Should You Shower Daily?

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Do you shower daily? A flurry of news articles this past week has suggested this could be a bad idea

  • Today’s main feature looks into the science of this, and offers a way to enjoy “the best of both worlds”, enabling you to stay fresh as a daisy without compromising your skin health

• Do you love scrolling through long sales pitches? No? We’ll get right to the point, then:

  • Today's sponsor NativePath is offering a 365-day money-back guarantee on their range of electrolyte and amino acid drink mixes, which are great for your kidneys, bladder, and pelvic floor muscles.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

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Visible in the Skin: 3 Warning Signs of Insulin Resistance (3:30)

We don't do clickbait, so we'll not keep it a mystery; the signs are:

1. skin tags

2. hyperpigmentation

3. "other skin findings"

The latter is a catch-all including hair thinning, cellulitis, and more.

Dr. Dhand explains in more detail what things "count":

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Hint: today’s mystery item is a good thing to avoid medical emergencies in the car

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❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I read an article that daily showering is “performative” and doesn’t really give any health benefits, what do you say?❞

We looked to find the article you might be referring to, and this seems to be about a BBC article that was then picked up, rehashed in fewer (but more sensational) words, and widely popularized by the New York Post (not the most scholarly of publications, but it seems to have “done numbers”).

Here’s the BBC article:

BBC | There's no need to shower every day—here's why

Looking for the science behind the “Experts say…” claims, none of the articles we found linked to any new research. One of them did link to some old (2005) research:

Sage Journals | Explaining Showering: A Discussion of the Material, Conventional, and Temporal Dimensions of Practice

We also see (in the dearth of scholarly research to cite), a Harvard Health article being cited quite a bit, and this is more helpful and informative than the flashy news articles, without requiring to read through a lot of hard science.

To summarize, Harvard’s Dr. Shmerling says daily showering can:

• Cause/worsen dry skin

• Make skin more permeable to pathogens

• Upset our natural balance of bacteria that are supposed to be there

• Weaken our immune system

Read in full: Harvard Health | Showering daily—is it necessary?

But what if I like showering?

Well, don’t let us stop you. But you might consider using less in the way of shower products. We wrote about this previously, in answer to a different-but-related subscriber question:

10almonds | Body Scrubs: Benefits, Risks, and Guidance

PS…

Handwashing, though? Most people could reasonably do that more often:

The Truth About Handwashing

Would you like this section to be bigger? If so, send us more questions!

❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I read an article that daily showering is “performative” and doesn’t really give any health benefits, what do you say?❞

We looked to find the article you might be referring to, and this seems to be about a BBC article that was then picked up, rehashed in fewer (but more sensational) words, and widely popularized by the New York Post (not the most scholarly of publications, but it seems to have “done numbers”).

Here’s the BBC article:

BBC | There's no need to shower every day—here's why

Looking for the science behind the “Experts say…” claims, none of the articles we found linked to any new research. One of them did link to some old (2005) research:

Sage Journals | Explaining Showering: A Discussion of the Material, Conventional, and Temporal Dimensions of Practice

We also see (in the dearth of scholarly research to cite), a Harvard Health article being cited quite a bit, and this is more helpful and informative than the flashy news articles, without requiring to read through a lot of hard science.

To summarize, Harvard’s Dr. Shmerling says daily showering can:

• Cause/worsen dry skin

• Make skin more permeable to pathogens

• Upset our natural balance of bacteria that are supposed to be there

• Weaken our immune system

Read in full: Harvard Health | Showering daily—is it necessary?

But what if I like showering?

Well, don’t let us stop you. But you might consider using less in the way of shower products. We wrote about this previously, in answer to a different-but-related subscriber question:

10almonds | Body Scrubs: Benefits, Risks, and Guidance

PS…

Handwashing, though? Most people could reasonably do that more often:

The Truth About Handwashing

Would you like this section to be bigger? If so, send us more questions!

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

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The style here is not a sales pitch (though he does, at the end, offer extra resources if desired), but rather, instructional, and this book is in and of itself already a complete guide. With clear instructions and equally clear illustrations, you don't need to spend a dime more (unless you don't own a resistance band, in which case then yes, you will need one of those).

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Wishing you the very best of good health every day,

The 10almonds Team