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Despite the fact that the vast majority of experts in Health agrees that grooming is an important part of personal hygiene and that we should shower regularly to prevent infections or other illnesses, an expert made headlines by refuting such a claim and announcing that he had not taken a bath for five years Has taken. Could it be that he is right or does his theory just have no basis? Draw your own conclusions.
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In 2015 James Hamblin, who works as a professor at the School of Public Health at prestigious Yale University and a specialist in preventive medicine, stopped showering with one goal: to show that there is no “medical need” to do so.
He himself explained the reasons for his decision: “We spent two full years of our lives bathing. How much of that time (and money and water) is wasted? “But why did he do it?” I know a lot of people who bathe very little. I knew it was possible but wanted to try it myself to see what the effect would be. “
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Now, five years later, he claims to be more than happy with the decision he made: “Over time, your body gets more and more used to it, so it doesn’t smell as bad if you don’t use soap and deodorant. And your skin won’t get that oily when you stop using harsh soap. Many people use shampoo to remove oils from their hair and then apply conditioner to add synthetic oils. If you can break that cycle, your hair will look like it was when you started using those products. “
Speaking to the BBC, Hamblin explained that “the important thing is to understand that it takes time to see the effects, it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s not instantaneous. There were times when I wanted to take a shower because I missed it, it smelled dirty and felt like I was fat. But that happened to me less and less ”.
He also explained that excessive bathing “changes a kind of balance between the oils in the skin and the bacteria that live. If you shower aggressively, you destroy ecosystems. They quickly repopulate, but the species becomes unbalanced and tends to favor the types of microbes that produce fragrance. Your ecosystem reaches a stable state and you stop smelling. You don’t smell like rose water … You just smell like a person. “
“I have my own scent and my wife likes it. It’s not bad for other people. Nowadays we hope that people don’t smell anything or that they smell like perfume, cologne, body wash or else it means they smell bad. If there is a perceptible human odor, it is negative, ”he adds.
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“I rinse when I need or when I want, just with water, quickly, especially if my hair looks like I just woke up or I have something visibly dirty. But you can exfoliate, you can get rid of the oils just by rubbing your hands and combing your hair every now and then. And that’s all, ”he explains.
He also explained why, according to him, showering is a ‘very modern’ concept: ‘We used to have no running water. Most people only had access to running water in the last hundred years. It was something that maybe royalty could do, kings and queens, but that humans could only do occasionally. Maybe they ended up in a river or lake, but we didn’t have to do that every day. “
“It’s a whole new event in the history of mankind: that we have to spend so much time, money and resources on bathing and when that is combined with our knowledge of the skin microbiome. I am curious that we may be doing too much and that it can be useful to cut back, ”he adds.