The pleasing whiff of good bugs - where microbiology and perfumes meet

The human skin is home to millions of bacteria that help regulate pH levels, dryness, oil content, and more.

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The human skin is home to millions of bacteria that help regulate pH levels, dryness, oil content, and more. We also have plenty of data on the skin microbiome | Image used for representational purpose only The human skin is home to millions of bacteria that help regulate pH levels, dryness, oil content, and more. We also have plenty of data on the skin microbiome | Image used for representational purpose only | Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFor someone who has been battling bad bugs for his entire professional life, life has produced an interesting deviation for Abdul Ghafur, infectious diseases expert. He has now begun engaging with the good bugs too, in particular looking at the skin microbiome to see what perfume is right for you. That's right. The perfume type has to be at ease with your skin microbiome, for it to actually work. Otherwise, multiple applications and overexposure to the chemicals in the perfumes might turn sour, at the least, and at the extreme, even turn harmful for humans.

"We think of bugs as being all 'bad', but that is not true at all. About 99.999% of bugs are either neutral or good for us. It's only 0.001% of bugs that are 'bad', rather, disease causing," Dr. Ghafur hastens to clarify. While his profession hitherto has set him up arms akimbo, against the disease-causing critters, his passion has more recently set him on the side of the good ones!