Like, I travel around for work and I’ve met plenty of people from all backgrounds.
Why is there a demographic of people who don’t seemingly bathe regularly, or at the very least wear something to cover up their BO? I could understand if it’s an allergy, or even religious reasons (though the people I’ve met that smell bad are usually you’re average American young adult man) but recently (like in the past week, recently) I’ve met a concerning number of people who don’t seem to wear any kind of deodorant or possibly don’t even bathe regularly; it’s starting to become an issue for me, as I don’t even want to interact with them when I can smell them walking up from 3+ feet away yet I need to for work.
Does anyone have any possible insight?
That’s not recommended by dermatologists. Soap destroys the acid layer on your skin that keeps bacteria out. As a regular thing, you should therefore only lather on soap where the bacteria buildup is high enough, i.e. under your arms, in your butt crack and other skin folds.
Unless you got super sweaty, you shouldn’t soap up your arms and legs every day.
I can’t stand the feel of human-produced skin oils building up anywhere on my body. I need to feel squeaky clean to feel clean. But that might be just my own personal mental problems. I never even use lotion. I just can’t stand grease and oily substances. Seeing or feeling my own fingerprints on my devices sends me into a rage of wiping everything down with alcohol.
For what it’s worth, scrubbing to get that “squeaky clean” feeling removes the protective layer of sebum between your skin cells. It dries out your skin, and hence, causes your body to go into overdrive producing more oils. As a result, you end up really greasy by the end of the day. After learning this, I backed off the temperature of my daily shower, switched to a pure Castile soap, less of it, and stopped scrubbing vigorously. Now I don’t leave oily smudges on my phone screen, except after sweating a lot. Also, no more itchy, dry skin and cracking knuckles in the winter.
Phones and keyboard are filthy, but it’s more about people usually not cleaning them enough and not about people not being clean enough.
The amount of bacteria on thoroughly and often soap-washed skin very quickly rises high because of the missing acid and/or oil layer.
The “only use soap on armpits+groin+feet most of the time” recommendation is not made up.
Fair point. When I said soap, I really meant a body wash, of which pH balanced versions are available.
You also have an oil layer that keeps certain kinds of bacteria out, so don’t destroy that one. As said: most days, just lather pits, groin, and feet, simply rinse the rest with water.