My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-shampoo-bacteria-rich-hygiene-experiment.html?_r=0

For most of my life, if I’ve thought at all about the bacteria living on my skin, it has been while trying to scrub them away. But recently I spent four weeks rubbing them in. I was Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic, developed by AOBiome, a biotech start-up in Cambridge, Mass. The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing it away with soap and shampoo — acting as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.

In the conference room of the cramped offices that the four-person AOBiome team rents at a start-up incubator, Spiros Jamas, the chief executive, handed me a chilled bottle of the solution from the refrigerator. “These are AOB,” he said. “They’re very innocuous.” Because the N. eutropha are alive, he said, they would need to be kept cold to remain stable. I would be required to mist my face, scalp and body with bacteria twice a day. I would be swabbed every week at a lab, and the samples would be analyzed to detect changes in my invisible microbial community.

In the last few years, the microbiome (sometimes referred to as “the second genome”) has become a focus for the health conscious and for scientists alike. Studies like the Human Microbiome Project, a national enterprise to sequence bacterial DNA taken from 242 healthy Americans, have tagged 19 of our phyla (groupings of bacteria), each with thousands of distinct species. As Michael Pollan wrote in this magazine last year: “As a civilization, we’ve just spent the better part of a century doing our unwitting best to wreck the human-associated microbiota. . . . Whether any cures emerge from the exploration of the second genome, the implications of what has already been learned — for our sense of self, for our definition of health and for our attitude toward bacteria in general — are difficult to overstate.”

While most microbiome studies have focused on the health implications of what’s found deep in the gut, companies like AOBiome are interested in how we can manipulate the hidden universe of organisms (bacteria, viruses and fungi) teeming throughout our glands, hair follicles and epidermis. They see long-term medical possibilities in the idea of adding skin bacteria instead of vanquishing them with antibacterials — the potential to change how we diagnose and treat serious skin ailments. But drug treatments require the approval of the Food and Drug Administration, an onerous and expensive process that can take upward of a decade. Instead, AOBiome’s founders introduced AO+ under the loosely regulated “cosmetics” umbrella as a way to release their skin tonic quickly. With luck, the sales revenue will help to finance their research into drug applications. “The cosmetic route is the quickest,” Jamas said. “The other route is the hardest, the most expensive and the most rewarding.”

AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.

For my part in the AO+ study, I wanted to see what the bacteria could do quickly, and I wanted to cut down on variables, so I decided to sacrifice my own soaps, shampoo and deodorant while participating. I was determined to grow a garden of my own.

More at the link.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Harpa Timsah

[spookyturtle 9,466]

I have raw denim jeans that I have worn for over 8 months without washing them so I can get some cool fades and wear patterns.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

I have raw denim jeans that I have worn for over 8 months without washing them so I can get some cool fades and wear patterns.

You got a circle of dip on your back pocket?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

You got a circle of dip on your back pocket?

Nope. I used to smoke when I was young and stupid. I quit about 20 years ago and never used any tobacco product since, dip included. Thankfully now that I'm older, I'm just stupid.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Nope. I used to smoke when I was young and stupid. I quit about 20 years ago and never used any tobacco product since, dip included. Thankfully now that I'm older, I'm just stupid.

So what kind of jeans wear are you going for?

[Novembro 1,763]

Where are the pictures?!

[spookyturtle 9,466]

So what kind of jeans wear are you going for?

However they wear, they wear. I don't like the pre-distressed ones anymore. Now it is more of a one of a kind look. They wear according to your use and activity, etc. I don't wear them if I'll be sweating because I'd never be able to go for months on end without washing them. Always a shower before wearing them, very careful when eating, etc. Turn them inside out and air them out every couple of wearings. It takes a while to start getting some good whiskers and honeycombs. You can Google those, a picture is worth a thousand words. Nothing bad about those terms in case you were wondering.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

I have had real jeans before

My fave pair of jeans were my dad old jeans from the 70s. He gave them to me.

Just thought you wanted to emphasize something special in your wear. Some big wallet spot?

What about those shrink to fit jeans, they still make those.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

I have had real jeans before

My fave pair of jeans were my dad old jeans from the 70s. He gave them to me.

Just thought you wanted to emphasize something special in your wear. Some big wallet spot?

What about those shrink to fit jeans, they still make those.

Levis still makes the shrink to fit. I have a pair of those that are currently a work in progress. In the 1970's, there was no sanforized denim, it was all raw. That's why your dads were so good. Today, the majority of the premium denim comes from Japan, although the Levis Vintage Clothing line still uses US made denim from Cone Mills in NC. That's Danno territory. Samurai is a good Japanese brand, but there is only one store in the US that carries them. Many buy them from overseas, but I think sizing is difficult without trying on to see how the various cuts fit. Everything is big until you soak them to shrink them. Another good heavyweight, and I mean heavyweight denim brand is Iron Heart from the UK. Japanese made, but UK based company. They make 25oz denim jeans that will actually stand up by themselves, that's how stiff it is!!

I carry my wallet in my front pocket, so I get the wear pattern there and my small key ring in the watch pocket, so lots of wear there. I was doing the cell phone in the back pocket quite successfully for years, but I recently sat on and broke one for the first time. I try really hard not to get much wear on the knees because the knees always wear out first and I don't like the heavily faded knees in my old age.

What brands are you familiar with?

[Neonred 3,575]

I think I still have an old pair of Levis from the 1970's but I know I'd have a hard time fitting into them. They must shrink in storage!

Funny thing about wear. I used to wear out the knees first but lately I am wearing out the seat. Must say something about my changing activities.

[Jacque67 7,328]

I have raw denim jeans that I have worn for over 8 months without washing them so I can get some cool fades and wear patterns.

Not commando I hope!!!

Spotted Horse jeans are cool. Yohji Yamamoto often collaborates with them.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Hippie stuff

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Not washing pants for 8 months for a pattern? Juvinile.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Not washing pants for 8 months for a pattern? Juvinile.

Real bikers never wash their jeans.

[Teddy B 17,252]

It wreaks in here.