DoctorOz: How Often Should You Bathe? Experts Reveal the Truth!

It's America's dirtiest debate ever a raging controversy over how often should you bathe me? I enjoy a hot steamy shower But some of Hollywood's biggest celebrities have recently made some downright dirty Confessions Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher made headlines when they admitted to only bathing their kids when they see dirt on them Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell agreed that they wait for the stink and And leading men Jake Gyllenhaal and Brad Pitt have also copped to having very relaxed bathing routines So are they on to something? We're putting it to the test with our seven-day no bathing experiment. Just wait till you see the shocking results for your skin and hair How long could you survive the stink? We challenged two couples who currently disagree on how often they should be bathing to live one whole week without a shower Let's see how they managed We are ready to take on this. Dr. Oz is seven days Seriously seven days. You're just getting home from work. I feel like I've been sweating all day. I still kind of achy I feel fine. I know you're pretty much used to this I got up and I'm ready to take a shower and then I remembered I can't Wait a minute. You said no. You said no bathing Dr. Oz didn't say anything about cool water. I'm feeling like I actually want to take a shower now. I've been dying Like I feel like every day I'm just sweating and I want to take a shower at night I do have a lot more time on my hands when I don't take a shower Disgusting. I'm taking the sheets off. I can't wait to get these sheets clean You and me both Usually when I'm alone the dog Ren is with me and he usually cuddles up to me Do you want to see where my dog is now? Show your face Oh, Kenny's coming home from work. Let's check on him. Nobody really hung around me as usual like they do normally The other kids didn't want to play with you Feel like I'm greasy sweaty. I'm over the whole thing. How about you? Baby just smell now Okay, I kept my comments to myself for you I think with all this oil in my hair that these curls are gonna come out really cool. And at least my hair won't look that bad Maybe the one time during kovat. I'm grateful for the six-foot social distancing on the stage Please welcome the couples currently on day seven of no bathing danielle and mo Smell so bad. We'll get to that. I am six feet away We got Bambi Kenny here Daniel most are with you the biggest obstacle you guys have had since you've embarked on this voyage of seven days with your new hygiene habits I think the biggest obstacle probably was having to deal with each other and not really tell you how you really feel Because she smelled after day one I don't think she noticed but I definitely noticed That's a big disagreement. I mean what are the major differences you notice in your skin and in your hair? My hair can't you see it? It's all slick. I have this natural grease gel thing going My grandmother used to use those foam curlers. I found them. Well, she had dippity-doo with this little thing I don't know if you remember the gel. Well, I I dippity done it myself with all the grease And it stayed a little bit. Did you like the fact that it had because sometimes actually I gotta admit I do this I don't do it when i'm making shows. I get stuff all over my body and my hair, but if i'm on my own You know, i'll wash some parts of my body we'll talk about that in a second But I actually like that that my hair has feel to it. Well, i'll wait two or three days, but I don't wait seven days Kenny, how about you? You know, I didn't notice a big difference in my skin, but I feel like I have bad head all day long for a week All right, so we're taking a look at what happens to the skin and the hair over the last seven days I want you all welcome a good friend of mine dermatologist dendy engelman. So let's start with the hair for a second What what gives you what what's going on to our hair when we're not bathing it all the time so it certainly depends on hair types, but you hit the nail on the head as far as With your scalp. I mean it is good to skip some washes and Our natural oils are like ours our natural conditioner. I actually enjoy as I mentioned that feeling however The skin is is actually a good way to start because we have a little replica here what goes out with the body And when you said we should think about our bacteria on the skin as actually being part of the garden the ecosystem Yes, so we've got good flowers beautiful flowers and plants like weeds that aren't so good for us explain this to us So this is a little example of what's going on with the microbiome of our skin or the microenvironment And it's really important to have good bacteria Which are the flowers and bad bacteria always kind of creep in there like the weeds and so when we wash We actually are if we do it the right way We're getting rid of the weeds But we're keeping the good bacteria there as little fortress to try to fight off the bad bacteria But when we over cleanse we can actually eradicate everything there good and bad and that's when we get into trouble Let me come on over here I got a little demonstration to do with you and I finally got you a little bit of soap with fragrance All right So I want you to replicate what we all do so for example if you're showering just let's say the first time in a while So go ahead and shower it up there So then what happens when you put just the right amount just the right amount we get rid of the bad bacteria So we we weed our garden and only the good is there helping to keep the bad things away Okay Now keep going though the way many people do it, you know once a day twice a day and now all of a sudden What's going on dendy? So we're getting rid of the good bacteria too. So all of our flowers out of our garden are gone And then what happens we have a lot of room for overgrowth Well, this is the issue because you were doing this basically plucking every one of those good bacteria and the bad guys out at the same Time right? They're all gone. So now you sort of leave the parched earth Area where there's not a lot of stuff growing and now you stop using your bathing material as you guys did So now after a day or two what happens you start planting? Things that maybe aren't in your best interest and this can cause an odor that you apparently Witness with each other see that down there emanating out there. That'll green stuff. Yeah, you don't want that stuff. That's uh can be toxic However over time what happens dendy so then our good bacteria come back and we do try to get back into homeostasis And so we regulate our body and so we'll often talk about that people say that they smell worse in the first couple days And that's because of the overgrowth of the bad bacteria But then when the good bacteria repopulate Then we get back to a more normal state because the skin is pretty amazing And keeping the good things in and the bad things out But we need to make sure that we're being mindful of the skin barrier in this microbiome And if we're we're smelling bad, we may be an imbalance. Our garden may not be balanced. Take it back to kenny He might appreciate it. So danielle you say you've picked up on your husband's odor A little faster than you were noticing changes in yours Yeah, maybe because i'm so used to him always taking a shower and always smelling a certain way so when he didn't Uh start smelling what i'm used to him smelling like I picked I was able to pick up on it Especially around day four. I really picked up on his hair. Thanks. Danny. How about you? Don't notice the odor of kenny a little faster than your own um Look at the height How's this setup I'm bigger I smell more So, uh Mila kunis ashton kushner they're together I think do they have it right all these celebs you talked about that are all in the news now saying they are practicing some of these Less hygienic approaches. Well, certainly, you know as a board certified dermatologist. I want you to bathe your skin But um, you know with children in particular we tend to over bathe them You know, it's not bad idea to just bathe them when they're dirty or every other day The reality is I have a three and a five-year-old. They're almost always dirty You know, there's always something to wash off of them But we don't have to over cleanse the skin and that's the takeaway is we want to make sure that the natural oils that are There to protect us aren't stripped away. And so no matter how frequently you are aren't washing. We're always washing our hands That's always key. Well, I would wash the key bits of the body to tend to have more hormones your underarms. Yes Yes, so that's really important There's certainly a tipping point where we all need to cleanse especially in those areas To get rid of the bad bacteria and that fatty secretion so that we don't smell bad so we can do everything be Tastefully odorous to our partners, but not too much of a good thing All right So what's the real answer to the burning question of how much should you shower the definitive answer when we come back? We are back with the raging debate over how often you should be showering then we promised you the definitive answer on this So drum roll, please Dr. Dendy So the answer is if you're in puberty and up to 60 Every day or every other day is perfectly fine As we get into our 60s and older our oil glands actually start to produce less oil And so you can have a little more leeway if you're not getting dirty You don't have to bathe every day or even every other day. The natural oils are actually good for the skin My my rule of thumb is if i'm not working under a car or in a tough basketball game I can I can skip a day over the next past actually, you know This has been true for everybody But this past year has changed a lot of things and women put down their makeup brushes and started prioritizing their skincare since the march Uh to 2020 date that we all will remember the rest of our lives internet searches for self-care routines that search term Saw a 250 percent boost And while many used their extra time at home last year to focus on their beauty regimen Our next guest ditched her daily cleansing care and opted in for a more laid-back approach She actually stopped washing her face Entirely so jalen. Thanks for being with us. What prompted you to take such a drastic step and stop washing your face? Hi, so basically i've had acne My entire life since I was around 10 years old And it just got worse and worse over the years and in my early 20s. I just couldn't handle it anymore I had tried literally everything you could think of to fix it and nothing worked So I was doing some research and there's people saying how your body wants to self-regulate and wants to take care of itself So just to drop literally everything so I did 30 days later after doing nothing at all to my face I had almost perfectly clear skin besides some um, you know, like acne scarring or hyperpigmentation But besides that it was completely gone. So I was like, well, i'm not going to quit now So it's been you know, two years now and I have almost perfectly clear skin And you know, it's just I dropped literally everything to do that jill and i'm proud of you. Yeah, keep it up So when did we decide? to wash our faces Differently, when did we decide what cleansers that might make sense? And or all are they all pretty much created equally whenever you do wash your face So they're not and there are really harsh detergents and cleansers that strip away everything and we can see here You know, this this lady is beautiful and wears makeup and obviously wants to cleanse her skin and get the makeup off But when we do really harsh cleansers, we can actually strip the skin of our natural oils Leave it imbalanced and actually leave it dry and sensitive. So that's not a healthy state We used to think that squeaky clean feeling was actually good. That's rendered a very unnatural unhealthy state So we want our natural oils on there providing help and a barrier to the skin against the outside defenses So you want to stay away from stripping liquid cleansers? Okay, so i'm seeing these micellar Yes, uh products these days and it's my cell is a chemical term It just means they surround the fat and take it away. But why are these micellar wipes? I have potentially been more beneficial and what do they do? So they are they're basically dilute baby shampoo And so they're very good for sensitive skin people who have eczema people who have different sensitivities or rosacea They're not great, you know oil and water don't mix and if it's a water wipe Then it's not going to be as great with dissolving oil-based makeup So what do you recommend for folks wearing makeup if they have normal skin? What's the best cleansing option? Yes, so don't you got to stay with me here? It's a little counterintuitive and especially my patients with acne are like you want me to put what on my skin? But oil-based cleansers are great for dissolving makeup because oil Dissolves oil like removes like and so makeup is an oil base And so oil-based cleansers actually remove that and so this is going to be a little bit mind-blowing But you want to use an oil cleanser to remove your makeup, even if you have oily or acne prone skin Do you think overall we should have a more relaxed skin regimen for all skin types? I do I think that this past year everyone's just been crazy with the self-care and as you said earlier The searches are through the roof with people wanting to do more to help improve their skin But there's a fine line between doing just the right amount and doing way too much and actually causing harm So I want people to be relaxed and they'll take away from this segment I hope people know that if you have dry skin do not wash your face more than once a day Even if you have oily skin twice at maximum and that should be the takeaway there's lots of folks who are Older in age have actually adopted that for decades and it seems to have made them look better I know these old wives tales actually have some merit Sometimes to find out your skin type and the cleansing care it craves go to drags.com. Take the quiz find out