OUCH! Are Your Fingertips Cracking? It Might Be Pandemic Related
Then a week or so later, I noticed a similar cut on my thumb, but this time I hadn't been in proximity to knives. Because they are on my fingertips, these little cuts hurt like hell, especially when I get hand sanitizer—a.k.a cut finder—in there.
The same thing has happened to a number of my friends, and it turns out that we are victims of skin fissures. They are caused by dry skin, and are especially common on fingertips because the skin there is less elastic than elsewhere. From what I've been able to learn, the dryness could be caused by atopic dermatitis (eczema) but might also be due to less dramatic causes.
Since this just started happening over the past year, I wondered if it could be pandemic related. I wanted to ask a dermatologist at University of Arizona about it for this post. Unfortunately, people at the College of Medicine won't talk to outlets whose ownership is not public.
Well yeah, you just can't be too careful. This is a very controversial topic! I could be a shill who is secretly bankrolled by dark money from Big Moisturizer or something.
So, I will have to piece this together myself. With the caveat that I'm not a dermatologist and I could be wrong about this, I will boldly argue that there is a good chance that these fissures are related to the excessive hand washing and hand sanitizing we have all being doing over the last year.
Above, I established that skin fissures are caused by dry skin. Step two is to show that hand washing and alcohol-based hand sanitizers cause dry skin.
Turns out there is a study for that. It says "[e]ach hand wash detrimentally alters the water-lipid layer of the superficial skin, resulting in a loss of various protective agents such as amino acids and antimicrobial protective factors." This leads to "irritative contact dermatitis" and dryness. It says alcohol-based hand sanitizers do the same thing. But if they are "well-formulated" and contain emollients, they are not as bad as soap.
It also says hand sanitizers are better than soap and water for killing germs on your skin. This is not what I thought and it makes me wonder why the CDC recommends hand sanitizer only when you can't wash.
But I digress. Fissures are caused by dry skin, dry skin can be caused by washing/moisturizers, ergo fissures can be caused by washing/moisturizers. Q.E.D.
What can you do about it?
Moisturize! A Wirecutter article quotes two dermatologists on the importance of applying moisturizers, including on fingertips, after washing/sanitizing. The best things to use are ointments containing "occlusives, thick oils that trap existing moisture in the skin like a glove."
If you're like me, you don't want to walk around with a coating of thick oil on your hands all day. Think of what that would do to your keyboard, or phone, or pet. The risk of dropped coffee cups is enormous. Nobody would want to be behind you at the store and have to use the same credit card machine. You might be unable to twist doorknobs and become trapped in your house. You could lose your grip on the steering wheel and die in a crash.
You can try moisturizing creams but, according to the article, they are not as effective. Another strategy is to try the occlusives when you won't be awake to be bothered by greasy hands.
Vaseline recommends applying their product to your hands before bed, then putting on a pair of white cotton gloves. A variation on that theme I saw (in a link that I can no longer find) is to soak your hands in warm water for a few minutes, then pat them dry before applying the Vaseline and gloves.
Image by Corona-zona
