Some people prefer to shower in the morning, others in the evening. Who is doing it the right way?

In this increasingly polarised world we live in, there is one question that perhaps divides us more than any other – do you shower first thing in the morning, or last thing at night? Or perhaps you are one of the 34% of the American population who do not shower daily.

Whichever camp you belong to, you may wonder what impact your choice has on your health.

For many of us, after we wake up bleary-eyed in the morning one of the first things we do is jump into the shower. Morning shower advocates often argue that standing for 10 minutes under a torrent of hot water helps them to wake up and feel fresh and ready to start the day. Yet nighttime bathers argue that showering before bed helps them wash the day's grime away before they slip under the covers and succumb to blissful sleep.

So what does the science say on which is actually more beneficial for us?

Showering helps to remove the dirt, sweat and oil from our skin. This can accumulate throughout the day, along with pollutants, dust and pollen from the environment. If you don't shower before bed, this detritus is deposited onto your sheets and pillowcase.

This isn't all. Your skin is teeming with microbial life. Zoom in on any square centimetre of skin and you'll find between 10,000 to one million bacteria living there. They feed off the oil secreted from your sweat glands. While sweat itself doesn't smell, the sulphurous compounds produced by bacteria like staphylococcus certainly do.

So showering before bed may seem like the more hygienic option. However, as ever, the truth is more complicated than that.

"If you shower at night you go to bed nice and clean, but you'll still sweat overnight," says Primrose Freestone, a microbiologist at the University of Leicester.

According to Freestone, even in cold weather a person will still sweat up to half a pint of sweat into the bed, and deposit 50,000 or more skin cells – an all-you-can-eat buffet for dust mites.

"You're still........

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