
Beard Stubble: Style Statement or Pathogen Paradise?
Frequent touching of the beard, often with the hands, can spread germs from the environment.
Research over the past 50 years has shown that bacteria and toxins can persist in beards even after washing. This has led to concerns that beards may harbour bacteria, which could increase the risk for infection.
Healthcare Context
In healthcare, beards remain a topic of debate, particularly regarding the spread of hospital-acquired infections. Studies have shown mixed results; some have found higher overall bacterial counts on the faces of bearded healthcare workers than on those of their clean-shaven peers, while others have reported no significant difference.
One study comparing hygiene levels in human and dog MRI scans found that men's beards carried a higher microbiological load than canine fur, including potentially harmful bacteria. Interestingly, the same study also showed that bearded doctors were less likely to carry Staphylococcus aureus, a key cause of hospital-acquired infections, than clean-shaven doctors. In addition, patients treated by bearded surgeons did not have higher rates of postoperative infection.
Skin Infections
Beards can spread skin infections, such as impetigo, a contagious condition typically caused by S aureus, which can colonise facial hair. In rare cases, parasites such as pubic lice (Pthirus pubis) have been found in beards, eyelashes, or eyebrows, particularly in situations involving poor hygiene or close contact with an infected person.
Beard Care
Neglected or poorly maintained beards can cause skin irritation, inflammation, and infections. The underlying skin is sensitive, as it contains many blood vessels, nerves, and immune cells, and can be easily affected by oil, dead skin, and environmental factors. Experts recommend daily cleansing of the face and beard to effectively remove dirt, allergens, and microbes. Dermatologists also advise regular moisturisation, using a beard comb to clear out impurities, and trimming to manage stray hairs and support healthy growth.
The hygiene of a beard largely depends on how well it is cared for; when cleaned daily, it does not pose a significant risk.
This story was translated from Univadis Germany.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Forbes
19 hours ago
- Forbes
20 Hurdles For Healthcare Tech Startups In Scaling Solutions
A healthcare startup may launch with a bold and innovative idea, but turning that idea into a scalable solution that works across hospitals and complex health systems is rarely straightforward. From integrating with legacy infrastructure to navigating strict compliance requirements and diverse stakeholder priorities, even the most agile teams can struggle to scale effectively. Left unaddressed, these challenges can stall adoption, drain internal resources and limit a product's long-term impact. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council highlight some of the most common hurdles healthcare startups must be ready for and share their expertise on breaking into and succeeding in this challenging sector. 1. Finding Client Champions To scale solutions within a health system or payer organization, you need to engage a team of internal champions who can understand, justify and prioritize your platform. Organizations evaluate dozens if not hundreds of companies each year. Champions help articulate your value, often leveraging their professional credibility to advocate for it. Finding and 'winning' them is essential to scaling. - Graham Gardner, Kyruus Health 2. Navigating Integration Requirements Across Hospital Systems One of the biggest hurdles is navigating the complexities of integration requirements across different hospital systems. Healthcare startups frequently underestimate the time and resources needed for integrations. Success requires building flexible APIs from day one and having dedicated integration specialists who understand healthcare IT infrastructure, not just general software development. - Ted Kail, Cority Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? 3. Gaining Traction In A Risk-Averse Environment Most healthcare organizations are risk-averse and don't want to be early adopters. They look for proven, well-established companies and products, making it difficult for healthcare startups to get traction, even when they have clearly better solutions. Partnering and delivering real value to that first set of clients is critical in scaling early on. - John Bou, Modio Health 4. Integrating With Insurance Systems Health insurance companies amplify the interoperability challenge by adding another layer of complex, often siloed, data and systems that healthcare tech startups must integrate with. This makes the negotiation and implementation of business associate and HIPAA agreements more complicated, given the data types, security requirements and shared liabilities that arise from integrating with both providers and payers. - Ajai Paul, Affirm Inc. 5. Understanding The Complex Stakeholder Ecosystem Healthcare startups often make the mistake of viewing the U.S. healthcare system with a 'singular' point of view. It is an integrated ecosystem where each stakeholder is affected by the others, which means multiple interests must be aligned when adopting new technologies. - Raghav Ramabadran, Intelligine Technologies 6. Building Custom Integrations For Each Customer Healthcare startups' challenges include integrating with electronic health record systems, which is not a 'plug and play' process. Each hospital or system has its own highly customized version of an EHR, with unique workflows, data fields and security protocols. This lack of standardization means startups must build a new integration for nearly every customer. - Chris Ciabarra, Athena Security Inc. 7. Developing Strong Governance From The Outset Healthcare startups often wait to build full product depth until after landing their first client, but healthcare's high-risk, structured environment demands strong governance from day one. Change control, release management and a deep understanding of current operations, especially when replacing legacy systems, are essential before customizing. Building depth late risks delays and failure! - Trisha Swift, Mula Integrative Health & Wellness 8. Maintaining HIPAA Compliance With Digital Content One challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech is managing digital content while staying HIPAA-compliant. Hospitals need more than stock photos and shared drives—they expect secure, role-based access to branded visuals that convey authenticity and protect patient privacy. Without a digital asset management strategy, startups risk falling short on compliance, credibility and growth. - Andrew Fingerman, PhotoShelter 9. Ensuring Consistent Performance And Compliance Across Disparate Systems Healthcare startups often struggle to scale because hospital environments vary widely in terms of infrastructure, workflows and data systems. Without a unified data architecture, real-time metrics, and built-in security and governance, it's hard to ensure consistent performance—or meet privacy requirements like HIPAA and business associate agreements governing protected health information. - Dave Albano, Diliko 10. Working Within Complex Pricing And Claims Rules One of the challenges is the integration of new tech into strict hospital billing and compliance processes. Hospitals have complex pricing and claims rules, and startups must work within these rules. They can't disrupt revenue or patient data safety. Doing this right builds trust and helps a solution scale faster. - Abhishek Sinha, Accenture 11. Processing Both Structured And Unstructured Health Data Integrating structured data (EHRs; lab results) and unstructured data (clinical notes; imaging; video) can be a major challenge. Healthcare startups must ensure their tech can process both, all while adapting to varying data and privacy standards across systems, which further complicates scaling and interoperability. Fortunately, generative AI is making this easier to do. - David Talby, John Snow Labs 12. Balancing Accuracy And Transparency With Scalability The healthcare and life sciences sector faces rigorous accuracy and transparency requirements that cannot be sacrificed and must be built into products from the start. Balancing this with scalability—which is really code for 'solving problems you don't have yet'—is a constant challenge—especially for startups, which often place a key focus on agility and speed. - Martin Snyder, Certara 13. Maintaining A Consistent, Accurate Record Of Core Assets One key challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech solutions across systems is the inability to maintain a consistent and accurate record of core assets—such as patients, providers and devices—due to the absence of a robust master data management strategy. This causes data fragmentation, which in turn hinders decision-making, innovation and seamless integration across platforms. - Somnath Banerjee 14. Keeping Up With A Range Of Regional Norms And Laws Key challenges include a wide range of compliance requirements, regulations, cultural norms, and data privacy and region-specific laws—making a one-size-fits-all solution impractical, even within a single organization. Startups often rely on business rules engines that lack user friendliness. Agentic AI offers a more adaptable and intuitive alternative. - Koushik Sundar, Citibank 15. Working Within Legacy Hospital Systems One major challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech solutions is integration with legacy hospital systems. Many hospitals rely on outdated EHRs or siloed IT infrastructure, making interoperability difficult. Startups must ensure compliance, data security and seamless integration to gain trust and adoption at scale. - Srikanth Bellamkonda 16. Clearly Demonstrating ROI And Pathways To Reimbursement Healthcare startups often struggle to clearly demonstrate a return on investment and secure reimbursement pathways. Without established billing codes or tangible cost-savings data, hospitals hesitate to allocate budget. Startups must invest heavily in economic validation, health economics and outcomes research, ensuring payers and finance teams see sustainable revenue models before adoption. - Manav Kapoor, Amazon 17. Creating An Internal COE Establishing an internal center of excellence with deep industry experience in scaling healthcare systems is vital, but costly. A key challenge lies in selecting vendors that align with the company's DNA. Bridging the gap between emerging tech and the unique demands of healthcare requires thoughtful planning and a nuanced understanding of both innovation and patient-centric outcomes. - Hari Sonnenahalli, NTT Data Business Solutions 18. Overcoming Resistance To New Tech I've regularly observed the challenges clinical sites face when adopting new technologies. There is often reluctance or resistance to change; staffing shortages further exacerbate these issues. A more effective approach may be to 'mirror' site-level data. This would allow AI-driven platforms to build a harmonized system that enables forward progress without disrupting existing workflows. - Rachel Tam, Bristol Myers Squibb 19. Accounting For Integration Issues When Building Solutions The biggest hurdle to overcome when scaling tech solutions across hospitals or healthcare systems is not technical; rather, it is integration—into provider workflows, clinical practice guidelines, financial models and revenue cycle management programs. Unless the issues around integration are considered and covered when building the solution, scaling will not occur. The landscape is littered with misaligned HealthTech startups. - Mark Francis, Electronic Caregiver 20. Completing Vendor Risk Documentation Post-ransomware, hospitals demand extensive vendor risk audits with hundreds of security controls, SOC 2/HITRUST docs, and custom BAAs. Completing these lengthy questionnaires stretches sales cycles to 18 to 24 months, burning cash and pulling engineers from product work to compliance, blocking scale. - Mohit Menghnani, Twilio


Fox News
19 hours ago
- Fox News
The new world of medicine: AI doctors
Doctronic founders Dr. Adam Oskowitz and Matt Pavelle discuss their new AI tool to help users better 'understand their health' and communicate with their doctors on 'America Reports.'


New York Times
20 hours ago
- New York Times
UnitedHealth Will Cooperate With Federal Probe of Its Medicare Billing Practices
After months of unconfirmed reports about a potential federal probe into its Medicare business, UnitedHealth Group, the giant health care conglomerate, announced Thursday morning that it was cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice and responding to both formal criminal and civil requests. UnitedHealth said it had 'proactively reached out' to the Justice Department after news reports of a government investigation had surfaced, according to an unsigned company statement. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The probe appears to focus on the private insurance plans that UnitedHealth offers as an alternative to traditional Medicare. The company is the largest supplier of these Medicare Advantage plans, which are sold to millions of older Americans and to people with disabilities. The business has become a critical source of revenues to UnitedHealth as Americans have increasingly chosen to enroll in these plans instead of the government's program. But UnitedHealth, along with other major insurers, has come under sharp scrutiny from federal officials. Government investigators have claimed that the company has overbilled Medicare, and regulators have been looking into whether it also inappropriately boosted payments by diagnosing enrolled patients with additional conditions, logging them as sicker than they are. Medicare pays UnitedHealth more when patients are sicker. UnitedHealth owns UnitedHealthcare, the insurer that sells the Medicare Advantage plans, and also operates a vast network of doctors through its Optum unit. Many of these doctors treat patients who are enrolled in the company's plans. The Wall Street Journal has been investigating whether UnitedHealthcare was increasing Medicare payments by inappropriately coding patients with diagnoses. It recently reported that prosecutors had been interviewing former employees. Medicare officials have already cracked down on some potentially abusive practices. But the probe by the Department of Justice signals a broader interest by regulators into this historically lucrative business, which contributes significantly to the company's $400 billion in annual revenues. The Justice Department inquiry comes at a difficult time for UnitedHealth, which has been reeling from a series of challenges, including the brutal murder in December of its top insurance executive, Brian Thompson. In May, the company abruptly replaced its chief executive with its former chief executive, Stephen Hemsley, after the company reported disappointing results. Its stock has plummeted, and on Thursday the share price was down in early trading. In its statement, the company expressed 'full confidence in its practices,' and that it was 'committed to working cooperatively with the Department through the process.' It added that the company had 'a long record of responsible conduct and effective compliance' and that it was conducting an independent review of its practices. UnitedHealth 'is committed to maintaining the integrity of its business practices and serving as reliable stewards of American tax dollars,' the company said.