translated from Spanish: Unusual: A professor at Yale University has not bathed for six years

Many people need, to start the day with energy, a shower as soon as they get out of bed. Others prefer it before bedtime, to relax. But there is a professor of medicine at the prestigious Yale University who never does: he has not showered for six years. James Hamblin, 37, is a professor at the Yale School of Public Health and a specialist in preventive medicine. “I know of many people who bathe very little. I knew it was possible, but I wanted to try for myself to see what the effect would be.” So in 2015 he decided to stop showering.
“Over time, your body gets used to it more and more so it doesn’t smell so bad if you don’t use deodorant and soap. And your skin doesn’t get so greasy when you stop using strong soaps. Many people use shampoo to remove oils from the hair and then apply a conditioner to place synthetic oils. If you manage to break that circle, your hair will end up looking the way it was when you started using those products,” Hamblin said.
“The main thing is to understand that it takes time (to see the effect), it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s not immediate. There were times when I wanted to shower because I missed him, smelled bad and felt like he was fat. But that started to happen to me less and less,” he explains. According to his theory, “the smell of bodies is the product of bacteria that live on our skin and feed on the oily secretions of sweat and sebaceous glands that are at the base of our hair follicles.” When you shower aggressively, you destroy ecosystems. They re-recover quickly, but the species become unbalanced and tend to favor the types of microbes that produce odor,” he said. “I have a smell of my own and my wife likes it. That’s why when you stop showering there is a moment when your ecosystem reaches a stable state and you stop smelling bad. You don’t smell like rose water. You just smell like a person.” The professor complains that at present, “we hope that people do not smell of anything or that they smell of perfume, cologne, bath gel or else it means they smell bad. If there’s any detectable human odor, it’s negative.” His modus operandi is as follows: “I rinse when I need it or when I want it, only with water, fast, especially when I have hair as if I had just woken up or if I visibly have something dirty. But you can exfoliate, you can remove the oils by simply rubbing with your hands and combing your hair occasionally. And that’s it.” Of course, he said he washes his hands and teeth several times a day. Hamblin explained that the daily shower is a very modern concept: “Yes, because we didn’t used to have running water. Most people did not have access to running water until the last hundred years.” It was something that maybe royalty could do, kings and queens, but that people could only do occasionally. Maybe they would get into a river or a lake, but it wasn’t something we needed to do every day,” he explained. I would say that the shower is a preference, but not a medical necessity,” the professor concluded.

Original source in Spanish