Boston: Showering, for many of us, is an important part of our daily routine. Personal hygiene is a good thing to maintain if you want friends or a job.
However, Dave Whitlock, a chemical engineer, has decided to eschew bathing for 12 years in favour of dousing himself with a live bacteria spray, invented by a company he cofounded.
The mist, developed by company AOBiome, has no odour and feels like water, contains live bacteria and is designed to be sprayed directly onto the skin twice a day. The shampoo and cleanser don’t contain bacteria, but won’t kill the bacteria already on your body.
“I have not taken a shower in over 12 years,” Mr Whitlock said.
“No one did clinical trials on people taking showers every day, so what’s the basis for assuming that that is a healthy practice?”
The spray is called Mother Dirt and is aimed at people who want to eradicate soap from their lives.
The product website says: “In our modern world, with the rise of probiotics, DIY cosmetics, no-poo products, and other natural skin care solutions, it can be difficult to figure out exactly what it means to live healthy and have healthy skin.”
“The biohacking trend along with a shift towards more natural lifestyles, like Paleo, have led the way for an educated population around the benefits of probiotics and supplements. Yet in this move towards DIY remedies and supplements to help rebalance health, we seem to have overlooked the very important ecosystem of the skin microbiome.”
“Much like our gut relies on active probiotics and other gut bacteria to restore health, the biome of the skin needs to maintain certain bacteria on the skin for health.”
The company claims we do not have enough bacteria on our skin, and we are obsessed by washing it all off with soap.
Mother Dirt has won an award for being one of the most innovative companies of 2015.
The company says you can still shower and use the product — you just spray it on directly after you bathe.
Whitlock doesn’t plan to start showering; he uses Mother Dirt every day and hopes the rest of the world will join him.
“I would like a billion people a day to use this,” Whitlock said.
