How does belly button fluff form

Now, let's all remember to wash our belly buttons and let poor Steinhauser go on with his life. Celebrity Fashion Video. What is belly button lint? Keywords belly button weird beauty gross skin care belly button lint. These are the findings of a University of Sydney researcher named Karl Kruszelnicki. Dr Karl, as his fans know him, has an Australian science radio show, and one of his listeners wrote in asking where navel fluff comes from and how it forms.

That inspired Kruszelnicki to distribute a survey online, which led him to the conclusion that BBL is an affliction mainly of middle-aged men with sufficient body hair. For his research, Kruszelnicki received an Ig Nobel Prize in , an accolade given for research that "first makes you laugh, and then makes you think.

Fluff may help make bellybuttons cleaner by collecting bacteria as it forms Credit: Getty Images. In addition to the online survey, Kruszelnicki and his colleagues collected samples from willing volunteers and also asked some to shave the hair from around their belly buttons. It turned out that shaving belly hair indeed prevented the accumulation of lint. While perhaps not the world's leading experts on the topic, Dr Karl and his colleagues arrived at an explanation for the formation of navel fluff that, at least, makes intuitive sense.

Hairs around the belly button, they think, operate as a "one-way ratchet mechanism", stealing tiny fibres from inside your clothes and depositing them into your navel. Older clothes, less lint Kruszelnicki wasn't the only person to take a stab at what forms the fluff that fills belly buttons around the world.

In , a Vienna University of Technology researcher named Georg Steinhauser published his hypothesis in the eyebrow-raising journal Medical Hypotheses. For reasons known only to himself, Steinhauser collected his own navel fluff each evening for three years.

Though he insists that he maintains good personal hygiene, including a shower each morning, his navel invariably becomes filled with fluff by the day's end. In all Steinhauser collected samples from his own belly button. Their combined weight didn't even reach a single gram. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. A year's worth of belly button lint. David Burton Look in your belly button at the end of the day, and you might find a loosely packed tuft of soft lint.

How belly button lint forms Georg Steinhauser of the Vienna University of Technology is primarily an atomic chemist. Journal of Nutrition Steinhauser first arrived at this hypothesis by finding that of his friends, it was mostly people that had stomach hair who also typically found belly button lint. Steinhauser As you can see, the vast majority of his lint balls weighed less than three milligrams.

Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.

The Latest. Some people also clean their belly buttons with cotton swabs soaked in alcohol, which he says can cause dryness and irritation. Removing your belly hair could also limit your lint build-up. Contact us at letters time. By Markham Heid. Poor Georg Steinhauser.