I guess the OP is talking about people that shower at night. I just shower every morning and change under clothes. I’ll wear a pair of jeans and a fleece top over a tee-shirt for a few days though. I work from home, other wise I used to change my fleece to a different color every day. No point it that now.
All of this.
I shower only twice a week due to my dry, sensitive skin. And as much as I used to love a hot, hot shower, my skin really hates it. I’d like to shower more often, and in summer, if my skin is happy, I shower every other day. But no, you do not need to wear your manky, dirty underwear to maintain your bacterial balance; you need to eat a healthy diet and use mild soap with lukewarm water when you bathe.
Everyone keeps talking about nasty underwear. The man was talking about a 24 hour cycle of bathing and fresh underwear. But the cycles were simply 12 hours apart. I can see the logic behind it but I just have my doubts if the underwear, including t shirts could transfer enough good bacteria fast enough to be worthwhile.
What benefit do you hope to get from the bacteria on your underwear?
If not health risks, then certainly legal risks, if you go commando around playgrounds with a faulty zipper.
Maintaining and/or promoting a healthy population of “good” micro-critters to out-compete the “bad” ones in the personal petri dish that is your outer body, if I’m following the OP and subsequent convo correctly.
The ensuing debate seems to be, well, whether that’s really the case. However, unfortunately, we don’t appear to have a resident “underwear bacteria” expert on staff.
As luck would have it, I got my PhD in undergarment animalcules. I spent my career in men’s and women’s underpants.
(j/k- 
)
This article (PDF) may be of interest to you. It discusses the effect of antibacterial clothes on human skin microflora:
Conclusion: Altogether, in our experiments, we were not able to see any significant adverse effects of antibacterial clothes on the physiological human skin microflora or the skin barrier of healthy people. Worth note is that the subject of evaluation was healthy skin that is already in good condition at the start of the study.
I feel I have a pretty healthy gut flora. But I don’t feel the same about my skin. I get a lot of “prickly heat”, which I believe is caused by bacteria that my skin is sensitive to. So I guess I’m just not the market for “maintaining existing skin flora”. I suppose if I were, I might be more interested in this conversation.
(I would be interested in a cream or ointment of “healthy bacteria” to apply to my skin, but I don’t believe anyone is marketing that.)
Per mayoclinic.org:
Heat rash develops when a duct that leads from a sweat gland to the surface of the skin is blocked or inflamed. This then blocks the opening of the sweat duct on the surface of the skin (sweat pore). Instead of evaporating, sweat is trapped beneath the skin, causing irritation and bumps on the skin.
While it could be bacteria, it could also be sunscreen, dead skin, etc. Using sunscreen gives me heat rash. Weird, but that’s my skin.
Well, I don’t know for sure it’s bacteria. But I know for sure that washing helps reduce it, and failing to wash encourages it. And that changing to clean clothes helps independently of whether I wash.
I just want to go on the record as saying that I think the ability to, whenever I want, indulge a long, hot steamy shower with scented soaps and conditioners, followed by a liberal application of deodorant and a change into fresh, clean lightly scented clothing is one of the joys of modern civilization. It’s a privilege that was inaccessible to the vast majority of humans that ever lived and died on this planet.
It’s a privilege that I indulge in daily, unapologetically, and I don’t intend to stop.
Oh, I used to work for a guy whose wife loved his natural body odor and allegedly encouraged him not to shower too often. However, everyone that had to work in the vicinity of this guy found him nauseatingly stinky and if he hadn’t owned the company he probably would’ve been fired for stinking up the place.
Less odor and better skin
I only shower twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays) unless i have been working in the yard or other strenuous or grubby activity, or some special event that demands it. I only change my underwear and socks after I shower. I use Mitchum unscented 48 hour antiperspirant and Lever 2000 Aloe & Cucumber bath bar soap. I’ve never had any complaints from the missus.
I often get heat rash under my breasts in hot weather. Once during the pandemic I had a particularly bad case, and started googling home remedies; having read a batch of them I thought ‘well vinegar can’t very well hurt and I’ve got some.’ So I tried soaking a washcloth in white vinegar and wiping the affected area a couple of times a day.
Works beautifully. Don’t know whether it’ll work for you; but might be worth a try.
Is that full strength vinegar or do you dilute it?
I used full strength. The first time I put it on it stung a bit, but once the rash started healing it didn’t sting. I only needed to use it for a few days.
Now I don’t let the rash get as bad before I use the vinegar; and again, only until it at least mostly clears up.
Our unfair world divides people in two categories:
• Those showering before going to work
• Those showering after coming home from work
A question for all who post about ‘bath’: do you mean actually soaking in a tub or just another way to say shower? Because just soaking, i.e. marinating in your own juices (albeit diluted) without showering after seems counterproductive if the goal is to get squeaky clean.
That’s why the Japanese wash before they get into the tub at an onsen.
When I’m done soaking, I let the water out of the bath, stand up, and rinse off briefly under the shower head.
Soaking is good for sore muscles; and I do the kind of work that can produce ground-in dirt that needs to soak for me to get clean.
But I’m not actually convinced that just a plain bath doesn’t get most people clean. That’s all that most people did in my parents’ generation, and they got clean. I wash my hair in the tub, though, and can’t get all the soap out of my hair without a bit of shower – but my mother washed hers separately from taking a bath, in the kitchen sink; and I seem to remember also filling a pot with clean water from the tub spout and pouring that over my head, when I first started washing mine in the tub instead, and the tub I was using didn’t have a showerhead.
In hot weather I’ll sometimes take just a shower.
Oh, I agree. Soaking is relaxing, soothing and makes my arthritic joints feel a bit better. And one does get cleaner. But soap and shampoo residue as well as… other substances… I rinse that off with a quick shower before toweling.