A doctor made the extraordinary decision not to wash his body with soap for a full five years in order to save money, time and allow his skin microbiome to flourish. Dr. James Hamblin started this project when he first moved into a small Brooklyn apartment to pursue journalism rather than his previous medical career. In his book Clean, he explains that part of it is about cutting costs, and he realizes that if you bathe for about 30 minutes a day, you spend about two years of your life bathing.
However, the real reason behind the project is very different. “I’ve been doing a lot of reduction in my life, and that’s when I started learning about the skin microbiome,” Hamblin said in an interview with Today. The doctor continued: “Like the gut microbiome – there are trillions of microbes living inside of us – it lives all over our skin (the microbiome) and that means a lot of hygiene that we do if we’re always covered with microbes, most of which are actually completely healthy, and even beneficial for us. It led to some experimentation with trying to see exactly what the purpose of the maintenance and cleaning regime was.”
You’ve probably heard of the benefits of the gut microbiome and how it’s linked to everything from gut health to your mood. Relatively recently, scientists have begun to study more of your skin biome and how it affects your health. There are thoughts that people shower too often and are damaging their own microbiome, including potentially beneficial bacteria that play a role in skin health. There’s also evidence that conditions like acne can be caused in part by disruption of the skin’s normal microbiome.
Of course, not taking a shower has its downsides, and one of the simplest is that other people say the idea is disgusting. James normally faced this situation as well. He also continued to wash his hands due to hygiene and the COVID-19 outbreak. However, he noticed that the body odor he took while taking a shower was not as pronounced as in the years when he did not shower.
told the Guardian, “My skin has gradually become less oily and has fewer eczema spots,” he continued. I didn’t smell like the bulbous body odor I had when it passed.”
Hamblin also criticizes the cosmetics industry itself, noting that more than 1,500 chemicals found in personal care products are banned or restricted in the EU, compared to just 11 in the US. To illustrate this, “Perfect Skincare for Men” He started his own skin care company with the slogan “, and sold products containing almost randomly selected ingredients. Everything was fine and legal.
Still, he seems shy about recommending the no-shower lifestyle to others: “I recommend this approach to everyone “I’m not here for the sake of it. It sure looks terrible in many ways. But it also changed my life.”
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