How to clean yourself properly in every shower: Doctor lists the body parts people don’t wash enough

A top doctor has listed the five body parts people don’t wash in the shower and bath correctly or at all. 

Dr Jen Caudle, from the US, said it’s important not to forget to wash your belly button, behind the ears, underneath your fingernails, your legs and your toes in a TikTok video. 

The health expert  believes ‘a lot’ of people don’t wash their belly button at all and made a follow up clip telling viewers how to properly clean the neglected body part. 

‘Guys, it gets gross. Please wash your belly button,’ she said. 

Dr Jen said those with an ‘outie’ belly button can clean their using just soap, water and a wash cloth with ‘no problem’.

‘If you have an ‘innie’, you might need to be a little bit more strategic about it. The washcloth doesn’t get into an ‘innie’ very far so it doesn’t clean it fully,’ she added. 

‘This is actually where I suggest a Q tip. Q tips can be very helpful getting that soap and water in there if you’re not able to get that wash towel in there.’ 

Dr Jean said people can also clean their ‘innie’ belly buttons with an alcohol or salt water solution if they don’t feel like soap and water is thorough enough. 

 ‘If you feel you’ve got discharge, pus, pain, redness, inflammation, swelling, or other things like an odour that doesn’t go away, you’ve got to see a doctor because you may have an infection that needs further treatment,’ she explained.

‘We want you to wash your belly button routinely to hopefully help prevent those infections.’

Second on Dr Jen’s list of places people don’t wash enough is behind the ears and said they should focus particularly on the areas behind the lobe and at the top of the ear. 

Dr Jen said ‘a lot of people don’t wash their belly button at all’ and suggested cleaning the neglected body part with soap, water and a washcloth or Q-tip or an alcohol solution

‘I want you to specifically wash that area. If you rub your ears and you smell it and it’s gross, you haven’t washed it recently.’ 

Another area Dr Jen said people ‘don’t often think about’ is underneath the fingernails and suggests giving them a scrub. 

‘This is where a lot of dirt and grossness gets trapped. We don’t often think about our fingernails,’ she said. 

Fourth on Dr Jen’s list is the legs as people sometimes think letting the soap and water run down them in the shower is enough to keep them clean. 

‘I want you to actually wash your legs,’ she said.

‘I’m not talking about letting that soap run down your legs in the shower, I’m talking about washing. Wash your legs please.’

Between the toes was the final item on Dr Jen’s list of things to remember to keep clean.    

‘You want to make sure you’re preventing infections of many different sorts so make sure you’re deliberately washing your toes,’ she said. 

‘And wash the rest of your body by the way.’

More than 1.5million viewers watched Dr Jen’s video and many in the comments were shocked people are neglecting so many areas of their bodies in the shower. 

‘Who DOESN’T wash these parts? I thought that we were all grown here!!’ one users wrote. 

‘Me thinking it’s common knowledge to wash all of these,’ a second agreed while a third replied: ‘It’s a SHAME you have to even say that’.

‘And the back of the neck!! people neglect that area a lot!!!’ another added.