David Whitlock, an MIT chemical
engineer and co-founder of AOBiome, a clinical-stage microbiome company, says
he has not showered for 15 years and doesn’t stink.
The expert’s disclosure comes
amid increasing interest in friendly skin microbes that protect humans from
pathogens and keep the body healthy by making useful chemicals.
Following a 2015 interview where
he claimed that people often confuse “clean” for “sterile”, Whitlock recently
told The Guardian that he only rinses a part of his body with water when he
gets it dirty — but never with soap.
“It was kind of strange for the
first few months, but after that, I stopped missing it. If I get a specific
part of my body dirty, then I’ll wash that specific part but never with soap,”
he said.
According to him, the motivation
behind this practice was to encourage friendly microbes to live on him in
symbiotic harmony; feast on the ammonia from his sweat; and give him
“low-maintenance balanced skin”.
While this might readily be
suggestive of stone-age norms, Whitlock appears not to be the only learned
expert who has upheld this uncommon practice.
Sarah Ballantyne, medical
biophysicist, similarly advocated for the need to live the stone age way. She
said she uses only water for washing even after “sweating buckets” at the gym.
On her part, Sandy Skotnicki,
Toronto-based dermatologist, said “there’s nothing wrong with just rinsing.”
“I’ve talked to people who
haven’t used any kind of detergent in years and they’re perfectly fine. Since
1950, we’ve gone from bathing once a week to every day. Has that changed our
skin microbiome? I think the answer is yes. And has that caused a rise in
inflammatory skin diseases? I think the answer is yes, but we don’t know,” she
added.
In the same vein, Jackie Hong, a
reporter in Yukon, north-west Canada, said she has not used soap in the shower
for nine years.
“I use my hands to scrub myself
and get any grime off, but I’m sitting in court or at my desk most days, so
it’s not like I’m getting bombarded with filth,” she said.
Although there are no clear
indications that avoiding soap helps avert skin diseases, Whitlock claimed the
practice has been a successful experiment for him.
Microbiome-friendly and probiotic
products made of bacteria harvested from animal farms, he revealed, made him
stop smelling and less susceptible to skin infections.
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