For decades, people have been obsessed with antibacterial soap.
Bacteria and germs were painted as the devil, responsible for a host of diseases, and everything from compulsive handwashing to Purell stations in every public place became the norm.
However, a new startup called AOBiome is bucking the trend with a mist that’s probiotic.
The logic works like this: natural bacteria on the skin (before being stripped away by soaps and harsh cleansers) are designed to dissolve the ammonia in sweat and body odor while retaining moisture.
AOBiome has developed a revolutionary bodyspray which contains “billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water.”
A New York Times journalist tried the product for a trial period, and the results are astonishing:
My skin began to change for the better. It actually became softer and smoother, rather than dry and flaky, as though a sauna’s worth of humidity had penetrated my winter-hardened shell. And my complexion, prone to hormone-related breakouts, was clear. For the first time ever, my pores seemed to shrink.
Body odor was not a problem as long as she followed the instructions to mist before she left the house and after she got back home.
Probiotic advocates and scientists hope that this is the first step in using probiotics for good.
Those with wounds that fail to respond to antibiotics could receive a probiotic cocktail adapted to fight the specific strain of infecting bacteria. Body odor could be altered to repel insects and thereby fight malaria and dengue fever. And eczema and other chronic inflammatory disorders could be ameliorated.
Now that more and more diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics, it may be time to start looking in the other direction.