October 29, 2025 • 45 mins
For this episode, we make our way back into the bathroom as we go deep on showering. How often should you actually shower? What’s the proper way to do it? Do you actually need to wash your legs every time? How long should your shower last? Should you be using a loofah — or are they actually bad for you?
Our guests this week are Katherine Ashenberg, author of The Dirty on Clean: An Unsanitized History and board-certified dermatologist Dr. Lisa Akintilo.
Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (860) 325-0286.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Devin. We are working on an advice episode,
and who more qualified to answer your questions than Man, you,
Noah and me Devin. So, if you have an argument
you're trying to settle with a spouse, you got a
debate you're trying to settle with for a friends, email
us at Manuoah Devin at gmail dot com, or you
(00:20):
can give us a call at the number in our
show notes.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Devin, and this is no such thing the show where
we settle our arguments in yours by actually doing the research.
On today's episode, how often should you wash your legs?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have no there's no no such thing. No touch,
thank no touch, thanks touch, thank no touch thank.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So. I think a good place to start. This conversation
was one of our first conversations we had about showering.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, first conversations about show.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, yeah, I remember. It's pretty. You know, it's a
core memory.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Paint a picture for us.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're all sitting in the old business inside our offices,
and one of our friends i'll say their name, but
we'll bleep it out, was talking about how her dad
is so crazy and you want to know, the crazy
thing that her dad does.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Remind me really struggling to remember this moment.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Her dad showers every day, right, So she was like,
my dad is so crazy. Guess what. He showers every
single day? Remember? And I said, okay, but what does
he do? That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
He's playing basketball And.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
She was like, no, he just hours every day. Isn't
that crazy? And we were like no, like, we all
shower pretty much every day at least once at least minimum.
And it was revealed that the time did not shower
every day. I think at that point she started to realize, Okay,
(02:21):
she was in the minority here, I'm the crazy one
and the rest of us were showering on the daily.
So we never quite found out how often showered, but
we do know it was not daily. Now, I will
say this, she did not stink. It was not a
situation when we were like.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, yeah, it makes sense, Yeah, no, of course not.
In fact, I think I can recall a pleasant aroma. Yes,
she smelled clean and perfume.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Or whatever exactly it would you know if she had
not revealed herself in that moment, I never know. I
would have never known. But it bring to mind for
us this, you know, especially you know, being a black
man living in America. Sure, I've been learning a lot
over the last couple of years about other people and
(03:13):
other cultures living in America and how often they shower.
So let's start here. All right, I'm sweating bullets, three
boys in a room. How often are we showering? Many?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm showering at least once a day, so like most days,
it's just the one time morning or night morning, like definitely,
not sometimes at night, but like not before bed. Like
it's not like I need a shower to get into bed.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Start your day. You're showering, Yeah, when are you showering
twice a day?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Twice a day?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Really?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I mean it'll be like, all right, shower in the
morning anyway. But then let's say I go out, if
I biked here, for example, biked back, worked up a sweat,
I'm not going to shower right when I get home,
but like later on, I'll feel kind of like, I
don't know, crunchy, yeah, and I'll just be like, all right,
I just want to clean slate before I do the
rest of the day, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay, So it's like you said, it's not right before
you go into bed, but it's just like, oh, i've
been you worked out or something. Yep. You just like
your normal state to be kind of clean.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, it's like more comfortable to feel fresh and clean.
And if I don't feel like that, I'll shower. Okay, No,
I'm pretty similar. Definitely, at least once a day in
the morning, that's the default.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
And then it's very similar to Manny. It's like, especially
if I go out, especially during the summer, warm months,
and I come back nice refresh, whether it's kind of
right when I get back or later more like you know,
eight nine before I start winding down for the for
the evening. But but yeah, for me, it's like it's
just a nice way to start the day to actually
(04:55):
like get up and be like, all right, now I'm
ready to go. So it's it's kind of just like
having coffee or something.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It's like I want to do.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
It's not like it's not like I wake up, I'm
worried I'm gonna be so dirty or something. But then
it's like then my hair is in better shape everything. Yeah,
you just get a lot better anyway. And and just
the act of being in the shower I like not
just the end product of being clean. It's like, like
I like spending time in there.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That's my thing about it. I also enjoy being in
the shower. It's like you're sort of forced alone. You know,
you can't be on your phone for a long time.
Sometimes I play a little music. Oh yeah, maybe sometimes
I listen to a little podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And as we know from a previous episode, you guys
love hanging out in the bathroom. If I can extend
my time in there, I'll take any chance, like a.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Nice little shower. Yeah, I'm I'm at least once a day,
sometimes two morning shower for sure. Yeah, you know, ideal situation.
I'm getting up, I'm working out, I'm showering. You have
to work out start my day, and then when I
get home at night, I'll shower before I go to bed.
(05:57):
Speaking of people not showering, so so, there is this
journalist who was at The Atlantic, James Hamblin, who in
twenty sixteen wrote about his decision to stop showering.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Every day, no period, period. Oh my god, that's not
why he's no longer in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We read what you just wrote. It just smells, he wrote,
You know, he ended up. That was an article in
twenty sixteen. In twenty twenty, he had a book come
out called Clean, in which he was still not showering.
He talks about how it was a gradual thing, right,
He didn't wake up one day and go from showering
(06:42):
to not showering. He slowly tapered his way off of it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
Your body sort of gets into more of an equilibrium
when you stop doing these things. And I don't recommend
that anyone do it cold turkey. You know, we've all
when I was in the same habit as everyone are
doing a lot of showering and a lot of application
of So if I went a day without it and
a day without theodorant, I mean I knew it. I
smelled terrible, I looked greasy. I felt bad. Over Over time, though,
(07:08):
if you gradually do less and less, your body gets
used to it. It's sort of like training for a marathon.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
He does not shower. He hasn't showered now. That was
in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh so this isn't really, this is truly I have
not showered in years.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I thought, he has not showered in years. Look, he
may you know, I don't. I don't know the man,
he may have snuck a shower in here there, you know,
he've rolled around in some mud, maybe maybe snuck a
rinse or shower in. But yeah, he's no longer showering regularly.
He does not use soap outside of his hands, and
(07:48):
he does not wear yodurant yo.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Tell us a little bit about why, okay, because that's disgusting.
So no offense to people.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yhowers, but no offense to our listeners who haven't showered
in ten years. We still want you to keep coming
back to it.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
On the developed country, there's no excuse.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
What's his reason?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he talked about in his book in the article
that he started to calculate how much time we spend
in our lives showering. Here we go with the time.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yep, this is the same thing as sitting standing and peeing.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeap.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
What's the rush, guys?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And he said, based on his calculations, we spend two
full years of our lives washing ourselves. And to him,
it just he doesn't enjoy the act the showering obviously
like we do. And he was just like, why are
we doing this? He thought, you know, it's not medically
necessary for us to shower. We're just doing it because
(08:53):
that's what we do as a society. And he was curious.
If he just slowly stopped doing it, his body naturally
adjusted and it wouldn't be necessary to do it anymore.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I don't know why we have to pretend that it's
about like the amount of time at the end of
your life, you spent two years, how many how many
years you spend watching TV, or like how many years
you spend commuting to work. It's a bad way to
think about things. What it's like, what are you doing
with those two years?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
That's so so great, that's so much more fun than thanhower.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
We spend two years being you know, like toddlers, Like
we're not doing like it's not that long. It's not
that much time to me.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah, why don't kids start working in the In the
minds again, it's about wasting time doing other stuff. It's
like having fun playing factory, do something productive for one.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I don't like this at all. So what I hear
about like how much time it saves? I kind of
roll my eyes. But I am curious about like some
of his other reasonings that might have more weight to them.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, you know, he talks a lot about it not
being you know, medically necessary. There have been a lot
of conversations about actually we shower too often nowadays, you know,
like I haven't done any research yet.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And I could easily believe that we might be showering
too often. I remember during COVID when when we learned
that we were putting hand sanitizer on too often and
how that actually harmed our hands over time.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Well, yeah, yeah, that's what I was curious about, Like
how much it dries out skin by just doing the
water and rints and all that with the soap, like
ye versus I'm assuming I'm imagining by not showering, eventually,
you're gonna your skin's gonna build up some more tolerance
maybe or something.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah some stink ye a nice good sting.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And I think another aspect of this that we haven't
really talked about yet is how do we shower right?
It's not only how often, what are we doing once
we're in there right by play? So there was another
moment in culture in twenty nineteen where a user this
(10:56):
this tweet is now deleted, okay, put out a poll
asking when you go and shower, do you wash your legs.
You all remember this conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I remember this. I thought it was from before twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now it's twenty nineteen, and it was revealed through that
pole and subsequent conversation that a lot of white women
did not wash your legs when they shower.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So if you do, you have an up opinion.
Speaker 6 (11:23):
I don't wash my legs in the shower. Do you
wash your legs in the shower?
Speaker 7 (11:27):
We're bacta Taylor Swift who was just telling me about
washing her legs in the shower.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
I couldn't hear you. Did you say you do wash
them or you don't? I do?
Speaker 7 (11:35):
Because when you shave your legs, isn't that shaving cream
is like soap?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Right?
Speaker 7 (11:39):
Yeah, I mean you don't clean their legs well, but
you're sticking a shower regardless, So I mean it's not
like it's not getting clean.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I mean you only got to do washing your legs,
meaning like going through the effort of actually scrubbing your legs.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yes, okay, yes, you know you're go in the shower,
you're soaping up, whether you're using you know, this is
another thing.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, all right, we need to get into there's a
lot of right there's it gonna be a long This
might be a three parts.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
As you know, as a black band growing up in
this country and we where I was growing up, we
had something called the washrag. I know it maybe foreign
to some of our listeners, but a washrag is exactly
what it sounds like. It is a rag that you
would put some soap on and then use the rag
to clean your body. You know, you would change out
(12:26):
the washwrag every couple of days because it really, you know,
it starts to get a little stink to it if
you don't. But you're using something Some people use loofahs. Yeah, yeah,
you know there's an African uh ba bathing that whatever
you call it.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, as long as it has some coarse materials that
kind of exfoliates.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But and you know, I learned this from an early
age from sleepovers at some of my friends' houses who
happened to be white. We don't want to make any assumptions.
When they would give me, uh, okay, I'm gonna go shower.
Here's your child, I said, okay, thank you, I need
(13:08):
that to dry off. Where's the washrag? And they're like,
wash rag? What is that? You know? Like so a
lot of white people don't use washrags. They just use
their hand to clean everything.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it's like it's like finding out that my white
friends used to talk back to their mom.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know that was an option.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
What kind of that kind of alien world?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
So we say all that to uh bring us to Noah, Yeah,
no do you Yeah, if you're just listening, you're not
watching it on Instagram? Do you use a washrag?
Speaker 7 (13:46):
So?
Speaker 4 (13:47):
I use now, but growing up I actually did use washrags,
like we always did have.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
A small one in there. Yeah, I would use that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, that's why I never really thought to be I
didn't know. I didn't want to assume all did, just
the ones I was interacting with.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Just to circle back a little bit, I remember that
discourse online end up being surprised at the amount of
people who didn't wash their legs or would say something
along the lines of like, I'm washing my you know,
kind of the problem areas, and then the soap is
going to run it down. I remember, Yeah, and like,
I guess clean my legs on the way down to
the drain. Yes, which just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
What you brought up a really good point when we
were talking about this. I don't know if you remember this, Manny.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, I fried my brain, you said, since then.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I think about it once a week now. Oh, it's
one of those things. Well you were like, how actually
every time I washed my legs I think about this.
You're like, how long do you think this takes?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It takes less than thirty seconds still, wipe your legs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Less than that is we're acknowledging soaps running down your legs.
You need to run, you need to rinse that off.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, just that it doesn't take much the same amount.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Of time to make sure there's not still bubbles all
over you.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yes, as to actually watch it and not take not
It doesn't add that much time to your shower.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Maybe twenty seconds total. Yeah, how long are your showers?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
By the way, Oh that's a really good question.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So let's say the primary main shower in the morning.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
My my normal no rush shower about ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I think I'm about that. I think the same.
There are instances where like, maybe it's a night in
I've got nothing going on, you know, I'll just be
kind of day dreaming in there.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Oh yeah, definitely, if no one else is around, so
I know no one's like a way, it's about.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
The something like I can definitely take long.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, I'd say my standard's probably eight to twelve, yes,
and then yeah, if it's a nice one I'm chilling,
then close to twenty probably, yeah, if I'm just going
to take our time.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Really, I'm the follower of the method of like, you know,
really focusing on the quote unquote problem areas right, like
your your pits, your crotch, whatever, but your butt, yeah,
and then doing a much lighter version of that for
the rest.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Of your boxactly. Yeah, you start with those.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
You know, five to ten minutes this thing. Maybe you
do a second round. I guess that's what I do,
Like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But like you got it once yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I think like, you know, if you only did one
round in there, which sometimes I'm late or whatever, I
think you're you're a perfectly hygienic person. Oh yeah, So
if it's only taking five minutes in there.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah I could do. If you said, oh yeah, hey
you only got five minutes to shower, I could do it. Yeah,
I could do it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It could be pretty thorough.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But maybe that's not exactly what this episode is about.
Maybe I did a derail.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
No, No, it was good. Well, I think a lot
of that conversation ended up being too which also came
to mind from me, which is like the sort of
like acceptability politics of like what's allowed in certain cultures
versus what is not allowed, So like black culture is
very important to always be presenting yourself in the best light,
(17:04):
which is like your clothes need to be iron right,
they need to be clean. You can't go outside if
you stink, right, Like, it's it's a lot of you know,
some of this is like respectability politics, but it's like
your parents were always like, you know, when people see you,
they're not just judging you, they're judging all black people
exactly based on how you are presenting our family.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And then also.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes, black people whereas who's dak Shepherd and his who's
his wife? Oh yeah, Kristen Bell. They came out, and
the thing I love about these stories is that the
people just kind of volunteer this information. They said, they
only washed your kids when they start to stink, so
(17:48):
you know, like once a weaker some kids, I forgot
about that.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
We had to start saying like, hey, when's the last
time you bathe them? Yeah, forget sometimes.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Five six days goes along.
Speaker 8 (17:58):
I mean they don't smell, so so you know it's
hard people.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well they do.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
I'm a big thing of waiting for the stake.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
With that's that's biology's way of letting you know you
need to clean it up.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And it became a whole thing, right, It's like, so
I think, like, I think part of this too is
a cultural thing of like expectations around what is acceptable
versus what is not acceptable. And I'm not even saying
that like the black point of view here is correct, right,
Like I don't believe in respectability politics, but that on
(18:34):
the pod. Yeah, so I'm not saying like showering every
day like gives us, you know, a better chance of
getting equal, right, But I think it is part of
the equation of you know, not only what we're doing
in our homes, but also how comfortable we feel sharing, right,
Like there there's probably lots of black people who aren't
(18:56):
still doing the things that they were taught as kids.
But they're not going to go on the internet say
oh yes, I also don't wash my legs and I
shower you know, once every two weeks, and you know,
to make it clear, James talks about this a bit
and his article in this book about like, hey, I'm
a white guy, great education, Like I have certain advantages
(19:19):
that allows for me to go on this journey of him. Yeah,
without it like completely ruining my status. Okay, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we get back, we're
going to hear about a king that only took two
baths in his entire life, and hear from a dermatologist
(19:41):
about how often we should really be showering. All Right,
we're back.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
This is Devin. All Right, fellas, it's been a few
weeks since we last chatted about how often we should
be bathing. So in that time I've spoken to a
dermatologist who does have an answer. But before we get there,
I want to take a brief detour and figure out
(20:19):
how we got to where we are today in terms
of showering. So we're going to do a little abbreviated
history of bathing. Okay, So I called up someone who
read a whole book on it.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
My name is Catherine Astenberg, and I wrote a book
called The Dirt Unclean and unsanitized history.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So Catherine came out with the idea for the book
after a trip to the museum.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
This book first came to me in a museum in
Toronto where I live, which is called the Royal Ontario Museum.
And there was one day I was looking at a
picture of a sort of seventeenth century crowd scene somewhere
in Europe, and the caption underneath had said the rich
in this picture, the aristocrats are dirtier than the peasants.
(21:04):
You know, press a button and learn more, which I
wasn't doing all that often than those years. But I
pressed a button because that was so counterintuitive in a way.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So why was this the case? Well, in the fourteenth
century we had this little thing called the Black Death,
which killed between forty and sixty percent of Europeans depending
on which historian you trust. In this flag was the
worst pandemic ever and the.
Speaker 9 (21:33):
French king consulted the medical doctors at the Sorbonne and
they said what caused it? And they said, all you know,
planets were aligning in bad ways.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So the king at the time wanted to know how
to prevent it.
Speaker 9 (21:46):
The people most at risk were fat, very emotional and
they took warm baths. What was wrong with taking warm baths?
It opened your pores and the disease entered through the port.
This is obviously not the case, but as a result,
a French historian called Jules Michele said that what followed
(22:08):
were a thousand years without a bath. Wasn't really a thousand,
It was more like five hundred, but it was a
considerable number of years.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So what happens next? They're rich people of European society
avoid hot water like the plague. See what I did there?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Nice?
Speaker 9 (22:29):
Those people never got in hot water, never washed anything
but their hands. King Louis the fourteenth of France, for example,
was a very athletic king. He did all kinds of sports.
Every day in his long life. He took two baths,
but every morning he washed his hands and maybe dribbled
(22:49):
a little water on his face, and that was the
extent of his hygiene because his body was the most
important body in France, so they had to keep it
away from disease.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So incredible. How much of like science back then was
just vibes based.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, it's like, I don't know, these guys are kind
of fat, and I don't know. They like warm water. Yeah,
all right, So we got King Louie to fourteenth taking
two baths. Right. At some point English scientists were like, actually, guys,
walm watar is good. It doesn't spread disease. It could
(23:29):
actually prevent it. So I was curious how we got
to today. We're bathing more regularly is the norm, and
you know, we use a little thing called soap.
Speaker 9 (23:39):
What really made bathing and showering work was advertising. Unfortunately,
it was a huge success. We had soap to wash
our clothes and wash our floors. We didn't have what
was called in the nineteenth century toilet soap, soap to
wash our body. And so even when people got the idea, oh,
let's get into warm water, there's something kind of good
(24:02):
about that, they did that without soap. The soap that
you'd wash your floor and your clothes with was really
harsh and it really melted very quickly. But various chemical
processes were discovered and put into production by the big
soap makers like Procter and Gamble and palmolive, and transportation
(24:23):
made it easier to get so all of a sudden,
soap toilet soap was born kind of in the second
half of the nineteenth century advertising was born. They brought
each other up together. And because all toilet soap was
pretty much the same as every other kind of toilet soap,
they needed advertising to say that ivory soap was better
than pal molive soap, for example. They invented all kinds
(24:47):
of gimmicks and use of celebrities and games and coupons
and stuff that you could collect.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Soap brought us some of our first branded content. Sure
you think got the idea of a soap opera?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
The first radio dramas were sponsored by soap companies.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That's why it's called that. That's why it's called what
Great trivia.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Good morning radio listeners, Clara Lunde, I'm brought to you
by the makers of super.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Thubble, and they also advertising. This is invented kind of
bad things which are known in the advertising trade is
whisper copy, which was successfully designed to make you feel
really worried. Are you offending because you haven't taken a
(25:33):
bath today or a shower? And offending was one of
their scary words, and they would say, you will never
know if you're offending.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
After comparing the acts of daily baths with different soaps,
lay doctors made this amazing statement. Actually, you're clinger. It's
safer from the old when you bathe daily with Life
Boy and when you bathe with any other leading soap.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
The point of the ad is so that you don't
offend someone else with your smell. Yes, well that's why
soap was new. I guess I've been offending people with
my smell the whole time.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, that was what they were saying. They're saying, Hey,
wouldn't move the needle for me. All of you've been thinking,
we got this new thing to fix that, and everyone
is going to start using it, so you want to
be left behind and be the one guy who still stinks.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I see. It's pretty convincing to me. Yeah, I mean,
you know, if it's an easy choice.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
If you see everyone around around you start using it.
It's like it's also.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Wild to think about how old these some of these
companies are After and Gramble all the way.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Back then been around for a bit.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
All right, So the advertising business did its big thing.
But Catherine called out in her book, not everyone bought
into this, so you know, many maybe wouldn't back in
the day. Some of us, some of us are freethinkers
and you know who else were free thinkers, our European
brothers and sisters.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
The European countries are extremely different in terms of hygiene.
It was always kind of a trade off between the historians.
I was reading what is the Dirtiest Country in Europe
and it was kind of a contest between France and Spain.
French people would take a shower four days a week,
did not think it was necessary to change their underwear
every day, versus the North American much closer to once
(27:20):
a day.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's funny. I've seen some tiktoks recently of young people
going to Paris for the first time, and the one
thing that they constantly comment on is like, oh, a
lot of these people in France are not wearing the odorant.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
Yeah, people still say that about France. It's amazing how
I'm regenerate they are. But there's a wonderful book by
a guy, a historian by I think his name is
Alan Corbin R b I N. He's French, and about
the French love of strong smells, the way they hang
their meat, their wine, their smelly wonderful cheese, and their bodies.
(27:59):
And it's a kind of somadic atmosphere in which they
live and which they're not just tolerant of it, they
they like it, they seek it out. Well, this famous
story about Napoleon and Josephine that he was on a
military campaign and he wrote to Josephine, I will arrive
(28:19):
in Paris, you know, in two nights or on Friday
or something like that, Nu levpa, do not wash. This
was part of sexual pleasure for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
That's nasty.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That is, you know, don't think shame many, all right,
that's some people are.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Napoleon cook, I can I can imagine if you have
that kink, be like hoping that they don't wash, being like, hey,
don't take a shower. He's like, hey, I'm on my
way back.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Hey, I know you've been washing out while being gone.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That ends today. Put a stop to it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And this will circle back to an idea that we
were talking about in the intro. But this idea of
clonliness was also used to discriminate against minority groups in
the US.
Speaker 9 (29:16):
Americans were just as dirty as Europeans until the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So during the Civil War, things like hygiene and hospital
conditions became a much bigger focus in the US to
help improve the health of the troops.
Speaker 9 (29:29):
So by the time all these immigrants arrived on the shores,
arrived at Ellis Island from the south and the east
of Europe, it was felt one way to make them
be Americans is to teach them about bathing and about
seeing themselves.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
So it was a.
Speaker 9 (29:46):
Huge teaching campaign. You can't be American unless you're clean.
And it had also been used for the blacks after
the Civil War in reconstruction.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So going back to the side of respectability politics. During Reconstruction,
we had people like Booker T. Washington who were promoting
this idea of cleanliness for black.
Speaker 9 (30:08):
People, and he wrote a book in which he talked
about what he called the Gospel of the toothbrush. She said,
once you give a person a toothbrush and they start
to use it, they're on their way to being a
full American citizen.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So there we go. We got our idea of respectability politics.
Back to Booker T. So early, get your toothbrush. That's
white people are going to start being nice to us
if we brush our teeth. Didn't work.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They had to do some of the strategies after that one.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Now that we've gotten a little history lesson We're going
to take a quick break, and when we get back,
we're going to have all our baiting questions answered by dermatologists.
(31:05):
All right, we're back in as promise. I spoke with
a dermatologist.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
My name is Lisa Akintillo.
Speaker 7 (31:12):
I'm a Boort certified dermatologist and cosmetic dermatologic surgeon correctly
at NYU in New York.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
And, like Noah likes to say, I want to waste
no time and get right into it. First question, let's
get right to it. How often do you shower?
Speaker 6 (31:31):
I personally showered twice today.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
Some people may find that extreme, but I've done it
for years, just because the night shower is part of
my kind of decompression from the day.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
My night routine.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Yeah, the wine down, so that's just my personal preference.
But yeah, twice a day, once if I'm gonna bind,
but usually it's twice.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I'm never someone who showers like right before bed. But
I'm coming around to the idea that like it makes
sense in the sense of keeping your bed a sacred,
clean place.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yes, people should listen back to our episode about whether
or not it's okay to wear your outside clothes on
your bed. That's right, Well, we touched on us a
little bit, but I like my bed clean, all right,
so I trusted her already. Right, twice a day. This
woman knows what she's talking about. But just because doctor
Akintailo showers twice a day doesn't necessarily mean we should showering.
(32:26):
There is the Okay, I do this for the scientific
reasons of like keeping my body clean, and then there's
the routine, and there's the cultural aspects of it. All right, scientifically,
how often should we really be showering for, you know,
for our health?
Speaker 7 (32:42):
That's a good question. How often should we be showering scientifically?
Because I, to my knowledge, has not been any formal
studies saying, oh, this is the evidence based number of
times you should shower in a day. I would say,
I tell my patients they should shower once a day.
That probably varies depending on who you talk too. But
I personally believe you're out in the world, if you
(33:03):
live in a place like New York, you're exposed to
the elements, you're exposed to the pollution. It's good to
at least once a day kind of rinse that off
of you. And then also you provide hydration back into
the skin which does tend to get fairly dry throughout
the day. And then there is the mental health part
of it too. Like I was alluding to earlier, it
is like a nice few minutes where it's just you.
You get to focus on taking care of yourself. But again,
(33:24):
some people might say less than that. There are some
other factors at play with how often I recommend people shower.
Maybe if somebody has eggs, more of that dry, itchy,
flaky skin, they should not shower too often. But you're
so right in bringing up the cultural part, because there's
a huge voice in my head at least that say, well,
you can't shower. You can't not shower every day. So
(33:45):
that's my take on it.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Wow, so once today, Yeah, we should basically be dermatologists.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I love to hear that a dermatologist recommends you shower
once a day, and I think a lot of people
should that to heart.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Obviously, there's you know, we say for every single person
in the world, there maybe someone with some condition that
we're not mentioning here. But yeah, that's that's our general
recommendation to most of our clients. So the weather is
actually cooling down in New York, Yeah, right, when we
started this, it was like a little bit hotter, So
I was curious how much of this recommendation is based
on just like where you're living, right, Like I feel
(34:22):
like I'm showering a little bit less now than i
was when it was a little hotter. And also like
someone's activity level does that determine how often they should
be shower.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
If you're feeling really hot and sweaty and sticky, maybe
you either live in a warm place year round or
at summertime.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
That can be helpful just to get all the sweat off.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
And for that reason too, I do recommend patients who
exercise a lot to also at least do a quick
rint or spray, you know, certain areas with hypochlorous acid
or some kind of cleansing spray. It's because that sweat
staying all the skin for a prolonged amount of time
can lead to issues down the line like acne, little
bits of eczema, or dry, itchy skin.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
And this made me a dumb question, but like on
a molecular level, like what makes us smell?
Speaker 6 (35:08):
Yeah, what's the cause of the body odor?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Right?
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Yeah, So it's interesting sweat in and of itself does
not have an odor. Our sweat glands produce this fluid,
these africrine and acrine glands and the skin. But what
causes the smell is bacteria that is on the skin.
So it is interesting to think about. But we all
have bacteria living on our skin, mites and other things too.
They're all in symbiosis with us. But the bacteria, if
(35:33):
the sweat is on the skin for a prolonged amount
of time, they like it. They kind of gravitate towards it,
and as they eat it and digest it, that process
produces an odor that is oftentimes unpleasant for either one
self or people around someone to smell. But sweat in
and of itself is not a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It's yea, it attracts.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I guess I always assumed like you get sweaty and
then your arm pits start to emit an odor. Yeah,
I smell when I'm on the train and someone smells bad,
I thought that's essentially what was happening.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
This is fascinating though.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes, the bacteria eating up that sweat yummy, yummy, yummy,
So I want it. Doctor, I can tell Hell to
walk me through the perfect shower routine. Let's start with
what soap we should be using.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
So in broad strokes, for most people, I recommend just
the plain, gentle hydrating cleanser. If someone is more prone
to sensitive skin, I would probably shy away from the
fragrance cleansers because that can be pretty irritating to the skin. Now,
dial or hibocleans is another one, or bends of peroxide.
They're all the antibacterial washes and soaps. Those can be
(36:45):
helpful for certain reasons. Right somebody has a lot of
body owner Sometimes we like the antibacterial soap to decrease
the amount of bacteria on the skin. If somebody has
a particular condition where we're trying to decrease again that bacteria,
maybe acne and those are you, and then we do
recommend those special antibacterial soaps. But for most people, for
most of the population, most of the time, just as
(37:06):
hydrating gentle cleanser as all that's needed.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
She says, no, no need to splurge on an expensive soap.
And we were talking about bar or liquid. She said,
both are great. More of a bar guy. You Dove, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
I think typically I'll buy a Dove, but I'll kind
of if something's on sale, I'll try it.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
But well, the fun fact is dove is not technically
a hope. Excuse me explain dove is not technically a sope.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
It's you know, we don't need to get into the
weeds here, but it doesn't have certain properties, which is
why dove is considered to be more moisturizing, because soap
strip your body of more things. Oh so people use
dove because it's gentler on your skin.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
That makes sense, because yeah, you do hear about people
using too much soap. She was alluding to this earlier too,
just like and then yoga irritated and dry skin doing
too much cleaning.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
So now you know, we had a good time with dove,
but I'm about to ruin your lives.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Oh god.
Speaker 7 (38:13):
I asked her how long we should be showering, So
showers actually should be on the shorter end, which may
be breaking the hearts of all your oul because we
all love our long you know, hot showers that feel
so good and you know messages the back, et cetera.
But really, showers should be no more than five minutes,
and probably cools with the three minutes. So I tell
my patients, if you're listening to music, it should be
(38:35):
about a song. Those songs these days are about three
and a half minutes. Yeah, there should be about that long.
They should be lukewarm as well, not hot.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:44):
Now, I myself am guilty of a hot shower now
and again, especially in the winter, just because it's so
cool outside. But that hot water strips a lot of
our natural oils off of the skin and actually makes
us dryer as a result. So the water doesn't have
to be cold by any means, but lukewarm is deespecially.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, I'm doing my own research. We're learning that she
takes basically less than one shower. Actually she just breaks it.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Up based on the amount of minutes.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, I'm on my Maha ship. I don't trust that.
How hot, How hot are your guys showers? I don't
go super hot. I'm not scorching, but they're hot. I
like it hot, I mean not my room steamy.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, yeah, I like.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
But I've cauted it down. I think partly because of
the skin irritant factor.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I do have some dry skin. I don't want to
irritate it. And definitely, the hotter it gets, I noticed that.
I'm definitely not lukewarm, but and I have no idea
what temperature it is.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I'm probably slightly hotter than I should be, but I'm not.
I used to be even hotter.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, I used to my I used like I feel
like in high school and college. I used to have
like hot showers just boiling your skin.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah. So uh, next up our controversial question about whether
or not you actually need a wash rag.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Oh hmmm, instead of just your hands, instead.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Of just yours.
Speaker 7 (40:01):
I just had a conversation with a family member about
this last week. Because you are not wrong. This is
where there's a lot of cultural impact. Well disclosure, I
am of Nigerian descent, and I grew up using a
lufa or the African nets bonge, and it's just what
I'm used to. So when I discovered not everybody uses that,
I was kind of flabbergasted. So basically, the question that
(40:22):
you're getting to is manual physical exfoliation necessary as part
of a shower routine.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
The technical answer is not really.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Sometimes, again, if someone has a particular skin condition, we
might not want too much physical abrasions to the skin,
as that can aggravate different rations people may have or
other issues. But again, I tend to think having some
kind of exfoliant is nice, whether it be manual or chemical,
just to help get rid of that top layer of skin,
because sometimes that is leading to a lot of issues
(40:52):
as well with dryness and skin irritation. And with just
gentle exfoliation with a Lufa and African nut sponge honestly,
hands can work some times too. That can help get
that top layer off and give a nice glow to
the skin, especially with moisturizer quite afterwards. So that's that's
kind of my answer for that. Again, I personally love
ALOFA and I cannot fathom not using it.
Speaker 6 (41:14):
I travel with one.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yes, it's the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I accept the censer. She's back on our good side.
Yeah she knows what she's talking about.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah she's pro So next up from my white girls,
do you actually need to wash your legs?
Speaker 6 (41:34):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 7 (41:35):
When I first heard of this debate or discussion a
few years ago, I was flabbergasted.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Yet again, takes no time.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's the thing that drives me crazy. It's like it
takes you could do it very quickly.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
It literally takes me ten seconds.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
It's not so you can't tell my answer is yes,
we should be watching our whole body, including our legs.
Though soap dripping down is not enough. And when you
think about it, truly, especially in the summer, but I'd
say year round, our feet are exposed to a lot
of different things in the world. Right, even if you're
wearing socks and shoes and you have your trousers on,
you still might have a little bit of exposed ankle.
(42:10):
If it's the summer, you're wearing your sandals, your flip flops,
that all needs to be washed. Just think about you know,
if you don't wash your legs and feet, you get
into bed and all the stuff that's probably sitting in
your sheets, and it's just to be clean. I think
it's probably best to wash the feet and legs and
arms and as you mentioned, all the body parts. Truly,
(42:30):
it really doesn't take that much time. There are some
arguments people say where you really only need to focus
on the hot zones, which would be the groin, in the.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
Armpit and the face.
Speaker 7 (42:40):
I guess too, I understand where they're coming from, but
I just personally think, and I've seen in my patience
that people's skin looks much healthier if they do wash
and moisturize their whole body.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Just take the ten seconds and wash your legs.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Yeah, it feels nice under the knee.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a good spot right out. Yeah. All right,
that's it. That's all we got. Has this changed your
point of view of showering. I think this is one
that we all kind of agree on. This is a
beautiful thing. Doesn't happen all the time with us, but
we were all doing at least once a day. I
(43:17):
guess we have some suggestions to our brethren who are
not doing this.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, it's good to know that if I do have
a quicker shower, I'm not really risking anything. Or if
I don't use the rag sometimes it's probably fine. Yeah.
I feel the same.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's nice that you know my quick rinses when they
happen are probably doing the job.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm going to keep my long showers and do them
every day.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
All right. Yeah that's all I had. Was there anything
else that you felt like you wanted to talk about
that you didn't get to touch on.
Speaker 6 (43:53):
No, I think we talked about everything.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
I you know, shower at least once a day, don't
spend a lot of money.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
Moisture eyes for sure, keep them short, Yeah, keep them short.
Speaker 8 (44:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (44:04):
The short thing is that's a big change for most people.
So when I bring up the song reference, that tends
to help at least you notice like, oh, it's in
like two three songs.
Speaker 6 (44:10):
Maybe I should give out Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
He's he he heals, heals. After we recorded our conversation,
I was able to find out that James Hamlin has
reintroduced a daily rent to his routine, but he is
still not using any soap, shampoo, or theodor. Just just
some water. Okay. I want to hear about how often
(44:42):
y'all are showering? Do you wash your legs? Email us
at Manny Nolah Deevin at female dot com, or you
can call the number and show notes if you are
listening to us on Apple podcasts. I have a favorite
to ask. Go leave us a five star review, but
I also want you to tell us in a review
who your favorite No Such Thing member is. Be honest,
(45:05):
it's me. No Such Thing is a production of Kaleidoscope Content,
our executive producers for Kate Osborne and Mangeshkadur. The show
was created by Manny Fidel, Nor Friedman and me Devin
Joseph theme in credit song by Manny. Mixing for this
episode by Steve Bone. Our guests this week were doctor
(45:26):
Lisa Acintillo from ny You and Katherine Aschenberg, the author
of The Dirt on Clean, which we'll win to in
our show notes. All Right, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Those those those, those those such thing
Hey, it's Devin. We are working on an advice episode,
and who more qualified to answer your questions than Man, you,
Noah and me Devin. So, if you have an argument
you're trying to settle with a spouse, you got a
debate you're trying to settle with for a friends, email
us at Manuoah Devin at gmail dot com, or you
(00:20):
can give us a call at the number in our
show notes.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Devin, and this is no such thing the show where
we settle our arguments in yours by actually doing the research.
On today's episode, how often should you wash your legs?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have no there's no no such thing. No touch,
thank no touch, thanks touch, thank no touch thank.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So. I think a good place to start. This conversation
was one of our first conversations we had about showering.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, first conversations about show.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, yeah, I remember. It's pretty. You know, it's a
core memory.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Paint a picture for us.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're all sitting in the old business inside our offices,
and one of our friends i'll say their name, but
we'll bleep it out, was talking about how her dad
is so crazy and you want to know, the crazy
thing that her dad does.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Remind me really struggling to remember this moment.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Her dad showers every day, right, So she was like,
my dad is so crazy. Guess what. He showers every
single day? Remember? And I said, okay, but what does
he do? That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
He's playing basketball And.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
She was like, no, he just hours every day. Isn't
that crazy? And we were like no, like, we all
shower pretty much every day at least once at least minimum.
And it was revealed that the time did not shower
every day. I think at that point she started to realize, Okay,
(02:21):
she was in the minority here, I'm the crazy one
and the rest of us were showering on the daily.
So we never quite found out how often showered, but
we do know it was not daily. Now, I will
say this, she did not stink. It was not a
situation when we were like.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, yeah, it makes sense, Yeah, no, of course not.
In fact, I think I can recall a pleasant aroma. Yes,
she smelled clean and perfume.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Or whatever exactly it would you know if she had
not revealed herself in that moment, I never know. I
would have never known. But it bring to mind for
us this, you know, especially you know, being a black
man living in America. Sure, I've been learning a lot
over the last couple of years about other people and
(03:13):
other cultures living in America and how often they shower.
So let's start here. All right, I'm sweating bullets, three
boys in a room. How often are we showering? Many?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm showering at least once a day, so like most days,
it's just the one time morning or night morning, like definitely,
not sometimes at night, but like not before bed. Like
it's not like I need a shower to get into bed.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Start your day. You're showering, Yeah, when are you showering
twice a day?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Twice a day?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Really?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I mean it'll be like, all right, shower in the
morning anyway. But then let's say I go out, if
I biked here, for example, biked back, worked up a sweat,
I'm not going to shower right when I get home,
but like later on, I'll feel kind of like, I
don't know, crunchy, yeah, and I'll just be like, all right,
I just want to clean slate before I do the
rest of the day, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay, So it's like you said, it's not right before
you go into bed, but it's just like, oh, i've
been you worked out or something. Yep. You just like
your normal state to be kind of clean.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, it's like more comfortable to feel fresh and clean.
And if I don't feel like that, I'll shower. Okay, No,
I'm pretty similar. Definitely, at least once a day in
the morning, that's the default.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
And then it's very similar to Manny. It's like, especially
if I go out, especially during the summer, warm months,
and I come back nice refresh, whether it's kind of
right when I get back or later more like you know,
eight nine before I start winding down for the for
the evening. But but yeah, for me, it's like it's
just a nice way to start the day to actually
(04:55):
like get up and be like, all right, now I'm
ready to go. So it's it's kind of just like
having coffee or something.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It's like I want to do.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
It's not like it's not like I wake up, I'm
worried I'm gonna be so dirty or something. But then
it's like then my hair is in better shape everything. Yeah,
you just get a lot better anyway. And and just
the act of being in the shower I like not
just the end product of being clean. It's like, like
I like spending time in there.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That's my thing about it. I also enjoy being in
the shower. It's like you're sort of forced alone. You know,
you can't be on your phone for a long time.
Sometimes I play a little music. Oh yeah, maybe sometimes
I listen to a little podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And as we know from a previous episode, you guys
love hanging out in the bathroom. If I can extend
my time in there, I'll take any chance, like a.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Nice little shower. Yeah, I'm I'm at least once a day,
sometimes two morning shower for sure. Yeah, you know, ideal situation.
I'm getting up, I'm working out, I'm showering. You have
to work out start my day, and then when I
get home at night, I'll shower before I go to bed.
(05:57):
Speaking of people not showering, so so, there is this
journalist who was at The Atlantic, James Hamblin, who in
twenty sixteen wrote about his decision to stop showering.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Every day, no period, period. Oh my god, that's not
why he's no longer in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We read what you just wrote. It just smells, he wrote,
You know, he ended up. That was an article in
twenty sixteen. In twenty twenty, he had a book come
out called Clean, in which he was still not showering.
He talks about how it was a gradual thing, right,
He didn't wake up one day and go from showering
(06:42):
to not showering. He slowly tapered his way off of it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
Your body sort of gets into more of an equilibrium
when you stop doing these things. And I don't recommend
that anyone do it cold turkey. You know, we've all
when I was in the same habit as everyone are
doing a lot of showering and a lot of application
of So if I went a day without it and
a day without theodorant, I mean I knew it. I
smelled terrible, I looked greasy. I felt bad. Over Over time, though,
(07:08):
if you gradually do less and less, your body gets
used to it. It's sort of like training for a marathon.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
He does not shower. He hasn't showered now. That was
in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh so this isn't really, this is truly I have
not showered in years.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I thought, he has not showered in years. Look, he
may you know, I don't. I don't know the man,
he may have snuck a shower in here there, you know,
he've rolled around in some mud, maybe maybe snuck a
rinse or shower in. But yeah, he's no longer showering regularly.
He does not use soap outside of his hands, and
(07:48):
he does not wear yodurant yo.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Tell us a little bit about why, okay, because that's disgusting.
So no offense to people.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yhowers, but no offense to our listeners who haven't showered
in ten years. We still want you to keep coming
back to it.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
On the developed country, there's no excuse.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
What's his reason?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he talked about in his book in the article
that he started to calculate how much time we spend
in our lives showering. Here we go with the time.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yep, this is the same thing as sitting standing and peeing.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeap.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
What's the rush, guys?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And he said, based on his calculations, we spend two
full years of our lives washing ourselves. And to him,
it just he doesn't enjoy the act the showering obviously
like we do. And he was just like, why are
we doing this? He thought, you know, it's not medically
necessary for us to shower. We're just doing it because
(08:53):
that's what we do as a society. And he was curious.
If he just slowly stopped doing it, his body naturally
adjusted and it wouldn't be necessary to do it anymore.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I don't know why we have to pretend that it's
about like the amount of time at the end of
your life, you spent two years, how many how many
years you spend watching TV, or like how many years
you spend commuting to work. It's a bad way to
think about things. What it's like, what are you doing
with those two years?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
That's so so great, that's so much more fun than thanhower.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
We spend two years being you know, like toddlers, Like
we're not doing like it's not that long. It's not
that much time to me.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yeah, why don't kids start working in the In the
minds again, it's about wasting time doing other stuff. It's
like having fun playing factory, do something productive for one.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I don't like this at all. So what I hear
about like how much time it saves? I kind of
roll my eyes. But I am curious about like some
of his other reasonings that might have more weight to them.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, you know, he talks a lot about it not
being you know, medically necessary. There have been a lot
of conversations about actually we shower too often nowadays, you know,
like I haven't done any research yet.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And I could easily believe that we might be showering
too often. I remember during COVID when when we learned
that we were putting hand sanitizer on too often and
how that actually harmed our hands over time.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Well, yeah, yeah, that's what I was curious about, Like
how much it dries out skin by just doing the
water and rints and all that with the soap, like
ye versus I'm assuming I'm imagining by not showering, eventually,
you're gonna your skin's gonna build up some more tolerance
maybe or something.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah some stink ye a nice good sting.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And I think another aspect of this that we haven't
really talked about yet is how do we shower right?
It's not only how often, what are we doing once
we're in there right by play? So there was another
moment in culture in twenty nineteen where a user this
(10:56):
this tweet is now deleted, okay, put out a poll
asking when you go and shower, do you wash your legs.
You all remember this conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I remember this. I thought it was from before twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now it's twenty nineteen, and it was revealed through that
pole and subsequent conversation that a lot of white women
did not wash your legs when they shower.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So if you do, you have an up opinion.
Speaker 6 (11:23):
I don't wash my legs in the shower. Do you
wash your legs in the shower?
Speaker 7 (11:27):
We're bacta Taylor Swift who was just telling me about
washing her legs in the shower.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
I couldn't hear you. Did you say you do wash
them or you don't? I do?
Speaker 7 (11:35):
Because when you shave your legs, isn't that shaving cream
is like soap?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Right?
Speaker 7 (11:39):
Yeah, I mean you don't clean their legs well, but
you're sticking a shower regardless, So I mean it's not
like it's not getting clean.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I mean you only got to do washing your legs,
meaning like going through the effort of actually scrubbing your legs.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yes, okay, yes, you know you're go in the shower,
you're soaping up, whether you're using you know, this is
another thing.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, all right, we need to get into there's a
lot of right there's it gonna be a long This
might be a three parts.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
As you know, as a black band growing up in
this country and we where I was growing up, we
had something called the washrag. I know it maybe foreign
to some of our listeners, but a washrag is exactly
what it sounds like. It is a rag that you
would put some soap on and then use the rag
to clean your body. You know, you would change out
(12:26):
the washwrag every couple of days because it really, you know,
it starts to get a little stink to it if
you don't. But you're using something Some people use loofahs. Yeah, yeah,
you know there's an African uh ba bathing that whatever
you call it.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, as long as it has some coarse materials that
kind of exfoliates.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But and you know, I learned this from an early
age from sleepovers at some of my friends' houses who
happened to be white. We don't want to make any assumptions.
When they would give me, uh, okay, I'm gonna go shower.
Here's your child, I said, okay, thank you, I need
(13:08):
that to dry off. Where's the washrag? And they're like,
wash rag? What is that? You know? Like so a
lot of white people don't use washrags. They just use
their hand to clean everything.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it's like it's like finding out that my white
friends used to talk back to their mom.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know that was an option.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
What kind of that kind of alien world?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
So we say all that to uh bring us to Noah, Yeah,
no do you Yeah, if you're just listening, you're not
watching it on Instagram? Do you use a washrag?
Speaker 7 (13:46):
So?
Speaker 4 (13:47):
I use now, but growing up I actually did use washrags,
like we always did have.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
A small one in there. Yeah, I would use that's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, that's why I never really thought to be I
didn't know. I didn't want to assume all did, just
the ones I was interacting with.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Just to circle back a little bit, I remember that
discourse online end up being surprised at the amount of
people who didn't wash their legs or would say something
along the lines of like, I'm washing my you know,
kind of the problem areas, and then the soap is
going to run it down. I remember, Yeah, and like,
I guess clean my legs on the way down to
the drain. Yes, which just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
What you brought up a really good point when we
were talking about this. I don't know if you remember this, Manny.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, I fried my brain, you said, since then.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I think about it once a week now. Oh, it's
one of those things. Well you were like, how actually
every time I washed my legs I think about this.
You're like, how long do you think this takes?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It takes less than thirty seconds still, wipe your legs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Less than that is we're acknowledging soaps running down your legs.
You need to run, you need to rinse that off.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, just that it doesn't take much the same amount.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Of time to make sure there's not still bubbles all
over you.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yes, as to actually watch it and not take not
It doesn't add that much time to your shower.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Maybe twenty seconds total. Yeah, how long are your showers?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
By the way, Oh that's a really good question.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So let's say the primary main shower in the morning.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
My my normal no rush shower about ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, I think I'm about that. I think the same.
There are instances where like, maybe it's a night in
I've got nothing going on, you know, I'll just be
kind of day dreaming in there.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Oh yeah, definitely, if no one else is around, so
I know no one's like a way, it's about.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
The something like I can definitely take long.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, I'd say my standard's probably eight to twelve, yes,
and then yeah, if it's a nice one I'm chilling,
then close to twenty probably, yeah, if I'm just going
to take our time.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Really, I'm the follower of the method of like, you know,
really focusing on the quote unquote problem areas right, like
your your pits, your crotch, whatever, but your butt, yeah,
and then doing a much lighter version of that for
the rest.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Of your boxactly. Yeah, you start with those.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
You know, five to ten minutes this thing. Maybe you
do a second round. I guess that's what I do,
Like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But like you got it once yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I think like, you know, if you only did one
round in there, which sometimes I'm late or whatever, I
think you're you're a perfectly hygienic person. Oh yeah, So
if it's only taking five minutes in there.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah I could do. If you said, oh yeah, hey
you only got five minutes to shower, I could do it. Yeah,
I could do it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It could be pretty thorough.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But maybe that's not exactly what this episode is about.
Maybe I did a derail.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
No, No, it was good. Well, I think a lot
of that conversation ended up being too which also came
to mind from me, which is like the sort of
like acceptability politics of like what's allowed in certain cultures
versus what is not allowed, So like black culture is
very important to always be presenting yourself in the best light,
(17:04):
which is like your clothes need to be iron right,
they need to be clean. You can't go outside if
you stink, right, Like, it's it's a lot of you know,
some of this is like respectability politics, but it's like
your parents were always like, you know, when people see you,
they're not just judging you, they're judging all black people
exactly based on how you are presenting our family.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And then also.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes, black people whereas who's dak Shepherd and his who's
his wife? Oh yeah, Kristen Bell. They came out, and
the thing I love about these stories is that the
people just kind of volunteer this information. They said, they
only washed your kids when they start to stink, so
(17:48):
you know, like once a weaker some kids, I forgot
about that.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
We had to start saying like, hey, when's the last
time you bathe them? Yeah, forget sometimes.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Five six days goes along.
Speaker 8 (17:58):
I mean they don't smell, so so you know it's
hard people.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well they do.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
I'm a big thing of waiting for the stake.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
With that's that's biology's way of letting you know you
need to clean it up.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And it became a whole thing, right, It's like, so
I think, like, I think part of this too is
a cultural thing of like expectations around what is acceptable
versus what is not acceptable. And I'm not even saying
that like the black point of view here is correct, right,
Like I don't believe in respectability politics, but that on
(18:34):
the pod. Yeah, so I'm not saying like showering every
day like gives us, you know, a better chance of
getting equal, right, But I think it is part of
the equation of you know, not only what we're doing
in our homes, but also how comfortable we feel sharing, right,
Like there there's probably lots of black people who aren't
(18:56):
still doing the things that they were taught as kids.
But they're not going to go on the internet say
oh yes, I also don't wash my legs and I
shower you know, once every two weeks, and you know,
to make it clear, James talks about this a bit
and his article in this book about like, hey, I'm
a white guy, great education, Like I have certain advantages
(19:19):
that allows for me to go on this journey of him. Yeah,
without it like completely ruining my status. Okay, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we get back, we're
going to hear about a king that only took two
baths in his entire life, and hear from a dermatologist
(19:41):
about how often we should really be showering. All Right,
we're back.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
This is Devin. All Right, fellas, it's been a few
weeks since we last chatted about how often we should
be bathing. So in that time I've spoken to a
dermatologist who does have an answer. But before we get there,
I want to take a brief detour and figure out
(20:19):
how we got to where we are today in terms
of showering. So we're going to do a little abbreviated
history of bathing. Okay, So I called up someone who
read a whole book on it.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
My name is Catherine Astenberg, and I wrote a book
called The Dirt Unclean and unsanitized history.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So Catherine came out with the idea for the book
after a trip to the museum.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
This book first came to me in a museum in
Toronto where I live, which is called the Royal Ontario Museum.
And there was one day I was looking at a
picture of a sort of seventeenth century crowd scene somewhere
in Europe, and the caption underneath had said the rich
in this picture, the aristocrats are dirtier than the peasants.
(21:04):
You know, press a button and learn more, which I
wasn't doing all that often than those years. But I
pressed a button because that was so counterintuitive in a way.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
So why was this the case? Well, in the fourteenth
century we had this little thing called the Black Death,
which killed between forty and sixty percent of Europeans depending
on which historian you trust. In this flag was the
worst pandemic ever and the.
Speaker 9 (21:33):
French king consulted the medical doctors at the Sorbonne and
they said what caused it? And they said, all you know,
planets were aligning in bad ways.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So the king at the time wanted to know how
to prevent it.
Speaker 9 (21:46):
The people most at risk were fat, very emotional and
they took warm baths. What was wrong with taking warm baths?
It opened your pores and the disease entered through the port.
This is obviously not the case, but as a result,
a French historian called Jules Michele said that what followed
(22:08):
were a thousand years without a bath. Wasn't really a thousand,
It was more like five hundred, but it was a
considerable number of years.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So what happens next? They're rich people of European society
avoid hot water like the plague. See what I did there?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Nice?
Speaker 9 (22:29):
Those people never got in hot water, never washed anything
but their hands. King Louis the fourteenth of France, for example,
was a very athletic king. He did all kinds of sports.
Every day in his long life. He took two baths,
but every morning he washed his hands and maybe dribbled
(22:49):
a little water on his face, and that was the
extent of his hygiene because his body was the most
important body in France, so they had to keep it
away from disease.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So incredible. How much of like science back then was
just vibes based.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, it's like, I don't know, these guys are kind
of fat, and I don't know. They like warm water. Yeah,
all right, So we got King Louie to fourteenth taking
two baths. Right. At some point English scientists were like, actually, guys,
walm watar is good. It doesn't spread disease. It could
(23:29):
actually prevent it. So I was curious how we got
to today. We're bathing more regularly is the norm, and
you know, we use a little thing called soap.
Speaker 9 (23:39):
What really made bathing and showering work was advertising. Unfortunately,
it was a huge success. We had soap to wash
our clothes and wash our floors. We didn't have what
was called in the nineteenth century toilet soap, soap to
wash our body. And so even when people got the idea, oh,
let's get into warm water, there's something kind of good
(24:02):
about that, they did that without soap. The soap that
you'd wash your floor and your clothes with was really
harsh and it really melted very quickly. But various chemical
processes were discovered and put into production by the big
soap makers like Procter and Gamble and palmolive, and transportation
(24:23):
made it easier to get so all of a sudden,
soap toilet soap was born kind of in the second
half of the nineteenth century advertising was born. They brought
each other up together. And because all toilet soap was
pretty much the same as every other kind of toilet soap,
they needed advertising to say that ivory soap was better
than pal molive soap, for example. They invented all kinds
(24:47):
of gimmicks and use of celebrities and games and coupons
and stuff that you could collect.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Soap brought us some of our first branded content. Sure
you think got the idea of a soap opera?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
The first radio dramas were sponsored by soap companies.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
That's why it's called that. That's why it's called what
Great trivia.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Good morning radio listeners, Clara Lunde, I'm brought to you
by the makers of super.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Thubble, and they also advertising. This is invented kind of
bad things which are known in the advertising trade is
whisper copy, which was successfully designed to make you feel
really worried. Are you offending because you haven't taken a
(25:33):
bath today or a shower? And offending was one of
their scary words, and they would say, you will never
know if you're offending.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
After comparing the acts of daily baths with different soaps,
lay doctors made this amazing statement. Actually, you're clinger. It's
safer from the old when you bathe daily with Life
Boy and when you bathe with any other leading soap.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
The point of the ad is so that you don't
offend someone else with your smell. Yes, well that's why
soap was new. I guess I've been offending people with
my smell the whole time.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, that was what they were saying. They're saying, Hey,
wouldn't move the needle for me. All of you've been thinking,
we got this new thing to fix that, and everyone
is going to start using it, so you want to
be left behind and be the one guy who still stinks.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I see. It's pretty convincing to me. Yeah, I mean,
you know, if it's an easy choice.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
If you see everyone around around you start using it.
It's like it's also.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Wild to think about how old these some of these
companies are After and Gramble all the way.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Back then been around for a bit.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
All right, So the advertising business did its big thing.
But Catherine called out in her book, not everyone bought
into this, so you know, many maybe wouldn't back in
the day. Some of us, some of us are freethinkers
and you know who else were free thinkers, our European
brothers and sisters.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
The European countries are extremely different in terms of hygiene.
It was always kind of a trade off between the historians.
I was reading what is the Dirtiest Country in Europe
and it was kind of a contest between France and Spain.
French people would take a shower four days a week,
did not think it was necessary to change their underwear
every day, versus the North American much closer to once
(27:20):
a day.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's funny. I've seen some tiktoks recently of young people
going to Paris for the first time, and the one
thing that they constantly comment on is like, oh, a
lot of these people in France are not wearing the odorant.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
Yeah, people still say that about France. It's amazing how
I'm regenerate they are. But there's a wonderful book by
a guy, a historian by I think his name is
Alan Corbin R b I N. He's French, and about
the French love of strong smells, the way they hang
their meat, their wine, their smelly wonderful cheese, and their bodies.
(27:59):
And it's a kind of somadic atmosphere in which they
live and which they're not just tolerant of it, they
they like it, they seek it out. Well, this famous
story about Napoleon and Josephine that he was on a
military campaign and he wrote to Josephine, I will arrive
(28:19):
in Paris, you know, in two nights or on Friday
or something like that, Nu levpa, do not wash. This
was part of sexual pleasure for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
That's nasty.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That is, you know, don't think shame many, all right,
that's some people are.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Napoleon cook, I can I can imagine if you have
that kink, be like hoping that they don't wash, being like, hey,
don't take a shower. He's like, hey, I'm on my
way back.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Hey, I know you've been washing out while being gone.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
That ends today. Put a stop to it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And this will circle back to an idea that we
were talking about in the intro. But this idea of
clonliness was also used to discriminate against minority groups in
the US.
Speaker 9 (29:16):
Americans were just as dirty as Europeans until the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So during the Civil War, things like hygiene and hospital
conditions became a much bigger focus in the US to
help improve the health of the troops.
Speaker 9 (29:29):
So by the time all these immigrants arrived on the shores,
arrived at Ellis Island from the south and the east
of Europe, it was felt one way to make them
be Americans is to teach them about bathing and about
seeing themselves.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
So it was a.
Speaker 9 (29:46):
Huge teaching campaign. You can't be American unless you're clean.
And it had also been used for the blacks after
the Civil War in reconstruction.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So going back to the side of respectability politics. During Reconstruction,
we had people like Booker T. Washington who were promoting
this idea of cleanliness for black.
Speaker 9 (30:08):
People, and he wrote a book in which he talked
about what he called the Gospel of the toothbrush. She said,
once you give a person a toothbrush and they start
to use it, they're on their way to being a
full American citizen.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So there we go. We got our idea of respectability politics.
Back to Booker T. So early, get your toothbrush. That's
white people are going to start being nice to us
if we brush our teeth. Didn't work.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
They had to do some of the strategies after that one.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Now that we've gotten a little history lesson We're going
to take a quick break, and when we get back,
we're going to have all our baiting questions answered by dermatologists.
(31:05):
All right, we're back in as promise. I spoke with
a dermatologist.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
My name is Lisa Akintillo.
Speaker 7 (31:12):
I'm a Boort certified dermatologist and cosmetic dermatologic surgeon correctly
at NYU in New York.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
And, like Noah likes to say, I want to waste
no time and get right into it. First question, let's
get right to it. How often do you shower?
Speaker 6 (31:31):
I personally showered twice today.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
Some people may find that extreme, but I've done it
for years, just because the night shower is part of
my kind of decompression from the day.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
My night routine.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Yeah, the wine down, so that's just my personal preference.
But yeah, twice a day, once if I'm gonna bind,
but usually it's twice.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I'm never someone who showers like right before bed. But
I'm coming around to the idea that like it makes
sense in the sense of keeping your bed a sacred,
clean place.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yes, people should listen back to our episode about whether
or not it's okay to wear your outside clothes on
your bed. That's right, Well, we touched on us a
little bit, but I like my bed clean, all right,
so I trusted her already. Right, twice a day. This
woman knows what she's talking about. But just because doctor
Akintailo showers twice a day doesn't necessarily mean we should showering.
(32:26):
There is the Okay, I do this for the scientific
reasons of like keeping my body clean, and then there's
the routine, and there's the cultural aspects of it. All right, scientifically,
how often should we really be showering for, you know,
for our health?
Speaker 7 (32:42):
That's a good question. How often should we be showering scientifically?
Because I, to my knowledge, has not been any formal
studies saying, oh, this is the evidence based number of
times you should shower in a day. I would say,
I tell my patients they should shower once a day.
That probably varies depending on who you talk too. But
I personally believe you're out in the world, if you
(33:03):
live in a place like New York, you're exposed to
the elements, you're exposed to the pollution. It's good to
at least once a day kind of rinse that off
of you. And then also you provide hydration back into
the skin which does tend to get fairly dry throughout
the day. And then there is the mental health part
of it too. Like I was alluding to earlier, it
is like a nice few minutes where it's just you.
You get to focus on taking care of yourself. But again,
(33:24):
some people might say less than that. There are some
other factors at play with how often I recommend people shower.
Maybe if somebody has eggs, more of that dry, itchy,
flaky skin, they should not shower too often. But you're
so right in bringing up the cultural part, because there's
a huge voice in my head at least that say, well,
you can't shower. You can't not shower every day. So
(33:45):
that's my take on it.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Wow, so once today, Yeah, we should basically be dermatologists.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I love to hear that a dermatologist recommends you shower
once a day, and I think a lot of people
should that to heart.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Obviously, there's you know, we say for every single person
in the world, there maybe someone with some condition that
we're not mentioning here. But yeah, that's that's our general
recommendation to most of our clients. So the weather is
actually cooling down in New York, Yeah, right, when we
started this, it was like a little bit hotter, So
I was curious how much of this recommendation is based
on just like where you're living, right, Like I feel
(34:22):
like I'm showering a little bit less now than i
was when it was a little hotter. And also like
someone's activity level does that determine how often they should
be shower.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
If you're feeling really hot and sweaty and sticky, maybe
you either live in a warm place year round or
at summertime.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
That can be helpful just to get all the sweat off.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
And for that reason too, I do recommend patients who
exercise a lot to also at least do a quick
rint or spray, you know, certain areas with hypochlorous acid
or some kind of cleansing spray. It's because that sweat
staying all the skin for a prolonged amount of time
can lead to issues down the line like acne, little
bits of eczema, or dry, itchy skin.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
And this made me a dumb question, but like on
a molecular level, like what makes us smell?
Speaker 6 (35:08):
Yeah, what's the cause of the body odor?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Right?
Speaker 7 (35:10):
Yeah, So it's interesting sweat in and of itself does
not have an odor. Our sweat glands produce this fluid,
these africrine and acrine glands and the skin. But what
causes the smell is bacteria that is on the skin.
So it is interesting to think about. But we all
have bacteria living on our skin, mites and other things too.
They're all in symbiosis with us. But the bacteria, if
(35:33):
the sweat is on the skin for a prolonged amount
of time, they like it. They kind of gravitate towards it,
and as they eat it and digest it, that process
produces an odor that is oftentimes unpleasant for either one
self or people around someone to smell. But sweat in
and of itself is not a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It's yea, it attracts.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I guess I always assumed like you get sweaty and
then your arm pits start to emit an odor. Yeah,
I smell when I'm on the train and someone smells bad,
I thought that's essentially what was happening.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
This is fascinating though.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes, the bacteria eating up that sweat yummy, yummy, yummy,
So I want it. Doctor, I can tell Hell to
walk me through the perfect shower routine. Let's start with
what soap we should be using.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
So in broad strokes, for most people, I recommend just
the plain, gentle hydrating cleanser. If someone is more prone
to sensitive skin, I would probably shy away from the
fragrance cleansers because that can be pretty irritating to the skin. Now,
dial or hibocleans is another one, or bends of peroxide.
They're all the antibacterial washes and soaps. Those can be
(36:45):
helpful for certain reasons. Right somebody has a lot of
body owner Sometimes we like the antibacterial soap to decrease
the amount of bacteria on the skin. If somebody has
a particular condition where we're trying to decrease again that bacteria,
maybe acne and those are you, and then we do
recommend those special antibacterial soaps. But for most people, for
most of the population, most of the time, just as
(37:06):
hydrating gentle cleanser as all that's needed.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
She says, no, no need to splurge on an expensive soap.
And we were talking about bar or liquid. She said,
both are great. More of a bar guy. You Dove, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
I think typically I'll buy a Dove, but I'll kind
of if something's on sale, I'll try it.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
But well, the fun fact is dove is not technically
a hope. Excuse me explain dove is not technically a sope.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (37:36):
It's you know, we don't need to get into the
weeds here, but it doesn't have certain properties, which is
why dove is considered to be more moisturizing, because soap
strip your body of more things. Oh so people use
dove because it's gentler on your skin.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
That makes sense, because yeah, you do hear about people
using too much soap. She was alluding to this earlier too,
just like and then yoga irritated and dry skin doing
too much cleaning.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
So now you know, we had a good time with dove,
but I'm about to ruin your lives.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Oh god.
Speaker 7 (38:13):
I asked her how long we should be showering, So
showers actually should be on the shorter end, which may
be breaking the hearts of all your oul because we
all love our long you know, hot showers that feel
so good and you know messages the back, et cetera.
But really, showers should be no more than five minutes,
and probably cools with the three minutes. So I tell
my patients, if you're listening to music, it should be
(38:35):
about a song. Those songs these days are about three
and a half minutes. Yeah, there should be about that long.
They should be lukewarm as well, not hot.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:44):
Now, I myself am guilty of a hot shower now
and again, especially in the winter, just because it's so
cool outside. But that hot water strips a lot of
our natural oils off of the skin and actually makes
us dryer as a result. So the water doesn't have
to be cold by any means, but lukewarm is deespecially.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, I'm doing my own research. We're learning that she
takes basically less than one shower. Actually she just breaks it.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Up based on the amount of minutes.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, I'm on my Maha ship. I don't trust that.
How hot, How hot are your guys showers? I don't
go super hot. I'm not scorching, but they're hot. I
like it hot, I mean not my room steamy.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, yeah, I like.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
But I've cauted it down. I think partly because of
the skin irritant factor.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I do have some dry skin. I don't want to
irritate it. And definitely, the hotter it gets, I noticed that.
I'm definitely not lukewarm, but and I have no idea
what temperature it is.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I'm probably slightly hotter than I should be, but I'm not.
I used to be even hotter.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, I used to my I used like I feel
like in high school and college. I used to have
like hot showers just boiling your skin.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah. So uh, next up our controversial question about whether
or not you actually need a wash rag.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Oh hmmm, instead of just your hands, instead.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Of just yours.
Speaker 7 (40:01):
I just had a conversation with a family member about
this last week. Because you are not wrong. This is
where there's a lot of cultural impact. Well disclosure, I
am of Nigerian descent, and I grew up using a
lufa or the African nets bonge, and it's just what
I'm used to. So when I discovered not everybody uses that,
I was kind of flabbergasted. So basically, the question that
(40:22):
you're getting to is manual physical exfoliation necessary as part
of a shower routine.
Speaker 6 (40:27):
The technical answer is not really.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Sometimes, again, if someone has a particular skin condition, we
might not want too much physical abrasions to the skin,
as that can aggravate different rations people may have or
other issues. But again, I tend to think having some
kind of exfoliant is nice, whether it be manual or chemical,
just to help get rid of that top layer of skin,
because sometimes that is leading to a lot of issues
(40:52):
as well with dryness and skin irritation. And with just
gentle exfoliation with a Lufa and African nut sponge honestly,
hands can work some times too. That can help get
that top layer off and give a nice glow to
the skin, especially with moisturizer quite afterwards. So that's that's
kind of my answer for that. Again, I personally love
ALOFA and I cannot fathom not using it.
Speaker 6 (41:14):
I travel with one.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yes, it's the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I accept the censer. She's back on our good side.
Yeah she knows what she's talking about.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah she's pro So next up from my white girls,
do you actually need to wash your legs?
Speaker 6 (41:34):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 7 (41:35):
When I first heard of this debate or discussion a
few years ago, I was flabbergasted.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Yet again, takes no time.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's the thing that drives me crazy. It's like it
takes you could do it very quickly.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
It literally takes me ten seconds.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
It's not so you can't tell my answer is yes,
we should be watching our whole body, including our legs.
Though soap dripping down is not enough. And when you
think about it, truly, especially in the summer, but I'd
say year round, our feet are exposed to a lot
of different things in the world. Right, even if you're
wearing socks and shoes and you have your trousers on,
you still might have a little bit of exposed ankle.
(42:10):
If it's the summer, you're wearing your sandals, your flip flops,
that all needs to be washed. Just think about you know,
if you don't wash your legs and feet, you get
into bed and all the stuff that's probably sitting in
your sheets, and it's just to be clean. I think
it's probably best to wash the feet and legs and
arms and as you mentioned, all the body parts. Truly,
(42:30):
it really doesn't take that much time. There are some
arguments people say where you really only need to focus
on the hot zones, which would be the groin, in the.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
Armpit and the face.
Speaker 7 (42:40):
I guess too, I understand where they're coming from, but
I just personally think, and I've seen in my patience
that people's skin looks much healthier if they do wash
and moisturize their whole body.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Just take the ten seconds and wash your legs.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Yeah, it feels nice under the knee.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a good spot right out. Yeah. All right,
that's it. That's all we got. Has this changed your
point of view of showering. I think this is one
that we all kind of agree on. This is a
beautiful thing. Doesn't happen all the time with us, but
we were all doing at least once a day. I
(43:17):
guess we have some suggestions to our brethren who are
not doing this.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, it's good to know that if I do have
a quicker shower, I'm not really risking anything. Or if
I don't use the rag sometimes it's probably fine. Yeah.
I feel the same.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's nice that you know my quick rinses when they
happen are probably doing the job.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm going to keep my long showers and do them
every day.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
All right. Yeah that's all I had. Was there anything
else that you felt like you wanted to talk about
that you didn't get to touch on.
Speaker 6 (43:53):
No, I think we talked about everything.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
I you know, shower at least once a day, don't
spend a lot of money.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
Moisture eyes for sure, keep them short, Yeah, keep them short.
Speaker 8 (44:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (44:04):
The short thing is that's a big change for most people.
So when I bring up the song reference, that tends
to help at least you notice like, oh, it's in
like two three songs.
Speaker 6 (44:10):
Maybe I should give out Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
He's he he heals, heals. After we recorded our conversation,
I was able to find out that James Hamlin has
reintroduced a daily rent to his routine, but he is
still not using any soap, shampoo, or theodor. Just just
some water. Okay. I want to hear about how often
(44:42):
y'all are showering? Do you wash your legs? Email us
at Manny Nolah Deevin at female dot com, or you
can call the number and show notes if you are
listening to us on Apple podcasts. I have a favorite
to ask. Go leave us a five star review, but
I also want you to tell us in a review
who your favorite No Such Thing member is. Be honest,
(45:05):
it's me. No Such Thing is a production of Kaleidoscope Content,
our executive producers for Kate Osborne and Mangeshkadur. The show
was created by Manny Fidel, Nor Friedman and me Devin
Joseph theme in credit song by Manny. Mixing for this
episode by Steve Bone. Our guests this week were doctor
(45:26):
Lisa Acintillo from ny You and Katherine Aschenberg, the author
of The Dirt on Clean, which we'll win to in
our show notes. All Right, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Those those those, those those such thing
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