleach baths are already being used to treat other skin ailments. But don’t go hopping in a bleach bath just yet. This research is preliminary and hasn’t been tested on humans yet, so it’s important to wait until we know more about it’s impact — and potential downsides — before trying it out. And, since bleach is a chemical and a very alkaline one at that, it would be important to use it in the care of a board-certified dermatologist in exactly the way they prescribe.