Germ-free Dirty Hippies

now that person is no longer in that area. And I think all of this riff raff have taken it over well not well, last I checked, maybe you have a shower shower you. I don't think anybody can get into the actual executive bathroom, but unless you have a special key, yeah, the executive and somebody may have it. I don't know. Somebody's done from it instead of using the public squalor toilet, so the rest of us used. But it makes you think it's like cleanliness, right, is

next to godliness? That's the old old thing. Yeah, so if you are a high ranking executive, then you're a little closer to godliness and the corporate ladder of things and Therefore, you get to bathe as much as you want. Like you can have like a morning meeting, take a shower, get out, dry off, have another conference call, than another meeting, than another shower. You can get up to like five showers a day. Okay, So sure, you're you're that executive.

You're very clean, you have a lot of Lamborghinis and nice income. You have many choices of mustaches that you could wear. I'm assuming this is like a luxe thing, right, I'm assuming this is every executive has this kind of thing. Yeah, but here's a little something to throw down there that you don't have. What's that You probably don't have good bacteria. And that's how it is. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you have all the money in the world. If you

don't have good bacteria, you ain't got nothing. So this this comes under the idea that that maybe on one hand you have the the the clean cut executives and the other the dirty hippies. Yes, and then maybe the dirty hippies, um, who not only don't have a shower at work, might not even be using their shower at home every day. Um that they may have the right philosophy here. They may have the correct way of life and this culture war of bathing. Well, okay, we talked

a little bit. Uh you know, we talked about this in the in the podcast about as your Gut to Genius, we talked about all the bacteria in your gut and what's going on there. Similarly, scientists researchers are starting to look at the bacteria in our skin and say, who wall hold on a second, there's a lot more going on here at skin deep level than we knew about before. Perhaps it's not a good idea to wash away a

lot of good bacteria. And in fact, there's something called the Human Microbiome Project which is essentially mapping the skins ecosystem and the Yeah, they're calling the skins ecosystem, which was really cool. And they're even saying that it's it's a lot like a zoo and that there's much more diversity or maybe even like a rainforest. Um. Yeah, so

they're saying that the human body is resembling a super organism. Okay, so my body, my my skin rather is a jungle, and I should maybe not get up every morning and slash and burn it in the shower exactly exactly. Um, And I'm like Okay, I'm gonna say this. I don't know what everybody's uh jungles are like with their armpits, so I'm not suggesting that people don't bathe. However, we do have good data that perhaps it's not as necessary as before. This sort of American ideal of cleanliness and

godliness isn't exactly the right path, right. Well, the connection between cleanliness and godliness is really fascinating and pretty much

spans the entire length of human history. There's a great book out there called Clean A History of Personal Hygiene Impurity by Virginia Smith, and I highly recommend picking this up if anybody's really interests in it, because it basically she exhaustively analyzes the the emergence and UH and an advancement of On one hand, hygiene, which is my body needs to be cleaned sometimes because it gets dirty, and

if it gets to dirty, there's a problem. And then the idea of purity, the idea that yes, exactly that my my soul is pure, that that there's a connection but in between physical and spiritual purity or mental purity, and these two issues become intertwined throughout human history. So suddenly we have situations where it's like, oh, I'm going into the sauna to sweat out my illness and also maybe a tone for sins and just it just gets

just complicated and intertwined throughout history. So we have this thing, this cleanliness and godliness that if I can, if I can scrub it out, then that I'm going to be better in the long run. Right, Yeah, we have that. So we've got that that sort of um, you know, altross of history, honest, right, that has colored our perception of bathing and hygiene. And then we also have the American Civil War in which Frederick law Homestead if it sounds familiar, he was the guy who um created Central

Parker was the architecture. Yeah, but he was actually on the Union side. He created a big sanitation campaign and he basically said, look, um, let's, you know, for all the soldiers coming in off warfield. You know, if they're if they're even if they're just hanging out let alone, they've got some sort of wound. Let's make sure that

they're cleaned regularly. But their linens are clean regularly, and that the walls and you know, the hospitals and whatnot are all cleaned and they found that that greatly decreased disease and illness. So all of a sudden, people have that aha moment and we're like, oh, yeah, we should probably do this all the time, which has led to our obsession with bathing. Well. I also have to say, as a I'll admit that I am sometimes a maybe not compulsive, but I I love a good shower, you know.

I Mean it's like I get up in the morning and on one level, yes, I want to feel clean um. On another level, I want my hair to not stand straight up. Yeah. But then also it's just like you're you're hit with all this hot water. It wakes you up, it refreshes you, it it's just you know, you're you're living completely in the moment while that water is on your face, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's the soap thing. Yes, well it becomes problematic if you do

it all the time, right. I mean, I'm like, one level of that is the whole No Pooh movement, which isn't quite as strange as it sounds, because when I first a friend of mine was like, yeah, I'm doing this no Pooh thing, and I'm like, WHOA, I don't know if that's possible. I think, Yeah, I'm still hoping. What is shampoo? Okay, all right, well you know I mean for me, that's chologically, it's just I'm going to go there. Well yeah, when I first I was like, yeah,

let's if that's possible, I'm I'm on board. No, No, it's actually with the the shampoo thing, it is actually really good for I was talking about not pooing ever again like that's that's also good for me. But but I'm not using shampoo, and the idea of being that you're hair is gonna be better off in the long run if you're not either, the more extreme version being that you're not using all these harsh soaps, right, The idea is to distribute the oils rather than strip them

a wet. The same thing with the skin though, So, um, I don't know if you know this, but this is so crazy. There are ten bacterial cells for every one human cell. So you know, if they had a quorum, like you wouldn't even have a vote there, right, basically, um, and then although some of the bacteria on our skin is is foreign and can make a sick, most of it is harmless and a lot of it is beneficial.

So there's this a great New York Times UM article called The Grid Unwashed, and in that article they say that good bacteria are educating your own skin cells to make your own antibiotics. Says Dr Richard Gallo when that's he's the chief of Dermatology Division at the University of California, San Diego, so we know what he's talking about. And so they essentially produced their own antibotics that kill off

bad bacteria. So if you're showering three times a day, then you're probably gonna have a real problem in terms of that good bacteria that you're stripping off, and you're actually gonna be damaging your skin cells and making it more apt perhaps to actually have that bad bacteria gualm

onto it. Yeah, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually warns that UM that that Washington scrubbing um excessively or in an environment like a hospital where you're you're constantly using these anti bacterials and you're wearing gloves, that you can get irritant contact dermatitis, which is uh

actually an occupational risk for health care professionals. And UH also excessive scrubbing can wear away the stratum corneum, which is the utmost skin barrier, so that you know, if you're regularly breaching this drying it out, it's getting irritated and cracked. Like you said, it's gonna be um more susceptible to pathogens. It's like cleaning out a neighborhood, like you know, everybody gets for closed on suddenly all these empty houses and less reputable things, and people may move

into those homes. You know, you clean out the natural environment of bacteria. You know, who knows what the what the next tenants are going. You're saying behind my ear might become a crack den, Yes, a crack den of bacterial may am okay, I thought that might be the case. Um, this is actually interesting to the places on the human body where there are different types of diversity, because again, remember you've got all that bacteria, and it's not just

one kind of bacteria. There's actually read somewhere there's like a thousand different type of bacteria on your skin at this very moment um. Scientists actually expected to find the most bacteria and the most diversity in moist, dark environments such as our under arms, between our toes um. How do I say this delicately. Are our Crecus buddcus? Yeah, I think that's the Latin here, Yes, But it was actually the forearms that have the most bacterial diversity, like

the inside of the forearm. Well that they didn't say exactly. I think I'm gonna guess it's on the inside, just because you know your your arm is going up and down and perhaps and I don't know, this is Julie's like flimsy theory, and you might might have more uh contact with your other skin right right, I don't know, but actually the forum has forty four bacteria species on average.

By comparison, the behind the ear only saw nineteen bacteria species. Wow, so like the worst like instead of like thinking about like spitting on somebody, if you're really mad at somebody, come to them and just start rubbing your forearms against their face, just like when I'm both side up and

down against their cheeks. Yeah. And then also the crease of the arm right, um, So you know that's that kind of makes sense because that's sort of a waste area that really, So that I found that really interesting because a lot of times when I'm on the Marta, the public transportation train here, we have in Atlanta. Um, you know, it's just it's just like uh, you know, it's it's just like the London tube, except smaller and

less efficient. Um mind the gap. Yeah it's uh, but but I'm generally reluctant to actually touch surfaces with my fingers, so I will wrap my arm around it and actually end up clutching the bar with that area right below the what are we calling it, the opposite of the elbow, the inner elbow, the increase of your your arm. Yeah, so I'm I'm doing I'm I thought I was doing a good thing. I'm actually doing my part to dirty

up part up all funky. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the whole thing where they say, you know, of course cover your mouth when you sneeze or but people have been encouraging to use as to use the vampire or the Dracula method right where you bring it up and you cover your nose and mouth with the the crook of your elbow there the crook and uh and that sounded great. It's like, okay, I'm not going to be you know, using that for anything. I'm not you know,

putting my food there and eating out of it. So but it but it turns out it's like, oh, I'm I might be getting a little sick here. Let me press my face to pick up against the dirtiest, most bacterial populated part of my body. Let me blow this possible, you know, virus now into the crook of my elbow with the forty four bacteria, and see if I can create my little peatree dish and then rub it on some mass transportation like pole and yeah, you look down

and they're like their little cities emerging there. Yeah, yeah, the little skyscrapers. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. But that's a Again, that's the surprise of all of this is that, you know, from what I could tell and the research, it wasn't until two thousand and seven that people actually started to look

at the skin and say, what about the bacteria there? Um. And another really cool stat that that we found is that the most stable skin sites look more similar across different people than separate skin sites on one person. So that means that strangers often share the same bacteria living on their under arms, even as two separate sites on the same person contained wild different bacteria. So if you ever like you know, you feel really separate from humanity.

Just think about that. Just think about your your armpits uniting all of us. It's a beautiful thought, isn't it. It's and I mean, it's just you know, thinking about it's like it's only been since the forties and fifties that that we've really gotten into the whole like must bathe every day kind of thing and modern convenience for

modern conveniences, everybody suddenly has a bathroom. Um, it's why if you you stay at older hotels, you frequently find the whole exterior bathroom thing and you're you're, you're like, WHOA, I can't believe I'm playing X amount of night and I've got to walk out in the middle of the night to go pee. But that's just part of it. But but, but the core here is that long before this, for millions of years before this, we were not taking baths every day. It's just it's a part of our

development that we were a dirtier people. Well, and they also are funkier people. We were a funkier people, and technology has changed with so much. I mean, even if you're a armor today, you're probably still not um in the soil quite as much as you were before, right, because we have machines that are taking care of things, so we're not getting as so crazy dirty as we were before, to the point where you come home from your job and it's just like you've got hold dust,

you know, under your your nail bed. I mean, it still happens, right, but it's just not as frequent. Yeah, Like I I don't take a shower when I come in in the afternoon from work because that would be a little silly since I generally don't break a sweat in the course of the day, and unless well maybe I should sometimes with Allen Marta and it's maybe you're just trying to slough all that those e pollutants. Yeah, that's true from your computer E pollutants and then just

sort of smig and exhaust and all that. Okay, so maybe maybe I should take a shower when I get home. But but the point being, I'm not toiling in the mud. I'm not, you know, I'm not returning home like streaked in the excrement of various farm animals. Most days. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's not. It's not like the Black Plague era, right, Like they're there's not urine hopefully um in the streets and in feces and so on and so forth. Yeah, And it's also even if I am breaking a sweat,

it's uh like sweat in and of itself. It is not like stink juice coming out of your body. It's uh. Now you let sweat set, you let it go on unwashed than uh, than things can get a little extra funky, I guess. But I mean sweat is not the enemy, actually, right, that's not the funk causing um active ingredient here, right, And in fact, i've heard um actually from There was a this American life that several years back for some

guys intentionally went I became homeless. They were kind of down on their luck, and they're like, hey, it would be easier if we just went ahead and became homeless, lived on the streets in New York where there are a lot of you know, so we won't have to worry about going hungry because we know where to hit

and where to go. Um. But but early on in the process they were very into like, all right, we're gonna but we're gonna avoid falling into these into the trap of being like stinky bums and One of the things they advocated was was washing the socks was just vital and there they said that if you ever like smell somebody on public transportations down on their their luck and kind of grimy and there's just they're reeking, there's a good chance it's sock funk that's going on socks

just you know completely, you know, they soak with sweat, et cetera, and then they just stuff starts growing. I mean that, yeah, that makes sense, right, you're just you've got your own little ecosystem in your shoes. Yeah. And nobody's making the argument the dirty hippies. I mean they generally don't even wear socks, right, No, no, just yeah, see again they're that is like sort of I think

the higher coal type of footwear that's worn by hippies. Um. But also the other thing here is the African glands. And these are glands that are found in the breast general area. Eyelids aren't pits and ear and in the breast. They if you're wondering, like why are they in the breast, Uh, they actually secrete fat droplets into the breast milk. They're not making smelly breasts or anything. Um. And in the ear they helped form earwax. So again that's the culprit here.

It's not the fact that you actually sweat. And I've also read before to the diet can obviously give you a funk. Yeah yeah, Like if you're eating nothing but garlic and onions every day, day and day out broad

chicken like four seven. Yeah, if your diet is nothing but fast food fried foods, then then yeah it might it might have an effect on the waist you smell yeah, yeah, So you know, with all that in mind, still I think that what's interesting about all of this is that, Okay, we've got the discovery that there's good bacterial in the skin, and yet we have this very robust antibacterial soap market

that's in everything. It seems like it maybe has cooled off a little bit in the last year, but I mean I were seeing it in body wash and so on and so forth, and actually it's not ideal at all to be using antibacterial wash, at least the stuff

that's used um commercially. There's a place for it in hospitals obviously, yeah, or you know, it's like maybe you keep it around for for times when yes, some antibacterial soap would be a good idea, right, Like you're doing something particularly dirty, or you accidentally stick your hand in

cat feces. I don't know, um accidentally, Yeah, every placing dozy dough with the polls on mass transit, right, so you might want a little pure l. Yeah, but it's like you just ate dinner and you got a little grease on your your fingers. Maybe not a good time

to actually just scour the bacteria from your hands. Yeah, And there are plenty of studies out there that have looked at the effectiveness of antibacterial step and they're essentially saying that that just the normal soaping, counting the your A, B c's, you know, I think it's like under two minutes or something. Um, washing your hands for two minutes with just regular soap is much more effective than the antibacterial soap because the antibacterial soup is actually stripping away

the good bacteria along with the bad bacteria. I think sometimes there's a sense with with washing hands though, that it's it's kind of like bacteria and these these deadly things that can get into it's all these germs that they're kind of magic and and therefore you're gonna need something equally magical to get rid of it. I don't

know that that that really makes sense. Like I like, I I know on a on a scientific level what's going on with germs, But but still there's this sense like like like there are germs everywhere and uh, and they're these kind of magical unseen things, and so you're gonna need something with a little magical potency to it to take it out, and not just something that kind

of smells nice. It's m M. You're saying, it's kind of like it's kind of crazy, I admit, but I mean I feel like a lot of people must see it that way, you know, I don't know, I don't know.

I mean we are we talking about, like like I used to use antibacterial stops a lot more until my my wife convinced me not to so, and I think part of it when I was using it all all the all the time, it was like I'm gonna wash my hands, it's gonna be as clean as possible, and then they're gonna if there's any risk of germs getting on my hand, I'm gonna go ahead nip that in the butt because it could be these these hidden and visit.

You know, it's like putting some sort of magic token up on the door to keep ghosts out, all right, So it's like a talisman. Yeah, it's kind of a weirdly like, yeah, a talisman like science looping back around

and becoming fault pale all in the course of your handwashing. Well, actually, all that handwashing with antibacterial soap has given rise to something called the hygiene hypothesis, which is actually really interesting because, as we all know, there's been a huge up tech analogies with children, and so the hygiene hypothesis says basically that our super clean world is depriving our children's immune

system system of developing properly. So instead of doing what it's supposed to do, which is to fight off bacteria, it doesn't really have that bacteria anymore really to fight off. So it's kind of the mother boy effect, right where them like motherboy, like you're you're the codl child, Mama's boy. Yeah. Yeah, that that that is protected from all the hart realities of the era of the world, and then therefore can never really um survive unattended because they just have no defenses.

Right let out into the wild it's it's then um ravaged by a pack of lions essentially, you know, like Buster, Yeah, except for the pack of lions is actually your own immune system. Because the immune system is looking for something to attack, right, and if there's no good or bad bacteria going on, or if there's very little bacteria that would normally be there, uh, then it would essentially turned

to the person, right and begin attacking the person. So it's and that's what you see with some of the autoimmune systems diseases today, right, or even like something as simple as exzema flare ups. I mean that there's a good theory there that says that those flare ups happen when the bad bacteria is stripped off, So that's where

all these allergies start to kick in. It also reminds one of some of these pages from the history books of of ancient empires and the idea that you want to keep the army away invading people and and causing termel term elsewhere, because God help us if they come back to the city, yes, because then they're just gonna turn on us and turn on themselves. I know it's gonna it's gonna be like Shakespeare play at least the ending. Yeah, right, well with a wedding, oh, this usually a wedding or

death or I went dark, you went dark? I thought your wedding. No, no, I was thinking, you know, poison flasks hemlock. Yeah, the like gotcha. Well there you go. I mean that's that's why that that's the case for being a dirty hippie. Really yeah, I'm still not completely convinced. H You know, I'm not going to give up showering. Like I said, I really like some hot water splash in my face in the morning. However, I have um force myself to not wash my hair every day. Um based.

I mean I've been hearing it for a while, but then like the last dude to cut my hairs, like like yeah, yeah, you should just make maybe just wash it every other day. So I'm trying that you should seriously what okay, not that everybody wanted some sort of like tips on this, but this is what everyone wanted tips on hair care. But really, if you massage your scalp and you redistribute the oils, then you're not going

to have slick looking hair. I will tell you this because I did not that I want to reveal this but I just washed my hair after seven days, yeah, this morning, and it was not It wasn't slick at all. Of course you didn't see me before that, so you can't verify, but trust me, that's what you do. Wait, so your hair is better for having like we were, okay, day day seven. Wish your hair better before you washed

it or after? Well, I mean it was starting to get a little funky because it's been seven days before i'd actually put shampoo on it. But my point is is that it looked quite lovely. Maybe you know, of course days one through five, six and seven looking a little bit funky. But it wasn't like an oil slick or anything. And it's not like you you get up the more the next morning you have and taking a shot. You haven't washed your hair rather in a day, and

then it's suddenly chaos, it's suddenly bad. Right. The key is you have to massage of scalp redistribute oil. Massage scalp redistribute oils. That's your takeaway. I did want to mention that, uh, the author of Dirt Unclean, uh, Katherine Ashenberg, has a lot of really great information about this sort of the history of funk and history of cleanliness, so you guys might want to check that out as well. Well. Hey,

I've got just one quick listener mail here. Um, hey, listened by the name of Billy writes, then, with the little contemplation about the role of robots in our future, says greetings, I was listening to Love Hayden robots. You mentioned the love bots, like the one you called Roxy, and that's with three xes. I am very constrict myself, but with this the adultery, it's it is not a living being. It would only be able to work outside

of parameter setting. However, physically it would resemble a human. Also, um, what would happen if you had had a sex spot and it downloaded a virus on the servo net? Okay, some interesting thoughts there, But indeed, what would it be adultery if one started seeing a robot on the side. I don't know what if you saw one robot and then you were seeing another robot. I'm still intrigued by the idea of robot STDs, just essentially what he's talking about. Yeah, which,

there's actually that case where the guy gave himself. It wasn't sexually transmitted. It was a computer transmitted virus in his body. That's right. He had a r f I D chip implanted and he gave himself a virus on that chip. So I don't know what the future holds there. Yeah, it'll be interesting. So hey, have you have some interesting tidbits share of this or just some contemplative ideas. You can share them with us on Twitter or Facebook we

or blow the mind on both of those. And you know, I want to mention that you know they have the pashtags on Twitter. If you use Twitter, you are glow aware of this. They're often used for bad humor. But there's one particular hashtag that that I have been following because the hashtag is blew my mind. One word that's hashtag that the hash sign blew my mind. And I'm interested because I'm like, I wonder what's blowing everybody's mind on Twitter. It turns out very inane stuff. It's blowing

people's minds. Couple example, Yes, some of them are so bad I can't actually read them um in the podcast. But like here's one I don't know is it biber for Bieber? One? Is is at justin Bieber Bieber? I just saw your movie with my best friend, because there's several ds, and then something that resembles like a smiley faced but facing a different direction than I'm used to. And then they add the hashtag blew my mind. And then there's a heart thing, Uh, please follow me back,

it will make my Friday. And then some other strange emoticon that I've that I'm apparently too old to understand, but okay, so that this person was blown up. Their mind is blown by this. Then there's another one. I think that's the first time in my life I've put on pants left leg, right leg blew my mind or and then somebody just watched The sixth Sense, So I

think we can do better. Listeners. Um, if you encounter some cool bit of science, if we um, you know, I dare I say we blow your mind with some cool bit of of science or or just a cool idea or a contemplation on the world around us, share it on Twitter, throw on that hashtag, and let's uh, let's reclaim the blew my mind hashtag from the people are are large There's some there's some good boasts out there, but but from the largely the people who are misusing

it on doll things, Yeah, I like that. Let's reclaim it. Uh, Let's let's give some justice to blew my mind. Yeah. And hey, if you have any thoughts that you would like to share with us, please do so at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House stuff Works iPhone app has a RYE. Download it today on iTunes, m