New Study On ‘Beard Gunk’ Will Make Your Skin Crawl

I have a beard and I demand a recount.  There is no way that my beard is more germ-infested than the average strand of dog hair.  Perhaps I'm just in denial, but I just can't fathom how that's physically possible.

Most men with beards these days tend to their beards quite well.  It's become an art form (and a relatively expensive one at that) to maintain thick, lavish, well-groomed face fur. We groom it, wash, oil, brush, dye, condition and treat it like any other meaningful body part. A strong healthy-looking well maintained beard is important to us men.  This latest survey is a blow to our beard, a shot to our stubble, and fighting words to our face.

According to a report that I saw on News 10 ABC, a new study suggests a man’s beard isn't any cleaner than the fur on a dog.  Now I'm not suggesting that my dogs (or yours) aren't clean animals, but if you're paying attention, you know where that animal has been.

Try taking your dog for a walk and see if they don't stop to literally smash their face in an area where they believe another dog has urinated.  Dog's mark their territory, but they need to know what territory to mark first, and this a way to collect their data.  Followed by literally smashing their face in another dog's urine.  Or their crotch.  Or both. Not to mention that most dogs will attempt to sniff and or eat anything they can get their mouth on and that sometimes includes other dogs.  I'm not trying to pretend that male faces aren't exposed to these sorts of things from time to time, but if you wash regularly, your face should rank higher in the clean department than a DOG!

Now for the actual data:

According to the report, "professors with Switzerland's Hirslanden Clinic took swab samples from the whiskers of 18 men and compared them with samples from the necks of 30 dogs of varying breeds"

Ultimately, they found all of the bearded men, aged from 18 to 76, 'showed high microbial counts'.

But only 23 out of 30 dogs had high counts, the Daily Mail reports.

To matters even worse according to the report, seven of the men sampled were found to have microbes in their beards that posed a threat to human health.

I like my beard and I like other men's beards.  I have a hard time believing this survey is accurate and it's not because I think dogs are dirty.  I just assumed that us men were perhaps a wee bit cleaner.