She indicates that the worst effect was on her hair, even though I thought it was reliably said that if you stop shampooing and removing oils from your hair, it eventually stops producing much in the way of replacement oil and becomes (more or less) clean looking again. I didn't think it would take more than a month to achieve that, though.
Some of the men in the company that is investigating this idea have taken things to quite an extreme:
AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.Thanks, but no thanks.
At least, I suppose, it indicates that the historical periods where fear of regular bathing was rampant were not as smelly as we might expect.
3 comments:
That is incredibly cool. I wouldn't feel worse for getting rid of soap (it's pretty bad for my skin actually) but I'd miss showers and baths, which are so so comfy....
If you're interested, look up "The Hygiene Hypothesis". The nutshell is that we may be removing too many useful bacteria not only from out gut from our skin. There are even studies suggesting bacteria on the skin can play a role in regulating blood pressure because these bacteria release nitric oxide, which is fundamental to blood pressure regulation.
More broadly, it appears that bacteria play an important role in "tuning" our immune response. All very strange and very interesting.
The other thing about this experiment: I thought at least some skin bacteria actually increased after bathing, due to their liking warm water.
I wonder if they have done the experiment of spraying on the bugs every day but just having a warm shower without soap every (say) second day, to see how many of them are removed that way.
On a related matter, I listened to a doctor or specialist many years ago on The Science Show say that soap is bad for skin and hair for the way it removed natural oils. He recommended, and had himself for a long time, only showering using conditioner on his hair, and sometimes on his body too as it could help remove dirt. I actually tried it (on the hair) for a week, but didn't care for the result.)
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