I'm Manny.
Noah, this is Devin, and this is no such thing. The show where resettle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. Today's question is it okay to wear you're outside clothes on your bed. We go beyond the vibes and actually sense up swabs to a lab. We have the results back from the lab.
We can't wait.
No, no, there's no no such thing, no such thing, no such thing.
Okay. So this one, actually, Manny, came up at your birthday party. We were talking about the podcasts and we were asking people do you have any ideas that we should you know, debate or talk about. And Jordan and our good friend, was like, is it actually bad to wear outside clothes inside? Like if you're on the train and you have like clothes and you sit down your bed, are you actually tracking in a lot of germs? Well,
let's let me back up. Growing up, it was very much a thing in my house where my parents would be like they were like outside clothes and they were like inside clothes. So if you went outside to play in clothes when you if you came inside and you were in for the day, yeah, you would change your clothes because the clothes that you were previously wearing have outside dirts in germs, and this.
Is like no matter what you were doing, not like okay, you were you know, in.
The mud playing sports.
No, yeah, this is just like not extreme, but you know, yeah exactly in the yard.
Like going to school, right, like the clothes that you wore to school if you were like and this is not like okay, middle to day, I'm in the house for two hours. I got to change the clothes. This is like, okay, I'm not going out again for the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you would put on inside clothes let's call I don't know that they had a name.
Just change your clothes.
Yes, you wouldn't wear the same clothes you went to school with to like hang out at night at home. And then there's also on top of that, like in almost no situation would you ever wear your outside clothes on your bed or sit in your bed wearing clothes that you weren't outside. Those are rules I had grown up.
I will say I didn't always follow those rules, right, Like I feel like college, in your dorm room, you don't have like a couch, right, So it's like if your friends come over, if you're hanging out, like people just sit on your bed.
Yep, I'm sorry in that headspace, are you thinking this is bad and gross? But I just kind of don't care right now? Or it was always you were just following a rule your parents had.
I would say, up until somewhat recently, I was just following a rule that like we had growing up. But now as a like a natural adult, now yeah, no, now I think it's gross.
It's just gross.
Like if you guys came over and sat on my bed, on your bed, I was like, Okay, what's going on here? No, I'm just going to assume that this was not a thing in your house.
No, No, I mean, speaking as a white man, Yeah, it just wasn't obviously it would only be like, okay, yeah, you're clearly dirty from something.
So your parents never explicitly were like definitely not outside.
Never a rule like that for like general yeah cleanliness in that way.
No, in my experience, it's you know, my mom always wanted us to be clean, like come home, like shower, change clothes at times. But I don't think it had to do with like germs that came from outside that are now on the furniture or the bed. It was more like you stink.
Like did you ever get the you smell like outside?
Yes?
And that was when I when we played you know, all my siblings played for its growing up, and so like that's a little different than just commuting somewhere. But like that's to me, when you would smell like outside is like sitting in the hot sun or whatever.
Yeah, you're doing an outside activity.
Yeah, So in those instances, definitely, my mom's like, don't even don't even think about talking to me before you take a shower first smell there. But if I were just going to school and I came back home and like sat on my bed, I don't think my mom would think anything of it. And I'm interested in in this kind of uh, this this feeling because to me, I'll ask you a question. If I commuted to your apartment, why is why would I be allowed to sit on your couch but not your bed. I mean, you're a
lot of time on your couch. If you're worried about your bed, I don't know why you.
Just shouldn't have people over that. Yeah, at that point, you're gonna give me a beer, like hants like come.
Over, yeah, or like I guess some people have those couch covers.
Yeah, yeah, I guess when I'm on my couch, less of my body is touching the catch, right, yeah, versus when I'm in bed, it's like it's just my boxers.
Does your dog get on your bed?
He does? And this is a thing, so I that my dog on. My dog goes everywhere. And yes, I don't have like tables, like you can't sit on this thing, but there are so like on my bed there's the ali cover, so like I make my bed and then there's a linen cover I have on top of that that he stays on. Yeah, so you know, it's like to me, it's probably like in bathrooms ready have like the toilet bowl, you know, yeah, where you're like probably recover. Yeah,
like what is this actually doing? Like if the germs are really about that life like yeah yeah, but in my mind there's a separation.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Where do we all stand on this current day?
Oh I don't care. Yeah, people unless you're like smelling bad, Like I'm more about like hygiene.
Yeah, if I come home, I mean yeah again, not that many people are over there. If I come home after work or whatever, and then I haven't. I'm not going to change before I sit down on my bed. Like I would never get in my bed under the covers. Yeah, I would never get under the covers in my work.
Yeah, that'd be kind of weird.
Yeah, anyway, that's a different problem.
Yeah, but like I would, I would definitely sit on my bed my jeans or whatever that I wore out onto the subway or what have you.
Yeah, I'm the same way, Like I'm not you know, there's there are many times where I'll change before I get into bed, but it's not because of the germs. It's like just more of a comfort thing, like I'm not going to be in my jeans in bed or whatever. Yeah, And I've always been I've always wondered for people who
are like hardline against it. I'm wondering what's happening or what they think is happening in their head where like you get on the bed and then the germs that are on your clothes are like jumping or transferring to the bed and then what, yeah, die, Like what what part of is? We live in New York City, one of the dirtiest fucking cities in the world. I don't my one question about this is like, I think it's totally fair and fine if you don't want outside clothes
on your bed. I wonder if those people know you're doing way grosser shit all day.
Oh yeah, yeah sure.
But I remember I years ago had like a fling with someone who just was repulsed, like if I sat on the bed, repulsed, like immediately changing the sheets.
Oh like changing the sheets, like immediately after I left.
Like cleaning, Like doesn't want anyone to sit on the bed if they had just come from outside. And I think that's like a problem.
That's again like like you were saying, it's like what what exactly is going to happen to you in your mind? Like you're gonna get sick from this?
You think, Yeah, you know, I've seen people do drugs off of like disgusting things and bathrooms and then turn around and be like no outside clothes on my head? Like what are we talking about here?
Like what is it?
Actually?
What is the germ part of this? How big of a role does that play? Or you know, maybe it was just a rule that was instilled when they were a kidding that's what you do. There's not a lot of logic to it like I I'm sure I have I do tons of things that are not rational.
Like other house things that like you were shoes in your house, you wear shoes out, typically have the shoes off, but like if someone came in and it's not a big deal the same way.
I think it's just more comfortable to be. Yeah, it's also yeah, it's a little clean.
In terms of just like okay, I have to, like, you know, mop last night.
Yeah I would. I wouldn't demand people to like.
My dog walkers definitely off And I'm like it's fine.
I'm also curious if say, you lay your dirty clothes on your bed on the top of the covers, are those germs ever gonna find their way under? And let's say you don't have a top sheet for these.
Purposes, you know top she I mean like we got we have top sheets.
Yeah, yeah, I love it because you need it, especially temperatures changed the night. I love I can just take off this and now it's I'm just in this thing.
I'm not trying to be uncovered.
Yes, that's yeah, something on top of me. Yeah.
So I mean, I'm just curious how how much transfer is actually happening. I wonder if there's like a like a black light test. Yes, ultimately black light would be funny because it would be like, yeah, this is great for a podcast. Yeah yeah, exactly, yeah yeah.
After the break, we'll talk to a microbiologists and track down a lab that's actually willing to take on our silly outside clothes experiment.
Hey, you've reached money, Noah and devon at no such thing. Please leave your message after the beep. I think it's disgusting.
I won't even stand near the top of my comforter with outside clothes on for fear of them touching.
I think it's acceptable to be on the bed, Like if you're grown up and you've got a nice two fae and hospital corners and whatever, and you have outside clothes on top of all that, I think that's acceptable to where outside clothes into bed is not great.
The only garment that I am keeping on is my T shirt from the day. Providing that I haven't been sweating profusely, I am absolutely fine to wear that overnight and then chuck it in the laundry basket. For me, it's like during the winter, your T shirt is never really exposed. It's always under a jumper, under a coat.
Every time a subway drives by, it dusts up all the ratshit and human feces and piss from like, you know, ten million people or whatever just wafting in the air. At the very least, put on different clothes, best case, take a shower.
If I'm having someone over from a date and we're not in a relationship so I don't know them met, well, it feels really silly to ask them to take off their parts. It feels presumptuous. It like interrupts the flow of things. But I do scream internally when their outside shirt touches my pillow, But ultimately, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
All right, we're back.
I'm Anny, I'm Noah Devin.
So last time we talked, we were discussing whether or not you should wear your outside clothes on your bed, and so I want to talk to an expert about this, so I reached out to a microbiologist.
So my name is.
Doctor Lisa Kuchara. I'm a professor at Quinnipiac University, and one of my research specialties is kind of looking at full mites, which are is the fancy word for inanimate objects which could contaminate us with bacteria.
So think of like th Knob's uh your phone okay, subway poll subway pole game specifically a gaming because you get at we've seen you know, So she's she's kind of helpful here because we are trying to see if our beds are film mights. So maybe unsurprisingly, Lisa describes herself as a germaphobe. As a microbiologist, I would probably be a germophobe, but she has a unique reasoning for being a germaphobe.
So my germophobia kind of comes from my like my fear of missing out, my ability that I don't want to be sick, even with things that aren't going to kill me. So if I'm going to be say taking a plane ride and going through all the things that I might be touching, I don't want to get to my destination and then spending the time in the bathroom. That's not something that I enjoy, and so I try to avoid things like that.
So with that mindset, I was curious, what are something to gross things that we encounter and just our day to day lives.
Definitely things that we don't tend to think about, like doorknobs, things like menus. So a lot of restaurants have very plasticly, very germ ridden menus, and so what do you do you eat right after touching this menu? The person before you went to the bathroom didn't wash their hands, and now you're eating your French fries with your hands.
So she says she brings hand sanitizer to restaurants for that reason, and then she also talked about phones. Phones are really gross.
Yeah, of course, it's interesting that we also take our phones everywhere, right, So our phones go to the bathroom with us, our phones go to the restaurant with us, so we also have to be careful of that. One of the things I do with my students is we swabbed a lot of phones, and almost all of them have fecal matter on them, which means that people are washing their hands after they go to the bathroom. They're touching lots of things, and yet our phones are with us at most meals.
Oh no, a lot of who that's I don't want to hear that.
Do you wipe down your phones?
Nope?
No, no, I mean, what's the last time you left down your phone?
Like if sometimes if I drop food on it, I'll wipe yeah.
Even even then, it's like more wiping it with my thumb and not Yeah, it's not to clean the phone. It's just so I can see drop ketch up all my screen. I might wipe it with I might, but I might even just do a little like my thumb and just y'all do the.
You don't do the little lights all wiped the phone every once in a while.
I've never, I really never thought about it.
Did you do it during COVID?
No?
Damn? Okay, y'all are this is trying to make a lot more sense. So in the home, what what do you think is like the grossest thing? Wan in the grossest thing?
Then I would imagine the toilet toilet?
What about like sink sink knobs.
Sink knobs, okay, a mirror?
Why I'm just throwing out things that are closer the sink, dishes both?
Uh?
The sponge, yes, the sponge.
Yes, so our sponge is pretty disgusting. Most people's sponge has more bacteria than our toilet stew. So we do microwave our sponge after you know, washing our dishes.
All right, so micro gavey sponges. Yeah, we didn started talking about stuff that we can be bringing into our homes. I told her that I use puro wipes to wipe Ally's feet before he comes in a house.
That's amazing. I mean, you're a very person.
She said that actually helps, and then that led to a conversation about whether or not we should be wearing our shoes in a home.
You're in an environment that perhaps you're leaving your shoes at the at the front door then having it inside and outside pair of shoes. We do that to some extent, but like if we're unloading and loading groceries, we don't go to that extreme. So we're not completely religious about it. But we have on nice, you know, very comfy slipper shoes that are inside outside shoes if we needed to just you know, step out to pick up something at the stoop type of thing, and then we have our
outside shoes. But like I said, we're not so particular about it that if we had to go in and out a hundred times that we're going to be taking.
Out office Yeah, every single time you're going out. Yeah that's how now I am too, right, Like I try to avoid wearing my shoes inside. But if it's like okay, I just got to run and grab something. I'm not going to take them off and put them all the way back on and retime. Is it more so for you? Is it a germs thing or is it more so just like you know, if your shoes are dirty, you can kind of see the footprints inside, right like it shows up on a floor in a way that some
of these other germs do not. Is that sort of you know, your consideration.
It's threefold. So it is the fact that I don't want to be again, I don't want to be spending time cleaning my house when I could be, you know, enjoying life. So I want to minimize that. Definitely, germs that we might be bringing in. And then also any pollens or anything like this spring we had a really big year with pollens. I know a lot of people
then bring the pollen in. It's all over there, you know, their rugs, it's everything, and then they're wondering why they're having such a hard time with pollen season.
We are currently recording this inside of my apartment, and I resonate with what she just said because I'm someone who loves to keep the floor as clean as possible. Now, you know, as you look at it right now. I haven't cleaned in a few days. But I try to make it so that you can like walk around here in your socks and you look at the bottom of your socks and then yeah, so like I really value that. And I actually just bought this insane electric mop.
This is how you know Manny needs a full time job.
All right, So now we're getting to the question, all right, does the microbiologists where outside clothes on her bed?
I don't so, and it depends on what I'm wearing. If I'm outside hiking, then I might actually have bird poop on me and we were just photographing and turns pooped on me. Definitely want to put those right into the washer. Don't want to bring them into the bed. So we tend to have clothes that we wear around the house, just nice little comfy like sweatpants and T shirts that tend to be my inside clothes. What I wear to bed would be different than what I were
outside all day. And again from a point of view too of depending on the season in fall and spring, the amount of pollen that we could be bringing into our beds. I want to have a nice, relaxing sleep. I don't want to have to be bringing there's enough problems with dust, smites and other things that could be interfering with sleep. We don't need to be bringing pollen
into that equation as well. So to me, the outside clothes don't belong, you know, in my bed by what I keep the bed as you know, relaxing as possible and not introduce things into that environment.
I'll say this, I'm being convinced by.
The like.
The sanctity of your sleep more so than like making the bed dirty y because I will say it's like she's talking about briefly mentioned like having bird people on her or whatever. You know, even people who like to have their outdoor clothes on their bed are they're not gonna do it if there's literal shit on their clothes. But when she's talking about like the pollen and stuff, like I do sometimes have trouble sleeping.
So that's what she does. But I did ask her, like, how bad is it in terms of like like you're saying, is this just like a vibe thing?
Yeah?
Is there a concern that like there's germs that I'm picking out throughout the day, could actually, you know, if they get into my bed somehow make me.
Sick, not so much onto your bed per se, but the fact that you could be touching them with your hands and then touching your face. So you know, you're you're you're thinking again of that fancy word I use the beginning full mites inanimate objects that could be transferring germs to us. Certainly, if we you know, sit in something, touch something, you know, gerre exposed, and our pants legs to something, we could then be bringing that into our home.
The more the concern is that we'd be touching that with our hands and then touching our face. If you think about something like influenza, it really I could dip my hand in a five gallon bucket of influenza. I'm not going to get the flu. I'm going to get it by then touching my nose or my eyes or
you know, something along those lines. So the main modes that we'd be getting something in is either breathing them in or touching our faces or some kind of you know, you're eating in bed and you know, bringing something into your gastrointestinal system. Our skinned of a pretty good barrier against most things. We're really thinking about more the portals of entry being up in our head type, you know, areas as the main problems.
One thing she talked about that she does, which I started doing since I did this interview, is she puts her pillows underneath her comforter so that there is a barrier between the pillow. She talks about she has dogs, and her dogs get on her bed and they're rubbing against stuff because you know, you're laying your head on
your pillow, so that's your directly. You don't have to touch your hand to your face, it's just you're laying on it, so that that is a you know, maybe if you both won't stop sitting on the bed with your outside clothes, maybe you want to put your pillow, yeah, underneath your comforter so that there's a little bit of a barrier.
It's good to know that that's a lot cleaner and a lot healthier. There's one huge problem with it, though, why you don't get the cold side of your pillow, which.
Is so nice A good Yeah, So, Manny, you brought up the fact that people like you know, me and Noah, we have dogs, and you talked about other people in your life who have dogs, and you accuse them of being hypocrites because you're like, how are you coming at me about this? And you have a dog. So we talked about something that I do, which is I have a linen cover on my bed which is the ali cover, and he needs to stay on that cover because in my mind that's like the toilet sea cover. Yeah, oh yeah,
and that's the separation that makes sense. Does that cover actually do anything in terms of germs?
It kind of depends on how you're using it. At least isn't going to be them on my pillow, them on my sheets. I can wash that particular one as often as I need to wash it. So the fact that I can clean it more often. I have a couple of them, so I can easily rotate them in and out for washing them.
Yeah.
And so you're saying there's not much are you Are we gonna see much of a transfer of those germs to the germs sort of like because in my mind, I'm like, oh, it's a separation. Those germs aren't going to make it on you, Like you're saying, like onto my pillow into the lower layers of the bed. Is that true?
They're not really crawling around there, They're not There are germs that would be Morgan contact germs would It's not impossible, but it's not likely that that's going to be something. So I guess from an outside clothed point of view, if you put them on, if you didn't have a dog, and you had a comforter on top of your regular comforter, that would be able to catch the germs and the pollen and things like that as well. But if I didn't have a dog, that would be a lot of
extra work. It would just be easier the out cyclones.
Wait, that's really insightful. Actually, I did think germs just kind of were going on running arounds and stuff.
Another thing that Manny brought up was, man you thought it was ridiculous. You talked about a former flame being set. You sat on the bed for five seconds. Is there like a five second rule when it comes to you know how long someone is to be sitting on your bed before that? Those germs transfers are pretty immediate.
Pretty immediate. First of all, the five second rule was debunked MythBusters something long ago. If your lollipop foles in the kitchen floor, don't eat it. Certainly, the longer and the more jostling you're doing on your bed. The more you're going to get transfer going on if you sat down for fifteen seconds versus if you laid and rolled over, you're going to be transferring more pollen and germs over.
I guess I would probably think of it as the same way of my shoes, Like, we're not ridiculous about it. So if I had to, you know, I was outside and doing a bunch of things that I had to come in and sit on my bed and change something or do something, I probably wouldn't, like immediately think about cleaning my bedding because it would be a short period
of time. But I don't think there's a finite line that you could say, Okay, if it's less than fifteen seconds, you're good, or a period of time, it would be accumulative over time. For pollen, any kind of molds or any kind of fungus could be immediate. Bacteria kind of depends on you know, how much and is it wet or is it dry, So their time could play a factor.
So I would say, if this person is saying that, you know, they sat on their bed for fifteen seconds and now they felt compelled to wash, they're betting I wouldn't go to that extreme, certainly, But at the same time, I wouldn't want to be jostling on the bed and clothes that I wore outside for a night eat.
I would like to apologize. Well, I agree with with the microbiologists here that like she wouldn't go nuts if someone just sat there for five seconds. But yeah, I did kind of think, like, oh, I'm just gonna be here for a little bit. The germs are gonna be fine.
They're they'll come back with me.
Yeah, they're gonna be on me for the most part of my clothes.
They're still shilling with you.
Yeah.
I didn't realize how quickly they could go pretty immediate.
Yeah, And like she says, you know, I'm saying alonger that you're sitting on the bed the board drooms are being transferred. But it's it's there's no fifteen second rule. There's no five second rule. And if you sit down, the germs can start out immediately and going on to bed.
That is a funny rule. Like I wonder where it came. It must be just like pure human copo. Oh yeah, I really want to eat this thing.
I will say saying lollipop is is more extreme than many other foods.
That are less sticky.
You know what I'm saying, Like, I just trying to tell you eat stuff off the floor.
I'm not even saying that, but I'm just saying a chip versus a you know, hard candy that's already been You're eating a chip off the floor, bro, If I mean, I would rather do that than a.
I'm not saying rather, if you drop a chip on the floor, you eat.
On the floor.
If Manny's mom, I'm not eating a chip off any floor, not a chip.
A freshly mopped floor. And I drop a single potato chip, It's in clear space. How hungry are you just throw it out? It's just one chip.
It's not about it's not about that. I'm gonna have to pick it up either. What No, It's like if I dropped like so what would you what are you gonna get off? Like a fruit?
Like a fruit? Because it's like if I drop like an apple on the floor, right, it's like, Okay, I don't want to throw out the whole apple. That's it off?
You comment it off or have you already bitten the apple?
Yes? And its situation?
Yes, that's interesting.
So Yeah, the point of that was if you sit on the bed for five seconds or four seconds, it's still germs, pretty immediate, but it is still cumulative. And then another piece of pushback that y'all had was about couches.
M M.
Yeah. So we're recording this podcast and Many's apartment right now. Noah is an outside guess he is sitting on your couch, and Noah is wearing his outside clothes on your couch, and so are.
Make you feel this is where you're supposed to sit.
So your pushback was, if people are so freaked out about outside clothes and their why don't they have that same energy when it comes to their couches.
If I was coming home in dress clothes, I probably would change into my inside clothes before sitting on the couch. So I probably would for me personally do the same thing. But obviously we can't require our guests to come in and you know, here's here's your inside clothes, so for get.
But I guess the biggest difference is, you know, we're spending you know, hopefully six hours a night on your bed in a sleep that you want to be a restorative sleep, versus when you're sitting in your couch, you're not kind of I don't know, it's not the same mechanism by which you're lying on the couch, and the intimacy with your couch isn't quite the same for most people. I try to like vacuum my couch. I do once a year, try to kind of like a steam type
of a clean. But that's not really for germs. It's again probably because I have dogs. I do have a throw on the couch that the dogs are allowed on, so that gets you know, washed ver regularly. But I think, you know, if you have I guess guests that are coming in from hiking and they're gonna be spending eight hours on your couch, I probably would, you know, feel a little weird that they might be transferring this. But how often are they doing that? I do doing that
once versus on our bed. We could be doing this every day, day in and day out.
Okay, So basically she's saying that it is just as dirty. But there's two differences. One, you're not really putting your face on the couch. Not they're sleeping too. It's like not as intimate a space. It's a different it has a different purpose exactly. So if you're someone who needs to change their clothes before they go on their bed. I can see why that's different than your couch.
I'll concede many or no one of you brought up people are so freaked out about outside clothes. So what if I take off the clothes, I'm still dirty outside body getting into bed. Yeah.
I guess it depends on what you've been doing. If you've been outside doing any kind of work or athletic activities, or inside working out your sweat. Bacteria love sweat. They just kind of like that's like, uh, you know, red Bull for them. They just like, hey, you know, we're just gonna go to town. So if you were really sweaty there, it would be a benefit of showering before you got into the sheets because over time, all of that sweat that is going to allow this breeding ground
for for a bacteria to happen. But for an average person that's kind of going into an air conditioned, you know, workplace and then coming home. I wouldn't say there'd be any need to do that.
That attracks with me. That makes sense.
Yeah, I accept that answer, this one, trust the Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that makes total sense that the clothes are a pretty good safeguard.
All right, We've talked a lot about making our beds dirty. But how often are we cleaning our sheets?
Now, that's a question I think is going to be there's gonna be a lot of range.
Yes, how often are we washing our sheets? Fellas?
Be honest, No one wants to want to start. Yeah, yeah, you're starting on basically.
Laundry once a week. So I washed my sheets once a week. I also have like four pairs of sheets, so I wrote, even if I'm not washing that sheet, I just switch them out once a week.
I would say many times more than this, but I'm talking about the minimum.
Yes, is once a month? Once a month, yeah, minimum.
Sometimes we'll go more, sometimes we go left. Why do you ask why?
I asked because I asked.
This is a good question.
How often we should be watching that, especially if you're gonna be sitting on your damn Yeah.
That to me is way more important than someone's sitting on top on top with your clothes.
Especially the sheets. Are getting real intimate with your sheets. Yeah, yeah, she said, once a week is good.
You know, to do it more often than that sometimes, then if we give ourselfs too stringent a thing, then we don't do it at all. That it kind of backfire on us.
Another question for you, are we washing on hot.
Now because I'm afraid that they shrink?
I asked doctor Lisa.
And she said, with betting, I still still with hot. So all the clothes you're washing them more often, you're not allowing that to be able to accumulate. If I guess if you were watching your betting every day, which I wouldn't recommend, I would feel more comfortable on gold, but washing it once a week, I would prefer hot. And then also we're thinking now of also dust mites.
And if you think your pillow gets heavier and heavier and heavier over time, why it's because of all the dust might poop that is making your mattress and your pillow heavier over time. So by washing once a week and using hot, especially in the in the driver, you're also killing off any dust mites. That's going to help you with allergies, and that's going to help you with just over all your level of sleep and keeping that pillow not from gaining so much weight over time.
But don't we run into a convenience problem where like I wash my shirt with hot water by accident, I can't run that shirt. Again, it's too small. What if you know these beds are already so the the the undersheet, it's shrinks.
It's over. Okay, Doctor Lisa is not here to talk about care instructions on your on your bedding, all right, So if you want to look at the care instructions on your bedding, if you want to follow that, you want to follow that. We're talking about the science, she says. The science says you need to wash it on hot. And now it's time for our experiment. We sent swabs to a lab to see just how dirty our outside clothes are and to see if those germs are actually
being transferred to our beds. Swab one dirty jeans. These are a pair of jeans that I've worn for the last couple of weeks and haven't washed. Swab two queen jeans. These are the same pair of jeans after being washed and dried on hot. Swap three dirty bedding for one week. I spent five to ten minutes today sitting on the bed with my outside clothes about four clean better to that same betting after being washed and dried on hot. Now here are the results from the lab.
I can't wait.
The dirty jeans and dirty bedding had elevated bacteria levels okay, and yeast in mold, east.
In mold, Yes, that's tough to hear.
Mold washing those really reduced the numbers, if not zero, close to it. So the lab said it's likely that the genes worn outside were exposed to bacteria and then sitting on the bed with those genes transferred that bacteria to the bed and then obviously washing them greatly reduce the amount of bacteria you're exposed to hear. I will say good news perhaps is that some of the more extreme stuff like staff Ecola and Semonela were not detected
on the clean or dirty samples. Doctor Lisa was surprised by that. You know, we didn't go through her life for this experiment. She's like, that was a bit surprising. She said that could have been the way that the lab cultured the swabs. But that being said, I asked her what her takeaways were, because I know, I break thing was like, is any of this stuff gonna make you sick? But this stuff, it's kind of hard to tell.
We don't have we didn't have anything that was like this will definitely make you sick, so it's gonna be how long are you exposed to that? What are you you know, what is touching that? What is your immune levels? That sort of thing. But her big takeaways was like who wants alergies, moldonisee, allergae inducing dust mite poop or the chance of getting sick or MRSA. Yeah, she said, don't wear your outside, closing your bed and then wash
your bedding weekly. That that was her takeaway. Well, either or one of you changed the way you live your lives now now that there are numbers associated with it. Right, it's not just like, oh, this feels like it's dirtier, like we have now numbered proof.
Yeah.
Like to be honest, no, I will say I might gave my sponge the other day.
Okay, oh nice, Okay, it'll probably cross my mind now, and maybe I will pause and change before I sit for a minute on the bed before going about my day if I come home. But it's not going to be I'm not going to freak out if if I do sit there, or if someone else does. Like, again, I've made it this far. I'll probably be able to make it another couple of years, you know.
A couple of years, all right? Okay? Man, Yeah, many. Are you gonna change.
Yeah, I can see myself doing it a little less frequently, but never in a situation where I'm like quitting cold Turkey was really about convenience.
I'll probably try to wash my betting more like stuff like that. Like stuff like that, it's going to be more top of mind than like the sitting on the bed thing is just seeing and even from what we've learned, doesn't really even see. Even given your bringing mold or whatever, it doesn't seem to be that big of an issue.
Like imagine if I had done that for you know, a couple of weeks.
Yeah, yeah, and your bedding, yes, So that that seems a lot more critical. And it seems like the experts would probably agree with that as far as best.
If you're only going to do one thing or a few things, that it should be up.
Yeah. If you're going to continue to center your post, you should maybe wash your sheets more often.
Yeah, I can allow. I can allow for that.
There's no no such thing, such thing.
Such thing.
No such thing was produced by Manny Finel, Noah Friedman and Me, Devin Joseph. Theme song by Many. Special thanks to our guest this week, doctor Lisa Kuchara and the Contract Testing Laboratories of America for actually helping us conduct this experiment. We're gonna put the full results to our experiment on our website, so that's no such thing not show. Also just link to it in our show notes. Shout out to Jordan Billman. That was our first episode from
our listener submitted question. So if you have something you want us to get to the bottom of, email us at Manny noahdevinat gmail dot com. We'll also put that in the show notes. All right, next week on No such thing is letterbox ruining movies?
Right now, I've got to give it, I think a one point five.
Damn Yeah, you said a lot of it is pretty hideous to me. That's crazy.