Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The science of bathing (featuring Dr. Katrine Whiteson)

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Daniel, Kelly, and Katrine talk about what bathing does to your microbiome, and weigh up the pros and cons.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who likes to think about aliens. And contrary to popular mythology, I really do stay quite clean. Hi, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space. And I also enjoy a regular shower. And I appreciate, Daniel, that you defy stereotypes about your community. We are all individuals.

So tell me, Kelly, have your hygiene habits changed since you moved out onto the farm? Do you feel like, I'm just farm fresh all the time? Or do you feel like, wow, I just touched a goat. I need to go wash my hands. I do wash my hands after petting the goats. And when I know that I'm going to be mucking the stalls, which pretty much means picking up large piles of hay and feces, I move my shower from the morning to the afternoon

so that it can happen after all of that poop dust has landed in my hair. And you're still a little, but, you know, I think maybe in the end, living amongst the animals could be helping my microbiome. Hard to say. Yeah, well, we're going to learn all about that

on the show today. We are. And so let's not wait another second before we bring Katrina on. Because this is time wasted, not having her on the show. So let's get to it. All right.

Well, then it's again. Again, my distinct pleasure to introduce the podcast, the listener's favorite Professor Whiteson, and the one who's largely responsible for teaching our children to bathe. Thank you, Katrina. Wow, that's a big responsibility. It's like a surprising responsibility. Like, I was kind of blown away by how hard it was to convince my kids that they wanted to shower every day. Was it the same for the Whiteson kids?

Let's tell all the secrets. Oh, big time. We were actually reminiscing about that with the kids recently and how in the summer, I mean, they were swimming a lot, like almost every day. But I feel like there were definitely, we had like a every Sunday, absolutely you need to take a bath policy. But the kids feel like they had. Once a week. Once a week, if you need it or not. I mean, on top of swimming and everything.

But yeah, I think there might have been, they seem to think they figured out how to trick us or like a babysitter into not doing a bath on a soft. Sunday once. Oh, no. Which is like, what's so bad? Baths are nice. I don't understand why we have to persuade people to take one. You know, the feeling of being clean, the splashing around. It's all good.

And just so my kids aren't furious at me, I'll mention that they are both now very religious showers. You know, they take it daily, no complaints, and they both luxuriate in there. And I'm glad that our water isn't metered. I mean, our kids, too. Our kids love showering, too. I mean, our son's an athlete. He probably showers more than once a day a lot of times.

Yeah, so we've definitely taught our kids to shower and they enjoy it. But the question we're asking today is whether scientifically that actually was good parenting or not. And it's kind of a recent thing to be showering so much. Yeah. Yeah. I always get nervous when you start talking about the science of parenting because I'm like, do I want to know if I've been doing it wrong? Like, is this something they're going to be talking about in therapy later on? But, you know, it's all right.

We're going to get into it. It's going to be fine. But you've been an excellent step-parent to your baby goats, Kelly, is what I hear. I have, yes. Lottie, whose mama goat, has decided she's not super into feeding her kids. And so that has fallen upon me and my sister-in-law. And so we are sharing the work of being step-goat moms. Put that on your CV for sure. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that's going to get me a job down the road. Well, I don't know if goats need to shower, but I'm very curious by the science of bathing

because we had an episode recently where we talked about super advanced showering, fancy techniques like sonic showers and mist sprays. And Kelly asked me if that had an impact on the skin microbiome. And I didn't know. And so here we are today calling in the ringer, the real Professor Whiteson. The favorite Professor Whiteson. That's right. No, no, no. We did have lots of listeners write in saying that the biofilms episode was their favorite episode, and that's cool.

We all like Katrina. I'm not offended. You need two Whitesons and a weiner smith to really rise to the top. All right. So let's go to the Extraordinaries. We asked the Extraordinaries, is there any scientific reason not to shower? And we learned a lot about our audience from this question. Let's hear what they had to say.

I wonder who asked this question. I think indoor plumbing is roughly, I don't know, 150, maybe 200 years old. So I'm going to say that we survived without showers for a very long time. So no, there's no scientific reason not to shower. I don't know if there is any scientific reason to not to shower. I think daily shower has more to do with social and cultural needs than with skin health. I also don't think there is a scientific reason to shower. I mean, there is multiple ways to keep good body hygiene and showering feels good, but

It doesn't, it's not a need. And from the environmental point of view, it may be better for us to shower less than try other alternatives. In general, even if the water you're using is clean, it'll still strip oils from your skin and dry out your skin a bunch, not to mention the environmental impacts of taking long showers and wasting water and stuff. I believe there is a scientific reason not to shower as it allows your body to establish its natural, ecosystem and sort of all of your levels of oil and that sort of thing equalize on their own. I think if you have the flu or pneumonia, that's a very scientific reason not to shower. Okay, thanks. Bye. Hmm. I'm going to pull a Daniel and say that this question is a little too vague and undefined to answer. I'm not sure what scientific reason really means.

When you have certain things like dry skin where a shower may exacerbate their condition. Is there any scientific reason to take a shower? Well, that's what my younger stuff would say. I don't know why kids hate taking showers. I would suppose that if the water was dirty or if you had open wounds, that showers might not be best. By showering, we probably deprive a lot of wildlife of their sustenance, mites, etc. I'd just assume be clean, though.

I think that the answer to this question may be related to the health of the skin, Maybe an excessive amount of showering may cause some sort of dermatitis. I conducted a scientific experiment into this, and on 100% of the days that I did not shower, my wife told me to stop being weird and gross. Like, I don't know, we survived without showering for, like, belleniums while we were evolving. I don't know, I feel like that's just unclean. Like, there's way more scientific reasons to shower than not to shower. Possibly because it could dry out your sense.

skin a lot or something like that? Overshowering causes skin flakiness. It wastes water. It takes waste of one of those pheromones that can be useful in a date. Of course there's a scientific reason not to shower. If you shower too much the corks in your hair combine with the trematodes living on your skin to give you cork trematitis. Maybe if you shower too much you're harming your microbiome,

but also if you don't shower, those guys might get out of control. You never know. Well, Katrina, what do you think? Well, I mean, I actually agree. Several people talked about how showering is a recent thing, and we haven't been showering through human evolutionary history, and that raises all kinds of questions about how it changes our health and our hygiene. And I think those are really good questions. There are not questions you can get a good answer to by reading the labels on shampoo and soap packages. I'll tell you that. Oh, you're going up against big soap. Well, I mean, I like soap as much as the next guy, but I do think we are disrupting our microbiomes by using soap and

showering regularly. And I mean, there's just so much to say. I can't talk about this without bringing up the story of a company called A-O-B-B, which the A-O-B stands for ammonia oxidizing bacteria. And so there's a whole movement of people, and there's a product from A.O. Biom, which has an ammonia oxidizing bacteria in it that is moving us away from using soap to disrupt our microbiome, and instead inviting in certain microbial characters to help us with our skin hygiene. What? Wow. So you're saying there's a product that puts bacteria onto your skin? Yes. Wow. All right. So like when chinchillas are rolling around in those dust baths,

Like 10 years from now, we're going to be rolling around in ammonia bacteria baths. Is that what it's going to look like? I wish everybody could see Kelly's little dance there, a little fish of a shower dance. You do not even know how close in thinking you are to the founders of this AO biome company because the story goes, it all started when one of them was watching a horse bathe in dust on a hot day. And imagining that the sweat on the horse was like meeting up with a bacteria. in the dirt that was somehow helping that situation be better, and that might have been why that behavior evolved.

That's amazing. It is really amazing, right? But before we get into the details of this product, maybe we should back up and remind people of what is on our skin, because I have the impression that I take a shower, I wash myself clean, and then it's just me and my skin cells. But tell me, Katrina, what's going on on my skin? What microbes are living there? Oh, what a good question.

Okay, so I mean, to be honest, the microbes are not just on the surface. So rinsing off with water is not going to do too much. The microbes are actually living in the top millimeter or so of our skin. They're like densely packed into the follicles and different structures underneath there. So rinsing off your skin certainly will not remove all the microbes. We have really fascinating biogeography of the microbes that live on the human body. And so you could imagine the environment in the crook of your elbow where it's moist is going to be super different from on your forearm where it's more dry. And so overall, there's a certain collection of microbes that are really common on our skin.

They include staphiloccus and another bunch of bugs called carina bacterium. And the names don't matter, but there are some bugs that do better. The names don't matter. To both agree. Here it is. See, Kelly, I brought the train on to gang up against you. Oh, no. No, I was proud of her.

We're saying some of the names, and I thought, I wonder how Daniel's going to retaliate later in the episode. But, all right, we're just going to, we'll call them bugs and move on. But wait, Katrina, I have to understand this. You're saying that, like, the environment of my elbow is different enough from the environment of my wrist that we got different microbes living there. They're like different little ecosystems. Yeah. I mean, they're different in the same way that a rainforest is different from a desert, is different from a coral reef. The nutrients and environment are completely different.

and they allow for the thriving or survival of different types of microbes. So in the moisture parts of your skin, you have moisture-loving microbes. And if it's more dry, you have microbes that have tools for surviving that. But my elbow, I mean, I don't want to get too personal here. My elbow is not like a rainforest, you know, compared to the desert of my wrist. Like, they can't be that different. They're like, you know, 10 inches apart, right? How can they be so different and how can the bacteria be so specific and so sensitive to the conditions

that you have like different microbes living there. I mean, the conditions are pretty different. I mean, maybe I should have used armpit as an example for a moist location. That is more rainforest area. That's true. Thank you. One could even say I might like be able to ferment my own human kombucha there. Oh, boy.

Oh, that's a physicist thing I'm guessing too. Definitely not. Definitely not. I mean, actually here's a piece of information that might stick in your mind. So your feet, which are definitely more moist, at least in the modern world, most people are wearing socks. And our feet have really diverse communities of fungi living on them, whereas the rest of our bodies don't have as much fungi on our skin.

And then the bacteria, it's the opposite. So the bacteria have more diversity in the places that are less moist. So our feet are really quite different from the rest of our bodies in terms of the skin microbiome and they have a lot more fungi. So there's a lot of different habitats where you find different kinds of microbes. I guess what I'm wondering is like, so if we're using, soap to clean the surface, like does our skin segregate into habitats where like you would have different bacteria species on the surface of your skin relative to like a millimeter down where

you said? So like maybe there's still some bacteria in the hair follicles, but are you getting rid of a whole different set of bacteria by just cleaning the surface of your skin? Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense. I mean, in my mind, the skin bacteria have roots and when you wash them off, many of them will come back. Okay. When you say roots, You don't mean like an individual bacterium has like, you know, literal roots to hold itself on. You mean like there is a depth to the community? Exactly. That is what I mean.

I mean that there are microbes that are living underneath the top, top surface of the skin. And when you wash, those are not removed. And I mean, I have a really great example about Dr. Armpit and the transplants he did to help people with body odor, if you would like to hear that, because it really illustrates it. Of course. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay, we're jumping to the body odor part of the discussion. Let's do this. I mean, so this is all in the context of a society where people are showering. So it could be that in the past, we had communities of microbes that were more connected to the environment that we lived in. And if you were to shower, you would completely remove that forever. I don't think that's the case in modern people. And my wonderful example from a Belgian scientist who goes by the moniker, Dr. Armpit, you can Google him.

He's a wonderful scientist, and he wanted to help people who were struggling with body odor. And he found twins where one twin had more body odor than the other. And he did armpit transplants, which involved really roughing up the skin in the armpit so that you could get to the microbes underneath and also disrupt the skin microbiome more substantially. And then so he roughed up the skin and then transplanted the microbes from. from the nice-smelling twin onto the twin who was struggling with body odor. And my understanding is that it was quite effective. He did write a paper about it.

But that's not an armpit transplant. That's an armpit microbe transplant. Okay, fair enough. That's very different. You're being very picky. Words have meanings, people. Come on. I mean, that's the part of the armpit we're all thinking about.

So can we dig a little deeper into why we stink and like why we stink more. post-puberty and what role bacteria have in all of that? Yeah, great question. And actually, I didn't bring up oil when I talked about the moisture of the skin, and we have more oily parts of our skin, and they attract a different community of microbes. So when you go through puberty and your skin becomes more oily, you do have a different community of microbes living on your skin. And in general, where the smells come from are through the production of volatile molecules

that can waft away from their origin source and make it to your nose. And microbes are really good at fermenting things and breaking things down. And so we have microbes that are converting the molecules they come across on our skin into volatoles that we can smell. Much like the process of kombucha brewing, you're saying. Oh, my goodness. Let it go, man. You lost that one. Let it go.

And beer and bread. Okay. Mr. Sourdough. might like to know all those delicious aromas from the sourdough, yes. I see. Some of those are the same molecules just in different combinations, you know. Well, I would like to work out and smell like sourdough. That would be amazing.

Yeah. I mean, I think that would be an improvement for most of us if we could smell like sourdough. But are you saying that we smell because microbes are fermenting on our skin? Is that what's really happening? It doesn't have to be fermentation, just to be clear. But yes, microbes are producing volatile molecules. that make it to our nose and we smell them. Yes.

So I feel like lately when I look through the deodorant aisle, there are a lot more methods that are being used right now to address stink than I've seen in the past. And so, like, I tried some, like, loomie or whatever where it's supposed to change your pH, and that's supposed to make it so that you don't stink. Do you have any thoughts on these new methods and which ones work in, like, the science behind it?

them? I've also been noticing this and I agree that it's interesting to see there's some new strategies coming out. I don't know enough about the science to make an evidence-based comment. And I'm not sure there is a lot of evidence because that's not the burden that's placed on companies before they can write something on their package. They just have to be generally regarded as safe. Oh, so it's unregulated like the supplement industry, you mean? Yes, exactly. It's in the same way. That doesn't. doesn't mean some companies haven't done real research. I think, in fact, I think that the company's producing these molecules or these products, maybe some of them are your listeners,

they actually probably have a lot of really strong evidence. And maybe that is what's reflected on the package. But it's hard to know that by just looking at the package. If you work for Loomi, get in, well, do we want to do a whole deodorant episode? Why the heck not? I want to know about the science of reducing stink. Yeah, why don't I smell like sourdough? Yes. Let's dig into the science of that. There's a life goal for you. I'm wondering how much I want to ask you personal questions about like what deodorant do you use and how often. And maybe we should make this more general instead of so specific.

But Daniel's like, no, ask her whatever. It's not me. Well, no, I mean, I'm happy to share all kinds of stuff because I'm interested in this and I've tried different things, you know. But I personally, I mean, I just shower and use normal shampoo and conditioner and body wash, and I put deodorant on. I don't have like a brand I'm super loyal to, but I use normal deodorant that has probably terrible things in it. Oh, okay. And I have tried some of these other new products, but I didn't feel like they worked very well. But maybe I wasn't consistent enough or, you know, there's maybe you have to transition more slowly.

I've been curious about that myself. And I love the story about this company that I brought up earlier, which has a product where you apply ammonia oxidizing bacteria to your skin. And there's a group of people who haven't showered for more than 10 years. And the people around them say that they don't smell. So I just find that amazing. But I think that you have to somehow do a much more gradual transition. And I remember, I reread it last night, but I remember reading a New York Times article about a reporter at the New York Times. who tried this product from A.O. Biom.

And she didn't shower for, like, I don't know, a month or something. And her colleagues were all calling her teen spirit. Does that suggest it didn't work? That was the sense I was getting. And then she was saying, like, at some point, she basically wasn't able to engage in her normal life because her hair looked crazy and she smelled. Oh, no. How is it supposed to be working?

So, like, what is the connection with what the bacteria are doing and the production of stink? And out of character for me, can you explain the chemistry here? Ammonia oxidizing? What's going on there? So these are bacteria that oxidize ammonia. It's actually the same type of process that happens in a wastewater treatment plant. We have a lot of ammonia in our sweat. And I think there's other consequences relating to pH that maybe it also keeps the pH a bit lower.

and that probably also helps to prevent the colonization of other bugs that, I think that many of the bugs that cause odor might not tolerate low pH as well. So anyhow, the ammonia oxidizing bacteria that were initially observed when the guy who founded the company watched a horse bathing in the dust, you know, he found them there. And so he hypothesized that horses were dealing with a, hot, sweaty summer day by having the help of these ammonia oxidizing bacteria to reduce the ammonia load on their skin. And then the metabolic products from that had other positive

consequences to regulate the skin microbiome. And he doesn't smell like a horse, of course. Well, I mean, my knowledge is essentially limited to this New York Times article, but it was a pretty good one. I'm happy to share it. But it ends with a comment where the reporter asks his girlfriend how he smells, and she says, he smells like a human. Oh, okay. So not a horse, but I mean, that didn't really necessarily make it sound like it was working. It's a very broad comment, too. That's right.

But apparently, damning with faint breeze. Yeah, the people who have been using this product are living lives and you can't tell. I mean, it makes me have a lot of questions. Like, what about after you exercise? And apparently they still shower with water. And that's kind of a ritual that people have as a part of the, day that must be hard to lose, right? And so

even if it's not necessary, I think they were just using only water. The reporter who tried to use the product, she went back to just a simple shampoo and soap after that. All right, so we've laid the groundwork to understand what critters are growing

on our skin and how they contribute to our individual particular human smells. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk to Katrina about the effects of showering and how What influences your health. Just ask your smart speaker to play iHeart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone.

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Oh, that is a good smell, but I think you're trying to insult us still. All right, well, let's keep this healthy. I want to know about how my skin microbiome influences the rest of my health. Like, we've been talking about the critters that live on our bodies and how they vary from place to place and how that's all different. But we haven't really answered the question of what critters do we want on our body? Are we washing away good guys or bad guys? Or is that just an totally arbitrary human distinction? So, Katrina, how does our skin microbiome influence us and our health?

What a great question. And to be honest, you kind of have to back up a little bit because our skin health is very affected by our immune health and our general health. So your skin is the largest organ in your body, and it really does reflect your health. But for example, eczema and allergy have become much more common in the last century. And we really think that starts in the gut. Wait, what? Yeah, so the prevalence of eczema. So in California, for example, by the age of two,

something like half of California children are experiencing eczema, atopic dermatitis, to some extent. Are you saying that's only for Californian children? Like, Virginians are spared from this? Well, no. I mean, actually, industrialized children have very high rates of eczema, atopic dermatitis. And maybe you've heard me tell this story a million times where they compared Hutterite children and Amish children, where the Amish children had more exposure to microbes and dirt. Their farming was being conducted very close to their households. They found like more particles of bacterial endotoxin, which is like a cell surface part of a bacteria that makes big immune responses happen.

They found more of that in the household dust and in the children's lives in general. And they found that the rates of eczema were much, much. much smaller, same for the rates of allergy. Whereas in the Hutterite families, where farming was conducted a little farther away from the houses, they had higher rates of eczema, although probably half of what industrialized people have on average. So you're saying that the more you were exposed to like dirt and dust and farming byproducts, the weaker your immune response, or the lack of inflammation, lack of over-response? The lack of over-response, exactly. Yeah. And is eczema just itchy skin?

Yeah, it's itchy skin. It's like red, rough patches. It can have a lot of staphilococcus in it, but it really does seem to have an immune origin that isn't only on the surface of the skins. But all those exposures I just talked about are going to be influencing all parts of your body for sure. But a lot of the solutions we've been reaching for have been related to cultivating a healthy baby gut microbiome in order to avoid the development of those overimmune responses. So make the connection for us, Kachina, which I think is implied in your comment. You're saying that exposure to these allergens avoids an allergic response later on in life. There's something about the immune system not having seen it and then it reacts too strongly to it later. Yeah. I mean, this is very much a hypothesis. There's a lot of science to do to really connect the dots on what you just asked. But yes, that's exactly the idea.

So the hygiene hypothesis, which initially this episode was about the hygiene hypothesis, and I didn't realize we were going to talk about showering specifically so much because to me, the hygiene hypothesis is all about the changes in the 20th century where our hygiene changed. So we've had wastewater treatment, which obviously is wonderful. I love tap water. We've got vaccination, antibiotics, smaller family sizes, just personal hygiene I do think makes a difference. I mean, imagine how different it would be if you grew up in a place where there were like

tons of kids and babies around and no clean water. I mean, there's a lot of downsides in terms of diarrheal illness in a situation like that. But the people who are growing up in communities like that, they actually don't get eczema. They don't get acne. They have actually really amazing skin health. And so that combination of different exposures is associated with better skin health outcomes. But all the details are like a huge science question that people are really working on right now. But it suggests that, like, healthy living is dirty living in some sense, that you want to be exposed to all these crazy things so that your immune system learns to respond appropriately. Is that the idea? Yeah, I mean, dirty living is maybe not how I would put it.

I mean, what about forest bathing? There you go. We do farm bathing. Farm bathing, there you go. Yeah, that's a great idea. Like, there's a wonderful institute in Finland, which, you do. We do farm bathing. There's a has done a bunch of different interventions where they've studied the impact of better connection to nature and microbiome and immune health outcomes. So, for example, they took a paved over kindergarten and they ripped up the pavement and put a bunch of garden boxes in and got the kids getting their hands in the dirt more. And that group of kids had better outcomes when it came to allergies and asthma and other eczema and so forth. And why in particular do we, think that is. So it's like if by playing with dirt when you are in kindergarten can solve the

problems, then that means it wasn't something that was like kicked off when you were a baby and is now in place for the rest of your life. It means it's something that you can change at least when you're in kindergarten. Yeah. So it's something about what those bacteria are doing in the moment. What do we think that they're doing? Do we know? I mean, this is a huge question, but I think it has to do with toleration. So if you are exposed to something, can consistently your immune system becomes tolerant of it. And so I think that's a big part of it. I do think it'd be better to have it happen in infancy.

I really could imagine a future where we are more carefully constructing our baby gut microbiomes and not just letting that happen willy-nilly. So akin to vaccination that we have a plan for making sure that babies get good exposures in their guts early on. Because I think if you, you know, for example, preterm babies who have a lot of antibiotic exposure are much more prone to some of these eczema and allergy and asthma type of outcomes. So I think there's a big moment in early life where we could have a lot of influence. But it is fascinating. And this is true for a lot of different allergies and food tolerances,

that you can build up better tolerance as an adult. So, I mean, many people get allergy shots where you use exposure to protect yourself from future allergies. Or, you know, maybe you've heard of people going and getting like the tiniest one, 10,000th of a peanut amount of exposure weekly and building it up over time until they can eat a peanut without having an anaphylactic shock, which is like life-changing. So those are amazing changes that we are feeling around with how to make use of those changes that can still happen in adulthood. Exposure therapy, I mean, I get that it works, but it always reminds me of like, somebody's afraid of spiders. Let's put them in a box with a bunch of spiders, you know,

as a way to like solve their problem or like, throw. row them out of an airplane if they have a fear of heights or something. But you're saying this like it actually works. There is so much variation and I am really not an expert in that. So I don't want to pretend I understand it. But I mean, I'm a part of our society. I've watched people in my life going through these processes where they use exposure and are able to tolerate things better. And I really love this doctor who wrote a book called fiber-fueled. And he always says your gut is a- That does sound like a book you'd like. I did. Sorry, go ahead.

And he always says that your gut is a muscle and you just have to build up to things. And you wouldn't go to the gym and try to deadlift your body weight the next day. You would build up to it over a year. And most people can eat most things if given small exposures and growing them slowly. And there's exceptions like celiac disease and gluten, obviously, and some severe allergies. But I like that thinking that if you build up to, To it, you can get your body to handle a lot of different exposures. And just because I'm paranoid, I'd like to mention that if you're interested in this building

up tolerance thing, you should talk to a doctor and do it under their supervision. Because we don't need any extraordinary saying, my kid had anaphylactic shock. Yes, exactly. That's for sure. But make the connection for us between all this interesting stuff about the gut and the skin. because initially we were talking about skin microbiome and like Hutterite or Amish children exposure via the skin to stuff on the farm versus like, you know, urban kids who aren't exposed to that. But now we're talking about gut health.

And you said earlier that the two are connected. What is the connection? Aren't these microbial communities very different? The microbial communities are different. They're more on the surface. But underlying everything is your immune system. Your skin reflects your immune health because your skin is your biggest organ. you see it all the time.

Oh, I see. So if your gut, I mean, 70% of your immune system is in your gut. So if you are promoting your gut health through your diet and your life, then all those immune cells will protect your skin. So they'll, you know, your immune system is like this army that's, it doesn't have to be with such an aggressive term, but, you know, they're a team that's out there, cleaning stuff up for you. They're like a marching band.

Yes, a nice quiet one, though. Okay, so just to make sure I understand the connection between the gut and the skin is that they're both affected by your immune system, but your immune system is centered in your gut, even though your skin, as you were saying, is the largest organ? That's right. So your gut is lined with really large numbers of immune cells, also neuroendocrine cells. Your gut has this amazing network of cells that are promoting. by your diet and your microbiome, and those immune cells are going to reflect your systemic health big time. All right.

So now to bring it back to the question in the episode, we're trying to understand whether showering is good for you. And you're telling us that you have microbial communities on your body, but that... It seems to me, if I can try to, if I can jump in and say what maybe the point is, is you should be rolling around in farms until you get the right. kind of bacteria like in your hair follicles and you should be creating the right kind of microbiome. And then it's not so bad if you shower once a day to rinse off the ones that are like on the outside part, but you want to establish a good microbiome initially and then it's okay to shower?

That's a really cool thought. I don't know if that's true. I do think that when you shower, you remove many of the environmental microbes that might be helpful on your skin, like those ammonia oxidizing bacteria. They don't do well if you shower with soap. So we are changing our microbiomes by showering in that sense. But we live in a society where everybody's

showering. I mean, I personally am not going to stop. You were asking me for personal stories. Well, Daniel will remember a few years ago... I'm terrified about what this story is going to be. I wanted to use this soap that's like in

a bar so it's not liquid, so it's more environmentally friendly because it's easier to transport it. So I got shampoo and conditioner in the form of a bar and I tried to use them for like a month. And I was like thinking it was going okay. And then one day I think I was like at a poster session with my students or something and they were taking pictures and I saw the picture and I was like, oh my gosh. I need some real shampoo. So like, so my question is how would we transition to, you know, the way these people who haven't been showering for 10 years, I mean, I find that fascinating. So I think there must be a way to transition yourself towards that and to

need less showering. I think if you, I think right now the products we're using, use soap to strip the oils and then add the oils back, think of shampoo and conditioner or soap and lotion. And I think if we cut both of those steps out of the process, we could probably get to a pretty good balance, and I would imagine that you would have a different skin microbiome if you were to do that. Now, if you go swabbing people in the industrialized world, you're not going to find a whole lot of people who live that way, so it's pretty hard to know what the microbiome would look like. We have done microbiome studies in parts of the world that are relatively uncontacted. Like, I actually got to do a study in the Amazon and Ecuador. We didn't collect skin samples,

but the people in that community did not have eczema or acne. So that was kind of a amazing. And Dr. Armpit, he also went down and he studied, he went with a Yanamami, a guy named David Good, who's a Ph.D. student at Gelf in Canada, and he is Yonamami, and they went down to where he's from, and they did collect skin samples. And so they did see different types of microbes on the skin of the people in this community. So I think that's a hard question to answer in a modern context, because all of us are showering. But in principle, you could like gather up the armpit microbes of people who don't shower and smell fine and you could bottle that up and like sell it and people could effectively all have armpit transplants instead of taking showers. Is that a real business opportunity? In theory,

I think it is. And what's actually really interesting was I followed up on AEOBioe last night. And I learned that they are taking their product in a more medical direction for like wound healing. and other medical applications. They're doing clinical trials and so forth. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of potential here beyond just cosmetics or smells, but actually for health and wound healing. All right. Well, that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about,

because it seems like you're saying that the largest health conditions that affect your skin, like eczema and acne, whatever, are actually driven by your immune system, which is controlled by your gut. And that's not something we're talking about cleaning today. But so if we're talking about whether you want to shower, that's going to impact the microbiome on your skin. But that's a lesser player in these questions of like acne or eczema. They mostly seem like affect how you smell. So it's not about health.

It's about smell. Is that right? I think there are some exceptions to that. I think wound healing, for example, or your capacity to heal from skin injury, I think that is also your gut and your immune health is important. But I think the local conditions could actually. be quite important. And so I think that's actually a really fascinating future for intentional probiotics to make sure that the microbial environment in a wound is promoting healing. So if I eat more fiber, my leg will heal faster when I trip on my farm.

Maybe? I think so. I'm pushing it. I'm pushing it. No, I mean, I think that's totally on par with what we understand that if you have fiber in your gut and then that promotes the immune health and all those immune cells in your gut, that leads to systemic improvements in healing. Well, go grab a can of beans while we take a commercial break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about more reasons to love fiber. Actually, that's not what I'm planning on, but I'm guessing we're going to get to it. like love. You feel it in your heart. IHR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts,

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Okay, we're back and we're talking to Dr. Katrina Whiteson of the Weissan Research Institute, CEO of our upcoming startup, which will sell you other people's armpits. And beans. And beans. Wow. Not a very normal combination, I've got to say. So Katrina, take us to the forefront of research. What are people doing right now to understand the microbes on your skin and how that relates

to showering and, of course, fiber and guts? What is being funded right now? What are avenues of investigation currently? Oh, what a cool question. My mind is lighting up. I mean, I can't not tell you about Julie Segre at the NIH, who is a leading skin microbiome research. And believe her or not, she's collaborating with our colleague and neighbor, Susan Huang, who's an epidemiologist who studies Staphylococcus in nursing homes and infections in nursing homes. And I just got to see Julie speak at a conference last week where I learned all about.

their studies in nursing homes where they swab the skin of nursing home residents and look for pathogens and look for transmission of infection between people. She's done this in hospitals, and now they're moving to nursing homes. There's a lot of antibiotics in nursing homes, and they do see a lot of transmission. So, I mean, this is a big area where we could improve health, and I think showering is actually a very big positive in the context of transmission of microbes in a health care setting. So score one for showering. Yeah, that's a definite score one for showering.

Wait, are we keeping track of the score here? I feel like we haven't said too many pro-showery. I think we've implied it, but let's go ahead. Showering got a point there. Yeah, and then actually that makes me think of another whole effort that I've watched happening in the last 10 years, which is to understand how the aerosolization of microbes in the shower can affect lung health and susceptibility to lung infection. And there are some gram-negative bugs in our tap water.

So if you aerosolize that and stand around breathing in for 10 minutes every day and you're susceptible to lung infections, that could sound kind of dangerous. And so there were questions about whether, for example, children who have cystic fibrosis would be safer in a bath and they shouldn't take showers, which is an enormous endeavor to ask all the parents of people with cystic fibrosis to take on, like, what if you don't have a bath? And actually, the final message on that was that those small environmental exposures actually did not change risk in a meaningful way and that your kids

should jump in the pool and the lake and enjoy the shower and living a healthy lifestyle like that had way more impact on your long-term prognosis than any one exposure. So that was, I like really listened to the outcome of that public health message because otherwise I was really feeling for families that we're going to try to avoid showering for that reason. And so I think when it comes down to it, they collected massive amounts of data. And I felt very convinced that it was safe to shower, even if you had cystic fibrosis. So that's, I guess, another plus one. But they didn't have a control group that showered like a horse.

No, they did not do dust bathing in this study. That's right. And then, yeah, then actually I had a really big life experience this week that I can share where I got to hear about several different cancer microbiome research studies. Many of them connected to diet and exercise. So when you say cancer microbiome, you mean whether or not the microbiome contributes to causing cancer or treatment of cancer? Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of different angles there. But whether or not the microbiome and the associated immune impacts. influence the risk of the development of cancer and then also influence the treatment outcomes of cancer therapies.

For example, there were talks about melanoma, and I learned that eating a high-fiber diet can actually really help with slowing the progression of melanoma. So people who are eating a high-fiber diet, they're less likely to develop melanoma. and if they do develop a small beginning, smoldering melanoma, that will be curtailed by a high-fiber diet. They're less likely to have it progress. Shows one, fiber two. Yes, exactly. And believe it or not, this event that I was invited to, it was kind of shrouded in secrecy. We didn't have an agenda or know who was going to be there.

And there was heavy security. And it's like I went in through like an airport. And then I get in there and I see all these colleagues from all around the country. Some I know, some I don't. but like it's clearly a big crowd. And we all sit down and guess who walks in, R.F.K. Jr. Oh, okay. And so we got to hear him talk about health for 45 minutes.

And there were a lot of diet parts that I agreed with in terms of like eating more whole foods. And maybe the NIH is going to invest more in cancer and diet and microbiome. And did you offer him your personal kombucha? And if no, is it because the. Secret Service would have tackled you halfway there. Recognizing the danger of kombucha. I mean, I do not think they'd find it dangerous. I bet that I bet RFK Jr. is a kombucha drinker.

Let's face it. Not sure. Not sure. I don't know if that's a team member I'm necessarily wanting. Wanted on our team. But, no, I did not try to take kombucha through the security, if that's your question. Interesting. Interesting.

All right. Well, how do you feel about it? the direction the NIH is taking and that RFK Jr. is steering the medical research community towards. I have really mixed feelings. I mean, I feel really sad about the way that the research enterprise has just been like completely disrupted. There's been so many people who have lost their jobs or like really important projects, like 26 year long passion projects of teams of people that were really centrally important to health and they've just been canceled. So I mean, And that type of tragedy is very hard to even begin to understand.

But there are, you know, I think there are elements of what they're trying to do in terms of focusing more on diet. I think that's, that is actually wise. I don't always agree with the types of diets that they're talking about, but I do agree with the idea that a big part of why Americans are less healthy and there's a lot of chronic disease is connected to our food environment. and fixing that is a massive project. It's not just about telling people that they should eat healthier. We've been doing that forever. I mean, what second grader doesn't know that they should eat more fruits and vegetables? We all heard that.

So getting ourselves to do it is not a small project. I don't want to derail us, and I won't. But I just want on the record that I am like massively opposed to what RFK Jr. has been doing with like the vaccination schedules for kids. And so I'm just going to take a second to. plug the American Academy of Pediatrics. They've got a website that has what I think is the best schedule for vaccines, for kids and adults.

And so, you know, I'd like to just go on the record as being massively opposed to that in particular. Yeah, I could not agree more. And that's a really important resource, which I teach that in every microclass, like to make sure that the students are ambassadors for microbiology and for vaccination. It's like one of the most important advances our society has ever come up with. with. So Katrina, give us the bottom line. My takeaway is that to influence your health, it's mostly affected by what you eat. And so you should eat more fiber if you want like less eczema

and fewer allergies, et cetera. But also while it's fine to shower, it's important to also be exposed to all sorts of crazy stuff out there in the environment so that your immune system doesn't overreact. Is that a fair way to bottom line it or give us some more nuance on it? Yeah, I like that bottom line. I think in early. life, the exposures both for your gut microbiome and your general exposures in your world make a really big difference to how your immune system develops. And then throughout your life, like the way Kelly brought up the fact that these changes can keep occurring in adulthood, that's fascinating and definitely true. It's something you have some control over, so it's a good thing that way.

I'm thinking about diet that we can change our exposures that way. In terms of showering, I mean, I think the way that most of us are living, showering every day, in fact, I heard Julie Segre say many times that by showering every day you are protecting yourself from infection. And in those healthcare contexts, I think that's very true. As she was saying that, I was also thinking about these groups of people who are most of humans before 100 years ago, we were not showering every day. And so I think it's interesting to imagine a future where we don't use products to strip the oils and then other products to add the oils back. But I personally don't know how to change that in my daily life and it's going fine for me. So I think our current way of doing things works.

But I could imagine a future where we're more savvy about that and we get ourselves to a more balanced state where we don't need to use products to strip the oils and different ones to add them back. I will continue showering but eat more beans, which I always do more of in the week after you've been on the show. But I get to sustain that. But I always really remember in that week. And so does this nuanced understanding of hygiene, you know, that it's good to be exposed to these things and to be out on the farm? Does that extend to, for example, office hygiene? Is there potentially some science to Zach Wiener-Smith's claim that he works better in an office with like Dorito bags on the floor and inspires his creativity?

Can we make that sort of leap? Oh, my gosh. I have the best favorite study to share with you. So last year, my lab didn't just do spring cleaning. We did spring greening. And we were inspired by the same Finnish Institute I told you about where they stripped the concrete off the playgrounds and put gardens and dirt for the kids to play with. Well, they extended this to offices. And they made these green walls and they were very fancy.

I can share the reference. The green walls cost $7,000 or euros or something. So we did not buy a $7,000 green wall for my lab. But what they found in this study was when they put these green walls that allowed for air to be filtered over the leaves of the plants. And I don't know if it was hydroponic or if there was soil, but certainly there wasn't a lot of soil. But the point of this greening was to have the plants filtering the air akin to an HVAC system. And they had, you know, airflow organized around it. And they put them into modern office buildings and also into hospitals.

and also into less modern office buildings that had less current circulation. And they found that the buildings that started out with less circulation had the biggest improvements. But they did study, I believe they studied the skin microbiomes of the office workers. And the message I got was that there was general improvement. I'm happy to share the paper. And so my lab took that result and took it upon ourselves to build a green wall in our lab. And it's been a real source of joy. And so I'm not sure how that relates to Z.

Zach Wienersmith's, you know. Office hygiene. Let's give Kelly some ammunition here. Come on. Organization. But if he were to add a green wall to his office, I think that is likely to have positive impact. And we don't mean let mold grow on the walls or something. I mean purposefully, you know, bring nice plants in.

Yes. Mold is usually not a positive for health. But I mean, I'm open to ideas there. I'm not. Not in my home. All right. So talking about weird critters, my last question for you is maybe predictable. When we meet aliens, are we going to discover that they take showers?

Wow. I mean, think about how space travel would be so much easier if you didn't have to take a shower. Like maybe there's going to be future technologies where it is like a shower in the sense. I'm sure the aliens will have good hygiene. I mean, if they make it all the way to hear from where they are, I'm guessing they have figured hygiene out. And so I would say I would anticipate good hygiene, but I'm not sure that they'll take water-based showers. So when the craft lands in the center of UC Irvine and the door opens, you're expecting like nice smells to come out. I was just thinking about that.

I mean, everyone... Refried beans. Alien kombucha. I think it's possible that their smells will be pretty foreign to us. So I can't really promise that a modern human will like the smell. Fair enough. All right. Thank you, Katrina, for coming on the show again and answering our absurd, ridiculous questions

with a good sense of humor and scientific basis. We can't wait to have you back on the show again. Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on our show. Whatever podcast app you're using, it really helps people find us. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman. He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D&K Universe.

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