Research Suggests That Men With Beards Actually Harbor More Germs Than Dogs, Claiming That Dogs Can Be Deemed “Clean” In Comparison To Bearded Men
After hitting that coveted growth spurt around the time of middle school, young men typically look forward to the development of one specific feature: facial hair.
Whether or not you choose to rock a beard now, you probably yearned for one at some point. For many, beards mark that they’ve “become a man.”
But this once-coveted look might set you up for some hygiene-related criticism now. According to a study published in 2019, beards could actually harbor more germs than the fur of dogs.
Scientists at the Hirslanden Clinic near Zurich, Switzerland, aimed to find out if using the same MRI scanner for both humans and dogs was hygienic.
In order to assess this, they compared the bacterial load in terms of colony-forming units (CFU) of human-pathogenic microorganisms, analyzing samples from 18 men with beards and 30 dogs with fur.
The study also involved comparing the level of bacterial contamination in an MRI scanner shared by dogs and humans to that in two other MRI scanners used solely by humans.
The results? Men with beards had high microbial counts, in contrast to just 23 out of the 30 dogs. Moreover, seven of the bearded men actually had such high levels of beard bacteria that they were at risk of illness.
“On the basis of these findings, dogs can be considered as clean, compared with bearded men,” said Andreas Gutzeit, the study’s author.
This perhaps shocking discovery caused some beard defenders to crack comments and cast doubts about the research.
arthurhidden – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person or dog
Even Keith Flett, the founder of the Beard Liberation Front (BLF), a British interest group that campaigns to support beards, expressed his skepticism about the findings.
“I think it’s possible to find all sorts of unpleasant things if you took swabs from people’s hair and hands and then tested them. I don’t believe that beards in themselves are unhygienic,” Flett explained.
“There seems to be a constant stream of negative stories about beards that suggest it’s more about pogonophobia [or the overwhelming fear or worry about beards] than anything else.”
Still, the study’s researchers concluded that men with beards harbor “significantly more microbes than dogs.” Therefore, humans are not at risk if dogs use the same MRI machines.
To read the study’s complete findings, which were published in the National Library Of Medicine, visit the link here.
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