By now we all know that the best and easiest way to prevent coronavirus (as well as the common cold and the flu) is by washing our hands and using hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available.

With all that hand washing (which, really, we should have been doing all along), there may be an uncomfortable side-effect: dry hands. People who have hands that are very dry with cracked skin (that might even be bleeding) are more likely to skip washing their hands. Why? Because washing dry hands hurts and causes the skin to become even drier.

According to Dr. Justin Ko, chief of medical dermatology at Stanford Health Care, while washing your hands removes germs and dirt, it also removes natural oils from your skin. “Because you caused so much irritation, your hands get dry, cracked and raw.”

Don’t skip washing your hands! Instead, we have a few tips to help you keep your hands moisturized so they can handle all of this hand washing.

First, use a moisturizing soap if possible. That way you’ll be preventing your hands from drying out while you’re actually washing them. Also, skip scented soap and hand sanitizer. The fragrance ingredients can be even more drying.

Second, put moisturizer on your hands. That doesn’t mean you need to run out and buy some expensive lotion. All you need is something hydrating like Aquaphor Healing Ointment or even Vaseline.

Dr. Mary Stevenson, assistant professor of dermatology at NYU Langone Health, recommends moisturizing your hands immediately after washing them. 

Preeti Malani, chief health officer at the University of Michigan offers the following advice:

“At bedtime, put on some good-quality, inexpensive, effective moisturizer. If your skin is becoming raw and dry, you might be washing your hands too much.”

We recommend buying everyone in your home their own moisturizer instead of sharing one bottle. There was an instance where a nurse with nail fungus shared lotion with patients at a hospital, and the nail fungus spread to the patients. Yikes!

Christina Johns, senior medical adviser for PM Pediatrics also says that it’s important to use clean hands when applying the moisturizer and to touch the bottle or tube as little as possible. “Fewer things coming into contact is best practice in general, in terms of minimizing germs and microbes.”

Excuse us while we go buy moisturizer before stores run out of that too.