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This Startup Thinks You Should Replace Showers With Probiotic Spray

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April 29, 2016, 12:00 PM ET

This post originally appeared on Uncubed.

Getting ourselves clean, we thought, involved scrubbing every fleck of dirt, countless germs, and any temporary tattoos off our skin.

But the Cambridge-based beauty startup Mother Dirt is taking a radical new approach.

The idea is that our decades of bacteria-killing bloodlust have also decimated the microorganisms on our skin that consume irritants and toxins in sweat. Mother Dirt’s AO+ Mist, which costs $49 per bottle, contains live Ammonia Oxidizing Bacteria that promise to “restore balance to skin microbiome.”

Related: This Whole ‘Eating Bugs’ Thing Actually Has Legs

And the man who developed it all, chemist David Whitlock, claims he hasn’t showered or bathed in 12 years, without a single complaint about his B.O.

Thankfully, skipping the soap is not a requirement for using Mother Dirt’s products. “That’s what I do,” Whitlock said, “but in order to enjoy the benefits of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, you don’t have to stop showering. You just have to use the spray after drying off after a shower to restore balance to your skin flora.”

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