Why Does Your Skin Wrinkle when Your in the Bath?

When you climb into the bath water and stay for a fairly long time your skin will most likely wrinkle quite a bit and this is especially true for places like your fingers. You may have wondered about why this happens and perhaps what can be done to prevent this from happening. The motion of molecules is to move from an area of high concentration into an area of low concentration. We see this happen if we put a few drops of food coloring into a large container of water. The food dye spreads out quickly moving from the area of high concentration (the drops) into the area of low concentration (the water).

If a woman walks into the room with a strong perfume you may not smell the perfume at first, but after some time the perfume moves from an area of high concentration (the woman) to an area of low concentration (the room). Even heat will move from an area of high heat into an area where the heat was lower and when you cook the heat from the stove will travel to all parts of the pan and even into the handle. The handle will typically have more protection so that you do not feel the heat. Although this kind of motion is a bit different it is still moving from the high concentration of heat into the area of low concentration of heat. This is a special case of such motion called "conduction".

Our bodies are composed of a great deal of water and that water also has a fairly high salt content. When you climb into the tub the water inside the tub and the water inside your cells would not normally move because the concentrations are similar, but the salt in your body does try to move from the area of high concentration (your body) into the tub (low salt concentration). As the salt moves through your cells and into the bath water it pulls water in your cells along with it in the process. The cells then have less water and begin to wrinkle. Once out of the tub your body will begin to replace the water back into the cells.

If you add "bath salts" to the bath water you will be increasing the concentration of "salts" to the bath water and this will tend to keep your skin from wrinkling. If the concentration of salts that you add is high your skin may even move some water into the skin cells and your skin may feel smoother and softer to the touch. Salts are also good for generally cleaning the outer surface of the skin, so adding bath salts also helps in the process of cleaning your skin.

When people are in an accident they often lose a lot of blood and you have probably heard on television programs how the emergency workers add "saline" solution to the victim. This is to rehydrate the body. The use of only saline solution is important because it adds fluids to the body without getting into any problems of "blood type".