I wish Lemmy would grow to the point when these Reddit moments of "I’m a dermatologist, and actually…” happen as usual as they happen on Reddit.
That used to be the case on reddit. These days you have to scroll through hundreds of lame jokes to find an actual discussion.
I’m a Demodex folliculorum and I’m currently dating a Demodex brevis so I’m somewhat of an expert. Our host is pretty gross and rarely showers which has made the real estate in this area really expensive. We’ve been trying to move to another host but the opportunity hasn’t come up yet. Anyway, to answer your question, we have scuba gear.
As another user pointed out, most bacteria and other microscopic forms of life don’t really “breath” in the way we think of it. Often they just absorb oxygen from their surrounding environments.
They can be washed away, killed by chlorine (pools), or killed by salt imbalance (ocean). However it’s really hard (read near impossible) to kill them all, and even if you did they exist in our environments naturally and from other humans as well as on things we’ve touched recently. So they repopulate quickly.
There are some arguments that Sodium Laurel Sulfate kills “good” bacteria on our skin.
TIL I have little bugs on my skin :(
I am not a microbiologist. However I do know that bacteria are pretty resilient, and most pathogens and parasites can live for at least a few hours outside of a host. Plus your skin is really not all that smooth at a microscopic level, there are all sorts of little nooks and crannies to hold onto.
Drowning wouldn’t really be a concern for them, imo, but additives like chlorine are specifically meant to be disinfectants.
Now hear me out:
What if you jumped through a tall fire, naked, a few times? Nothing so fast as to actually burn you, but enough to make you hairless.
I’m fairly certain that would kill quite a bit of the microbiome.
