This means if it's raining, we'll have clothes drying in the bathroom, which I'll then need to move out to take a shower. Whether it makes sense to then put them back in to the now wet bathroom with the dryer running I'm not sure.
It dramatically reduces the amount of lipids in sebum, which is what odor-producing bacteria in the armpits feed on. It's also a recent mutation which has been highly selected for, despite being recessive. Comparable to lactase tolerance.
For me, the latter is much more a concern - I sweat overnight and so want to be clean in time to start interacting with people. If I do physical activity, or it's a hot summer day, I might even shower in the morning and evening.
On the other hand, before I visited China, I never imagined getting so dirty that I needed to shower before bed, or I would be rolling in dirt. The dirt really gets on you in dusty Beijing. It wasn’t what I was used to from the states at all.
I don’t shower to wash off dirt; I shower to wash off my own body’s excretions. Which definitely do happen while I’m sleeping (and more so, in fact, because body temperature rises during sleep.)
I can shower, dry thoroughly, get straight into bed… and still, the next morning, I’m sticky from sweat; have BO (that deodorant won’t mask); and my hair is now stuck moussed by my own overnight scalp oils into looking like Goku.
You have that backwards. “People maintain a fairly consistent body temperature during the day which drops at night by around 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. However, some people still feel hot at night due to their unique body composition, sleep environment, something they ate or drank, or other medical reasons.” https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-faqs/why-do-i-get-so-h....
Deeper look: “Core body temperature (CBT) reductions occur before and during the sleep period, with the extent of presleep reductions corresponding to sleep onset and quality.” https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/japplphysiol...
Critically your body intentionally lowers temperature including changes to skin capillaries and sweating, it’s not simply lowering temperature from not moving. So you can wake up sweating even if things where fine when you went to sleep.
With my partner we have complementary heating systems. I get warm in the evening when they are cold, and they warm up after eating which does nothing for me. The difference is radical.
I guess partly due to this I would never spend a day without a shower in the morning. I've never been sick enough to skip a morning shower, even in a high fever (or especially then I guess, due to sweating more than usual). The dirty feeling is just too much to bear.
Try taking your core body temperature using a thermometer rather than relying on perceived temperature.
Caffeine, as a cholinergic, constricts peripheral blood vessels, and reduces bloodflow; and as a diuretic, it also reduces interstitial-fluid retention in peripheral tissues. These effects combine to decrease your skin temperature (or rather, to make your skin temperature less reflective of your core temperature and more reflective of the ambient air temperature); while very slightly increasing your core temperature (and blood pressure! Which is one reason caffeine is bad for your heart!)
Most of your heat-sensing nerves are in your periphery, not in your core. So caffeine, by making your skin cooler, makes you feel cooler (even though your basal body temperature goes up!) to which your body responds by sweating less (even though caffeine, as a cholinergic, would force you to sweat in great-enough amounts. See: SLUDGE syndrome.)
Most people don't drink caffeine after a certain time in the evening; and so at night, whatever caffeine was in their bodies has a chance to flush out — which then suddenly allows bloodflow, blood pressure, and interstitial fluid to wash back out to their skin and extremities — and with that comes an increase in skin temperature, "hot" qualia, and triggered sweating from signalled overheating (i.e. the same reason you sweat from spicy food even though your BBT isn't increasing.)
I tried switching after moving out but didn't find it nice for the same reason you mention, getting the bed all dirty with whatever sweat had accumulated over the day.
My uncle's family kept visiting from America and taking 20 minute showers, which would have been totally fine if they were still in Vermont but used an incredibly high amount of water. He eventually installed a shower timer so his tank wouldn't run dry.
In such conditions, water costs more than mere money. Yes, you can probably afford to shower twice a day, but that would require you to bring in a tanker of water from an already drought-stricken reservoir. Water takes on a moral cost as well as a financial one. There's a famous passage from Dune: "One date palm requires forty liters of water a day. A man requires but eight liters. A palm, then, equals five men." Australia is not quite Arrakis, but in a water shortage extra showers start to feel like an Arrakeen date palm.
[0] See this huge PDF for exactly what that was and how we plan to manage it if it happens again: https://www.water.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/671...
Currently our home's AC is out which has resulted in two showers/day due to the heat. Post exercise is going to at least be a hot rinse.
The irony (pun semi-intended) is my wife has gotten fond of at times hanging clothes in the bathroom during a shower to help remove wrinkles. No, Ironing is better but it's a little less ceremony as well as increasing the overall utility of the water you used in the shower.
I suppose different genetics in different regions might play into that.
I think I wake up still basically clean, not filthier than morning showerers. I am of course a biased observer for that.
I grew up in 3rd world without running water, so I'm not ever going to feel "guilty" or whatever other BS for taking 2-3 showers a day.
How does that work? If you wash in the evening and go to bed you do not wake up dirty. Unless your bed is a pigsy I suppose, but then the solution is different.