6 1GT Tuesday July 28 2020 | the times
bodyhealth&soul
Just what’s in this stuff
we squirt on our hands?
I
f you are slouching over your
computer, phone or newspaper
while reading this, then
shoulders back and listen up.
Physiotherapists now believe
that there is no such thing as
perfect posture when it comes to
averting back and shoulder pain,
but emerging evidence suggests that
the way we sit and stand can have a
meaningful effect on our mood and
self-confidence. And scientists
investigating the psychology of
posture say that it is tiny changes in
the way we carry ourselves as opposed
to the elaborate gestures of so-called
“power posing” — formidable stance,
arms out or hands on hips — that are
the most effective in making us feel
more alert and less fearful.
A decade ago power posing was
a hot topic. A study conducted at
Harvard Business School by Amy
Cuddy, a social psychologist, suggested
that our body language governed our
minds, and that people who adopted a
high-power stance felt more powerful
than their cross-legged, inward-
leaning “low power pose” counterparts.
Cuddy also proposed that expansive
and commanding postures went as far
as altering body chemistry, causing an
increase in confidence-boosting
testosterone and a downturn in
cortisol, the stress hormone. Her Ted
talk on power posing became the
second most popular to date and has
since amassed more than 58 million
views. Everyone seemed to be into it
— from politicians to athletes,
executives to interviewees — apart
from some of Cuddy’s fellow
psychologists, who picked holes in her
study and labelled it pseudoscientific.
Since then the idea that power
posing affects our hormones has
largely been rebuffed, but many
psychologists are now convinced that
our posture does indeed influence theSit up! You’ll
feel happier.
How posture
can improve
your mood
Stopping slouching
won’t cure a back
ache — but it will
affect your health,
says Peta Bee
way we feel and behave in some ways.
For a study to be published in the
September issue of the journal
Behaviour Research and Therapy,
Poppy Brown, a doctoral researcher in
psychiatry at the University of Oxford,
revisited the concept of power posing
to see if it helped to reduce feelings of
vulnerability in a group of 100 people
who had experienced paranoia.
“There is a scale of paranoia and it
builds on negative beliefs and feelings
of inferiority,” she says. “We wanted
to find out if powerful postures
helped these people feel less powerless
about themselves.”
To do this Brown asked the
participants to hold either a power
pose or a neutral pose for two minutes
before entering a virtual reality social
situation in which they would usually
feel self-conscious. Results showed no
difference in the outcome, suggesting
that posture had little effect on
overcoming paranoia. But when
Brown repeated the experiment on
50 people who did not experience
paranoid thoughts, the power poses
did make a difference.
“We found statistically significant, if
small, increases in feelings of power
among people who did the power
poses compared with those who
didn’t,” she says. “What we think might
be important for raising confidence is
not holding wide, expansive power
poses, but rather to avoid the small,
contractive postures, such as crossing
your hands or rounding your
shoulders, which seem to reduce
self-belief and self-assurance.”
It is not the first time researchers
have suggested that slouching affects
the way we feel. Elizabeth Broadbent,
a professor of health psychology at
the University of Auckland, has
looked extensively at the way posture
affects our psyche. “What the
literature is generally showing is that
having a contracted posture — that is
rounded shoulders and head down —
has negative effects on mood,”
Broadbent says. “So changing that
posture to be more upright can alter
how you feel, make you feel more alert
or less fearful.”
It is not just how we sit or stand, but
how we hold ourselves when we
move around that influences our
outlook. “When people walk with
their head tilted down, looking down,another common ingredient. “That’s
a humectant, which helps moisturise
the skin,” says Dr Deirdre Buckley
of the British Association of
Dermatologists. Glycerin serves
a similar purpose.
So far, nothing to worry about —
even if you are using the stuff
morning, noon and night.
The problem, however, is that
many contain far more than just a
simple alcohol and some filler or
moisturiser. “The No 1 concern for
me is the presence of fragrance. And
lots of them contain fragrance,”
Buckley says. “It’ll be listed as
‘parfum’ or might be listed as an
individual fragrance such as
limonene, which, as you might guess,
is a lemony scent. Or linalool, which
is sometimes derived from lavender,
and also found in lemongrass.”
In theory these are innocuous, but
as Buckley points out, a surprisingly
large number of people are allergic
to them. “We did an audit at the
British Society of Cutaneous Allergy
and we found that about 5 per cent
of our patients were allergic to
linalool, and about 3 per cent were
allergic to limonene,” she says.
To complicate
matters, linalool
only becomes an
allergen when
oxidised. When
it is added to
a product it
won’t harm
someone even
with very
sensitive skin.
But the longer
your hand
sanitiser has
been open, the
more likely it is to be harmful to
someone who is allergic to linalool.
“It usually causes very annoying
itching, redness and blistering to
those who are allergic,” Buckley says.
Coleman points out another
potential irritant: sodium lauryl
sulphate. “It’s used in a lot of
skincare products,” she says. “It’s a
bit like a foaming agent. It can alter
the skin barrier function, triggering
eczema or dermatitis.”
Triclosan is another ingredient she
is wary about. Banned in the US, but
still legal in the UK, it is found in
quite a few hand sanitisers on the
market. “It’s an antimicrobial
ingredient, but in certain animal
studies it’s been shown to alter
hormone regulation. It can cause
antibiotic resistance in some cases,”
Coleman says.
In one recent study it was also
found that women exposed to
triclosan may be more likely to
develop osteoporosis than women
who don’t have this exposure.
Buckley says consumers shouldn’t
be put off using sanitiser by some of
the questionable ingredients. “The
public should be using hand gel, but
they should be using one that is
fragrance-free, and if they go to a
supermarket or café they should be
using their own, not the one on offer
in a big dispenser because you don’t
know what is in that.”
Harry WallopL
ast week in America,
the US Food and Drug
Administration found
34 brands of hand
sanitiser on sale that
contained methanol, a
type of alcohol that not
only leads to blindness
when swallowed, but can be
dangerous merely when rubbed into
your hands. The US watchdog said
that there had been hospital
admissions and deaths caused by the
contaminated hand sanitisers.
British authorities have been quick
to reassure consumers that they are
very unlikely to find any hand
sanitisers with methanol over here
because regulations in the UK and
EU are much stricter. The Cosmetic,
Toiletry & Perfumery Association,
based in the UK, has emphasised that
methanol is on the banned list of
ingredients allowed in any cosmetic
or “biocide”, the category of products
under which most sanitisers fall.
That, of course, won’t deter
determined black market operators.
Only last month Trading Standards
officers at Heathrow stopped 8,
counterfeit hand sanitisers — falsely
labelled
“Andrex” and
“Comfort” —
from entering
the market. In
March Trading
Standards
officers in
Birmingham
seized hand
sanitisers on
sale containing
glutaral (or
glutaraldehyde),
a disinfectant
which was banned
for human use six years ago.
Yet even if you are using perfectly
legal hand sanitiser, bought from a
reputable pharmacy or supermarket,
what is in it? And now that we are
increasingly being asked to squirt
them on our hands five or six times
a day as we enter any shop or café,
how healthy are these liquids and
gels for our skin?
The key ingredient in all of them
is alcohol, which is nearly always
ethanol or isopropyl, sometimes
known as “rubbing alcohol”. Both
are completely fine, dermatologists
say. “However, ethanol can be
extremely drying without a doubt,”
says Emma Coleman, a Harley Street
dermatologist. People should get into
the habit of moisturising their hands
regularly to stop their skin from
over-drying and cracking.
Many also contain carbomer,
which turns the liquid into a gel
and is harmless, according to
dermatologists. Propylene glycol isUse your own gel,
not the stuff
given away free
in big dispensers
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