You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

I have a loaded question for you.

Are you team Lufa or team washcloth or team bare hands? That's me.

Do you wash your legs in the shower? I don't know if you remember there was a huge internet debate about that.

Are you a bath person

bath person or a shower person.

I am personally a bath the person although my family shuns me for this but I absolutely

love a bath I take a bath every single day.

Dr. Michelle Henry is a dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon based in Manhattan, and she's here to talk to us about the surprisingly controversial subject of bathing.

She says, practically speaking, of course, bathing is a way to cleanse your skin of dirt, oil, and

debris and lower your risk of disease.

But exactly how to go about that task?

That's a bit murkier.

Hygiene is just such a funny thing.

If you ask a mom of a toddler, hygiene

is getting off the visible dirt that she can see.

If you ask a microbiologist it's about getting away the bacteria, right?

So it's such a nuanced conversation.

She says one reason people get fired up about this stuff is that bathing can serve a social function.

It really represents our family, our value system, in some ways our religion.

You know, if we look at religious texts we're always talking about purifying ourselves and you know so it has really deep

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