Clean: The New Science of Skin

It might sound counterintuitive to take a sabbatical from showering to refresh your skin, but recent studies prove that a bathroom full of skincare products might not improve your bodily health at all—in fact, all of those moisturizers, conditioners, and wrinkle creams might be feeding the problems you’ve been trying to eliminate. Despite the health and skincare industry’s advertisement of various products as wellness necessities, their claims aren’t always scientifically sound and their creations may be corrupting the skin’s “microbiome”—a crucial layer of microbial organisms partly responsible for one’s overall wellness. Writer and physician James Hamblin deconstructs society’s increasingly expensive reliance upon skincare products to reveal a more nuanced understanding of hygiene, skin, and overall human wellbeing.