An MIT scientist goes 12 years without taking a shower after discovering the benefit of preserving healthy bacteria that’s normally washed away with soap and water. David Whitlock, an MIT-trained chemical engineer and developer of AO+ believes that restoring healthy bacteria to the skin improves a range of human health conditions.
Whitlock helped found AOBiome, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup that’s exploring “potential physiologic effects such as preventing infection, improving skin architecture and improving vascularization” through the use of live bacteria spray, according to the Daily Mail.
Touted as being the first product developed for the skin microbiome and released in July, AOBiome’s Mother Dirt spray is a live-bacteria-containing mist that’s applied to the skin twice a day and offered as a replacement to daily showering.
“I have not taken a shower in over 12 years,” Whitlock said, while admitting that he does take an occasional sponge bath.
“Modern hygiene has selectively depleted the natural balance of the skin microbiome particularly affecting AOB,” or ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, said the company. “By restoring the appropriate AOB levels, we believe a range of human health conditions could be impacted.”
Jasmina Aganovic, AOBiome’s consumer products manager said: “We’ve confused clean with sterile. We’ve taken the dirt out of our lives. We don’t spend as much time outdoors as we used to, even little children.”
AOBiome says its product “acts as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory, and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.”
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