Do you have the spunk to outlast the funk and quit showering?
By Darren Woods
When you were little, do you
remember your parents forcing you to bathe? You’re playing outside all day,
maybe even getting muddy, but when it was time to come inside you didn’t want
to get anywhere near the bathtub. I can relate.
But as I got older, I want to
shower as much as possible. The tranquility of the shower became a place of
refuge or break from the outsider world. Especially, me, being an athlete, I
cannot wait to wash away that layer of hard work that your body sweats up from
a workout. I’m a college football player, so between classes, workouts and
practices I can find myself in the shower three times a day. But, now I’m
starting to question if I may be overdoing it. That’s because I came across an
online article titled “You’re probably showering way too often.” This made me
LOL… literally. I was puzzled. My mind drowned with questions. How can you
shower too much? Do you not like to be clean? I had to dig deeper.
This article went all scientific on
me, so I won’t bore you to sleep with all those big words. Basically, the “experts”
said that all these products we use over and over may seem—and smell—like it
helps our skin when it is really wearing down the chemical structure of our
skin. And what’s crazier is they said to much water is doing the same. I’m
still calling bluff on that.
I read more and more articles. Like,
is this really a “thing”? Or was this just some “fad-ad” like all the other
trillion articles out there telling us another thing we are doing “wrong” in
our everyday lives?
Then I came across the name James
Hamblin, a writer and editor for The Atlantic. He didn’t shower for two years.
Seriously. He did some deep scientific research about our body and skin. He
found that we have some sort of “good bacteria” that manifests itself on our
skin. These bacteria are like the bacteria found in and around our digestive
system. (Stay with me because this is where I got lost). The bacteria on the
skin is what produces our body odor. So, that BO you smell after you forget to
put on deodorant is that bacteria. Here is the freaky part: after give or take
several weeks (almost 2 or so months from what I assume) the bacteria eventually
“comes to balance” with your body and the environment and becomes odorless! I
couldn’t believe it so I kept digging. James was inspired by journalist Julia
Scott, who has learned to still bathe but go without using any cosmetics that
are applied to the body. She began to spray herself with bacteria commonly
found in soil. She found that the bacteria reacted with the air to reach a
level of natural balance. This still wasn’t enough to convince me to abandon a
warm shower and body soap. For one, and no offence to James or Julia, but I
play Division I college football. I work out twice, maybe three times a day sometimes.
I unfortunately do not have the luxury of sitting down letting my body odor “come
to balance.” I sweat! And sweat some more. It might be a different story if I
sat behind a desk all day and in my car for two hours during my commute to and
from that desk, but that isn’t me. That isn’t a lot of us…right? I still wasn’t
convinced. Could someone as active as me get away with no showering for long
than an hour after a workout?
James got in contact with the
company AOBiome that makes natural body sprays and washes that are literally
full of bacteria. They are basically saying that we wash off bacteria to get
“clean,” but these bacteria are good for the skin. Crazy, right? Keep up.
AOBiome claims that by washing away these natural bacteria our body produces
itself we continue to “dull” the skin. It’s like tires on your car. You want
your tires to have good traction, but it slowly loses it from the continuous
driving, turning, and breaking of the car until the tires no longer have any
treads on them. Our skin is the same way. Overtime, from continuous washing
away of this bacteria, the skin will soon stop producing it. AOBiome produces
its products that help trigger the “regeneration” of the bacteria. I still
wasn’t sold. I thought, “no way our body needs to stay dirty to become clean?”
I’m with you if you thought James
Hamblin was a little weird for not showering for two years, but turns out James
isn’t the king of the anti-shower club. He was beat by a long shot, and when I say
long shot, I mean full-court buzzer beater type long shot! MIT graduate Dave
Whitlock is in a class of his own. He helped found AOBiome, and he hasn’t
stepped inside a shower in 12 years. He thrives off the bacteria spray he
helped configure with AOBiome. Remember how I mentioned that the bacteria on
our skin will become odorless? Whitlock claims that it may take a while for
your body to reach the state of balance with its bacteria, but it’s science.
It’ll work, right? Once your body and its bacteria are on the same page, that
odor becomes odorless, and you smell like a “person.” Dave said it took his
body maybe a couple months for him to stop noticing a bad body odor. Again, I’m
an athlete. I’m not too sure me and Dave live the same day-to-day lifestyle.
Shocker alert! That’s right, you
guessed it! Whitlock’s colleagues at AOBiome say he smells odorless. (Am I the
only one who saw that coming?) The only time he might give off a funky stich is
of he forgets to change clothes which should be a routine thing. After all that
research, I still am thrown through a loop about this “becoming odorless”
thing. I can understand the science behind body soaps and cosmetics killing of
our good bacteria. However, being an athlete, I sweat too much too often not to
shower and use soap. I guess the proof is in the smell though. Who is gutsy
enough to abandon the shower oasis, and test to see of the people around you
can tell?
Twitter tag: Don’t sweat it! Turns out that not
showering = showering minus the water bill! Click to see why not bathing can
make you smell “normal” over time! [link to the blog post]
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