Many people are now aware of the importance of your gut microbiome. Some even take proactive steps to protect it, like minimizing the use of antibiotics and eating fermented foods to support a healthy balance.

Less widely known is that such microorganisms don’t only populate your gut; they’re found throughout your body, including on your skin. Just as your gut depends on a balanced microbial state to function optimally, the balance of bacteria and other microbes on your skin also matters. What’s more, the average American showers close to once each day, a hygiene habit that may be doing your body more harm than good.

A No-Shower Experiment

If you spend 20 minutes a day washing, that equates to about two years of your life spent in the shower or bath along with a hefty amount of money spent on the “necessary” accouterments like shampoo, conditioner, soap and moisturizer.

What if you were to cut this back to showering once every other day, once every three days or, simply, hardly at all? Dr. James Hamblin, a senior editor at The Atlantic, tried the latter and wrote about his experience, explaining:

“ … I started using less soap, and less shampoo, and less deodorant, and showering less. I went from every day to every other day to every three.

And now I’ve pretty much stopped altogether. I still wash my hands, all the time, which remains an extremely important way to prevent communicable diseases. I still rinse off elsewhere when I’m visibly dirty, like after a run when I have to wash gnats off my face, because there is still the matter of society. If I have bed head, I lean into the shower and wet it down. But I don’t use shampoo or body soap, and I almost never get into a shower.”

At first, you may have some odor and greasy skin or hair. However, this may be the direct result of your prior aggressive showering routine. Body odor is the result of bacteria feeding on oily secretions from your sweat and sebaceous glands. Washing with detergent soaps wipes out the bacteria temporarily, but it quickly reestablishes itself, typically with an imbalance that favors odor-producing microbes.

When you give your body a break from the soap and shampoo, however, the ecosystem has a chance to right itself and, in so doing, offensive body odor largely disappears. “ … [Y] our ecosystem reaches a steady state, and you stop smelling bad,” Hamblin explained. “I mean, you don’t smell like rosewater … but you don’t smell like B.O., either. You just smell like a person.”

How Shrewd Marketers Sold Americans the Idea of “Clean”

It wasn’t until the early 20th century, not coincidentally when advertising became prolific, that Americans began to be very concerned about personal hygiene. The advertising industry created a “need” for newfangled products like “toilet soap” and “mouthwash” where one had never before existed. Today most people engage in the habit of washing their hair and skin with soap and shampoo, which removes natural oils, and then adding those oils back via the use of synthetic moisturizer and conditioner.

The irony is that most of the lotions are far inferior to natural sebum and many, if not most, are loaded with toxic ingredients that ultimately will worsen your health. The fact that daily washing can strip your skin of beneficial oil, leading to dryness and cracks (especially if the water is hot and harsh soaps are used), is a clue that your skin may be better off with a far less aggressive hygiene routine. Though it may seem shocking to consider showering less, keep in mind that daily showering is a relatively new phenomenon.

Are There Risks to Excessive Showering?

There are risks on multiple levels, starting with the disruption of your skin’s microbial balance. The long-term repercussions of this are still being explored, but by removing beneficial bacteria from your skin, it could make skin conditions like eczema worse.

Many members of the “no-poo” movement (a group of people who abstain from shampooing their hair) claim not shampooing leaves their hair healthier, shinier and less frizzy.

There’s also the issue of chemical-laden body washes and shampoos. When you cut back on showers, you negate the need for these products and their oftentoxic ingredients. There are issues on an environmental level as well, especially in regard to water usage. One seven-minute shower uses more water than a bath, and it’s expected that water usage for showers will grow five-fold by 2021. Not to mention, if you’re on city water and you don’t have a filter on your shower, showering is a major source of exposure to carcinogenic chlorination byproducts such as trihalomethanes (THMs). THMs are associated with bladder cancer, gestational and developmental problems.

Just the simple act of showering in treated water, in which you have absorption through both your skin and lungs, may pose a significant health risk to you — and to your unborn child, if you are pregnant. Numerous studies have shown that showering and bathing are important routes of exposure and may actually represent more of your total exposure than the water you drink. So in this respect, cutting back on your shower time would be important to help limit your exposure. The biggest issue, however, is that most people do not need to scrub their bodies from head to toe each morning or evening. It’s unnecessary and disruptive to the delicate and beneficial microbial communities living on your skin.

Please Read Part 2.

Trained by the conventional medical model, Dr. Joseph Mercola treated many symptoms with prescription drugs and was actually a paid speaker for the drug companies. But as Dr. Mercola began to experience the failures of this model in his practice, he embraced natural medicine and has had an opportunity over the last thirty years to apply these time-tested approaches successfully with thousands of patients in his clinic. Over 16 years ago he founded Mercola.com to share his experiences with others. The site is the most visited natural health site in the world for the last seven years with nearly two million subscribers. Dr. Mercola has also written two NY Times bestselling books, and has had frequent appearances on national media.