It only takes a ten-minute swim in the ocean to get your skin covered in a coat of sea-dwelling bacteria, research has found.
A team went to a California beach and recruited a set of beach goers, who only swam in the ocean infrequently and weren't using sunscreen.
After taking swabs from participants' skin before and after swimming, they found a common ocean bacteria called Vibrio, typically found in salt water.
While Vibrio isn't necessarily bad, some strains are 'disease-causing' and raise the risk of infection by disrupting your skin's delicate microbiome.
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It only takes a ten-minute swim in the ocean to get your skin covered in a coat of se-dwelling bacteria, research has found. A team went to a California beach and recruited a set of beachgoers, who only swam in the ocean infrequently and weren't using sunscreen
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine went to the beach and recruited a select set of beachgoers.
They were people who only swam in the ocean infrequently and who weren't using sunscreen at the moment.
They also had to not have bathed in the past 12 hours, or used antibiotics in the past six months.
Before swimming, the nine volunteers who were ultimately recruited had a skin swab taken from the back of their calf, then went on a 10-minute swim.
After they returned and completely dried off, the skin was swabbed again, as well as six hours and a day later.
The microbiome protects us against germs and the team observed that they changed and became more similar to one another after swimming.
The findings show that that ocean water exposure can alter the diversity and composition of the human skin microbiome.
The researchers, from the University of California, Irvine, noted the study is a work in progress but could help explain a pattern of how people who swim in the ocean are more likely to get sick with stomach aches and ear infections than those who stay on the sand.
Though the bulk of infections from the sea are caused by faeces, which get into our bodies, the team suspects that ocean bacteria as a whole can make illness more likely through their effects on the skin microbiome.
On the beach, they only used people who only swam in the ocean infrequently and who weren't using sunscreen at that moment.
Before swimming, the nine volunteers who were recruited had a skin swab taken from the back of their calf, then went on a ten-minute swim.
They also had to not have bathed in the past 12 hours, or used antibiotics in the
