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[music] Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
Hot tubs are great places for relaxation, massages, skin infections… Yes
you heard right I said skin infections. Usually that doesn’t happen if the
water is properly treated to control bacteria but by definition hot tubs
have hot water and hot water is a great breeding ground for certain germs
like pseudomonas, which is a bacteria that causes a lot of infections that
are associated with water exposure. Now normally that water is treated with
chlorine or bromine to kill the bacteria so these things can’t occur but if
the waters not adequately treated and if it allows the bacteria to grow
then you can get a skin infection. Those infections usually have little red
bumps or even little red pus pimples on your skin especially your skin
which is exposed to the jets of water that’s streaming against your skin
because that actually drives the bacteria right into the pores or hair
follicles. When there’s bacteria in the water, often a lot of people in
that same hot tub are going to get the infection and that’s one of the tips
off’s to where the infection came from, when a lot of people get the
infection at the same time. Fortunately, it’s easy to treat with a topical
anti-biotic and even if you don’t treat it, it usually goes away in two or
three days. But even easier than treating it, is preventing it. So the next
time you’re going into a hot tub, check with your host or whoever’s
controlling or maintaining the hot tub and just check to make sure that,
that day they measured that the levels of chlorine or bromine are adequate
so there’s no bacteria growing in your hot tub.