Physical Wellness

What Happens To The Body Without Showering

By Anne Collins | Update Date: Jan 24, 2017 07:30 AM EST

A year ago, James Hamblin, senior editor at The Atlantic gave up showering for an entire six months. It was not because he was too lazy to hit the shower, but because of an experiment he wanted to try out for himself.

James shared that the experiment started when he was pursuing a story about a company selling bacterial spray and heard about a journalist, Julia Scott who used the spray.

According to Huffington Post, Scott sprayed bacterial microbes on her body called nitrosamonas eutropha. She stopped showering and sprayed the bacteria every day for a full month as a replacement for her use of beauty products.

After a month, her body fully cultivated the healthy bacteria naturally. The body moisturized itself as Scott said her acne completely disappeared.

A chemical engineer launched the product in 2015 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The engineer claimed that he didn't shower for 12 years.

James was intrigued by the story. "I don't go as far as spraying myself with bacteria but it got me thinking ... maybe it doesn't make sense to be destroying this ecosystem by scrubbing ourselves with soap every single day," James told The Guardian.

Some scientists said that taking a shower regularly may disrupt the body's ecosystem and damage the microbiome. It is a group of bacteria that live in and on our bodies.

As an example, the scientists cite an indigenous tribe called the Yanomami in the Venezuelan Amazon. They have been found to host a community of diverse microbes that has ever been discovered in humans. This only goes to show that less use of products and water might be good for us.

Microbes make you smell like a human rather than smelling like a product. James' girlfriend said that he didn't smell bad either.

"But after a while, the idea goes, your ecosystem reaches a steady state, and you stop smelling bad. I mean, you don't smell like rosewater or Axe Body Spray, but you don't smell like B.O., either. You just smell like a person."

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